On 18 March 2009 Mr Anatoly Rubinov, Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus, Head of the Working Group of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus on Cooperation with the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany, had a meeting with Mr Manfred Zabel, Chairman of the Board, IBB "Johannes Rau" Minsk, Mr Peter Junge-Wentrup, Director of the International Education Centre of Dortmund, Ms Astrid Sahm and Mr Viktor Balakirev, Directors of the IBB "Johannes Rau" Minsk, on their request. Ms Svetlana Shilova, Deputy Chairperson of the Standing Committee of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Belarus for Health Care, Physical Culture, Family and Youth Affairs, Deputy Head of the Working Group of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus on Cooperation with the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany also took part in the meeting.

      The Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Republic briefed on the modern directions of the Republic of Belarus foreign policy and underlined that the relations with Germany in all spheres were given a special attention. He highly appraised the IBB Minsk activity aimed at the development of NGO contacts between the Republic of Belarus and the Federal Republic of Germany.

      The IBB Minsk representatives informed the Belarusian side about the Centre’s activities results, in particular about the implementation of the Support Programme for Belarus financed by the Federal Government of Germany, which included more than 130 already completed projects, and briefed of the scheduled events including the “Developing Partnership Projects” German-Ukrainian-Belarusian conference of partner NGOs.

      In the end of the meting the sides agreed on continuing the contacts.