Belarus has been widely ostracized internationally following March presidential elections that saw a landslide victory for incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko and were widely criticized as fraudulent by the opposition and international observers.
"Problems can only be solved by dialogue, not isolation," Sergei Lavrov told a visiting session of the council's Parliamentary Assembly in Moscow.
Russia currently holds the rotating presidency of the council's committee of ministers, the Council's executive body, and Lavrov said he hoped Russia's presidency could help start dialogue with Belarus, which he said PACE admitted there was a need for.
Lavrov also criticized an entry ban imposed on Lukashenko and other top Belarusian officials by the European Union and the United States in the wake of the elections, and said Lukashenko's victory reflected the will of the Belarusian people.
"We cannot say this is a successful way to solve the problem," Lavrov said. He added that because of the ban the speaker of Belarus' parliament was unable to attend PACE sessions.
Belarus is the only European country that is not a member of the Council of Europe.
Isolating Belarus would be a mistake, Lavrov said, saying that "We [Russia] cannot agree that Belarus presents a threat to Europe."
He had harsh words for an international monitoring mission that included PACE representatives, and said procedures for appointing representatives were opaque.
"For three years already we have been unable to get an answer to the question of who and were the participants of this international mission were chosen ... [and] for some reason we cannot include in it members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States," a loose association of former Soviet republics, Lavrov said.
