Belarus wants the European Union to take in 2,000 migrants, and officials in Minsk will send 5,000 others back to their countries to fix the crisis on the Polish border, the president's spokeswoman has been quoted as saying by Belta news agency.
It comes as Belarus authorities on Thursday cleared the main camps where migrants had huddled at the border with Poland, in a change of tack that could lower the temperature in a crisis that has spiralled in recent weeks into a major East-West confrontation.
The spokeswoman said Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko had discussed the proposal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and that Ms Merkel had agreed to discuss it with the European Union.
The spokeswoman, Natalia Eismont, summarised the proposal as follows: "The European Union creates a humanitarian corridor for the 2,000 refugees who are in the camp. We undertake to facilitate (as far as possible and if they wish) the remaining 5,000 to return to their homeland."
The European Commission and Germany poured cold water on the proposal that European Union countries take in 2,000 of the migrants currently on its territory, however, and the United States accused Minsk of making migrants "pawns in its efforts to be disruptive", signalling the tensions with the West were far from over.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Thursday that his country will not take in refugees stranded on the Belarus-Polish border.
"If we took in refugees, if we bowed to the pressure and said 'we are taking refugees into European countries', then this would mean implementing the very basis of this perfidious strategy", Mr Seehofer said during a news conference in Warsaw after talks with his Polish counterpart.
European Union countries accuse Belarus of having deliberately created the crisis by flying in migrants from the Middle East and pushing them to attempt to cross illegally into Poland and Lithuania.
Belarus officials deny the accusations.
"We are talking about an irregular and perfidious migration which is being organised by Belarus with a degree of support from Russia," Mr Seehofer said.
"The Poles are not only following their own interests. They are also acting in the interests of the whole European Union."
Germany, the EU's wealthiest economy, is believed to be the preferred destination of many of the migrants.
The EU Commission said earlier there was no question of any negotiation with President Lukashenko.
European countries have for months accused Belarus of deliberately creating the crisis by flying in migrants from the Middle East and pushing them to attempt to illegally cross its borders into Poland and Lithuania.
Minsk, backed by Moscow, rejected those accusations in a stand-off that had left thousands of migrants trapped in freezing woods at the border.
A spokesperson for the Polish border guards said the camps on the border in western Belarus were completely empty on Thursday, which a Belarusian press officer confirmed. Belarus state news agency Belta said the migrants had been brought to a warehouse in Belarus away from the frontier.
"These camps are now empty, the migrants have been taken most likely to the transport-logistics centre, which is not far from the Bruzgi border crossing," the Polish spokesperson said.
"There were no other such camps ... but there were groups appearing in other places trying to cross the border. We'll see what happens in the next hours."
Hundreds of Iraqis who have camped for weeks at Belarus' borders with the EU checked in for a flight back to Iraq on Thursday, the Iraqi foreign ministry said.
Migrants gathering on the Belarus-Poland border in the Grodno region, Belarus, 8 November 2021. Source: AAP
"Yes, unfortunately, only about 400 refugees have agreed to return home. In all, to be precise, in the plane that left today there were 374 passengers, mostly Iraqi citizens," Ms Eismont said.
"We're fulfilling our promises while the EU has not yet fulfilled a single obligation," she added.
