BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

14/05/2006

EU to freeze Belarus president's assets

By Fidelius Schmid and Daniel Dombey in Brussels

The European Union is set to freeze the assets of Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, and more than 30 senior officials in a response to Belarus's flawed presidential elections in March and the subsequent jailing of Alexander Milinkevich, the main opposition candidate.

The move, likely to be made in coming days, follows a decision by EU ministers in April to impose a visa ban on Mr Lukashenko and 30 officials.

Diplomats from several member states said the EU's 25 governments had agreed that the officials named in the visa ban would also be subject to an asset freeze, as would a smaller number of people affected by a previous visa ban.

The list includes members of the presidential staff, the interior minister, the country's highest ranking prosecutor, the head of Belarus's secret service, the minister of information and the president of the parliament.

The ban was originally to have been agreed today at an EU foreign ministers meeting. However, diplomats said a formal decision could not yet be taken, as the necessary documents were not yet available in all the 25-nation bloc's languages. But another ministerial meeting could take the step in coming days, since consensus has already been reached.

The decision to impose the asset freeze was more complicated than the visa ban and diplomats said it had been intended to be put into place for some time. But the bloc had tried to handle the issue discreetly, a diplomat said: "If you announce an asset freeze for weeks before you can install it, the money will disappear to countries like Switzerland before you can get hold of it." ⺄oday's foreign ministers' meeting will see a new attempt to open up the way EU ministers agree legislation, one of the most secretive legislative processes in the western world.

Austria, which holds the EU presidency, will circulate a suggestion to make all ministers' legislative work public. The proposal would make work on legislation jointly agreed with the European parliament "open, at all stages". "This is part of the debate on the future of Europe and rebuilding trust with European citizens," said an Austrian diplomat. "We expect to have an agreement on principle on this in the EU's June summit so that coming presidencies can work on it and put it into action."

Source:

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/66007b18-e373-11da-a015-0000779e2340.html