BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

22/06/2008

Russian and Belarusian leaders meet to discuss long-debated merger

The Associated Press

BREST, Belarus: Russian President Dmitri Medvedev met with the president of Belarus on Sunday to discuss the merger of the two former Soviet countries into a single state.

"The movement forward is very good," Medvedev said after talks with Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Russia and Belarus signed an agreement in 1996 that called for close political, economic and military ties — and eventually a full merger — but negotiations on strengthening the union of the two countries have stalled.

"Politically and legally we created a union state, and now it is important to fill it with real content," Lukashenko said.

In the 1990s, Lukashenko — who has been called "Europe's last dictator" by Western critics — pushed for the merger, apparently hoping to take reins from Russia's weakening president, Boris Yeltsin.

But Vladimir Putin's election in 2000 demolished Lukashenko's hopes to rule both countries.

Two years later Lukashenko angrily rejected a Kremlin proposal to incorporate his nation into the Russian Federation, and ties have further soured due to disputes over the price of Russian natural gas. Cheap Russian energy is critical to propping up Lukashenko's Soviet-style economy.

Some observers had speculated that Putin might become the president of a new unified state of Russia and Belarus after he stepped down in May after eight years as Russian president. That speculation ended when Putin made clear he intended to serve as premier under his protege Medvedev.

"The last eight years of working with Russia and its former president were full of summersaults and stumbles, but we gained a powerful momentum," Lukashenko said.

A merger of the two predominantly Slavic, Russian Orthodox countries would be the first of any two ex-Soviet republics since the Soviet Union split apart in 1991. But it would deepen Western concerns about an increasingly assertive Russia that seeks to restore its lost Soviet clout.

After the talks, Medvedev and Lukashenko were scheduled to visit a village where in 1991 leaders of the then-Soviet Russia, Belarus and Ukraine signed an agreement that ended the Soviet Union.

"The place was desecrated, and after walking there we might think of something good for our citizens," Lukashenko said.

Source:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/22/europe/EU-GEN-Belarus-Russia-Merger.php

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