BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

08/06/2009

Russia, Belarus destined to remain allies in spite of 'dairy war'

By Itar-Tass World Service writer Lyudmila Alexandrova

Tensions between Russia and Belarus, fairly recently quite close allies in the post-Soviet space, continue mounting. Belarus is dissatisfied with the slashing of Russia's economic assistance and rebukes Moscow for aspirations against its national sovereignty.

A strategy of skillful maneuvering between Moscow and the West in a drive to get dividends on both sides, which Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has espoused for the past several years, has turned up at bay.

It looks like Russia has grown reluctant of putting up with Lukashenko' s increasingly harsh statements that go far beyond the limits of the diplomatic protocol at times. Still, experts tend to surmise that Moscow and Minsk will not be able to part with each other all the same.

Following last week's scandal around the harsh criticism that Lukashenko came up with regarding statements by the Russian Finance Minister, Alexei Kudrin, the partners in a yet unfinalized Russia-Belarus Union State plunged into a 'dairy war'.

As of last Saturday, the Russian governmental watchdog in the field of consumer rights, Rospotrebnadzor, banned imports of about 500 brands of Belarussian dairy produce. The motion may inflict a loss of 1 billion U.S. dollars on the Belarussian budget - a telling loss given the overall size of the country's budget that stands at slightly over 15 billion U.S. dollars.

Russia's Chief Sanitary Physician, Gennady Onishchenko claimed in an explanation for the ban that the Belarussian dairy producers "have failed to reassign the authorization documents in line with requirements of the technical regulations that took effect back in December 2008."

Russian mass media recall in this connection that bans have been imposed in the past on imports of a variety of products /varying from Georgian wines to canned Latvian sprats/ right at the moments of high political tensions with one or another country. Dr Onishchenko refuted this vehemently, however, saying the case in hand is "precisely the technical regulations" and not a "dairy war" of any kind.

Shrinkage of exports in recent months has caused a sensation of dizziness in the Belarussian economy. The country's foreign trade deficit exceeded 2.6 billion U.S. dollars from January through April, largely due to a 47.6% fall of exports to Russia.

"Problems over the exports of dairy products may aggravate the situation in the economy seriously, since this is one of the main items of exports to Russia," Irina Tochitskaya from a research center at the Institute of Privatization and Management told the Vremya Novostei daily. "Belarus has been exporting two-thirds of its dairy produce so far."

Foreign trade dilemmas exert a bad impact on the internal economic situation. Overstocking with unsold products has already risen above 90% of the monthly volume of output and this forces many dairy factories in Belarus to go over to a reduced workweek.

"Russia has forced us out of its market and do you think we'll forget it somehow?" President Lukashenko asked somewhat rhetorically a few days ago. "Well OK, I personally will get over one way or another, but ordinary people won't forget it."

Rospotrebnadzor's demarche came in the wake of Russian Finance Minister Kudrin's rebukes, who said Minsk had refused to accept the last tranche of a Russian loan amounting to 500 U.S. dollars in the ruble equivalent, which gave him grounds to call into question the solvency of Russia's western neighbor.

This infuriated Lukashenko, who suddenly engaged in personalities.

According to him, "Kudrin has taken the line of solidarity with our local bullies who yap here working out Western money and teach us how we must work."

After that, he lashed out at the Belarussian cabinet. "If you can't do business with Russia, don't bow to it and don't wail. We must seek our luck in other parts of the planet," he said.

This was the last drop for Moscow. Last Wednesday, President Dmitry Medvedev - who did not specify any names, however - said the comments on representatives of the Russian government, "which the leader of a closest partner state" took the liberty of making, were "inadmissible from the angle of view of diplomatic ethics."

Lukashenko responded to it Friday, asserting in an interview with a group of Russian reporters that Russia has been blackmailing Belarus for several months on end with demands for recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, hinting that only in this case Belarus could hope for getting a loan of 500 million U.S. dollars.

He recalled that the military and political support Minsk extends to Moscow is not at all free of charge.

"Do you think this should be for free?" he said. "Ten million people /the population of Belarus - Itar-Tass/ standing like a shield in front of Moscow - is this for free? That's invaluable, actually!"

Finally, when the story came down to a possible incorporation of Belarus into Russia, he said that Moscow "will get one more Chechnya" if it tries doing this. He warned that a national liberation war will be started by the "bullies" - an epithet he applies to the opposition - who will get weaponry from Ukraine and other countries "feeling no special affection for Russia".

In the meantime, the experts do not feel like over-dramatizing the situation, Nezavissimaya Gazeta writes.

"Relations between Moscow and Minsk have undergone trial tests like this one on a number of occasions, but the two sides have objective interest in each other and there won't be any complete breakup of relations," the newspaper says.

It also quotes Alexei Makarkin, the Vice-President of the Center for Political Technologies who compares these relations to an endless telenovela that seethes with compromises, scandals, reproaches, and acts of reconciliation.

"Like Belarus, Russia treats this union very pragmatically," Makarkin says.

"Russia doesn't have too many partners or allies so that it could throw them away easily and Lukashenko uses the fact expertly when he blackmails Russia with the West and, on the contrary, the West with Russia," says Konstantin Simonov, the director of the Center for Political Opportunities. "Minsk gets soft loans, customs discounts and preferences in economic cooperation from Moscow."

On the face of it, Belarus has not brought to completion yet any of the projects that Russian companies are interested in.

RBC Daily says the Belarussian leader makes attempts to blackmail Russia in this manner regularly enough but his personal reputation in the West is such that no one there will open full-scale cooperation with him, even though he is obviously trying to exempt Belarus from the domain of Russia's influence.

Frankly speaking, the Europeans have made a number of illustrative steps to meet Minsk halfway most recently. Belarus has gotten a member status in the EU's Eastern Partnership program and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has returned to it the status of a special invitee, which Belarus was stripped of back in 1997.

"Sadly for Alexander Lukashenko, no place is left in the world where people wouldn't know him or where they'd be waiting for him," RBC daily quotes political scientist Vassily Zharkov as saying.

Experts forecast an ironing-out of the current tensions with the aid of mutual concessions and compromises, and the 65th anniversary since the liberation of Belarus from Nazi troops, due in early July, could offer a perfect occasion for launching the process.

President Medvedev has been invited to attend the July festivities in Minsk.

Source:

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14028505

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