BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

25/10/2007

Belarus envoy to mend fences with Israel over president anti-Semitic remarks

Lukashenko's authoritarian regime has come in for heavy criticism from the European Union and United States over its human rights record.

JERUSALEM (EJP)---Belarus will send a special envoy to Jerusalem to try to mend fences with Israel about anti-Semitic remarks made by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko.

In a statement, Israel's foreign ministry said that Pavel Iakoubovitch, a newspaper editor andnd himself Jewish, who is close to the Belarus leader, will arrive "in the coming days" for what is officially "a discussion on bilateral relations."

During a press conference broadcast live on national radio on October 12, Lukashenko maintained that Slavic ethnicities such as Belarusians and Russians took better care of their cities than ethnic Jews.

Referring to poor conditions in the Belarus town of Bobruisk, he was quoted as saying: "After all this is a Jewish city and the Jews don't look after the place they live in. Look at Israel. I've been there."

"He went on to say the city was cleaned up after the Jews left and called on Jews 'who have money' to return to Bubruisk."

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni blasted the comments saying that "the role of leadership is to fight anti-Semitism, wherever it raises its ugly head all over the world, not to encourage it."

The Belarussian ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry to receive the protest, the statement added.

Belarussian Jewish groups have warned of growing anti-Semitism, voicing alarm at the open publication of anti-Semitic brochures and books, desecration of Jewish cemeteries and closure of the republic's only Jewish university.

The Nazis exterminated some 800,000 Jews in Belarus during World War II and mass emigration to Israel in the 1990s has reduced the country's Jewish community to around 28,000 people.

Lukashenko's authoritarian regime has come in for heavy criticism from the European Union and United States over its human rights record.

Source:

http://www.ejpress.org/article/news/21194

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