BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

08/11/2010

Lukashenko: 'Russia seeking my defeat at presidential election'

Interfax-Ukraine

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said that Russia does not want his victory at the presidential election on December 19.

"That is true: they are doing everything to make me lose this election," Lukashenko said in an interview with the Polish media, published on Saturday.

Russia has begun seeing the future of Belarus as part of the Russian Federation, he said. "The future of the Union State was due to be decided at the referendum of two countries, at which we were to adopt the union's constitution that would spell out everything: which currency, authorities," Lukashenko said.

"By the way, at the time we did not see that this [single currency] will be some ruble - it will be a supranational currency. At the time of signing the Union Treaty we though that it would be joined by Ukraine," Lukashenko added.

"Russia opposed the referendum, it broke this agreement and started offering a single currency. Why build the house from the roof? Let us build from the bottom by creating economic foundations. And then it started offering annexation to Russia. As the first president of the sovereign state I cannot let myself destroy the country by annexing it to another state," Lukashenko said.

The Belarusian-Russian relations were also affected by Russia's reaction to the reluctance by Belarusian authorities to give away its strategic enterprises at a price below their market worth, the Belarusian president said. Russia saw its economic cooperation with Belarus as "free privatization of what is there in Belarus," he said.

"They are trying to bend: a president not like Lukashenko should be more cooperative malleable here," he said. "But our people are not going to accept that kind [of a president]. You [another president] will be tested along the lines of Lukashenko," the Belarusian leader said.

Source:

http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/89171/

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