BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

13/12/2006

Russia Blasts US For Raising Belarus Human Rights At UN

MOSCOW (AP)--Russia's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday angrily criticized the U.S. for raising the plight of an opposition leader in Belarus in the U.N. Security Council, saying the move violated U.N. procedures.

The ministry said in a statement that the U.S. move represented an attempt by Washington to "turn the Council into the platform for discussing issues dictated by U.S. home policy interests."

It added that the discussion of human rights issues was a prerogative of other U.N. structures and condemned what it called "the violation of the existing Security Council procedures" by the United States.

Belarus, led by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko who is dubbed " Europe's last dictator" in the West, isn't on the Council's agenda. Russia's U.N. envoy strongly objected Tuesday when the United States brought up the 54- day hunger strike of jailed former Belarusian opposition presidential candidate, Alexander Kozulin.

Angered by the U.S. move, Russia demanded to postpone a key round of Council negotiations on a European draft Security Council resolution on Iran.

Kozulin, who ended his hunger strike Tuesday, has been jailed since March when he led a protest march following presidential elections in which he was one of three candidates challenging Lukashenko. Kozulin had been on hunger strike to protest his sentencing in June to five and a half years in prison for organizing the unsanctioned protest.

Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994, quashing dissent and maintaining power through elections that have been dismissed by critics abroad and at home as illegitimate. Russia has been Belarus' main sponsor and ally.

Source:

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20061213%5cACQDJON200612131417DOWJONESDJONLINE000915.htm&