BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

19/02/2008

Belarusian President Says He Also Offered Release To Former Presidential Candidate

President Lukashenka said on February 15, while visiting the Vitsebsk region where former presidential candidate Kazulin is incarcerated, that he offered Kazulin the opportunity to accompany his wife Iryna, who is suffering from cancer, to Germany for medical treatment, Belapan and RFE/RL's Belarus Service reported, citing government sources. "European Union ambassadors appealed to me, saying that the state of his wife had deteriorated," Lukashenka said. "OK, we all are human and anything can happen in life. I agreed for him to take his wife [to Germany] for treatment. We helped her as far as we could, offered her treatment in Germany. But, as far as I have been informed today, Kazulin refused her treatment," Lukashenka said. However, Kazulin's daughter Volha denied this. She said that if her father had really been given such an offer and she was just unaware of it, the objective was to expel him from Belarus. "Our father will never leave the country in any case," she added. Iryna Kazulina also described the circumstances of her husband's possible release as unacceptable. "The things that his [Lukashenka's] messenger told us were unacceptable. That would be a disgraceful flight from the country," she wrote in an open letter posted on the Internet. Kazulin, who ran in the March 2006 presidential election, was arrested during antigovernment demonstrations that followed the polls and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for organizing events that disturbed public order. AM

Source:

http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2008/02/3-cee/cee-190208.asp

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