BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

25/03/2007

Belarus police clash with opposition at rally

By Andrei Makhovsky

MINSK, March 25 (Reuters) - Belarus police clashed with protesters in Minsk on Sunday after some 10,000 people turned out for an opposition rally to call for the ousting of President Alexander Lukashenko.

There were no reports of injuries in the clashes, which came as the opposition marked the anniversary of the short-lived 1918 Belarus republic crushed by Bolshevik troops.

"We are the majority. We will win. The authorities will fall under the pressure of their lies," opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich told supporters who chanted 'Long Live Belarus.'

"But we should prompt their fall. We are not alone. We have many friends in Europe," he told a crowd waving the red and white flags of the 1918 republic, banned by the government which uses the Soviet-era national flag.

Lukashenko, branded by the United States as Europe's last dictator, has begun to make overtures to the European Union after relations with former ally Russia collapsed this year in a bitter trade row over oil and gas prices.

Popular especially among rural and elderly voters, Lukashenko says the opposition is led by outcasts who have failed in government and live on foreign donations.

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso on Sunday said the EU was ready to form "a full partnership" with Belarus and could boost aid to the ex-Soviet republic if it adopts democratic reforms.

"The European Union is ready to enter into a full partnership with Belarus on the basis of these values," he said, referring to democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

The opposition has said the government's reaction to Sunday's rally would be an indication of how serious Lukashenko is in his calls to improve strained ties with the West.

Lukashenko, who has ruled the tightly-policed former Soviet-state since 1994, is accused by the European Union and United States of rigging elections and quashing the opposition.

Riot police cordoned off the main street in Minsk and groups of policemen checked identity documents.

Witnesses said police detained activists before the protest and the opposition said about 30 activists had been arrested and sentenced to up to five days in jail ahead of the rally.

Police clashed with dozens of protesters who tried to break police cordons and force their way to October Square, meters from a building where Lukashenko has offices, witnesses said.

Demonstrators split into large groups to avoid police, then marched to a meeting several kilometres (miles) away.

"There is a dictatorship in Belarus," Janusz Onyszkiewicz, an EU deputy from Poland, told the rally. "There cannot be a country in the centre of Europe without democracy."

Source:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L25356105.htm