BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

29/03/2007

One of our dictators is missing

By Luke Harding / World news 10:10am

He has is famous for being Europe's last dictator, and a man whose iron-fisted grip is rarely far away from the levers of power. But Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian ruler of Belarus, was at the centre of a mystery yesterday after allegedly going missing for 17 days.

Yesterday morning, Belarus's opposition media pointed out that Lukashenko had not been seen in public since March 10. The vanishing president cancelled a trip to Vietnam and also failed to meet Russia's prime minister, Mikhail Fradkov, when he dropped in recently to the Belarussian capital, Minsk, for a fraternal chat, European Radio for Belarus reported.

The media noted that the president also failed to show up at the Belarus's "golden puck" tournament, which, as a keen hockey player, is an event he personally founded.

Hours after the story hit the internet, however, Mr Lukashenko surfaced in the unlikely setting of a Minsk vegetable factory. Shrugging off rumours that he had been secretly ill, he told journalists: "If you turn to the stories on the internet, I had either a heart attack or a stroke, or both."

He added, elliptically: "Probably I'm a little tired. But at the same time I didn't stop my hockey training. I may have appeared less on TV but it seems the opposition can't live without me. If they don't see me for one day, they say I've had a stroke."

His bravura comments faithfully reported by Belarus's state-run news agency are unlikely to quell speculation, however, that Mr Lukashenko is not being entirely frank about the state of his health.

The president disappeared for several weeks at exactly the same time last year. He even failed to return in time for his inauguration, which had to be postponed. When he eventually came back to work he looked exhausted, observers said. It can, however, be said with some certainty that Mr Lukashenko was not having a holiday in the European Union or relaxing on a beach in the south of France.

He is banned from the EU, despite the president's recent intruiging declaration that he wants better relations with the west.

Source:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2007/03/29/one_of_our_dictators_is_missing.html