BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

14/03/2007

Belarus duplicity made clear by fresh arrests

By Andrew Rettman

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - With Belarus regularly throwing opposition people behind bars at the same time as calling for dialogue in Brussels, evolving EU policy on president Lukashenko risks giving political capital to Europe's "last dictator" even as it tries to counter the threat of the country's absorption by Russia.

On Tuesday (13 March) police snatched activist Vintsuk Vyachorka outside his apartment in Minsk and arrested fellow activist Vyachaslau Siuchyk in a public square. The actions come 12 days before a 25 March rally in October Square to commemorate last year's mass protests, with EU diplomats and MEPs keen to attend.

"I am dismayed at the reported arrests...I urge the Belarusian authorities to release Mr Vyachorka and Mr Siwchyk immediately," external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said on Wednesday. "The offer the EU has made to Belarus, to engage in a partnership as part of the European Neighbourhood Policy, is subject to Belarus taking steps towards democratisation."

But despite Brussels' reaction, Minsk's noisy talk of desire for EU rapprochement since Russia spiked its oil and gas prices in January has sparked genuine interest in the EU capital. Last week, EU top diplomat Javier Solana sent a team of senior aides to meet with Belarus foreign minister Sergei Martynov in Minsk in a rare event in the recent years of Lukashenko rule.

The result of the mission is being kept under wraps for now. At the same time, the European Commission is dangling the prospect of expert-level talks on energy with Belarus in the coming weeks or months. The Belarusian ambassador in Brussels - Vladimir Senko - claims he has frequent face-to-face meetings with the German, Polish and Lithuanian as well as "practically all" the other ambassadors in the EU headquarters.

The EU's latest thinking on Belarus is influenced by fears - as recently voiced by Lithuanian prime minister Gediminas Kirkilas - that the Kremlin energy spike is designed to push Minsk into an unfavourable state union with Russia. Vilnius is even talking of a top-level unofficial mission to Minsk to broker an "exit strategy" for Lukashenko in a tactic reminiscent of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution.

Belarus is a complex problem for the EU: any strong western engagement risks provoking anger in Moscow, which considers the country part of its sphere of influence. Any high-profile meetings with Belarus politicians can be used as material for Lukashenko's propaganda machine, as in the case of a January visit by Council of Europe head Rene van der Linden, which was spun by state media as a sign of western political acceptance.

The EU is so far proceeding with more caution than Mr van der Linden: with zero progress this year from Minsk on releasing political prisoners such as Aleksander Kozulin and with numerous fresh arrests, the commission put off indefinitely a planned 21 March energy meeting. EU states have also unanimously agreed to renew an EU visa ban on 34 Minsk officials and Lukashenko himself.

The sanctions decision is to be rubber-stamped by EU farm ministers on 19 March. On top of this, the added threat of some ?400 million of EU trade sanctions to be imposed in June is currently rumbling through the pipeline. The EU political sanctions are clearly causing the Lukashenko circle some pain. The trade move would act as a double whammy for the country's fragile economy after the Russia hikes.

Belarus unapologetic

Meanwhile, some senior Belarus diplomats - such as the EU envoy Vladimir Senko himself - continue to ply a line that stands diametrically opposed to a vast body of independent information coming out of the country: numerous EU, UN, Council of Europe, western and local NGOs as well as the world's top news agencies have in recent years painted a miserable picture of the country's respect for basic civil liberties.

In a recent meeting with EUobserver, Mr Senko made light of the disappearances of opposition activists in the country, such as the husband of prominent opposition campaigner Irina Krasovskaya. "Be sure there's a great number of people disappearing in every country...if some brick has fallen from the roof in Belarus, this is always a story, a history - there's a fuss," Mr Senko said.

The ambassador even refused to admit that political prisoners exist in Belarus, saying on the case of Mr Kozulin - who got five year's jail on charges of "hooliganism" last year after leading protest rallies - that "we would not talk about any kind of political prisoners - all these cases you are talking about are cases on criminal grounds."

Mr Senko said his country is in "transition" from its Soviet-era past to something new, but added - in a worrying aside, in terms of reform timetables - that "it would be impossible to make a fully-democratic society in 12 or 13 years - you [EU states] needed centuries for that."

He confirmed however that the "heart" of the Belarus-Russia crisis is that "we are not going to say goodbye to our sovereignty or independence" to "become some 69th department of the Russian Federation," even though he did not rule out a future rapprochement with Russia instead of the EU.

EU sanctions policy

EU international sanctions policy has been accused of asymmetry by Belarus and Russia in the past: the German EU presidency has been pushing for months to relax the EU's much weaker sanctions against the much more repressive Uzbek authorities to help build a presence in Central Asia. Nobody would even suggest human rights-based sanctions against Russia.

But US diplomats and opposition NGOs have warned Brussels in recent weeks not to "throw a lifeline" to the Lukashenko regime, just as it is becoming vulnerable to change on the back of the crisis in Russia relations.

"Lukashenko's decorative talk about bilateral relations with the west all started after the oil and gas price increases from Russia," NGO activist Olga Stuzhinskaya told EUobserver. "Since then there has not been any single, little concrete step. Now, before 25 March there are more arrests. People are being arrested every day."

Source:

http://euobserver.com/9/23702