DATE:
21/08/2010
A potential runner in the 2011 Belarusian presidential elections, Liberal Democratic Party Leader Sergei Gaidukevich, has promised to form a confederation with Russia if he becomes president.
The next Belarusian presidential elections must be held before February 6 2011, according to Belarusian law.
"We must search for Belarusian sovereignty in Russia and...think about a confederation - a common currency and a united military," Gaidukevich said at a party conference on Saturday.
He criticized the Belarusian leadership for dragging its feet on the introduction of a common Russian-Belarusian currency.
Gaidukovich said he believed he was the only candidate with a real chance of running against incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko. The two men were the main contenders of the 2006 presidential elections.
In the mid-1990s, Moscow and Minsk formed the Union State of Russia and Belarus, a loose political entity of the two ex-Soviet states. But sicne Lukashenko rejected several Russian unification proposals, including the introduction of a common currency, the union remains largely on paper.
The creation of a Customs Union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan has dealt another serious blow to the Union State project.
In 2009, relations between Belarus and Russia grew strained over a series of economic and political disputes, including Russian energy supplies, a milk export row and Lukashenko's reluctance to sign a deal to set up a post-Soviet rapid reaction force.
Relations were worsened this year by a gas dispute and, more recently, by Belarus's reluctance to join Russia in recognizing the independence of the former Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
MINSK, August 21 (RIA Novosti)
Source:
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100821/160287537.html
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