http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/belarus/index.html?query=POLITICS%20AND%20GOVERNMENT&field=des&match=exact Your search for POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT in Belarus returned 158 articles (1) (2) (3) (4) ... (11) (1) July 4, 2011 Belarus Cracks Down on Clapping Protesters ... By ELLEN BARRY Applause becomes a new form of dissent as President Aleksandr Lukashenko warns of shadowy foreign plots against him. ===== already done June 21, 2011 Belarus: European Union Imposes New Sanctions ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ The European Union on Monday imposed additional sanctions on Belarus in response to the government’s crackdown on opposition groups and independent media. ===== already done June 14, 2011 Restrictions on Exports Ignite Protests in Belarus ... By ANDREW E. KRAMER The government, grappling with a financial crisis, is trying to prevent certain foods, consumer products and gasoline from being siphoned off to Poland. ===== already done May 27, 2011 Belarus: Ex-Presidential Candidates Are Sentenced ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ Belarus sentenced two former presidential candidates to lengthy prison terms for organizing a large protest against elections held in December. ===== already done May 26, 2011 Belarussian President Signals Compromise ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ Aleksandr G. Lukashenko indicated that he might free political prisoners, which could open the way to financial support from Western nations. ===== already done May 17, 2011 Belarus: Government Critic Sentenced Over Protest ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ A Belarussian court convicted a journalist and critic of the nation’s authoritarian president on Monday of helping to organize a large antigovernment protest in December. ===== already done May 15, 2011 Andrei Sannikov, Belarus Opposition Leader, Gets Five-Year Sentence ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ A former deputy foreign minister is the highest-profile politician to be sentenced in a series of trials that has been purging the beleaguered opposition in the former Soviet republic. ===== already done (with different head "Belarus Opposition Leader Gets a Five-Year Sentence") April 24, 2011 From Poland, Satellite TV Pierces Belarus Media Muzzle ... By JUDY DEMPSEY For 17 hours a day, a team of nearly three dozen Poles and Belarussians broadcast into a country whose media are tightly controlled. ===== already done April 22, 2011 Belarus Has Too Much Democracy, Its Leader Says ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ Remarks by Alexander G. Lukashenko underscored fears that he would use last week’s subway attack to broaden his already extensive control. ===== already done April 18, 2011 Faltering Ruble, Long Lines and a Bomb Attack Rattle Belarus ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ The former Soviet republic, which is the most autocratic nation in Europe, is juggling a series of crises, and confidence in President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko has been shaken. ===== done MINSK, Belarus — The waiting list outside a currency exchange office at the Korona supermarket here had swelled to 52 people and many were getting desperate. Some had been waiting for three days, sleeping in cars, in an increasingly frantic effort to get dollars and euros. This former Soviet republic is on edge. Prices are rising and the Belarus ruble, the national currency, is shedding value. Already some imported foodstuffs have begun to disappear from store shelves, people here in the capital say. Though the extent of the current crisis is not yet clear, a sense of foreboding is spreading, compounded by the mysterious bombing last week at a subway station here that killed 13 people and wounded nearly 200. The attack appears to have shaken confidence in Belarus’s longtime authoritarian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who claims to be the country’s sole guarantor of security and stability. Still, the latest economic travails could prove to be even more challenging. In post-Soviet countries like Belarus, there are few starker indications of crisis than people waiting in lines, and the appearance of crowds gathered outside currency exchange offices has rekindled memories of shame and privation from the years just before and after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Even before workmen had cleaned away the last rubble from the bomb’s destruction at the Oktyabrskaya subway station last week, an unmoving line had formed at a currency office just a short walk from the site of the attack. “You remember the 1990s when people waited in line for bread,” said Maria Titova, 40, a housewife, who had been in line at the Korona supermarket for several hours. “Now we wait in line for dollars.” The scramble for hard currency has been driven in part by fears of an impending devaluation of the Belarus ruble, which the government keeps at a fixed exchange rate. Yet even under normal circumstances people here favor foreign currency for major transactions. Of all the former Communist bloc countries, Belarus has perhaps the closest resemblance to the Soviet Union. With its strong-arm president and robust security service — still called the K.G.B. — this country of 10 million is easily the most autocratic in Europe. In nearly 17 years as president, Mr. Lukashenko has created a centrally planned economy based on the Soviet model, while stifling independent enterprise. Though his supporters credit him with sparing Belarus the wild economic fluctuations experienced in neighboring Russia and Ukraine, opponents say the system has created nothing but stagnation. These days, Belarus is largely dependent on foreign handouts to stay afloat. Angered by apparent fraud in December’s presidential election and a sweeping crackdown on the opposition that followed, Western governments have imposed sanctions against Mr. Lukashenko and his government and all but cut off relations. And now, Mr. Lukashenko’s two main donors, Russia and the European Union, seem to have deserted him. Russia’s leaders, who have clashed frequently with Mr. Lukashenko in recent years, have said they are considering a $3 billion loan to help alleviate the current strains. But experts here say Russia will most likely demand painful concessions in return. Meanwhile, Belarus’s foreign reserves have fallen by over $2 billion to just $3.7 billion from a high point last October, according to the International Monetary Fund. The dwindling reserves prompted Standard & Poor’s to lower Belarus’s long-term foreign currency rating last month. The Central Bank has now been forced to limit the availability of hard currency. Most of the dollars and euros still available can be purchased only on the black market at elevated exchange rates, people here say. “I sell products calculated with a specific exchange rate, but now I cannot buy dollars at that rate because there are none,” said a cosmetics salesman named Oleg, who had spent the night in his car outside the Korona supermarket. “I am working in the red.” The problems stem in large part from Mr. Lukashenko’s attempt to shore up support ahead of December’s presidential elections, economists said. He dipped into government coffers to raise salaries and pensions and increase subsidies for housing and key industries. Despite the efforts, he was forced to commit widespread fraud to secure his victory, independent observers said, setting off a large antigovernment protest after polls closed. Hundreds were arrested in a violent police crackdown, and dozens of opposition leaders now face up to 15 years in prison for organizing what Mr. Lukashenko has described as a coup attempt. Economists, including researchers at the International Monetary Fund, have urged immediate action to curb spending. Yet, meaningful reforms like lowering salaries would be “politically unacceptable for the current authorities,” said Sergei Chaly, an independent economist in Minsk. “This would contradict all the pre-election rhetoric.” Rather, Mr. Lukashenko has suggested that December’s protest, the country’s current economic problems, as well as the bombing last week were all part of a conspiracy to undermine his rule. “Prior to the presidential elections, we foresaw attempts to squeeze us deliberately and methodically, as well as to destabilize the situation,” Mr. Lukashenko said last week. “All this has happened: first on the currency market, then on the food market, followed by the blast in the metro. It is a whole chain,” he said. He has played down the country’s economic problems and warned that anyone contributing to a perception of crisis would be punished. “Any panic, in particular about foodstuffs and currency, must be curbed,” he said. “Those guilty of spreading slanderous fabrications will be held criminally responsible.” Such threats have become common here, as have accusations from Mr. Lukashenko and other officials that Belarus’s beleaguered opposition, in collusion with Western governments, was responsible for the recent troubles. It is unclear how many here believe such accusations, and support for Mr. Lukashenko is also difficult to gauge. Almost no independent media outside the Internet exist in Belarus, and unbiased, Web-based news agencies often suffer attacks by hackers. A dearth of official information about the state of the economy has heightened speculation about what the authorities could be concealing, especially in the wake of the recent bombing. Rumors that Mr. Lukashenko and his security services could have been behind the subway attack have flourished despite a lack of evidence to support them. “The economic situation in the country is very difficult, prices for everything have risen and wages have stayed the same,” said Anna Osenenko, a 19-year-old student. “So this was carried out to deflect attention,” she said, referring to the bombing. At the sprawling Komarovsky Market here, Mr. Lukashenko’s efforts to gloss over the seriousness of the country’s economic problems have done little to allay concerns among some food sellers. “We’re living on the edge,” said a 43-year-old produce seller named Viktoria. “We have enough supply to last until the end of the week and then we’ll have to close.” ~~~~~~~~~~ March 28, 2011 Belarus Crackdown Extends to Those Outside Politics ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ The repression that started after the December re-election of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko has now spread beyond opposition leaders to people who had been strangers to politics. ===== done (2 pages) MINSK, Belarus — Andrei Vilkin has long been celebrated in Belarus for his skills as a karate master and a coach. The patriarch of a family of decorated martial artists, he has filled his living room with the hallmarks of his success: trophies from world championships and national awards for “service to the motherland.” But they are little help to him now. The authoritarian government of this former Soviet republic has branded the Vilkins “enemies of the people,” a phrase dating from Stalin-era purges, for taking part in protests over the widespread fraud they suspected in the re-election of the president. Mr. Vilkin; his wife, Svetlana; and their 21-year-old son, Aleksei, were among thousands of people who gathered on a central square here right after the election in December. The police responded violently, corralling them and hundreds of others into vans and shuttling them to prison. A judge summarily sentenced Mr. Vilkin and his son to roughly two weeks in jail for participating in an illegal rally and, bizarrely enough, for chanting “Long live Belarus!” Mrs. Vilkin was detained overnight, fined and released. The arrests, however, were only the first of their troubles. The secret police, still called the K.G.B., first moved against opposition leaders and their supporters. Some have already been tried and sent to prison for up to four years. But now, the crackdown has spread to people who had previously been strangers to politics, like the Vilkins, who dared to voice their anger at the government. The scope of the repression suggests that the president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, believes that he needs to bolster control over the country in the face of populist opposition. Beyond the election, which independent monitors said was undermined by fraud, prices are rising, social mobility is limited and many people are increasingly frustrated with the government’s control over most spheres of society. “The authorities have realized that they can survive now only through provocations and total oppression,” said Inna Kuley, the head of Solidarity, a Belarussian rights group. Dozens of people who took part in the protests have been fired from jobs or kicked out of universities, rights groups say. The government has disbarred at least five lawyers representing jailed opposition leaders, and few have been willing to step in to replace them. A large measure of the government’s control comes from its near monopoly on employment and education, Ms. Kuley said. In exchange for jobs and free education, Mr. Lukashenko demands loyalty. Few have much choice. Within Belarus’s Soviet-style economy, private sector jobs are scarce, as are independent universities. Events abroad may also be contributing to the crackdown. Mr. Lukashenko, often referred to as Europe’s last dictator, has made clear that he will smother attempts to organize the kind of uprisings that have occurred recently in North Africa and the Middle East. “If there arose a real threat of coup in our country, a threat to our 10 million people,” Mr. Lukashenko said on a visit to a military base last month, “I would not hesitate to use the armed forces.” Upon release from prison, the Vilkins found their lives upended. Mr. and Mrs. Vilkin, both martial arts instructors at a Minsk university, were deemed a poor influence on young people and forced to resign. They have been barred from their specially built workout center at the university and have nowhere to conduct private lessons. Mr. Vilkin, 52, said he worried that his son could be thrown out of college and drafted into the army. More than a dozen students arrested at the protest have been expelled, according to rights groups. “You have to remain loyal,” Mr. Vilkin said, slouched over a cup of tea at his kitchen table. “We violated this rule, and are now out of the game.” Mr. Lukashenko has described people like the Vilkins as both traitors and pawns in a Western-backed plot to oust him. Tens of thousands of people converged on Independence Square here in the capital in December, angered over what appeared to be fraud in elections that Mr. Lukashenko officially won with 80 percent of the vote. More than 700 people were arrested that night, crammed into police vans and thrown into dank and often overcrowded prison cells. Mr. Vilkin spent Christmas, the New Year and his 52nd birthday at a high security prison in the town of Zhodino, where he said he was at times beaten (he said he did not fight back) and verbally abused by guards. His cell was freezing, he said, and filled with cigarette smoke. He said he and his fellow prisoners from the protest amused themselves with a chess set made of black and white bread — until a guard discovered it and threw it away. Asked about his prospects now, Mr. Vilkin sighed. “Let’s not discuss it, O.K.? I haven’t been able to find decent work in Belarus, yet.” Mr. Vilkin had worked at the Belarussian National Technical University as a karate instructor since 1988. His team has won the national karate championship in Belarus for the last 12 years. “Now, everything we’ve done these past years has come to nothing,” he said, covering his mustachioed face with a hand. “All the memories of us will be forgotten.” Fyodor Panteleenko, an assistant rector at the university, said that he knew little about the case, but that it was Mr. Vilkin’s “right” to resign if he wanted to. Like many who gathered for December’s demonstration, Mr. Vilkin and his family had never protested before. They did not have ties to opposition groups, and of the nine opposition candidates, they did not support one in particular. Yet they and others who were interviewed said they sympathized with those calling for Mr. Lukashenko to be removed. In 16 years as president, Mr. Lukashenko seems to have modeled his country on the Soviet Union itself, complete with collective farms and five-year plans, largely obsolete factories and the pervasive K.G.B. Supporters credit him with staving off the aftershocks of the Soviet collapse — the runaway corruption, political instability and economic disarray that have plagued neighbors like Ukraine. But many have begun to view the stability as stagnation. To the west, Belarus borders the European Union — Poland, Latvia and Lithuania — and people look upon those neighbors with envy. “We were born in this country and we really love it,” Mr. Vilkin said. “And we think that it is worthy of a higher standard of living and development than it has. For this, there needs to be some kind of change.” ~~~~~~~~~~ March 18, 2011 Belarus: Human Rights Activist Expelled ... By REUTERS The government ordered Andrei Yurov, a Russian human rights activist, to leave the country on Thursday, a Belarussian rights group said. ===== done The government ordered Andrei Yurov, a Russian human rights activist, to leave the country on Thursday, a Belarussian rights group said. Mr. Yurov was detained Wednesday and released on Thursday morning, the human rights group Vesna-86 said. “This is complete lawlessness,” Mr. Yurov said, according to the group. Belarus has cracked down on dissent since a presidential election last December that Western monitors denounced as fraudulent. ~~~~~~~~~~ March 15, 2011 Ales Mikhalevich, Ex-Presidential Candidate, Flees Belarus ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ Ales Mikhalevich, one of seven former presidential candidates arrested after protests following the December election, announced that he had fled the country. ===== done MOSCOW — For two months Ales Mikhalevich, an opposition presidential candidate in Belarus, sat in prison after protesting the results of the December election as blatantly rigged. He said he had been tortured and then released only on the condition that he collaborate with the security service. On Monday Mr. Mikhalevich, fearing that he would be jailed again, announced that he had fled the country. His decision to flee, leaving behind his wife and two young daughters, underscored the pervasive uncertainty and fear among Belarus’s opposition in the face of a continuing crackdown by the security service, still called the K.G.B. in the authoritarian former Soviet republic. “I have reason to believe that I will not be leaving the K.G.B. building,” Mr. Mikhalevich wrote in his blog at 12:20 a.m. Monday, referring to a coming interrogation. “I am now in a safe place, beyond the reach of the Belarussian K.G.B.” Yuri Gubaryevich, a colleague, said he had spoken with Mr. Mikhalevich, who confirmed that the blog post was genuine. He said he was unaware of Mr. Mikhalevich’s whereabouts. Mr. Mikhalevich’s wife, Milana, said she had not had direct contact with her husband since Saturday and could not say where he was or how he was able to leave the country. Mr. Mikhalevich was one of seven former presidential candidates arrested when the police violently dispersed a large antigovernment protest after the December election. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the government headquarters in Minsk, the capital, angered over the sweeping victory of Belarus’s strong-arm president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, in the election. Independent observers said the vote was rife with fraud. Several of those candidates have now been released from jail while they await trials on charges of organizing mass unrest. Facing up to 15 years in prison, they have been barred from speaking publicly about their cases. Most have remained silent. Mr. Mikhalevich has not. Shortly after his release in February he issued a statement accusing guards at the K.G.B. holding facility in Minsk of abusing detainees arrested on the night of the protest. He said prisoners were made to stand naked and spread-eagle in frigid temperatures for about 40 minutes as many as six times a day. There were 15 prisoners in a cell made for eight, he said, and people had to sleep in shifts. Several times during his imprisonment, he said, guards coated the walls of the cell with a noxious paint and forced detainees to remain locked inside until it dried. Through all this, he said, he was denied access to his lawyer. In a report released Monday, Human Rights Watch detailed widespread abuse similar to that described by Mr. Mikhalevich. It is not clear how Mr. Mikhalevich was able to leave the country. In an interview at his apartment in Minsk last week, he said he was sure he was under heavy surveillance. The authorities had taken his passport and ordered him not to leave Minsk. In the interview he gave no indication of plans to flee. “My goal right now is to stop the torture and to ensure that political prisoners are freed,” he said. In his blog post on Monday he said he would continue such efforts. ~~~~~~~~~~ January 31, 2011 Belarus Frees Seven Political Prisoners ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ or Facing Sanctions, Belarus Frees Seven Political Prisoners, but a Dozen Remain in Jail The move appears to be a last-minute bid to mollify European leaders, who are preparing to impose sanctions on President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. ===== done MOSCOW — Belarus has begun releasing opposition political figures in what appears to be a last-minute attempt to mollify European leaders who are preparing to impose sanctions this week against the nation’s president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, and his government. At least seven opposition leaders imprisoned after a large antigovernment protest last month have been freed in recent days, according to family members and the Belarussian news media. Among them was Vladimir Neklyaev, a former presidential candidate, who was whisked to prison directly from his hospital bed after being beaten unconscious during a crackdown that followed the presidential election in December. Irina Khalip, a respected investigative journalist, was also freed, though her husband, Andrei Sannikov, another former presidential candidate, remained in jail. The authorities had threatened to take custody of Ms. Khalip’s 3-year-old son, Danil, but backed down. The security services, still called the K.G.B. in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, have placed Ms. Khalip and Mr. Neklyaev under house arrest, keeping them under 24-hour surveillance. The European Union is expected to complete plans this week on sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes against Mr. Lukashenko and dozens of other officials. European leaders said that only the unconditional release of all those jailed after the elections could avert the sanctions. Three former presidential candidates are among the two dozen or so opposition leaders who remain in jail. They face up to 15 years in prison for their roles in organizing the protest after the elections on Dec. 19. As the polls closed that day, thousands of people angered over Mr. Lukashenko’s victory converged on a central square in Minsk, the capital, calling for the president’s ouster. Mr. Lukashenko, a former collective farm boss who has ruled Belarus for 16 years, won with almost 80 percent of the vote, though independent observers documented widespread fraud. Mr. Lukashenko said the protest, which was mostly nonviolent, was an attempt, backed by the Western powers, to overthrow his government, charges that European leaders said were absurd. Last week, Mr. Lukashenko appeared to mock European officials, telling them to stay out of his country’s affairs and almost daring them to impose sanctions. “Are you trying to frighten me with sanctions? Well God be with you,” he said, in remarks posted on his Web site. “I have lived under visa restrictions for probably 10 years and am still alive and well.” Still, he said, he remained open to talks and a possible compromise. The United States and the European Union have employed various tools to pressure Mr. Lukashenko to ease his grip over the years. Sanctions against the president and his government have won the release of political prisoners in the past. Looking somewhat disheveled, but otherwise upbeat, Mr. Neklyaev, a poet and leader of the Tell the Truth movement, arrived at his apartment in Minsk on Saturday evening after spending nearly six weeks in jail. “Good evening, everyone; I’m glad that you’ve come,” he said as he dashed past applauding supporters and through the front door of his building, as documented in a video posted to the Web site of Radio Liberty’s Belarussian service. Though out of prison, Mr. Neklyaev and the others are hardly free. They still face lengthy prison terms and are under heavy surveillance. Lyutsina Khalip, the mother of Irina Khalip, the freed journalist, said her daughter was practically imprisoned at home. “She is not allowed to speak with anyone, no one is allowed to come over, she is not allowed to speak on the phone,” Lyutsina Khalip said. In addition, two K.G.B. agents are stationed inside the apartment at all times, she said. It was unclear whether the authorities planned to release Irina Khalip’s husband, Mr. Sannikov, or any others still in jail. For now, Lyutsina Khalip said, her daughter was making up for lost time with her son, who she said was “completely overjoyed.” ~~~~~~~~~~ January 15, 2011 Belarus Accuses Poland and Germany of Takeover Plot ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ; JOANNA BERENDT CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM WARSAW. Belarus accused Poland and Germany of plotting to overthrow President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and impose a puppet government. ===== done MOSCOW — Belarus accused Poland and Germany on Friday of plotting to overthrow President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and impose a puppet government with the aid of paid provocateurs from the Belarussian opposition. Citing information from what it said was a government investigation, Mr. Lukashenko’s official newspaper, Sovietskaya Belorussia, said secret services and even diplomats from both countries helped plan and finance what was supposed to be a violent government takeover after presidential elections last month. In a front-page story that ran for five more pages, the newspaper offered little to back up the claims beyond documents and transcripts of phone conversations by opposition members outlining political strategy. German and Polish officials dismissed the accusations outright. The accusations come days after European lawmakers met with a delegation of Belarussian opposition leaders in Brussels and vowed to impose heavy sanctions against Mr. Lukashenko and his government as punishment for a heavy-handed crackdown on opponents after the elections. Human rights groups say that the security services, still called the K.G.B. in Belarus, have been conducting daily raids on the homes and offices of opposition sympathizers. Independent news outlets have been closed, and people suspected of links to the opposition hauled to local K.G.B. precincts across the country for interrogation. Thousands of people poured into the streets of the Belarussian capital, Minsk, after the elections on Dec. 19. The protest was largely peaceful, though some demonstrators broke through the glass doors of the government headquarters before the police stopped them. More than 600 people were arrested, including seven of the nine candidates who opposed Mr. Lukashenko, when truncheon-wielding police officers violently dispersed the rally. Many said they were there to protest Mr. Lukashenko’s stranglehold on the former Soviet republic. The president controls almost all institutions in Belarus, including the news media, schools and universities, and much of the economy. He won the election with almost 80 percent of the vote. Independent observers said the ballot counting was rigged. Yet, according to Sovietskaya Belorussia, and by extension Mr. Lukashenko, the protesters had different intentions. “The main goal was to remove Lukashenko and place some kind of obedient puppet in his place as the head of the country and calmly observe the torture of the people thrown into an artificially created chaos,” the newspaper wrote. According to this version, the security services had to respond swiftly and harshly to thwart a planned coup on the night of the elections. “These people were not arrested for their political views,” the newspaper wrote. “They were arrested for concrete actions, expressed in particular in the attempt to seize the government headquarters and sow chaos in the country.” The newspaper said that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been funneled to the opposition from leaders in Europe. It published what it said were documents confiscated from opposition groups that described meetings with European officials at cafes in Brussels and elsewhere to discuss the formation of a “a new opposition force.” In this scenario, Poland was to be “the base for organizing and forming forces able to replace the lawful government of Belarus.” With aid from Poland, Germany and other European Union governments, the opposition was to organize a “color revolution” similar to those that toppled authoritarian leaders in other former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia. In none of the documents supposedly confiscated from opposition groups are there details of a possible violent coup. One document outlines plans to transform the country into a parliamentary democracy and recalibrate relations with Russia. Another describes a strategy of spreading false rumors, for example, about Mr. Lukashenko being in poor health and hiding money in foreign banks. The newspaper wrote that more information would be released in the coming days. At a news conference, Marcin Bosacki, a spokesman for the Polish Foreign Ministry, called the claims “dramatic propaganda” that “border on the absurd.” The accusations bode ill for opposition leaders. More than 30 of them are in jail facing up to 15 years in prison for their roles in what the newspaper called a “conspiracy.” “The main agitators have been arrested and charged,” the newspaper wrote. “There is an ongoing investigation that will put all in their place.” (Joanna Berendt contributed reporting from Warsaw.) ~~~~~~~~~~ (2) January 13, 2011 Belarus Draws West’s Criticism for Crackdown on Dissent ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ Authorities in Belarus were stepping up their campaign against the family of a former presidential candidate whose three-year-old son they have threatened to seize. ===== done MOSCOW — As Belarussian diplomats scrambled on Wednesday to assuage European concerns about the sweeping crackdown on dissent in their country, the authorities in Belarus were stepping up their campaign against the family of a former presidential candidate whose 3-year-old son they have threatened to seize. The security services conducted a search of the home of the former candidate, Andrei Sannikov, as well as the apartment of his wife’s mother, who has been caring for the child, Danil. Both Mr. Sannikov and his wife, Irina Khalip, a journalist, were arrested after a brutal police assault on demonstrators protesting the results of a presidential election in Belarus last month. The government has warned that it could take custody of Danil if his grandmother is deemed unfit to care for him. Relatives, however, believe it is an effort to intimidate the boy’s parents. The grandmother, Lyutsina Khalip, said she signed an agreement promising not to reveal details about Wednesday’s search. “I can’t say anything or I risk making it worse,” she said by telephone. The searches are part of a broader clampdown on opponents of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Almost daily, the security services, still called the K.G.B. in this former Soviet republic, have been conducting raids on the offices and homes of people linked to the opposition, interrogating them for hours and confiscating computers and other potentially compromising materials, human rights groups say. Independent media outlets have been shut down, and hundreds were detained. Seven of the nine opposition candidates who ran against Mr. Lukashenko in elections were arrested, and four of them remain in custody. Citing the continuing campaign, European leaders rebuffed a last-ditch diplomatic effort by Belarus on Wednesday, all but dismissing the possibility that relations between the West and the former Soviet republic could be salvaged. The foreign minister of Belarus, Sergei Martynov, had traveled to Brussels for meetings with European leaders apparently in an attempt to counter what the government of Belarus has called a distorted perception of events in the country. The European Union has threatened to impose sanctions, including a travel ban on Belarussian leaders, in response to the post-election crackdown. Mr. Lukashenko won the election with almost 80 percent of the vote, though independent observers said the ballot counting was rigged. In a meeting with Mr. Martynov on Wednesday, Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, reiterated the condemnation and warned of “appropriate measures” if the government failed to quickly release opposition leaders, journalists and others jailed for organizing and participating in last month’s rally, according to a statement on the European Union Web site. The United States, which has had sanctions in place against the government of Belarus for several years, has also denounced the authorities’ actions. More than 600 people were arrested when the police violently dispersed the antigovernment rally in Minsk, the Belarussian capital, on Dec. 19. About 30 people, including Mr. Sannikov and at least three other former presidential candidates, face up to 15 years in prison for their roles in the protest. The heavy-handed response has been met with shock and embarrassment in the European Union, where leaders have sought to cultivate a more pragmatic relationship with Mr. Lukashenko over the past several years. In response to promises of democratic reform, Mr. Lukashenko was offered economic incentives, including about $3.5 billion in aid ahead of the elections. European leaders now say the approach was misguided. “We know very well that we should change our policy towards Belarus,” Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Parliament, told visiting Belarussian opposition leaders in Brussels on Wednesday. In a hearing on Belarus later in the day, European lawmakers called for the swift imposition of sanctions against Mr. Lukashenko and his government, though they warned against isolating the country completely. “The people of Belarus are welcome in the European family of free and democratic nations,” Mr. Buzek said. He and others suggested easing visa restrictions for citizens of Belarus seeking to travel to the European Union, as well as providing scholarships for Belarussian students to attend European universities. A final decision on these and other measures is expected at the end of the month. Visiting opposition leaders from Belarus made it clear that they were dependent on quick European intervention to halt the campaign against them. “We need strict actions, we need concrete steps,” said Eva Neklyaeva, whose father, Vladimir Neklyaev, a former opposition candidate, was beaten unconscious and then jailed after last month’s elections. “We need you to understand that you have a key to my father’s prison.” ~~~~~~~~~~ January 12, 2011 Belarus Opposition Lobbies E.U. to Adopt New Strategy ... By JUDY DEMPSEY The country's 16 democratic movements are advising the bloc to cut contacts with the Belarussian leadership while strengthening nongovernmental organizations. ===== done BERLIN — The opposition in Belarus, determined to continue the pro-democracy movement despite the violent crackdown after the presidential election on Dec. 19, began lobbying the European Union on Tuesday to adopt a new strategy: cutting contacts with the leadership while strengthening nongovernmental organizations. The appeal was made in Berlin by 16 democratic movements whose leaders have embarked on a diplomatic offensive in European capitals including Berlin; Brussels; Prague; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Warsaw. The aim is to persuade governments and the European Union to adopt a more differentiated policy toward Belarus. “A new policy is needed by Europe if it places so much store on human rights and values,” said Aleksandr V. Kozulin, an opposition presidential candidate during the 2006 elections who was later imprisoned for two years. Eva Neklyaeva, daughter of one of the defeated presidential candidates last month, also spoke at a meeting organized by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the German-Belarusian Society. Her father, Vladimir Neklyaev, was beaten by police officers on election day, sent to a hospital and then dragged to prison, where his lawyers have seen him only twice. “Europe must adopt concrete measures,” she said. “There should be no dialogue with the regime until all the people are out of prison. The values of realpolitik should not outweigh the values of human rights and freedom.” Sergei Kalyakin, leader of a leftist group of Belarussian parties, said Europe could adopt policies that would hit the regime but benefit ordinary people. “A lot could be done by reducing the fees for Belarussians wanting to travel to the West, supporting students who because of the political activities cannot continue their studies and are being forced to go abroad, and supporting independent radio and television,” he said. This is the first time that the major nongovernmental organizations and civil society movements have banded together to oppose what they call the “rising terror and repressions by the authorities.” Until the presidential election last month, which the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe deemed flawed, the fractious opposition movements failed to agree on a candidate to oppose President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994. He was re-elected to a fourth term. But this week, the opposition established the National Coordination Council of the Democratic Opposition to speak with one voice within Belarus and in Europe to put pressure on the authorities in Minsk. The main goals of the council are to campaign for the release of all activists imprisoned on politically motivated grounds, to organize aid for their families and to disseminate as much information as possible to Belarussian citizens and to the international community. The Polish government is already pursuing such a strategy by increasing its support for civil society and nongovernmental organizations while isolating the top leadership in Minsk, Polish officials said last week. It is extending its Belarussian-language television to Belarus, opening its universities to Belarussian students who can no longer complete their studies back home because of their political activities and establishing a center in Warsaw for the Belarussian opposition. On Wednesday the Belarussian foreign minister, Sergei N. Martynov, is scheduled to hold a 30-minute meeting in Brussels with Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief. Ms. Ashton “will repeat what the European Union has been saying since the elections and call for the release of all political prisoners,” said Maja Kocijancic, who is the spokeswoman for Ms. Ashton and added that the meeting was at Mr. Martynov’s request. ~~~~~~~~~~ January 10, 2011 Belarus Suggests It Will Take Custody of Opponent’s Son ... By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ The government says it is investigating the status of 3-year-old Danil Sannikov after the arrest of his parents, Andrei Sannikov, a former presidential candidate, and Irina Khalip, a journalist. ===== done MINSK, Belarus — Ever since riot police officers crushed a large protest against apparent fraud in presidential elections here last month, the security services — still called the K.G.B. in this authoritarian former Soviet republic — have been rounding up people across the country for even the most tangential affiliation with the opposition. Now, it seems, they have gone a step further. The government warned recently that it might seize custody of the 3-year-old son of an opposition presidential candidate who was jailed along with his wife, a journalist. The authorities said that they were investigating the status of the child, who is now living with his grandmother, and that they expected to make a decision by the end of the month. In 16 years as ruler of Belarus, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko has often been called Europe’s last dictator. But the plight of the child, Danil Sannikov, may represent a new tactic in the government’s persecution of the opposition, one that harks back to the Stalin era, when the children of so-called enemies of the people were sent to orphanages after their parents went to the gulag. “Even in my worst nightmares I could not have conceived that this could happen,” said the child’s grandmother, Lyutsina Khalip. Thousands of protesters had filled a large square in central Minsk on the night of Dec. 19, incensed over Mr. Lukashenko’s claim of a sweeping victory in elections that independent observers deemed a farce. The police violently broke up the rally, which had been largely peaceful, arresting more than 600 people. Within 24 hours, seven of the nine opposition candidates for president had been arrested. Danil’s parents, Andrei Sannikov, a leading opposition presidential candidate, and Irina Khalip, a respected investigative journalist, were among those arrested, yanked from their car while Ms. Khalip was giving a telephone interview to a Moscow radio station. Mr. Sannikov was severely beaten and, his lawyer said, his legs were broken. They are among about two dozen people facing up to 15 years in prison on charges of organizing and participating in the protest. Many are being held at the K.G.B. detention center in Minsk, where they have been denied access to lawyers and contact with family. Lyutsina Khalip, the grandmother, said she had not heard from her daughter since the day after her arrest, when she received a letter instructing her to take care of Danil. “She wanted me to tell Danil she really loved him,” Ms. Khalip said, fighting back tears. She said her daughter had received threats about the boy even before the elections. One e-mail from an unknown sender read: “Don’t think about yourself, think about your son.” Ms. Khalip said she first had an inkling that the authorities were turning their attention to Danil shortly after his parents were arrested. She said she was at the K.G.B. detention center trying to deliver a parcel of food and clothes to them when she received an urgent phone call that made her rush to her grandson’s kindergarten. There, she was confronted by two women from the government’s child welfare service. She said the women were friendly, though they delivered an implicit warning: “If you don’t have the financial means or the physical means, don’t worry,” she said they told her. “The child won’t remain alone.” For Ms. Khalip, whose daughter has frequently run afoul of Belarus’s security services over the years, the message was clear. “This is an effort to put pressure on Irina,” she said. “They are capable of squeezing her, and this of course is the most sensitive place.” A representative of the child welfare service could not be reached for comment. Antonina Drugakova, the government social worker overseeing Danil’s case, told the Interfax news agency that the K.G.B. notified her about the boy shortly after his parents’ arrest. “We are required to respond if a child is left without the care of his parents,” Ms. Drugakova said. She said she hoped Danil would be able to remain in the custody of his grandmother, but said the government had a responsibility to determine whether she was fit to care for him. “God forbid that all is not well with the health of the grandmother,” she said. Mr. Sannikov’s lawyer, Pavel Sapelko, said that the K.G.B. notified child welfare services on Dec. 23, six days before his client and Ms. Khalip were officially charged with a crime. He questioned whether it was even legally necessary for Danil’s grandmother to assume legal custody. “The law is there to make sure that a child is not left alone at home or left at kindergarten with no one to pick him up,” Mr. Sapelko said. “If there is no evidence that the child has been abandoned, then there is no reason to dramatize this.” The families of other opposition candidates have also been subject to intimidation. The 22-year-old son of Grigory Kostusyov, one of the candidates arrested, was sentenced to 15 days in jail for trying to hold a solidarity protest a day after the elections. He was released, but was summoned by the K.G.B. again last week for further questioning. “The meeting lasted for about two-and-a-half hours, but thank God he was let go,” said Mr. Kostusyov, who is one of three former candidates to have been freed on the condition that they not leave Belarus. Four others remain in jail. “There has been pressure on my family for my entire political career,” Mr. Kostusyov said. In the weeks since the protest, the K.G.B. has fanned out across the country, interrogating anyone with a history of dissent and jailing those suspected of participating in the protest last month, human rights groups say. The police have been raiding the few independent news outlets and human rights groups that still operate, confiscating computers and documents. Many opposition leaders still at large have fled the country or gone into hiding. Anastasia Loika, who works for the human rights group Vyasna, said there had been lines of people outside the K.G.B. building in Minsk, all of whom had been summoned to be interrogated. “It’s like a conveyer belt,” said Ms. Loika, who was herself questioned for nearly five hours. “Every day there are searches across the country, and every day people are interrogated.” Western leaders have roundly condemned the government’s actions, and the European Union signaled last week that it was ready to impose a travel ban on Mr. Lukashenko. On Saturday, Danil sat playing with a train set in his family’s living room, stuffed animals and action figures piled around him. Since the arrests of his parents, a stream of visitors has brought toys, candy and well wishes to the Sannikov home. Ms. Khalip said the boy did not yet know that his parents had been arrested. She told him they had gone on a business trip, but he seems to sense that something is wrong. “If mama left on a long trip, why didn’t she bring me with her?” Ms. Khalip, 74, said Danil asked her recently. “He cries when I give him a bath because he says, ‘Papa doesn’t wash my hair like that.’” Over the past two weeks, Ms. Khalip has completed all of the medical and psychological tests required of her to keep Danil. Even Danil, she said, had to be tested for H.I.V. and syphilis. She said the welfare service should make a decision by the end of the month. ~~~~~~~~~~ January 6, 2011 Poland Supports Belarus Opposition By JUDY DEMPSEY Instead of waiting for the European Union, Poland is supporting the country’s non-governmental organizations while isolating the top leadership in Minsk. ===== notyet BERLIN — Since Belarus’s security forces cracked down on the opposition last month, the Polish government has been pursuing a strategy aimed at increasing its support for civil society and non-governmental organizations while isolating the top leadership in Minsk, officials in Warsaw said Wednesday. Instead of waiting for the European Union to adopt a united policy toward Belarus, Poland is moving quickly with its unusual unilateral effort. The steps include extending its Belarussian-language television to Belarus, opening its universities to Belarussian students who can no longer complete their studies back home because of their political activities and establishing a center in Warsaw for the Belarussian opposition. Last Saturday, Poland waived a ˆ20, or $26, visa fee for any Belarussian wishing to travel to Poland; other E.U. countries have retained charges for visiting Belarussians. “We want to help our neighbors strengthen their European identity by enabling them to have more frequent contacts with the Poles and other citizens of the European Union,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in Warsaw last weekend. He added that Poland would take measures to “prevent officials of the Republic of Belarus responsible for organizing the recent wave of repression against the civil society from entering the territory of Poland.” Mr. Sikorski also announced this week that Poland would double its assistance this year to non-governmental organizations in Belarus to over ˆ10 million, or $13 million. Belarussian security forces cracked down on the opposition last Dec. 19 and 20 following a presidential election that international observers called flawed. After President Alexander Lukashenko was elected to a fourth term, protesters took to the streets, and more than 700 people, including seven candidates who ran against him, were arrested. Poland’s unequivocal support for Belarussian civil society reflects a deep commitment to the expansion of values of freedom and democracy to those countries sandwiched between the European Union and Russia. And because Belarus is its direct neighbor, with a sizeable Polish minority, Poland feels a special responsibility for making the country an important foreign policy issue for the European Union as a whole. E.U. officials are expected to discuss relations with Belarus in the next few days in Brussels. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, was among E.U. leaders pushing for sanctions against Belarus, but government officials in Berlin say Germany also wants to support civil society and press freedom. In a joint statement on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, said they regretted the decision by the Belarussian authorities to halt the work of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors elections. The statement also called on Belarus to release candidates and others detained after the elections. In Poland, the Foreign Ministry said it was also providing aid to those beaten by the Belarussian security forces or those seeking shelter in Poland. The aid consists of legal assistance, accommodation and official space. The Belarussian authorities said Wednesday that Poland was free to do what it wanted. “Don’t expect me to criticize our Polish partners. We consider it a sovereign Polish right. They are free to take actions they feel appropriate,” said Andrei Savinykh, a Belarus Foreign Ministry spokesman. “But the problem is that there is quite a lot of our partners which have a distorted impression of the realities of the political and social life in Belarus.” Until last month’s crackdown, the European Union, in a policy initiated by Poland and Sweden, was prepared to offer Mr. Lukashenko incentives, including closer ties with the bloc in return for gradual democratization. But the repression against the opposition appears to have convinced Warsaw that a differentiated policy toward Belarus must now be pursued. “Clearly this is the time to do even more for civil society,” said Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy, director of Belsat TV, a satellite television channel that is supported by the Polish government and located in Warsaw. “We are needed more than ever in Belarus,” Ms. Romaszewska-Guzy said by telephone. Belsat TV, with its slogan “Your Right to Choose,” began broadcasting to Belarus in December 2007. It is now watched, regularly or occasionally, by nearly 761,000 people, according to the Polish Zerkalo-Info Research Center. The population of Belarus is estimated at nearly 10 million people. Ms. Romaszewska-Guzy said the channel employed 37 full-time journalists and had over 100 freelancers in Belarus, several of whom had been imprisoned; the offices of Belsat TV were raided in the days following the crackdown. Poland also supports Radio Racja, a Belarussian-language station, and European Radio for Belarus. The Polish government said Wednesday it wanted other E.U. governments as well as non-governmental organizations and media outlets to support these broadcasting networks to Belarus. “We want to work with other partners,” the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. Support from other E.U countries is essential, said Andrew A. Michta, a professor of international studies at Rhodes College in the United States and the first incoming director of the Warsaw Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “Poland cannot pursue this policy alone” he said. “Poland has limited resources, and it is also vulnerable in its policies towards Belarus. It is trying to persuade the E.U. to impose sanctions but not at the expense of isolating the Belarussian population. At the same time, Poland has to consider the Polish minority in Belarus, which can come under pressure from the regime. An estimated 400,000 ethnic Poles live in Belarus. Last February, the Belarussian authorities arrested more than 30 activists from the Union of Poles in Belarus, including its chairwoman, Andzelika Borys. Warsaw reacted by threatening to close its borders to some top Belarussian officials. ~~~~~~~~~~ January 2, 2011 Belarus Kicks Out European Watchdog Agency By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ The decision by the government appears to be another step in suppressing criticism and dissent. ===== notyet MOSCOW — In what appears to be another step in suppressing criticism and dissent, Belarus asked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to leave the country after its election monitors accused the government of fraud in the presidential election last month. A spokesman for the Belarussian Foreign Ministry announced the decision on Friday evening, saying that the group had fulfilled its mandate and that it was no longer needed. “This was a conscious decision due to the absence of an objective basis for retaining the O.S.C.E. mission in Belarus,” the spokesman, Andrei Savinykh, said, according to Belarussian news agencies. The organization, which has maintained an office in the capital, Minsk, since 1998, criticized the decision. Its chairman, Audronius Azubalis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, expressed “deep regret” over the move. “Its mandate has not been completed,” Mr. Azubalis said in a statement posted to his ministry’s Web site. “There is an important job for the O.S.C.E. to continue in Belarus.” The group’s monitors had detailed widespread fraud in the election, in which the country’s longtime authoritarian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, won about 80 percent of the vote, according to official tallies. The organization has also strongly condemned the violent police crackdown on thousands of antigovernment demonstrators who gathered in Minsk after the election to protest the results. At least 600 people were arrested. Ties between the West and Belarus, a former Soviet republic, had been improving in advance of the election, as the government allowed for at least a semblance of a campaign. But that window shut after the election. Mr. Lukashenko, who has been in power for 16 years, responded angrily to the criticism and vowed to do away with what he described as “mindless democracy.” His government has also cracked down on the news media, raiding the offices of independent journalists and shutting down an opposition Web site that had been one of the main sources of independent information. Arrests of opposition figures have continued almost daily. Five former presidential candidates have been charged with fomenting unrest after the election and could face up to 15 years in prison. Many of their associates have also been arrested or gone into hiding. “Continued positive engagement with Mr. Lukashenko at the moment seems to be a waste of time and money,” the foreign ministers of Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany said in a recent article on the op-ed page of The International Herald Tribune. Russian leaders, who in recent years have clashed with Mr. Lukashenko, have avoided criticizing him in the wake of the elections. Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, congratulated Mr. Lukashenko on his victory and expressed hope for continued friendly relations. ~~~~~~~~~~ December 21, 2010 Belarus Election Results Lead to Protests By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ Security services rounded up scores of opposition leaders on Monday, a day after anti-government demonstrators attempted to storm the government headquarters. Belarus Police Arrest Opposition Leaders By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ ===== notyet MINSK, Belarus — The government of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko on Monday carried out a sweeping crackdown on opposition leaders and their supporters, making arrests that drew scathing condemnations from Western governments and seemed to imperil recent efforts to improve relations. By late in the day, at least six of the nine opposition candidates who ran against Mr. Lukashenko in elections on Sunday were under arrest. The arrests followed an attempt by opposition supporters to storm the main government headquarters here in a futile effort to block the suspiciously lopsided re-election of Mr. Lukashenko, one of the world’s most authoritarian presidents. Mr. Lukashenko said at a news conference that more than 600 others had been detained. With so many arrests, few expected a continuation of the protests on Monday as some had wished. Throughout the day the streets of Minsk were largely quiet, blanketed in a heavy snow. Western officials expressed particular concern over the treatment of Vladimir Neklyaev, a leading opposition candidate, who was savagely beaten Sunday night, and later taken by unidentified men from the hospital where he was being treated. “At this moment, I do not know where my husband is located and who forcefully took him away,” Mr. Neklyaev’s wife, Olga, said in a tearful appeal at a news conference with members of an election monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Later, Mr. Lukashenko told reporters that Mr. Neklyaev was being held in a detention center. Western monitors offered a harsh assessment of Sunday’s elections, which Mr. Lukashenko officially won with just under 80 percent of the vote. The monitors highlighted apparent fraud in the vote tally and strongly condemned police violence on Sunday night. “Violent attacks and subsequent arrests of most of the presidential candidates, as well as hundreds of activists, journalists and civil society representatives is the backdrop against which these elections will now be judged,” said Tony Lloyd, the leader of one of the O.S.C.E. monitoring missions in Belarus. “I have to call upon the authorities to clarify the whereabouts, the condition and the future of all those arrested.” Given the overall atmosphere in the country on voting day, Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, who led another O.S.C.E. monitoring group, said, “A positive assessment of these elections is impossible.” Mr. Lukashenko, who has led this former Soviet republic for 16 years and is often referred to as Europe’s last dictator, responded with what appeared to a mix of irritation and bewilderment. “We did just as you demanded. What complaints could you have?” he said, speaking about the Western assessments. “Openness and transparency were so high that people mistook these elections for a reality show.” Mr. Lukashenko did make a concerted effort to give these elections at least the appearance of legitimacy. He allowed just about anyone to register as a candidate and permitted campaigning more or less freely around the country, a novelty here. For the first time candidates participated in televised debates in which they criticized the president. Western observers did note the improvements, though they said these were largely undermined by infractions committed on Election Day. The assessment could harm efforts by Western governments and Belarus to improve their often-strained relations. The foreign ministers of Germany and Poland had offered Mr. Lukashenko about $3.5 billion in aid on condition that this election be deemed free and fair. One Monday, officials in both Germany and Poland joined a vocal chorus of condemnation that included several other European Union countries, as well as the United States, which has not had an ambassador in Minsk since 2008. The White House said in a statement that Sunday’s violence represented “a clear step backwards on issues central to our relationship with Belarus.” A modicum of support came from the Kremlin, which in recent months has publicly clashed with Mr. Lukashenko. Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, called the elections “an internal affair” and pledged Russia’s support. “I hope that with the results of these elections, Belarus will be a modern country, and continue its development as a modern country based on democracy and friendship with its neighbors,” Mr. Medvedev said. ~~~~~~~~~~ June 14, 2010 Ethnic Unrest Ravages a City in Kyrgyzstan By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ; CLIFFORD J. LEVY, ELLEN BARRY and ANDREW E. KRAMER CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM MOSCOW. Much of Osh was in ruins after rioting that appeared to be aimed at ethnic Uzbeks; the official death toll in southern Kyrgyzstan rose to more than 100. ===== April 24, 2010 WORLD BRIEFING - ASIA; Kyrgyzstan: A Promise To Stay Away By CLIFFORD J. LEVY Kurmanbek Bakiyev, in Belarus after being ousted as president of Kyrgyzstan, says that he will not try to return to country, but he maintains that his resignation is not valid ===== April 21, 2010 Ousted President of Kyrgyzstan Finds Refuge in Belarus By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ The former president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, left Kazakhstan on Monday as he continued his travels in exile. ===== December 17, 2008 Electoral Rot Nearby? The Russians Don’t See It By CLIFFORD J. LEVY In bolstering authoritarian regimes in neighboring states, the Kremlin helps create the illusion of democracy. ===== notyet (3 pages) ZHODINO, Belarus — The voting monitor began his rounds on election day here at Polling Place No. 7. “Issues? Violations?” he asked the poll workers, glancing around like a casual sightseer. They said no, so he left. The monitor, Kholnazar Makhmadaliyev, breezed from one polling site (“What’s up? Things O.K.?”) to another (“Everything fine here?”), shaking a lot of hands, offering abundant compliments and drinking brandy with this city’s mayor. Such went Mr. Makhmadaliyev’s stint on a large observer mission led by the Kremlin that concluded that Belarus, a former Soviet republic and an ally of Russia, had conducted a “free, open and democratic” parliamentary election in late September. The Kremlin monitors’ version of reality, though, clashed with the one described by a European security group, whose own monitors dismissed the election as a sham tainted by numerous shortcomings, not the least of which was vote rigging. The monitors dispatched by the Kremlin did not report anything like that. Nor did they raise concerns about Belarus’s security service, still called the K.G.B., which had exerted harsh pressure on the opposition, imprisoning several of its leaders over the last year and thwarting their campaigns. Or about state-controlled television broadcasts repeatedly branding opposition leaders as traitors. Or, for that matter, about the final results: a sweep of every seat in the 110-member Parliament by supporters of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, often described as Europe’s last dictator. The Kremlin under Vladimir V. Putin has sought to bolster authoritarian governments in the region that remain loyal, and these election monitoring teams — 400 strong in Belarus alone — are one of its newer innovations. They demonstrate the lengths to which the Kremlin will go to create the illusion of political freedom in Russia and other former Soviet republics, even though their structures of democracy have been hollowed out. The monitors play a critical role in creating a democratic veneer, solemnly giving their customized assessments and formal reports, which are promoted by the government-controlled media. They also provide a counterweight to observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who denounce the same elections. The goal for the Kremlin is to convince the public — and, perhaps, even foreigners — that these governments are lawfully elected and representative of the popular will. “These monitors really illustrate what is happening in the post-Soviet space,” said Andrei Sannikov, an organizer of European Belarus, an opposition movement. “The monitors bless everything — in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, places where we know there are no real elections. These leaders want to be accepted and seen as truly democratic, even though they are unreformed and unchanged. They want to present themselves as equal to the American president.” Ultimately, Mr. Sannikov said, “they want some kind of legitimacy, especially in the eyes of the West.” A Sphere of Influence By backing these leaders, Russia has also reaped economic benefits and maintained its regional sphere of influence. It has done so even while seeking to destabilize pro-Western neighbors, most notably when it invaded Georgia in August in response to what it said was Georgian aggression. Belarus, which has 10 million people, is the only former Soviet bloc nation to Russia’s west that maintains warm ties with the Kremlin. The United States and its NATO allies have also sought good relations with many of the authoritarian governments in the region, to offset the Kremlin’s influence, to maintain military bases and to increase business opportunities. Still, the West has generally refrained from endorsing the results of elections in these countries. Senior Russian officials tend to tie themselves in knots explaining how governments that have crushed opposition movements can conduct fair balloting. The officials refer to Western election monitors as a tool that the West uses to smear Russia and other former Soviet republics. Vladimir A. Pekhtin, a vice speaker of the Russian Parliament who supervised the Kremlin monitors in Belarus, said every recent election in the former Soviet Union had been democratic and fair. He included countries like Uzbekistan, whose president has ruled since the end of Communism and was re-elected last year with 88 percent of the vote. Asked about the conclusions of Western monitors in Belarus, Mr. Pekhtin said, “They just made it up, invented it, to try to show that there was some kind of rot.” Still, even some insiders acknowledge what is at work here. Igor Y. Yurgens, an adviser to President Dmitri A. Medvedev who is the chairman of a liberal-leaning research group set up by Mr. Medvedev, described the Kremlin missions as doing little more than currying favor with neighbors. “It’s a pretty clumsy thought that the near abroad can be consolidated only through this, through being polite to the authorities in place,” he said. “They regard it as a diplomatic endeavor — be good to your ally,” Mr. Yurgens said, referring to the Kremlin. “Don’t poke him in the eye when the whole of the West is poking him already.” An Unlikely Monitor As he canvassed polling places at a rate of one every 5 to 10 minutes, Mr. Makhmadaliyev, the Kremlin’s monitor in Zhodino, allowed that he knew little if anything about Belarus’s political situation. That is understandable, given that he is from a village in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, in Central Asia. The observer teams typically work under the umbrella of the Commonwealth of Independent States, an alliance of former Soviet republics controlled by Moscow. In Belarus, many monitors were Russians, but some were from friendly countries like Tajikistan that had particularly checkered human rights records. Mr. Makhmadaliyev, 60, won a parliamentary seat last April in Tajikistan, where the elections tend to be as fair as those in Belarus. A member of the ruling party, he received 86 percent of the vote, officials said. He had received no training in election monitoring, he said, but that did not concern him. His sole aim, he said, was to assess whether election day was orderly in Zhodino, a city of 65,000 about 25 miles from the capital, Minsk. Rumpled and courteous, he wore a blue armband that identified him as an official observer. He took no notes. And everywhere he went — polling sites in schools, recreation halls and apartment buildings — the responses to his brief questions were the same. “Everything is fine here,” said Larisa A. Chichina, the senior official at Polling Place No. 7. He pronounced himself satisfied. Still, to judge an election based only on whether people can physically cast ballots is a little like reviewing a restaurant based solely on the quality of its waiters. Election experts say it is equally important to determine whether candidates can conduct their campaigns without pressure, whether the government denies the opposition access to the news media, particularly state television, and whether votes are tabulated fairly. But Mr. Makhmadaliyev said he would not delve into those issues in Zhodino. “It doesn’t interest me at all,” he said. “I am interested in whether people can vote on their own, whether people are given the freedom to vote.” (The monitors later released a report declaring that the overall election climate, including the news coverage, had been free and fair throughout Belarus.) Mr. Makhmadaliyev also said he saw no reason to conduct post-mortem interviews with the two candidates in the district to ask about their experiences. If he had, he would have heard the loser, Aleksandr V. Volchanin, from the pro-Western opposition, contend that the vote count had clearly been falsified. Election officials said Mr. Volchanin, a 46-year-old paramedic, received 24 percent of the vote, but he said the tally was highly suspicious because of a delay of several hours in announcing it. “I think that they were very strongly thinking about what figures they wanted to put out there,” Mr. Volchanin said. The winner, Dr. Vasily V. Lutikov, 51, a Lukashenko supporter, said Mr. Volchanin was looking for excuses. “Of course, he is going to complain,” Dr. Lutikov said. “He is upset — no one voted for him.” A Kremlin Counterattack The rise of these shadow monitors can be traced in part to Russia’s presidential election in March 2004. Mr. Putin won a second term in a landslide, but there was a major blemish: the O.S.C.E.’s observers called the contest far from democratic. This seems to have spurred the Kremlin to counterattack. Russia began a campaign to undercut monitors from the group, which is an alliance of more than 50 countries that includes Russia and other former Soviet republics. The Commonwealth of Independent States, which had been sending informal monitoring teams, adopted a formal policy of doing so, officials said. The missions are now overseen by a former director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Gen. Sergei N. Lebedev, whom Mr. Putin installed as the commonwealth’s executive secretary last year. General Lebedev said that the West applied double standards, scrutinizing elections in the former Soviet Union far more closely than those elsewhere. “We have a principle — the main principle — which is to objectively evaluate the situation, and not interfere in internal affairs,” he said. “We cannot evaluate the political system of a country. Our main goal is not to find shortcomings, as Russians say, to find bugs.” Mr. Putin, the current prime minister and former president, and his aides have lately evinced even more hostility to the O.S.C.E., calling for drastic cuts in its monitoring teams. They have also imposed such heavy limits on the group that it refused to monitor Russia’s presidential election in March 2008. (The Kremlin monitors did — and found no problems.) In the end, the Kremlin monitors in Belarus seemed to play just the role envisioned for them: helping to neutralize negative findings by the Western ones. As Lidia M. Yermoshina, chairwoman of Belarus’s election commission, put it: “If you are guided only by the O.S.C.E. report, you might become desperate. You need something to cheer you up.” Mr. Lukashenko had invited the Western monitors because he said that he was confident that they would endorse the election and that he was hoping for better relations with the West, which had imposed stiff sanctions on Belarus after opposition leaders were imprisoned in 2006. But the Western monitors came down hard, so it was no surprise that the state-controlled television news focused mostly on the Kremlin teams. Even Mr. Makhmadaliyev, the Kremlin’s monitor in Zhodino, made a television appearance. “At all the polling places, we have noted a very good mood among the people,” he told a reporter. “They are coming to elect those who most deserve it.” With that, he hustled to his next stop, walking past a large sample ballot that directed people to vote for Mr. Lukashenko’s candidate. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map ~~~~~~~~~~ October 14, 2008 European Union Temporarily Suspends Travel Ban for Belarussian Leader By STEPHEN CASTLE and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ; STEPHEN CASTLE REPORTED FROM BRUSSELS, and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ FROM MOSCOW. European foreign ministers decided to relax travel restrictions on the Belarussian government in the hope of luring the country away from Moscow’s sphere of influence. ===== notyet BRUSSELS — Belarus, which is often described as the last dictatorship in Europe, emerged from the diplomatic deep freeze Monday when the European Union temporarily lifted a travel ban on the country’s president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. With ties between the European Union and Russia severely strained over the recent conflict in Georgia, European foreign ministers decided to relax travel restrictions on the Belarussian government in the hope of luring the country away from Moscow’s sphere of influence. Officially, the move Monday was in response to the recent release of political prisoners by the Belarussian government. But diplomats in Brussels said they thought that the brief war between Georgia and Russia in August might have prompted alarm among Russia’s other neighbors, including Belarus, about their own independence. Some European governments, however, are skeptical that such fears can be exploited diplomatically, and they doubt that overtures will have a significant effect on the Belarussian government. That caution was reflected in the temporary nature of the concession on the travel ban; it lapses automatically in six months unless there is unanimous support from European Union members to continue it. The announcement was made before a meeting between foreign ministers from the European Union and Foreign Minister Sergey Martynov of Belarus in Luxembourg on Monday evening, the highest-level contact between the parties in four years. The United States has not indicated that it plans to match the European overture and lift a similar travel ban on Belarussian leaders. However, this year the United States welcomed the release of political prisoners and sent the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, David A. Merkel, to the Belarussian capital, Minsk. Belarus, a former Soviet republic of 10 million people, has had a prickly relationship with Europe since Mr. Lukashenko came to power in 1994, imposing a Soviet-style dictatorship that has tended to gravitate toward Russia, with which Belarus shares cultural and linguistic ties. Still, there has been occasional friction between Russia and Belarus, and as animosity between the West and Russia has intensified in recent months, the European Union has sought to strengthen ties with Belarus. During the war in Georgia, Mr. Lukashenko did not overtly support his longtime Russian allies. Nor has Belarus followed Russia by recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Stephen Castle reported from Brussels, and Michael Schwirtz from Moscow. ~~~~~~~~~~ September 30, 2008 WORLD BRIEFING - EUROPE; Belarus: Election Was Undemocratic, European Monitoring Agency Says By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe says vote count in parliamentary elections in Belarus was not as open as promised; says election generally failed to meet European democratic standards; notes that opposition candidates had more freedom to demonstrate and better access to television than in previous elections ===== notyet The vote count during parliamentary elections in Belarus on Sunday was not as open as promised, and the election generally failed to meet European democratic standards, said the election monitoring agency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. In a statement released Monday, the agency said independent observers were often denied access to polling stations. When access was provided, it said, observers reported cases of deliberate falsification of results. The agency said opposition candidates did have less difficulty holding demonstrations and greater access to television than in previous elections in Belarus, a country often described as Europe's last dictatorship. ~~~~~~~~~~ September 30, 2008 Loyalists Sweep Vote in Belarus By CLIFFORD J. LEVY Candidates loyal to Belarus’s authoritarian president headed for victory in all 110 parliamentary seats. ===== notyet MINSK, Belarus — Candidates loyal to Belarus’s authoritarian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, headed for victory in all 110 parliamentary seats on Sunday in an election under scrutiny for signs that he was easing control over the country. “There is no one from the opposition in Parliament,” Nikolai Lazovik, the secretary of the Central Electoral Commission, said Monday, according to Reuters. Mr. Lukashenko had pledged that balloting would be free and fair, seeking to improve relations with the United States and the European Union, which have imposed stiff sanctions on Belarus in response to his rule. Opposition leaders have said for weeks that the voting would be rigged. After Mr. Lukashenko cast his ballot, he declared, “It will be very difficult for observers not to recognize these elections.” No members of the opposition currently serve in Parliament. Belarus, a former Soviet republic of 10 million people, has close d iplomatic and ethnic ties with neighboring Russia, though frictions have arisen at times, and Mr. Lukashenko seems to have sought to play the Kremlin off the West in recent months to lessen his dependence on the Kremlin. In response to heightened tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict in Georgia, the European Union has tried to reach out to Belarus to woo it from the Kremlin’s orbit. European leaders made clear, though, that much would depend on how the election was conducted. Mr. Lukashenko, who has held power since 1994, has cited his willingness to allow opposition candidates to vie for seats as an example of his openness. In addition, he released political prisoners last month, including the most well-known, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, who had been serving a lengthy sentence for leading protests. On Sunday, opposition leaders described the election as a farce, saying that they were largely banned from appearing on the state-controlled television news and holding campaign rallies. They said they were certain that vote totals were fraudulent because they were not allowed to observe the counting. A few hundred opposition supporters gathered in a central square to denounce Mr. Lukashenko and call for the West to do so as well. Mr. Kazulin made a dramatic appearance, saying that the people of Belarus wanted better relations with the rest of Europe but could not attain them because of Mr. Lukashenko’s harsh rule. “We absolutely have a huge quantity of facts that show that this election was not democratic,” Mr. Kazulin said. “And the main thing is that the citizens of Belarus did not see this campaign.” Mr. Lukashenko allowed observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the election. In a report this month, they said the campaign was being conducted in “an extremely low-key manner,” suggesting that the opposition had little, if any, ability to publicize its message. ~~~~~~~~~~ September 29, 2008 Loyalists Lead Vote in Belarus By CLIFFORD J. LEVY Candidates loyal to authoritarian President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko won an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats in a closely watched election. ===== notyet MINSK, Belarus — Candidates loyal to Belarus’s authoritarian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, won an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats on Sunday in an election under scrutiny for signs that he was easing control over the country. Mr. Lukashenko had pledged that balloting would be free and fair, seeking to improve relations with the United States and the European Union, which have imposed stiff sanctions on Belarus in response to his rule. Opposition leaders have said for weeks that the voting would be rigged. After Mr. Lukashenko cast his ballot, he declared, “It will be very difficult for observers not to recognize these elections.” Still, preliminary results showed that supporters of the president had garnered at least 99 of the 110 seats in Parliament. Results were not available for the other 11 seats, but it seemed highly likely that the opposition would capture few, if any, of those. No members of the opposition currently serve in Parliament. Belarus, a former Soviet republic of 10 million people, has close diplomatic and ethnic ties with neighboring Russia, though frictions have arisen at times, and Mr. Lukashenko seems to have sought to play the Kremlin off the West in recent months to lessen his dependence on the Kremlin. In response to heightened tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict in Georgia, the European Union has tried to reach out to Belarus to woo it from the Kremlin’s orbit. European leaders made clear, though, that much would depend on how the election was conducted. Mr. Lukashenko, who has held power since 1994, has cited his willingness to allow opposition candidates to vie for seats as an example of his openness. In addition, he released political prisoners last month, including the most well-known, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, who had been serving a lengthy sentence for leading protests. On Sunday, opposition leaders described the election as a farce, saying that they were largely banned from appearing on the state-controlled television news and holding campaign rallies. They said they were certain that vote totals were fraudulent because they were not allowed to observe the counting. A few hundred opposition supporters gathered in a central square to denounce Mr. Lukashenko and call for the West to do so as well. Mr. Kazulin made a dramatic appearance, saying that the people of Belarus wanted better relations with the rest of Europe but could not attain them because of Mr. Lukashenko’s harsh rule. “We absolutely have a huge quantity of facts that show that this election was not democratic,” Mr. Kazulin said. “And the main thing is that the citizens of Belarus did not see this campaign.” Mr. Lukashenko allowed observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the election. In a report this month, they said the campaign was being conducted in “an extremely low-key manner,” suggesting that the opposition had little, if any, ability to publicize its message. ~~~~~~~~~~ August 17, 2008 Belarus Frees Opposition Politician From Prison By CLIFFORD J. LEVY An opposition figure was freed after months of pressure from the United States and the European Union on Belarus’s president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. ===== notyet MOSCOW — Belarus, a former Soviet republic that is considered to have one of the world’s most authoritarian governments, on Saturday released its most prominent opposition politician from prison, where he had been serving a lengthy sentence for leading antigovernment protests, officials said. The opposition figure, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, was freed after months of pressure from the United States and the European Union on Belarus’s president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Relations between Belarus and the West have grown more strained as Washington has stepped up sanctions in an effort to compel Mr. Lukashenko to curb political repression. Mr. Lukashenko is often described as a throwback to a Soviet-style leader who keeps control with the help of a security agency, which is still called the K.G.B. The war in nearby Georgia has sent tremors through relations between Russia and other former Soviet republics and satellites, but American officials said on Saturday that they believed that Mr. Kazulin’s release was not related to the conflict. Belarus and Russia have had generally good relations and have often talked in recent years about forming an official union. Even so, Russia has expressed some displeasure in recent days that the Lukashenko government has not offered more vocal support for the Russian side in the Georgia conflict. Belarus is to hold parliamentary elections next month. Mr. Lukashenko has pledged that they will be free and fair, and Mr. Kazulin’s release may be related to the government’s attempt to try to improve Belarus’s image before the voting. On Saturday, Mr. Kazulin did not make any remarks upon leaving the Vitba 3 prison, officials said. Jonathan Moore, the senior United States diplomat in Belarus’s capital, Minsk, said in a telephone interview that the release of Mr. Kazulin “was an important step in improving the human rights situation in Belarus.” In answer to American sanctions, Belarus has expelled many United States diplomats, and there is no American ambassador in Minsk. The United States imposed the sanctions against Mr. Lukashenko and other senior officials after the police arrested protesters at demonstrations in response to the 2006 presidential election. Last year, the Treasury Department froze the assets of the state energy and chemical company, Belneftekhim. Mr. Kazulin, 52, a former Lukashenko ally, turned against him and ran in the presidential election, which was described by election observers as rigged in Mr. Lukashenko’s favor. Mr. Kazulin was arrested and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. He was briefly released in February to attend the funeral of his wife, Irina, who died of cancer. He had threatened a hunger strike if he was not allowed to go. ~~~~~~~~~~ (3) June 25, 2008 Belarus Cracks Down on Internet News By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The new measures require that all Internet sites originating in the country be registered with the government. ===== notyet MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Belarussian lawmakers gave final approval on Tuesday to a crackdown on Internet journalism. The new measures require that all Internet sites originating in the country be registered with the government. Many independent newspapers that the authorities closed now have a presence on the Internet. The bill, drafted by the office of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, “is among the harshest in Europe,” said Oleg Gulak, the leader of the Belarussian Helsinki Committee rights group. But Liliya Ananich, the first deputy information minister, said, “We have to protect society from the negative effects of the Internet.” The legislation also provides for up to two years of imprisonment for journalists who reproduce foreign media reports that “discredit Belarus.” ~~~~~~~~~~ May 4, 2008 11 U.S. Diplomats Leave Belarus Amid Dispute By REUTERS The reduction in embassy staff was the second Belarus had sought from the United States this year, the latest one caused by a dispute over human rights and sanctions. ===== notyet MINSK, Belarus (Reuters) — Eleven United States diplomats have left Belarus after a dispute with the government over human rights and sanctions, an embassy representative said Saturday. Belarus had ordered 10 American diplomats to leave because Washington had refused to reduce its embassy staff in Minsk. “All 11 diplomats, 10 of whom were declared persona non grata, together with their families have left Belarussian territory and entered Lithuania,” an embassy representative said. ~~~~~~~~~~ May 2, 2008 Diplomats’ Expulsion Angers U.S. By DAVID STOUT The State Department reacted angrily on Thursday to the expulsion of American diplomats by Belarus, a former Soviet Republic regarded to have one of the world’s most repressive governments. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 8, 2008 WORLD BRIEFING | EUROPE; Belarus: U.S. Ambassador Told To Leave By CLIFFORD J. LEVY Belarus is withdrawing its ambassador from Washington because of sanctions imposed by US over government's crackdown on political opposition and press; demands that Washington withdraw its ambassador from Minsk, but Bush administration has given no indication that it will do so ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ February 27, 2008 Belarus Opposition Leader Freed for Wife’s Funeral By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ Authorities in Belarus temporarily freed Aleksandr V. Kazulin, a jailed opposition politician who threatened to starve himself if not permitted to attend his wife’s funeral. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 24, 2007 Plane Is Hit in Somali Capital as Threat to Government Builds ... By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN; MOHAMMED IBRAHIM and YUUSUF MAXAMUUD CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM MOGADISHU, SOMALIA. The incident is raising fears that Somalia’s transitional government faces an increasingly organized and lethal threat. ===== January 1, 2007 Russia-Belarus Gas Deal Averts Feared Disruptions in Europe By STEVEN LEE MYERS Gazprom struck a deal to supply gas to Belarus for the next five years, averting a price dispute that threatened to disrupt supplies to Europe. ===== notyet As a New Year's deadline arrived, Russia's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, struck a deal early Monday to supply gas to Belarus for the next five years, averting a price dispute that threatened to disrupt supplies to Europe, the company said in a statement. The agreement, reached as the Russian capital celebrated the New Year with rolling displays of fireworks, more than doubled the price that Belarus will pay for natural gas this year and raised it significantly in the years to come. For Belarus, a close ally of Russia, the price of gas would rise to $100 per thousand cubic meters in 2007, from $46 now, and increase steadily to the level paid by European countries by 2011, the company said. Gazprom, Russia's largest company, succeeded in achieving, at least in part, what its officials had described as a central goal: ending subsidized supplies of energy to the countries of the former Soviet Union. Belarus, led by its autocratic president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, has for years benefited from the comparatively inexpensive supply of natural gas, a vital part of its sclerotic economy, still mostly managed by the state. The agreement headed off a shutdown of supplies to Belarus and beyond, avoiding the disruptions of last year, when the effects of a price dispute with Ukraine rippled throughout Europe and raised concerns about Russia's reliability as an energy supplier. Gazprom, closely allied to the Kremlin, threatened to cut off gas supplies again beginning Monday at 10 a.m. if Belarus did not agree to the higher prices. At least 20 percent of Russian natural gas destined for Europe passes through Belarus, less than the amount that transits Ukraine but enough to raise new concerns in Europe. The agreement was reached after months of negotiations -- and a final week of threats and counterthreats. Belarus's prime minister, Sergei S. Sidorsky, arrived in Moscow on Sunday for a last round of negotiations and announced the deal with Gazprom's chairman, Aleksei B. Miller. Mr. Miller had suggested that Belarus should ultimately pay the going market price, now roughly $260 per thousand cubic meters of gas. The agreed price, $100 per thousand cubic meters, was less than the $105 that Gazprom had demanded in the past few days. But under the deal announced on Monday, Gazprom, in keeping with its stated goals of expanding its export empire, will acquire 50 percent of Beltranzgaz, the Belarussian gas-transit monopoly that distributes gas through the country. Mr. Lukashenko, whose rule has been described as the last dictatorship in Europe, had previously vowed never to give up control of those pipelines. On Friday, he vowed that Belarussians would rather live in unheated dugouts than pay the higher prices that Gazprom was demanding. ''All this means destruction of our relations,'' he said. A statement by Mr. Sidorsky early Monday appeared to reflect his government's unease with the agreement. ''The Belarussian side, in a difficult atmosphere on the eve of the new year, signed an agreement on unfortunate terms,'' he said, according to Agence France-Presse. Russia has long been the country's most reliable partner, shielding it from efforts by Europe and the United States to isolate Mr. Lukashenko, who won re-election to a third term as president in balloting in March that was denounced as unfair. But the negotiations suggested that Russia's political priorities had been surpassed by Gazprom's economic ones. ~~~~~~~~~~ December 28, 2006 Gazprom Warns of Wider Cutoffs if Belarus Interferes With Gas By ANDREW E. KRAMER Gazprom reacted fiercely to a suggestion that Belarus would pull natural gas out of export pipelines rather than pay a higher price. ===== notyet MOSCOW, Dec. 27 — Gazprom, the Russian energy monopoly, reacted fiercely on Wednesday to a suggestion from Belarus that it would pull natural gas out of export pipelines rather than pay a higher price for the fuel. Reversing course from its assurances of Tuesday, Gazprom warned Poland, Lithuania and Germany of possible supply disruptions. About 8 percent of the European Union’s gas imports pass through Belarus. The country, whose alliance with Russia has turned rocky, both imports natural gas for domestic consumption and transships fuel to markets farther to the West. Its president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, is often referred to as Europe’s last dictator. “We are interdependent,” the deputy prime minister of Belarus, Vladimir I. Semashko, said of the two countries’ energy ties in remarks Wednesday on Russian state television. “If I don’t have a domestic gas supply contract, Gazprom won’t have a transit deal.” Mr. Semashko brushed aside Gazprom’s threat to halt supplies for the domestic market in Belarus. “Gazprom will not reduce the amount of supplies,” he predicted. “With Ukraine there was an attempt like this. After two days, everything fell back into place.” He was referring to the showdown at the beginning of the year when a price dispute between Ukraine and Russia and a two-day embargo caused jitters across Europe, which relies on Russian gas, especially in the winter. Gazprom’s chief executive, Aleksei B. Miller, responded by issuing a deadline to shut off the gas. “If a contract for supply next year is not concluded, Gazprom will have no basis to supply gas after 10 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2007,” he said in televised remarks. He also suggested that Russia should impose export duties on sales to Belarus, raising the price to $260 per 1,000 cubic meters. Earlier, Gazprom had offered Belarus gas for $105 for the same volume, a combination of cash and equity in a key export pipeline. “You shouldn’t expect New Year’s presents from Gazprom,” the company’s spokesman, Sergei V. Kupriyanov, said after the Belarussian implied threat of disrupting Gazprom’s exports to Europe, the source of most of the corporation’s income. “Gazprom is not Santa Claus.” As in the dispute with Ukraine, the bargaining has become a test of Belarus’s leverage as a transit country for Russian energy and its willingness to risk the energy supplies of its neighbors farther down the pipelines. “Each of the former republics has a different set of circumstances in terms of what leverage the Russians have, and what relations these countries have with their neighbors,” Jerome Guillet, a Paris-based banker and an authority on Gazprom’s business practices, said in a telephone interview. Ukraine, for example, will pay $135 per 1,000 cubic meters next year. By contrast, Georgia, led by a pro-Western government, will pay $235. Belarus currently pays $46.68 per 1,000 cubic meters, the lowest price in the former Soviet Union outside of Russia itself. About 20 percent of Gazprom’s exports to Europe pass through Belarus, and 80 percent via Ukraine. The 25 countries in the European Union, taken together, import 40 percent of their gas from Russia. Gazprom said its average price in Western Europe in the first half of 2006 was $265. Mr. Kupriyanov of Gazprom said Wednesday that Belarus wanted to pay just $75 per 1,000 cubic meters and asked that Gazprom front the entire $2.5 billion for a 50 percent share in the pipeline company, Beltransgaz. That proposal is “very unlikely” to satisfy Gazprom, he said. ~~~~~~~~~~ December 27, 2006 Gazprom Threatens to Cut Off Gas if Belarus Rejects Higher Price By ANDREW E. KRAMER The strong Russian position suggests that Moscow is becoming aggressive in energy pricing even with countries that have been close allies. ===== notyet MOSCOW, Dec. 26 — Gazprom, the Russian energy monopoly, threatened Tuesday to halt natural gas supplies to Belarus if that country did not agree to a large price increase by the first of the year. The strong Russian position suggests that Moscow is becoming aggressive in energy pricing even with countries that have been close allies. Belarus now has the cheapest gas in the former Soviet Union, other than Russia. Gazprom, the world’s largest energy company by volume of reserves, is insisting that Belarus pay more than double its current price, though it would still pay less than richer countries in Europe. Gazprom warned that Belarus was behaving “irresponsibly” in the talks over pricing and a Russian demand to surrender equity in an important export pipeline, and said that such resistance was putting Belarus’s energy supply at risk. The threat was issued almost a year after Gazprom cut off fuel supplies to Ukraine, another important transit country for Russian energy exports, causing intense concern over supply in Western Europe. After three days and a din of criticism, Gazprom turned the gas back on. In the energy markets now, the Kremlin is dictating terms with greater assertiveness than it has since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gazprom already owns one of the two major export pipelines that run through Belarus and is negotiating for a share in the second, a move that would tighten the company’s bear hug on European supplies. Gazprom said exports to Poland and Germany through the pipelines would not be at risk, even if Belarus were switched off. The company spokesman, Sergei V. Kupriyanov, said Gazprom had been stockpiling gas in underground reservoirs in Western Europe to ensure uninterrupted supplies. “Responsibility for what has taken shape today lies with the Belarussian side,” Gazprom’s chief executive, Aleksei B. Miller, said Tuesday to a Belarussian delegation led by a first deputy prime minister, Vladimir I. Semashko. “Gazprom and the Russian Federation met you halfway on all issues,” Mr. Miller said. Gazprom’s tough negotiating suggested an unraveling of the special relationship between Russia and Belarus, which form a loose coalition called a union state. Russia is one of the Belarussian dictator Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s last allies in Europe. “The demand shows Putin is abandoning any myth of the union state,” said Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Lukashenko is desperate and backed into a corner.” Gazprom’s final asking price for gas in Belarus, $105 to $110 per 1,000 cubic meters, is still among the lowest offered to Russia’s neighbors. Gazprom says it is intent on raising prices throughout the former Soviet Union, ending a decade of subsidies. Gazprom said Belarus wanted rates in line with those paid in Smolensk, a neighboring Russian province, or about $40 for residential consumers and $54 for industrial customers, citing a treaty related to the union state. Mr. Semashko, the Belarussian deputy prime minister, left talks in Moscow on Tuesday without a deal. “We still have time until the 31st of December,” he said. Gazprom has slowly increased prices in neighboring countries while trading special deals for footholds in the local distribution business or access to export pipelines, which is essential to its hugely profitable business. ~~~~~~~~~~ December 5, 2006 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Police Detain Opposition Leader Belarus opposition leader Aleksandr Milinkevich is detained on suspicion of carrying drugs; Milinkevich, who opposed Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko in recent elections, was stopped week earlier by border guards on allegations of passport irregularities when returning from conference in Latvia; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ August 5, 2006 Court in Belarus Convicts and Sentences 4 Election Observers By STEVEN LEE MYERS Since the election in March, authorities have arrested scores opposed to President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. ===== notyet MOSCOW, Aug. 4 — A court in Belarus on Friday convicted four election observers whose arrests in February foreshadowed a broad crackdown after the disputed re-election of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. The observers, leaders of an American-financed organization called Partnership, were sentenced to prison for terms ranging from six months to two years under a law adopted late last year to restrict public protests. Formally, they faced charges of membership in an unlawful organization, though on the eve of the election in March, the chief of the country’s security agency publicly accused them of plotting a violent coup. Since the election, in which Mr. Lukashenko received 82 percent of the vote, according to official results, the authorities have arrested scores of protesters and political leaders opposed to Mr. Lukashenko. Last month a court sentenced one of them, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, to five and a half years in prison for organizing a rally in April to protest the vote. Another, Aleksandr Milinkevich, who himself has been arrested and jailed for brief periods since March, criticized the verdict on Friday as a “political execution” of those simply trying to hold the government’s electoral behavior to account. “This trial demonstrates the arbitrariness of administrative and command rule and the complete absence of any control over the power,” Mr. Milinkevich said in a statement. Partnership gained prominence for organizing election observers during elections in 2004 for a new Parliament and a referendum that same year that gave Mr. Lukashenko the right to seek unlimited terms in office. The group received money from the National Democratic Institute, whose representative for Belarus, David Hamilton, was also accused by the authorities of participating in the coup plot. The government refused to register the group and raided an organizational meeting last year, arresting dozens of members. The four convicted on Friday — Nikolai Astreiko, Timofei Dranchuk, Aleksandr Shalaiko and Enira Bronitskaya — were leaders of the group whose arrests in February effectively disrupted plans to observe the presidential election, which was roundly denounced by the United States and Europe as a fraud. Belgium’s foreign minister, Karel De Gucht, criticized the case on Friday, citing the nature of the charges and the murky circumstances of the trial, which was held behind closed doors. “I believe it is a mistake to add even more individuals to an already extensive list of politically motivated convictions,” Mr. De Gucht, who also serves as the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said in a statement. The United States and Europe have imposed sanctions on Mr. Lukashenko and members of the government in protest, establishing a ban on travel for many senior officials and a freeze on their assets abroad. Those measures appear to have had little real effect on Belarus, which continues to receive political support from Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin. David J. Kramer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for the region, said in a telephone interview from Washington that those involved in the Partnership prosecution could also face sanctions. That would presumably include a ban on travel to the United States, but he declined to elaborate. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map ~~~~~~~~~~ July 10, 2006 Polish President to Appoint His Twin as Prime Minister By JUDY DEMPSEY President Lech Kaczynski will appoint his twin brother and longtime political partner as Poland's prime minister on Monday. ===== May 19, 2006 European Union Freezes Assets of Belarus Chief for Rigged Vote By STEVEN LEE MYERS The freeze follows a ban on travel to the European Union's 25 member states, and a similar ban the United States imposed this week. ===== notyet MOSCOW, May 18 — The European Union on Thursday imposed a freeze on bank accounts and other financial assets of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and 35 other senior officials in Belarus, with their families or proxies, in retaliation for the rigged presidential election in March and the crackdown on government opponents that has continued in its wake. The freeze follows a ban on travel to the European Union's 25 member states, and a similar ban the United States imposed this week. The Bush administration has also warned that it would freeze Mr. Lukashenko's assets, but has not yet done so. The immediate effect is unknown, because it is not clear whether Mr. Lukashenko has bank accounts in Europe or the United States, and if so, how much money they contain. Mr. Lukashenko has mocked the idea, as he has the visa ban. Even before the election, he denied having assets abroad, as officials did again this week when the European Union signaled its decision. "Take this money, if you know that there is any there," Mr. Lukashenko said then in typically defiant remarks in a televised interview. "There is nothing to get Lukashenko for. Understand?" Mr. Lukashenko, who has been in office since 1994, won a third term with what officials said was 83 percent of the vote. The leading opposition candidate, Aleksandr Milinkevich, won only 6 percent, a result broadly disputed by Mr. Lukashenko's critics in Belarus and by American and European officials. Mr. Milinkevich welcomed the European action on Thursday as an important new lever against Mr. Lukashenko's government, one that would harm senior officials but not the broader population, as economic penalties would. "Even if they do not manage to find such accounts, it is effective because it has a strong moral impact on officials," he said in a telephone interview from Belarus. "As for visas, officials have given interviews in the press. They keep saying they have been offended unjustly, but one can see they are quite concerned, though, frankly, Lukashenko does not allow them to go abroad very often." The freeze applies to Mr. Lukashenko, senior members of his administration, the ministers of education, information and justice, ranking members of Parliament, the prosecutor general and the chief of the security service, still known by its Soviet-era abbreviation, the K.G.B. The European Union's statement, issued in Brussels, called the officials on the list those "who are responsible for the violations of international electoral standards and the crackdown on civil society and the democratic opposition" around the March 19 election. The statement said the freeze also applied to "those natural or legal persons, entities or bodies associated with them." A European diplomat in Minsk, the Belarussian capital, said that meant family members or others, as well as trust funds or companies, that hold accounts abroad under other names. It also applies to stocks or other assets. A White House report issued before the election accused Mr. Lukashenko of enriching himself and asserted that he was "likely among the most corrupt leaders in the world." After the election, the police and security forces arrested dozens of protesters and shut down an encampment that had lasted five days on the main square in Minsk. A second challenger, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, was arrested March 25 and remains in prison, facing charges of organizing antigovernment protests. Mr. Milinkevich and other senior opposition party leaders were arrested in April and sentenced to two-week prison terms on lesser charges. They were released late last week. The European diplomat said in a telephone interview that the decision would force the European Union's members to scrutinize financial transactions in search of Mr. Lukashenko's money abroad. "We suspect there is," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the policy publicly. "But we've never gone after it before." A senior State Department official in Washington said that the Bush administration would follow suit, though perhaps not for several weeks because of legal requirements involved in freezing foreign leaders' accounts. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map ~~~~~~~~~~ April 29, 2006 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Putin Backs Leader By STEVEN LEE MYERS (NYT) Pres Vladimir V Putin of Russia praises his counterpart from Belarus, Aleksandr G Lukashenko, who has faced strong denunciation from European and US officials after recent presidential elections ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 11, 2006 Europe Bars Its Doors to Belarus President and 30 Officials By C. J. CHIVERS The European Union today blocked their entrance to much of Europe as punishment for election tampering and violent crackdowns. ===== notyet MOSCOW, April 10 — The European Union on Monday imposed travel restrictions on President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus and 30 more of the country's officials, blocking their entrance to much of Europe as punishment for election tampering and violent crackdowns on dissent in the former Soviet state. The restrictions, widely expected after a rigged presidential election and police violence against antigovernment demonstrators in Belarus last month, are effective immediately. The European Union's statement cited not only the recent events in Belarus, including the election on March 19 and beatings and detentions of opposition members and foreigners, but also the disappearances in 1999 and 2000 of four opposition figures, whom the state is suspected of having killed. The Europeans also reiterated their support for Belarus's nascent opposition, some members of which have received financing from European governments and the United States. They vowed to expand contacts and to support an independent news media. "Opposition candidates and their supporters have offered the Belarussian population a democratic alternative," the European Union's statement said. The European community, it added, will "intensify and facilitate people-to-people contacts and enhance access to independent sources of information." Under Mr. Lukashenko, often referred to as Europe's last dictator, Belarus has virtually no independent news media. Its three state-controlled television stations endlessly flatter the president and criticize his perceived foes. Mr. Lukashenko, who was sworn in for a third term as president on Saturday, has shown little public concern about the prospect of sanctions. Immediately after the travel ban was imposed on Monday, his government labeled the action "short sighted" and said sanctions would only aggravate relations between Belarus and the West. Mr. Lukashenko appeared at his inauguration ceremony wearing a military uniform, and bluntly scolded the West for what he described as its efforts to encourage revolutions patterned after those that have changed post-Soviet governments in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan since 2003. "Get busy with restoring order in your own countries," he said, in remarks aimed at the West, according to a transcript prepared by the BBC. "Belarus has a robust immune system. Your clumsy attempts to plant the virus of revolution have produced the reverse effect and have become an antidote for this color disease," a reference to the democracy movement in Ukraine, which used the color orange as its badge of unity. The list of officials banned from travel to Europe include senior members of the presidential administration, as well as the two top officials of the K.G.B., the state security agency, which retains its Soviet name. The list also includes election supervisors, judges and a prosecutor involved in processing cases against opposition members. It substantially reflected a proposed list of 47 officials created and circulated by Western diplomats last month in Minsk, except that it did not include state journalists the previous list recommended for sanctions. Their omission reflects a divergence in opinion among diplomats about how to classify the state journalists, who are regarded by some Western countries, including the United States, as K.G.B. agents. But some diplomats worry that sanctions against the state journalists could lead to retaliatory restrictions against Western newsgathering. No matter Mr. Lukashenko's public displays of confidence, the European Union's decision puts him in rare company. Other public officials barred from entering the union include security officers responsible for the bloody crackdown in 2005 in Andijon, Uzbekistan, and those indicted for war crimes and their close circles. The only other heads of state banned from the European nations are President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and the leaders of the military junta now controlling Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. "You can see the company in which these guys are," Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said in a telephone interview. She said the list would continue to be reviewed and might grow. The response from the government of Belarus came in the form of a statement by Andrei Popov, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. "We have repeatedly stated to our European partners that restrictive policy toward Belarus is groundless, far-fetched and useless," he said. "Real understanding and constructive cooperation are obviously reached through dialogue, but not imposed with sanctions." Nikolai I. Lozovik, the deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission and one of the Belarussian officials whose travel was restricted, said he was proud to be included. He said the sanctions were a case of European political pressure and double standards. "Good is called bad, and bad is called good," he said. "I would be offended if in this situation I was considered a person who was corresponding with European standards." Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map ~~~~~~~~~~ (4) March 25, 2006 U.S. and Europe Plan Sanctions Against Belarus By C. J. CHIVERS; DAN BILEFSKY CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM BRUSSELS FOR THIS ARTICLE, JOEL BRINKLEY FROM WASHINGTON and STEVEN LEE MYERS FROM MOSCOW. The sanctions are likely to irritate Russia, which endorsed the presidential election and made light of the violence on Friday. ===== notyet Correction Appended MINSK, Belarus, March 24 — The United States and Europe said Friday that they would impose sanctions against President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus and other top officials for cracking down on a peaceful protest over his re-election, which was widely seen as a sham. The swift and nearly unanimous condemnations from Western nations widened their rift with Belarus and posed new challenges for their relations with Russia, which has stood behind Mr. Lukashenko. The United States stopped short of cutting its ties with the Belarus government, but a senior State Department official said that travel and financial restrictions already in place on "fewer than a dozen" Belarussian government officials would probably be extended to more than 50, including Mr. Lukashenko. The European Union announced similar moves. The announcements came as Belarussian authorities were processing hundreds of demonstrators in a Soviet-era prison here in the capital, and holding what the opposition described as closed trials without legal representation or defense witnesses. The opposition also said that since their members were arrested in a police sweep early Friday morning, many detainees had been beaten, denied the use of toilets, forced to stand for hours in subfreezing temperatures, and packed nearly by the score into small prison cells. "It is a horrible violation of human rights and the law," said Aleksandr Milinkevich, the principal challenger to Mr. Lukashenko in last Sunday's presidential election. "They do not consider us to be people." Mr. Lukashenko made no immediate comment about the planned sanctions. But Belarus's Foreign Ministry suggested the West was being hypocritical and he hinted at retaliation. "If the United States and European Union countries respect the people of Belarus, they should respect their choice," Andrei Popov, a ministry spokesman, said on national television. "The Republic of Belarus retains the right to take retaliatory measures.' The threat seemed to expand on a remark earlier in the week by Mr. Lukashenko, who said Europe would hardly be able to restrict its trade with Belarus, a main transit route to the West for Russian gas and oil. The United States said that it "condemns the actions of the Belarussian security services" in which "they forcibly seized and detained Belarussian citizens who were peacefully demonstrating against the fraudulent March 19 election results," according to a State Department statement. The sanctions are likely to irritate Russia, which endorsed the presidential election on Monday and made light of the violence on Friday. As many as 1,000 people have been arrested in the past several days for participating in rallies or supporting the opposition, including for trying to give demonstrators food, according to Mr. Milinkevich and Aleksandr Kazulin, another presidential candidate. The United States echoed appeals by both candidates for Belarus to release the detainees immediately. "The United States calls on authorities in Belarus to release without delay the hundreds of citizens who have been detained, not only in the past 24 hours, but in recent days and weeks, simply for expressing their political views," said the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan. Leaders of the European Union said they would add Mr. Lukashenko's name to an existing visa ban against six Belarussian officials. The move puts him on the same blacklist as Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, and Myanmar's military leaders, all of whom have had their European assets frozen. The Polish foreign minister, Stefan Meller, said the new restrictions, which will take effect around April 10, could involve more than a dozen people. "This is a fight of good against evil," he said. The officials subject to the sanctions would be forbidden to travel to the United States or Europe, or to fly on airlines belonging to any of those countries. Assets they hold in American or European banks will probably be frozen, though officials noted that the details had not yet been determined. The administration hopes the threat of sanctions might change behavior in Belarus even before the new rules are put into place. Their goal, said the senior State Department official, who declined to be identified under department rules, is to "hold individuals accountable, to squeeze them" so that some might "peel off" to escape "the tightening noose." The crackdown creates a fresh strain on relations between the West and Russia, which has congratulated Mr. Lukashenko for his official victory, and said the election, seen in the West as a farce, signified "the development of democratic institutions and the strengthening of the foundations of civic society in Belarus." Russia, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, showed no sign on Friday of rejecting its embrace of Mr. Lukashenko, who, according to official results, was re-elected to a third term on Sunday with 83 percent of the vote. Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, at a news conference in Moscow, dismissed the protests as "illegal activities." He accused the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitored the elections, of having prejudged them and of instigating the demonstrations that followed. "It has played an inflammatory role," Mr. Lavrov said, according to a transcript provided by the Foreign Ministry. "To goad people into illegal activities is, I think, wrong." Christian Strohal, director of the organization's human rights arm, responded in a statement that Mr. Lavrov's statements showed "a deliberate disregard" for the facts. The State Department played down the American disagreement with Russia. A spokesman, Adam Ereli, noted that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with Mr. Lavrov by telephone on Friday and did not even bring up the issue of Belarus. Nonetheless, the West's actions may be seen as a challenge in Russia. "The United States and Europe have laid down markers that it will not accept fraudulent elections in Belarus," said Celeste A. Wallander, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The implication, she said, is that the West "will not accept fraud in Russian elections, either." But James. M. Goldgeier, a Russia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that message may be undercut by the fact that Russia faced no consequences after similar disagreements over other elections in its former republics over the past two years. In Minsk, the police crackdown hardly lessened the tension. For all its speed and efficiency, with hundreds of protesters being removed from their camp on October Square by the riot police in less than 25 minutes, the action seemed to have done little to break the opposition's will. Opposition members and relatives of those detained gathered outside the walls of the pretrial detention center and cheered every time a bus with detainees left the compound. The unrest in recent days was the first sustained public dissent in the 12-year rule of a president often called Europe's last dictator. Freedom of assembly and speech are almost nonexistent here, and the economy remains managed by the state. Mr. Milinkevich called for wide sanctions against Belarussian officials, including television journalists who he said knowingly spread lies on state television. He said a rally planned for Saturday would go forward, no matter how few people showed up. The event seems certain to present a fresh challenge to the government, if only on a small scale. Several demonstrators who have thus far eluded arrest said they would appear on October Square, against the government's orders, in a continued show of civil disobedience. One young man, who said he escaped from the crackdown early Friday by running from the police as they began seizing the demonstrators, stood on the square Friday afternoon, wearing a red-and-white button that read "For Freedom." The protester, who gave only his first name, Mikhail, said that he would be back with more demonstrators on Saturday, and that he expected he would be arrested. Dan Bilefsky contributed reportingfrom Brussels for this article,Joel Brinkley from Washington and Steven Lee Myers from Moscow. Correction: March 27, 2006 Because of an editing error, an article on Saturday about statements from the United States and Europe that they would impose sanctions on Belarus over the crackdown on peaceful protesters after the country's presidential election referred incorrectly to a senior State Department official's estimate of the number of Belarus officials likely to face sanctions. The official said that "fewer than a dozen" officials were under sanctions now and that the number would probably increase "by a factor of five or six." The official did not say the number was likely to be more than 50. ~~~~~~~~~~ March 25, 2006 Defiant Belarus Opposition Shifts to a Jailhouse Wall By C. J. CHIVERS Relatives of those detained in the Belarus crackdown turned up at the jailhouse walls Friday, demanding to know who was inside. ===== done (Photo-caption ... Sergei Grits/Associated Press A demonstrator flashed a victory sign Friday from a prison cell in Minsk, Belarus, after scores of election protesters were arrested) MINSK, Belarus, March 24 — The young man stood by the prison wall and read the names to a crowd of family members. "Vitushka," he said. "Ten days." "Vinogradov," he said. "Ten days." "Marchuk," he said, and repeated the same jail sentence, written on a scrap of paper he said the opposition had managed to smuggle out. The center of the psychological chess game between the autocratic government of Belarus and its emboldened new opposition shifted Friday from a small camp on October Square to a pretrial detention center, where much of the opposition movement now finds itself locked up. Since March 19, when President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko won a landslide re-election that the West and the opposition say was tainted by abuse and fraud, Belarus's opposition has challenged Mr. Lukashenko as never before, risking police violence and arrest to assemble in public and denounce the official result. Mr. Lukashenko and his police forces, which had never allowed such dissent, refrained from arresting the demonstrators until early Friday morning, when the riot police broke up a demonstration that had continued for more than 80 hours. The crackdown stopped the largest public display of defiance against Mr. Lukashenko's rule, but it was only the most visible effort of the government's effort to tamp down these protests before they spread. During the demonstration, each time protesters ventured away from the relative safety of their camp, they faced a gantlet of undercover security officers, waiting at subway token booths, lurking on train platforms, loitering near their homes. The officers arrested demonstrators by the score, and hunted for anyone believed to be a potential supporter or participant in the demonstration. On Friday, the relatives of the detained and opposition members who had eluded arrest turned up at the jailhouse walls, demanding to know who was inside, and trying to get the officials to accept parcels for the detainees. The bags contained nuts, juice, toothbrushes and clean clothes. The jail officials refused to accept them, just as they refused to provide a list of detainees, forcing the relatives to rely on the occasional call from within on smuggled cellphones, and to trade stories of beatings and young men spending the night shivering outside in the jail yard. Sometimes the gates would open and several prisoners would be seen being transferred away by bus. "We are together!" their friends and family would chant. Sometimes an ambulance would appear, and the crowd would wonder who had been hurt? One man passed the limited word they had of trials. The trend was clear: 10-day sentences. The charge: participating in an unsanctioned rally. Jail sentences will not stop them, opposition members said. Their next move, they said, will be to try to assemble for another demonstration on Saturday. But the government was already moving against them, deploying more police officers on the square, and using state television to denounce those already in jail. A propaganda campaign was also under way. After the protest was broken up, state television showed images of a square littered with alcohol containers and pornography, along with syringes and packets of white powder, and suggested that the camp was simply a drug-fueled orgy. "Of course it is easier to carry out different sexual experiments on psychologically unstable youth," the news broadcaster said. October Square, he said, was turned by the demonstrators into "an ugly, criminal tumor on Minsk's body." But journalists for The New York Times passed all four nights night on the square and saw no alcohol, drugs or pornographic materials inside the camp. Minutes after the riot police departed early Friday, alcohol bottles and pornography were in abundance, as if they had been planted. At the prison walls, the remaining opposition members said they were undeterred. "It is easy to sit in your warm kitchen and speak against this regime," said Sergei Karievsky, 50, an architect. "But if the sleeping society is ever going to be awakened, someone has to go out in the cold and fight for their rights." ~~~~~~~~~~ March 23, 2006 In 50-Yard Square in Belarus, a Country Within By C. J. CHIVERS For four consecutive days, protesters have defied warnings of arrest and bloodshed to demand a new election. ===== notyet J. CHIVERS MINSK, Belarus, March 22 — By midnight, as the temperature dropped ever lower and morning twilight was still five hours off, the core of Belarus's public opposition assumed its shape in the darkness. It was about 300 people, arms interlocked and forming a small, dense square, stomping on the frozen ground under a police cadre's contemptuous gaze. Behind them, inside their human box, another group of demonstrators held their banned flags overhead, a thicket of banners over 20 small tents. At any moment, the demonstrators said, they expected the police to rush forward, beat them with clubs and drag them off to the detention cells. And then their protest would end in blood. All of them said they were ready. "They may attack and beat us and inflict great trauma," said Stepan Svidersky, 18, a student. "But we have already achieved a result: We have shown our country that we are not afraid to stand against arbitrary rule." Since a rigged presidential election on March 19, the capital of Belarus has seen a protest like none in 12 years of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko's autocratic grip. For four consecutive days, protesters have defied warnings of arrest and bloodshed and stood in a corner of October Square to demand a new race. Their numbers rise to several thousand each evening, as they form a rally and impromptu dance party on the edge of an ice rink, and then dwindle, hour by hour, until midnight, when this core stands through the night, in two lines, to hold the place for the next day. It is a frigid, risky vigil, given the Belarussian weather and the government's history of reflexive brutality against those who dare to stand and call for better lives than Mr. Lukashenko's island of Soviet nostalgia and corruption has been able, or willing, to provide. Mostly they are young men in their 20's. A few look too young to shave. But since Tuesday night, when the opposition's leaders began to disagree about how best to proceed in their effort to unseat a president they do not recognize, this all-night core has become an independent force in a quixotic struggle. Their influence emerged when one of Mr. Lukashenko's two principal challengers, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, urged the protesters to disband Tuesday night and save themselves before the police crackdown. "There is no sense in keeping them on the square," Mr. Kazulin said. "We should think about our children, protect them, and not keep them in front of us." The protesters refused to go. And they rejected the label of "children," applied to them by Mr. Kazulin, as well as by Mr. Lukashenko, as they crowded together in the plummeting cold. They formed their two lines, one facing out of the camp, to warn of any advance by the police, the other facing inward, to keep an eye on the behavior of the demonstrators, ensuring that no provocateurs had slipped inside. After midnight, they occupied a portion of Belarus, a country of 10 million people the size of Kansas, that was no larger than a 50-yard square. It was a country within. They danced on its cold stone. They handed out tea. They said they would not give it up. "We consider this camp to be the only means to defend our position," Vitaly Korotysh, 22, one of the coordinators of the rally, said at 3:30 a.m. "If necessary it will stand for years. And if they break it up, I think on the next day the people will be back." It is too soon to know whether this is foolishness or resolve. But their position has been supported by Aleksandr Milinkevich, the second-place finisher in the election, with 6 percent of the vote, far behind the incumbent's 82.6 percent, which the protesters see as a cynical fraud. Mr. Milinkevich has said he will be with the demonstrators until the end, whatever shape events may take. It all could end with a dwindling of interest, he said, or in state violence. But inevitably, he said, the feelings here will grow. "We live in a country of total fear, and very few people are brave enough to come out like this," he said, standing in front of the ranks at 4 a.m., as the temperature dropped to 10 degrees. "This action destroys fear inside the country because it tells people it is possible to fight for your own destiny." The protesters see little chance of changes in government anytime soon. To the extent that this is a revolution, Mr. Milinkevich often says, it is a revolution not on the streets but in the mind. In many ways the students are following in the footsteps of the people's movement that overturned a rigged presidential vote in Ukraine in 2004. How widely the feeling is spreading is unclear, but they have left their camp and posted rallying cries on the Internet. They have sent text messages by mobile phones to their friends. And they venture away a few hours a day — risking arrest when alone or in small groups away from the foreign photographers and news crews here — urging others to join them. They hope for a large rally on Saturday, a day of celebration of a short-lived Republic of Belarus in 1918 that the government does not recognize and that Mr. Lukashenko despises. Since this year's celebration happens to fall on a Saturday, potential opposition supporters will not be at work. But their efforts have been squelched so far by the arrests of protesters leaving the square and by state television coverage that has portrayed them as homosexual, drunk and, in the words of one riot police commander, "pathetic." But ultimately, Mr. Milinkevich said, a message exists here that cannot be missed by Mr. Lukashenko and his security apparatus, which retains the name K.G.B. "We are not cattle anymore," he said. That sentiment was repeatedly expressed in the darkness, as demonstrators made clear it was not merely the election they protested, but the entire form of government Mr. Lukashenko has built. They attacked the government's arbitrary detentions and its smothering of political and economic freedoms, including the freedoms of assembly and speech. And they condemned the paired inefficiency and corruption that they said were at the center of the administration. Although some Western countries, including the United States, have aided opposition groups here with training, financing and political support, the demonstrators on the square speak of an organic anger, fueled by the injustice and inequities within Belarus. "Those who have a higher education understand that Lukashenko is a commodity profiteer," said Maxim Grechkoyedov, 25, an engineer who said that the government accepted natural gas from Moscow at below-market prices, part of Russia's subsidy of the Belarussian state, and then sold a portion at market prices, keeping the difference for the president and the elite. Mr. Grechkoyedov said the protesters were here because they were part of Belarus's "lost generation," those who have attended universities since the Soviet Union's disintegration, and have languished in low-paying jobs and under repression for their adult lives. Many have had enough, he said; Europe is not supposed to be like this. An opposition has been born. It is small, but one sign of its early resolve is that almost everyone who stands until dawn not only gives his or her last name for publication, but also insists that it be written down, knowing then that the authorities will see who they are. "I am tired of the lies," said Aleksandr Zhukov, 21, a student. "I am no longer afraid." He stood in the darkness, shifting his weight from one cold foot to the other, waiting for whatever comes next. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top ~~~~~~~~~~ March 22, 2006 Arrests Hold Down Protests on Belarus Vote By STEVEN LEE MYERS and C. J. CHIVERS The arrests in Minsk appeared to have the effect the authorities intended as the size of the protests dwindled considerably. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 22, 2006 A Dictator's 'Re-election' Aleksandr Lukashenko has staged a landslide presidential victory in Belarus as hollow as that of any other tyrant. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 17, 2006 Days Before Vote, Belarus Cracks Down on Opposition By STEVEN LEE MYERS Days before an election already seen as unfair, the administration intensified the atmosphere of fear. ===== notyet By STEVEN LEE MYERS MINSK, Belarus, March 16 — Days before a presidential election already seen as unfair, President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko's administration has intensified the atmosphere of fear and tension, arresting dozens of campaign workers and other opponents. On Thursday his security chief warned that any opponents who gathered to protest the election's outcome could face criminal charges for terrorism. Lt. Gen. Stepan N. Sukhorenko, chief of the security service, still known as the K.G.B., held a news conference here to accuse the opposition of planning to carry out a coup after the voting on Sunday, supported by the United States and Georgia. He showed a video of what he said was an opposition political worker confessing to having received training in Georgia from four Arabs and veterans of the Soviet armed forces. "There is a preparation not for the peaceful protest, as the organizers of the so-called revolution declare, but for a well-planned, forceful action," he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. He said the plotters intended to use "explosives, arson and acts of provocation." Belarussian officials, including Mr. Lukashenko, who is seeking re-election, have accused foreign powers of fomenting unrest and even revolution before. But coming only three days before the election, General Sukhorenko's remarks raised the specter of a violent confrontation. The leading opposition candidate, Aleksandr Milinkevich, has called on supporters to gather in Minsk on Sunday night to defend their rights to elect the next president freely, despite official warnings that any assembly would be illegal. Even before the vote, a wave of arrests has deprived Mr. Milinkevich's campaign — and any protests to follow the vote — of dozens of its leaders. His campaign announced that 18 of its workers around the country had been arrested in recent days and sentenced to jail terms of five to seven days — through Sunday's voting. Several others were fined, while still others await sentencing. Two of Mr. Milinkevich's senior campaign directors were sentenced last week to short prison terms after holding campaign rallies that the authorities declared illegal. At least five supporters of a second opposition candidate, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, were detained Thursday while distributing fliers in Minsk, two of his aides said. Mr. Kazulin himself was detained and beaten on March 2 while trying to attend a congress held by Mr. Lukashenko. Although the figures are inexact, opposition leaders and human rights groups said more than 60 people had been jailed, while hundreds more had been detained for hours at a time, often on charges of swearing, littering and hooliganism. "These were absolutely legal meetings of the campaigns," Andrei Sannikov, a leader of the human rights organization Charter 97, said in an interview. "The authorities are using the criminal code to interfere with the elections." State television reported Thursday night that the Foreign Ministry had summoned American and European ambassadors and warned them that their countries, along with the opposition leaders, would be held responsible for the consequences of any protests on Sunday. The European Union and the United States have denounced the harassment of campaign workers, as well as efforts to stifle independent news media and private advocacy organizations. The United Nations special representative for Belarus, Adrian Severin, did so again in a statement on Thursday, while the European Union warned that it would consider expanding a ban on visas to high-ranking Belarussian officials if the elections were not free and fair. So far, though, the warnings have had little effect. A spokeswoman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that three of the group's 430 election observers — two from Poland and one from Germany — had been refused entry this week, while five others had been denied visas. Unofficial observers from private organizations in Denmark, Ukraine, Lithuania and Georgia have also been turned away at the border. Although the Bush administration has declared Mr. Lukashenko Europe's last dictator — and President Bush last week held a highly symbolic meeting with the widows of two opposition figures who disappeared and are presumed dead — Mr. Lukashenko retains significant support in Belarus, presiding over economic growth even as he has punished dissent. He also has the support, at times open, of Russia, leaving the United States and Europe with few levers with which to exert pressure. Still, Anatoly Lebedko, one of the country's prominent opposition leaders, said the recent crackdown reflected a growing climate of fear that defied the message of stability that Mr. Lukashenko had cultivated with the help of absolute control over the state news media. Mr. Lebedko was detained outside his party headquarters on Wednesday, ostensibly for parking illegally. He was released early Thursday morning but faces a court hearing on Tuesday, which could result in a prison sentence. General Sukhorenko singled Mr. Lebedko out in the news conference on Thursday, saying he was under investigation for preparing a terrorist act, punishable by eight years to life in prison, or even death. Mr. Lebedko, in an interview in his office in Minsk, denied the charges, saying no one in the opposition advocated violence. "The authorities for so long have instilled fear in this country that they did not realize that they caught the same virus," he said. "They are afraid." Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top ~~~~~~~~~~ March 3, 2006 Belarus Opposition Candidate Injured in Melee With Police By STEVEN LEE MYERS Aleksandr V. Kazulin, who is challenging President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, was released more than eight hours after his arrest. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ February 26, 2006 Bringing Down Europe's Last Ex-Soviet Dictator By STEVEN LEE MYERS Democratic activists in Belarus expect to lose next month's election. Then they'll get on with their revolution. ===== notyet ebruary 26, 2006 Bringing Down Europe's Last Ex-Soviet Dictator By STEVEN LEE MYERS On March 19, Aleksandr Milinkevich will not be elected the next president of Belarus. He campaigns anyway, but with something else in mind. Through the winter he has traveled from city to city in clattering rented vans, meeting would-be voters in the bleak cold, gathering signatures and speaking about the social, economic and, above all, political neuroses that afflict this small nation at the eastern edge of a new Europe. "I am Aleksandr Milinkevich," he recently assured a worker outside an auto-parts factory in Borisov, a gritty industrial city northeast of the capital, Minsk. The man seemed genuinely stunned to find this stranger greeting him. "It is impossible to win at the elections, because there are no elections," Milinkevich told me the first time I met him in a dim, three-room apartment in Minsk in October. "Nobody counts the votes." It was my first realization that a presidential campaign in Belarus, a former republic of the Soviet Union, operates with a logic outside any traditional notion of democracy. Milinkevich had just been selected, narrowly, during a congress of democratic opposition leaders to serve as a unified candidate against the country's authoritarian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a former collective-farm boss who, over nearly 12 years in power, has defined democracy to mean not the people's choice but the people's acclamation — orchestrated by his government, including the ubiquitous security services, and enforced by a pervasive sense of fear. "We go into these elections not because we believe in their fairness, but because this is a chance to go to the people, to conduct a campaign door to door," Milinkevich explained through an interpreter. "I will not say that at every door people will become less fearful immediately. But very many people, when they see others who are not afraid, who dare to tell the truth, they will start to have more courage." For now, many people react uneasily when they encounter him, as if he were an apparition. In the consciousness of a people saturated with state propaganda and ideology, he appears as the shadowy leader of a revolutionary cadre financed by big powers abroad and committed to the overthrow of the government. Belarus, with about 10 million people in a landlocked mass not quite the size of Kansas, is a new nation and, even in the European mind, an obscure one. (A Belarussian acquaintance told me recently that a border guard at Stockholm's airport did not recognize his passport.) The country's fate has rarely been more than an afterthought in the larger struggles of competing European empires. At best it is considered the western appendage of Russia, which is what it has been historically. Its modern borders date only to the end of World War II, and except for a brief period between World War I and the consolidation of the Bolshevik revolution, it has known independence only since 1991, when the demise of the Soviet Union was officially declared — in Belarus, in fact. With the presidential election scheduled for next month, though, Belarus is now the battleground for a new struggle, not between empires exactly, but over competing notions of how democracy should work in the nations that emerged from the Soviet wreckage. Following popular uprisings against authoritarian leaders in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, those who would like to break Lukashenko's iron grip, from President Bush to leaders across Europe, have thrown their support — and money — behind Milinkevich and an array of democratically minded activists determined to wake up a populace considered too passive, or too afraid, to challenge the state. The activists are headed for a confrontation. Milinkevich, a 58-year-old physics professor and the unlikeliest of revolutionaries, is campaigning not for the presidency but for an uprising. "If our campaign is successful, then we will get people out into the street," he told me last December in Brest, a city of about 200,000 near the border with Poland. "This is the last chance, the last battle. If we shall not stand out in the streets, the long polar night will descend on Belarus." Lukashenko is prepared for unrest. Last year he eliminated a legal provision that allowed members of the police force and security services to disobey what they considered an unlawful order. A new law pushed through Parliament late last year makes organizing a public protest — or making statements that discredit the state — punishable by three to five years in prison. Lukashenko's interior minister recently ordered new measures to increase security before the election. A European diplomat told me that if Milinkevich's supporters gather in numbers in Minsk to protest an electoral result that is already a foregone conclusion, Lukashenko will not hesitate to disperse them forcefully. "There is no doubt Lukashenko will issue the order," he said. Lukashenko himself said as much in a TV interview on Jan. 27: "Any attempt to destabilize the situation will be met with drastic action. We will wring the necks of those who are actually doing it and those who are instigating these acts. Embassies of certain states should be aware of this. They should know that we know what they are up to. They will be thrown out of here within 24 hours." Lukashenko, first elected in 1994 as a corruption-busting reformer in the country's last truly free election, acts as if the world were plotting to overthrow him. It is central to his cultivation of popular support and is a regular theme of the steady stream of propaganda on state television, which reports extensively on nefarious American and European — even Russian — schemes to subordinate Belarus. Lukashenko's speech last September to the United Nations General Assembly was a jeremiad against a unipolar world dominated by the United States and included defenses of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. "If there are no pretexts for intervention, imaginary ones are created," he said in remarks shown repeatedly in Belarus. "To this end a very convenient banner was chosen — democracy and human rights. And not in their original sense of the rule of people and personal dignity, but solely and exclusively in the interpretation of the U.S. leadership." In a sense, Lukashenko is right. The policies of the European Union and the United States — supporting free news media, sponsoring civic organizations and providing assistance to the country's democratic opposition — all seek to undermine his hold on power. With the election approaching, foreign aid has jumped in ways reminiscent of the cold war. In January the European Union awarded a two-year, $2.4 million contract to a German organization, Media Consulta, to coordinate the broadcasting of news into Belarus, hoping to break an information blockade that has left most Belarussians isolated from, and ignorant about, even neighboring countries. The Bush administration, which has labeled Belarus the only "outpost of tyranny" left in Europe, spent $11.8 million last year on democracy promotion and plans to spend $12 million in 2006. The National Endowment for Democracy, the Congressionally financed nonprofit organization that promotes freedom overseas, is spending $2.2 million more on 49 grants related to the Belarus election. For some time the United States spent this money openly in Belarus, as it has and still does in other countries of the former Soviet Union, including Russia. Lukashenko's government, however, has tightened controls over organizations that received American and European funds, closing many of them down. When 70 Belarussians met in a Minsk movie theater in October to hold a founding congress of an American-supported election-monitoring group called Partnership, the police arrived and arrested them all. Three organizers were sentenced to 15 days in jail; a fourth was fined. The money, like the organizations themselves, has now gone underground or abroad. In December, 50 representatives of foreign ministries and international groups that support democracy gathered in Vilnius, the capital of neighboring Lithuania, to try to coordinate — and divide up — millions of dollars of aid. Thomas C. Adams, the State Department's aid coordinator for Europe and Eurasia, described the meeting to me as a gathering of "the Belarussian freedom industry." In a long day of discussions and presentations, the slickest appeal came from four young men belonging to a group calling itself Khopits, or "enough" in Belarussian. Using a computer and a projector, they proposed launching a secret information war, distributing leaflets, stickers and newspapers — mostly satirical — as well as ribbons and scarves emblazoned with the colors of the European Union. Khopits does not, officially, exist. In Belarus, a month after the meeting in Vilnius, I met one of those who made the presentation, who described the group and its work on condition I identify neither him nor the city he is from. He is 23 and baby-faced. "It would be better if you described me as a woman," he said. Three days before our meeting, three Khopits members were arrested and jailed. Khopits, according to its members and sponsors, is a network of cells with dozens of activists in 60 cities and villages. It has no vertical structure or leadership. On a clear, icy day, the unnamed 23-year-old and I met at a bustling restaurant named 0.5, meaning half-liter, the size of the typical glass of beer. As we sat down, he disassembled his two cellphones, taking out the cards and the batteries as a precaution against surveillance, said to be possible even with a phone switched off. "They listen to us, 100 percent," he told me, underscoring a fear of eavesdropping that is widely shared in Belarus. Khopits's information war is well under way. The National Endowment for Democracy, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (the N.E.D.'s British counterpart) and the Foreign Ministry of Germany are paying for it — with cash smuggled into Belarus in small amounts in ways he asked me not to disclose. (Representatives of Westminster and the German ministry declined to discuss their support for Khopits; the N.E.D. asked that I not disclose the amount of the assistance.) It is hard to gauge how effective this furtive campaign is, but the 23-year-old activist explained that even a trickle of oppositional information would seep into the cracks in Lukashenko's rule, weakening it, if not by the election, then sometime later. "This country is not Cuba, surrounded by water," he told me. "It is surrounded by civilized countries." Unless the borders are sealed entirely, information will still get through. "Sooner or later we will open people's eyes, and this regime will crash." The cloak-and-dagger precautions undertaken by the Belarus opposition are necessary because Lukashenko has rebuilt the security apparatus that existed in Soviet times — the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, or K.G.B. Fear in Belarus is pervasive: fear of the police, fear of the secret service, fear of the bureaucracy at work or school that punishes any sign of antigovernment activity. This fear extends even beyond Belarus's borders. While I was in Vilnius, a dozen young students gathered in front of the Belarussian Embassy to protest the expulsion a week earlier of Tatsiana Khoma, a fourth-year student at the Belarussian State University of Economics. Khoma was expelled for having attended a meeting in France of the National Unions of Students in Europe. Among the demonstrators was a young Belarussian who introduced herself, improbably, as Jane. After a while she confided her real name but begged me not to disclose it or the university she attends. She was there, she said, to try to draw public attention to Lukashenko's assault on higher education, including limiting study-abroad programs and even trips, which now must be approved by the Ministry of Education. But for her to speak openly would be to risk the fate that befell Khoma. "It is difficult for us to do anything," she said, warily eyeing the embassy before rushing off. Later that night I received an e-mail message from her, imploring me in the subject line, "Please, don't mention my name." "Because of the law we have in Belarus, we can't say anything we think about Belorussian politics," she wrote in earnest, imperfect English. "I saw you anderstant this, but I'm a little afrait." That week, Milinkevich's senior campaign aides gathered in a basement office in Vilnius. They included Milinkevich's rival as the democratic opposition leader, Anatoly Lebedko, who narrowly lost in the opposition's congress in October. The office — modern and sleek, with projectors and equipment for video conferences — was unlike anything the opposition had in Minsk. (In fact, by January, Milinkevich's campaign still did not have an official headquarters.) The meeting took place on the day Belarus's lower house of Parliament adopted the amendments to the criminal code lengthening jail terms for those convicted of fomenting protest or criticizing the government. Lebedko, a former school director and parliamentary deputy, has been one of Lukashenko's fiercest critics and has paid the price. In October 2004, as protesters rallied in Minsk after the fraudulent referendum extending Lukashenko's terms, secret service officers chased him into a pizza restaurant and beat him so badly that he nearly died. Outside the restaurant several elderly women on the sidewalk chanted: "Fascists! Fascists!" Lebedko, who barely conceals his disappointment at having lost to Milinkevich as the opposition candidate, has nevertheless become the campaign's chief strategist. He denounced the new amendments as an effort to instill fear and called them a sign of Lukashenko's desperation. "Despite propaganda reminiscent of Hitler's, half the population still wants change," he told me, citing polls, as he and the others loaded paper plates with Chinese food provided for the meeting. "Fifteen percent say they are willing to take to the streets. That is one and a half million people. This is our chance." The meeting began. The leaders of the democratic opposition of Belarus were there to discuss politics with Terry Nelson, the national political director of Bush-Cheney 2004. In that campaign, Nelson oversaw the president's strategy of creating a vast get-out-the-vote network by organizing volunteers. "We have neighbors talking to neighbors, and that's the way to win a close race," he said at the time. The office in Vilnius belonged to the International Republican Institute, which is partly financed by the National Endowment for Democracy. The institute's director for Belarus is Trygve Olson, a bearish campaign operative from Wisconsin who previously worked in Poland and Serbia. He went to Belarus in January 2001 and was denied a visa by April. He has worked in Vilnius ever since. On Belarussian state television, Olson has been singled out for organizing seminars like these. As the narrator of one 2004 documentary put it, "We found out that these technologies of educating provocateurs in Nazi schools and educating the opposition leaders in Belarus are very similar." Terry Nelson's presence in Vilnius underscored the depth of American support for Belarus's beleaguered opposition, but that support is not limited to Republicans. The National Democratic Institute operates from Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, its workers having also been barred from Belarus. The two American organizations, with a bipartisanship that is increasingly rare at home, have divided their labors: the N.D.I. works with regional groups, the I.R.I. with the national campaign. Nelson listened as Lebedko, Sergei Kalyakin (leader of the Communist Party of Belarus) and Aleksandr Dobrovolsky (a Milinkevich advisor) discussed the results of a poll, paid for by the I.R.I., that showed the ratings of Milinkevich and other opposition leaders all in single digits. "You need to reach those people to reach your goals," Nelson said. The question was — and remains — whether an American-style campaign can work in a place like Belarus. Nelson and Olson discussed, then ruled out, such highly refined campaign tactics as microtargeting of voters based on databases with precision information about income and habits. Still, they went over the categories of likely supporters — students, small-business men and Protestants (who face restrictions on worship in an overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox country) — that Milinkevich had, somehow, to reach. Kalyakin said that a majority in Belarus favored a new president, but faced with almost daily warnings on television, feared the instability or economic chaos that could follow. Dobrovolsky predicted that the campaign was prepared to mass 15,000 to 25,000 young people to protest the results on March 19 — or possibly a move to disqualify Milinkevich even before the vote. He said that gathering 50,000 could prove sufficient to inspire more people to mass. "Is that enough?" Nelson asked. "We will see," Dobrovolsky replied. 'Only dictators fear revolutions," said Vladimir Kobets, who is essentially a political fugitive in his own country. He is a leader of Zubr, a youth group whose name means "bison," a symbol of the country, though not one the government embraces. Lukashenko has instead revived those of the Soviet era, including the green-and-red flag of the Belarus Soviet Socialist Republic. If people are going to protest the election results, Zubr will provide most of the early protesters. It claims 5,000 active members and 10,000 more "volunteers." Forty young people founded Zubr in a secret meeting in a national park in January 2001. Its protests — often antigovernment antics like street performances in Lukashenko masks or graffiti campaigns — have landed dozens of the group's members in jail. According to Kobets, nearly 100 have been beaten. Meeting Kobets was not difficult, but it required certain precautions. We would meet in front of a green wooden house on the banks of the Svislach River, which wends through Minsk. The house, now a museum, is where the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, a precursor of the Bolsheviks, held its illegal founding congress in 1898. From there we wandered aimlessly along the wide esplanades beside the river in Gorky Park before heading into a cafe, presumably safe from any unwanted listeners. Kobets is round-faced and wears glasses. He is no longer so young. He has a wife and two children. He has no regular job. He was arrested last August when he met two activists from Georgia, though he was released within hours. The Georgians, part of the Kmara youth group that has provided inspiration and training to Zubr, were released 10 days later, after Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and Viktor A. Yushchenko of Ukraine intervened personally with Lukashenko. Kobets, like Milinkevich, doubts the possibility of having a legitimate election, largely because Lukashenko's apparatchiks control every part of it, most important the election commissions that will count the votes and report what the federal election chief in October 2004 called "an elegant victory." That was when Lukashenko announced a snap referendum amending constitutional term limits and allowing him to seek re-election indefinitely. The vote was widely denounced in Europe, and an independent exit poll suggested that the referendum actually received the support of less than half the voters. But it stands anyway. Kobets, over coffee, said that Lukashenko's power was not as formidable as it seemed. As evidence he gave the steps the government has taken to suppress dissent: arresting protesters, expelling students from universities, banning the distribution of independent newspapers, requiring state workers to sign yearly contracts, which can be revoked after any sign of disloyalty. "The problem is not Lukashenko," he said. "It is the fear." Zubr's newest project is to organize protests on the 16th of each month. The date commemorates the night — Sept. 16, 1999 — that Viktor Gonchar, once a deputy prime minister and election commissioner who became a popular opposition leader poised to challenge Lukashenko, disappeared along with a businessman who financed the opposition. On that night the two men went to a banya, the public bathhouse that is a ritual part of Slavic life. They were evidently abducted and probably murdered. The idea is to remind Belarussians of the darker episodes in Lukashenko's rule. On Jan. 16, several dozen young people gathered on Independence Street in the center of Minsk, which used to be named after Francis Skaryna, a Renaissance-era scholar and printer who is an important figure in Belarussian identity. (Lukashenko changed the name last year.) A kind of flash mob gathered, though unlike those stunts elsewhere the organizers refuse to use text messages. "The K.G.B. reads them," a young woman named Marina said. They rely on word of mouth instead. Marina came to Minsk from Mogilev in the east. On the way, the police stopped the minibus she and her companions were riding in, ostensibly for a traffic violation. Two members of the group were detained. Marina and four others bolted into the forest, she told me, where officers searched for them with dogs. They avoided capture, hitched a ride and made it to the protest. She refused to give her last name. Marina passed out torn shreds of blue jeans; denim is now the color of this revolution in the making. (It was settled on after a Zubr activist, Nikita Sasim, waved his jeans jacket as the police broke up another 16th protest.) After 15 minutes, the Minsk protest was over, and the crowd drifted into the dark, snowy night. Kobets told me that Belarus's democratic activists took their inspiration from the unlikeliest of sources: a Kevin Costner film. "The Postman," adapted from a novel by David Brin in 1997 and critically panned, depicts an apocalyptic America where the remnants of civilization live in terror of a brutal army headed by a sadistic general. Costner's character, a drifter, delivers a bag of old mail — information — and becomes a symbol of hope for those hoping to restore their American democracy. In this improbable metaphor, the postman would be Aleksandr Milinkevich. It as midafternoon in January and minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit when Milinkevich drove up to the Soviet-era auto factory in Borisov, one still owned, like most everything else in Belarus, by the state. The wan winter light was already fading as the day shift filed out. Milinkevich's campaign workers unfolded a small table, adorned with his portraits, outside the factory's entrance. Going inside, of course, was out of the question, despite the weather. A few workers sidled closer, forming around him a broken circle of overcoats and hats — fur for the older men, knitted caps for the younger ones. Hatless and gloveless, his bearded face reddening from the cold, Milinkevich tried to draw out these would-be voters with the mild, inquisitive manner of a professor, which is what he was until the state fired him in 2000 for joining the campaign of a Lukashenko challenger. What followed was what passes for a public discussion of politics in Belarus today. "Many people want changes," he said, refuting what these people are told when they watch television. "Yes," a voice in the circle agreed, "very many people want changes." "Something has to be done about it," came a second. In conversations like these, Milinkevich is asked about his policies, his prescription for jobs and wages, relations with Russia and the rest of Europe. Mostly, though, he is asked about the electoral process itself. No one signed the petitions on the table. A portly woman on the factory steps, smartly bundled, murmured that she would. "No, don't do it," her companion said, tugging at the fur of her coat as she led her down the steps and away from the candidate. "They will take down your name." "They," like the president, went unspoken, because they, like the president, are omnipresent and, at least in the public perception, which is what counts, all powerful. Two cars — one red, one white — followed Milinkevich's vans wherever they went, as they always do. At each stop one or more of the men inside would emerge with a hand-held video camera and record the candidate and anyone with him — sometimes only steps away. They are — or at least they are presumed to be — officers of the K.G.B. "Yes, I know they are watching," Milinkevich said earlier in another town, Zhodino, when a passer-by nodded in the direction of the stone-faced men. In Borisov, the shift change ended, and the pool of potential voters shuffled into the city, dispersing without having ever really assembled. A uniformed officer of the Interior Ministry kept repeating into his telephone: "Everything is calm." To travel with the Milinkevich campaign is to experience an Orwellian version of democracy. In Brest, in December, he took phone calls on a fax machine from voters who had learned he would be at that number for one hour that evening; they discovered this from reading fliers that had been distributed furtively in apartment blocks. Once, after Milinkevich met with students in front of Brest State University, I lingered to talk with a student, who gave his name as Pavel Dailid. Within minutes two officers arrived and demanded my documents and those of an interpreter. "This is the usual thing for us," Dailid said when they left after taking down our names and passport and visa numbers. "I want to come out onto the street and say what I want." Minutes after we parted, Dailid was stopped when he re-entered the university and threatened with expulsion. When Milinkevich tried to deliver a gift of books to an orphanage, a sign declared that it was closed. The director, Valentina Kratsova, said sheepishly that a quarantine had been declared. Milinkevich tried to meet local activists in a community center, but that, too, was closed. They met instead in the old wooden house where he took calls the night before. The police came and threatened to call inspectors, saying an unsanctioned meeting was taking place and warning of violations of the building code. As a result of all this, Milinkevich often meets no more than a few dozen people in an entire day. Deprived of access to the state media, unable to assemble large crowds of supporters, he says he hopes that he can spread a message of change almost voter by voter. "Democracy is not only counting votes and not only the freedom of the press," he told those who gathered in the old house. "It is what is in the minds of people." The meeting broke up early after the police warning. Irina Lavrovskaya, one of Milinkevich's aides, asked everyone to leave in small groups of one or two people — "calmly, quietly" — and to head in different directions. In January, in Borisov, Milinkevich received some parting advice from a worker at the auto plant. "Remember what happened to Gonchar," the man told him. "Don't walk alone." Milinkevich is running exactly the sort of campaign that Terry Nelson suggested in the meeting in Vilnius — the one that the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute have supported with their training programs. A recent poll by the Gallup Organization/Baltic Surveys showed that three out of four Belarussians now know of him — compared with one out of four in September — and almost all of them have learned about Milinkevich by word of mouth. Trygve Olson said it was extraordinary that a little-known politician — a bearded, soft-spoken professor who once served as a deputy mayor in Grodno and was the president of a basketball team there — had made such inroads, given the pressures he faces on the campaign trail and the blackout in state media. Of course, Lukashenko will win — with 75 percent of the vote, according to Milinkevich. "He does not like figures below 75 percent," he said. Lukashenko, whose information apparatus portrays him as the last defense against chaos, might win in a free vote anyway. "What can you do?" Lukashenko told a gathering of voters late last year. "You will elect me." The secretary of the country's election commission, Nikolai I. Lozovik, told me in an interview, "There is no basis for a mass protest vote in Belarus today." He also excoriated foreign meddling. "The United States and Europe have already rejected the policy of exporting revolution," he said. "I mean Lenin, Trotsky. I do not understand why these countries are now exporting democratic revolutions. What is the difference?" Meanwhile, Milinkevich speaks of a victory over passivity and fear. "Our victory is more important," he told a sparse audience outside a factory in Zhodino. "We want to have a victory in people's minds. If we can manage to achieve this victory, then we can go out into the streets. We will not go out with guns or stones. We will go out and show how many we are." The historic model Milinkevich has in mind, which he and others repeat often, is Poland and Solidarity — not in 1989 when the Communist government crumbled under its own weight, but in the dark days of 1980, when Lech Walesa was only beginning his campaign of dissent. "There was a powerful public protest," Milinkevich told me in January. "The authorities could do nothing. Martial law was imposed. And that was the beginning of the end." Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map ~~~~~~~~~~ February 18, 2006 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: 2 Opponents To Challenge Leader By STEVEN LEE MYERS (NYT) Aleksandr Milinkevich, Aleksandr Kazulin and Sergei Gaydukevich will challenge Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko, Belarus's authoritarian leader since 1994, in election on March 19 that few expect to be free or fair ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 18, 2005 Fearing Ukrainian-Style Uprising, Belarus Cracks Down By STEVEN LEE MYERS The U.S. and Europe's support of Belarus's opposition is likely to inflame tensions. ===== notyet N LEE MYERS MINSK, Belarus, Oct. 14 - Ten men gathered in a dim three-room apartment one recent evening to plan the unseating of this country's autocratic president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. They have little money, no slogans, no songs and, so far, no color like the orange that thousands rallied around during the popular uprising last year in Ukraine. What they have is a hope, admittedly slight, that the wave of democracy that washed over Ukraine and other former Soviet republics in the last two years might next hit here. "Lukashenko has exhausted the possibility of strengthening his power," said Aleksandr Milinkevich, a physicist who leads an improbable coalition of politicians and civic leaders mounting an even more improbable challenge in the election for president next year. "Sometimes he thinks if he raises wages a bit, people will love him again, but not everything is measured by bread and salo," he said, referring to the salted pork fat that is consid ered a delicacy in this part of the world. "There is such a notion as human dignity." Few here or abroad believe that Belarus's beleaguered opposition can win the election, expected before July. But with American and European support, its effort is shaping up as a new struggle over democracy in what was once the Soviet Union. It is likely to inflame tensions not only with Mr. Lukashenko's government, but also with that of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who opposes Western efforts to democratize former Soviet republics. "There will be a road to democracy in Belarus," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared in April after meeting with Mr. Lukashenko's opponents in neighboring Lithuania, calling his government "the last dictatorship in the center of Europe." It is hard to overestimate how difficult that road will be. Mr. Lukashenko, first elected as a corruption-fighting reformer in 1994, has ruled this country of 10 million with ever increasing authoritarianism, weakening the other branches of government and stifling independent news media and businesses. He is able to run because of a referendum last year lifting the constitutional limits on his term, a vote that was widely denounced as illegitimate. When people gathered then on October Square in Minsk to protest that referendum, police officers in riot gear swiftly suppressed them, beating and arresting dozens. They have done so repeatedly during all public manifestations of dissent ever since. "The Belarussian authorities are particularly concerned with preventing any small thing from becoming a big thing," a senior diplomat here said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic protocol. "They're not going to let people put up tents in October Square." As it has in the months before previous elections, Mr. Lukashenko's government has intensified efforts to stifle any voices of opposition. A former student, Nikita Sasim, when asked about his arrest, replied, "Which one?" He was expelled from a university last year, like dozens of others, and served 10 days in prison after joining the underground youth movement Zubr. Last month he was beaten at an unauthorized rally. On Oct. 7 he was arrested after posting anti-Lukashenko leaflets and held over the weekend by the secret service, still known, as in Soviet times, as the K.G.B. "The pressure from the authorities," he said, "is becoming stronger." Mr. Lukashenko has closed independent organizations by forcing them to reregister with the government, then denying permission to those deemed disloyal. This summer security forces raided the Union of Poles, a group that represents the ethnic Polish minority, prompting a dispute with Poland. A decree by the president requires all government employees - in a country where the state controls 80 percent of the economy - to work under one-year contracts, which dissenters say are used to enforce loyalty. The state media distribution monopoly last month ordered newspaper stands to stop selling the last independent daily newspaper, Narodnaya Bolya, or People's Will. The order, denounced by the European Union as an assault on a free press, has left its survival in doubt. "They are trying to mop up the media, so that the voters can receive information from only one source," said the editor, Iosif Seredich. Mr. Milinkevich, the opposition leader, said the events in Ukraine last year, when thousands poured into the streets to protest a rigged election for president, inspired many Belarussians. But he noted the essential ingredients of the Orange Revolution that are lacking here. "They had television, radio, newspapers," he said. "They had oligarchs who supported them. Our rich businessmen who support us are either in prison or abroad." Mr. Lukashenko's opponents do have support abroad. The United States has pledged $5 million to support democracy in Belarus, but it has not detailed how the money would be spent. The European Union is paying the German radio channel Deutsche Welle to broadcast into the country, prompting complaints of cold-war-like tactics from Belarus and Russia. "The West will not spare any expenses," Mr. Lukashenko said earlier this year. A popular uprising like Ukraine's, he said, is "the last thing that we need." There are indications, though, that external pressure - and the continued isolation of Mr. Lukashenko and several other officials, who are prohibited from traveling in Europe - may be having some impact. Mr. Lukashenko agreed last month to allow 800 representatives of the opposition to meet in a cultural center in Minsk. After meeting on Oct. 1 and 2, delegates from across the political spectrum, from Communists to liberals, selected Mr. Milinkevich as a unified opposition candidate. Mr. Milinkevich, a professor and television commentator, once served as a deputy mayor in Grodno and then headed an independent organization, which Mr. Lukashenko's government banned in 2001. Belarussians, he said, are ready for a change in leadership, something suggested by opinion polls. The main challenge is to overcome people's fear of openly opposing Mr. Lukashenko's state. "We are only for a peaceful election," said Mr. Milinkevich, who has been arrested and fined but has not led the street protests. "We do not want blood. And if we have to come out to defend our choice, then we shall go out on the streets, but without stones or pistols." For all its control, he added, Mr. Lukashenko's government has fissures in popular support and in the support of those now on its side. "If 100,000 people come out on the streets, I don't think that the government will stand," he said. "One general, during an illegal rally in Minsk, said if you come out with 2,000, we will continue to beat you, as we have. But if we see that 100,000 come out in the street, then we will join you." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top ~~~~~~~~~~ April 23, 2005 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Dissident Held; Leader Sees Putin By STEVEN LEE MYERS (NYT) Belarus police arrest opposition leader Andrei Y Klimov a day after Sec of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko for suppressing political opponents ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 22, 2005 At NATO Talks, Accord and Discord for U.S. and Russia By STEVEN R. WEISMAN; C.J. CHIVERS CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM MOSCOW FOR THIS ARTICLE. NATO acted to open discussions with Ukraine about becoming a member and the secretary of state met with opposition leaders from Belarus. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 26, 2005 A Demonstration in Belarus Is Crushed The protesters in Belarus said they hoped to ignite a revolution similar to those that have swept Kyrgyzstan and the other former Soviet republics. ===== notyet Demonstration in Belarus Is Crushed By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS INSK, Belarus, March 25 (AP) - In an effort to emulate a popular uprising in Kyrgyzstan, hundreds of Belarussian demonstrators gathered outside the office of their authoritarian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, on Friday to demand his ouster, but were beaten back by riot police officers swinging nightsticks. The Belarussian Foreign Ministry assailed the Kyrgyz opposition, warning that protests that drove Kyrgyzstan's longtime leader, Askar Akayev, from power could destabilize the entire Central Asian region. The protesters in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, said they hoped to ignite a revolution similar to those that have swept Kyrgyzstan and the other former Soviet republics. "Today's gathering must send a signal to the West, Russia and our own bureaucrats that Belarus is ready for a serious change," said Andrei Klimov, an opposition leader. "Our aim is to start the Belarussian revolution and force the resignation of Lukashenko, the last dictator of Europe." Mr. Lukashenko has largely retained the Soviet system in Belarus, a country of 10 million. He has stifled dissent, persecuted independent media and opposition parties, and prolonged his power through elections that international organizations say were marred by fraud. Showing that he will not tolerate demonstrations like those that drove the presidents of Georgia, Ukraine and now Kyrgyzstan from power, Mr. Lukashenko sent police officers into the streets on Friday to disperse an estimated 1,000 protesters who chanted "Down with Lukashenko!" Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top ~~~~~~~~~~ December 28, 2004 Yushchenko Wins 52% of Vote; Rival Vows a Challenge By C. J. CHIVERS Viktor A. Yushchenko's opponent refused to accept Ukraine's election results and said he would challenge them in court. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ December 14, 2004 Ukraine's Election Crisis Has Had Dim Mirror Images in Other Former Soviet Republics By CHRISTOPHER PALA Ukraine's political earthquake may have sent shock waves through Russia and Europe, but in the former Soviet republics, the tremors have been decidedly more muted. ===== notyet aine's Election Crisis Has Had Dim Mirror Images in Other Former Soviet Republics By CHRISTOPHER PALA LMATY, Kazakhstan, Dec. 11 - Ukraine's political earthquake may have sent shock waves through Russia and Europe, but in the former Soviet republics - where there have been similar accusations of improprieties carried out to ensure that the old political leadership remains in power - the tremors have been decidedly more muted. Just two months ago in this sparsely populated country roughly the size of Western Europe, parliamentary elections regarded as unfair by local and Western monitors left a growing opposition movement with only one seat in a 77-member lower house of Parliament. The lone opposition member refused to take his seat in protest. While Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, had promised that a new election law would make the vote fair and open, a chamber with a handful of opposition members has been replaced by one with none. Dos Kushym, director of Kazakhstan's largest poll-monitoring organization, described the latest election as the most blatantly fraudulent since the nation gained independence 13 years ago. Two weeks after the Kazakhstan voting, Belarus held a parliamentary election that achieved much the same result. It was described by one opposition leader as the least fair since Aleksandr G. Lukashenko was first elected president in 1994. A year earlier in Azerbaijan, another contested election was held - with a twist. The government's candidate was Ilham Aliyev, 42, the son of President Heydar Aliyev, who had appointed him prime minister in August of that year. The elder Mr. Aliyev, who died in December 2003, withdrew his candidacy for re-election in favor of his son two weeks before the vote. After the younger Mr. Aliyev was declared to have received 80 percent of the vote, street protests erupted, and one person was killed. Isa Gambar, the leader of Azerbaijan's opposition Musavat Party, recently flew to Kiev, Ukraine's capital, as did a delegation of former opposition candidates from Kazakhstan. They were all eager to learn what it was in Ukraine that led supporters of the challenger, Viktor A. Yushchenko, to flood the streets of Kiev and other cities and prevent his opponent, Viktor F. Yanukovich, from taking office after a vote they deemed fraudulent. After Kazakhstan's elections, Bright Path, the largest opposition party, also called for a protest demonstration on the capital's main square. But when the government refused to allow it, the demonstration was called off. "We decided to cancel it because we were afraid there would be violence, and we felt a responsibility toward our supporters," Oraz Jandosov, a candidate and co-chairman of the party, said in an interview. Transparency International rates Kazakhstan one of the most corrupt countries in the world, ranking it 122 out of 145 - the larger the number the more corrupt - and the opposition blames Mr. Nazarbayev, 63, for institutionalizing bribe-taking during his rule. Independent monitors and pollsters say Kulyash Agatayeva, an Education Ministry official, won largely because of the mobilization of teachers and other government officials who were ordered to campaign and vote for her or face losing their jobs. "My wife is a school director, and on election day we both voted six times, because we had to," said a driver who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. "You call that democracy?" There were also allegations that busloads of out-of-towners were paid to vote over and over at various polling places, and that election observers were denied tally sheets - all charges still echoing across Ukraine. The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe, the European Union and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, based in Washington, found that Kazakhstan's election fell short of international standards. But Russian monitors called it free and fair even before the voting ended. Alikhan Baimenov, another leader of Mr. Jandosov's opposition party, said encouraging Kazakhs to stand up for their rights would be a long process. "We need to convince our society that you can change president and still have stability," he said. Russia's intervention in the elections "has shocked a lot of people here because we value our independence," he added. "It's a mistake that shows how inexperienced Russia is in nonforce relationships with its neighbors." "This is a critical moment for the regime," he said. "They should look at Georgia and Ukraine and begin to make democratic reforms, and if they don't, there is no hope." David Lewis, director of the International Crisis Group's Central Asia Project, was not optimistic. "There is no evidence that governments will learn the lesson - that falsified elections tend to produce conflict," he said, referring to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. "On the contrary, I think these events just increase their paranoia." Until Ukraine's second round of voting, American support of democracy in this region had been slight, Mr. Baimenov asserted. Unlike the European Union, the United States Embassy here did not issue any statement on the elections after the results were announced, although it criticized the first round. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage flew here a month after the vote. Asked at a news conference what he had discussed with Mr. Nazarbayev, he listed nine subjects, none of which touched on the elections. The main purpose of his trip, he said, was to thank Mr. Nazarbayev for keeping a 28-member Kazakh mine-removal unit in Iraq. In contrast, Mr. Baimenov pointed out, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell immediately condemned the Ukrainian vote as flawed. ~~~~~~~~~~ (5) November 16, 2004 World Briefing | Africa: Sudan: Arms Exports Said To Fuel Darfur Violence By MARC LACEY (NYT) William F Schulz, Amnesty International USA executive director, says agency report shows that Russia, China, Poland, and Belarus and other countries are selling weapons to Sudan; urges United Nations to strengthen arms embargo against Sudan ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 27, 2004 Voices of Freedom Are Stilled by Europe's Last Dictator By STEVEN LEE MYERS With Aleksandr G. Lukashenko's rise to power, Belarus has become one of the most repressive of the former Soviet republics. ===== notyet er 27, 2004 Voices of Freedom Are Stilled by Europe's Last Dictator By STEVEN LEE MYERS By this time in the college semester, Marina Puzdrova should be making her way from class to class in the drab brick building on Brovka Street. Her university has been shuttered, though, its students and professors dispersed by the authoritarian whim of this country's president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. Miss Puzdrova, 19, would have a been a second-year student at the European Humanities University, which since its creation in 1992 has been an outpost of liberal education in an increasingly illiberal place. It was, therefore, a threat to the new state ideology that Mr. Lukashenko is steadily building. Although offered a place at Belarus State University, she and two philosophy classmates, like others at the university, plan to leave Belarus instead, continuing their studies in the Czech Republic. ''There,'' she said, ''we hope to find some more personal freedom.'' On Oct. 17, Belarus held a constitutional referendum that gave Mr. Lukashenko the right to seek unlimited terms in office. The vote, denounced as illegitimate by political opponents and international observers, consolidated political power in what is already considered to be Europe's last dictatorship. Like the other nations that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union 13 years ago, this country of 10 million initially embraced its independence, only to have its democratic hopes fade along with Mr. Lukashenko's rise to power. Although Mr. Lukashenko was first elected in 1994 with a populist mandate to fight corruption and restore stability, the country has become one of the most repressive of the former Soviet republics. Mr. Lukashenko's control extends far beyond politics. In 10 years in power, he has increased his sway over business, news media, civic organizations and schools -- in short, over anyone or anything that might challenge him. Journalists have been charged with criticizing the president, a crime punishable by fines, internal exile and up to four years in prison. What few private businesses exist -- nearly 80 percent of the country's economy remains in state hands -- have faced prosecution based on what critics call the slimmest pretenses. Private organizations have likewise been closed or harassed by the authorities, especially those that have received financial support from Europe or the United States, which Mr. Lukashenko regularly denounces in language reminiscent of the cold war. The Belarussian Helsinki Committee, the local chapter of the international human rights organization, has since August 2003 faced a prosecutorial assault for, among other things, failing to use quotation marks around its name on official stationary. ''We think it cannot be worse,'' Tatsiyana Pratsko, the committee's president, said in an interview in her small office. ''And it becomes worse.'' The United States and the European Union have increased their own pressure on Belarus, including a ban on travel to their countries by Mr. Lukashenko and other senior leaders suspected of involvement in the disappearances of political opponents in 1999 and 2000. Mr. Lukashenko has responded by strengthening his grip and intensifying his attacks on those he considers agents of the West. Mr. Lukashenko, a former collective farm boss, has not only retained aspects of Soviet economics but has also moved to recreate the structures that allowed the Soviet Union to maintain order over society. He issued a decree two years ago that required government agencies, factories and schools to hold ''political information'' meetings, like those once conducted by the Communists. Last year he created the Belarussian Union of Youth, which, like its Soviet-era inspiration, Komsomol, is a prerequisite to acquiring positions in the university or jobs. He has also established an official ideology, which remains ill-defined though it revolves around the unquestioned power of the presidency. The government's campaign against the European Humanities University is typical of Mr. Lukashenko's operations. In April, the Education Ministry issued an order outlining 26 ways that classes and activities should be regulated in the country's universities. They included restrictions on money from abroad, as well as on exchange programs. One measure called for monitoring of ''the moral-psychological climate'' in student dorms. In such a climate, it was clear that the European Humanities University would become a target. The university was established in the first heady days of Belarussian independence by a group of professors and the Belarussian Orthodox Church, which created its first department of theology. The concept was to create a private institution modeled on universities in Britain and the United States. It began with 67 students, but grew to nearly 1,000. ''People with free thought were formed here,'' said Grigor Y. Miniankov, the dean of the university's philosophy department. ''They learned critical thinking. People like that are not wanted here.'' In January, the country's education minister, Aleksandr Radkov, called for the resignation of the rector, Anatoly Mikhailov, who refused to go. In July, Mr. Lukashenko's administration ordered the university evicted from its rented building on Brovka Street. A week later the Education Ministry revoked its license, citing, in a Kafkaesque twist, its lack of space for classes. Mr. Lukashenko made his motive clear in a speech last month, denouncing the university's educational mission as subversive. ''There was an implicit, though focal, intention to train here in Belarus, in the European Humanities University, first of all, the new Belarussian elite, aimed at leading Belarus to the West when the time is appropriate,'' Mr. Lukashenko said. ''And what about other Belarussian universities, located in Brest, Vitebsk, Gomel and Mogilev, not speaking about other leading universities in Minsk?'' he went on, according to a transcript published in the official newspaper Soviet Belarus. ''Whom are they training? Servants and slaves for this very new elite?'' The Humanities University is struggling to stay alive in a virtual state. Dozens of students have transferred to universities in Europe and the United States that have agreed to recognize credits already earned. Dr. Mikhailov has left the country, accepting a position at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. Vladimir Dounaev, the vice rector, said classes would continue online. ''It is very difficult to close a concept,'' he said. ''We are living not in the era of Brezhnev, but of the Internet.'' In 2003, the government closed a high school with a similar mission. The school, the Humanities Lycee, now operates underground, conducting classes secretly in apartments, one step ahead of the authorities. The school's students -- now down to fewer than 100 -- continue to study, knowing their diplomas will not be recognized by the state. Irina I. Sidorenko, the school's deputy director, said the parents of many students had received threats of punishment. ''We feel ourselves hanging in the air, not knowing if we can survive another month,'' she said. ''One can only feel sorry for our society.'' Photos: Classes meet secretly in apartments since the Belarus government closed the Humanities Lycee in 2003 in a crackdown by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko on institutions perceived as a threat to his rule. (Photographs by Yuri Ivanov for The New York Times) Map of Belarus highlighting Minsk: Tatsiyana Pratsko, president of a human rights group in Minsk, has faced an assault by prosecutors. ~~~~~~~~~~ October 20, 2004 In Belarus, Police Arrest Opponent of President By STEVEN LEE MYERS The police arrested one of Belarus's opposition leaders during a second night of street demonstrations. ===== notyet r 20, 2004 In Belarus, Police Arrest Opponent of President By STEVEN LEE MYERS INSK, Belarus, Oct. 19 - The police arrested one of Belarus's opposition leaders on Tuesday during a second night of street demonstrations against the results of parliamentary elections and a constitutional referendum that would allow the country's president to extend his authoritarian rule. Anatoly V. Lebedko, chairman of the United Civic Party, one of a coalition of parties that unsuccessfully sought to win seats in parliamentary in elections on Sunday, was seized by special police forces in the lobby of a pizza restaurant here. He was taken to a police station and then by ambulance to a hospital, having been badly beaten during his arrest, according to officials from his party. Mr. Lebedko, 43, suffered injuries to his head and kidneys, as well as two broken ribs, the officials said. "It is complete cynicism," Anatoly O. Dobrovolsky, the deputy chairman of Mr. Lebedko's party, said in the chaotic moments after the arrest. "Lebedko does not pose a danger to anyone." The elections on Sunday - criticized by the United States, the European Union and election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe as undemocratic - cleared the way for the country's president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, to remain in power. According to official results that opponents denounced as fraudulent, voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum to scrap the Constitution's ban on more than two presidential terms. In parallel parliamentary elections, none of Mr. Lukashenko's opponents, including candidates from Mr. Lebedko's party, managed to win any of 110 seats in the country's lower house of Parliament, the House of Representatives. Mr. Lukashenko's critics assembled for a second night on October Square, the main square in Minsk, the capital. Although there were fewer demonstrators than on Monday evening, when nearly 1,000 gathered to denounced the election results, the response of the police was more severe. Dozens were arrested and loaded onto buses, according to witnesses. Moments later a group of special police officers chased Mr. Lebedko down Franciska Skoriny Street before arresting him. Mr. Lukashenko has faced larger demonstrations after previous elections, and it remained to be seen whether the anger over the vote would create a groundswell of popular discontent this time. Yekaterina Tkachenko, a spokeswoman for a coalition of opposition parties called Five Plus, said four dozen demonstrators remained in police custody on Tuesday night. Several others were injured in clashes with the police, including a cameraman from Russia's NTV network. The cameraman's equipment was destroyed, the network reported. The police declined to discuss the arrests, including Mr. Lebedko's. In a brief interview late Tuesday night at the hospital where he was being treated, Mr. Lebedko said, "It is not the behavior of a winner," referring to Mr. Lukashenko's government. "It is hunting." ~~~~~~~~~~ October 19, 2004 Relishing Victory at Polls, Belarus Leader Denounces Critics By STEVEN LEE MYERS President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko denounced his opponents and election observers as agents of the West. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 19, 2004 A Sham Election in Eastern Europe After the shameful election on Sunday in Belarus, it is incumbent on the West to encourage new leadership in the former Soviet republic. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 18, 2004 Boss of Belarus Seems to Win Referendum, as Expected By STEVEN LEE MYERS Belarussians voted on a constitutional referendum that would allow Aleksandr G. Lukashenko to seek unlimited terms in office. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ September 29, 2004 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Travel Ban Criticized Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko holds that United States and European Union travel ban for government officials is designed to influence voters before Oct 17 referendum deciding whether or not Lukashenko can serve third term ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ September 8, 2004 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Leader Calls Vote On Third Term Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko schedules referendum on Oct 17 to allow him to run for third consecutive term; has been leading Belarus since 1994; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ August 7, 2004 World Briefing | Europe: Greece: Belarus Minister Barred From Games Greece bars Belarus Sports Minister Yuri Sivakov from Olympic Games after release of Council of Europe report identifying him as key figure in disappearance of political opponents of President Aleksandr Lukashenko; European Union suggests that Sivakov's attendance at Games would be inappropriate ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 28, 2004 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: President's Opponent Is Jailed Belarus police arrest Mikhail Marinich, leader of European Choice, opposition party that ran against current President Aleksandr Lukashenko in 2001, for illegal possession of firearms and top-secret government documents ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ December 27, 2003 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: We May Be The Next Iraq, Leader Says Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who has been highly criticized for human rights violations and suppression of national media, declares that Belarus must be prepared to defend itself against American attack; contends US military action in Iraq has set precedent of unseating leaders that are viewed by America as undesirable Corrections Correction: May 30 article on government suspension of newspaper in Belarus listed wrong writer May 31, 2003 May 30, 2003 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Newspaper Halted For 3 Months By SETH MYDANS (NYT) Belarus Information Minister announces suspension of established daily publication Belarusian Business Newspaper for media violations; paper's deputy editor Irina Khalip calls action politically motivated; holds that government wants newspaper to end criticism of President Aleksandr G Lukashenko ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 5, 2003 The World's Other Tyrants, Still at Work By ARYEH NEIER Aryeh Neier Op-Ed article holds despots around world are getting rid of their opposition, real or imaged, while international attention is focused on Iraq; cites moves by Pres Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Fidel Castro in Cuba and Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko in Belarus ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ January 21, 2003 World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Putin Backs Belarus Union By MICHAEL WINES (NYT) President Vladimir V Putin, while in Minsk, voices surprising commitment to economic alliance with Belarus and calls for expeditious efforts toward making Russian ruble standard currency for both countries; skeptics believe relationship will fail to live up to Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko's vision ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ (6) November 27, 2002 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: At Least One Friend, Maybe By MICHAEL WINES (NYT) Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko meets with Russian Pres Vladimir V Putin to discuss possible economic or political union between countries ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ November 2, 2002 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: New Law Restricts Religions By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY (NYT) Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko signs law that bans religious organizations that have been in Belarus for less than 20 years, sets censorship of religious literature and bars foreigners from leading religious groups; critics say law, backed by Russian Orthodox leaders, will be most restrictive religious law in Europe ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 24, 2002 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Russian Lawmaker Thrown Out By MICHAEL WINES (NYT) Boris Y Nemtsov, leader of Russia's largest liberal party, is taken into custody in Minsk and expelled from Belarus; Nemtsov indicates he was set up by Belarussian KGB in response to his political opinions ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ September 13, 2002 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: European Official Expelled By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY (NYT) Belarus government expels acting head of Minsk mission of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko has been at odds with organization over crackdowns on press and political opposition and recent charges that Belarus is selling weapons to Iraq ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 23, 2002 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Protesters Sentenced By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY (NYT) Three courts in Minsk, capital of Belarus, begin sentencing opposition protesters arrested last week for demonstrating against authoritarian rule of Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko; human rights group there reports 43 people have been sentenced, most to jail terms of 3 to 10 days ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 21, 2002 Police in Belarus Detain 40 As a Protest Ends Violently By MICHAEL WINES Truncheon-wielding police officers in Belarus violently break up downtown march protesting living conditions and inadequate salaries; at least 40 demonstrators remain in jail; demonstrators' target is government of Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, whose Communist-style government controls most aspects of country's laggard economy and permits only limited political opposition; Lukashenko has long been ostracized by most Western governments because of his government's human rights record; two leading p... ===== notyet olice in Belarus Detain 40 As a Protest Ends Violently By MICHAEL WINES Published: April 21, 2002 At least 40 demonstrators remained in a Minsk jail today, after truncheon-wielding police officers in Belarus on Friday violently broke up a downtown march protesting living conditions and inadequate salaries. At least 15 other protesters, most of them under age, were released overnight, said Andrei Sannikov, the leader of a Belarus human rights organization, Charter 97. Several protesters were reported hospitalized with injuries. The Belarussian police said today that they had arrested about 85 protesters and released nearly 50. Mr. Sannikov said the police action against what had been a peaceful march was meant to intimidate potential participants in what is usually Belarus's largest anti-government demonstration, an annual march marking the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. That protest is to be held next Friday. The 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl reactor, just across the Ukrainian border, left a fifth of Belarus contaminated by fallout. The demonstrators' target is the government of President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus's leader since 1994. His Communist-style government controls most aspects of Belarus's laggard economy and permits only limited political opposition. Friday's demonstration was staged on Minsk's main avenue by several hundred protesters, some carrying the banned red-and-white flag that Belarus used in its first years after declaring independence from the Soviet Union. The protesters marched under a banner that declared, ''We can't live like this anymore.'' But some also carried signs accusing the government of providing illegal military assistance to Iraq, an allegation raised by American officials who visited Minsk in February. Mr. Sannikov said the protest had been peaceful until several buses carrying black-helmeted riot police officers pulled alongside the marchers, and the police formed a line in front of them. ''When the marchers met the first line of the special police force, they turned around and went back,'' Mr. Sannikov said, ''and then they were beaten.'' News agency reports said the protesters were hit with truncheons as they sat in the street and on sidewalks, then herded to jail. The Charter 97 Web site, www.charter97.org, stated that six protesters were hospitalized with head injuries. News reports said one was in serious condition. Among those arrested were a prominent Belarussian filmmaker, Yuri Khaschevatsky. One of the organizers of the march, a 60-year-old journalist named Valery Shchukin, was beaten unconscious, according to the Charter 97 Web site. The police said that Mr. Shchukin suffered injuries to his lower back and pelvis. Mr. Lukashenko has long been ostracized by most Western governments because of his government's human rights record. Two of Mr. Lukashenko's leading political opponents have vanished in recent years, and a former member of Belarus's special services charged late last year that one had been executed and buried near a government base. Belarus has met the criticism with growing irritation. On Monday, the government threw out the leader of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a principal human rights monitor, and refused a diplomatic visa to his successor. ~~~~~~~~~~ April 20, 2002 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Police Break Up Salary Protest Belarus police beat and arrest dozens of demonstrators demanding higher salaries after they try to march to residence of Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 26, 2002 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Opposition Politician Freed Belarus frees opposition politician Andrei Klimov, who once led attempt to impeach Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko; Klimov, held since 1998, was serving time in labor camp in connection with fraudulent documents linked to construction projects; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 24, 2002 Ex-Leader of Belarus Challenges a Punishment by Pension By MICHAEL WINES Former Belarus Pres Stanislav Shushkevich is suffering inventive punishment at hands of current Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, political enemy who is refusing to have Shushkevich's pension indexed for inflation; Shushkevich says inflation has left monthly pension worth about $1.80, enough for four loaves of excellent brown bread or bottle of vodka, but not both ===== notyet x-Leader of Belarus Challenges a Punishment by Pension By MICHAEL WINES Published: March 24, 2002 Political enemies of Belarus's autocratic ruler, Aleksandr Lukashenko, have been hectored and arrested, and sometimes have even vanished. But his predecessor as president, Stanislav Shushkevich, is suffering in especially cruel and unusual fashion: the government refuses to index his monthly pension for inflation. In Belarus, where prices tripled annually through the 1990's and the currency periodically sheds zeroes to appear less worthless, that is a heartless fate indeed. ''It used to be around $200, which is a good pension by our standards,'' Mr. Shushkevich said in a telephone interview. ''Now it is 3,196 rubles. That equals $1.80.'' Enough for four loaves of excellent brown bread or a bottle of vodka, but not both. Mr. Shushkevich's inventive punishment has been going on for more than four years. But it came to light only this month, in a Minsk courtroom, after he sued the Labor and Social Security Ministry, arguing that President Lukashenko was engaging in political revenge. The government denies that, but no one would dispute that Mr. Shushkevich would be a choice target. In December 1991, Mr. Shushkevich, then the chairman of his nation's Supreme Soviet, met with President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia and Ukraine's leader, Leonid Kravchuk, at a Belarussian hunting lodge and signed the papers that dissolved the Soviet Union. Mr. Lukashenko, an admirer of Stalin and all things Soviet, has called the dissolution of the Soviet Union a crime. He became president in 1994 by defeating Mr. Shushkevich, by then Belarus's leader, in a bitter election, and extended his rule through a questionable referendum in 1996. By then, Mr. Shushkevich was a member of Belarus's democratic opposition, drawing a monthly pension of about 3.2 million rubles, about $200, for his past service as the chairman of Belarus's Supreme Soviet. In September 1997, Mr. Lukashenko issued an executive decree setting new rates and cost-of-living conditions for pensions of state officials -- except, it seems, former chairmen of the Supreme Soviet. By coincidence, the only two retired chairmen were Mr. Shushkevich and Seymon Sheretsky, then the opposition leader. Mr. Sheretsky later fled Belarus after receiving death threats. Mr. Shushkevich has stayed on, but since Mr. Lukashenko's decree was issued, the only change to his pension has been the lopping off of three zeroes. He calculates that his 3,196-ruble stipend is now less than one-hundredth of the inflation-adjusted pension of an official of similar rank. Nor is that all, Mr. Shushkevich said. The government has declined to grant him the breaks on rent and city services accorded other retired officials. Nor is he allowed to teach, he said, although the state university still uses a prize-winning radioelectronics textbook he wrote. Mr. Shushkevich said he had scraped by with the help of American scholars -- he worked at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and lectured at Harvard, Yale and Columbia in early 2000 -- and by making occasional speeches in Poland. He said he had been battling for his cost-of-living adjustment for more than two years, to no avail. Only after exhausting those appeals did he go to court, where the filing fee was 15 times his monthly pension. The government argued that only the rubber-stamp Parliament could index Mr. Shushkevich's pension for inflation. This month, the court agreed. Although he said he had no hope of winning a reversal, Mr. Shushkevich said he planned to appeal the decision to the highest court. He had better hurry. In the last three months, the value of his pension has dropped by 15 cents. ~~~~~~~~~~ September 21, 2001 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Lukashenko Denounces The West Aleksandr Lukashenko begins second term as president of Belarus by denouncing West for refusing to recognize election; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ September 11, 2001 Stalinist's Disputed Victory in Belarus Vote Is Denounced By MICHAEL WINES Foreign leaders, diplomats and human rights groups, with prominent exception of Russia, condemn officially overwhelming re-election of Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, Europe's last Stalinist leader, as fundamentally flawed; say outcome is destined to ostracize still further nation already shunned by much of democratic world; government says preliminary vote count shows Lukashenko won with 75.6 percent of vote, swamping democratic candidate Vladimir Goncharik, who had 15.4 percent; remaind... ===== notyet talinist's Disputed Victory in Belarus Vote Is Denounced By MICHAEL WINES Published: September 11, 2001 With the prominent exception of Russia, foreign leaders, diplomats and human rights groups today condemned the officially overwhelming re-election of Europe's last Stalinist leader, President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, as fundamentally flawed. Several said the outcome was destined to ostracize still further a nation already shunned by much of the democratic world. The government said this morning that a preliminary vote count showed that Mr. Lukashenko had won Sunday's election with 75.6 percent of the vote, swamping the democratic opposition candidate Vladimir Goncharik, who had 15.4 percent. The remainder was split between an ultranationalist candidate and those who voted against all three. Mr. Lukashenko, who won a five-year extension of his presidency, first won election in 1994. He extended his term in a 1996 constitutional referendum that independent monitors say was flawed by some of the same failings as the Sunday vote. In a victory speech on Sunday evening, he called his re-election ''elegant and beautiful'' and a triumph for the nation's people. Mr. Goncharik asserted today that the vote was rigged, saying his supporters' monitoring at 500 of the nation's 6,700 precincts indicated that Mr. Lukashenko won a plurality of 46 percent to his 40 percent. Under Belarus law, a runoff election is required when no candidate wins an outright majority. Russian observers joined with those from other former Soviet nations in decreeing Mr. Lukashenko's victory both democratic and fair. President Vladimir V. Putin congratulated Mr. Lukashenko today on what he called a convincing win. But even the Russians, who are allied with Belarus in a loose diplomatic and economic union, allowed that the government's behavior was at times problematic. The chairman of Russia's Central Election Commission, Aleksandr A. Vishnyakov, expressed distress over the government's election-day shutdown of opposition web sites, e-mail, telephone service and even cellular telephone access. ''If it's true, it's very bad news,'' he said in an interview on Sunday in Minsk, shortly after word of the censorship spread on Russian television and among observers. Western human rights groups and observers, in news conferences and reports, charged that Mr. Lukashenko had rigged the election long before the actual vote by blocking his opponents from the media, smearing and thwarting independent vote monitors, intimidating voters and election officials and conducting a vote that was wide open to manipulation. In a post-mortem issued this afternoon, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors civil rights and elections, said the Belarus election failed to meet the democratic standards that Mr. Lukashenko himself agreed to in past meetings of the organization's member nations. For his part, Mr. Lukashenko was unrepentant. On Sunday, even before the European group delivered its verdict, the president declared that the head of the O.S.C.E.'s mission in Minsk, Hans-Georg Wieck, would be expelled from Belarus for espionage if he does not leave voluntarily. ''Our elections don't need the recognition of anybody,'' Mr. Lukashenko said. Hrair Balian, the head of the organization's elections section, said in an interview that the flaws of the election lay not so much in the reasonably orderly vote but in the weeks of campaigning and months of harassment that preceded it. Of 80,000 local, provincial and national election commissioners -- officials whose ostensible job is to ensure an impartial vote -- all but 230 were nominated or appointed by the government, Mr. Balian noted. As much as 20 percent of the electorate was reported to have cast ballots in a five-day ''early voting'' period before Sunday, a procedure he said was potentially wide open to ballot-stuffing. ''It was an uneven playing field,'' Mr. Balian said. ''That sums it up.'' George A. Folsom, president of the International Republican Institute, said weeks of observation by his organization and others, including the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, led inexorably to the conclusion that the election was neither free nor fair. ''It was an election that was designed to have one outcome: the election of Lukashenko,'' he said. This morning Mr. Goncharik said he would file a complaint with the Belarus Central Election Commission demanding that the vote be annulled. The Belarusian Helsinki Committee, an arm of the internationally known human-rights organization, also planned to file a complaint alleging what its leader, Tatyana Bratko, called ''gross violations of existing legislation'' governing Belarus elections. She said Mr. Lukashenko was returning the nation to an era reminiscent of Soviet times, when laws were selectively enforced and government candidates always elected in landslides. ''If we are coming back to the past,'' she pledged, ''then we will be referred to as dissidents -- not as human-rights activists.'' ~~~~~~~~~~ August 29, 2001 Belarussian Says West Plots 'to Poison the People' Ahead of Vote By MICHAEL WINES Belarus's authoritarian president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, reacting to accusations that his secret police ordered two critics killed, accuses West of financing campaign of lies 'to poison the people' before elections next month; witnesses are said to implicate 'death squad' in series of killings, including those of opposition figures Viktor Gonchar and Yuri Zakharenko, who disappeared in 1999 ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ August 24, 2001 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Race Tight, Police Move In By MICHAEL WINES (NYT) belaru ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ August 19, 2001 Street Theater and Graffiti: Belarus Dissidents Make News by Making Noise By MICHAEL WINES Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, who has functioned as dictator, casting Belarus in Soviet mold with disastrous results, faces election in three weeks that could actually test durability of Lukashenko's one-man rule; economy is a shell, and population has been nearly cowed by vast security network and disappearances of succession of political opponents and former cronies of Lukashenko who fell from favor; political dissidents are becoming more active with guerilla-style protest; photo; map ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ August 10, 2001 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Candidate's Accusations By MICHAEL WINES (NYT) Vladimir Goncharik, leading opposition candidate in Belarus presidential election Sept 9, says he plans to release 'sensational evidence' implicating nation's authoritarian government in disappearances of several leading critics of Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ (7) June 8, 2001 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Date Set For Election Showdown By MICHAEL WINES (NYT) Belarus parliament sets Sept 9 election date, setting stage for contest between Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko and pro-democracy parties ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ May 4, 2001 World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: Opposition Unites By MICHAEL WINES (NYT) Splintered political opposition in Belarus plans to unite to support single candidate against Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko in September election ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 31, 2000 Europe's Last Tyrant Editorial says Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus was legitimately elected president in 1994, but since then, with support from Russia, he has amassed near absolute powers, permitting little dissent or private enterprise; notes he openly admires Hitler and says Belarussians want him to bring back Stalinist state; says opposition forces in Belarus are not unified enough to translate this frustration into political power; hopes they work together to defeat Lukashenko when he runs for re-election yea... ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ June 29, 2000 Minsk Journal; Sculpting a Monument to a Vanished Democracy By PATRICK E. TYLER Sculptor Ivan Y Misko plans to unveil bust of Gennadi Karpenko at late democracy advocate's tomb in rite that will be political act in authoritarian Belarus; Karpenko, until death in April 1999 under mysterious circumstances, led forces seeking to oust Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko; Karpenko's wife says family, harassed by security forces, will leave nation after rite; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ June 28, 2000 Russian Politicians Urge Leader of Belarus to Hold Free Elections By PATRICK E. TYLER Russian parliamentary leaders appeal to Belarus's autocratic president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, to allow opposition parties to take part in all aspects of elections this fall; appeal adds weight to European concerns about increasing repression ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ June 23, 2000 Belarus Chief Is Rebuked By Delegation From Europe By PATRICK E. TYLER European Parliament delegation severely criticizes Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko's assault on his political opponents in Belarus and threatens to withhold a team of observers for elections he is trying to orchestrate for the fall in order to restore legitimacy of his hard-line nationalist government; Mikhail N Chigir, former prime minister who broke with Lukashenko over 1996 dissolution of Parliament, says he intends to run for Parliament in fall and for president next spring if Lukashenko allows... ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ December 17, 1999 Minsk Journal; Fear Is Creeping Across This Post-Soviet Land By MICHAEL WINES Belarus is increasingly the scene of strange and terrible happenings; disappearances and death threats are new elements in post-Soviet Belarussian politics; they have further winnowed an already small democracy movement and sent chill through whatever opposition remains; Anatoly Lebedko, opposition leader, has been tried on criminal charges five times in last 32 months, fined four times, jailed twice and seriously beaten once; his predecessor as opposition leader, Viktor Gonchar, has disappeare... ===== notyet Minsk Journal; Fear Is Creeping Across This Post-Soviet Land By MICHAEL WINES Published: December 17, 1999 In the last 32 months, Anatoly Lebedko has been tried on criminal charges five times, fined four times, jailed twice and seriously beaten once, on the steps of his apartment. His office phone is tapped. His friends are hectored by the tax police. The state security police ordered his neighbor's 10-year-old son to spy on him, and he returned from a trip to find two subpoenas in his mailbox. Leading the democratic opposition in Belarus is no easy job. Then again, it could be worse: in September, Mr. Lebedko's predecessor as opposition leader, Viktor Gonchar, went to his local steam bath, dutifully trailed by his security police collars, and has yet to come back. Never exactly a beacon of freedom, Belarus is increasingly the scene of strange and terrible happenings. Mr. Lebedko is persecuted; Mr. Gonchar is presumed to be dead. His predecessor fled to Lithuania in July, fearing for his life. A fourth opposition leader died in April, ostensibly from a brain hemorrhage. Two top government officials who turned against Belarus's leadership disappeared in April and May. Disappearances and death threats are new elements in in post-Soviet Belarussian politics. They have further winnowed an already small democracy movement and sent a chill through what opposition remains. More than that, they may have forever remade the image of the country's leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, long regarded as just a goofy autocrat. Stories abound of his obsession with sports, his off-color speeches and other quirky behavior, but now he is quickly earning a reputation as a ruthless dictator. Knowledgeable foreign analysts say there is no proof that Mr. Lukashenko's government is liquidating opponents. There are hints that in some cases independent death squads or splinter groups in the nation's large security apparatus may be responsible. But there is no denying that Mr. Lukashenko, who became president in 1994 in the country's first free election, has done little to halt the crimes, or that he has used them to sow disarray among his critics. ''What's happening here in this small country is underestimated by the U.S.,'' Mr. Lebedko said the other day in his office, not far from downtown Minsk. ''This regime is supported by elementary fear. This is the legacy of the Soviet Union.'' Some independent groups say the situation in Belarus has worsened sharply since last winter, when Mr. Lukashenko's critics began organizing surprisingly vigorous protests. ''The government crackdown on independent media, civil society and political activity has become more systematic and violent,'' said a report issued in April by the East-West Institute, a New York-based group promoting democracy in former Soviet-bloc nations. ''The public mood in Belarus is characterized by an insidious and deepening fear as well as the widespread belief that little can be done to change the situation.'' The deterioration goes well beyond the disappearances -- of Mr. Gonchar; of Anatoly Krasovsky, a financial backer of government critics; Yuri Zakharenko, a former interior minister who was politically organizing police officers; and Tamara Vinnikova, a former head of the central bank who was under house arrest. [On Dec. 13, a Belarussian newspaper published what it said was a statement it received by telephone from Ms. Vinnikova from an unidentified country, Reuters reported, saying the Belarussian authorities had plotted to kill her.] Andrei Sannikov, leader of the human rights group Charter 97, was beaten in February. He fled to Geneva after a security police officer sent a death threat via a friend. Seymon Sharetsky was speaker of the democratically elected Parliament that Mr. Lukashenko dissolved after a 1996 constitutional referendum that expanded presidential powers and was widely judged to be rigged. He fled to Lithuania in July. Mikhail Chigir, prime minister until he resigned over the referendum, was arrested in March, a day after he registered to run in a shadow presidential election. He was released in the fall. Andrei Klimov, a member of the disbanded Parliament who signed a demand for Mr. Lukashenko's impeachment, has been in jail since February 1998. Others suffer without ever seeing the inside of a cell. Zinaida Gonchar has stopped working since her husband disappeared. Now she sits in the family's apartment, not really waiting for news, she says; even investigators told her that the truth was probably locked in a secret police file. Belarussian politics is a closed society, and the Gonchars knew Mr. Lukashenko well -- so well that he often came over for dinner; so well that Mr. Gonchar served as Mr. Lukashenko's deputy prime minister. Mrs. Gonchar said the friendship began to crack in 1994, when Mr. Gonchar remained neutral rather than help Mr. Lukashenko campaign for the presidency. Soon after, Mr. Gonchar was driving when ''he had an accident -- the wheel just came off,'' his wife said. ''He was pretty badly injured.'' Mr. Lukashenko did recruit Mr. Gonchar into the government. But he quit after two months and was elected to Parliament. ''Then the telephone began ringing, with threats and warnings, mostly against me,'' his wife said. ''They'd say, 'We'll come upstairs and beat you.' Or I'd be walking on the sidewalk and a car would suddenly jump on the sidewalk in front of me and back out.'' Someone shot at Mr. Gonchar's car one day, wounding his secretary. Mr. Lukashenko organized the 1996 constitutional referendum, and Mr. Gonchar became chairman of the government's election watchdog commission. Then Mr. Lukashenko dismissed him and Mr. Gonchar became a member of the opposition. In 1997 Mr. Gonchar and other former legislators published a brochure on constitutional violations by the government. The security police took him in for questioning. He took a breather then, working on a Belarus-Lithuania tribunal, and the harassment eased. But in late 1998, democracy advocates decided to hold a shadow presidential election marking what would have been expiration date of Mr. Lukashenko's term had it not been lengthened by two years in the referendum. Mr. Gonchar was named to run the electoral commission. And the troubles resumed. In March the police imprisoned Mr. Gonchar. He went on a hunger strike. After 10 days, he was released from jail and thrown on a snowbank. ''The last six months, we were followed constantly -- not only Viktor, but myself,'' Mrs. Gonchar said. ''We were warned on several occasions.'' She said the security police were tailing Mr. Gonchar the night he and Mr. Krasovsky took their weekly trip to the baths. ''So I have no doubt,'' she said, ''that the authorities know exactly who is responsible.'' Mr. Lukashenko pooh-poohs the disappearance, saying Mr. Gonchar is rumored to be in Russia. The president's seemingly casual attitude toward his opponents' troubles has come at a price. At the recent summit meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Mr. Lukashenko was ostracized by Western leaders. An inventive man, though, he found a way around that. As leaders strolled to a meal one day, he ambushed President Clinton long enough to assert later that they had had a weighty discussion and that he had even invited Mr. Clinton to visit Belarus. ''I told him a joke,'' Mr. Lukashenko recalled later. ''If you cannot'' visit Belarus ''before the end of your term, then all you will have to do is extend it.'' ~~~~~~~~~~ December 9, 1999 Russia and Belarus Agree To Join in a Confederation By MICHAEL WINES Russian Pres Boris Yeltsin and Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, after years of talks, agree in principle to form economic and political confederation, rite, Moscow; announce sheaf of related initiatives, including plan to create joint army district; Russian leaders seem unlikely to carry out many of alliance's grand designs soon, if ever; Lukashenko holds new district is designed to defend against invasion from West; Yeltsin says confederation will keep nations separate and is not targeted at... ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 20, 1999 Deadly Politics in Eastern Europe Editorial comments on recent incidents in Serbia and Belarus, in which opposition politiciand have either disappeared or suffered potentially fatal attacks in murky circumstances; discusses apparent assassination attempt against Serbian opposition leader Vuk Draskovic and disappearance of four prominent opposition leaders in Belarus ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 18, 1999 Dozens Are Injured At Belarussian Rally Dozens of people are reportedly injured in clashes in Minsk, Belarus, between opposition supporters and police during protests against Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 4, 1999 Belarus Sees Its Dissidents Disappearing By MICHAEL WINES Four prominent political dissidents in Belarus have mysteriously disappeared since April, coinciding with most concerted campaign yet by fragmented pro-democracy movement to press Government for reforms; Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko denies any involvement; missing dissidents are Viktor Gonchar, Anatoly Krasovsky, Tamara Vinnikova and Yuri Zakharenko; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ July 24, 1999 London Journal; Prophet of Left Is Quitting Office, Not His Calling By WARREN HOGE Semyon Sharetsky, chief opposition figure in Belarus, flees to Lithuania after his supporters vote him acting president and proclaim Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko's Government at an end; apparently fears for his safety during a new Government crackdown on critics, who charge that Lukashenko has illegally extended his rule ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 14, 1999 CRISIS IN THE BALKANS: IN SERBIA; Belgrade Voice Against Misuse Of Patriotism By STEVEN ERLANGER Deputy Prime Min Vuk Draskovic, most liberal member of Yugoslav Government, attacks use of Serbian wartime patriotism for ideological and political ends--indirectly challenging Pres Slobodan Milosevic and his nationalist and leftist allies; is only official voice to condemn slaying of opposition publisher Slavko Curuvija and proposals for Yugoslavia to form alliance with Russia and Belarus ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 14, 1999 Belarus to Bolster Forces Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, visiting Ukraine, says his country will strengthen its forces in collaboration with Russia to counterbalance admission of three former Soviet bloc states to NATO ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ January 18, 1999 Belarus Finds Varied Ways to Muffle Independent Journalists By MICHAEL WINES Belarus Govt of Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko is using ingenious array of methods to muzzle free-speaking journalists, from beatings to financial pressure, to extent that independent press seldom speaks above whisper; watchdog groups charge Govt with systematically suppressing press freedoms that nation's Constitution supposedly guarantee; accuse it of seeking since 1994 to control independent press with clear aim of driving such outlets out of business; map ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ (8) January 4, 1999 Is Russia-Belarus Union a Danger? Hans Konig letter, responding to Dec 30 editorial, says union of Belarus with Russia will help both countries; cartoon ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ January 4, 1999 Is Russia-Belarus Union a Danger? Roman Szporluk letter, replying to Dec 30 editorial, says opposition in Belarus to union with Russia reflects in part the country's historic ties to Poland and Lithuania; cartoon ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ January 4, 1999 Is Russia-Belarus Union a Danger? Edward B Cone letter says union of Russia and Belarus (Dec 30 editorial) is to be opposed as well on the grounds that Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarussian President, harbors ambitions of becoming leader of Russia; cartoon ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ December 30, 1998 Wrong Partner for Russia Editorial warns Russia that reuniting with Belarus would be grave mistake, burdening depleted Russian economy even further and expanding pernicious influence of Aleksandr Lukashenko ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ December 27, 1998 Belarus's Chief Pursues Dream To Revive the Old Soviet Union By MICHAEL WINES Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko pursues his dream of making Belarus a model socialist state and merging it into Russia, thus beginning the rebuilding of former Soviet empire, which he might have a good chance of leading; such a union would be hard enough to achieve, given that Russia is moving in capitalist direction while Belarus is entrenched in old-style socialism, and harder still if Belarus's stumbling economy should ground to a complete halt, saddling Russia with the cost of maintaining anoth... ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 1, 1998 Two Youths In Belarus Pay Dearly For Graffiti By JANE PERLEZ Belarus teen-agers Vadim Labkovich and Alexei Shidlovsky, in case that has attracted close attention in Washington and Europe, are sentenced to 18 months in 'strict' labor camp for spray-painting graffiti on statues of Lenin and KGB founder Felix Dzherzhinsky; Labkovich's sentence is suspended because he is only 16 ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ October 9, 1997 Reporter for Russian TV Freed By Belarus, Easing Tensions By MICHAEL R. GORDON Belarus has freed Pavel Sheremet, Belarus citizen and reporter for Russian television network, in case that has gravely strained ties between Belarus and Russia; Sheremet, detained in July for allegedly trying to illegally cross border into Lithuania while filming report on smuggling, has been thorn in side of Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko's autocratic Government; Lukashenko is unhappy about activities of Russian journalists because Russian television reaches much of Belarus, circumventing his cens... ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ September 4, 1997 Soros Closes Foundation In Belarus By JUDITH MILLER George Soros, American financier and philanthropist, closes his Belarus Soros Foundation, holding Belarus Government crackdown on foundation is part of broader drive to destroy independent society in nation ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ August 2, 1997 Yeltsin Backs Down in Tiff With Belarussian Over Arrests By ALESSANDRA STANLEY Pres Boris N Yeltsin of Russia retracts criticism of Pres Aleksandr R Lukashenko of Belarus over his detention of three Russian reporters and promises that their case will not affect relations between the two countries; Human Rights Watch/Helsinki publishes a searing indictment of Lukashenko's systematic repression of civic organizations, opposition groups and the press ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ July 6, 1997 The Underground Isn't Over By JUDITH MILLER Judith Miller reports on political repression in Belarus, in light of popularity of banned film An Ordinary President, extraordinary satirical documentary about Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, made by his artistic nemesis, Yuri Khashchevatsky, country's leading filmmaker; Khashechevatsky declares 'My film is driving Lukashenko crazy'; photos ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ May 24, 1997 Russia and Belarus Agree on a New Union Russia and Belarus agree to form new union, in largely symbolic move intended to appeal to nostalgia for old Soviet empire; Pres Boris N Yeltsin and Alexander Lukashenko, autocratic leader of Belarus, sign treaty creating new supernational body to oversee union; actual merger of two nations has been blocked by Russian reformers, who are wary of assuming burden of Belarus, poor country run by man opposed to free-market reforms ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ May 2, 1997 Belarus Fines Soros Foundation $3 Million in Apparent Crackdown By JUDITH MILLER Belarus imposes $3 million fine on Soros Foundation for what Government says are currrency exchange violations; fine follows what foundation officials in New York City call campaign of harassment against foundation, which supports civic groups and individuals critical of Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko's efforts to suppress opposition in former Soviet Republic ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 4, 1997 Belarus Tries Protesters Opposed to Russian Ties Belarus begins closed-door trials for protesters who took part in violent rally against unification with Russia ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ April 3, 1997 Russia Dilutes A Treaty With Belarus, Then Signs By ALESSANDRA STANLEY Russian Pres Boris N Yeltsin and Pres Aleksandr R Lukashenko of Belarus initial charter on union of two republics after Russia hastily watered down accord on eve of meeting; agree to hold off ratification for month to allow public scrutiny and more amendments to lessen Russian responsibility for indigent neighbor; Yeltsin says union does not create single state and that adopting common currency will take years; Belarus police beat demonstrators opposing union, Minsk ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 29, 1997 Stopping Stalinism in Belarus Editorial on misery of Belarus, and Aleksandr Lukashenko's efforts to bring back Stalinism; says Russian Pres Boris Yeltsin ought to increase pressure for freedom, and avoid partnership with dictator ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ (9) => koko all of them notyet March 27, 1997 U.S. Expels a Belarus Diplomat, and Warns of Repression There By STEVEN ERLANGER US orders expulsion of Belarus diplomat Vladimir Gramyka in retaliation for what it calls 'unwarranted' ouster of Serge Alexandrov, US diplomat who was monitoring anti-Government march in Minsk on March 23 ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 24, 1997 Diplomat From U.S. Expelled by Belarus After Protest Rally Serzh Alexandrov, American diplomat, is expelled by Belarus for allegedly participating in anti-Government rally; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 21, 1997 Belarus Cracks Down on Rising Opposition Authorities in Belarus fine former opposition legislator Mecheslav Grib $800 and arrest 20 people at peaceful protest against policies of Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ March 16, 1997 10,000 in Belarus Protest Moves by President About 10,000 demonstrators march through central Minsk, chanting slogans hostile to Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko and waving banned independence flags; march was organized by nationalist opposition movement, many of whose leaders are in jail; Pres Lukashenko acquired sweeping powers in referendum in November and disbanded Parliament, replacing it with Assembly staffed with loyal deputies; Lukashenko has restricted right to demonstrate, but authorities allowed most recent protest to go ahead ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ January 14, 1997 Russia Explores Unification With Belarus Russian Pres Boris Yeltsin reportedly suggests to Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus that two countries weigh referendum on unification ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ December 15, 1996 A Country Burgers Can't Save By STEVEN ERLANGER Riot at opening of first McDonald's in Minsk, over reports of free fries, points up incoherent, even bizarre, politics in former Soviet republic; photo; police responded with clubs, as befits constitutional dictatorship; Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko has effectively carried out rolling coup by manipulating referendum, shutting down parliament, forcing out constitutional court judges and blocking independent newspapers; scant US leverage noted ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ December 3, 1996 Belarus Leader Aims at Russian Reunification Jill Cetina letter disputes November 22 editorial and November 25 news article on referendum on constitutional revisions in Belarus ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ November 29, 1996 Belarus Chief Signs Charter Increasing His Power Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko signs into law new Constitution granting him vast powers ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ November 28, 1996 Belarus Chief Gains Power In Key Votes By Parliament Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, tightening his grip on Belarus, prepares to force his opponents out of Parliament building; Belarus has had two rival Parliaments since Lukashenko's victory on Nov 24 in referendum on new constitution that expands President's powers at expense of legislature; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ November 27, 1996 Belarus Vote Leads to Split Of Parliament Supporters of Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko formalize deep division in Parliament and set up their own breakaway assembly after voting to make results of recent referendum to expand his powers binding, and to halt attempt by old Parliament to impeach him ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ November 26, 1996 President of Belarus Wins Referendum on Expanding His Power By MICHAEL R. GORDON Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko is declared overwhelming victor in referendum he organized to expand his power; says he will organize new parliament and let those Constitutional Court judges who abandon their 'political preferences' stay; parliamentary leaders refuse to cooperate ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ November 25, 1996 President of Belarus Pushes Referendum to Expand Power By MICHAEL R. GORDON Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, defying West, East European nations and own Parliament, holds referendum on giving himself near-absolute power; move is humiliating setback for Russia's effort to defuse confrontation between Lukashenko and legislators demanding his impeachment; map; photo ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ November 24, 1996 Belarus's President Backs Off Accord Belarus Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko, day after accepting Russian-mediated deal to end standoff with Parliament, backs away from agreement, saying referendum to expand his powers will be binding after all ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ November 23, 1996 In Belarus, Where Europe Meets Russia, a Worrying Deadlock Over Who Is Really in Charge By MICHAEL R. GORDON Russia seeks to forge compromise between the autocratic President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, and his main opponents in Parliament, but Parliament refuses to endorse it on the grounds that it leaves Lukashenko with the upper hand; Lukashenko is seeking near-absolute power in a referendum ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ koko November 22, 1996 The Crisis in Belarus Editorial on economic stagnation and political extremism that have brought Belarus to brink of dictatorship and civil conflict; hopes last-minute Russian intervention will succeed ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ (10) November 19, 1996 Belarus Premier Quits Over Referendum Plan Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus accepts resignation of Prime Min Mikhail Chigir, who quit because of rising protests over referendum that could grant President nearly absolute power ===== notyet MINSK, Belarus, Nov. 18— President Aleksandr Lukashenko today accepted the resignation of his Prime Minister, who quit as part of rising protests over a referendum that could grant the President nearly absolute power. Mr. Lukashenko told state television that a Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Ling, would replace Prime Minister Mikhail Chigir. The President said his Labor Minister, Aleksandr Sosnov, had also resigned. Earlier, Mr. Chigir met with leaders of Parliament, who quoted him as saying he would step down unless the President canceled his referendum, which is scheduled for Sunday. Opponents say the referendum is being used by the President to set up a dictatorship. Mr. Lukashenko insisted in a television interview that he had no plans to cancel the voting. The resignation of Mr. Chigir, who had remained loyal to the President during months of escalating tension, was the latest in a series of protests. Thousands demonstrated against the referendum over the weekend, and today members of Parliament announced that they would begin moves to impeach the President. The referendum seeks to greatly expand the President's powers, including a provision to extend his rule for another two years. It would also allow him to disband Parliament, appoint judges, election officials, some of the legislators and most members of the Constitutional Court. ~~~~~~~~~~ ================================================================================================== October 20, 1996 Belarus Knight on a Charger Carries Hammer and Sickle By MICHAEL R. GORDON Thousands of Belarus demonstrators march through Minsk to protest Pres Aleksandr Lukashenko's plan to gain near-absolute power, demanding he abandon attempt to rewrite constitution; photo; map; Lukashenko portrays himself as model of flexibility, offering to delay, but not drop, referendum on expanding his powers; Belarus appears to be going back in time five years after gaining independence from old Soviet Union; privatization is halted, bank accounts of independent newspapers are frozen, lead... ===== notyet MINSK, Belarus, Oct. 19’Í�With this former Soviet republic teetering on the brink of crisis, thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets today to protest President Aleksandr Lukashenko's plan to gain near absolute power. Against a backdrop of red-and-white banners, opposition leaders warned of an impending dictatorship and demanded that he abandon his effort to rewrite Belarus's Constitution. But Mr. Lukashenko had a message of his own. Portraying himself as a model of flexibility, he offered to delay, but not drop, the referendum on expanding his powers, leaving the opposition and the President on a potential collision course. Belarus's new date of reckoning, he suggested, would be Nov. 24. ''If you think Lukashenko is the man who will give away the power you gave him, you are wrong,'' he said today before a gathering of supporters. Five years after Belarus gained its independence during the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the country appears to be going back in time. Privatization has come to a screeching halt. The bank accounts of independent newspapers have been frozen. To the distress of the West, Belarus has yet to return to Russia 18 nuclear missiles left over from the Soviet Union. Belarus is even festooned with the symbols of the old Communist order. The nationalist symbol of Belarus -- a knight astride a charger -- has been stripped from the Parliament building, leaving the Soviet hammer and sickle on display. ''We see dictatorship approaching,'' said Valentin F. Golubev, 41, a historian. ''That would bring us back to worse than we had before.'' Already, there are signs that the intimidation is working. As rumors spread that the authorities would use dogs, tear gas and even snipers to attack protesters, today's march in front of the old opera house numbered 5,000 to 10,000 -- a far cry from the 30,000 demonstrators opposition leaders had anticipated. As it turned out, there were no dogs. But early this morning, army trucks and armored personnel carriers rumbled through the capital toward the Palace of Sport, where Mr. Lukashenko had convened a meeting of hand-picked supporters. When seven decades of Soviet rule came to an abrupt end in 1991, the hope was that this newly independent nation of 10 million would reclaim its national traditions and carry out economic reform. The former director of a collective farm, Mr. Lukashenko was elected on a platform of fighting corruption and initially went along with economic changes. But after taking the first jarring steps toward a capitalist economy, by October last year Belarus was reversing course. The shift back to a command economy was popular with the rural and elderly voters accustomed to the Soviet ways. Aleksandr I. Feduta, a former speechwriter for Mr. Lukashenko who broke with the President to join the opposition, said privatization was a concept Mr. Lukashenko found hard to accept. ''He thought it was just robbing the state,'' he said. ''He could not agree to something independent of him. He thought it was stolen power.'' As the nation veered off the reform track, the International Monetary Fund suspended its loans, and World Bank projects were shelved. To fight unemployment, Mr. Lukashenko ordered state-controlled factories to step up production. But that has succeeded primarily in creating excess and unwanted goods. ''It is a very serious economic situation and there is a possibility of a sharp crisis,'' said Christopher Willoughby, the director of the World Bank office here. As the economy has declined, Mr. Lukashenko has cracked down on his critics. Television news was put under tight Government control. Instead of reporting on today's demonstration, the state television presented a program on folklore and then man-in-the-street interviews with citizens who backed the President. Independent newspapers have been harassed. Ihar Hermianchuk, the editor of Svaboda, a monthly magazine, said the Government had frozen the paper's bank accounts, limited his newspaper's access to printing plants and is trying to raise its rent. In another turn toward the past, Mr. Lukashenko has sought to prop up his ailing economy by cementing a confederation with Russia. And apparently in an effort to bargain for more aid, he has delayed the return of the nuclear missiles to Russia. To strengthen his hand, Mr. Lukashenko secured the backing of Aleksandr I. Lebed, the former security adviser to President Boris N. Yeltsin. Mr. Lebed flew to Minsk last month to meet with Mr. Lukashenko, and the public dismissal of Mr. Lebed by Mr. Yeltsin on Thursday was a blow to Belarus's President. The demonstration today was sparked by Mr. Lukashenko's originally announced plan to hold a national referendum on Nov. 7 -- the old Soviet holiday commemorating the Bolshevik revolution -- to amend the Constitution. The date was an apparent effort to play to nostalgia, and one of the main thoroughfares here has been draped with electric lights and a large five-pointed Soviet star. The adoption of the referendum would give Mr. Lukashenko another five years as President and give him the power to appoint members of Belarus's Constitutional Court and Parliament, two institutions that have challenged Mr. Lukashenko's policies. ''He practically wants to eliminate the parliamentary form of government,'' warned Gennadi D. Karpenka, the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament. Seeking to blunt Mr. Lukashenko's drive for power, the Parliament had scheduled a competing referendum on Nov. 24 on whether to eliminate the Presidency. Today Mr. Lukashenko did a tactical retreat by saying he could accept the Parliament's date for a referendum, but he still stressed the need to amend the Constitution to expand his power. Anatol Maisenya, a political scientist here, said that Mr. Lukashenko's move was forced by a lack of strong support in Msocow, pressure in the West and opposition at home. The Parliament's date for a referendum is less advantageous for the President because a series of city elections are scheduled then, which will bring urban voters to the polls. Mr. Lukashenko's strength has been in rural areas, where he has posed as a corruption-fighting crusader wrestling with an unruly Parliament. The procedures governing the Nov. 24 election will make fraud more difficult, Mr. Maisenya said. Further, the Parliament will insist on having its question on the ballot. Mr. Lukashenko's support, according to some polls, stands at about 40 percent. While this is more than his rivals show, the support of more than 50 percent of the electorate is needed to change the Constitution. Still, Mr. Lukashenko has not wavered from his view that constitutional changes to strengthen the presidency are needed, making it likely the confrontation with the opposition will extend through the referendum and beyond. At a news conference in Moscow this week, Mr. Lukashenko said Belarus was free, even as he scribbled down the names of reporters who asked unfriendly questions. Fears of a dictatorship, he declared, resulted from an American plot to thwart an alliance between Russia and Belarus. ''The C.I.A. cares about the revival of an empire,'' Mr. Lukashenko said. ''It scares them.'' But Mr. Lukashenko was blunt about his concept of how Belarus should be ruled. It should, he said simply, be the responsibility of ''one strong man.'' Photo: Belarussians, many carrying the national flag, rallied in Minsk yesterday against President Aleksandr Lukashenko's bid to extend his power. (Reuters) Map of Belarus showing the location of Minsk. ~~~~~~~~~~ October 12, 1996 U.S. Presses Shaky Belarus to Honor A-Weapons Pact By STEVEN ERLANGER US seeks to prevent Belarus from slipping into a dictatorship and reneging on its promise to give up its nuclear missiles by the end of the year; Pres Aleksandr G Lukashenko has called for street demonstrations by handpicked 'people's deputies' on Oct 19 in an effort to disband Parliament and force through a new constitution in a referendum on Nov 7 that would extend his term until the year 2000, allow him a second seven-year term, let him appoint a majority of the highest court and con trol a ... ===== notyet U.S. Presses Shaky Belarus to Honor A-Weapons Pact By STEVEN ERLANGER WASHINGTON, Oct. 11’Í�The United States, its influence limited, is trying to prevent the former Soviet republic of Belarus from slipping into a dictatorship and reneging on its promise to President Clinton to give up its nuclear missiles by the end of the year. Ukraine and Kazakhstan, two other former Soviet republics that also inherited modern missiles, have both become nuclear-free, handing over their missiles, as agreed, to the Russian authorities for dismantling. But Belarus has not even begun the process. The Belarussian President, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, has called for street demonstrations by handpicked ''people's deputies'' on Oct. 19 in an effort to disband Parliament and force through a new constitution in a referendum on Nov. 7, the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The proposed constitution would extend his term until the year 2000, allow him a second seven-year term, let him appoint a majority of the highest court and control a new upper house of Parliament with veto power over the lower house. And despite opposition in Belarus, senior American officials say Mr. Lukashenko could win such a referendum, even without election fraud. Mr. Lukashenko, a flamboyant, demagogic 41-year-old elected in 1994 to replace the man who brought the country to independence, wants to reunite with Russia and stymie market reform. He ran on an anti-corruption program and the promise to integrate with Russia and restore Soviet-style economic security. He has restored the Soviet-era flag, shut down newspapers and radio stations, fired elected officials, restricted human and civil rights, broken up some opposition demonstrations and banned others, and prevented the Parliament's chairman, Semyon Sharetsky, the country's second-ranking official, from appearing on television. Belarus, with only a thin and debatable history of sovereignty separate from Moscow, might be considered just another victim of history, a sort of geopolitical joke. But unlike the authoritarian governments of Central Asia, for example, Belarus is a European country with nuclear weapons, bordering what are likely to be the boundaries of an expanding NATO and led by an unpredictable and openly anti-Western leader who is pushing for nearly unlimited power. In light of the recent developments there, Defense Secretary William J. Perry, who is going to Moscow next week, has canceled plans to stop in Minsk, the Belarus capital, because of serious doubts that Belarus will become non-nuclear by 1997. Such a high-level visit would be seen as support for Mr. Lukashenko and its cancellation as a form of criticism. The restoration of a Communist dictatorship in Europe would be an embarrassment for the Clinton Administration, which has broadcast its success in helping the former Soviet Union make a transition to a relatively democratic, free-market way of life. A failure to get Belarus to give up its 18 nuclear missiles, however, would be dangerous, even if they are currently under the control of Russian officers. The SS-25 missiles are Russia's most modern mobile single-warhead missiles. The Clinton Administration is using what tools it can muster to influence Mr. Lukashenko. The Americans are pressing the Russians hard to get Belarus to live up to its nuclear promises. ''We'd be comfortable with Russia playing a role in this,'' a senior American official said. Mr. Lukashenko, for his part, has talked darkly of a Washington-Moscow conspiracy to undermine him. Last April, he and President Boris N. Yeltsin signed a pact of ''federation'' between Belarus and Russia, but Amrican officials suggest that Mr. Yeltsin was looking more to his own re-election struggle than to real reunification, a notion popular among Russian Communists and ultranationalists. The Russians are also leery of absorbing the sizeable debts of Belarus, which has made little effort to reform its economy or collectivist agriculture. The United States has also tried to strengthen the democratic opposition to Mr. Lukashenko by providing assistance to non-governmental organizations working there and discouraging large corporations like McDonald's and Ford, who seek advice from the State Department, from making significant investments in Belarus just now. The United States also gave quick political asylum to the leader of the main democratic opposition party, Zenon Poznyak. Congress, in the 1997 Foreign Assistance Act, has banned all American aid to the Belarus Government. ~~~~~~~~~~ August 1, 1996 2 Belarus Dissidents Seek U.S. Asylum Zenon Poznyak and Sergei Naumchik, prominent leaders of democratic opposition in Belarus, apply for political asylum in US ===== notyet 2 Belarus Dissidents Seek U.S. Asylum WASHINGTON, July 31’Í�Two prominent leaders of the democratic opposition in Belarus said today that they had applied for asylum in the United States, saying that their lives were in danger in the former Soviet republic. ''We were convinced that there was a real threat to our lives and freedom,'' Zenon Poznyak, chairman of the Belarussian Popular Front, said. He appeared with a front spokesman, Sergei Naumchik, at a news conference arranged by Representative Martin Hoke, an Ohio Republican. Mr. Hoke's spokesman, Larry Vanhoose, said this was the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 in which democratic movement leaders had sought asylum as a result of the reimposition of authoritarian rule in a former Soviet state. The two exiles, who left Belarus four months ago, accused the Government of President Aleksandr Lukashenko of persecuting the political opposition, banning unions and controlling news reporting. The State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service declined comment on the asylum request. Mr. Poznyak was a leader of the Belarus independence movement and a sharp critic of the Soviet Union's environmental policies. The asylum seekers said they would have more freedom to work for human rights in Belarus by continuing their political activities abroad. In Belarus, they said, they had been denied access to radio and television and had been beaten, and their families had been intimidated. In Minsk, leaders of the Belarus Popular Front pledged to continue their campaign against President Lukashenko. ~~~~~~~~~~ koko March 25, 1996 World News Briefs;Demonstrators in Belarus Oppose Tie With Russia AP About 15,000 people, many waving red-and-white Belarussian flags, marched through downtown Minsk today to demand continued independence and protest Government moves to form a political, cultural and economic union with Russia. At one point, demonstrators shouting anti-Government slogans broke through a police cordon. Scuffles broke out between the police and marchers who pelted them with snow and ice. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ koko March 24, 1996 BELARUS TO JOIN RUSSIA IN A UNION By MICHAEL SPECTER The leaders of Russia and Belarus agreed today to form a "union state" which, while it would not quite merge the Governments of the two Slavic nations, would nevertheless tie them to each other economically, politically and culturally. Such a plan has long been discussed, particularly in Belarus, where it has been eagerly sought. But the speed and timing of the decision clearly grows mostly from election-year politics in Russia, where the Communist-dominated lower house of Parliament voted last... ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ koko November 13, 1994 World News Briefs; President of Belarus Cuts Short Treatment President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus cut short medical treatment in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi to return home, saying he was worried about soaring prices and political tension. He called a special Cabinet session today. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ koko October 9, 1994 What Does Russia Want? By GRIGORY A. YAVLINSKY An increasingly disquieting feature of Russian politics is President Boris Yeltsin's ambiguous attitude toward integration with the former Soviet republics. Big unanswered questions hover in the air. With which members of the Commonwealth of Independent States -- if any -- should Russia integrate? How? On what basis? With what goals? And with what consequences for Russia, those republics and the rest of the world? ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ July 17, 1994 Belarus Winner Remakes His Image By MICHAEL SPECTER, The angry young man who just became the first President of Belarus learns fast. Elected by flailing away at the Government, belittling the idea of free enterprise and promising that crime would stop at once, Aleksandr Lukashenko performed a quick pirouette this week. After five months of shouting that the ex-Communist leadership of Belarus was running the country into the ground, Mr. Lukashenko said he was "shocked" to find out how bad things really were. He called for peace. And despite hints ... ===== notyet Belarus Winner Remakes His Image By MICHAEL SPECTER, MINSK, Belarus, July 14’Í�The angry young man who just became the first President of Belarus learns fast. Elected by flailing away at the Government, belittling the idea of free enterprise and promising that crime would stop at once, Aleksandr Lukashenko performed a quick pirouette this week. After five months of shouting that the ex-Communist leadership of Belarus was running the country into the ground, Mr. Lukashenko said he was "shocked" to find out how bad things really were. He called for peace. And despite hints to the contrary during his campaign, he said only true democracy could save the struggling country. "I promise you there will be no dictatorship," Mr. Lukashenko said in his first public appearance after receiving more than 80 percent of the votes cast on Sunday. "I am of the people, and I am going to be for the people." Promised Radical Change With scarcely any experience in setting domestic or foreign policy, the 39-year-old former farm manager and lawmaker won election in this country between Russia and Poland mainly by promising to take a sledgehammer to a Government of former Communist Party chiefs. He vowed to put his opponent, Prime Minister Vyacheslav F. Kebich, in prison. He said he would freeze prices, beat inflation, provide jobs for everybody. He pledged more Government support to the elderly and a brake on privatization, a program that so far has touched almost no one and that most people oppose as a gift to profiteers. "If he can do it all, he is Moses," said Stanislav S. Shushkevich, a bitter enemy whom Mr. Lukashenko helped remove from his post as Speaker of Parliament. "But he is not. Solzhenitsyn said that Vladimir Zhirinovsky was the caricature of a Russian patriot. Well, Lukashenko is the caricature of Zhirinovsky." That does not seem to have bothered the voters. Mr. Lukashenko's promises were sweet music here in Belarus, where 10 million live as if the Soviet past were still very much in the present. It is reflected in the country's wary mood, the unwillingness of many people to talk with outsiders and the sheer number of busts and statues of Lenin. Government-Run Economy The state still reigns supreme, controlling nearly all of the heavily industrialized economy. To use the currency, one has to add an imaginary zero to each bill; prices move too fast for the Government printers. The future is in the clouds. People want a better life, a little stability, some sense of fairness, a free press. Polls show that most people associate private enterprise with the huge dachas built in the last few years by men who own fancy cars. At the same time, they associate Communism with the anti-reform politicians who have run the Government since the Soviet Union broke up and who have called repeatedly for reunion with Russia. "This election was not a mandate for a new frontier or a new vision or even a new man," said Anatol I. Maisenya, president of the National Center for Strategic Initiatives, an independent think tank here. "Mr. Lukashenko has no ideology. He has no program. He has no economic or political background. He said the bad guys are running your country and its time to get rid of them. And as an achievement, that may be enough." Yet by toning down his remarks this week, Mr. Lukashenko seemed to be saying he knows he will have his hands full. The man who tried to stop the dissolution of the Soviet Communist empire now says he likes the way Margaret Thatcher went about her program of privatization in Britain -- "carefully, so people understood it and accepted it." He backed off from his pledge to prosecute his opponent, saying that "it would be up to the courts." And he has suggested that some of Mr. Kebich's aides -- the men he recently accused of trying to assassinate him, lock him out of state buildings and ban him from radio and television -- might make good senior officials in the Government, though he says he still intends to halve its ranks. Euphoria has hardly swept the nation since the election results were announced. In markets and on factory floors, workers say they voted for Mr. Lukashenko but show little delight in their choice. Again and again, a concern for stability and for the nation's youth emerges in conversations with workers. "I am concerned about my children, about my grandchildren," said Lyda I. Ovsykevich, 57, a retired woman who worked as an industrial manager during the Communist era and now sells tomatoes at the central market in Minsk. "I don't even like to discuss what system is better. I don't care," she said. I want a normal meal every day, and I want my grandchildren to be able to afford bananas. "It would be nice if people in other countries took us seriously, if we had a real currency. But those things don't really matter. This new man is a young man, so he has to have a stake in change. And for me that is plenty." What Kind of Change? It remains to be seen what kind of change, if any, Mr. Lukashenko can bring. His vision is hard to pin down. He has pledged to pursue monetary union with Russia, which would effectively mean surrendering a considerable amount of control over the Belarussian economy. Yet as a member of Parliament he opposed the founding of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a grouping of most of the former Soviet republics. Mr. Lukashenko rose quickly to prominence last year after he was appointed head of a parliamentary anti-corruption commission. He accused 70 senior officials of corruption and demanded that they be removed. Lawmakers' Strategy To limit the political fallout, Parliament removed the reformist Speaker, Mr. Shushkevich, from office. By sacrificing Mr. Shushkevich, lawmakers thought they would be able to satisfy Mr. Lukashenko while preserving the possibility that one of their own, Mr. Kebich, would become President. But that backfired. So did the portrayal of Mr. Lukashenko by Government-controlled newspapers and television stations as a wild-eyed farmer who had no business visiting Minsk, much less running the country as President. "It wasn't very subtle," said a Western diplomat based here. "And it didn't work. Lukashenko perfectly represents the feelings of the normal man or woman here. They are feeling disenfranchised and are not sure which way to turn." Photo: Aleksandr Lukashenko. (Associated Press) ~~~~~~~~~~ koko July 16, 1994 Ethnic Politics in the East All politics is ethnic, or so it seems, in the former Soviet Union these days. This kind of politics, with its attendant demagoguery and violence, can destroy all chance for peaceful change. President Boris Yeltsin's hint last week that the withdrawal of 2,500 Russian troops still in Estonia would depend on better treatment of Estonia's Russian residents could run just such a risk. In an effort to appease Russia's nationalists, he hinted that the troops might not all be out by Aug. 31, as promi... ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ koko July 12, 1994 Discontent of Belarus Voters Fueled Landslide for Outsider By MICHAEL SPECTER, Suggesting a deep unhappiness that has surfaced in other former Soviet republics, voters in Belarus have elected as their first President a man who promised to dismiss everyone connected to the Government "within a day." Aleksandr Lukashenko, 39, a crusader against corruption who comes to the job with no significant experience in domestic or international politics, rolled to a thunderous victory, receiving more than 80 percent of the vote. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ koko July 10, 1994 Voting Today In Ukraine And Belarus By STEVEN ERLANGER, Ukraine and Belarus will choose Presidents on Sunday in elections that have been dominated by debates about relations with Russia. The outcomes, which are likely to produce a tighter core of Slavic post-Soviet states, are being closely watched in Washington and Europe, where worries about Russian neo-imperialism are growing. ===== notyet ~~~~~~~~~~ June 25, 1994 Belarus Voters Back Populist in Protest at the Quality of Life By MICHAEL SPECTER, Showing once again how distressed people in the countries of the former Soviet Union are with the current state of their lives, Belarussian voters overwhelmingly supported a populist anti-crime crusader against the current Prime Minister in the results today of the first round of presidential elections. Alexander Lukashenko, 39 years old, whose vitriolic rants about government and the country's shattered economy remind many observers of the Russian ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, rece... ===== notyet Belarus Voters Back Populist in Protest at the Quality of Life By MICHAEL SPECTER, MOSCOW, June 24? Showing once again how distressed people in the countries of the former Soviet Union are with the current state of their lives, Belarussian voters overwhelmingly supported a populist anti-crime crusader against the current Prime Minister in the results today of the first round of presidential elections. Alexander Lukashenko, 39 years old, whose vitriolic rants about government and the country's shattered economy remind many observers of the Russian ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, received 45 percent of the vote on Thursday -- more than all five other candidates combined. Candidates cannot win on the first round, however, unless they receive more than 50 percent of all votes cast. Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich, 58, who had been universally considered the front-runner, came in a distant second, with 17 percent of the vote. He and Mr. Lukashenko, who led in all six regions of the country, wedged between Poland and Russia, will face each other in a runoff in two weeks. Although it would seem hard to imagine that Mr. Lukashenko would lose so soon after such a decisive victory, the rules for the runoff state that if 50 percent of all eligible voters fail to turn out, there would have to be yet another election. "What happened today came as a sensation only to those who refused to face the truth about our country," Mr. Lukashenko told reporters in Minsk, after the results had become clear. "The poor and deprived people for the first time had a chance to elect somebody like them to this supreme post, and the people spoke." They have a lot to speak about in a country where inflation averages nearly 40 percent a month and jobs are disappearing by the day. And, as was the case in the Russian parliamentary elections last December, the people mostly spoke by saying no to the current Government. Economically faltering, politically unsure of itself, Belarus is the Slavic heartland of the former Soviet Union, and its 10 million residents have suffered greatly since their independence in 1991. They have already voted to form a monetary union with Russia, and practically all candidates in the race -- including the two who will face each other in the runoff -- stressed the need for closer ties and more certain relations with Russia. Mr. Lukashenko prided himself on the fact that he was the only political leader from the country who voted against the Brest pact of 1991, which proclaimed the end of the Soviet Union. Crucial Base for Soviets When it was under Kremlin rule, Belarus was a crucial agricultural and technological base for the Soviet Union. Its outmoded and now idled factories made many of the heavy machinery and industrial tools that found their way onto the enormous state farms. When, after independence, reforms failed to sustain or improve production, the economy collapsed and political leaders fought with each other to see who could argue most eloquently for a new union with the country they had fled. The Government in Minsk remains largely packed with apparatchiks installed during the days of Kremlin power. Mr. Lukashenko's political star rose during the last year when he was made the head of the anti-gangster commission of the Belarussian Parliament. The polls have shown that most citizens feel Mr. Lukashenko, a former factory manager, is the first man to take resolute steps to rid the nation of corruption at the highest levels. He submitted a list of 70 ranking officials, including two vice-premiers and the Defense Minister, who he said were corrupt and should be removed from office. The embarrassed Government ended the work of his commission prematurely, securing his fame and popularity. Economic Program Lacking Yet Mr. Lukashenko, who survived an assassination attempt during the presidential campaign, has little to offer in the way of an economic program -- other than to endorse monetary union with Russia. His main disagreement with Mr. Kebich has not been on the vital issue of sovereignty for the country or economic independence, but who could negotiate better terms with Russia. "I am neither with the leftists nor the rightists," he said during the campaign. "But with the people against those who rob and deceive them." An aide to independent Belarus's first head of state, Stanislav Shushkevich, who received less than 10 percent of the vote, said the election runoff presented the country with a choice between "one man symbolizing a gradual collapse and another who stands for an abrupt crash," of the economy. Mr. Shushkevich was the Parliament speaker -- the head of state in Belarus -- until earlier this year, when Mr. Lukashenko forced him to resign after allegations of corruption. Map: The Belarus Government in Minsk remains packed with apparatchiks from Soviet days. (The New York Times) Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyHomePrivacy PolicySearchCorrectionsXMLHelpContact UsBack to Top ~~~~~~~~~~ June 24, 1994 Heavy Voting in Belarus In a heavy turnout, Belarussians cast ballots in the first presidential election in the former Soviet republic, a race dominated by economic worries. More than 73 percent of the 7.3 million eligible voters went to the polls in a race among six candidates ranging from Communist-era technocrats to ardent reformists. Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich was considered the front-runner, but no results are expected until Friday. ===== notyet Heavy Voting in Belarus MINSK, Belarus, June 23? In a heavy turnout, Belarussians cast ballots in the first presidential election in the former Soviet republic, a race dominated by economic worries. More than 73 percent of the 7.3 million eligible voters went to the polls in a race among six candidates ranging from Communist-era technocrats to ardent reformists. Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich was considered the front-runner, but no results are expected until Friday. Authorities said there were no election law violations, but opposition supporters accused officials of fraud. More than 100 foreign observers were present. Belarus has been led since the 1991 Soviet collapse by the speaker of its anti-reform Parliament. Although the country has been politically calm, it has been reeling from inflation rates of 30 to 40 percent a month. ~~~~~~~~~~ January 28, 1994 Belarus Says Aide's Ouster Won't Stop Reform By STEVEN ERLANGER, The Belarus Foreign Ministry called in foreign diplomats in Minsk today to reassure them that the country's commitments to denuclearization and a market economy were unchanged by the ouster on Wednesday of Stanislav S. Shushkevich, a non-Communist reformer, as chairman of Parliament and ceremonial head of state. The removal of Mr. Shushkevich by Parliament, on dubious charges of corruption after two years of battling for early elections and economic reforms, leaves Belarus in the hands of the s... ===== notyet Belarus Says Aide's Ouster Won't Stop Reform By STEVEN ERLANGER, MOSCOW, Jan. 27? The Belarus Foreign Ministry called in foreign diplomats in Minsk today to reassure them that the country's commitments to denuclearization and a market economy were unchanged by the ouster on Wednesday of Stanislav S. Shushkevich, a non-Communist reformer, as chairman of Parliament and ceremonial head of state. The removal of Mr. Shushkevich by Parliament, on dubious charges of corruption after two years of battling for early elections and economic reforms, leaves Belarus in the hands of the same Communist Party officials who ran it before the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Mr. Shushkevich, 59, was also considered an outspoken advocate of Belarusian independence from Moscow, which had ruled Belarus since 1772. His opponents, including the longtime Prime Minister, Vyacheslav F. Kebich, who survived a similar vote, favor ties to Russia that are much closer, almost a reunion of the two states. President Clinton met with both men two weeks ago to thank Belarus for agreeing to scrap its 81 SS-25 nuclear missiles and to give support to faster economic reform and early parliamentary elections, seen as an effort to prop up Mr. Shushkevich. Fear of New 'Empire' Senior Western diplomats in Minsk expressed concern before Mr. Clinton's visit that a reunion of Russia with Belarus could start an "imperial reconstruction" that Washington and the West did not want to see. In Minsk today, the head of the opposition in Parliament, Zyanon Paznyak, said the removal of Mr. Shushkevich represented "a creeping Communist coup aimed at eliminating Belarusian statehood and imposing a dictatorship under Kebich." Mr. Shushkevich, a physicist who once helped teach Russian to Lee Harvey Oswald, was succeeded by his deputy, Vyacheslav Kuznetov, a conservative former Communist. Yuri V. Khadipa, the deputy chairman of the opposition Belarus National Front, said: "Now the last stage of the reconstitution of the Russian empire will begin with the induction of Belarus into the ruble zone. This move will prop up factories of the former Soviet military-industrial complex, which no one needs." Having already forced through a military alliance that calls on Russia to defend Belarus and its 10.7 million people, Mr. Kebich is a prime proponent of an economic union that would subordinate Minsk's financial policies to Moscow's in return for cheap energy and the use of the Russian ruble. He recently agreed upon such a union with his counterpart, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who is due to come to Minsk next week to iron out details. Belarus is heavily dependent on Russia for energy and contracts, and its unreformed economy is experiencing 50 percent monthly inflation. Minsk-based diplomats said the return to dominance of Soviet-era managers in Moscow had an obvious impact in Belarus, though they stressed that the Communist-dominated Belarusian Supreme Soviet, first elected in March 1990, has been trying to oust Mr. Shushkevich for months. They almost succeeded in July, but he was saved then by Mr. Paznyak and the opposition. But this time, after more months of trying to balance between Mr. Kebich and Mr. Paznyak, Mr. Shushkevich ran out of supporters, many of whom were angered at his failure to protect two Cabinet allies who were removed from office on Tuesday. This monetary union, which would cost Russians many millions of dollars if the ruble is exchanged one for one for the weaker Belarus currency and if debts between state enterprises are canceled, was one of main factors cited by Yegor T. Gaidar, the architect of Russia's economic reforms, when he quit Mr. Chernomyrdin's Cabinet, followed this week by the Finance Minister, Boris G. Fyodorov. Map of Belarus shows the location of Minsk. Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyHomePrivacy Policy ~~~~~~~~~~ (11) January 27, 1994 Belarus Parliament Ousts Leader Belarus's Parliament ousted its liberal leader today, further dampening prospects for rapid economic reform and an independent foreign policy. Legislators voted 209 to 36 to dismiss the leader, Stanislav Shushkevich, who has almost single-handedly battled politicians and bureaucrats opposing free-market policies in Belarus. ===== notyet Belarus Parliament Ousts Leader MINSK, Belarus, Jan. 26? Belarus's Parliament ousted its liberal leader today, further dampening prospects for rapid economic reform and an independent foreign policy. Legislators voted 209 to 36 to dismiss the leader, Stanislav Shushkevich, who has almost single-handedly battled politicians and bureaucrats opposing free-market policies in Belarus. His ouster came two weeks after he received strong backing of President Clinton, who stopped in Minsk after visiting Moscow. Belarus's conservative Prime Minister, Vyacheslav Kebich, Shushkevich's constant rival, survived a vote to oust him. A total of 101 legislators voted for his dismissal and 175 against. Although Mr. Kebich survived the vote, some moderates argued that he was morally obligated to resign since more than 100 legislators had voted against him. Members of the Parliament, which was elected when Belarus was still part of the Soviet Union, made it plain that their vote was intended as a reprisal for Mr. Shushkevich's support for market reforms and his resistance to aligning foreign policy with neighboring Russia. "This is approval for the Government's policy," Mr. Kebich's top adviser, Valery Skorynin, said of the vote to oust Mr. Shushkevich. "Shushkevich is an idealist. You cannot reform and privatize any more quickly than our government has been doing." Mr. Shushkevich's first deputy, Vyacheslav Kuznetsov, who served during the Soviet era, took over as acting Chairman of Parliament. Advocates of reform, a small minority in Parliament, said the vote portended the end of Belarus as an independent entity, separate from Russia. "Belarus's new pro-Russian leadership will conduct its affairs in such a way as to bring the country into the Russian empire," said Zenon Poznyak, leader of the Belarussian Popular Front. "This is a betrayal of Belarussian sovereignty." Mr. Shushkevich came under fierce attack in the debate leading up to the vote and even his few reformist allies in Parliament gave him only lukewarm support and refused to take part in the vote. Liberals have become disenchanted in recent months over Mr. Shushkevich's concessions, particularly his consent to Belarussian membership in a Russian-led defense pact. In contrast to Ukraine, Belarus did not seek independence as the Soviet Union crumbled, and its politics remain dominated by Communists. Copyright 2011 The New York Times ~~~~~~~~~~ January 27, 1994 Russia Policy: A U.S. Riddle By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The Clinton Administration's policy toward the former Soviet Union is being undermined, slowly but surely, by the takeover in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine by politicians advocating populist economics that American officials believe will lead to financial ruin and political turmoil. Only two weeks ago President Clinton traveled to Moscow and Minsk to deliver his message: more economic reform will lead to more Western aid. The leaders there nodded in agreement and the White House pronounced the vi... ===== notyet Russia Policy: A U.S. Riddle By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, WASHINGTON, Jan. 26? The Clinton Administration's policy toward the former Soviet Union is being undermined, slowly but surely, by the takeover in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine by politicians advocating populist economics that American officials believe will lead to financial ruin and political turmoil. Only two weeks ago President Clinton traveled to Moscow and Minsk to deliver his message: more economic reform will lead to more Western aid. The leaders there nodded in agreement and the White House pronounced the visit a rousing success. But no sooner did Mr. Clinton depart than one piece of bad news after another came rolling in from Moscow and Minsk -- everything from the ouster of Russia's key economic reformers to the toppling today of the liberal President of neighboring Belarus. No Reformers, No Reform A White House spokeswoman, Dee Dee Myers, tried to put the best face on these sharp reversals, responding with the mantra that "we're more interested in the policies than in the personalities" and that "President Yeltsin, as you know, reassured the President that he remains committed to reform." Yet the fact is that virtually all of the Cabinet members left standing in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are dedicated to policies that run completely counter to the economic advice President Clinton gave those countries just two weeks ago. It's hard to support reform without reformers. "I think the news since the President's Air Force One plane took off from Russia has been unremittingly bad," said Lee Hamilton, the Indiana Democrat who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "The reformers have been leaving, and the Government is being dominated by those people who are skeptical about free markets and want to go on supporting the big state industries. I for one will find it very difficult to support aid for Russia if the Central Bank there continues to pour money and credit into supporting these inefficient state-run industries." Debate on Who Lost Russia Behind its public facade of supporting policies, not personalities, the Administration is also scrambling to figure out what to do and bracing itself for what is already being whispered about: a debate on who lost Russia. What makes influencing events in Russia so difficult, say Administration officials, is that the main problem there is not economics. It's politics. That is, President Boris N. Yeltsin understands the economic advice the West is giving him, which goes like this: The only way for Russia to develop a market economy is if it has a currency that is convertible and stable -- so that banks will be prepared to make loans at reasonable interest rates, so that Russian exporters will be willing to bring their profits back into the country without worrying that their earnings will be eroded by inflation, and so foreigners will be ready to invest there. The only way to get to that stage is for Russia's Central Bank to stop printing so many rubles. The only way to get to that point is if the Russian Government can close its budget deficit, now running about 9 percent of its gross domestic product. And the only way to accomplish that is if the Government stops subsidizing unprofitable state industries and farms, many of which produce products that sell for less on the world market than the cost of the raw materials that go into them. This is where economics ends and politics begins. To close such factories and farms would require laying off thousands and thousands of Russians, at least until new businesses sprout up to re-employ them. The new Government, dominated by conservatives like Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, Central Bank Chairman Viktor V. Gerashchenko and Agriculture Minister Alexander K. Zaveryukha, is not ready to risk the political reaction that such draconian policies would involve -- especially in light of the last election. That was why key reformers Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov and First Deputy Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar quit. 'Voters Have Spoken' "The Russian voters have spoken," said Dimitri Simes, Russian affairs expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The Administration is, on the one hand, praising Russian democracy and Russian democratic elections. On the other hand, it is pressuring Yeltsin to adopt policies that were supported by less than 15 percent of the Russian people -- who voted for the Russia's Choice party, led by Gaidar." Senior Administration officials say they are trying to deal with this situation by holding to a two-track policy. One track is to keep shining a light on the path of real economic reform that President Clinton laid out in Moscow. American officials hope that after this new Russian Government dabbles in populist economics it will return to its senses and bring back the reformers. The United States will keep its offer on the table to Mr. Yeltsin's Government: Adopt real economic reform and the United States will galvanize the Group of Seven industrialized democracies to come up with real money to support it. The other track is to continue pressing ahead with the $4.1 billion in direct assistance already approved by the Congress. That money is not going to the Russian Government but to support various projects on the ground, from small businesses to housing for soldiers, to energy development, to technical advice on subjects ranging from democracy to accounting. These are the "ground-up" projects that the Administration hopes will plant the seeds of capitalism, no matter what the Government in Moscow does. But this two-track approach may not be sustainable for long. "I think that is a phoney distinction," Mr. Hamilton said. "If you have hyperinflation again in Russia, all bets are off. If you have hyperinflation it doesn't matter if you supply them $10 billion or $1 billion. You have to have the fundamentals in line." ~~~~~~~~~~ January 17, 1994 Leading Russian Reformer Quits, Questioning the Cabinet's Policies By STEVEN ERLANGER, A day after President Clinton left Moscow, carrying assurances of continued Russian market reforms, their architect, Yegor T. Gaidar, announced today that he was quitting the Government because he did not think that it would pursue a sensible economic policy. "I cannot serve in the Government and at the same time be in opposition to it," Mr. Gaidar said, citing recent decisions made without Cabinet approval that he said contradicted his efforts to stabilize the economy and bring the budget defi... ===== notyet Leading Russian Reformer Quits, Questioning the Cabinet's Policies By STEVEN ERLANGER, MOSCOW, Jan. 16? A day after President Clinton left Moscow, carrying assurances of continued Russian market reforms, their architect, Yegor T. Gaidar, announced today that he was quitting the Government because he did not think that it would pursue a sensible economic policy. "I cannot serve in the Government and at the same time be in opposition to it," Mr. Gaidar said, citing recent decisions made without Cabinet approval that he said contradicted his efforts to stabilize the economy and bring the budget deficit under control. His resignation, in a letter to President Boris N. Yeltsin, is a considerable embarrassment for Mr. Clinton, who cited Mr. Yeltsin's "strong assurances of his intention to continue the reform process" as one of the most important achievements of their three-day summit meeting. Yeltsin's Pledge to Clinton Mr. Yeltsin, in his joint news conference with Mr. Clinton on Friday, said, "As regards reforms, we will be resolute and radical." But by then, according to Mr. Gaidar, Mr. Yeltsin knew of his impending resignation after a long private talk on Thursday. [ Heading back to the United States from Geneva, Mr. Clinton said that Mr. Yeltsin had told him several days ago that Mr. Gaidar was going to resign. "We are not going to reverse our reform course," Mr. Clinton quoted Mr. Yeltsin as saying. "But we do want to cushion the impact of it." [ Secretary of State Warren Christopher seemed to play down Mr. Gaidar's resignation. "I'm not sure it's a bad thing that there are one or two changes," he said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." ] Yet if the Finance Minister, Boris G. Fyodorov, who is said to be considering resigning, joins Mr. Gaidar in leaving the Government, that would shake already dwindling Western confidence in Moscow's commitment to financial stability and structural change. Mr. Gaidar said he had no assurances that he would be able to control financial and economic policy, even if he kept his posts as one of four FirstDeputy Prime Ministers and as Economics Minister. He refused, he suggested today, to serve as window dressing for a sharp turn in Government policy toward higher spending and inflation that would inevitably continue to be described by Russian officials as "reform." "I cannot answer for reforms without being able to prevent unwise actions of the Government, without possessing the necessary levers to persistently pursue the economic policy I am convinced is correct," Mr. Gaidar wrote Mr. Yeltsin. He objected specifically to a projected monetary union of Russia with Belarus and plans for a new $500 million parliamentary center. Mr. Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin are expected to meet Monday to discuss the resignation, and may try to persuade Mr. Gaidar to change his mind. Mr. Gaidar would insist on assurances of control over economic policy that are unlikely to be forthcoming, however, after Mr. Gaidar's Russia's Choice party came in second to the party of the caustic nationalist, Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, in the Dec. 12 parliamentary election. Mr. Fyodorov, whose efforts to control expenditure more strictly have been widely applauded in the West, has said he would resign if reformers lose control of economic policy and Viktor S. Gerashchenko, the director of the Russian Central Bank and an opponent of reform, keeps his job. An official of Russia's Choice told Interfax news agency that Mr. Fyodorov also planned to resign, because "he cannot bear the responsibility for a policy that will inevitably spur inflation." Pressure on Yeltsin Seen But it may also be that Mr. Gaidar and Mr. Fyodorov are trying to force Mr. Yeltsin to dismiss Mr. Gerashchenko, who has regularly received support from Mr. Chernomyrdin, and to give fewer important posts to enemies of reform when the Government is shuffled, perhaps as early as Tuesday. "Gaidar has to carry the can for the poor performance of Russia's Choice," a senior Western diplomat said. "And it would be hard for Gaidar and Chernomyrdin to work together in Government." Mr. Chernomyrdin took the election results as a clear sign to slow and soften economic reform. But if Mr. Gerashchenko stays and Mr. Fyodorov goes, the diplomat said, "that would be in policy terms a pretty unwelcome signal, and makes it a lot harder to let any of this I.M.F. money loose." Much of Western aid to Russia is funneled through organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Fund's loans are loosely contingent on some form of prudent Russian economic performance, a position the Clinton Administration has intermittently applauded and criticized. At the moment, with Mr. Clinton talking of social protections and his Treasury Secretary, Lloyd Bentsen, talking of fiscal rigor, the Russian reformers themselves are disheartened and confused. Washington seems to be using the possibility of further loans from the Fund and World Bank as an incentive to keep Russian reformers, already a minority, in power. If Mr. Yeltsin is willing to play that game, another senior Western diplomat suggested, Mr. Gaidar seems sick of it. Deferred Spending to Come Due But with inflation due to surge in April, given a huge amount of deferred spending in November and December, an abandonment of Mr. Fyodorov's efforts to restrain inflationary deficits would put the Fund and World Bank in an even more awkward position. "Is this the worst of the news, or just the start of the bad news?" the diplomat wondered. One of Mr. Gaidar's allies, Social Security Minister Ella Pamfilova -- the only woman in the Cabinet -- said she would also resign, while Mr. Gaidar said Mr. Fyodorov's decision would come in a few days, suggesting a coordinated, last-ditch effort to force a change in Government direction. "We hope that the Government's policy will not be drastically altered after all," Mr. Gaidar told Interfax. Mr. Fyodorov said the Government was at a "turning point, where everyone is being promised money and there are offers of stronger social support policies." But "no one says who will pay or how," Mr. Fyodorov continued. "When these great projects arise from who knows where, of course one's enthusiasm for work in the Government is low." He said his decision about resignation would depend on the shape of the future government. Gaidar's Changing Fortunes The fortunes of Mr. Gaidar, a balding, round-faced man of 37 with a courtly manner, have been a measure of the wildly uneven pattern of Russian economic changes. He has been a Yeltsin favorite and was chosen to initiate the great experiment of turning Russia into a free-market, private economy in January 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Forced out of office in December 1992 by conservatives in Parliament, Mr. Gaidar was asked to return to office by Mr. Yeltsin last September, to reassure the West about the future of reform just days before the President disbanded Parliament. Again, after the December elections and sharp criticism of Mr. Gaidar by Mr. Chernomyrdin, Mr. Yeltsin, at a news conference Dec. 22, answered a question about the future of economic reform by intoning: "Gaidar stays. Which means that the policy he pursues stays -- naturally, together with the Government and the President." But the poor election performance of Russia's Choice, and the failure of Mr. Gaidar to persuade other reformers like Grigory A. Yavlinsky to unite with him against Mr. Zhirinovsky, have weakened Mr. Gaidar enormously. Even though he was out of office for nearly all of 1993, he was still seen by many voters as the embodiment of economic reform, even though it was Mr. Chernomyrdin who was Prime Minister. Mr. Gaidar himself criticized the slow and incoherent pattern of reform, which made social pain sharper and more prolonged. In an interview today, Mr. Yavlinsky was dismissive. Mr. Gaidar "was decoration -- he fulfilled his role Oct. 3 and 4," when Mr. Yeltsin shelled the old Parliament, Mr. Yavlinsky said. "He couldn't change the situation; he wasn't an active member of the Government; he wasn't included." But Mr. Yavlinsky denied reports he has been approached about a Government portfolio. In his resignation letter, Mr. Gaidar cited two cases to explain his growing frustration over economic decisions made about which he was either uniformed or strongly opposed. First, he objected to the monetary union with Belarus, an agreement announced Jan. 4 with no discussion in the Cabinet. If the weak Belarusian currency is exchanged for the Russian ruble at one to one, it could cost the Russian economy $1.4 billion, Mr. Gaidar estimates. "We are not rich enough to sacrifice the welfare of Russian citizens to political considerations," he said. His objections were ignored. In objecting to the new parliamentary center, he wrote that "this destructive decision was taken without my knowledge and despite my resolute objections." It, too, was never discussed in any Government meeting. Mr. Gaidar said he would continue to support Mr. Yeltsin "and your policy of reforms." But he said his party would not blindly back the Government in the new Parliament. Photo: In an embarrassment to President Boris N. Yeltsin and to President Clinton, the planner of Russia's economic reform, Yegor T. Gaidar, quit yesterday, saying he did not feel he had received enough backing in Moscow. Mr. Gaidar, right, spoke at a reception for Mr. Clinton on Saturday with Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev, center, and Sergei A. Filatov, Mr. Yeltsin's chief of staff. (Reuters)(pg. A7) Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyHomePrivacy PolicySearch ~~~~~~~~~~ January 16, 1994 CLINTON IN EUROPE; Clinton Promises Help for Belarus Before Changing Focus to Mideast By DOUGLAS JEHL, Switching his focus from Russia to the Middle East, President Clinton flew from Moscow to Geneva today for meetings on Sunday with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria aimed at getting the stalled Mideast peace talks started again. On his way to Geneva, Mr. Clinton stopped in Belarus, where he pledged at least $50 million in additional aid, including $25 million to help the Government carry out its pledge to surrender all 81 of the old Soviet SS-25 nuclear missiles left on its soil. ===== notyet CLINTON IN EUROPE; Clinton Promises Help for Belarus Before Changing Focus to Mideast By DOUGLAS JEHL, GENEVA, Jan. 15? Switching his focus from Russia to the Middle East, President Clinton flew from Moscow to Geneva today for meetings on Sunday with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria aimed at getting the stalled Mideast peace talks started again. On his way to Geneva, Mr. Clinton stopped in Belarus, where he pledged at least $50 million in additional aid, including $25 million to help the Government carry out its pledge to surrender all 81 of the old Soviet SS-25 nuclear missiles left on its soil. During his six-hour stopover in Minsk, Mr. Clinton also became embroiled in a local dispute over which victims of oppression to honor first. On his arrival in Geneva, Mr. Clinton was met by President Otto Stich and Foreign Minister Flavio Cotti. He is to meet with President Assad for three hours on Sunday before flying home to Washington at the end of his eight-day visit . On Diplomatic Tiptoe Administration officials expressed hope that the prospect of better relations with Washington might prompt Mr. Assad to seek a comprehensive peace with Israel. The Syrians, who have faced economic hardships since the collapse of the Soviet Union, hope to build a new relationship with the United States. But the officials said President Clinton is not ready to remove Syria from his Administration's list of terrorist states, a designation that carries heavy sanctions, as Mr. Assad has demanded. Mr. Assad will be seeking to restore Syria's position as a key player in any Middle East peace negotiations. His position has been eclipsed by the separate Israeli accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was signed in Washington on Sept. 13. En route to Geneva, the White House faced a diplomatic squabble over Mr. Clinton's plans to visit a memorial for the victims of Stalinist oppression in Belarus before laying a wreath at a monument to those killed by the Nazis. The original White House itinerary for Belarus called for Mr. Clinton to go straight from Air Force One to a stark memorial in Kuropaty forest, just outside Minsk, that was raised to victims of Stalinist repression. But in deference to the leaders of Belarus, most of them former Communists, the White House agreed to postpone Mr. Clinton's stop at the Kuropaty memorial and first lay a wreath at the black obelisk in Victory Square in Minsk that honors victims of World War II, as Prime Minister Vyacheslav F. Kebich had insisted. The last-minute change was viewed with dismay by Belarus's political opposition. The switch also exposed White House uneasiness about possibly offending the Soviet-style Government, which Mr. Clinton was prodding to hold elections this spring. No Signs of Modernization Despite Mr. Clinton's support, there is no indication that Belarus will accept Washington's advice to go forward with economic reform. The nation's leading reformer, Stanislav S. Shushkevich, chairman of the Supreme Soviet, holds less power than Mr. Kebish, the old-line Prime Minister. The importance of Kuropaty to domestic politics lies in the fact that it is the country's only known mass grave for those executed by Stalin's secret police between 1937 and 1941, giving it symbolic importance for the anti-Communist opposition, whose leader, Zyanon Paznyak, was the archaeologist who discovered it. As many as 200,000 bodies of Poles, Jews and other victims of Stalin are believed to be buried at the site, and a senior Western diplomat in Belarus bluntly described it as "unfortunate" that the White House had backed away from its original plan. "What is needed here is for the West to remind everyone about the Communists' past," the diplomat said. The Administration had initially added Belarus to Mr. Clinton's itinerary partly as a gesture of thanks for its decision to relinquish its nuclear weapons, but more importantly as an object lesson for Ukraine, which until Mr. Clinton's visit had refused to do so. An Unnecessary Symbol But Ukraine's about-face last week, under which it will surrender its 176 nuclear missiles and 1,500 warheads over the next seven years, stripped the Belarus stop of its symbolism, leaving Mr. Clinton confronted more starkly with a system that has seen few changes from the old Soviet style. In Minsk this afternoon, senior White House officials sought to minimize the significance of the decision to reschedule the visit to Kuropaty, an ice-covered clearing with a crude wooden cross crowned with barbed wire. In a speech this afternoon at the Academy of Sciences in Minsk, Mr. Clinton tried to keep the focus on the arms agreement, telling the audience that Belarus deserved the "thanks and credit of citizens all over the world" for being the first former Soviet republic to plan a nuclear-free future. But he made a clear reference to the Government's refusal to assure March elections, saying he would "hope and pray" that they would go forward. He also called upon Belarus to "press ahead" with economic reforms. Separate Meetings Mr. Clinton was greeted at the Minsk airport by Mr. Shushkevich, a former nuclear physicist turned centrist democrat whose position makes him the leader of Parliament, and whom American officals regard as the country's best hope of reform. The President also held what the officials described as cooler talks with Mr. Kebich, who rose through Communist Party ranks and who has headed the Government since 1990. Mr. Clinton met separately with the opposition leaders, among them Mr. Paznyak, who told reporters later that they had urged Mr. Clinton to cut off aid to Belarus altogether on the ground that it would support only the Government and not reform. But there was also evidence of the resentment felt by some Belarusians at Mr. Clinton's visit: a group of Communists marched around a statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the K.G.B., and waved banners that included one reading, "Yankee Go Home." Photos: President Clinton saluting as he and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, left Russia yesterday for Belarus. (Agence France-Presse) (pg. 1); Mr. Clinton angered nationalists in Belarus yesterday by laying a wreath first at a memorial for the Nazis' victims, then for those killed by Stalin. (Reuters) (pg. 10) Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyHome ~~~~~~~~~~ January 14, 1994 CLINTON IN EUROPE; In Belarus, Memorials Define a Nation By STEVEN ERLANGER, President Clinton's decision to lay a wreath in the Kuropaty Forest, just off the highway from the airport, as he arrives in Minsk has ignited a debate that tells much about Belarus's fragile sovereignty and Soviet-style politics. The fuss threatens to overshadow Mr. Clinton's six-hour visit here on Saturday, a quick thank-you to the former Soviet republic for agreeing to give up all 81 of its SS-25 nuclear missiles, an accord that was reached without any of the haggling needed to produce a sim... ===== notyet CLINTON IN EUROPE; In Belarus, Memorials Define a Nation By STEVEN ERLANGER, MINSK, Belarus, Jan. 12? President Clinton's decision to lay a wreath in the Kuropaty Forest, just off the highway from the airport, as he arrives in Minsk has ignited a debate that tells much about Belarus's fragile sovereignty and Soviet-style politics. The fuss threatens to overshadow Mr. Clinton's six-hour visit here on Saturday, a quick thank-you to the former Soviet republic for agreeing to give up all 81 of its SS-25 nuclear missiles, an accord that was reached without any of the haggling needed to produce a similar pledge by Ukraine. Kuropaty, an ice-covered clearing in the forest marked by a crude wooden cross embellished with a circle of barbed wire, is not one of the plentiful memorials in this blood-soaked country to the victims of Nazi Germany. It is the site of a mass grave of those executed by Stalin's secret police from 1937 to 1941, and it is thought to contain up to 200,000 corpses. Symbol of a Nation The current Government looks at Kuropaty with extreme ambivalence. When excavation at the site began in 1988, Kuropaty took on symbolic importance for nationalists. The archeologist who discovered it, Zyanon Paznyak, a leader of the political opposition, regards Prime Minister Vyacheslav F. Kebich as a traitor, accusing him of "conducting a pro-imperial, pro-Russian policy." So the wreath-laying will serve to highlight Mr. Clinton's support for faster political and economic change in this nation of 10.7 million, including early elections to a Parliament that has been in place since 1990, before independence. Mr. Kebich said in an interview that the legislature had decided to ask the White House to schedule Mr. Clinton's visit to Kuropaty last, as he departs -- and not before paying his respects at the official Soviet-built monument to the victims of Nazism in downtown Victory Square. Legacy of Bloody Wars But for Mr. Paznyak, such a schedule change would be an outrage. "The old Communist Party and Supreme Soviet are still in place in Belarus," he said. "Kuropaty is a crime committed by their predecessors, and they hate that Mr. Clinton will pay respects to this horrible place, this factory of death. It is a symbol of Stalin's genocide and the massacre of our nation." A senior Western diplomat said it was unlikely that Mr. Clinton's schedule would change. Like Ukraine, to the south, Belarus has seen centuries of bloodshed and has been chewed up by many larger neighbors. An estimated 1.3 million Belarusians died during the Nazi occupation in World War II -- including virtually every Jew and half the population of Minsk. Up to 2 million died in Stalin's purges. And Belarus, like Ukraine, is trying to build an independent state, but on weaker foundations, with little left of ancient Belarusian culture. Except for the Nazi occupation and a few months of independence after the Russian Revolution, the area has been under the control of Russia since 1772, and of Poland and Lithuania before that. Few people even speak Belarusian. "Not so long ago, on a tram car, if I heard someone speaking Belarusian, I knew who it was without even turning around," said Ihar Germyanchuk, an opposition deputy and editor of Svaboda, or Liberty, a small nationalist newspaper. So Kuropaty is also important in the search for symbols of Belarusian nationality. Minsk's vast main street, for instance, once named for Lenin, is now named for Frantsisk Skaryna, born about 1490. He was Belarusian all right, but he is honored for having printed the first Bible in what was then Lithuania, and he spent most of his life in Cracow and Prague. 'Think of Survival First' Stanislav S. Shushkevich, the embattled centrist democrat who is Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, says Belarusians have learned humility from their history, which helps to explain the paucity of reform and the willingness to kowtow, if necessary, to Russia. "We've been beaten so many times and put in such difficult situations, we always think of survival first," said Mr. Shushkevich, a nuclear physicist. Mr. Shushkevich has been kept in power by Mr. Paznyak and the opposition, but he tries to steer a course between them and the old Communist officials around Mr. Kebich, who now promises elections this year, after rejecting a petition to hold them earlier. "I don't sense the building of an independent state," Mr. Shushkevich said. He finds the Government to be reactive and wavering, first promoting a Belarusian currency and then, as inflation worsened, promoting an ill-defined economic union with Russia. In the Bear's Embrace Many workers see the embrace of Moscow and its ruble as a sort of salvation. One said, "I can't think of sovereignty and independence when I can't feed or clothe my son." Mr. Kebich denies that economic union, which is by no means fully negotiated, would diminish sovereignty -- despite the need to coordinate Minsk's currency, budget and financial policies with Moscow. "We're realists," he said. All oil and gas pipelines come from Russia and 75 percent of Belarusian industry depends on Russian products and markets. But when asked if he is worried about Russia's putting economic pressure on Belarus, he replied: "Of course we're worried. That's why we should behave ourselves! That's why we must behave very quietly!" Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyHomePrivacy PolicySearchCorrectionsXMLHelp ~~~~~~~~~~ September 22, 1993 SHOWDOWN IN MOSCOW; YELTSIN AND LEGISLATURE ACT TO OUST EACH OTHER; CLINTON BACKS PRESIDENT By SERGE SCHMEMANN, ===== notyet Declaring that the "irreconcilable opposition" of the Russian legislature, with its large number of Communists, had paralyzed his reforms and his ability to govern, President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered the group dissolved on Tuesday and called elections to a new parliament for December. Almost immediately, the Supreme Soviet voted by an overwhelming margin to depose Mr. Yeltsin and ordered security forces not to obey him. SHOWDOWN IN MOSCOW; YELTSIN AND LEGISLATURE ACT TO OUST EACH OTHER; CLINTON BACKS PRESIDENT By SERGE SCHMEMANN, Correction Appended MOSCOW, Wednesday, Sept. 22? Declaring that the "irreconcilable opposition" of the Russian legislature, with its large number of Communists, had paralyzed his reforms and his ability to govern, President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered the group dissolved on Tuesday and called elections to a new parliament for December. Almost immediately, the Supreme Soviet voted by an overwhelming margin to depose Mr. Yeltsin and ordered security forces not to obey him. To wild applause, the deputies then swore in Vice President Aleksandr V. Rutskoi as acting president. Mr. Rutskoi, a hero of the Afghan war and erstwhile ally of Mr. Yeltsin, has become his most bitter foe and an open champion of reconstituting the Soviet Union. Few Signs of Troops For the moment, Moscow was calm. The Army pledged "strict neutrality," and there were no signs of sizeable troop movements in the capital. As night fell Tuesday, some truckloads of soldiers and police officers were spotted outside the offices of the Mayor, near the headquarters of the legislature. Truckloads of soldiers also pulled up to the Central Bank, the Finance Ministry and the central television complex, for which Mr. Yeltsin ordered "intensified security." Several hundred furious hard-line Communists gathered around bonfires outside the Parliament building to build makeshift barricades and to shout their hatred of Mr. Yeltsin. Court Upholds Ouster of Yeltsin A crack unit of Interior Ministry troops loyal to Mr. Yeltsin, the Dzer zhinsky Division, had been moved into the capital earlier in the week, purportedly to help fight crime, but they were not in evidence. In a brief appearance on television, the Interior Minister, Viktor F. Yerin, said his commanders "correctly understood" Mr. Yeltsin's decree. [ Excerpt from Mr. Yeltsin's speech, page A19. ] As the Supreme Soviet adjourned early today, the Constitutional Court -- whose chairman, Valery D. Zorkin, has long been openly hostile to Mr. Yeltsin -- upheld the decision to depose Mr. Yeltsin. With that, the bitter political feud that has undermined Russia's fledgling attempts at democracy and market economics reached the open fracture that has been widely predicted and feared, with the threat of civil violence between parallel governments now real and no evident ground left for compromise. In the past, Mr. Yeltsin and Parliament have backed away from direct clashes, and there was little certainty this morning about what might occur. As domestic politicians and foreign governments began choosing sides, various prospects loomed, from total paralysis of the Government to bloodshed. Much depends on how regional authorities will respond, and on what moves Mr. Yeltsin or Parliament take next. Some moderate voices called for immediate elections for President and Parliament. Preceded by two days of nervous rumors, Mr. Yeltsin appeared on national television at 8 P.M. Tuesday to finally make the move that he has repeatedly threatened in the nine months since his feud with the conservative, Communist-dominated legislature changed from political scuffling to a total battle over Russia's destiny. 'Irreconcilable Opposition' The legislature, he declared, "has ceased to be an organ of rule by the people." "Power in the Supreme Soviet of Russia has been seized by a group of persons who have turned it into the headquarters of irreconcilable opposition," he added. Pausing in his measured and stern delivery, Mr. Yeltsin sipped slowly from a teacup and then issued his verdict: "My duty as President is to state that the current corps of deputies has lost its right to be in control of crucial levers of state power." Anybody who tried to block the elections would be brought to justice, he declared, though all current deputies had the right to run for the new, two-chamber parliament. Soon after, at a hastily convened news conference at Parliament headquarters -- the same White House from which Mr. Yeltsin led his resistance to the Communist putsch two years earlier -- Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, the wily Speaker of Parliament who has orchestrated the opposition to Mr. Yeltsin, declared: "This putsch will collapse with a crash." Sitting next to him, Mr. Rutskoi warned darkly that "combat action is not to be excluded." The Recent History Russia's legislature consists of two bodies. One is the Congress of People's Deputies, with about a thousand members, which meets infrequently. The other is the Supreme Soviet, whose 250 members meet regularly and make day-to-day decisions. The deputies were elected in 1989, in the era of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, when the Communist Party still ruled supreme. Rules set by the party insured the election of many Communists and extreme nationalists, who have blocked Mr. Yeltsin's legislation at every turn. Their terms end in 1995. Mr. Yeltsin was elected President in 1990; his term expires in 1996. The actions by Mr. Yeltsin and by Parliament were legally questionable, but since the Russian Constitution is based on the Soviet Communist one of the Brezhnev era, the rule of law has had little respect in the current political atmosphere. In his televised address, Mr. Yeltsin made no reference to the use of force, except to declare that anyone resisting his decree would be subject to arrest. Mr. Rutskoi, for his part, issued his first decree, ordering the Ministries of Defense, Interior and Security to obey the Constitution. [ In a telephone interview with the ABC News program Nightline, Mr. Rutskoi was quoted as saying he had removed the defense and security ministers and replaced them with his own nominees. ] [ Mr. Rutskoi said he named Gen. Viktor P. Barannikov as new security minister. Mr. Yeltsin dismissed General Barannikov as security minister on July 27, charging him with corruption. Mr. Rutskoi also said he was naming as new defense minister "General Achalov" -- apparently Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy minister of defense who took part in the attempted coup in August 1991. ] Western governments quickly lined up behind Mr. Yeltsin, as did the governments of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Once again, Moscow was gripped by intense suspense and crisis. Initial reports spoke of emergency meetings of regional administrations and councils around the country. Much depends on the responses by the leaders of Russia's increasingly assertive regions -- the provinces and ethnic republics -- and on whether violence breaks out. But the early declarations from the regions were mostly calls for calm. On Saturday, Mr. Yeltsin met with regional leaders in an attempt to create a Council of the Federation, which he hoped would become an alternative legislature. But the conference failed to agree on a founding charter, leaving unclear how strongly the leaders will back Mr. Yeltsin now. Regional and urban legislatures seemed likely to come down on the side of the Parliament. There is the chance that the conflict will become simply another phase in the interminable feud between Mr. Yeltsin and the deputies, further undermining governance and reform until the two exhausted sides finally agree to simultaneous re-election. There is also the chance that the President, having learned from thwarted offensives in the past, planned this one through to the end and, through force or political maneuver, will succeed in routing the legislature and Mr. Rutskoi, and in holding new elections. And there is the chance that Mr. Khasbulatov and the Supreme Soviet will outmaneuver Mr. Yeltsin. The mood at the Moscow White House, at any rate, was upbeat, and many deputies seemed to believe that Mr. Yeltsin had finally overstepped his limits and had opened the way for the deputies to force him aside. The formal basis for deposing Mr. Yeltsin was a constitutional amendment passed earlier this year by the legislature declaring that if the President tried to dissolve parliament, he would automatically lose his powers. Bicameral Congress Proposed On Mr. Yeltsin's side, Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin went on television to declare the Government's support for the President. Mr. Yeltsin's formal decree, published separately on Tuesday night, called for the disbanding of the Congress of Peoples' Deputies and the Supreme Soviet. It also called for elections to a new bicameral parliament: a federal assembly with an upper Council of the Federation, composed of leaders of the regions, and a lower State Duma of popularly elected deputies. He called for elections to the Duma to be held Dec. 11 and 12. Until the new parliament was elected, Mr. Yeltsin said the Central Bank, the General Procurator and the Ministries of Defense, Interior and Security would come under his control. In his speech, Mr. Yeltsin said he would call early elections for the presidency once the new parliament was in place. But he gave no date. Yeltsin's Legal Argument Mr. Yeltsin devoted much of his address to an attempt to give his move a legal basis, since he had no legal grounds to dissolve the Congress. Under the Constitution, the Congress of People's Deputies has virtually unlimited power to legislate. He argued that he derived his authority not from the Constitution but from the people, as the only nationally elected official. It was therefore his ultimate responsibility, he asserted, to save Russia from a body that had "lost its ability to perform the main function of a representative body, the function of concerting public interests." "The security of Russia and her people is a higher value than formal compliance with the controversial laws produced by a legislature that has totally discredited itself," he declared. "The time has come for the most serious decision." Photos: President Boris N. Yeltsin, top, calling for dissolution of Parliament. (Reuters); Vice President Aleksandr V. Rutskoi, bottom right, a Yeltsin foe, met reporters after the speech. He was later sworn in as acting president. (Agence France-Presse (pg. A1) Chart/Photos/Chronology: "The Players and their Moves" BORIS N. YELTSIN -- President First democratically elected President of Russia . . . led the resistance to the failed coup d'etat against Mikhail S. Gorbachev in August 1991 . . . made enemies of allies in Parliament with his push for quick reforms . . . 62 years old . . . RUSLAN I. KHASBULATOV -- Speaker of Parliament A former ally of Yeltsin . . . led lawmakers in chipping away at President's power and hampering his reforms . . . 50 years old . . . doctorate in economics . . . supports a free market, but more gradual transition. ALEKSANDR V. RUTSKOI -- Vice President Yeltsin's former ally and Vice President . . . has accused administration of corruption and been accused of corruption in return . . . 45 years old . . . Afghan War hero . . . has backed the military-industrial complex in opposing Yeltsin's defense cutbacks. VALERY D. ZORKIN -- Constitutional Court chairman Often sided with Yeltsin's opponents when court tips the balance in the power struggle between President and Parliament . . . 50 years old . . . taught law at Moscow University Chronology of events Tuesday 8 P.M. -- Yeltsin dissolves Parliament and calls elections for a new legislature in december. 9 P.M. -- Khasbulatov calls the action a "state coup," calls for a general strike, orders the police and military to ignore any of Yeltsin's orders. 10 P.M. -- Zorkin joins Khasbulatov at Parliament for a news conference and offers his support. Wednesday 12 A.M. Parliament, under Khasbulatov, names Rutskoi acting president. Rutskoi's first mandate is to nullify all decrees Yeltsin made the previous day. 1 A.M. 4,000 people remain gathered in front the the White House in Moscow. 2 A.M. Constitutional court declares Yeltsin's decree grounds for impeachment. Moscow is eight hours ahead of Eastern daylight time. (pg. A18) Map of Moscow shows location of Russian Parliament. (pg. A18) Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyHomePrivacy Policy ~~~~~~~~~~ August 16, 1993 Ex-Soviet Republics Look Again to Russia; Undemocratic Belarus To the Editor: While Belarus can be commended for its policy on getting rid of nuclear missiles, promoting the country as a model for other former Soviet republics seems out of place ('Belarus, a Model for Ukraine," editorial, Aug. 4). Belarus is one of the least democratic of the former republics, with the former Communist bureaucracy entrenched at all government levels. ===== notyet Ex-Soviet Republics Look Again to Russia; Undemocratic Belarus To the Editor: While Belarus can be commended for its policy on getting rid of nuclear missiles, promoting the country as a model for other former Soviet republics seems out of place ('Belarus, a Model for Ukraine," editorial, Aug. 4). Belarus is one of the least democratic of the former republics, with the former Communist bureaucracy entrenched at all government levels. Since gaining independence in 1991, Belarus has made little progress in democratization and hardly any in economic reforms. Last year the parliament ignored a petition, signed by 400,000 voters and validated by the electoral commission, for a referendum on early parliamentary elections. Most news media are government owned or subsidized. Last Jan. 1 the few independent radio and television stations were shut down. As for the economy, Soviet-style price controls and production quotas remain in effect, and 90 percent of the property is state-owned. In terms of governance, Belarus has a long way to go before it can be promoted as an example to be followed by any other country. ART B. ARTMAN Research Assistant, Freedom House New York, Aug. 4, 1993 Copyright 2011 The New York Times CompanyHomePrivacy PolicySearchCorrectionsXMLHelpContact UsBack to Top ~~~~~~~~~~ December 27, 1991 AFTER THE SOVIET UNION; New Names For New Lands With the independence of the former Soviet republics, a number of changed names and spellings have emerged in diplomatic messages and official English-language pronouncements. Five of the republics have adopted preferred English-language versions of their names, and their preference generally guides the usage of other governments. ===== notyet AFTER THE SOVIET UNION AFTER THE SOVIET UNION; New Names For New Lands With the independence of the former Soviet republics, a number of changed names and spellings have emerged in diplomatic messages and official English-language pronouncements. Five of the republics have adopted preferred English-language versions of their names, and their preference generally guides the usage of other governments. Byelorussia has adopted Belarus, Kirghizia is Kyrgyzstan, Moldavia is Moldova, Tadzhikistan is Tajikistan and Turkmenia is Turkmenistan. The remaining former Soviet republics are retaining the traditional English-language renderings of their names: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. ~~~~~~~~~~