BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

11/01/2007

The Kremlin might be interested in removal of Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, political analyst speculates

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko's press office reported yesterday that he had reached a compromise on the dispute over the price of Russian natural gas exports to Belarus with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, spokesmen for the Kremlin press service and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said following the report that they were unaware of any new developments in the dispute, Dow Jones Newswires reported the same day.

Observers say the present pressure put on Belarus will most likely misfire, instead of pushing President Lukashenko into a union.

Political analyst Vladimir Filin, talking to the online paper Forum.msk, says after these developments he has no doubts that the idea of a unified state of Russia and Belarus has died completely. However the other idea, of rapprochement and creation of an Eastern Slav union of Belarus and Ukraine, has been getting more and more supporters, according to Filin.

He says normalization of the relations between Belarus and the West will be inevitable and would mean termination of all forms of military cooperation between Belarus and Russia.

In Minsk, in well informed circles behind the scenes, now, probably not without a reason it is rumored that vindictive Kremlin secret services officers quite could "order" even physical elimination of the Belarussian President, Forum.msk is quoting the analyst as saying. Filin reminds of Russian secret service agents' action three years ago in Qatar where they had blown up Chechen separatist ex-President Zelimkhan Yandarbiev together with casual people, then had allegedly poisoned investigative journalist and politician Yury Shchekochikhin, and had shot his colleague Politkovskaya last autumn and had allegedly poisoned ex-security service officer Alexander Litvinenko. In this connection Filin notices that, first, in the structures of the KGB of Belarus, which are engaged in counterterrorist activity, the methods applied by "the colleagues" from the neighboring state are known well enough, as earlier they had together with them served to Soviet Union; today their Russian counterparts have completely criminalized and sworn the gas pipe, as Filin puts it.

The analyst points out that even Alexander Lukashenko's elimination would give nothing to the Kremlin. "On the contrary, any new leader of Belarus will unequivocally accept westernized and sharp, in the spirit of [President of Georgia] Saakashvili, an anti-Kremlin orientation, that, by the way, for clear reasons would be easier to exercise by the next President than the current head of the Belarus' state".

Mikhail Margelov, Chairman of the International Affairs Committee in Russia's Federation Council, told a pro-Kremlin website Strana.ru January 9, the following: "Lukashenko has shown that his interests don't coincide with ours. Friendship with undemocratic rulers cannot be reliable and association with Lukashenko only tarnishes Russia's reputation". Margelov, a former KGB undercover agent in the Arab world in Soviet times, is a well-informed and well-placed Kremlin insider, a member of the so-called liberal faction of Putinites that believe close partnership with the West will better serve their (and Russia's) interests, according to the Eurasia Daily Monitor.

Source:

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1190