BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

15/01/2007

Belarus leader blasts Moscow as relations turn sour

Misnk

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has accused Moscow of trying to incorporate his country into Russia, in some of his sharpest comments yet against one-time ally and energy partner Moscow.

Speaking after a bitter oil transit row between the two neighbours, the Belarussian leader referred to a long-standing plan to form a joint state and said Moscow was betraying the spirit of the plan. He also blasted yesterday a pet Kremlin project, a plan by Gazprom to build a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea to Germany, which he said was the "most stupid" plan in Russian history.

"The Russian leadership is demanding that we join the Russian Federation - that's what is in the heads of the Russian leadership. I don't want to bury the sovereignty and independence of the country," Lukashenko said.

"From all the consultations and discussions, I have understood that we have different approaches and understandings of the building of a union state. A union should be created on principles of equal rights," Lukashenko said as he cast his vote in district elections. - AFP.

He again accused Moscow of being the guilty party in the oil transit dispute that prompted a shut-down of the main oil pipeline from Russia to the EU last Monday, before a resolution was found on Wednesday. - AFP.

"If Russia is going to reach for the valve every year, is going to switch off the gas and oil supplies to its ally, we can't talk about a union state," he said, adding that counter-measures could be taken.

"If pressure by Russia continues, Belarus will introduce payment for the land used by the oil pipeline.... Such a step wouldn't contradict international law," he said.

The comments underlined the increasingly fraught relationship between ex-Soviet Belarus and its giant neighbour, despite Lukashenko's previous record of loyalty to Moscow.

The Belarussian leader, who has ruled with an iron fist since 1994, has recently indicated that he is rethinking foreign policy and has made overtures to southern neighbour Ukraine, which has more decisively broken from Moscow's influence.

Lukashenko was also scathing about the Nord Stream pipeline project, which would bypass the ex-communist countries of eastern Europe and take natural gas to Germany and other western European nations.

"The Baltic gas pipeline -- it's the most stupid plan in the history of Russia. It should be in the Guinness book of records," Lukashenko said.

"It's not known what will happen to it as it passes through piles of ammunition on the bottom of the Baltic Sea," he said, referring to environmental concerns related to World War II debris on the Baltic sea bed.

The pipeline project has prompted anger in Belarus' western neighbour Poland, which has been one of Lukashenko's sharpest critics along with the United States.

Washington has dubbed Belarus Europe's "last dictatorship".

Some analysts have predicted an about-turn by Lukashenko in which he may court the "anti-Russian" countries of central and eastern Europe, some of them new EU members, in order to shore up his isolated position.

Lukashenko may offer his Western critics "something like a Gorbachevian perestroika," Viktor Kremenyuk of the Institute for USA and Canada Studies in Moscow, told AFP on Saturday, referring to the liberalisation that took place under Russia's last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

"He doesn't need to change much as something has happened ... western Europe has become too dependent on Russia. This has put the nations of eastern Europe on alert" so that they are seeking new allies, he said.

Belarussian opposition groups said that local elections on Sunday had been marred by widespread violations including the arrest of over 30 activists and mass early voting, seen as a way of facilitating violations.

"I don't expect these to be honest elections -- we haven't had honest elections in Belarus for a long time," said opposition leader Vintsuk Vyachorka of the Belarussian Popular Front, who was standing for election in Minsk.

Source:

http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=13918&cat=2