BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

09/03/2006

Belarus KGB protects the country from the "Ukrainian threat"

As AIA previously reported, Belarus President Lukashenko accused Ukraine of channeling money into his country to overthrow him, recalling the string of revolutions held over the last few years in Ukraine, Georgia and Serbia, which brought to power pro-Western leaders. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denied the accusations in an official statement, which, in line with criticism raised by Western governments and observers, also questions the democratic standards used by the Belarusian authorities in holding the elections. Following this the Belarus KGB seemingly received orders to deal with the Ukrainian citizens, who are the members of the NGOs that played a role in Ukraine's Orange Revolution, Kiev Post reports. Vladyslav Kaskiv, head of Ukraine's Pora party, which became well known when it was a non-governmental youth organization, was banned from entering Belarus. Kaskiv, two members of his party and three Ukrainian television journalists arrived in Belarus to cover the presidential election campaign, but were detained at the airport and sent back to Ukraine. According to Serhiy Yevtushenko, one of the members of Pora, which is running in Ukraine's parliamentary elections in a bloc sympathetic to President Viktor Yushchenko, the moment the Ukrainians arrived at the airport in Minsk, they were taken to a separate room and interrogated by the Belarus KGB. "When we got in, there was a group of KGB employees led by Alyaksandr Zharsky, who introduced himself as the head of the KGB's department for terrorism", said Yevtushenko. The group of Ukrainians was then put on a plane and flown back to Kiev without explanation. In response to inquiries by Ukraine's Foreign Ministry, the Belarusian authorities said that "as a sovereign state, Belarus is entitled to such a decision". "The Ukrainian authorities have declared that they have a list of individuals who are not welcome in Ukraine. We respect the position of our Ukrainian colleagues", said Andrey Popov, press secretary at the Belarus Foreign Ministry. From the opposite end of Ukraine's political spectrum, radical leftist Natalya Vitrenko and Communist leader Petro Symonenko have also made a visit to Belarus lately, but they didn't have any trouble at the border. On March 3, both Vitrenko and Symonenko, who favor establishing a union between Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, joined President Lukashenko at an all-Belarusian Forum. At the forum, the two Ukrainian politicians said that Belarus was on the right path of development.

Source:

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=721