BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

Russia against regime change in Belarus

VILNIUS -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday Moscow opposes any attempts at regime change in Belarus, after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was "time for change".

Asked about Rice's views on the ex-Soviet republic run with an iron fist by President Alexander Lukashenko, Lavrov said he did not want to comment specifically on those remarks.

But he immediately said: "We would not of course be advocating what some people call regime changes anywhere. We think the democratic process, the process of reform cannot be imposed from outside."

"We are interested in promoting our relations with Belarus. This is what our people want," he added, speaking after talks with his NATO counterparts in informal talks in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Rice said in Vilnius on Wednesday that the time has come for change in Belarus, which she described as the last dictatorship in central Europe.

Noting that revolutions have swept through Georgia and Ukraine in the last year or two, she said there were other places where "opposition forces are speaking out about developments in their society."

This was the case "even in Belarus which... is really the last true dictatorship in the centre of Europe," she told a joint press conference with Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus.

"It is time for change to come to Belarus," she added. -- AFP

Source:

http://www.timesofoman.com/newsdetails.asp?newsid=14327