BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

April 21, 2005, 2:26 PM EDT

Rice Encourages Belarus Dissidents

By Tyler Marshall
Times Staff Writer

VILNIUS, Lithuania -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice turned the spotlight on political oppression in Belarus today, meeting a group of opposition figures from a country she had earlier labeled "the last true dictatorship in the center of Europe."

She told them that democracy would eventually come to their land too.

"While it may seem difficult and long, and at times far way, there will be a road to democracy in Belarus," Rice told the seven opposition figures, which included an academic, a politician and human rights activists.

"We admire your courage and we admire your dedication and we want you all to know you are in our thoughts," she added in remarks at the start of the meeting.

One of the seven who attended the meeting, opposition politician Aleksander Dobrovolskiy, said Rice pledged to support their efforts to open the country's political system to greater participation, a move that would challenge the government of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

"She said the United States and Europe remained committed to helping Belarus become free," Dobrovolskiy told reporters after the meeting. "We intend to offer an alternative and initiate a mass pressure for that change."

The United States has consistently complained about the repressive nature of Lukashenko's government. Several opponents of that government have disappeared, and earlier this month the Bush administration expressed "grave concern" about what it charged was the jailing of Belarusian citizens for political dissent.

Rice's meeting with the opposition group took place in a small conference room on the fringes of an informal gathering of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's foreign ministers in the Lithuanian capital - the first major session ever hosted by a country that was once part of the Soviet Union.

Just before her meeting with the Belarus activists, Rice and her NATO colleagues formally reached out to another former Soviet republic, Ukraine, offering an intensive dialogue that would likely lead to eventual membership.

While Ukraine's accession to the alliance would likely be at least three years away at the earliest, the fact that the issue of Ukrainian membership was under discussion at an alliance meeting in Lithuania underscored how dramatically the political climate has changed in Europe and how quickly barriers to NATO membership have fallen.

"The backdrop reflects just how far NATO has come," alliance Secretary General Jan de Hoop Scheffer told reporters at a news conference.

It was another reflection of that change that Russia showed no signs of curtailing its own cooperation with NATO, even though it was clearly unsettled by the spreading influence of the alliance and unhappy about Rice's meeting with the Belarus opposition figures.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov not only attended today's session of the official forum on Moscow's relations with the alliance, known as the Russia-NATO Council, but he also signed an agreement clarifying the status of alliance forces while conducting joint training or on joint missions with their Russian counterparts.

In a discussion on the Middle East, Lavrov suggested that if international peacekeepers were required to guarantee a possible Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, coordination between Moscow and major Western nations on a potential deployment could be done through the alliance.

On the issue of Belarus, Lavrov indicated his displeasure with the Rice meeting, but stopped short of suggesting any countermeasures.

"We would of course not advocate what some people call regime change anywhere," he told reporters, when asked about Rice's meeting with the Belarus group. "Democratic reform cannot be imposed from the outside."

The opposition group had initially expected only to meet with Rice. However, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Javier Solana and Lithuanian Foreign Minister Antanas Valionis also participated.

While the Belarusian activists indicated that Rice had offered suggestions on tactics during the meeting, U.S. officials who attended the session said she had merely summed up points that members of the group had made. At a news conference later, Rice said it would be "inappropriate" for the United States or any foreign government to advise the Belarusian opposition.

"To tell the Belarusians or anyone else what you should do, or must do, this would not be an appropriate role for the United States or the international community," she said. "They will make those judgments. But they can be certain through discussions like we had today, through support that they're getting from various funds from the EU and from the United States, that people know about the struggle in Belarus and are prepared to support independent voices in that struggle."

Rice said the meeting also served to put the Lukashenko government on notice that "they are being watched by the international community, that this is not a dark corner in which this can go on unobserved, uncommented upon as if Belarus somehow was not a part of the European continent."

Her decision to hold such a high-profile meeting, and the willingness of U.S. officials to present the government opponents to the news media in Vilnius, are likely to dampen possible criticism by pro-democracy activists in the United States that she had not been tough enough during talks with Russian leaders earlier in the week in Moscow. She spent two days in the Russian capital attempting to smooth the way for next month's visit by President Bush.

Presidential elections in Belarus are scheduled for next year. U.S. officials, pointing to the example of Ukraine, have said they view the vote as a chance to challenge Lukashenko's rule legitimately at the polls.

However, these same officials admit that the political opposition in Belarus is less organized and has a lower profile than its counterpart did in Ukraine, and has no strong, unifying figure comparable to Viktor Yushchenko, who won Ukraine's presidency in December.

Dmitry Borodko, head of an opposition Belarusian youth group called Volat, claimed it was impossible to count on a fair presidential election next year. "We don't want to participate in an election we can't win," he said.

He told reporters that street protests demanding official explanation about the fate of those who had disappeared was an option under consideration.

Another of those present at the meeting, Svetlana Zavadskaya, head of a civic group called 'We Remember,' is the wife of television journalist Dmitry Zavadski, one of several individuals who government opponents claim have disappeared.

Dobrovolskiy estimated the number as "maybe as many as 30."

Moments after NATO foreign ministers invited the government in Kiev to begin talks on membership, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk said his country was committed to carrying out the arduous political and military reforms needed to qualify for membership.

"We've transformed our relationship, it's at a new stage," he said.

He estimated that measures demanded by NATO for a country to be considered eligible for membership could be completed as early as 2008, but others noted that it could take longer and that accession also depended on when the alliance's 26 members were ready to accept Ukraine.

At her news conference, Rice praised alliance efforts to start a broad political Euro-North American dialogue on crucial global issues, even though they may be far from NATO home countries. She said ministers today discussed Middle East issues in addition to the possibility of assisting the African Union in its efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's Darfur region.

Source:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/la-042105rice_lat,0,6241137.story?coll=ny-leadworldnews-headlines