BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

05/04/2006

German, Russian ministers at odds over Belarus vote outcome

Berlin - The foreign ministers of Germany and Russia differed Wednesday in their assessment of the outcome of last month's controversial election in Belarus which saw President Alexander Lukashenko returned to power with 83 per cent of the vote.

'The will of the Belarus people as well as those in Ukraine must form the basis of relations with these sovereign states,' Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin.

Steinmeier said the March 19 vote in Belarus did not meet international standards whereas the polls in Ukraine a week later did. Western observers widely condemned the election in Belarus as fraudulent.

The two ministers did agree that a solution had to come through diplomacy and not through confrontation.

Lukashenko is due to be sworn in for a third term on Saturday. Opposition leaders want a new vote without Lukashenko and have called for sanctions against his government.

Lavrov is due to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung on the second day of his two-day visit Thursday.

Earlier Wednesday, Merkel described Russia as having a 'strategic relationship with Germany while underlining that Moscow needed to be a reliable partner in the energy sector,' a reference to its shutting off gas supplies to Ukraine in January.

Merkel urged Russia to join a European energy charter, signed in 1991 in The Hague by 51 nations, aimed at enhancing long-term energy security by protecting investment and transport infrastructure such as pipelines.

Source:

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/article_1152853.php/German_Russian_ministers_at_odds_over_Belarus_vote_outcome