BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

28/04/2009

Berlusconi defends meeting with Belarus leader

Associated Press

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday defended his decision to meet with Belarus' autocratic leader and said the time was ripe to help push the Eastern European pariah state toward democratic reforms.

"The moment has come to give Belarus a push so that it reaches democratic standards comparable to that of the European democracies," Berlusconi said at a new conference in Warsaw, where he spoke alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Berlusconi was in Warsaw to meet with Polish leaders and to attend a congress of the European People's Party in Warsaw on Wednesday ahead of elections to the EU Parliament in June.

He spoke a day after hosting President Alexander Lukashenko at a dinner in Rome. It was the Belarusian leader's first trip to Western Europe since the EU slapped a travel ban on him in 1999 and froze his assets to punish him for a crackdown on the political opposition.

The EU lifted the ban to allow Lukashenko to attend an East-West summit in Prague, Czech Republic, in May. The summit is to launch an EU program of trade and aid benefits for Belarus and five other former Soviet republics.

In power since 1994, Lukashenko's treatment of critics and lack of tolerance for dissent have led some Western officials to dub Belarus "Europe's last dictatorship."

Berlusconi said it was important to maintain dialogue with Belarus, just as European states did 15 years ago with Turkey, a country which he said at the time was viewed with distrust.

In Italy, the news agency ANSA quoted Lukashenko as saying that during his visit to Italy, officials did not push him to make democratic reforms.

"Nobody asked me about reforms in Belarus," he was quoted as saying Tuesday. "We know ourselves what direction to take in our country and how to reform our social and political system."

Source:

http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=933579&lang=eng_news

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