BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

27/07/2007

Fired Belarusian KGB Chief Vows Loyalty To President

Stsyapan Sukharenka, the former chairman of the State Security Committee (KGB) who was dismissed from the post by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka last week (see "RFE/RL Newsline," July 24, 2007), said in a press interview on July 26 that he remains loyal to the president, Belapan reported. "I've always been the president's ally because I don't see any alternative to him today," Sukharenka said. He denied rumors that a rift between the KGB and the Interior Ministry might serve as a reason for his dismissal. "I did not have a war with them and do not today," he said. When asked whether the KGB had really discovered a person who had been trained to use dead rats to contaminate urban water supplies ahead of the 2006 presidential elections, an allegation that was ridiculed by the opposition, Sukharenka stuck to the story. "One shouldn't mock this, it did happen. And the news conference that we held then helped prevent that situation to a great degree," he said. During a televised news conference held shortly before the vote on March 19, 2006, Sukharenka played a videotaped interview with a man who had allegedly confessed that the plan to contaminate water supplies with dead rats was part of a Western-funded plot to destabilize the situation in Belarus and bring an opposition politician to power. JM

Source:

http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2007/07/3-cee/cee-270707.asp

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