BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

03/08/2006

Latvia expels Belarus embassy diplomat

Latvian Foreign Ministry has declared a First Secretary of the Belarus Embassy in Riga a persona non-grata, and asked him to leave the country within 24 hours news agencies are reporting today. Online paper NovoNews writes that the diplomat's name is Dmitry Krayushkin. The ministry says the activities of the Belarus embassy employee violated the status of a diplomat, but refuses to make further comments. In the language of diplomats, the "violation of the diplomatic practice", as the Foreign Minister of Latvia

Artis Pabriks characterized the diplomat' s activity to BNS news agency, means espionage, NovoNews notes. "If Belarus had any grounds to consider that the Latvian diplomat had undertaken any unlawful activities, there exists a generally accepted practice under international law on how to address such issues," the ministry says adding that no such steps were undertaken. The ministry noted that a bilateral agreement on legal assistance has been concluded between Latvia and Belarus, and opportunities provided by it were not used during the course of the case involving the diplomat.

The expulsion of the Belarus diplomat follows a recent incident with a Latvian diplomat in Belarus, who was charged on July 28 with disseminating pornography. The case began last Tuesday when the Belarusian secret service, which still goes by the Soviet name KGB, stormed a Latvian diplomat's apartment in Minsk saying they suspected the Latvian of distributing pornographic materials. Some DVDs were confiscated - with the Belarusians claiming they are porn videos and the Latvians countering that they are merely old recordings of Belarusian news programs. The Latvian Embassy in Minsk said, "the search in the diplomat's house was a gross violation of the Vienna Convention [on diplomatic immunity] and international agreements."

A similar case occurred in January of 2005 when a Czech diplomat was expelled from Belarus following accusations that he was courting a 16-year-old boy, Spiegel Online writes. A German diplomat and his Ukrainian partner were booted out of the country in 2004, it adds.

Source:

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1011

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