BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

03/08/2007

Belarusian President Orders To Pay Gas Debt To Gazprom Slams Russia For Desire To 'Privatize' Belarus And Vows To End 'Humiliation' By Moscow

President Alyaksandr Lukashenka declared on August 2 that Belarus will pay what it owes to Gazprom for gas deliveries in the first half of 2007, Belarusian and world media reported. "Today I've given an order to take this money from our reserves and pay this $460 million," Lukashenka said while visiting the editorial office of the government newspaper "Sovetskaya Belorussiya." "Of course, we are depleting our resources, but our good friends, in particular [Venezuelan President] Hugo Chavez, expressed their readiness to provide a loan on conditions advantageous to us. Western banks are also ready to provide resources for us.... Today we will pay from the reserves and replenish them within a month with credits. Let them take [the money] and live in peace," Lukashenka said. Interfax reported the same day that Belarus has paid $190 million out of its $456 million debt to Gazprom. On August 1, Gazprom threatened to reduce gas supplies to Belarus by 45 percent as of August 3 over the unpaid debt (see "RFE/RL Newsline," August 2, 2007). Reuters reported on August 3 that Gazprom postponed cutting gas supplies by one week after Minsk made the $190 million payment. JM

President Lukashenka on August 3 condemned Russia for what he said is Moscow's desire to "privatize not only [profitable Belarusian] enterprises but all the country," Belapan reported. "I have never said that Belarus could be included into Russia," Lukashenka said. "I have spoken about a union, and the building of a union should take place on equal conditions. But then they puff their cheeks [and say] it's impossible. For the [Russian] leadership under [former President Boris] Yeltsin it was apparently possible; all accords [on Belarusian-Russian integration] were signed then. Russia's new leadership considers those accords disadvantageous and is beginning to denounce them." JM

President Lukashenka also revealed on August 3 that at the beginning of this year Russian President Vladimir Putin preliminarily agreed that Moscow will disburse a loan of $1.5 billion-$2 billion to Minsk in connection with a gas-price hike, Belapan reported. According to Lukashenka, Moscow subsequently offered an unacceptable yearly interest rate of 8.5 percent for the loan. "The last visit of Belarus's prime minister to Russia was humiliating. I told him not to travel there anymore," Lukashenka said about Belarusian Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski's recent talks on the Russian loan with his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Fradkov. "There have been hints recently that I should travel to the Kremlin and beg on my knees [for the loan]. Maybe someone else will go there and beg on his knees, but I won't," Lukashenka added. He pledged to make Russia pay for the humiliation suffered by Belarus. "But we will also ask Russia to pay for everything. We will find this $2 billion-$3 billion. We are not the people that should be humiliated," he noted. JM

Source:

http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2007/08/3-cee/cee-030807.asp