BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
16/08/2007
Belarus police block Polish politicians at border
Minsk - Belarusian police blocked a visit to the former Soviet republic by a group of Polish politicians, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday.
The Polish officials had been intending to participate in a memorial ceremony in the Belarusian city Grodno for Polish soldiers that died in the first half of the 20th century.
Belarus was the scene of intense fighting between the Soviet Union and Poland in the early 1920s, and again in the late 1930s.
Donald Tusk, leader of the Citizens' Platform opposition party, was among the officials denied entrance by Belarusian border police, who according to the report gave no reason for the refusal.
Michael Dvorchik, an assistant in Poland's ruling government, had his entrance blocked on grounds Belarus had declared him 'persona non grata', the Belapan news agency reported.
The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday sent Belarus an official note complaining of the incident.
The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (BMFA) was quick to respond, claiming it had already warned Warsaw the Polish politicians would be refused entrance for their support to ethnic Polish groups within Belarus.
'Every country has a list of persons it does not want to admit, and Belarus is no exception,' said Maria Vanyshina, a BMFA spokeswoman. 'It appeared to us there was no possible reason for this visit (by the Polish politicians) other than for public relations purposes.'
'There was the possibility their visit would inflame ethnic tensions, and so we refused them entry,' she said.
Some Polish politicians, among them Tusk, have called for stronger support by Warsaw to ethnic Poles in Belarus, and a more energetic Polish effort to bring democracy to the country, which is ruled by authoritarian President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
Tusk raised hackles in Belarus in 2005, during visit to Grodno during which he called for Belarus' Poles to consider themselves under Warsaw's protection, a statement attacked by Lukashenko as interference in Belarusian internal affairs.
A former collective farm boss, Lukashenko in recent months has cracked down on ethnic Polish groups, claiming NATO nations are attempting to use them to build networks of agents to undermine his regime.
c 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Source:
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