BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

12/10/2007

Belarussian leader lashes out at Putin, Gazprom

MINSK (AFP) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday lashed out at neighbouring Russia, after a recent congress of a party backed by President Vladimir Putin, and accused gas giant Gazprom of trying to strip Belarus bare.

"I watched a few moments (of the United Russia party's congress) and it made me want to vomit," Lukashenko told Russian reporters.

During the October 1 congress, Putin announced that he would head the party lists for the December 2 legislative election, suggesting that he could stay on as prime minister after presidential elections due in March next year.

"I am very much concerned that you will go down and be sucked into Soviet times, when all would rise up and shout hooray and hail," said Lukashenko, whom Washington has dubbed "Europe's last dictator" and whose rule, reinforced by controversial March 2006 elections, is marked by a vicious suppression of the opposition.

Ties between Moscow and Minsk were poisoned by a spat over high prices for Russian gas supplies to Belarus, which until recently benefitted from extremely low prices, which served as Moscow's chief tool of political support for Lukashenko's authoritarian regime.

Lukashenko on Friday also accused Gazprom of trying to racket Belarus by raising prices and suggesting that it could take over Belarussian pipelines and oil refineries.

"We used to take money away from medicine to upgrade our refineries. Today your rich companies, swollen with that money, suggest that we hand them over so they could load them up. I see one reason only -- give what you have," Lukashenko said.

"Give to those companies, pipelines to Gazprom, oil refineries to other companies. But our law forbids privatisation of these enterprises," Lukashenko added.

Source:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/071012/19/14nzw.html