BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

08/10/2008

Belarusian opposition backs EU overtures

By Rikard Jozwiak

EU should maintain dialogue with Belarus's authoritarian regime but also maintain pressure on the leadership, opposition says.

Belarus's leading opposition politicians today expressed support for the EU's decision to meet Belarus's previously ostracised foreign minister, but urged the EU to maintain the visa ban it imposed on dozens of leading Belarusian officials following the flawed presidential election in 2006.

Alyaksandr Milinkevich and Alyaksandr Kazulin, who were in Brussels to attend a European Parliament debate on the political situation in Belarus, said that the decision made by EU's foreign-policy chief Javier Solana to invite the Belarusian foreign minister, Serhiy Martynov, for talks on the sidelines of a gathering of EU foreign ministers was politically sensible. "The recent elections were not democratic," Milinkevich said, referring to parliamentary elections held on 28 September in which no opposition candidate won a seat in parliament or even secured 20% of the vote in their constituency. "But there is no alternative to dialogue," Milinkevich continued. "If one were to build a new Berlin wall around Belarus and completely isolate it, one would lose all one's influence."

However, maintaining the visa bans on individuals who have been directly involved in breaching the standards of democratic elections or in violating human rights is essential, the two men said. There is debate in Brussels about the possibility of partially suspending those targeted sanctions.

Nor, they said, should efforts to gain influence over the regime of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka mean excluding the opposition from talks. "It would have been good to invite Kazulin and Milinkevich as well as Martynov", said Kazulin, who slammed Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski for not meeting the opposition when he held a meeting with Martynov recently.

They both threw their support behind other ideas intended to open Belarus up, pointing out that in their view pro-European sentiment in Belarus is growing. "You cannot close the door on Belarus. We insist on a dialogue", Kazulin said. Among the ideas they backed was one contained in a resolution passed by the European Parliament today, which called on the Council of Ministers - the forum for EU states - and the European Commission to make it easier for Belarusians to gain visas to the EU, in part by reducing the cost of a visa from ?60 to ?35.

But they also urged the EU to push for specific concessions from Belarus. "The main issues in Belarus have not been resolved," Kazulin said. "We still have articles of the penal code in the country that allow the persecution of political prisoners," he said by way of example.

Kazulin was himself a political prisoner, allegedly for hooliganism and incitement to mass disorder after a political protest in Minsk in March 2006, but he was eventually released in August before his term ended. His release was followed by that of other two other political prisoners. Those moves have not, however, been followed by legislative changes.

Kazulin, whose wife died while he was in prison and who went on hunger strike on several occasions during his imprisonment, is one of this year's nominees for the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize. Milinkevich won the prize in 2006, a year in which he challenged Lukashenka for the presidency.

During their visit, Milinkevich and Kazulin met the Parliament's political grouping as well as the Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra, whose country will chair the European Council next year.

Source:

http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2008/10/belarusian-opposition-backs-eu-overtures/62634.aspx

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