BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

13/12/2006

Belarus Opposition Leader Says EU, G8 Fail To Confront Lukashenko

Belarus opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich on Wednesday criticized the European Union and G8 industrial nations for what he termed their failure to confront authoritarian Belarus leader Aleksander Lukashenko.

"I think that Europe still has not found a method under which democracy can supported in countries under dictatorship," said Milinkevich in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt.

Milinkevich, who was Tuesday awarded a prestigious European Parliament prize for freedom of thought, urged the EU to forge a more robust system for supporting democratic structures, civil society and a free media.

"We often have the feeling that Europe has forgotten us," he said.

Milinkevich said opposition leaders had called both on European Union and Group of Eight (G8) members to raise the Belarus problem at last July's G8 summit in St Petersburg and at two EU-Russia summits in Finland in October and November.

"Unfortunately this was not done at either St Petersburg ... nor in Finland," he noted.

Russia is a main backer of the hardline leadership in Belarus which used to be a part of the Soviet Union.

The Belarus opposition leader appealed to the international community not to recognise a possible referendum on the merger of Belarus with Russia, because Belarus was not a democracy.

Milinkevich ran against Lukashenko in the March 2006 presidential elections, which the EU and the US condemned as seriously flawed. The opposition leader was held in a Minsk jail for two weeks after the elections.

In February, Milinkevich had asked EU lawmakers for their support, but Belarus authorities denied a delegation of MEP election observers entry to the country.

c 2006 DPA

Source:

http://www.playfuls.com/news_10_5191-Belarus-Opposition-Leader-Says-EU-G8-Fail-To-Confront-Lukashenko.html

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