BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

08/12/2006

Former Belarusian Leader Says 1991 Belavezha Accord Was Coup De Grace For USSR

Former Belarusian Supreme Soviet speaker Stanislau Shushkevich has told RFE/RL's Belarus Service that in signing the so-called Belavezha Agreement on the dissolution of the USSR at Viskuli in Belarus's Belavezha Forest on December 8, 1991, he jointly with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk only confirmed that the Soviet Union was already dead at that time. "Those who consider [the Belavezha Agreement the] breakup of the [Soviet] Union are wrong, because the union had already been broken up by the putschists [August 1991 aborted coup leaders] and by [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev, who did not want to agree to a confederation. We had enough courage to acknowledge that [the breakup] had taken place," Shushkevich said. According to Shushkevich, the subsequent removal of nuclear weapons from Belarus was a more momentous event for the country than the collapse of the Soviet Union. "I think that the main event in my life was that I did everything to unconditionally remove nuclear weapons from the territory of Belarus. This, incidentally, became possible thanks to [the agreement at] Viskuli.... Just imagine Belarus being a nuclear state today, under such a troublesome leadership that does not realize its responsibility for stability in Europe," Shushkevich said. JM

Source:

http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2006/12/3-cee/cee-081206.asp