Minsk expects all EU sanctions to be lifted, official says

Minsk expects “all sanctions restricting cooperation” with the European Union to be lifted, Deputy Foreign Minister Valery Varanetski told reporters in Minsk on Friday, said BelaPAN.

Mr. Varanetski described the European Parliament’s resolution on Belarus adopted on Thursday as a step “in the right direction.” He stressed that Belarus and the EU should “create a legal framework for cooperation.”

The European Parliament’s resolution urged EU bodies to “continue the dialogue with and devise a policy vis-à-vis Belarus, subject to strict positive conditionality based on a gradual step-by-step approach, equipped with benchmarks, timetables, a revision clause and adequate financial resources.”

While insisting that the EU visa ban must not be abolished for “those directly involved in violating democratic election standards and human rights,” the European Parliament called “for consideration to be given to a six-month partial suspension of this sanction for other officials, provided that during that period the restrictive media law adopted at the end of June 2008 is amended before it is fully implemented.”

There are currently 41 people on the EU’s list of Belarusian officials subject to a visa ban and an assets freeze in connection with their alleged involvement in a crackdown on civil society and opposition activists in the country.

Four of them were added in October 2006. Those were Judge Alyaksey Rybakow who sentenced former presidential candidate Alyaksandr Kazulin to 5 1/2 years in prison; Syarhey Bortnik, the public prosecutor in the trial; Judge Leanid Yasinovich who handed down prison sentences to four independent election observation activists; and Andrey Mihun, the public prosecutor in the trial.

Thirty-one people, including Alyaksandr Lukashenka, were entered following a March 2006 presidential election for their alleged involvement in violations of international election standards and crackdowns on post-election protests.

Among them were then KGB chief Stsyapan Sukharenka; then Prosecutor General Pyotr Miklashevich; Henadz Nyavyhlas, then head of the Presidential Administration; Natallya Pyatkevich, deputy head of the Presidential Administration; Anatol Rubinaw, deputy head of the Presidential Administration; Aleh Pralyaskowski, presidential aide for ideology; the ministers of education, information and justice; the head of the Belarusian State Television and Radio Company; several lawmakers, the secretary of the central election commission; the chairman of the pro-government Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus; two district judges; and the chairpersons of the six regional election commissions and the Minsk city election commission in the 2006 presidential election.

Six people entered on the list earlier include four persons suspected of involvement in the 1999-2000 disappearances of Mr. Lukashenka’s opponents. Those were Interior Minister Uladzimir Navumaw; Viktar Sheyman, a former prosecutor general; Yury Sivakow, a former interior minister; and Dzmitry Pawlichenka, former commander of an Interior Troops unit. The latter three were implicated by the so-called Pourgourides Report in the alleged abduction and murder of opposition politicians Yury Zakharanka and Viktar Hanchar, businessman Anatol Krasowski and journalist Dzmitry Zavadski.

Lidziya Yyarmoshyna, head of the central election commission, and Yury Padabed, then chief of the Minsk riot police, were added to the list a few weeks after parliamentary elections and a constitutional referendum in November 2004.