Reuters - 03.02.2006

Reuters

Belarus leader denounces West

By Andrei Makhovsky

MINSK - President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday defiantly told Western critics to stay out of Belarus's affairs, while an opposition rival for the presidency was beaten by security forces and detained for several hours.

Lukashenko, who faces tougher Western sanctions if a March 19 election which he is heavily favored to win is denounced as unfair, vowed to take whatever steps were necessary to prevent Western-inspired subversion of his administration.

Before his televised speech, academic Alexander Kozulin, one of two opposition candidates, was beaten and driven away to a police station.

He was released in the early evening as a second opposition candidate, Alexander Milinkevich, held an illegal rally in the city center -- with up to 3,000 supporters, more than usual.

Lukashenko, speaking for three hours, said his stewardship had boosted living standards. Western countries, he said, had no right to give lessons to his former Soviet state.

"It is not for (the West) to teach us about human rights. Let them deal with their own affairs. They have plunged the entire Middle East into blood. We see your democracy soaked in blood," he said.

Speaking a day after the state security service, called the KGB, said it had thwarted an attempt to seize power, Lukashenko told 2,500 delegates at the "Belarussian National Congress" that opposition activists should be drafted into the army.

"And if they don't go, let them answer to the law. They all dodged military service in their time," he said.

Kozulin, 50, had been attempting to register for the mass gathering addressed by the president when plainclothes police knocked him to the ground and removed him from the hall.

Officers tried to stop journalists from filming the incident and scuffles broke out. A Reuters television correspondent was beaten and injured.

BEATING DENOUNCED

U.S. President George W. Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley denounced the beating and said the world needed to show more outrage about Belarus.

"Obviously there's an election coming up. We would like it to be free and fair. And a prerequisite of free and fair elections is that you don't beat up opposition candidates or opposition supporters and throw them in jail," he said.

Poland, which backs the opposition, said it would urge the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Belarus if Lukashenko used force against the opposition.

"If elections will not be conducted properly and Lukashenko uses force against demonstrators, we will try to convince the EU countries to impose tough economic sanctions on this country," a senior government source told Reuters in Warsaw.

Lukashenko remains popular in Belarus, particularly in the provinces, where he is widely seen as a guarantor against the instability of other ex-Soviet states.

Nina Shidlovskaya, a spokeswoman for Kozulin, former rector of the Belarussian State University, said after his release: "He's not terribly well. But his spirits are high."

Dozens of Kozulin supporters later had gathered outside the police station to demand his release. Police bundled about 20 into a bus and took them away. Several journalists, including a Reuters photographer, were briefly forced inside the station.

Milinkevich issued a statement denouncing the police action, saying the elections had now degenerated into a "farce".

A fourth candidate in the election, Sergei Gaidukevich, is an ally of the president.

(Additional reporting by Natalia Reiter in Warsaw)