&host=rt.com&uri=/politics/lukashenko-poland-belarus-sikorski/&via=(none)&ua=CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html))
Poland urges Lukashenko to give up power
Published: 03 August, 2011, 12:21
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko (RIA Novosti / STF)
TAGS: Conflict, EU, Protest, Politics, Belarus, Lukashenko, Opposition
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has called on Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko to begin talks on a peaceful handover of power.
In an interview with the British newspaper the Financial Times, Poland’s top diplomat also advised Lukashenko not to hold onto his seat like some North African leaders have done.
According to the minister, the poor state of the economy and the political isolation of the former Soviet republic are the result of “Lukanomics” in the economic and political spheres” of the state.
“So I believe that the topic for discussion with regards to Mr Lukashenko should be Belarus’s transition to democracy and his own orderly departure from power,” Sikorski told FT.
The Polish diplomat also noted that it would favorable for Lukashenko “not to learn from” Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. While the first one was ousted following the Egyptian revolution in February this year, Colonel Gaddafi is still not ready to abandon his grip on power, despite months of violent uprising between his regime and the opposition, NATO bombings, and numerous civilian causalities.
Sikorski suggested that Lukashenko should rather follow the example of Poland’s last Communist leader – Wojciech Jaruzelski. He resigned after an agreement to hold democratic elections in Poland was reached in 1989.
Despite Lukashenko’s violent crackdown on the opposition after the December 2010 election which secured him a fourth term in office, the European Union did not kick Belarus out of the “Eastern Partnership” project.The initiative launched in 2009 was aimed at developing close economic and political ties with six former Soviet republics – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – in exchange for democratic reforms.
According to Sikorski, the decision to keep Belarus in the project was right, since “arrangements and advantages of the Eastern Partnership would benefit the Belarusian people”.
In January, the EU reinstated a visa ban on President Lukashenko and other Belarusian officials as a response against the government’s suppression of opposition activists.
03.08.2011, 10:52
2 comments
Russia’s NATO ambassador said to return to domestic politicsThe Congress of Russian Communities (KRO), created by Dmitry Rogozin in the 1990s, is reportedly preparing to join United Russia’s Popular Front. |
03.08.2011, 12:42
1 comment
Poland uses theories in plane crash probe - RussiaRussian transportation minister, Igor Levitin, has strongly rejected the Polish report on Lech Kaczynski’s plane crash, saying that Russian flight controllers could not make decisions for the crew of an international flight. |
Sevodnya, Belarusians have more to say in Belarus than English do in England and Americans do in the US. Besides of that, there's not 1 Belarusian who tells politicians in other countries what to do or not. This western arrogance should be halted, because there are already too much of this people creating only chaos and death all over the world. And you are one of the millions of ignorants who defends those policies. Better keep your comments for your own countries policies. I'm sure there's much more to critisize over there!
RT gives many point's of view etc etc...Yet the questions of nazis fascist filtrationinto the system is not expose to the mediain any manner. Such be the case in thehistory when over a thousand nazis polesgave the germans the border geo.info on the road to moscow. Is something missing historical wise thinking
sevodnya_net, I don't know from where you got that idea that Belarusians (or Russians for that matter) don't know what to do, cannot say or cannot do things in their own countries. dd is right (and I based it on my own experience living in both Russia and the US) -- Americans (while may say things publicly) do not have more power to change things in the country than Russians, for example. Knowing their spirit, I believe, Belarusians have enough freedom to control their lives and not to be lectured by "dogs sitting on the chains" who think that they are living in the free world and consider this as demonstration of their "freedom" to bark on everyone they see outside the fence who is not like them or not familiar to them. They fail to see, though, that doing so -- they serve their masters by helping them to promote their political agenda.