Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has grown wary of the Kremlin since Russia's invasion of Georgia
The upcoming Czech presidency of the European Union may invite Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko to an extraordinary EU summit early next year, if his regime initiates democratic reform. On 13 October the EU temporarily lifted a visa ban on Lukashenko and 35 other high-ranking members of the government, up to April 2009, stressing that the period will not be extended if the regime backslides or recognizes South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
“Belarus has to become a member of the European Eastern Partnership [an EU plan to engage its eastern neighbors] first and of course there has to be some improvement on its way to democracy,” said a Czech foreign ministry spokeswoman
The Czech Republic – an EU leader in promoting democracy – has told Belarus opposition groups they will be seated at the summit, while also giving Lukashenko a December deadline for further reforms.
As the EU Observer notes:
Belarus neighbours Lithuania and Poland admitted the sanctions move was based on geopolitics – an attempt to “save” Belarus from absorption by Russia – rather than a response to Minsk’s release of political prisoners in August. Sweden went even further by suggesting Mr Lukashenko should one day stand trial for the disappearances of four opposition activists in 1999 and 2000.
Lukashenko “has been nervous about” the Kremlin’s aggression in Georgia, said Stephen Flanagan, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and grown wary of Moscow’s claim of “special rights” to Belarus, which the Kremlin considers its “near abroad”.
The US government wants more progress on democracy and human rights before it will consider easing sanctions against the regime. The September 28 parliamentary elections failed to meet international standards, but in a warning considered as a setback to democracy, Lukashenka demanded the West accept the results if it wanted to improve relations and wean Minsk away from Russia’s embrace.
Freedom House has called for Minsk’s application for an IMF stabilization loan to be rejected on political grounds. “No other country approaching the IMF has a record of broad scale repression that equals that of Belarus,” Freedom House director Jennifer Windsor said. “Providing Belarus with a loan now would effectively reward President Lukashenko for conducting a sham election, marginalizing the opposition and crushing independent media.”
The travel ban on leading officials will be restored next April if democratic reform fails to materialize and all 27 EU countries consent unanimously to permanently lifting the ban. The EU expects that direct access to and communications with leading Belarusian officials will give Brussels more influence within the ruling elite and help counter the voice of the Kremlin. But, one analyst notes, “[N]either of these provisos will provide much solace to the Belarusian opposition, particularly those who carried out futile campaigns for election to the parliament under adverse and uncompromising conditions.”
The main challenge for the EU is to convince the Belarusian elite to undertake gradual political liberalisation through engagement, argues the Pontis Foundation. “The goal of Western policy should be to encourage the opening up of the country …. through small steps targeting changes of rules and regulations which would start to ease the current political system,” the Bratislava-based NGO contends. “Allowing unrestricted flow of foreign assistance to local NGOs, accepting civil society and allowing independent media to work freely would create more space for policy alternatives,” it concludes.
The regime has aggressively curbed independent civil society and pro-democracy groups. In 2004, Belarus enacted provisions allowing the regime to close an NGO for violating laws restricting the use of foreign funds or for demonstrating in violation of a law curtailing mass meetings. In 2003-4, government officials dissolved 71 leading civil society groups. A December 2005 measure introduced severe penalties for activities deemed conducive to fomenting “revolution” in Belarus, including training people to take part in “group activities that flagrantly violate the public peace”.
The EU has been criticized by Belarusian opposition groups and their international supporters for its overly timid and bureaucratic approach to aiding Belarusian civil society. An internal EU document notes that “international assistance projects must undergo a registration procedure [in Belarus] and be scrutinized by a ministerial level Committee for tax exemption and a formal approval before they can be started.”
Any meaningful dialogue with the regime must be transparent and based on tough conditionality, argue Dzianis Melyantsou and Vitali Silitski in a recent analysis for the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies. They are critical of the fact that “in its willingness to normalize the relations with Minsk, the EU made unilateral concessions without putting previously any concrete conditions on liberalization,” a failure that Belarusian authorities will interpret as weakness. Neighboring governments (like Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine), Belarusian political parties, think tanks, and independent civil society groups must also be engaged in the dialogue.
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