Alexander Lukashenko doesn’t intend to come up with any new initiatives of his at the Moscow talks. He said this today upon his arrival in the Russian capital. According to him, over the recent period the sides voiced numerous proposals. Many of them, he stressed, had been fulfilled in the past. Lukashenko added that only Germany could compete with Belarus in the scope of her cooperation with Russia. The Belarusian leader said that they would mostly concentrate on the economic interaction and political issues.

---

In course of the current visit Putin and Lukashenko will try to discuss one more time the draft Constitution of the “common state”. Its previous version, prepared by the Belarusian colleagues, was called by Putin “legal mess” and proposed to the document’s authors to separate “flies from chops”, report “Vedomosti”.

---

On Tuesday Alexander Lukashenko arrives with a working visit in Moscow. On August 14 he is expected to meet with the president of Russia Vladimir Putin. As stressed by the Belarusian leader at his recent meeting with the state leadership, “certain pause” in high-level contacts must not be taken for a halt in the bilateral activities, which continue to be quite intense. Current visit to Moscow will be rather a short one – it will last but for a few hours. Negotiations of the two leaders will start in Kremlin at 11a.m. Minsk time.

---

Today Moscow will be visited by the president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. Kremlin claims that his visit will be a working one. This once again proves that Moscow takes her time in unification with Belarus, doing it gradually and solely on her own conditions. This will be Lukashenko’s first visit since their relations with Putin cooled off in June this year. The two leaders were supposed to meet earlier, but, say the Russian Administration officials, “first, Vladimir Putin was too busy, then Alexander Lukashenko couldn’t come because of harvesting.”

---

Seemingly, there commenced a final round of negotiations, which will further define the destiny of the Belarusian-Russian relations. If one casts away long and boring speeches by our president about the brotherhood of our nations and forgets an all-piercing KGB glance, with which Vladimir Putin looked at his colleague, the only thing left for the two will be giving 100% guarantees to one another. The period of political promises and deceits by Lukashenko was put to a halt by Putin in spring this year when he quoted a famous saying about “flies and chops”. It took our political leadership all of the summer to search for the uneaten chops and now they are taking them to Kremlin.

---

Belarusian opposition intends to demand from the country’s authorities to insert changes into the Electoral Code, regulating the implementation of elections into the local bodies, said the Consultative Council of opposition political parties, which convened for a Minsk meeting on Tuesday, reports “Rosbalt”.

---

On Tuesday, at 5p.m. the Russian TV and radio stations resumed operation in Belarus, reports “Interfax”. According to the news agency, at the moment the authorities unleashed investigation into the real root-causes of the incident to find out who the responsible persons are. However, RIA “Novosti” reports with a reference to the BT leadership that “the Ministry of communications of Belarus finished prophylactic works, which caused temporary halt in broadcasting of Russian TV channels. From now on their programs will appear on air in an usual format.” This is but another blunder on their behalf and an awkward attempt to disguise it.

---

Around 60% of the Belarusian exterior trade is Russia-oriented. RIA “Novosti” was told on Tuesday in the press-service of the Belarusian embassy in Russia that Belarus occupies the third spot in Russia’s trade turnover next only to Germany and Italy. In 2001 the trade turnover balance between Russia and Belarus exceeded $11bln, whereas in 2000 it averaged $9bln. According to the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, by June this year the trade turnover between the two countries fell for the first time over an extended period: export of the Belarusian commodity to Russia contracted by 6,2%, while the import of Russian goods – by 3,3%.

---