First deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus Vasily Pugachev will visit Beirut on Monday, January 20. RIA “Novosti” correspondent reports that the official “will discuss with the Lebanese colleagues the ways of extending and strengthening Belarusian-Lebanese relations”. The news sounds particularly astounding in light of the recent scandal with the seizure of military consignment on the territory of Lebanon en route to Iraq from Belarus.

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Local executive in the person of the head of the district executive committee Stanislav Yurgel demands to halt the activities of the editor of the newspaper Romuald Ulan as an individual entrepreneur and addressed over the matter the Grodno region economic court. The newspaper’s personnel are convinced that the authorities are simply trying to silence the popular regional edition.

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Outcomes of this stage of the election campaign will be made known only on January 17, Radio Svaboda was told by the secretary of the Central Electoral Commission Nikolai Lozovik. He explains the delay by saying that they need to gather and process the data, emanating from more than 6000 constituencies.

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BPF representatives addressed the authorities with a protest appeal. None of the 33 members of their party were included into the district commissions on the elections into the City Hall. BPF Council believes that this testifies to the executive’s violation of Electoral Code.

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Kiev procuracy intends to more thoroughly investigate into the death on the territory of Belarus of a director of the news agency “Ukrainian news” Mikhail Kolomiyts, said the prosecutor of Kiev Vasily Prisyazhnuk. In the near future Belarus will be repeatedly visited by the Ukrainian operative group, which will try to define possible contacts of Kolomiyts, reasons for his coming to Belarus and particularly to the forest of Molodechno, where his body had been unearthed.

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