The formation of the district electoral commissions ended on January 15, but it took the Central Electoral Commission quite a while to draw the conclusions and calculate the statistics. They explained the delay by huge volumes of work to be done. Throughout the country there have been formed 6,681 commissions, which encompass 72,328 people. In light of this figure, the number of political parties’ members – 162 – simply gets lost. Active politicians are overlooked practically everywhere.

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On Monday the court of Turin resumed court hearings on the so-called case of “Streshunsky and Co”. The state prosecutors accuse the group of citizens from Ukraine, Russia, Greece, Great Britain and Croatia in conspiring a criminal plot for selling arms to Yugoslavia contrary to the UN sanctions in 1992-94. According to the case files, in 1992-94 the Global Technologies International company, headed by Streshinsky, supplied eight consignments of ammunition from Ukraine and Belarus to Yugoslavia opposite to the UN arms embargo. Meantime, the state export organizations of Belarus and Ukraine were presented phony certificates of the final user.

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Informal CIS summit will take place in Kiev rather than Ivano-Frankovsky region, as planned before, “Interfax” was told on Monday in the chief informational department of the Ukrainian president’s Administration.

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In course of Vladimir Putin’s visit to Minsk police have been operating in an emergency regime but all the same failed to avoid clashes. Despite the order of the police leadership not to detain anyone and prevent any incidents, a few riot policemen in civilian beat the women from the Human Rights League.

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Belarus counted on this visit a lot, which is quite understandable, as far as only a few foreign leaders visit the country. The analytical program of the local TV ran a long report on how Minsk was preparing to meet the Russian president. According to the presenter, the financial expenditures could be compared only with George Bush’s coming (though president Bush has never been in Minsk).

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The lawsuit was instituted under article 424/3 of the Belarusian Penal code – power abuse. BelaPAN refers to the press-service of the Committee for state control and the department of financial investigations in Minsk and Minsk region that the company’s commercial director in the years 2001-2002 purposefully gave instructions for the sale of costly vehicles in breach of the agreement on preliminary payment. As a result of the unsanctioned exceeding of terms for holding exterior trade operations, “BelAz” faced economic sanctions in the size of 58,9mln Russian rubles and $4,2mln, reports the press-service.

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