Polish Foreign Minister Vlodzimezh Chimoshevich formulated his country’s vision of EU stance towards Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Moldova at the international conference “EU enlargement and good neighborhood policy”. Chimoshevich believes that the EU member-states should develop a “consecutive, all-encompassing structure of their eastern politics”, which must form the eastern EU direction. According to the Polish official, the Eastern direction must have non-governmental background and widely use the experience, accumulated by NGOs.

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Satisfaction over the rates of trade-economic cooperation between Belarus and Iraq was shared on February 26 by the chairman of the “council of the republic” Alexander Voitovich in course of his encounter with the Iraqi ambassador in Belarus Salman Zeidan. The successfulness of their economic cooperation, he said, is partially explained by the active work of the joint commission on trade-economic cooperation, the fifth session of which took place in Baghdad in late December. During the meetings in the diverse Iraqi ministries Belarusian side signed contracts, worth overall around $80mln.

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Ahead of the following session of the committee for the freedom of association of the International Labor Organization, scheduled for March 6, the International Confederation of free trade unions forwarded to the ILO director general Huan Somavia their address, calling on him to remind the Belarusian leadership about the commitments, they bound themselves with when entering this organization and ratifying its fundamental conventions, reports BelaPAN.

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Co-chairman of the public association “Private Property” Leonid Malakhov received a phone call this morning from someone, who called himself a KGB agent Lomot Sergei Petrovich and offered to meet him. Malakhov declined to do so and proposed the caller to send an official KGB subpoena. In response, the man recommended to meet “without too much turmoil”. However, the entrepreneur decisively refused to obey. At hearing that Sergei Lomot pledged he would soon send him an official KGB summons for interrogation. Malakhov views the incident as an attempt to exert pressure on him prior to the People’s March “For Better Life!”, scheduled for March 12 (which he is an organizer of). However, said Malakhov, they will fail to threaten him anyway.

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Belarus is ready to become a connecting link in the dialogue between the Non-Alignment Movement and CIS on most poignant problems of the present-day, said at the Movement’s XIIIth plenary in Kuala-Lumpur on Monday the Foreign Minister of Belarus Mikhail Khvostov. In his opinion, the Non-Alignment Movement’s activities must be based upon the dialogue between nations and civilizations.

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Representatives of the Bobruisk town hall and local law-enforcers broke into the office of the Belarusian organization of political repressions’ victims on February 25 morning. The raid has been carried out upon the request of the organization’s newly appointed leadership, supported by the Bobruisk authorities. The organization’s chairman Anna Bogach claims that the regime’s main task is to liquidate Belarus’ only museum of political repressions’ victims, allocated in their office.

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“I assume that intelligentsia, at least most talented and honest part of it, is not only ready to struggle but already does that. Vasil Bykov, Radzim Goretsky, Rygor Baradulin, Nil Gilevich, Sergei Zakonnikov, Anatoly Grytskevich speak through the press, fight for the national idea and country’s future, try to keep people away from wrong decision-making and behavior, such as, for instance, the formation of a weird union state. These people are using their own technique, while the rest of methods must be used by the political parties and youth organizations. Our intelligentsia cannot be blamed for indifference towards the future of Belarus,” – said in an interview to the Charter’s press-center Belarusian poet Genadz Buravkin.

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Alexander Lukashenko arrived for rest to Russia. The Belarusian leader intends to spend a fortnight at the mountain resort Krasnaya Polyana “Red Meadow” near Sochi.

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Delegation of the International Confederation of free trade unions intends to pay visit to Belarus on February 27-28 in order to familiarize themselves with the situation in the Belarusian Congress of democratic trade unions, whose accession to ICFTU will be considered later in June.

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The activities of the general jurisprudence has serious flaws, said at the press-conference the chairman of the Supreme Court of Belarus Sukalo, noting that there has been no improvement of the justice’s quality in the year 2002 whatsoever.

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