On July 31 the Vitebsk regional court decided to liquidate the public association “Center of youth initiatives “Kontur”. The association became well known in the course of mobilization campaign at the presidential elections 2001.

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USA keeps on getting new testimonies of the weapon-trade between Belarus and Saddam Hussein’s regime. The American ambassador Michael Kozak declared that in exclusive interview for BelaPAN, timed to coincide with the termination of his being the head of American diplomatic mission in Minsk. According to the ambassador, American specialists in Iraq accessed to certain “files and documents”. So, we don’t need to resort to special services in order to expose the truth.

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On July 31 at 8.30 the group of Lyceum students and their parents, just like a day before, came to the building of city educational administration of Minsk executive committee. About 50 persons raised the banners with the following slogans: ‘ The only Belarusian Lyceum is being liquidated’, “Belarusian future to the Belarusian Lyceum”, “Let us study” and other. They created the “live corridor” to see the officials who hamper the Lyceum’s functioning.

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The Supreme Economic Court declined the complaint of “Novaja Gazeta Smorgoni” founder Romuald Ulan having recognized his deprivation of the right to run entrepreneur’s activity legal. It was his fourth attempt to appeal against the Grodno regional economic court’s decision.

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Organization on security and cooperation in Europe has criticized again Belarusian authorities for limiting freedom of speech. On Thursday the OSCE representative Freimut Duve stated that the halting of “Belorusskaja Delovaja Gazeta” and expulse from the country of the NTV correspondent became new examples of persecution of independent mass media by the official Minsk.

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Ukraine doesn’t express any curiosity as for the ruble transforming into the united Russian-Belarusian currency. The president of the National Bank of Ukraine Sergey Tigipko stated at the press conference. “I think that every country has the right to take independent decisions concerning currency unions. To my mind, I don’t want hurt Belarus and Russia; Ukraine has another guiding line – European Union. We should direct our attention to integrating into the European structures as soon as possible. Sorry for saying that, but today we should find our bearings in euro and not in ruble.» underscored he.

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On July 30 Alexander Lukashenko edited the decree#336 “Issues of the Belarusian defense sport-technical association” In accordance with the document BelDSTA is transformed to the republican state-public association“ Voluntary association of the assistance to army, aviation and fleet of the Republic of Belarus (DOSAAF). This organization was called namely like this in the USSR. Its main tasks are “preparation of the population for the defense of the republic, training of the specialists for the Armed Forces, other forces and military troops of Belarus, development of aviation, technical and military relating sports as well as patriotic youth’s bringing up.”

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