Recent negotiations of five political parties, concerning their joint strategy for the parliamentary elections 2004 and leaders of youth organizations revealed certain differences in the approaches of the sides. As is known, the leaders of Belarus’ largest youth organizations Vladimir Kobets (ZUBR) and Pavel Severinets (Young Front) expressed their dissatisfaction with the talks, claiming that the political parties are simply using the youth for their own good. The young politicians prefer consolidation of all democratic forces and not just parties. This issue was raised today by the “Belorusskiye Novosti”.

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The web-site of the banned Grodno-based newspaper “Pagonya” resumed operation following a 4-months long break.

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A significant, if not crucial peculiarity of the present stage of the Russian-Belarusian integration, unleashed by Lukashenko and inherited by Putin from Eltsin, is its complete transparency. President Putin realizes well that the main condition of integration on behalf of Minsk is preservation of Lukashenko’s absolute power on the Belarusian territories, which are not dependent on Russia. It remains evident to president Lukashenko that for Russia, which entered the post-Eltsin’s era of stability and “strong hand”, the supposed merger with Belarus can only mean annexation of Belarus.

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Yesterday the Mogilev economic court held hearings on the independent edition “Novaya Gazeta Krycheva”. Entrepreneur Andrei Kuzmin addressed the court with a complaint over the Krychev district executive committee, which refused to approve the editorial board’s address. The judge of the Mogilev economic court Ivan Matulkov didn’t pass any decision on the matter. He referred to the businessman’s alleged failure to comply with a pre-trial order and officially left his complaint without consideration.

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