Today nineteen years ago, in the night of 25 to 26 April 1986, the worst catastrophe in nuclear history occurred in the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine. After a violent explosion and subsequent fire in atomic reactor no.4, radioactive material was released into the atmosphere. Both the direct damage caused by radiation and the equally significant indirect economic, social, medical and ecological consequences have affected millions of people.Seventy percent of the fall-out came down in Belarus. More than seven million people are still suffering from the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster.

---

Politician Andrei Klimov, currently facing two separate criminal charges, has been transferred from a district police department to the pretrial detention center on Volodarskogo Street.

---

Belarus has chosen is way of development and is not going to leave it, told Alyaksandr Lukashenka, answering the questions of the journalists during the visit to Vetka district, Homel region. Lukashenka stressed that “Belarus has created its own model of development through suffering. That’s the way we go based on life. Why should we turn aside halfway and adopt somebody’s model of development? Russia is a huge country, it has its own peculiarities, and they are not appropriate for us. We have a compact republic, that is why we are to move in the chosen direction and to take from them only the elements that suit us”.

---

The GUUAM countries (Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova) support the democratic movement in Belarus, told Foreign Minister of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili at a press conference in Novosti agency on Tuesday. “There was a statement in support of democratic movements in Belarus and in support of society of this country. It is a norm in the modern world, if it is a democratic world,” she told.

---

A year ago the well-known Belarusian politician, former Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Belarus Mikhail Marynich was arrested. “This year could be named a critical one in forming position of the world community towards Belarus. On the example of my father’s arrest the world has seen the real face of Lukashenka’s dictatorship. It is an immoral, shameless, regime capable of anything. It is obvious that the case of Mikhail Marynich was a frame-up, it was a political order. And it is not forgotten. On April 29 in Strasbourg the hearings of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the case of my father are to be held. It show once again that the world community is concerned over the situation in our county,” told son of Mikhail Marynich, leader of civil initiative “Freedom to Political Prisoners!”, member of the Council of Civil Initiatives “Free Belarus” Pavel Marynich.

---

There is, at least according to Condoleezza Rice, one “outpost of tyranny” in the former Soviet Union. The outpost is not Turkmenistan, surely on every count the region’s most repressive regime. Nor is it Uzbekistan, perpetrator of torture of a sometimes medieval nature. Instead, the country that U.S. secretary of state listed alongside Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Zimbabwe was Belarus. Lukashenka may be increasingly repressive, he may (or, just possibly, may not be) responsible for the disappearances of five opponents, but to rank him as a greater tyrant than Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov and Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niazov is clearly an injustice.

---

Another criminal case for public insult of Alyaksandr Lukashenka could be brought up against an independent newspaper in Belarus soon. It follows from the answer of he Prosecutors’ Office of Partyzanski district of Minsk sent to editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper “Zgoda” Alyaksei Karol. A. Karol tried to bring to justice policemen who in the end of March this year stormed one of the apartments rented by him, and where journalists were working. Office equipment was seized by policemen.

---

British Ambassador Brian Bennett said that the European Commission may open its mission in Minsk. The European Commission has administered its Tacis program in Belarus through its office in Kyiv, the diplomat told reporters in Minsk on Monday. “Unfortunately, it [the office] is a long way away,” he said.

---

British Ambassador Brian Bennett stressed that the European Union (EU)’s enlargement represents no threat to Belarus. Talking to reporters in Minsk on Monday, the diplomat noted that the EU is interested in developing close ties with all neighbors, including with Belarus.

---

The ambassadors of Latvia and Lithuania to Belarus, Maira Mora and Jonas Paslauskas, respectively, on April 25 visited imprisoned opposition politician Mikhail Marinich. Mr. Marinich, who resigned as Belarus` Riga-based ambassador to Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in the summer of 2001 to run against Aleksandr Lukashenko in that fall`s presidential race, is currently treated in a prison hospital in Minsk. He was transferred there from a correctional facility in Orsha on March 15, after he was reportedly diagnosed as having a transient ischemic attack.

---

The European Union does not want to impose anything and simply tries to "help Belarus move along the road of those principles that it itself has accepted," said Brian Bennett, the British ambassador to Belarus at a news conference in Minsk on April 25.

---

Latvia plans to more actively assist in the democratization of Belarus, Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the United Civic Party (UCP), said in an interview with BelaPAN on Monday following his visit to Riga.

---

Strasbourg, 25 April. Aleksandr Lukashenko will not be invited to the Council of Europe`s summit scheduled to take place in Warsaw on May 16 and 17, said the Dutch president of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), Rene van der Linden, at a news conference on Monday.

---

A demonstration in support of Belarus` opposition was staged near the Belarusian embassy in Moscow on April 25 on the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Participating in the demonstration were about 50 people including members of the youth wing of the Union of Right Forces, representatives of the Defense youth movement and Belarusian opposition activists, according to the Echo of Moscow radio station.

---

The nationalist Conservative Christian Party (CCP) plans to hold a commemorative ceremony at the Kurapaty memorial on April 26 on the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The ceremony will start at 6 p.m, Valery Buivol, spokesman for the party, told BelaPAN.

---

The 19th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power station catastrophe, the largest man-made disaster in the history of the humankind, is marked on April 26. Traditionally a march “Charnobylsky Shliach” takes place in Minsk on April 26. This year the Minsk executive committee has officially sanctioned a meeting in front of the Chernobyl chapel (Karastayanava Street) from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Besides, the opposition activists are going to forward petitions to the Administration of the president with a demand to move people from badly contaminated areas, to provide medicines and treatment to people affected by Chernobyl, to stop production of foodstuffs in contaminated areas; to cancel limitations for humanitarian aid delivery and going abroad for sick children; to stop forcible students’ job allocation in “Chernobyl-affected” areas.

---

Aleksandr Milinkevich, a pro-democracy activist who seeks Belarus’ opposition forces’ presidential nomination, on April 25 called on the public to pull the government into a dialogue on Chernobyl issues. Speaking at a roundtable conference in Minsk on humanitarian consequences of the accident, he pointed out that the government seeks to “monopolize and tackle alone the post-Chernobyl issues.”

---