Lukashenko may meet with Yushchenko in Moscow, foreign ministry says :: Charter'97 :: News

The Belarusian foreign ministry on May 5 confirmed media reports that Aleksandr Lukashenko might meet with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko while staying in Moscow on May 8 to discuss last week`s conviction and jailing in Minsk of five Ukrainian citizens.

The Ukrainian leader said on Wednesday that he would propose to Mr. Lukashenko that both sides should draw conclusions from the “sad incident” and not turn the "good-neighborly relations into another type of relations.”

But he said that the “fact of applying double standards to peaceful demonstrators - citizens of Ukraine and Russia - testifies to the Belarusian leadership’s special approach to this episode.”
Ruslan Yesin, the Belarusian foreign ministry`s spokesman, confirmed on Thursday that the meeting might take place. Belarus has always showed its neighbors and Ukraine above all "in an open, clear and plain manner” that it is “determined to continue actively developing bilateral relations,” he said.
Mr. Yesin said that the Belarusian foreign ministry would continue talks with the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk, as well as the Belarusian diplomatic mission in Kyiv, about the arrest of the Ukrainians.

“We hope that the Ukrainian president’s statements and his readiness to discuss the issue are a good sign of progress in the situation,” he added.

The five young Ukrainian men were arrested when the Belarusian police aborted an anti-Lukashenko crowd’s attempt to stage a demonstration in downtown Minsk on April 26 to mark 19 years since the Chernobyl accident.

On May 3, the Minsk City Court rejected a petition by the Ukrainian ambassador to Belarus for releasing the jailed Ukrainians, although a few days before, the same court had granted an early release to 14 Russian citizens who had been sentenced to jail for participation in the same demonstration.

The Belarusian ambassador to Ukraine said that Kyiv had failed to make a proper request for the revision of the jail sentences against the Ukrainians.