Expulsion of a senior Polish diplomat from Belarus and declaring recent election of the officials of the Union of Poles in Belarus null and void were among the topics of today’s talks of Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski with French president Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Alexander Kwasniewski expressed doubt about legality of expulsion the of polish diplomat from Minsk, and called upon the European Union to help in defending Polish diaspora in Belarus. “I hope the European Union will use its authority to take control over the events which endanger the Polish minority in Belarus," Kwasniewski said at the press conference summing up the results of the meeting with German and French leaders in France.
Regional organization GUUAM is to change its name, and will possibly be called the Commonwealth for Democracy and Development, told Foreign minister of Ukraine Borys Tarasyuk.
Georgian Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze expressed protest on May 19 regarding the recent visit by an official delegation from the Belarus Parliament and the President’s Administration to breakaway Abkhazia without the prior notification of Tbilisi. She told that this visit is yet another demonstration that “being against the democracy and the whole world could do no good” for Belarus. Nino Burjanadze told that her statement does not concern the Belarusian people, Civil Georgia informs.
The Belarusian foreign ministry has asked Marek Bucko, counselor of the Polish embassy in Minsk, to leave the country within one month, Ruslan Yesin, deputy head of the ministry’s Information Office, told BelaPAN. Mr. Yesin said that the diplomat was expelled for his activity “aimed at destabilizing Belarusian society.”
A statement made by U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday indicates that preparations are underway to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, Belarussian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ruslan Yesin told Interfax on Thursday.
The Belarussian Foreign Ministry has reproached the Council of Europe for biased criticism of the republic. "Belarus is disappointed by the fact that, instead of dialog, representatives of esteemed European institutions and individual member- states of the Council of Europe have again preferred the tactic of unilaterally criticizing our state in absentia," Belarussian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ruslan Yesin told Interfax in Minsk.
On May 18 editor-in-chief of the “Narodnaya Volya” Iosif Syaredzich was called to the prosecutor’s office of Belarus, to be served the official warning about “inadmissibility of violating the law and dissemination of information on behalf of unregistered public associations”. On May 16 the official warning was signed by assistant of the Prosecutor General of Belarus, Mikalay Kupryjanau.
The trial of the case of Andrei Klimov, former deputy of the 13th Supreme Soviet, which was to take place today in the court of Pershamajski district court of Minsk, is postponed indefinitely. The politician is charged with libel (Article 367 Part 2 of the Criminal Code) and insult (Article 368 Part 1 of The Criminal Code) for his statements about A. Lukashenka in his books and articles.
Syarhei Skrabets’ lawyer Mikhail Khomich told to Radio Svaboda that the health state of the prisoner is satisfactory. One of the activists of Belarusian political opposition, head of the parliamentary group “Respublika” Syarhei Skrabets was arrested on May 15 and now is kept in the remand prison in Brest. He is charges with violation of two articles of the Criminal Code:
Navapolatsk city court was trying a complaint of Alyaksei Trubkin no the ruling of the administrative commission of the local city executive committee, which sentenced him to a fine of 102 thousand rubles. He was fined for distribution of printing materials without imprint, congratulating with the holiday. The court upheld the ruling of the commission.
Valery Levonevsky, leader of market vendors` strike committee in Grodno who is serving a two-year prison sentence in the number 22 correctional institution in the village of Domanovo near Ivatsevichi, Brest region, believes that the newly enacted amnesty law will not be applied to him.
Court officers visited the apartment of opposition politician Sergei Skrebets, who is currently held in a pretrial detention center in Brest, on Tuesday to make an inventory of household effects to be seized toward the payment of a fine, wife Aleksandra Skrebets told BelaPAN.
Poland and Belarus expelled each other`s diplomats on Wednesday. "We have made a decision to expel a counselor of the Belarusian Embassy from Warsaw, from our country, in an identical procedure," Polish Vice Foreign Minister Andrzej Zalucki told reporters here.
The Polish embassy in Minsk has officially confirmed that its deputy head Marek Bucko has been asked to leave Belarus within a month, Radio Polonia reported Wednesday. The Polish side says it is considering “imminent measures” in response.
Persons who took part in recent actions aimed against the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB) will be banned from entering Poland and other EU countries, Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld said Tuesday [17 May]. "We deem it just and honest that those who violate the law bear responsibility" for their actions, Rotfeld told PAP.
Eight bidders for the presidency in Belarus’ 2006 election agreed on May 18 to work together toward the selection of a single democratic candidate, Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the United Civic Party (UCP), told BelaPAN.
Irina Khalip, deputy editor of the Minsk-based private newspaper Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta, has been conferred a Henri Nannen award by Germany’s Stern magazine and Gruner + Jahr publisher, said the press office of the German embassy in Minsk.
Belarus and Russia are establishing a center for maintaining and modernizing air defense equipment, said the Belarusian defense ministry. The center will be responsible for maintaining air defense systems in Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and Northwestern region.
Military-technical cooperation between Belarus and Russia has started yielding “really promising results,” Ivan Mironov of Rosoboronexport, Russia`s arms export company, told reporters in Minsk on May 18.
Tetraedr, a Minsk-based state-run company, upgraded an S-125 low-altitude surface-to-air missile system to an S-125-2T version and sold it to an undisclosed African country in late April.
Some Russian adults keep fond feelings towards a former Soviet Republic, according to a poll by Bashkirova & Partners. 36.3 per cent of respondents consider Belarus as one of the best friends and allies of Russia.
People exposed to radioactive iodine 131 in childhood have an increased risk of thyroid cancer, but this risk may be lowered with both iodine deficiency and supplementation, according to a study in the May 18 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
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