On a warm, balmy night in Warsaw this week, the Polish Radio Orchestra gave an outdoor concert to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Solidarity trade union movement.

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“We are looking for international mechanisms to help investigate abduction cases of politicians and journalist in Belarus. We are working on universal criminal jurisdiction which enables to initiate criminal case against citizens who committed international crimes, if the countries where they live do not want such procedures. As a rule, it concerns representatives of official authorities, who are not interested in conducting an objective investigation. There is a practice of courts in Belgium, England, France, Germany and Spain. The governments of these countries have a right to demand extradition these people for judgement. Sooner or later the highest officials of Belarus are to stand trial,” the well-known human rights activist, deputy chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee Harry Pahanyajla told to the Charter’97 press center, commenting the arrest of the commanders of power structures and the head of presidential guard charged with assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in Lebanon.

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“Retaliation is inevitable. In our country when the regime change, we would know the unpeople guilty of abduction of my husband Anatol Krasouski, vice-prime minister Viktar Hanchar, former minister of internal affairs Yuri Zakharanka, journalist Zmitser Zavadski; we would know why vice-speaker of the Supreme Soviet of the 13th convocation Henadz Karpenka,” the leader of the civil initiative “We Remember”, member of the Council of civil initiatives “Free Belarus” Iryna Krasouskaya said commenting the arrest of the head of force structures and the head of presidential guard in Lebanon, charged with assassination of the former prime-minister of the country Rafik Hariri.

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“On August 23, 2005 during the operation law-enforcing agencies aimed at crime prevention in the city of Homel, document inspection of a number of citizens have taken place, including a worker of the US Embassy Lyle McMillan. The diplomat’s card, presented by him, was untidy, and part of the text in it could not be read. In connection with impossibility to identify this person exactly, inspectors had to call for the direction of the department of internal affairs of the administration of the Tsentralny district of Homel, to whom McMillan presented his diplomatic passport,” in this way acting head of information department of Foreign Ministry Yesin commented on recent detention of US Embassy representative in Homel.

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Students of Yakub Kolas National Humanities Lyceum will start a new academic year in mid October, Lyavon Borshchevsky, an administrator of the school, told BelaPAN on Tuesday.

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Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld threw his support behind Anzhelika Boris (Anzelika Borys) amid a longstanding leadership dispute in the Union of Belarusian Poles (UBP).

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The situation in Belarus may be an issue under discussion at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers (so-called Gymnich) to be held on September 1 and 2, a source in Brussels told BelaPAN.

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Presidents Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland and Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine at a meeting in Gdansk, Poland, on August 31 discussed ways out of a deadlock in relations with Belarus, PAP reported.

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The current number of the “Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta” is to appear only in an internet- version. The BelaPAN was informed about that by the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pyotr Martsau. The “BDG” is the only independent newspaper that had not been re-registered by Information Ministry yet.

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In the national airport Minsk-2 the leader of the United Civil party Anatol Lyabedzka had been passing passport check and customs surveillance for more than two and a half hours. Anatol Lyabedzka returned from Poland from the celebrations on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of independent trade union “Solidarity”. As a result, his books and CDs, including a book with poems about Ukrainian Orange Revolution, were confiscated.

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Exactly a quarter of a century ago, here in Gdansk, the first velvet revolution began. When, on a boiling summer`s day in August 1980, I arrived at the blue-gray gate of the Lenin Shipyard, festooned with flowers and photographs of the Polish pope, with loudspeakers blaring patriotic hymns and farmers bringing baskets of food; when my colleagues and I were greeted at the gate by a young worker, naked to the waist but carefully identified as a picket by a red-and-white armband, and he led us into the shipyard through two lines of strikers in dusty blue overalls, cheering as if we had personally brought the solidarity of the world; then already I knew that something new and unique was happening here — a workers` revolution against a so-called workers` state!

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Euro Union has criticized Belarusian President’s decree, dated with 17-th of August 2005, according to which limitations on getting technical help by Belarusian organizations are put in force.

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This is the information provided by the Vaukavysk District Police Department, where Aliaxandr Baradaukin, the chair of the Vaukavysk branch of UCP, and a party member Vital Huliaieu, were taken on 30 August.

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Ukrainian public associations and Georgian choreographic group that arrived to Kyiv for a tour organized a protest in front of Belarusian Embassy, which lasted for half an hour. They protested against the arrest of activists of the Georgian movement “Kmara” Giorgi Kandelaki and Luka Tsuladze, and “Zubr” activists, who held an action of solidarity with the arrest Georgian citizens and were sentenced to 10 days of arrest. That meeting on September 1 was called “A Lesson of Democracy and Culture”.

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Belarus` first-grade pupils will be given textbooks "My Motherland Belarus" on September 1 as a present from the president, Education Minister Aleksandr Radkov said at a news conference in Minsk on August 30.

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Belarus may face serious social and economic consequences if it delays transition changes, says a national human development report for 2004 and 2005 called, "Belarus: Addressing Imbalances in the Economy and Society."

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The National Beauty School is Belarus` only agency to have obtained a modeling business license from the education ministry before the deadline, September 1.

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