The leader of the Belarusian Social Democrats political prisoner Mikola Statkevich has been denied a conditional early relief. According to the press service of the party, the documents prepared by the administration of the correctional institution, haven’t reached the court.

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Belarus is ready to agree to the increase in the price of natural gas that Russian consumers accept, Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky told reporters in St. Petersburg on September 25 after he had attended an industrial forum called Russian Industrialist 2006.

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City authorities of Mahilyou haven’t allowed members of oppositional parties to hold a picket and a meeting where the leader of the united democratic forces Alyaksandr Milinkevich was to participate.

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The problem of Russian natural gas deliveries to Belarus and its transit via Belarusian territory in 2007 will be resolved by the end of 2006, the Russian prime minister said Tuesday.

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Within a month Belarusian government plans to check activities of all firms representing Russian companies at the Belarusian market, Belarusian Prime Minister Syarhei Sidorski said to journalists on Tuesday. “We are to check all within a month,” Sidorski told at the briefing after the session of the Council of Ministers of Russia and Belarus.

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The European Commission hasn’t ruled to managed to pass a decision to suspend Belarus from the EU’s Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) on trade. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Greece and Cyprus voted against the proposal to suspend Belarus from the GSP, while Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia abstained.

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“Justice Ministry is making haste. Officials knew perfectly well that an appeal had been taken from the Ministry’s warning in the Supreme Court. Before consideration of this case in the court the warning cannot be considered to have legal force, and we had to perform it. I see not legal, but political motives in the actions of Justice Ministry. The regime needs to close the party of Communists in the run-up to the presidential elections,” told the leader of the Party of Communists of Belarus Syarhei Kalyakin, commenting on the Justice Ministry’s forwarding a letter of complaint to the Supreme Court of Belarus, seeking to suspend activities of the Party of Communists of Belarus.

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Justice Ministry has forwarded a letter of complaint to the Supreme Court of Belarus. It seeks to suspend activities of the Party of Communists of Belarus. As informed by the pres service of Justice Ministry, during the check of the activities of the Party of Communists of Belarus the ministry required documents concerning its number, however the documents were not provided. Justice Ministry has issued an official warning for that. The documents were not provided in the term stated in the written warning.

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A mother of the abducted Belarusian journalist Dzmitry Zavadski, Volha Zavadskaya, has commented on Alyaksandr Lukashenka being awarded with the decoration of the Belarusian Orthodox church, St. Cyril of Turau order. “It appears that in our state it is considered normal for the church to give awards to people suspected of abductions and murders. Everything is logical. The Orthodox Church is keeping pace with the regime, they support each other: by finances, by awards. We have been shouting about our problem for many years, and it’s all in vain. What for they are getting awards?” Volha Zavadskaya asks.

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The European Parliament has announced three nominees for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2006. Among the candidates for the prize are the leader of the united democratic forces of Belarus Alyaksandr Milinkevich, Lebanese diplomat and journalist Ghassan Tueni, and a collective nominee – “all those fighting for hostages kidnapped” in Colombia. The decision on nomination of those candidates has been passed at the joint session of parliamentary committees on foreign affairs and on development. The European parliament is supposed to determine the candidate before the end of October. The award-giving ceremony is to take place at the final plenary session of the parliament in December.

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September 25, 2006 marks half a year after the arrest of the former candidate for presidency in Belarus Alyaksandr Kazulin. At present the political is serving the sentence of 5.5 years of imprisonment in the minimum security colony “Vitsba-3”.

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Today Prime Ministers of Belarus and Russia Syarhei Sidorski and Mikhail Fradkov are to hold another “union state” Ministers Council meeting. The agenda is to be filled with technical issues, and Fradkov and Sidorski are to discuss the central issues in person. An interlocutor of Russian “Gazeta” in Russian government explained that “Belarus shouldn’t expect preferential gas prices while entirely commercial relations exist”. “And launching a joint venture opens new prospects. When a strategic vision of relations exists, issues of annual negotiations on price would recede into the background,” the interlocutor said. It only means that “distress signal” by Sidorski in Petersburg was understood in Moscow. And the desire of the Belarusian prime minister to have the same prices for gas as Russian enterprises have, would be satisfied.

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