Stanislau Bahdankevich: «Anyway, Belarus will pay for the oil» :: Charter'97 :: News

The negotiations on oil deliveries and transit between the government delegations of Russia and Belarus are to be continued at the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade of Russia on Friday. The first day of negotiations was over and the negotiators did not announce the results. Stanislau Bahdankevich, the former head of the National Bank of Belarus, is sure that the attempts of the Belarusian officials to make the public believe that they won at the start of the negotiations actually has nothing to do with the real victory in that primarily political confrontation. “Anyway, Belarus is doomed to failure. It is morally obliged to cancel hastily introduced export duties .Definitely, it is a negative point. What concerns the material aspect of the problem, they will agree on sharing the duties. But if previously we paid nothing, now, anyway, we shall pay at least 2 billion dollars, and it’s only for the oil, declared Bahdankevich in his interview to the Russian service of Radio Svoboda.

On 11th January , all day long, in the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade the Russian and Belarusian officials were talking over the carbon raw materials deliveries and transit .The tune to the negotiations was played by Vitaliy Saveliev, the Russian Deputy Minister for Economic Development and Trade, and Andrei Kabyakou, the Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister . German Gref, the head of the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade, and Syarhei Sidorski, the Belarusian Prime-Minister, joined negotiators in the afternoon. Literally, almost at night time, Syarhei Sidorski was received by the Prime-Minister Mikhail Fradkov in the White House. The observers do not exclude that Alexander Lukashenko might appear in Moscow. In their telephone conversation on 10th January both presidents discussed that opportunity in case the concrete results in negotiations were achieved.

The beginning of negotiations was preceded by the resolution of the Belarusian government canceling its own resolution of the 31st December 2006 on introduction the customs’ duty of 45 dollars per ton on the Russian oil transit. It was the cancellation of the duty by Belarus that was announced to be the only condition for the beginning of the bilateral negotiations.

After failing to gain from imposing the duty, Belarus insists on the counter step of Russia, meaning cancellation of the Russian duty on the Russian oil exported to Belarus which was introduced on 8th December 2006.Before leaving for Moscow Syarhei Sidorski openly revealed why the duty had been imposed: ”We introduced the countermeasure to introduction of the duty by the Government of the Russian Federation. That was done just to show that such measure is not a step forward in economic development.”

However Andrei Suzdaltsau, the political scientist, is sure that the last events have, first of all, changed Russia itself. According to the analyst, consolidation of the Russian elite has occurred. And in such situations ultimatums of Belarus will be simply ignored: ”For the last 10 days Alexander Lukashenko twice publicly gave up to Moscow. The first time it was when he declared his readiness to sell the Beltransgaz, the second time when he refused to employ the introduced duty on oil transit to the West. Thus, Minsk failed to enter the negotiations by force. Counting on the possible exchange of the Belarusian duty for the Russian one was useless. I believe, that Belarus will also fail to agree with Russia on canceling the duty on Russian oil export to Belarus.”