A United Nations official says Belarus has failed to reverse the decline in human rights in the country, despite the recent release of several political prisoners.

---

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should provide an equal and nondiscriminatory access to the advantages of nuclear power for all countries, a Belarusian delegation declared at a regular session of the IAEA Board of Governors, which is taking place in Vienna on June 11-14. The Belarusian delegation is headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Viktar Haisyonak, BelTA has been told in the press service of the Foreign Ministry of Belarus.

---

The entrepreneurs of several regions of Belarus are indignant of the pressure of regulatory bodies exerted through mass checks and huge fines which have become typical of late. Minor businessmen are sure that this way the authorities are solving the problem of local budgets deficit, the Radio Svaboda reports.

---

Starting its French tour at the festival in Nansi the Svabodni Teatar“(free theater) finished it within 30 days at the stage of the Christian Benedetti’s Theatre-Studio after having made 26 performances. That was the first full-scale tour of the Belarusian theatrical group in France.

---

Strangely enough, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s two-day official visit to the Belarus capital of Minsk last month received much less attention in the West than it really deserves.

---

A special paragraph has been devoted to Belarus in the report of the International Labour Conference. The BelaPAN agency has been informed about that by the International Labour Organization (ILO) representative, Chief of the Secretariat for the Commission of Inquiry Karen Curtis. This decision, she underlined, means that the situation with trade unions rights in Belarus is “one of the serious cases to which the ILO should pay serious attention”.

---

Members of Vitsebsk city public association “White Rus” (“Belaya Rus”, or “White Ruthenia”) stand for creation of the single national organization. It has been stated in the resolution of the public association, adopted at a foundation conference of the association on June 11.

---

An activist of the Belarusian Social Democratic party (Hramada) Zmitser Lisienka has been declared not guilty of violation Article 23.34 of the Administrative Violations Code for absence of crime in the act. The court stated that Zmitser hadn’t taken part in the unsanctioned picketing. However, as for the second Article, “insubordination to legal demands of police” to stop picketing (Article 23.4), he was fined 20 basic units (620,000 rubles) by Judge Mikhail Zubenya.

---

As many as 1,665 signatures were collected in Mazyr, Homyel region, to a petition calling for amendments to the 2002 Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations, Pavel Nazdra, a member of a local Protestant church, told BelaPAN.

---

Over the year 2006 the situation with human rights in Belarus had been deteriorating steadily. This conclusion has been made in a report of Adrian Severin, Special Rapporteur on human rights situation of in Belarus. It is supposed that on June 12 the Special Rapporteur is to characterize the situation with main freedoms and human rights and to make known in detail his opinion at the 5th session of the Human Rights Council of the UN General Assembly in Geneva.

---