A route taxi communication is going to be established between Brest and Grodno. The tickets for a new service will be on sale in the Brest taxi station. The cost of the service is seven and a half thousand rubles.
The transport enterprises of Brest have significantly intensified their activity. In July there were introduced regular air flights between Brest and Minsk. During a visit held recently by a delegation of the Western administrative district of Moscow the issues of establishing air communication with the Russian capital was considered. The Moscovites consider that the flight will find its passengers though a big advertising campaign should be carried out.
A non-governmental association named Tsitadel will launch a campaign for Aleksandr Lukashenko's reelection as soon as he is registered as a candidate in the presidential election coming up in September.
Tsitadel was established by the Brest Regional Soviet (elected council) and is led by the soviet's chairman Leonid Lemeshevsky.
Its aim, as stated in its charter, is to "unite patriotically minded citizens for support, assistance and propaganda of the current social and economic policy of the first president of the Republic of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, and the Belarusian government."
Among Tsitadel members are local government officials and activists of the pro-government Belarusian Patriotic Youth Union. Ahead of the campaigning phase in the presidential election, the association has been brainwashing local residents that the seven years of Mr. Lukashenko's rule were the best years in the country's history.
As part of preparations for Mr. Lukashenko's campaign, the local government has issued an order that a wired-radio outlet should be in each house in the region's villages. State newspapers are to be passed out free of charge after the beginning of the campaigning phase.
The regional government has published a bulletin praising the region's economic performance in the last seven years. Vasily Dolgolyov, the top government official in the region, attended a recent conference of Tsitadel's branch in Baranovichi, which is led by Mariya Zolotukhina, a
member of the National Assembly's upper chamber. Tsitadel's activity receives extensive coverage in the government-controlled regional newspaper Zarya and all district newspapers.
An agreement for trade-economic, scientific-technical and cultural cooperation will be signed in Moscow on August 6 by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Vasily Dolgolyov, governor of Belarus' Brest region,
Russian media report.
The signing ceremony is expected to be attended by Belarus' Ambassador to Russia, Vladimir Grigoryev, as well as by the heads of some Brest-based enterprises, including the carpet factory Kovry Bresta, the machine-tool plant Atlant and the Brest Electric Bulb Factory.
Supporters of Belarus' chief of state, Aleksandr Lukashenko, collected more signatures than his contenders' groups for his participation in this fall's presidential race, the Brest regional election commission announced on August 2.
Pyotr Yatskevich, chairman of the commission, said that the commission had found no serious irregularities during the verification of the signatures. Among the most typical defects, he mentioned incorrect
passport data, the inclusion of people from various locations in the same sheet, and signatures of non-Belarusian citizens. None of the four presidential bidders, who still have chances of being registered candidates, lost a substantial number signatures as a result of verification.
The regional commission reported the following numbers of
valid voter signatures:
-Aleksandr Lukashenko - 53,634 (out of the 53,682 collected
in the region);
-Vladimir Goncharik, chairman of the Federation of Trade
Unions of Belarus - 25,714 (25,943);
-Semyon Domash, leader of the Grodno-based non-governmental
organization "Ratusha" - 23,597 (23,725);
-Leonid Kalugin, director general of the Atlant
refrigerator group - 18,578 (19,698);
-Sergei Kalyakin, leader of the Belarusian Party of
Communists - 16,749 (16,772);
-Sergei Gaidukevich, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party
of Belarus - 11,752 (12,118);
-Pavel Kozlovsky, former defense minister - 11,003 (11,135);
-Zenon Poznyak, leader of the Conservative Christian Party
- 6,298 (7,544);
-Aleksandr Yaroshuk, leader of the Belarusian Union of
Agro-industrial Workers - 4,443 (9,782);
-Mikhail Marinich, former ambassador to Latvia, Estonia and
Finland - 3,499 (3,897).
The commission invalidated all signatures collected for Mr. Yaroshuk in Brest's Moskovsky district and many signatures collected for him in Brest's Leninsky district and the town of Zhabinka.
Signature-collection groups of 13 presidential hopefuls worked in the region. The signatures have been sent to the central election commission for a final examination.
Brest customs officers detained two ancient icons which were illegally brought to the west by train Moscow-Warsaw. These are icon “The Lord God Omnipotent”, written in the 18th century, and icon “Nicolas Miracle-Worker”, written in the 19th century. The icons were estimated at 700 thousand rubles.
8 August 2001