Opposition groups on April 19 started holding regional conferences of delegates to the Second Congress of Pro-democratic Forces preliminarily scheduled for May 26 and 27.
According to the organizing committee for the Congress, such conferences are to be held on April 29 in the Minsk and Homyel regions, on May 4 in the city of Minsk, on May 6 in the Hrodna region, on May 12 in the Brest region, and on May 13 in the Mahilyow and Vitsyebsk regions.
At a meeting held in Minsk on April 23, the Political Council of United Pro-democratic Forces a ballot form for secret votes at the regional conferences. The ballot contains five questions, including a question about the status of the Political Council's chairperson and co-chairpersons, the formation of the Political Council and its board, and the functions and powers of the board. The organizing committee for the Congress will sum up the results of the votes. The agenda of the Congress will be drawn up in accordance with the results of the votes at the regional conferences.
The organizing committee insists that the Congress will hardly be postponed. "The date of the Congress should not change," Anatol Lyabedzka, chairman of the United Civic Party, told BelaPAN earlier this month. "We've already drawn up all the documents that will be discussed at the Congress. The Small Constitution, and a program of the social and economic development of Belarus have already been completed. If the Congress is postponed, this can only be for organizational and political reasons, i.e. whether we will find a hall to hold the Congress, etc. But we have already held talks with our Ukrainian colleagues, and they say that they can offer us a hall and can also help us solve organizational problems."
Ina Kuley, the wife of Belarusian opposition leader Alykasandr Milinkevich, has appealed to the Minsk City Prosecutor Office to institute criminal proceedings in connection with the posting of her personal data to contact her on a Web site advertising sexual services.
"Since this ad was posted, I've repeatedly been called on my mobile phone and received offers of a sexual nature," Ms. Kuley said, according Mr. Milinkevich's press office. "Very frequently, such offers were insulting. The placement of this ad indicating my mobile telephone number was an intentional act aimed at insulting and defaming me," she says in her appeal.
Ms. Kuley, who heads the opposition coalition's committee for support of political victims, insists that the objective of that act was to discredit her as a public figure and the wife of the leader of pro-democratic forces.
A three-day training session on Israeli Studies opened in the Uzda district, Minsk region, on Friday.
Funds for the event were provided by the Jewish Agency for Israel (Sochnut). The training was arranged at the initiative of Veranika Rusakova who works at the Museum of the History and Culture of Belarusian Jews and historian Dzmitry Shemelyow.
Around 70 students studying in Minsk-based universities and young researchers are taking part in the session conducted by professors of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The program includes lectures on the history of Zionism and Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among other subjects.
Ms. Rusakova and Mr. Shemelyow intend to open a school of Israeli studies in Belarus where training would be conducted by Belarusian and foreign professors.
Currently, there is no association of Israel researchers in Belarus, a country with a big Jewish community. //BelaPAN
Belarusian Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski expressed confidence that Belarus would be able to maintain GDP growth at between eight and nine percent this year and subsequent years.
He said that a government innovation development program would foster the country's economic growth.
The official was speaking at an international conference on innovation policy and competitiveness held in Minsk on Thursday.
He said that the economic performance of Belarus in the first quarter of this year had showed that the economy had survived amid higher energy prices.
"Yes, we did have a deficit [in foreign trade] in the first two months. We failed to process a sufficient amount of oil and sell a sufficient amount of petroleum products in January. But we see prospects," he said, adding that the most important thing was that the country had had a surplus in trade with Russia, its major trade partners, in the first quarter. //BelaPAN
The Russian State Duma is to debate a ratification bill for an agreement with Belarus on the property of the Belarusian-Russian Union State.
The bill was submitted to the lower parliamentary house by President Vladimir Putin.
Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his Russian counterpart signed the accord in St. Petersburg on January 24, 2006 in pursuance of the December 8, 1999 treaty on the formation of the Union State.
Under Article 5 of the agreement, the Council of Ministers of the Union State and other governing bodies of the Union State shall acquire property rights and exercise them on its behalf. On the authorization of the Council of Ministers, these powers may be exercised by governmental agencies of Russia and Belarus. The Union State formation treaty did not entitle the Council of Ministers of the Union State to exercise these rights.
The agreement on the Union State's common property provides for expanding the powers of the Union State's Council of Ministers, whose decisions are binding for the member states, their agencies, natural persons and legal entities.
It obliges Russia to hand over part of its sovereign powers of determining the scope of the authority of Russia's governmental agencies to the Council of Ministers of the Union State. //BelaPAN
Uladzimir Sodal, a prominent scholar who has researched the work of renowned Belarusian writers, accused police officers of attacking him and his wife after Thursday's Charnobylski Shlyakh opposition demonstration in Minsk.
A clash with riot police occurred after a crowd of some 100 young people waving white-red-white flags set to march further after the demonstration. Up to 20 people were reportedly grabbed but were soon released after their fingerprints had been taken.
In an interview with BelaPAN, the 69-year-old Mr. Sodal said that the policemen acted "in an unexpected and impudent manner." "I could run aside but my dignity did not allow me to do this," he explained. "Why should I, a man who survived the dreadful years of Belarus' occupation by Nazis as a child, flee from my young compatriots in my own country in times of peace?"
"When this happened, I remembered a line from the Belarusian anthem 'We, Belarusians, are peaceful people.' And these peaceful people face this incomprehensible aggression on their way back home. If the authorities wanted to break up the demonstration, they should have done this at the beginning instead of humiliating the people who were returning home," he went on to say.
Mr. Sodal, who has physical disability, said he did not plan to file a complaint in connection with the attack, saying that it would be "senseless."
Activists of the Belarusian Popular Front and the Movement for Freedom in Brest have said that they have distributed more than 11,000 copies of an information bulletins about the Chernobyl disaster.
Some 10,000 copies were reportedly dropped into mailboxes and more than 1000 were handed out to Brest residents on April 26.
Activists distributed the bulletin at marketplaces, at public transport stops, and near large stores in the Kavalyova neighborhood, where a large number of migrants from Chernobyl-affected areas reside.
"By this act, we wanted to draw the attention of the residents of the regional capital to the Chernobyl tragedy, to tell them the truth about the Chernobyl-related problems that are yet to be solved," Dzmitry Shymanski, chairman of the Brest city organization of the Belarusian Popular Front, told BelaPAN. "We were surprised to learn that many townspeople, especially youths, did not know when this terrible accident occurred and were unaware of the threat its consequences pose."
Organizers of Thursday's Charnobylski Shlyakh are set to appeal to a prosecutor's office to probe the legality of the seizure of their sound amplifying equipment and the detention of people during the opposition demonstration.
"We were not able to normally organize and control the march," Yury Zyankovich, a member of the Belarusian Popular Front, told BelaPAN. "For my own part, I intend to file a complaint about my detention shortly after the demonstration. No charges were brought against me at the Tsentralny district police department where I was taken to together with other 15 detained people. This means that the detention was unlawful," he said.
The opposition activist said that the organizers also would ask the prosecutor's office to probe alleged attempts by police to push demonstrators to walkways undergoing repairs as they were marching along Surhanova Street.
"The prosecutor's office should find out who and how violated rights of demonstrators. It is up to the prosecutor's office to decide whether it was the police, riot police or the Minsk City Executive Committee." Mr. Zyankovich said.
The organizers also intend to contest the Maskowski District Court's decision to uphold the city government's ban of Charnobylski Shlyakh participants marching along Independence Avenue to the National Library, the route originally planned by the organizers.
The opposition demonstrations on March 25 and April 26 achieved their purposes, Vintsuk Vyachorka, chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF), said at Friday's news conference while commenting on the Charnobylski Shlyakh (Path of Chernobyl) march staged the previous day.
According to Mr. Vyachorka, these demonstrations showed that the Belarusian public "does have a protest potential." "Moreover, I was glad to see that most of the demonstrators [on April 26] were young people," he said. "This means that the Belarusian youth, or at least their active part, choose freedom, European values, and are even ready to take risks to defend its views."
According to the politician, the march on April 26 was "openly peaceful." "The authorities had to clench their teeth and endure," he said. "And only after the demonstration was over, they acted out their frustration on those who were leaving. We showed that there is a potential for protest, but now we should mobilize the people who live their daily lives, pursue their own interests, and believe that such problems do not concern them. But these problems will affect them. An economic crisis is beginning. We can see it from the authorities' behavior. The draft law to abolish the benefits of a large group of citizens, including students, small children, retirees, war veterans and Chernobyl victims is evidence of this.... By the way, the illumination on even Minsk's central avenue is switched off in the night, which is indicative of energy problems."
"That is why we should launch an awareness campaign now to communicate our viewpoint to the population, that is, if we accept the 12 conditions set by united Europe, we'll be able to avoid an economic and political crisis," the BPF leader suggested. "And if protest sentiments rise, we will be able to demand negotiations with the government after free and fair elections at the end of 2008."
Elections for the House of Representatives of the National Assembly are to be held in Belarus in the latter half of 2008.
Viktar Ivashkevich, deputy chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF) who is a member of the organizing committee for the opposition's April 25 annual Chernobyl march, said that the marchers would not go to Peoples' Friendship Park on Bangalore Square to hold a rally there as the city authorities proposed.
The march will run along its traditional route from the square in front of the National Academy of Sciences to the Chernobyl Chapel in the park on Karastayanavay Street, Mr. Ivashkevich told BelaPAN.
According to him, twenty-one minutes' silence will be observed near the chapel in commemoration of the Chernobyl victims on the occasion of the 21st anniversary of the nuclear disaster.
Mr. Ivashkevich called on those going to take part in the march to bring candles to light them in memory of the Chernobyl victims.
BPF Deputy Chairman Alyaksey Yanukevich, who was one of the official applicants for the city government's permission to stage the march, told the organizing committee at a meeting on Tuesday that an appeal had been filed with Minsk's Maskowski District Court the previous day against the city government's decision to ban the marchers from going the route planned by the organizers.
The organizing committee for the "Charnobylski Shlyakh" (Path of Chernobyl) march initially wanted it to start on Yakub Kolas Square at 6 p.m. and run on sidewalks along Independence Avenue, Minsk's main thoroughfare, to the square in front of the National Library, where a rally would begin at 8 p.m. The city government proposed that the march should start on the square in front of the National Academy of Sciences and run on sidewalks along Surhanava Street to Peoples' Friendship Park.
"Our constitutional right to freedom of assembly was violated, that is why we expect the court to annul the Minsk City Executive Committee's decision," Mr. Yanukevich said.
Up to 10,000 people took part in last year's Chernobyl march.
30 April 2007