The Council of Ministers of Belarus has issued a directive that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection should establish a national polar research center.
According to the directive, in the period until 2011, the center will be financed out of the national budget funds earmarked for scientific research and innovative activities, and with the national environmental protection fund’s money provided for financing the government’s 2007-2015 program envisaging the monitoring of the Earth’s polar regions and the organization of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.
The center is to have five staff workers. The environment ministry has been tasked with adopting the center’s charter.
Foreign Minister Syarhey Martynaw lashed out at the United States over its conduct in the international arena while speaking at the September 28 afternoon session of the UN General Asembly’s annual high-level debate.
“I would like to draw the attention of the General Assembly to a particular issue - the abuse by the United States of the rights of the world reserve currency manager and the deliberate creation of obstacles for the lawful economic activity of legitimate companies and banks from countries which are disagreeable to the United States,” the Belarusian minister said. “It is an alarm signal for the whole international community.”
“By ‘appointing’ states at will as pleasing and unpleasing, ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ the United States creates an atmosphere of suppression of dissent and diversity in international relations,” Mr. Martynaw said. “This does not just bring ideology and politicking into international relations. It is an act of confrontation – with every one and each one who dares to have an independent opinion, who has the courage to pursue an independent foreign policy.”
“The majority in this hall are Member States of the Non-Aligned Movement,” the minister said. “They are non-aligned to confrontation. Five decades ago the creation of the Movement was a protest against confrontation and a global response to the global challenge of confrontation. Today it is in our power to stop confrontation and to reject solutions it seeks to impose. Tomorrow belongs to the positive ideas and actions, to the engagement and cooperation for peace, in the common interest of the entire international community.”
Mr. Martynaw noted that Belarus “rejects the use of unilateral coercive measures in international relations as an instrument of political and economic pressure on sovereign states.” “These measures not only contradict the principles of the UN Charter and international law, but they breed alienation among countries, distrust and hostility. We deal with simply absurd facts when economic sanctions are imposed under the pretext of promotion of the rights of workers, yet ultimately they lead to job losses,” he said. “By applying unilateral coercive measures of economic pressure, including exterritorialy, the well known world centre of power assumes de facto the rights of the Security Council. We all witnessed this during the current debate in the General Assembly.”
Mr. Martynaw criticized “some countries” for what he called “the unacceptable practice of using the process of accession to the WTO as a convenient instrument of pressure on candidate countries, and not only economic – to receive forced and unilateral additional benefit from the WTO expansion – but political as well.”
“The United Nations must pronounce itself forcefully in favor of establishing – with participation of all interested states – fair conditions for WTO accession which take into account trade and financial needs of the joining countries, their real development needs,” he said.
The potential for trade with Belarus is huge, as the scale of industrial production there is very large,” George Arveladze, Georgia’s economic development minister, told a BelaPAN correspondent while meeting with a group of European reporters in Tbilisi last week.
Mr. Arveladze noted in particular that almost all tractors operated in Georgia’s fields are Belarusian-made.
The minister said that political and economic relations between countries should develop independently of each other. “Economically, our borders are open to everyone,” he noted, citing economic relations between Georgia and Russia, which are actively developing despite political tensions. He said that Russia’s Vneshtorgbank is the fourth largest bank in the country.
According to him, a Russian company distributes electricity in Tbilisi. Mr. Arveladze said that Russia’s mobile phone operator Vimpelcom (Beeline) had just entered the Georgian market.
According to official Georgian statisticians, the country’s trade with Belarus in the first eight months of 2007 amounted to more $13.9 million, an 11.7-percent year-on-year decrease. Georgia’s exports to Belarus rose by 16.8 percent year-on-year to around $2.5 million, while its imports from Belarus decreased by 16.1 percent to almost $11.5 million. Belarus accounted for 0.36 percent of Georgia’s foreign trade in the first eight months of 2007, down from 0.62 percent in the same period of 2006.
The Belarusian opposition has many people who could be a worthy alternative to the incumbent leader if given equal political opportunities, Lubomir Regak, Slovakia's charge d'affaires in Belarus, told BelaPAN.
“I believe that the Belarusian opposition is not to blame for its miserable state as is often alleged,” Mr. Regak said. “Given all the persecution, hounding and vilification, the denial of access to the media, defenselessness against the government’s arbitrary rule, one should in fact be surprised that the opposition has survived.”
Mr. Regak added that in democratic countries, the opposition is represented in the parliament, follows the actions of the government, criticizes the authorities and tries to convince voters that it can do a better job. “This is how the government is shaped at all levels, ensuring the rule of the people,” he said.
Mr. Regak described the opposition’s demonstration scheduled for October 14, European March for Freedom, as a display of support by Belarus’ civil society for the government’s tentative attempts to improve relations with its European neighbors. “We expect that the government will not obstruct the peaceful march of those advocating rapprochement with Europe for fear of discrediting itself once again by making its words contradictory to actions,” Mr. Regak said, adding that the march was not organized by the European Union but by Belarusian intellectuals and politicians.
Mr. Regak said that the EU might impose new sanctions on Belarus in the event of a dramatic deterioration in the human rights situation. “But in all honesty, the EU has no intention to take such unfriendly steps,” he noted. “On the contrary, there’s a wish to make the Belarusian partners realize that one should be friends and not enemies with the neighbors, let alone fellow citizens.”
The Slovak embassy to Belarus has been the European Union (EU)’s local representative on behalf of Portugal since July 1, 2007. Slovakia will chair the Council of Europe from November 2007 through May 2008.
Volha Kazulin, the elder daughter of imprisoned former presidential candidate Alyaksandr Kazulin, has been dismissed from her job.
She served in the position of deputy director in charge of legal and personnel affairs at a private company named Alaktiv.
On September 27, the government-appointed crisis manager, Syarhey Barysaw, dismissed her for unauthorized absence from work.
According to Volha, on September 25, she received a reprimand for failing to notify the management that she would be absent to attend a conference in Vilnius on relations between the European Union and Russia. “But before the conference, I had warned Barysaw that I would take part in that conference and would like to take an unpaid leave of absence for the period of the conference.”
“I was fired without being paid for the past four months,” Volha told BelaPAN. “I properly performed my duties and can only guess why the crisis manager declared war on me.”
Ms. Kazulin, a single mother, said that she appeal the dismissal to an appropriate court.
Transit via Belarus has been on the rise, Andrey Planin, deputy head of the Customs Control Organization Department of the State Customs Committee, told reporters in Minsk on September 27.
According to him, road carriage increased by 26.3 percent and rail carriage by 1.2 percent in the first eight months of 2007. Shipments from and to Russia accounted for 90 percent of the road carriage and 85 percent of all rail carriage.
Freight shipments by road via Belarus increased in number by 32 percent to 383,000.
Mr. Planin noted that an agreement on the transit of goods, signed in Moscow on June 29, 2007, would establish a simplified customs clearance procedure for goods carried through Belarus.
He added that the accord provides for uniform transit conditions, specifies the status of documents applied for customs purposes, and the rights and duties of people involved in through carriage. The implementation of the agreement would help increase the through carriage of goods to Russia, Mr. Planin said. Both countries currently conduct internal procedures to put the agreement in force, he added.
Civil society activist Katsyaryna Bychak is facing expulsion from Hrodna State University for “violating internal rules.”
The woman, a second-year law student, is accused of missing classes for nine days without good reason.
Ms. Bychak has provided written explanations saying that she was absent from classes for family reasons, but the excuse has been rejected by the school administration.
The council of the university’s law faculty was expected to meet on September 28 to discuss the case.
Ms. Bychak, who is regarded as one of the best-performing students at the faculty, is a member of the Belarusian National Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments. She has played an active role in a campaign against the city government’s plans to redevelop Hrodna’s historical area and this may have become the reason for her possible expulsion.
Several foreign-based schools have already expressed readiness to offer Ms. Bychak a place if she is kicked out of the Hrodna university.
Belarus has submitted a bid to host the Junior Eurovision 2009 song contest, Yury Azaronak, deputy chairman of the Belarusian State Television and Radio Company, said at a news conference held in Lahoysk, Minsk region, on September 27.
According to him, Belarus pays “enormous attention to staging festive shows, such as Dazhynki or Slavyanski Bazar.” “If the European Broadcasting Union gives us the thumbs-up, we’ll organize the contest to a good European standard,” Mr. Azaronak said.
According to Alyaksandr Zimowski, head of the Belarusian State Television and Radio Company, the host country is only in charge of the technical side of the show. “A team of organizers, representatives of the European Broadcasting Union arrive as a team, select a venue where they want to work and set out their technical requirements,” he said.
The Junior Eurovision 2009 song contest will take place in the Netherlands. In the junior contest the country hosting the next contest is selected well in advance of the preceding Eurovision. The winner will usually only receive a trophy. In the adult format the winning country automatically has the right to host the next Eurovision. //BelaPAN
The deployment of US missile defense facilities near Poland’s Belarusian border would lead to “unpredictable consequences” and make Poland a target for potential missile attacks, Defense Minister Leanid Maltsaw warned on September 28.
The Belarusian minister made the remark while meeting with the counterparts representing other member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
“Changing the balance of powers in Europe always leads to unpredictable consequences,” Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying. “It poses the biggest threat to the countries that host such facilities as they are targets of first [retaliatory] strikes.”
The United States is set to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland as part of its plans to build a system that will let it knock out incoming ballistic missiles potentially coming from North Korea and Iran. The plans have sparked vehement objections from Minsk and Moscow, which have promised to take retaliatory steps. //BelaPAN
With 90 percent of the applications already replied, only three out of 458 pickets against the forthcoming abolition of benefits and privileges have been allowed, Valery Ukhnalyow, chairman of the organizing committee, told BelaPAN.
According to him, two pickets were permitted in Brest and one in Navahrudak, Hrodna region. The yet unanswered 10 percent are the applications for pickets in officially designated areas in the provinces.
“As for the designated locations in Minsk, we got a uniform negative reply saying that pickets in Peoples' Friendship Park [near Bangalore Square] and 50th October Revolution Anniversary Park ‘would obstruct foot and vehicular traffic,’” Mr. Ukhnalyow said. “I wonder what kind of vehicular traffic could there be in the parks.”
Mr. Ukhnalyow said that pickets would be set on September 30 anyway. “Of course, we can’t field all the 458 pickets; but people will come,” he stressed. “They will not go to the places where pickets have been banned because this would entail charging them with staging an unauthorized demonstration, but they will be out on the streets, passing out printed material and collecting signatures to a petition to the House of Representatives.”
He noted that all the leaflets, newspapers and booklets would be legal and carry the required information about them.
30 September 2007