Lukashenko Sets Terms for Union

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, embroiled in a diplomatic row with the United States and dogged by violent protests in Minsk, announced Friday that Belarus was ready to "take a major stride" toward further integration though a union treaty with Russia.


"This document will raise Belarussian-Russian integration to a new level ... and impart an irreversible nature to the integration," Lukashenko told a news conference shortly after meeting with Yeltsin and attending a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States. "Our foreign policy will be coordinated in every area, from the economy to military matters -- the most sensitive area for the West."


A text of Lukashenko's proposed "union" -- which envisages creation of a "supra-national" executive council as the supreme organ of power in both countries -- has been presented to President Boris Yeltsin for approval, with a formal signing ceremony slated for Wednesday.


Radio Ekho Moskvy, citing an unnamed "senior government official" reported Friday that the draft had been initialed by Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and nearly all the Cabinet, but that the integration plan was "opposed by some deputy prime ministers." The government made no official statement on the draft treaty Friday.


Though Yeltsin has voiced support for a referendum on unification between the two Slavic neighbors and signed a treaty envisioning sweeping integration of political and economic structures last April, progress has been slow.


Lukashenko's verbal war with Washington at a time when Moscow is trying to improve relations with the West hasn't helped matters, and his recent relations with the Kremlin have been anything but smooth.


Lukashenko snubbed the Kremlin last November by rejecting a Russian-brokered compromise between the Belarussian president and parliament during a referendum that granted Lukashenko sweeping authoritarian powers. Moscow has also voiced concern over the influx of contraband goods, especially alcohol and cars, through Belarus, as well as over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Lukashenko said Friday that if neighboring Poland joined NATO, Belarus would reply with "corresponding measures." He accused Poland and Lithuania of conducting "covert military surveillance" of Belarus and said it was a "well-know fact" that a squadron of U.S. F-16 fighter-bombers had been stationed near the Polish-Belarus border.


"We are categorically opposed to NATO's advance to the east because we do not want to be a buffer state," said Lukashenko, 42. "[Since] our great Soviet state disappeared ... there is no counterweight."


Belarus' diplomatic relations with the West took a sharp downturn with the expulsion this week of U.S. Embassy first secretary Serge Alexandrov from Minsk after he was detained at an opposition rally. The move resulted in a tit-for-tat expulsion of a Belarussian diplomat from Washington and the recall of the Belarussian ambassador-designate.


Washington also canceled a planned $40 million aid program because of what it said were human rights abuses in Belarus. Lukashenko said the $40 million had been promised not as aid, but as compensation for Belarus' destruction of conventional weapons and the removal of nuclear missiles from Belarussian territory. "They promised to pay, but they didn't," he said. "So we will not destroy the [SS-18 nuclear missile] silos as promised."


Lukashenko charged that "enemies" of the union agreement feared Russian-Belarussian integration "may begin a real process of the unification of the nations which once formed the great Soviet people," and that international agencies such as the Soros Foundation, whose Belarussian program director was refused a visa last week, were conducting a campaign of subversion.


"In these conditions, the Belarussian state must take measures to protect its people against foreign influence," said Lukashenko, who last week said he believed Belarussians were pleading for "a return to Stalinist times."


Western and Russian media have been conniving with "lavishly paid extremists" in Minsk to slander his country, said Lukashenko, who prevented transmission of Russian television footage of violent opposition protests this week. Recent media coverage of unrest in Belarus was "a propagandist aggression against Belarus ... aimed at preventing the next step in integration," he said.


Lukashenko insisted he had been misrepresented in the media, and that his integration proposals were aimed at creating a union of equal states, rather than a unitary government.











"I do not lay claim to any crown or throne," he said. "My aim is to make life normal for the people of Belarus and for the fraternal peoples of Russia."