Paris, 24/08/2001 (Agence Europe) - In No. 29 of the "Occasional Papers" series of the Western European Union's Institute for Security Studies headed by Nicole Gnesotto, in Paris, Ramunas Davidonis, Lithuanian diplomat, Visiting Fellow at the Institute (and who wrote this report on a personal basis) acknowledges that the situation in Belarus, with "President Lukashenko's increasingly firm grip on power", now represents "a very significant challenge for the European security community". "Belarus' shift to authoritarianism and acquiescence to Russian hegemony was not anticipated by the European security community", the author observes, noting that, in the current situation, "it could even be argued that Belarus is behaving not as an independent republic but simply as a region of Russia". According to the report, entitled "the Challenge of Belarus and European Responses", Europe must develop a "comprehensive strategy to deal with Belarus", and the long-term goal of that strategy should be "a developing and democratic Belarus with a more balanced foreign policy". The close ties with Russia complicates things, but if it wants to contribute in changing the situation in Belarus, the European security community "should try to work with Russia", says Mr. Davidonis, acknowledging, however, that "Moscow is still reluctant to discuss issues concerning Belarus with its partners from Europe".
The European security community, which is trying to keep up a dialogue with the leadership in Minsk, is "making modest efforts to strengthen civil society" in the country ("much to Lukashenko's dismay") with a view to "fostering an alternative elite", notes Davidonis, stressing that, were there in fact to be a democratic change in Belarus, "Europe would then be better prepared to deal with the new leadership". According to him, "relations between Belarus and the European security community will be normalised only after democratic change occurs in Belarus", which cannot occur as long as Lukashenko remains in power. Davidonis does however acknowledge that the 9 September presidential elections do not seem to present serious risks for him, even though "the opposition seems to have found some unity in support of Natalya Masherova, daughter of the still very popular Communist leader of Soviet Belarus, Piotr Masherov".
Mr. Davidonis therefore underpins the crucial nature of this autumn's presidential elections, recognising that a "policy of conditionality is hardly applicable to Belarus", a "country for which normalising relations with the EU and the West is simply not a priority". "Relaunching the Tacis programme or receiving other forms of assistance from the West is not important enough to Lukashenko to justify what he perceives and denounces as Western meddling in his country's affairs with the ultimate intent of ousting him from power", the author writes. He then goes on to deplore the fact that the protests of different organisations and individual members of the EU should have "done very little to change the behaviour of government officials in Minsk". At the same time, he stresses that, "especially now that Poland has joined NATO and Lithuania is a leading candidate to join in the Alliance's next round of expansion, the European security community has had to take a hard look at how to deal with having direct borders with Belarus". For that reason, he says, "programmes directed at demarcation and overall strengthening of borders with Belarus have become a priority", and, despite the "profound disaffection in most European capitals with the political developments in Belarus", these programmes have not been suspended or frozen.
(WEU Institute for Security Studies, 43 avenue President Wilson, 75775 Paris Cedex 16. Tel.: 53 67 22 00. Fax: 47 20 81 78. E-mail: ies-ueo@iss-weu.com. Web: http: //http://www.weu.int/institute ).