Brussels, 13/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - At Monday's External Relations Council, the foreign affairs ministers will be called upon to decide whether they wish to keep in place the suspension of European sanctions against Belarus (decided upon last October), or whether they feel that the suspended "restrictive measures" should be brought back in, or even made tougher. The question is a politically important one, as it will also determine whether Minsk may take part in the "Eastern Partnership", a new policy aiming to reinforce the European neighbourhood policy (ENP) towards its neighbours to the East, and which will be officially launched at a summit to be held in Prague on 7 May. On 13 October 2008, the Council suspended, for an initial period of six months, the ban on travelling to the EU territory imposed on the main leaders of Belarus, including its president Alexandre Lukashenko (the freezing of assets, on the other hand, was kept in place: see EUROPE 9760). The Council had then agreed to reassess the situation in April 2009, with a number of options at hand: leaving in place the status quo, additional relaxation (in the event of favourable developments in democratisation and the respect the human rights), or putting all sanctions back in place.
On the eve of the Council, the 27 agree that the Lukashenko regime has recently made certain progress on democratic openness, but opinions still differ as to whether this improvement is enough to allow sanctions to be relaxed or to allow the country to join the neighbourhood policy and the Eastern Partnership. At Friday's Coreper, the United Kingdom (with some support, but somewhat ambiguous, from the Netherlands and Belgium) confirmed that it would like to see the sanctions back in place just as they were before 13 October 2008. These countries are also against the immediate inclusion of the country in the Eastern Partnership. Coreper will discuss the issue once again on Monday morning, before the Council. The question will almost certainly be discussed by the ministers. (H.B./transl.fl)