| 06.07.2010 |
Eastern Partnership ‘Absolutely a Success’
There are concerns the European Union’s market crisis will dramatically scale back its ambitions for outreach programs with its neighbors -- including its Eastern Partnership. |
| 05.07.2010 |
PACE Suspends its High-Level Contacts with the
Belarusian Government and Parliament
Strasbourg, 29.04.2010 – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) today decided to suspend its activities involving high-level contact with the Belarusian Parliament and/or the governmental authorities, having noted a “lack of progress” towards Council of Europe standards and a “lack of political will” on the part of the authorities to adhere to the Organisation’s values. |
| 11.04.2010 |
US Mission to the OSCE
Statement on Freedom of Assembly in Belarus
As delivered by Political Counselor Casey Christensen
to the Permanent Council, Vienna
February 25, 2010 |
| 11.04.2010 |
Political Sphere in Belarus: From Marxism-Leninism To Political Science
Like its native country, the discipline of political science in Belarus will take decades to outgrow its Soviet past. After all, most of the country’s contemporary social science luminaries were brought up on the volumes of scientific communism, memorizing the blessings of the socialist revolution and the proletarian dictatorship, and today force-feed their own students with courses like the “Ideology of the Belarusian State.” As a result, the spectre of communist past still haunts the Belarusian academia. |
| 11.01.2010 |
Doing Business With Lukashenka’s Regime
Typically, one would not expect to find a “Special Report” on Belarus in The Financial Times. In recent years, most of the western business community has shown limited interest in the country. It wasn’t so long ago, that some people joked about turning the country into an amusement park for people nostalgic over the break-up of the Soviet Union. While politics may have played a contributing role in this lack of interest, it was more likely the perception that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to undertake profitable activities in Belarus. |
| 11.01.2010 |
Opinion Poll Reveals the Impact of The Global Recession on Belarus
A synopsis of the latest opinion poll (September 2009) conducted in Belarus by the Independent Institute of Social-Economic and Political Research has been published on the Institute’s website (www.iiseps.org). The Charter 97 website issued a press release, which maintained that given a choice, Belarusians would join the European Union, but decline to join the Russia-Belarus Union (RBU). It further declared that based on the poll, a majority of Belarusians now wish to replace Alyaksandr Lukashenka as president (www.charter97.org, October 5). This analysis, however, over-simplifies the issues and obfuscates the attitude of the Belarusian population to the consequences of the economic crisis and current bilateral relations with Russia. |
| 11.01.2010 |
Lukashenka Makes Key Leadership Changes in Belarus
On December 4, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka made sweeping changes to the higher echelons of the leadership. The changes reflect both adverse news on the economic front and the installment of some hard-line personalities on the eve of a series of elections that will monopolize the next 12-15 months. The main opposition newspaper refers to the changes as “KGBization” and restoring ideological control over the media (Narodnaya Volya, December 5). |
| 11.01.2010 |
New Blocs Cooperation With Regime
Lyavon Barshcheuski, the former head of the Belarusian Popular Front says creation of the Belarusian Independent Bloc (BIB) is a “capitulatory project and treason”. |
| 11.10.2009 |
CENTRAL and EAST EUROPEAN COALITION
MEETS with U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIALS
Washington, DC– Following two very important foreign policy trips by President Obama to Moscow and Vice President Biden to Ukraine and Georgia, the Central and East European Coalition (CEEC), an assembly of 18 ethnic organizations representing the communities of Central and East European descent, had an opportunity to meet with the principal architects for the Obama Administration’s foreign policy agenda. |
| 11.10.2009 |
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
On 1 September, 2009 the world marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the World War II. Many political leaders including Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel took part in the commemoration ceremony in the Polish city of Gdansk. |
| 11.10.2009 |
An Open Letter to the Obama Administration
From Non-NATO, Non-EU EasternEurope
On July 16, 2009, the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza published an open letter to the administration of President Obama raising crucial issues pertaining to the Euro-Atlantic partnership. It was signed by some 22 foreign policy and security elites from the newer NATO and EU members— self-styled Central and Eastern European (CEE) intellectuals. Whether implicitly or explicitly, al the matters they touched on concern the dynamics of current and likely future events in their region of Europe vis-a-vis Russia. Their call for a reengaged, collaborative United States as a true partner with Europe in addressing concerns of the region was eloquent, accurate and most timely. |
| 04.07.2009 |
Belarusian President Boycotts Moscows CSTO Summit
Belarus refused to attend the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit in Moscow on June 14. The summit made decisions to enlarge the size of collective rapid deployment forces, the scope of their missions, and the legal basis of their operations. |
| 04.07.2009 |
Declaration of the European Council on the Eastern Partnership
1. Promoting stability, good governance and economic development in its Eastern neighbourhood is of strategic importance for the European Union. The EU therefore has a strong interest in developing an increasingly close relationship with its Eastern partners, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. The European Union's proposal for an ambitious Eastern Partnership to be established with these countries serves this objective. |
| 04.07.2009 |
Europes Last Dictatorship
Minsk, Belarus -- One of the questions I was repeatedly asked during a recent trip to the capital of Belarus was whether the Obama administration would opt for greater pragmatism at the expense of idealism in foreign policy. Both the government and opposition in this country have a vested interest in the answer. |
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