| Submit your comments on this article | ||
| Europe | ||
| Belarus Briefly Detains U.S. Diplomat | ||
| 2005-08-25 | ||
MINSK, Belarus (AP) - Police briefly detained a U.S. diplomat in Belarus, and activists said Wednesday the authorities wanted to prevent him from meeting them. American diplomats expressed concern over the detention and were discussing the incident with Belarusian officials, U.S. Embassy spokesman Alexei Solomakh said. Officials in Belarus' Foreign and Interior Ministries declined comment.
The U.S. government has been a vocal critic of President Alexander Lukashenko, whose government fears opposition attempts to foment political change in this tightly controlled country. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called Lukashenko's regime "the last dictatorship in the center of Europe." U.S. Embassy political officer Lyle McMillan was held for about 40 minutes on Tuesday, said Galina Skorokhod, an activist in the city of Gomel, where the diplomat was detained. She said the diplomat had been scheduled to meet with representatives of a variety of non-governmental organizations in a building where the groups have offices in the city, 185 miles southeast of the capital, Minsk. Foreign diplomats frequently meet with NGOs to keep abreast of developments in society and to express support for the groups, which often face harassment in authoritarian countries such as Belarus. Police notified the NGOs on the eve of the meeting that the building was off limits because of a search for a bomb on the premises. The venue for the meeting was then moved to a private apartment, Skorokhod said, but police showed up, saying they were carrying out ID checks as part of an operation to detect illegal migrants or criminals. That is when they detained the diplomat, she said in a telephone interview. "It's obvious that the police's main goal was to break up (our) meeting, which they did," Skorokhod said.
On Wednesday, two Georgians who took part in the "Rose Revolution" protests that brought down longtime President Eduard Shevardnadze in late 2003 were detained in Minsk, said Vladimir Kobets, leader of the Belarusian opposition youth group Zubr. Kobets told The Associated Press that he and the Georgian activists, Georgy Kandelaki and Luka Tsuladze, were seized by men in plainclothes and taken to a police station, where Kobets said he was released after questioning. Kobets said all the Georgians' documents were in order and no reason was given for the detentions. Police and other officials declined to comment. | ||
| Posted by:Steve White |