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FM AMEMBASSY MINSK
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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 MINSK 001187 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM ECON KTDB EPET BO
SUBJECT: EMBASSY MINSK WEEKLY POL/ECON REPORT - NOVEMBER 9, 
2006 
 
Ref: Minsk 1162 
 
¶1.  The following are brief items of interest compiled by 
Embassy Minsk. This edition includes events thru the November 6- 
7 Revolution Day holiday.  The next edition will cover items 
thru November 17. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 
----------------------- 
 
- U.S. and EU Ambassadors Visit Kurapaty (para. 2) 
- Foreign Military Experts Verify Belarus' CFE Compliance (para. 3) 
 
CIVIL SOCIETY 
------------- 
 
- Police Arrest 12 Opposition Youth Activists (para. 4) 
- GOB Still Refuses Hunger-Striking Cozulin Legal Council (para. 5) 
- Fourteen Join Kozulin's Hunger Strike (para. 6) 
- Authorities Have No Suspects in September 2005 Bombings (para. 7) 
- Education Minister Denies Expulsions Are Political (para. 8) 
- Regional Opposition Leaders Detained (para. 9) 
- Court Overturns Church Expropriation (para. 10) 
 
ELECTIONS 
--------- 
 
- Opposition Excluded from Gomel Election Commissions (para. 11) 
- Opposition Communist Youths Plan for Local Elections (para. 12) 
 
TRADE AND INVESTMENT 
-------------------- 
 
- Belarus' 2006 Foreign Trade Up by 32 Percent (para. 13) 
- Russia Considers Duty on Belarusian Sugar Exports (para. 14) 
- Russia Refuses to Sign 2007 Energy Deal with Belarus (para. 15) 
- Belarus Chamber of Commerce to Open in PRC, Russia (para. 16) 
 
DOMESTIC ECONOMICS 
------------------ 
 
- GOB Expects Monthly Pay To Rise to USD 350 (para. 17) 
- Economy Minister Claims 2006 Key Economic Targets Met (para. 18) 
- GOB Considers 50 Percent Cut in Military Pensions (para. 19) 
 
INDEPENDENT MEDIA 
----------------- 
 
- New Independent Newspaper in Mogilev (para. 20) 
- Editor-in-Chief of Belarusian "Komsomolka" Resigns (para. 21) 
 
SOCIETY 
------- 
 
- Lukashenko Criticizes Belarus' Healthcare System (para. 22) 
- Nuclear Power Plant to Be Operational in 2015 (para. 23) 
 
- QUOTE OF THE WEEK (para. 24) 
 
----------------------- 
International Relations 
----------------------- 
 
¶2.  U.S. and EU Ambassadors Visit Kurapaty 
 
On November 2, Ambassador and Heads of Mission of the United 
Kingdom, Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Latvia, 
Poland, and France visited Kurapaty, a wooded area outside Minsk 
where Stalin's secret police murdered and buried thousands of 
people during the 1930s and 1940s.  In response to journalists' 
questions, Ambassador explained the importance for a government to 
remember and openly discuss tragedies like Kurapaty in order to 
ensure that such atrocities were not repeated.  Throughout the 
week, hundreds of Belarusians commemorated the slayings by laying 
flowers and lighting candles at the site. 
 
¶3.  Foreign Military Experts Verify Belarus' CFE Compliance 
 
On October 31, a team of military experts from Belgium, the Czech 
Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the United states started their four- 
day inspection of the 120th Independent Mechanized Brigade of 
Belarus' Armed Forces to verify GOB compliance with the 1990 Treaty 
on Conventional Forces (CFE) in Europe, which sets limits on 
military equipment deployed by NATO and the former Warsaw Pact. 
 
------------- 
Civil Society 
------------- 
 
MINSK 00001187  002 OF 004 
 
 
 
¶4.  Police Arrest 12 Opposition Youth Activists 
 
On November 1, police arrested 12 youths for their unauthorized 
demonstration against the politically motivated conviction and 18 
month prison sentence of opposition youth leader Dmitriy Dashkevich 
(reftel).  The youths formed a human chain on Minsk's October 
Square and held images of Dashkevich.  Radio Free Europe/Radio 
Liberty Belarusian service reporter Lyubov Lunyova was among those 
detained but was released at the square.  Police released 10 of the 
youths after taking them to the police station and establishing 
their identities.  The remaining activists, Dmitry Fedoruk and Gleb 
Sandros, spent the night in a police lockup and were sentenced in 
court to three days in jail for petty hooliganism.  Fedoruk 
reportedly told pro-opposition website Charter 97 that police had 
beaten some of the detained activists.  On November 3, Amnesty 
International declared Dashkevich a prisoner of conscience. 
 
¶5.  GOB Still Refuses Hunger-Striking Kozulin Legal Counsel 
 
On November 2, Igor Rynkevich, the attorney for imprisoned former 
opposition presidential candidate Aleksandr Kozulin, confirmed that 
authorities are still preventing him from meeting with Kozulin. 
The Vitba-3 correctional institution warden reportedly announced 
that he would not allow the lawyer to meet the former presidential 
candidate until the latter ended his open-ended hunger strike, 
which Kozulin began on October 20 to protest President Lukashenko's 
fraudulent March 19 reelection.  Kozulin's daughter, Yuliya, 
visited Kozulin the correctional on November 2 and related that the 
warden justified the denial on the grounds that a meeting with 
Rynkevich would only weaken Kozulin's health.  According to 
Rynkevich, authorities put Kozulin in the prison's medical unit 
together with former lawmaker Sergei Skrebets, who also has been on 
hunger strike since October 20.  Both petitioned the prison 
administration to transfer them back to the barracks. 
 
¶6.  Fourteen Join Kozulin's Hunger Strike 
 
By November 2, fourteen Belarusian Social Democratic Party 
"Gramada" (BSDP) and Belarusian Party of Communists (BPC) activists 
in Brest began a hunger strike in solidarity with former opposition 
presidential candidate Aleksandr Kozulin.  On October 30, BSDP 
Brest City Chapter Head Anna Kanyus, a student at European 
Humanities University in Vilnius, began the hunger strike and was 
later joined by head of the BSDP Brest regional chapter head Igor 
Maslovsky, who has called on BSDP activists to fast for up to five 
days to draw international attention to Kozulin's politically 
motivated imprisonment. 
 
¶7.  Authorities Have No Suspects in September 2005 Bombings 
 
On November 3, Belarus' Main Organized Crime and Corruption 
Prevention Office Chief Vladimir Tikhinya announced that 
authorities have no suspects and are not holding anyone in 
connection to the September 2005 bombings that injured nearly 50 
people in the northeastern city of Vitebsk.  On October 4, police 
had arrested Pavel Krasovskiy, a prominent activist of the youth 
opposition organization Malady Front, on the grounds that 
Krasovskiy resembled a police composite picture of a suspect but 
released him 10 days later upon ascertaining that he was abroad 
during explosions.  In April, authorities released two other 
suspects on their own recognizance but until now had not indicated 
whether they remained suspects. 
 
¶8.  Education Minister Denies Expulsions Are Political 
 
On October 27, Belarusian Education Minister Aleksandr Radkov 
claimed that not a single student has been expelled from the 
country's institutions of higher learning for political reasons. 
Last year, Radkov issued a directive that ordered educational 
institutions to expel students who participate in opposition 
demonstrations. 
 
¶9.  Regional Opposition Leaders Detained 
 
On November 4, police in the southwestern city of Brest prevented 
opposition United Civic Party Regional Chair Stepan Novoselchanin 
from traveling to Kyiv, where he was to attend a conference of 
Belarus' opposition activists, by detaining him until after his 
train departed.   The same day, authorities in the northeastern 
city of Mogilev arrested and sentenced to five days in jail 
opposition Belarusian Popular Front Regional Chair Grigoriy 
Kastusev as he was boarding a train to Kyiv for the same 
conference.  Kastusev was charged with relieving himself in a 
public place and sentenced to five days in jail. 
 
¶10.  Court Overturns Church Expropriation 
 
On November 4, Sergey Lukanin, a lawyer for the Minsk-based New 
Life Church (NLC), reported that the Supreme Economic Court of 
 
MINSK 00001187  003 OF 004 
 
 
Belarus overturned all court decisions regarding NLC and will 
adjudicate the church's case under original jurisdiction in two 
weeks.  Earlier this year, Minsk city authorities expropriated a 
building and a four-acre plot bought by NLC in 2002. 
 
--------------- 
Local Elections 
--------------- 
 
¶11.  Opposition Excluded from Gomel Election Commissions 
 
On November 2, independent media reported that the GOB included 
none of the 39 nominees of the opposition United Civic Party and 
the Belarusian Party of Communists in the 60 District Election 
Commissions (DECs) formed in the eastern Gomel region for Belarus' 
January 14 local elections.  Of the total 664 DEC members, 41 
percent of them were nominated through the signature-collection 
procedure, 21.3 percent by "workers' collectives."  The remaining 
members were nominated by the pro-GOB Federation of Trade Unions of 
Belarus, and pro-GOB NGOs, including the Belarusian National Youth 
Union, the Belarusian Public Association of War Veterans, and the 
Belarusian Union of Women. 
 
¶12.  Opposition Communist Youths Plan for Local Elections 
 
On October 29, the Central Committee of the pro-opposition Lenin 
Communist Youth Union of Belarus (LKSMB), purportedly Belarus' only 
registered opposition youth party, approved the participation of 
LKSMB candidates in Belarus' January 14 local elections.  LKSMB 
leader Dmitry Yanenko predicted that the elections would be neither 
free nor fair but described the election process as "a good school" 
for LKSMB activists. 
 
-------------------- 
Trade and Investment 
-------------------- 
 
¶13.  Belarus' 2006 Foreign Trade Up by 32 Percent 
 
On October 30, Belarusian Ministry of Economics reported that 
Belarus' foreign trade in goods and services jumped by 32.2 percent 
year-on-year during the first eight months of 2006.  Exports rose 
by 27 percent. Imports rose by 37.6 percent, well above the target 
of eight to nine percent. 
 
¶14.  Russia Considers Duty on Belarusian Sugar Exports 
 
On November 1, independent media reported that Russia's Ministry 
for Economic Development and Trade has submitted a draft regulation 
that would impose an 8.1 percent compensatory duty on Belarusian 
sugar exports for a period of three years.  The draft followed an 
investigation by the Russian Union of Sugar Manufacturers 
(Soyuzrossakhar) that concluded that Belarus exported sugar made 
from imported raw cane sugar instead of sugar that was domestically 
refined from sugar beets.  At present, Belarus is exempt from 
paying duty on the export of domestically refined sugar, whereas 
sugar made from imported raw cane sugar is subject to duty at USD 
340 per ton.  Soyuzrossakhar estimates the Russian sugar industry's 
losses between 2002 and 2005 at more than USD 500 million. 
According a source within the Belarusian State Food Industry 
Concern, the president and prime minister will consider the issue. 
 
¶15.  Russia Refuses to Sign 2007 Energy Deal with Belarus 
 
On November 3 Russia's Ambassador to Belarus Aleksander Surikov 
announced that Russia will not discuss next year's fuel and energy 
agreement with Belarus until the dispute regarding the distribution 
of oil product export duty between the two budgets has been 
settled.  Surikov also related that Russia has withdrawn from the 
agreement to supply Belarus with natural gas at Russia's domestic 
prices and to equalize rail tariffs because of Belarus' apparent 
unwillingness to create a joint gas transport venture. 
 
¶16.  Chamber of Commerce to Open in PRC, Russia 
 
On November 2, the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry 
(BCCI) formally decided to open offices in China and St. 
Petersburg, Russia in late 2007.  At present, BCCI's office in 
Leipzig, Germany is its only presence abroad. 
 
---------------- 
Domestic Economy 
---------------- 
 
¶17.  GOB Expects Monthly Pay To Rise to USD 350 
 
On November 3, Economy Minister Nikolai Zaichenko said that the 
average inflation-adjusted pay is projected to rise by eight to 
nine percent and households' real money incomes by 7.5 to 8.5 
percent in 2007.  According to the official, the average monthly 
 
MINSK 00001187  004 OF 004 
 
 
pay is expected to grow to USD 350 by the end of next year. 
 
¶18.  Economy Ministry Claims 2006 Key Economic Targets Met 
 
On October 30, Belarus' Ministry of Economics reported that 
thirteen of the 16 key targets for Belarus' economic and social 
development were met in the first nine months of 2006.  According 
to the ministry, agricultural output rose by 2.2 percent in that 
period.  Meanwhile, Belarus' GDP energy intensity fell by 1.5 
percent.  Real income rose by 17.8 percent year-on-year.  The 
average real retirement pension in the first nine months increased 
by 28.9 percent compared with the level of the same period of 2005. 
¶19.  GOB Considers 50 Percent Cut in Military Pensions 
On October 27, independent media reported that Belarusian Deputy 
Prime Minister Viktor Burya is considering a plan to cut military 
pensions by 50 percent in order to reduce GOB budgetary 
expenditures.  The Belarus' Finance Ministry projects USD 40 
million in savings. 
 
----------------- 
Independent Media 
----------------- 
 
¶20.  New Independent Newspaper in Mogilev 
 
On October 31, a new independent newspaper published its first 
issue in the eastern city of Mogilev.  According to "Nash Mogilev" 
(Our Mogilev) Editor Andrey Dvigun, the paper will come out once a 
month at an initial stage and then will become a weekly, covering 
social and economic events in the city.  The paper will feature a 
political insert section titled "Mogilevskaya Koalitsiya" (Mogilev 
Coalition), and an editorial staff including members from local 
youth organizations. 
 
¶21.  Editor-in-Chief of Belarusian "Komsomolka" Resigns 
 
On November 2, independent media reported the resignation of Yuliya 
Slutskaya, Editor-in-Chief of the "Komsomolskaya Pravda v 
Belorussii," the largest independent newspaper in Belarus. 
According to press reports, Slutskaya has been offered a job with 
the NGO Belarusian Association of Journalists. 
 
------- 
Society 
------- 
 
¶22.  Lukashenko Criticizes Belarus' Healthcare System 
 
On October 29, President Lukashenko criticized Belarus' healthcare 
and asserted that more than half of Belarusians are dissatisfied 
with the quality of medical services.  According to Lukashenko, 
more than 50 percent of interviewed people are unhappy about 
doctors' bedside manner and 45 percent complain of a shortage of 
specialists in out-patient clinics.  Lukashenko stressed the need 
to modernize hospitals and other healthcare institutions. 
 
¶23.  Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant to Be Operational in 2015 
 
On October 30, during a visit to Russia, Belenergo Chief Engineer 
Aleksandr Sivak said that Belarus was determined to pursue its 
atomic power program with the first unit of a yet-to-be constructed 
Belarusian nuclear power plant expected to be put into operation in 
¶2015.  Sivak linked Belarus' decision to build the plant to 
increasing natural gas prices. 
 
----------------- 
Quote of the Week 
----------------- 
 
¶24.  On November 1, after hearing Judge Alla Bulash's decision to 
sentence him to 18 months in prison on politically motivated 
charges, opposition youth leader Dmitriy Dashkevich quietly but 
defiantly replied to the judge: 
 
"This is my victory.  This is my victory." 
 
Stewart