Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: New Worker Online To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 11:28 AM Subject: [pttp] US subversion in Belarus admitted International story - 21/9/2001. US subversion in Belarus admitted. by Steve Lawton ALEXANDER Lukashenko, who was overwhelmingly re-elected President of Belarus a fortnight ago, has survived a US destabilisation effort and blocked its longer term aim of creating a pro-Western state on the Russian border. The process was monitored by hundreds of international observers with backing from 45 countries -- a measure of how much 'interest' there has been in the strategically sensitive state. The observers grudgingly accepted the result. But the United States had been busily orchestrating Lukashenko's downfall from its embassy in Minsk, capital of Belarus. US Ambassador Michael Kozak, in a candid letter to The Guardian (August 25), likened the US effort to change the course of the election as a Latin American Contra-style operation. He said that the United States' "objective and to some degree methodology are the same" in Belarus as that conducted in Nicaragua in the 80s. Nicaragua was subjected to mercenary anti-communist killers called Contras in a war claiming at least 30,000 lives. They were organised by the US Administration under President Ronald Reagan against the liberation forces the Sandinistas, but also in other guises elsewhere against the Salvadoran FMLN in particular. An official at the US embassy in Minsk told The Times (September 3) that they had assisted around 300 non-governmental organisations, media and political forces that were "seeking political change". The main Belarus daily Sovetskuya Belorussiyu (September 5) alleged US, British and German intelligence agencies had cooked up a plan to get rid of Lukashenko. The paper, which sourced its information to Moscow, said that the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) group based in Minsk and assorted NGOs were used as a cover. Lukashenko has a popular mandate because he has so far managed to salvage some semblance of economic and social order out of the Soviet Union's demise. That has kept most peoples' heads above water and prevented a collapse of the state into Western hands. This puts a rather different light on the assassinations of Lukashenko's opposition leaders, said by Western agencies to have been carried out by death squads at his instigation. This has been used to brand him in the West as an unreconstructed communist dictator who simply eliminated rivals to hold on to power. So reports, prior to Kozak's admission, that had been exposed by Lukashenko's Government and by state media at the time and still ridiculed now look a sight more credible. News programmes over the last six months have frequently alleged US covert operations in Belarus. Last February, for instance, one programme said that over an eight year period hundreds of US spies had visited Belarus, a relatively small country, through the US embassy. It accused the US of fomenting separatist and religious divisions. Opposition organisations from the Youth Front of the Belorussian Popular Front to the Belorusian Independent Trade Union -- among many accused of being US-funded -- have mocked the Lukashenko Government for branding any opposition as tantamount to being an imperialist spy. So the real meaning of Kozak's interview with Belarus National TV on 21 December 2000 is now clear. (This was the one that was pulled from the TV schedule, never to be aired, and which the US embassy in Minsk decided, nevertheless, to stick on its website). He arrogantly explained, while maintaining the "democratic" value of the Bush-Gore election shenanigans, that "the perception exists in the United States and in Europe that the processes by which the [Belarus] Parliament was recently appointed or selected did not meet...basic standards of democratic processes that are applied to all.... "[We've reached a] situation now where we've got a Parliament that we aren't able to recognise as being representative of the Belorusian people." He added that there is a "fundamental problem of the credibility of the electoral process [in Belarus]." Kozak appears not to have done US-assisted groups any favours by his admission now that Lukashenko has been elected. Belarus remains close to Russia, not least because it is economically heavily dependent: President Vladimir Putin has endorsed Lukashenko. The broader connection of this US role is not coincidental in the light of the deep involvement of its forces -- military and intelligence -- in former Yugoslavia's Macedonia and other parts of the Balkans. Nato-EU expansion up to Russia's borders has been persistently warned against by President Putin. That, so far, has been foiled. But now the US is about to unleash its dogs of war which will affect these unstable balances. New Communist Party of Britain Homepage http://www.newcommunistparty.org.uk A news service for the Working Class! Workers of all countries Unite! ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://TOPICA.COM/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
