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29 March 2024

Ukraine trial, Belarus detainees worry EU

Published
By AFP

The EU is worried over developments on its eastern flank in Ukraine and Belarus, just weeks before the 27-nation bloc holds an Eastern Partnership summit in Poland, foreign ministers said Saturday.

The situation in both ex-Soviet states was "difficult", Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said at the conclusion of a two-day informal EU foreign ministers meeting in the Polish seaside resort of Sopot.

Poland currently holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency.

"We're following the case of Yulia Tymoshenko with great concern and we've made that clear to Ukraine," EU diplomatic chief Catherine Ashton said in Sopot, while saying talks on an EU association deal with Kiev were

going "forward because that seems to be the right thing to do."

"It's what the opposition would want and it's for the people of Ukraine," Ashton added.

The feisty Tymoshenko is standing trial in Kiev on abuse of power accusations, and faces up to 10 years behind bars on charges linked to a disputed gas deal she signed in 2009 when she was Ukraine's prime minister.

But her supporters argue her prosecution is part of a vendetta pursued by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a political rival.

European ministers also urged the EU to stand firm on its demand for the release of political prisoners in Belarus before any talks with strongman Alexander Lukashenko.

"There will be no rapprochement with the EU until he (Lukashenko) frees political prisoners," Austria's Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger told reporters in Sopot.

"It's a clear signal ... because it's unacceptable there are political prisoners in Belarus, that they haven't been set free and that the political opposition is being prevented from organising," he added.

Sikorski said there was "a consensus" on the matter in Europe.

"The liberation and rehabilitation -- their participation in politics -- of all political prisoners in Belarus is a prerequisite for our resumption of dialogue with authorities in Belarus," Sikorski added, a position echoed by Ashton.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov said Friday that Belarus freed 13 political prisoners over the past month as a first step to a larger pledge by Lukashenko to release all those arrested by October.

Authorities in ex-Soviet Belarus jailed several dozen activists and leading political figures in the wake of anti-government protests following Lukashenko's contested re-election in December, although some have already been released under an amnesty.