MINSK, March 6 (RIA Novosti) - Belarus rejects Ukrainian criticism of the country's upcoming presidential elections, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday.
Belarusian diplomat Andrei Popov was responding to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk who said earlier that Ukraine wanted the March 19 elections in Belarus to be "honest and transparent," but expressed doubts that this was possible.
Popov said Tarasyuk's statement was "made in light of the parliamentary elections in Ukraine [on March 26] itself rather than in the context of the Belarusian-Ukrainian relations."
"It is Belarus' aspiration to hold free and fair elections complying with the law and international obligations of our country, so our desires here coincide with Ukraine's," Popov said, adding that Minsk attached great importance to friendly bilateral relations with Ukraine.
The Ukrainian foreign minister's critical remarks followed a series of incidents in Belarus that aroused international concerns over the upcoming presidential elections.
On March 2, police in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, detained presidential candidate Alexander Kozulin, who was about to register for the All-Belarusian Assembly, a national gathering that identified the country's economic priorities for the next five years. Prosecutors said the candidate had pushed a policeman during registration and then damaged a picture of the country's president at the police station.
The Belarus State Security Committee (KGB) previously reported that it had uncovered a coup plot masterminded by the opposition and planned for March 20, the day after the presidential vote.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, whom Washington has dubbed the "last dictator in Europe", said the state had banned 72 non-governmental organizations suspected of plotting the coup.
The foreign policies of the two former Soviet republics have diverged since pro-Western leader Viktor Yushchenko came to power in Ukraine after 'orange revolution' in 2003. Meanwhile, Belarus has been moving toward an alliance with Russia ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, and has been threatened with sanctions by the West, which accuses Lukashenko of building a "dictatorship."
