A new Report of the Belarus Task Force

18.11.2008 21:54:03 - admin

The Report has been published and coordinated by the International Center for Democratic Transition in Budapest, Hungary and supported i.a. by the Amicus Europae Foundation. The report will be officially presented in the next few weeks in Brussels, Berlin, Paris and Washington.

Belarus is an important European country, and, since 2004, a neighbor of the European Union. It has numerous historical, economic, and cultural ties with the peoples of the European Union. Yet we feel that Belarus, since the mid-1990’s and the election of Alexander Lukashenko as the country’s President, has not received proper attention and the appropriate place on the EU’s agenda which it indeed deserves.

Due to its internal domestic political circumstances, Belarus has been excluded from various European institutions and international organizations and has become an isolated quasi-pariah state. Belarus has become Europe’s forgotten country, a nation which is left out of the universally beneficial process of cooperation in an increasingly prosperous and integrated Europe.

More recently, however, there is a significant increase of willingness for cooperation on the side of both the government in Minsk and Western governments. In late 2007, the Belarus Task Force was formed to help further this process with a thorough analysis of the situation and some specific recommendations.

The Belarus Task Force is chaired by Aleksander Kwasniewski, former President of Poland, and consists of a panel of highly renowned international experts representing a broad range of European countries. Most members of this group are either former Presidents or former Ministers of Foreign Affairs of their respective countries. With the following report, the Belarus Task Force hopes to draw more attention to the case of Belarus among a broad range of decision-makers in Europe as well as the United States.

An independent, democratic and open Belarus is a common European interest, shared by more and more people in Belarus as well as other actors of the international community. In order to best serve this goal, we need to promote democratic reform in the country and to strengthen the European component of the Belarusian identity. We must provide Belarus with a real European alternative.

Report is available here:
A_European_Alternative_for_Belarus.pdf