Translated material
President Putin
The head of Belarus is against such a prospect
This is exactly what, President Putsin, Belarusian citizens will probably call their new “father” in two years. But this will happen if at least two conditions are met. First, the President of Belarus must agree with the plan proposed to him at a meeting in the Kremlin yesterday to create a single Russian-Belarusian state, including holding elections in May 2004 for a “single head of a single state.” Secondly, Vladimir Putin must win these elections.Since hardly anyone will doubt the fulfillment of the second condition (even if we take into account Lukashenko’s considerable potential electorate in Russia), the main thing is the fulfillment of the first condition. But this already raises some doubts.
Yesterday in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin put an end to discussions about the state structure of the future Russian-Belarusian Union. “I don’t see any other structure other than a federal one, the same as in the Russian Federation,” Putin said. And he proposed a “concrete” plan for the unification of the two states. In May next year, a referendum is being held in Russia and Belarus to unite them into a Union. Then, in December 2003, elections to the Union Parliament (apparently, simultaneously with parliamentary elections in Russia) and, finally, in May 2004, elections for the head of the Union.
A correspondent for the Vremya Novostey newspaper intently watched Mr. Lukashenko's facial expression as his Russian counterpart voiced his historic initiatives. And then, with admiration, he noted that not a single muscle on Alexander Grigorievich’s face flinched. This is all the more important because, as it turned out, it was a complete surprise for Mr. Lukashenko to hear these plans from Putin’s lips in public. If this was an impromptu act by the Russian president, then it was clearly a success.
Lukashenko was able to recoup only a few hours later, finding himself on his native soil. Apparently, the Kremlin “anaesthesia” dissipated on the way home and the Belarusian president finally reacted to the Russian option. He rejected it as categorically unacceptable: “After all, it is not even about including Belarus into Russia as a single whole, but proposes dividing Belarus into 7 parts, including it in the Russian Federation and giving these parts equal rights with the regions of Russia, We will never agree to this option.”
True, the Belarusian leader has not yet begun to fundamentally object to the election of the “first person” of the Union. Whether this means that the Belarusian “father” has not yet abandoned hopes of becoming a “union father” is unknown.
Characteristic in this regard is the sharp rebuke given by Mr. Lukashenko on the substance of Vladimir Putin’s yesterday’s proposals to introduce a single monetary unit of the Union, which should be the Russian ruble, a year earlier than planned, already in January 2004. He is ready to start this “at least from this new year,” but provided that Minsk’s influence on the single emission center, that is, on the Central Bank of Russia, is maintained. But this is already an “old fairy tale”, heard more than once in Moscow, where they are extremely tired of it.
However, the Belarusian father does not have his own version of the new Union. Unless we consider as such the desire to “squeeze” out of the current Union Treaty the possibility of providing citizens of Belarus and Russia with “equal rights and freedoms within the Union”, and for economic entities such a regime so that “no one feels like a foreigner on the territory of the Union.”
Obviously, the Russian President did not count on Lukashenko’s immediate consent. And therefore he proposed another option for an alliance. Vladimir Putin is ready to build a single state on the principles of the European Union, with a single parliament, actually controlled by national parliaments. Mr. Lukashenko is “not against it,” but only if Belarusian sovereignty and the current Union Treaty are preserved. In a word, so that it remains as before: convenient and cheap (gas and transit) as in Russia, strict and tough as in Belarus (rights and freedoms of citizens).
But Moscow is clearly not ready to leave everything the same. And the head of Belarus has practically no opportunities for further speculation on the topic of the future Slavic union.