Alexander Lukashenko attacked the OSCE
On January 27, in an interview with the national television channel, the President of Belarus said: “They decided to create a corps of 14-18 thousand militants who will supposedly be observers, and tomorrow, as journalists in the Chechen Republic say, 'they sow grain during the day, and in the evening they shoot from under the bed.'" . The next day, the OSCE mission in writing refuted “all accusations of participation in actions of an unpeaceful and illegal nature.”

Alexander Lukashenko was dissatisfied with the OSCE's intention to create a group of volunteer observers for the presidential election campaign in 2001. During the parliamentary elections in October 2000, five thousand observers, trained with funds and support from the OSCE, submitted 285 reports of violations of the law. None of them were disputed by the authorities. However, the EU and the Council of Europe did not recognize the new parliament as legally elected and advised the President of Belarus to continue democratization reforms.
Now Mr. Lukashenko has decided to find a legal way to rein in the missionaries and at the same time intimidate local observers: “We pay contributions to the OSCE - their budget is formed from this, and they finance our opposition here, they fight against Lukashenko for his own money.” As the Belarusian Foreign Ministry reported, in 2001 Minsk is obliged to transfer 428 thousand euros, of which 214 thousand in the first quarter. By the standards of the Belarusian budget, this is decent money. The President said that he did not intend to “calmly look at this absurdity,” so “we took control of the budget of the OSCE, this group.”
Yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus distributed on the Internet website (www.mfa.gov.by) explanations about the financial activities of the OSCE mission in Minsk. The Advisory and Monitoring Group is invited to coordinate all 2001 projects with the Belarusian government before they begin implementation. Foreign Ministry spokesman Pavel Latushko referred to the decision of the OSCE Permanent Council of December 14, 2000, which stated: “All financial projects carried out by OSCE missions, regardless of the country of their activity, financed both from the OSCE budget and from voluntary contributions, must be submitted for approval to the government of the host country."
The OSCE mission, for its part, reminded the Belarusian president that “citizens have the right to make their own decisions about choosing the country’s leadership through open and transparent democratic elections.”
SABINA Kommersant-SOKOL, Minsk

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 15 dated January 30, 2001, page 11