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In with Iraq, out of NATO
By
Brian Kenety
PRAGUE - As Prague prepares to
receive 46 leaders for the NATO summit on Thursday and
Friday, it is thinking also of the two not invited.
President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus has
been denied an entry visa while President Leonid Kuchma
of Ukraine looks set to arrive, though he has not been
invited.
The NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization) military alliance has made it clear in
recent weeks that the two Eastern European presidents
will not be welcome at the summit, the first to be held
behind the former Iron Curtain.
On the face of
it, the two presidents are being kept away because of
their human rights record. Lukashenko has long been a
pariah in the West because of his autocratic rule,
marked by frequent crackdowns on dissent and media
freedom. Kuchma faces difficulties domestically and
abroad over his alleged role in ordering the murder of
opposition reporter Heorhiy Gongadze, whose headless
body was found in a forest two years ago.
Neither Belarus nor Ukraine are NATO members,
but both are members of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership
Council (EAPC), a consultative body to NATO which is due
to meet in Prague on the second day of the summit on
Friday. The two leaders are being kept out although
under NATO rules each EAPC member is allowed to choose
its own delegates.
But it is no coincidence that
both leaders have been accused of links with Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein. Belarus is a member of NATO's
Partnership for Peace program, but stands accused of
training Iraqi military officers in operating air
defense missiles. Kuchma faces allegations that he
violated United Nations sanctions by approving a US$100
million sale of the Kolchuga early warning radar system
to Iraq.
The Czech hosts are being careful to
single out the leaders, not their countries. Foreign
Minister Cyril Svoboda says that his government does not
want Lukashenko to use a visit to Prague to "legitimize
his position" in Belarus. But he has said members of a
Belarus delegation would be given visas. From Ukraine,
he says Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko has been
invited in place of Kuchma.
The West is keen to
maintain good relations with Ukraine to help preserve
its fragile independence from Russia. Ukraine is the
fourth-largest recipient of US aid. But the US has
suspended $54 million in aid over the Kuchma
controversy.
Kuchma has denied US allegations
that it was his voice on a tape recording authorizing
the sale of the military equipment to Iraq. After talks
with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow over the
weekend, Kuchma visited China seeking "proof" that he
never sold weapons technology to Iraq. Kuchma says that
all Ukrainian officials would boycott the meeting if he
was barred. "If the president does not go, no one will
go," he says.
Earlier this year, a court in the
Ukrainian capital Kiev began to investigate Kuchma over
his role in the murder. In September tens of thousands
of people took to the streets calling for him to stand
down. These were the largest demonstrations since
Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
NATO officials in Brussels say that Western leaders
would boycott any session that Kuchma might attend.
In parallel with Kuchma's objections, the
Belarus government has strongly attacked the Czech
government for denying an entry visa to Lukashenko. "The
Czechs will lose their position in Belarus for a long
time, if not for ever," the Belarus foreign ministry
said in a statement. "This unprecedented decision,
forced on the Czech side, is one in a series of
undisguised pressure on Belarus. It shows that Czech
foreign policy is not independent and demonstrates what
disregard Prague has for EAPC decisions in which it has
taken part."
Lukashenko immediately recalled the
ambassador to Prague, Vladimir Belsky, for
consultations. He also threatened to open his country's
borders to the West. That, he says, would force
Europeans to "crawl and ask for our cooperation on drug
trafficking and illegal immigration". He added, "We will
not defend Europe from the flood."
There is some
dispute whether Belarus and Ukraine should be clubbed
together. "People do not see Ukraine and Belarus as
being in the same league," Chris Donnelly, special
advisor for Central and Eastern European Affairs to the
NATO secretary general, told a conference last week.
Jiri Sedivy, director of the Prague-based
Institute for International Relations, said that the
Ukrainian president was every bit as suspect as
Lukashenko. "Kuchma cooperates more with Iraq now than
with NATO," he told delegates at a meeting organized by
the Czech civil society initiative Forum 2000 Foundation
last week.
(Inter Press Service)
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