Partnering with Lukashenka

Will he or won’t he come to Prague? As a critical meeting for the EU's relations with its eastern neighbors approaches, the focus these days seems less on the agenda itself than on whether Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka will crash the party.

He has an invitation, sort of. At the end of last week, media around the world reported that Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg had hand-delivered an invitation to “Europe’s last dictator,” as Lukashenka is often labeled, at a meeting in Minsk on 17 April.

Schwarzenberg was quoted as saying: “He accepted the invitation. It is now for him to decide who will represent Belarus at the summit.”

The Czech Republic currently holds the rotating EU presidency and will host the first official meeting of the Eastern Partnership - designed to improve ties with six formerly Soviet states - in Prague on 7 May.

Later on 17 April, after a wave of negative reactions from the press and some European capitals, the Czech Foreign Ministry moved into damage control, clarifying that, in fact, Belarus had been invited and not Lukashenka specifically.

That has led to widespread speculation that Czech diplomats have managed to strike a deal with Lukashenka: Belarus would be invited, raising the president’s credibility abroad and especially at home, but he would decline attending, instead sending someone else.

Pavel Vondra, writing in the Czech online newssite external page Aktuálně.cz, said the invitation was apparently accompanied by a clear recommendation that Belarus would be represented by the “right person,” i.e. not the president. “All sides would in the end manage to save face because it’s expected that Lukashenka would send instead the prime minister or some other representative. Diplomats don’t expect the breaking of this ‘gentlemen’s agreement.’ ”

One of the reasons the decision generated so much media coverage was that no one had evidently briefed Vaclav Klaus on the notion that Lukashenka himself almost certainly wouldn’t come. Lashing out against supposed “double standards,” Klaus said he was “rather surprised” by the move and would neither shake hands with Lukashenka nor receive him at Prague Castle.

Klaus, however, is not known for his condemnation of dictators or support for democracy promotion abroad. On the contrary: In the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia last fall, Klaus’s criticism of Russia was much tamer than that of other European leaders and he had avoided taking Russian leaders such as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to task for their democratic shortcomings.

“It would be nice if this gesture was the result of a principled stand of Mr Klaus toward the non-observance of democracy and human rights in this country [Belarus],” wrote journalist Lubos Palata, in a commentary in the daily Lidove noviny, on 18 April. “Vaclav Klaus, however, labels people striving to promote such values as “human rightists” and practically doesn’t criticize the Chinese communists or Putin.” (To Klaus’s credit, he did, at least, earlier condemn the conduct of the fraudulent 2006 presidential elections in Belarus.)

Palata and others see Klaus’s rhetoric as more a part of a campaign to discredit the Eastern Partnership concept and stay in favor with his Russian “friends” who see the EU’s plan as encroachment into Russia’s traditional near abroad.
The Eastern Partnership seeks an upgrade in ties with Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova as well as Belarus.

In Belarus, the reaction to the invitation has been mixed. The traditional opposition believes the Czechs and EU in general ignored their pleas that not enough progress had been made on issues such as human rights violations, freedom of the press, prison conditions, forced military conscription and the repression of democracy activists.

Others are more in favor of the move. “Many people belonging to grassroots initiatives believe that it is better to move to Europe, even at the cost of legitimizing Lukashenka, since the [increased] openness will 100 percent lead to the destruction of this system in an evolutionary way,” a Belarusian journalist who did not wish to be named told ISN Security Watch.

“However it is necessary that Europe condition each positive move on some political reforms,” the journalist said.

With the Belarusian economy hit hard by the lack of credit abroad to prop up its state-centered, export-driven model, now is the right time for such a strategy: Lukashenka will be more likely to negotiate if the resulting benefits keep him in power.

The engagement vs isolation debate has taken on new momentum as of late as relations between Belarus and the EU have warmed. In the wake of the financial crisis, Minsk has already sought and received aid from the West and tried to lessen its dependency on Russia. In turn, some EU member states have pushed for a recognition that isolation hasn’t worked and that Belarus should be rewarded for addressing some of the West’s concerns about jailed oppositionists and freedom of the media, even if minimally.
 
Even if Lukashenka decides, in the end, that a visit to Prague would be too provocative, the president’s new strategy is bearing fruit. His travel agenda for April includes a visit to Italy and a meeting with the Pope at the Vatican, both part of his first official trip to a western country since the mid-1990s, according to The Independent.

While the debate over Lukashenka has overshadowed the Eastern Partnership meeting to some extent, the controversy has at least brought some publicity to an event that some could simply dismiss as yet another humdrum attempt by the EU to come up with a strategy for dealing with its Eastern neighbors.

The current plan, however, could become much more than that: a way to bring into the fold countries decades away from EU accession by exchanging increased aid and closer relations for democratic and economic reforms.

Still, the discussion does inevitably come back to Lukashenka.

“European politicians as well as the Belarusian opposition do want Belarus to become part of the Eastern Partnership, but the royal entrance of Lukashenka to Prague would be too strong a symbol,” Katerina Spacova, the director of Civic Belarus, a Czech NGO that supports initiatives to promote democracy in Belarus, told ISN Security Watch. “We would basically help Lukashenka’s PR campaign in the upcoming presidential elections!”

“So if EU and Belarusian diplomats really achieved an agreement that another person representing Belarus would come to the summit in Prague, it seems a very good solution The only question is, whether anybody can rely on some unofficial promises from Belarusian officials. This regime and the president have always been extremely unpredictable.”