Avignon, France - The European Union must open the door to a
rapprochement with Belarus and support reconstruction and peace
efforts in Georgia and Moldova if it is to counter Russia's growing
assertiveness in eastern Europe, EU foreign ministers said Saturday.
'We should encourage Belarus to improve the way they conduct their
elections and we should give them incentives. We need a process of
rebuilding trust,' Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told
Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
'It is a very good time to rethink our relations with Belarus.
Belarus is sending desperate signals to the West,' Lithuanian Foreign
Minister Petras Vaitiekunas said.
Officially, Saturday's talks were set to focus on the EU's
relationship with Russia and Georgia following their war in August.
But with French President Nicolas Sarkozy - the current holder of
the EU's rotating presidency - set to travel to Moscow for talks on
the issue on Monday, the officials turned their focus to the question
of how to respond to Russia's new assertiveness.
During their talks, they discussed Turkish proposals on
maintaining stability in the Caucasus and debated how the EU should
strengthen international efforts to solve the conflict between
Moldova and its rebel region of Transnistria - a process in which
Russia is currently pushing for a trilateral solution.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that he had spoken with
Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin on Thursday, and that Voronin
stressed that he still saw the peace process as an
internationally monitored process.
After the talks, Foreign-Affairs Commissioner Benita
Ferrero-Waldner said the EU was likely to offer Georgia financial
assistance to help overcome the post-war economic crisis, with the
total this year possibly reaching 100 million euros (143 million
dollars).
'The military destruction is much bigger than the civilian and we
think that we have to assess our needs according to that... We will
have to help, and we will do so,' she said.
And following Belarus' release of its final political prisoners
during the summer, some EU ministers called for a strong sign to the
authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko that Minsk has
something to gain from bringing in democratic reforms.
Belarus 'is not a regime that we admire but we should recognize
what has been done. We now have an anomaly, we've dropped sanctions
on Cuba where there are 260 political prisoners, Belarus has released
its prisoners,' Sikorski said.
The EU currently has travel bans in place against Belarusian
regime figures, and its first step should therefore be to step up
diplomatic contacts, officials said.
Ministers have decided in principle to invite Belarusian Foreign
Minister Sergei Martynov to talks in Brussels, although it is not yet
sure whether they will do so ahead of the next formal ministerial
session on September 15, Kouchner told dpa.
However, member states remained divided on whether they should
make a move before Belarus holds elections on September 28.
'It would be good to send some signals now, and in case of
democratic free and fair elections to change (the EU's) general
policies,' Vaitiekunas said.
'We'll have to have a look at that at a later stage,' Finnish
Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said.
EU officials say that a key question is whether Belarus will
follow Russia's lead and recognize the independence of the breakaway
Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - something the EU
firmly rejects.
'Belarus can show real willingness to open up, move closer to
Western Europe if they do not also recognize South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. But of course Belarus at the moment is under very heavy
pressure from Russia,' Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said.
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