US sanctions against Belneftekhim: Belarusian press review
Independent media attempted to analyze how these sanctions would affect the Belarusian economy and whether they brought about a change in the behavior of the Belarusian authorities.
Radio Svaboda posted on its web site an interview with experts who shared their views on the situation. According to economist Valyantsin Matskevich, the US sanctions are going to be very painful.
“If these sanctions are implemented, they will have a huge financial impact. It will be very painful, since we know that Belneftekhim’s contribution to the national budget amounts at 20 percent”.
International relations expert Andrei Fyodarau told Radio Svaboda that the sanctions would be hardly critical for the economy of Belarus.
“It is still hard to say about how significant their economic impact will be. It seems they will not affect us greatly, because we don’t have a very serious level of economic relations with the United States”.
We remind that the US demands that Belarus release all the political prisoners.
In the unauthored Sovietskaya Belorussiya article titled The Weakness of The Force, there is no single word about political prisoners. The anonymous author asks with surprise about what “abstract human rights” the US are talking about.
“Are Belarusians deprived of the right to life? But there are lines in registrar offices in Minsk for several months ahead, while happy fathers are standing by the windows of maternity homes.
Are Belarusians deprived of the right to housing? But you can see the horizon of building cranes at any city.
Are Belarusians deprived of the right to education? Condoleezza Rice should come to Belarus towards the end of summer and hang out among dozens of thousand of university entrants”.
In the comments to the articles, some readers quoted the Belarusian Constitution to remind the article’s writer about those “abstract human rights”, e.g. Article 33 in the Constitution which bans censorship and the monopolization of the mass media.
Alexander Brechek in his blog at http://telegraf.by maintains that using “trade sanctions as a foreign policy weapon is inefficient”. Politically, sanctions end up usually in vain, while economic cooperation leads to positive changes, he writes.
Financial news agency http://afn.by posted an articled titled “US Painfully Slap on Lukashenka’s Hands Reaching Out for Nuclear Technology”, suggesting as follows:
“Lukashenka has regretted recently about his decision to withdraw nuclear arsenals from the territory of Belarus. Therefore, after the first official document was signed following two years of talk to pave wave for the construction of a nuclear power plant, Bush’s administration needed less than 24 hours so that US Treasury froze Belneftekhim’s bank accounts”.
It is not known if this was the cause of sanctions indeed. But given a very prompt reaction of the US, everything was ready and they seemed just to be waiting for the right moment.
