Reacting to Sanctions, Belarus Expels 10 More U.S. Diplomats

MOSCOW, April 30 -- Belarus expelled 10 U.S. diplomats Wednesday, deepening a dispute over sanctions imposed on the former Soviet republic by Washington because of the authoritarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Jonathan Moore, the head of the U.S. mission, told reporters in the Belarusan capital, Minsk, that he had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry and informed that the American diplomats had 72 hours to leave the country.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the decision was "unjustified and unwarranted."

"We are considering our response to this action," he said.

In March, the U.S. ambassador to Belarus, Karen Stewart, was ordered to leave. Moore, the chargé d'affaires in Minsk, said the latest step would reduce the number of American diplomats in Belarus to five.

After a presidential election in 2006 that was condemned as fraudulent by Western observers, Lukashenko and 30 other senior Belarusan officials were barred from traveling to the United States and the European Union.

Last year, Washington imposed sanctions on the state oil company, Belneftekhim, which U.S. officials say is personally controlled by Lukashenko. The company accounts for about one-third of Belarus's foreign currency earnings.

Lukashenko warned last year that any expansion of the sanctions would lead to the expulsion of U.S. diplomats. A U.S. explanatory note on the sanctions, which was issued late last year, was interpreted by Belarusan authorities as further punitive action by Washington.

The United States denied that sanctions had been expanded. But U.S. officials have said relations will be normalized only when the authorities in Minsk release imprisoned opposition leaders such as Alexander Kozulin, who received a 5 1/2 -year sentence for organizing demonstrations after the 2006 presidential vote.

Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager who has been in power since 1994, has been accused of smothering opposition groups' freedoms of speech and assembly, prompting some to call Belarus the "last dictatorship in Europe." The country of 10 million is sandwiched between Russia and Poland.

Moore said Wednesday that new sanctions will be imposed if Belarus does not release all those imprisoned for political activity.

"I believe it will be soon," he said.

Lukashenko said in his annual address to the nation Tuesday that Kozulin will remain in prison.

"They have picked some putrid oppositionist who got 1.5 percent in the election and picture him as a political prisoner," Lukashenko said of the West's demand for Kozulin's release. "He wants the whole world to rise to his release and the government to collapse."