Free Republic

MINSK (AFP) - Eleven US diplomats left Belarus Saturday after being expelled by the Minsk authorities, crossing the border into Lithuania just an hour before their deadline to leave expired, an embassy spokesman said. The diplomatic spat is the latest in a series of incidents between the US and a state Washington describes as the "last dictatorship in Europe." On Wednesday, Belarus gave the US embassy 72 hours to expel 10 of its staff who were no longer welcome in the former communist state, it said. The US had originally refused to reduce its diplomatic core in Minsk. It finally...

A Roman Catholic church is being built in Minsk, the first such construction project in the Belarusian capital city since the Bolshevik coup in 1917. The church is being constructed in the Serabranka neighborhood by the John the Baptist community with funds raised from its members and foreign donations. The city executive committee permitted the community to start the construction this past spring. The works began on June 15. The initial construction work involving the laying of the foundations and the connection of utility supplies is expected to be completed this year. The walls are to be built next year....

Members of Belarussian opposition parties and movements and entrepreneurs have joined an unauthorized rally in downtown Minsk to show their support for previously arrested opposition activists and entrepreneurial movement leaders, an Interfax correspondent reported. Minsk special-operations police force head Yury Podobed has estimated the number of people rallying on Minsk's Oktyabrskaya square at from 300 to 400.

Nov. 3, 2003 Cossack leaders in Belarus accused of anti-Semitism By ASSOCIATED PRESS MINSK, Belarus A U.S.-based Jewish organization on Monday accused Cossacks and Russian Orthodox Church leaders in Belarus of inciting anti-Semitism, and asked the chief prosecutor in the former Soviet republic to open a criminal investigation based on the allegations. Anti-Semitic literature was distributed at a meeting of Cossacks in the capital, Minsk, late last month, said Yakov Basin, the director of the Belarusian office of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. Basin said the Russian Orthodox Church leader in Belarus, Metropolitan Filaret, had given his blessing...

Exclusive: Banking on civil strife to restore their regime in Baghdad.Supposedly Saddams family has a 6 home estate built in Tripoli quite recently.

Saddam May Have Escaped to Belarus 25-Apr-2003 Saddam Hussein may have obtained safe haven in the former Russian province of Belarus. Western intelligence says several intelligence agencies in the Middle East and Europe think he and his family were on a March 29 chartered cargo plane that flew from Baghdad to Minsk. "There's no proof that Saddam was on the plane but we have proof that a plane left on that day from Baghdad airport and arrived in Minsk," says a senior intelligence officer. "If you can think of anybody else who could obtain permission to fly out of Baghdad...