Posted on 04/13/2006 11:43:36 PM PDT by vertolet
The E.U. is isolating one dictator while proposing concessions for another. Guess which one sells gas.
THIS WEEK the European Union took an important step toward sanctioning Europe's last dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, banning the Belarusan president and 30 of his aides and political collaborators from entering any of the union's 25 countries. Mr. Lukashenko staged a rigged election last month extending his term in office and arrested many of the people who tried to protest. While Mr. Lukashenko's regime is hardly likely to collapse under pressure from Brussels, the E.U. foreign ministers at least delivered the message that the union will isolate dictators.
Or will it? Even as Europe's policymakers were stoking their outrage over Belarus's tyrant, they were quietly preparing to approve a trade agreement with Central Asia's Turkmenistan -- home to Saparmurad Niyazov, or Turkmenbashi the Great, a ruler whose absolute power, cult of personality and repression of his people make Mr. Lukashenko look, well, Small. Mr. Niyazov doesn't bother with elections: He declared himself president for life long ago. He has no opposition protesters to arrest, since all dissenters are jailed, exiled or forced into mental hospitals long before they can congregate in the capital. He has renamed months of the year after himself and his mother, banned recorded music, closed most hospitals outside the capital, and removed almost all books from libraries and the educational system other than his own.
Mr. Niyazov has something else Mr. Lukashenko doesn't have: natural gas, in huge quantities. Some of it is already exported to Europe, via Russia, and European governments, which depend heavily on gas imports, lately have grown interested in increasing Central Asian supplies. Might that explain a request by the European Commission that the European Parliament approve the new trade agreement? The proposal, which would grant Turkmenistan...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"We need to visit virtually all of the former republics of the soviet union and bump off their despots."
Starting with Russia's Prime Minister Vladamir Putin.
Putin is president, not prime minister. And he is not despot.
Well this is in fact hypocrisy to ban Luka and work with Niyazov. If Poland would not be in the EU then Luka would not be banned either. Our government is tired of him, we would like to border with prosperous country and to have high bilateral trade exchange. Instead of that we have Luka who from political reasons completely destroyed Polish business in Belarus. He is making his country more and more backward so we have no even a single reason to be happy with him. Of course our government is not saint either, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are farther have more oil than Belarus so we have more friendly relations with them :)
The Chechens would disagree with you :)
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