BERLIN (Reuters) – European Union sanctions against 40 officials in Belarus are “a small victory” that will still be expanded, opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Monday, adding that she would urge Germany’s Angela Merkel to do more at an assembly on Tuesday.
Tsikhanouskaya fled her local country to Lithuania amid a police crackdown in Belarus after the nine August presidential election, whose official effects said headline Alexander Lukashenko had won, but that Tsikhanouskaya’s supporters said they manipulated.
Lukashenko denies falsifying the election result. EU leaders agreed last Friday to impose sanctions on 40 people, the Belarusian interior minister and the head of its electoral commission.
“It’s a victory, but it’s a small victory, and I’m sure, and I insist, that this list be expanded,” Tsikhanouskaya said of sanctions in an interview with Reuters before a meeting with Merkel in Berlin on Tuesday.
She hoped the assembly would be “a warm verbal exchange between two women, one of whom she wants for my country and the other, I’m sure, she’s interested in us,” she said, speaking in English.
“I have some gifts from him and I think we’ll talk about them, ” he added, without giving details. “Germany is doing a lot, but I’m sure it can do more. “
Merkel, who said after the nine-August election that they were neither lax nor fair and that Germany might not settle for their outcome, ruled as a mediator because she said Lukashenko had rejected her phone requests.
Tsikhanouskaya, who met with French President Emmanuel Macron last week, was confident that Lukashenko would “withdraw” and that they would follow new “fair and transparent” elections.
The two-month crisis brought Lukashenko back to Russia’s classic ally, who supported Belarus with loans and an offer of support from the army, both accusing the West of interfering in Belarus.
The West had to balance its sympathy for the movement for democracy with its reluctance to galvanize Moscow.
Belarusian police arrested 317 other people at Sunday protests in Minsk and across the country, the Interior Ministry said Monday.
Tsikhanouskaya said of the protesters: “It’s not safe, but they do it because they know why they’re fighting, why they’re protesting, and it’s important. “
(Additional report via Thomas Escritt)
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