US spends millions to bolster Belarus opposition

While voters in Belarus were expected yesterday to reelect their authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, questions swirled about both the fairness of the election and the nature of Western assistance to pro-democracy forces.

On the eve of the vote, the Belarussian government banned 2,000 of 7,000 local election observers. Analysts say a controversial early-balloting system - some polling stations in yesterday's election actually opened on Tuesday - was designed to seal a first-round victory for the Belarus leader.

Whatever the outcome, the election is revealing a remarkably high level of US and Western involvement on the side of pro-democracy activists, which has embroiled the American ambassador and senior Western officials in a political firestorm.

Although regime opponents say they are pleased to have help in building civil society in the former Soviet republic - and, by extension, in their attempt to oust the man often called the "last dictator in Europe" - the lifeline of cash and moral support has bolstered Lukashenko's claim that he is a target of Cold War-style meddling.

While it is against US law to fund foreign political parties, American and European grant money is flowing to an array of pro-democracy and civil society groups, newspapers, and political awareness campaigns.

"It would be dark, scary and awful without that [US] money," says Anatoly Gulayev, deputy editor of the independent newspaper "Den," and vice president of the Belarussian journalists' union. "Very few [opposition] newspapers live without that help. We should admit it and be grateful for it."

"What we want to see is a change in the system," US Ambassador Michael Kozak said in an interview. "If Lukashenko opened the system so there is a free press and a free and fair election, we would accept his government as legitimate."

Lukashenko says he is under personal attack, and that the US has crossed a fine line of intervention - a view shared even by some opponents and Western analysts.

"We will not have Americans telling us what to do... We cannot be brought to our knees," Lukashenko told supporters last week. He accused the US and the West of "sleazy election techniques," and read a list of opposition leaders he claimed had been paid by the US Embassy in Minsk to "remove" him.

Lukashenko has also accused the chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Hans-Georg Wieck - a former West German intelligence chief, who by all accounts played a critical role uniting opposition parties behind one candidate - of being the opposition's "chief of staff."

The president has said he will expel both men from Belarus after the election.

Washington spent $24 million in Belarus last year, and US officials say the figure is slightly higher this year. That amounts to a small fortune in this impoverished nation wedged between NATO's eastern flank and Russia.

"To me, [the aid] is nothing to be embarrassed about if you say you want to develop an open, civil society," Ambassador Kozak says. "We made no secret about it."

But critics say that, even if the opposition were to win Sunday's vote, they could have a hard time shaking a "Made in the USA" label. Others argue that the US has overplayed its hand, and that the opposition may see more profit in staying out of power.

"[The US] really helped the opposition financially so much, that the opposition has gone crazy," says Alexander Feduta, an independent journalist and former Lukashenko insider who is a fierce critic of the regime. "Name me any other country where you get paid for being in the opposition."

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