Accepting on Thursday credentials from the plenipotentiary ambassador of Russian Federation in Belarus Alexander Blokhin, Alexander Lukashenko didn’t comment on yesterday’s letter, sent to him by Putin, in which Russian president proposed to consider three integration models. Belarusian Foreign Ministry also declines to comment on the issue. At yesterday’s FM briefing press-secretary Pavel Latushko said that the Belarusian FM has never seen the document.

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On Wednesday deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Valery Loschinin passed over to the Belarusian side Vladimir Putin’s message on the Russian-Belarusian integration, namely the ways, after which the “union state” could develop. The fact that oral discussions now transformed into diplomatic correspondence proves that Kremlin is ready to pressure Lukashenko into giving a clear answer.

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Famous Belarusian opposition member Vadim Kabanchuk is seeking political asylum in Belgium. In 1997 Kabanchuk spent over 6 months in jail for his part in the street rallies of the Belarusian opposition in spring that year. In course of the year 2001 he actively engaged in the work of the public commission for locating the missing opposition figures Zakharenko and Gonchar, businessman Krasovsky and journalist Zavadsky.

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Editor-in-chief of the independent Grodno newspaper “Pagonya” Nikolai Markevich, condemned for libeling Alexander Lukashenko, was denied a job in the newspaper “Osipovichsky krai”, despite the paper’s lack of two journalists, a photographer and a driver. The paper’s editor Anatoly Tomashevsky explained the refusal to accept Markevich by a “directive from above”.

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Belarusian government introduces accreditation of legal bodies, which investigate and publish results of the surveys. On August 29 the country’s Prime Minister Gennady Novitsky signed a Cabinet’s order #1174 “On activities, associated with the implementation of researches and publication of sociological polls’ results, relating to the social-political situation in the country, national referenda and elections,” – reports BelaPAN. The examination will be carried out by a special Commission for referenda of the Academy of sciences.

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Chinese delegation, headed by deputy Minister of exterior trade and economic cooperation Lun Yuntu will be on a visit to Minsk on September 9-10. As said at the briefing by the FM press-secretary Pavel Latushko, the purpose of their visit is participation in the fifth summit of the Belarusian-Chinese commission for trade-economic cooperation. The Belarusian side will be chaired there by the Minister of trade Alexander Kulichkov.

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A group of the Belarusian “deputies” is set to raise an issue of dismissing the country’s parliament. “Interfax” was told on Wednesday by the deputy chairman of the commission for foreign affairs and CIS relations of the “house of representatives” Sergei Kostyan that “rumors about that have been circulating for a week now”.

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Tomorrow will see a joint session of the two youth organizations – Belarusian Youth Union and Belarusian Patriotic Youth Union. Prior to this remarkable event the editorial board received data of the BPYU’s examination by the Committee for state control. The inspectors revealed a payment evasion of $1mln. Scandal is too mild a word to characterize the incident.

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The Minsk city hall responded to the petition, filed by the BPF party, on commemorating on September 8 the great Orsha battle. The Minsk authorities allowed to hold the action in the “Druzhby Narodov” park near the Bangalor square. On September 3 the action’s organizers convened a meeting at which they yielded to the official proposal.

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For a forth day in a row parents of the Guta village (Vitebsk region) don’t let their children go to school, protesting against the non-payment of wages at the glass-making factory “Guta”, where most of the local residents are employed.

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Reserves of the ready goods, manufactured by the Minsk region companies, cost in total 148,7bln rubles. “Interfax” was told in the statistics department of the Minsk regional executive committee that the sum constitutes 68,1% in the average monthly production volume of the past seven months’ period.

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