New USA’s Secretary of State stands for sanctions against Lukashenka

In January 2011 The Washington Post published an article of John Carry an independent senator Joe Lieberman.

Together they called on the West to respond to the post-election repressions in Belarus with targeted economic, financial and visa sanctions, Radio Svaboda reports.

“The situation in Belarus calls for a strong and uncompromising response from all the parties. The political prisoners of the Belarusian regime must be immediately released and their security guaranteed”, - the American politicians noted in the article.

“Until there is a clear and unambiguous prof that the Belarusian leadership takes the basic rights of their citizens seriously”, John Carry and Joe Lieberman suggested five steps:

1. “Our government and the European Union must introduce targeted sanctions, including a visa ban and freezing the assets against the Belarusian officials and their aides, responsible for the persecution and human rights violations.

2. We are insistently calling on the European Union to join the United States in the ban on business and assets freezing of the Belarusian state petrochemical company Belneftekhim, and other bodies, that enrich Lukashenka and his henchmen at the expense of the Belarusian people.

3. We ask the European Union to stop the projects with the Belarusian authorities and suspend the meeting with Belarusian officials in the framework of the Eastern Partnership. We are calling on our European partners to join the USA instead in their attempts to promote the cooperation with the people of Belarus and ensure a more effective support for Belarusian civil society.

4. We are insistently calling on Mrs Clinton and Mrs Ashton to continue coordinating the USA and EU’s policies on Belarus.

5. We are calling on other members of the international community, including Russia, to undertake similar targeted actions against the Belarusian leadership”.

We would remind that the Senate of the USA Congress with the majority of the votes supported John Carry’s nomination as the Secretary of State of the USA.