Luxembourg - The European Union should suspend the visa bans it currently holds against most members of the Belarusian regime, but it is not yet clear whether it should do so for President Alexander Lukashenko, EU foreign ministers and officials said Monday. "At this moment the Belarusians are looking to the EU. The moderates are hoping that they get something to be able to encourage further reforms in Belarus," EU Foreign-Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told journalists at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.
"What I support is a suspension of the travel ban except for those people who are personally responsible for the violation of human rights or for the disappearances," she said.
At the meeting, the ministers were set to discuss whether or not to suspend some of the sanctions they brought in against Lukashenko's regime in 2006 as a response to human-rights violations and the disappearance of key opposition figures in the country.
The discussion follows Belarus' decision in August to release its last political prisoners, which the EU welcomed, but also a set of parliamentary elections on September 28 which the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) saw as deeply flawed.
"They have done certain things, they have released all of the political prisoners, but then they delivered a profoundly lousy election," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said.
Ministers on Monday appeared to be moving towards a consensus that they should suspend the visa bans on some regime figures and allow higher-level political contacts between the sides.
"That is my position: to lift the political ban and also the travel ban," the EU's top foreign-policy official, Javier Solana, said.
But the question of whether or not to suspend the travel ban on Lukashenko himself remained to be decided.
"I think that if you do something about visas, you have to go all the way. I don't want to mention Lukashenko's name, but there's no point in doing it unless you go all the way," Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said.
"There will be a discussion, we'll see what is there," Ferrero-Waldner said when asked about the ban on Lukashenko.
