“Belarus: Shaping the Space for Change”

BISS second annual conference

Kiev, 11-12 November 2008

Conference agenda

Day 1

Opening session, 11.45 - 12.15:

Greeting

Ales Ancipienka, BISS board chairman

Hans-Jochen Schmidt, OSCE office, Minsk

Panel 1, 12.15 - 13.45:

· Parliamentary elections of 2008 – results and implications.

The most predictable results of the parliamentary elections that took place in Belarus on 28 September 2008 were accepted as a great surprise and even a sensation in the West and partly even in Belarus. Indeed, with political prisoners being released, scores of OSCE observers entering the country, many after years of being on ban lists, emissaries of European and US governments having talks in the presidential administration, EU foreign policy supreme Xavier Solana talking to Belarusian president on the phone just three days before the ballot, and president Lukashenka himself making hints that few opposition members might be elected, it did look like that this ballot would have been markedly different than the usual routine exercise of validating the status quo, which elections in Belarus had routinely been for the last twelve years. Yet, the results declared by the central election commission hours after the vote was closed brought Belarus politics back to the customary routine. Nevertheless, calls for continuing the dialogue with the Belarusian authorities continued even when it became clear that the official Minsk failed to meet the minimal OSCE criteria.

Key questions:

· If elections failed to meet the basic OSCE criteria, was the strategy of ‘promoting change through engagement’ a failure? Did it have at all a positive impact on the political and social dynamic?

· Did the West stick to the principled and value-based approach, or moral clarity was compromised for some reasons, including post-Georgia Realpolitik?

· How to access the performance of the opposition in elections? Was it able to present a credible political alternative? Can it realistically change the condition of political apathy in the country? What is the future of political opposition in the opposition-free parliament?

Moderator: Valer Bulhakau (ARCHE/BISS)

Speakers:

Jaroslav Romanchuk(United Civil Party/Strategy Analytical Center),

Alaksiej Jurkou (Independent).

Yury Chavusau (Independent analyst).

Geert Ahrens (Head of ODIHR observers mission in the 2008 parliamentary elections).

Lunch 13.45 - 14.45

14.45-15.05: Sociological intermission (Andrei Vardomatski, BISS-NovAK)

Panel 2, 15.10 -16.40:

· Belarus’s relations with the European Union and the United States after the 2008 elections: lessons learned from the dialogue and confrontation

While Belarus – EU and Belarus-US relations are far from being normal, there are signs of warming up. Several rounds of negotiations with the representatives of European governments and intergovernmental institutions resulted in freeing of political prisoners. Likewise, after a bitter confrontation over sanctions slapped on the Belneftekhim concern in March 2008, that nearly led to the closure of the US embassy in Minsk, the Belarus relations with the US show a sign of improvement. The process of warming up accelerated in the wake of the Russia-Georgia war, and, while initially appeared as yet another attempt to blackmail Moscow with ‘moving to the West’, this time the official Minsk may have stronger than ever incentives to move closer to Europe. On its behalf, the EU declared that lifting of the sanctions was a opportunity. Some of the EU member states took initiative in their own hands and promoted contacts with Belarusian authorities on bilateral basis. However, as the promise by the official Minsk to conduct parliamentary elections in a free and fair manner, a key indicator of political progress for both the EU and the US, remained unfulfilled, the Belarusian authorities retreated to threats that non-recognition of elections would ‘end’ the dialogue, hinting that the West

Key questions:

• How sustainable is the motivation by the official Minsk to engage with the EU and the United States? What can be learned after the apparent engagement with the West in the pre-election period was followed by the business as usual during the elections.
• How far can this engagement go in the wake of Russia’s increasing political and economic pressure on Belarus? Can Belarus realistically ‘move closer’ to the West, or all we see are the periodic swings of pendulum in, alternatively, pro-Russian and pro-European directions?
• Is the EU about to scrap its non-paper ‘What the European Union Could Bring to Belarus’ and adopt a more limited agenda for engagement? Can such limited agenda bring a significant political progress in Belarus?
• What is the agenda for a dialogue after attempts to improve the conduct of elections ended up in failure?
• What is the role of transatlantic cooperation and dialogue in shaping up an effective Western policy towards Belarus?

Moderator: Olga Stuzhinskaya (Office for Democratic Belarus)

Speakers:

Dzianis Melyantsou (BISS/EHU)

Jean-Eric Holzapfel (EU delegation in Minsk)

Kamil Klysinski, Center for Eastern Studies (Warsaw, Poland)

Anais Marin, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

Oleksandr Sushko (Center for Peace, Conversion, and Foreign Policy of Ukraine)

Coffee break: 16.40 – 17.00

Panel 3, 17.00 - 18.30:

· Russia-Belarus relations: agenda and trends under Medvedev and after Georgia

After the tumultuous oil and gas war of 2007, Belarus-Russia relations almost came back to its usual format in the wake of the transfer of power exercise in Kremlin. Yet, Kremlin made it clear that economic subsidization would be reduced, and that privileged prices and cheap loans had to be paid for by allowing a deeper penetration of Russia’s capital, and by confirming the overall political loyalty of Minsk to Moscow. Failure by the official Minsk to recognize Ossetia and Abkhazia, if anything, testified that the brotherly hugs had become too restraining for Lukashenka. Nevertheless, the new situation with the Georgian war and the attempts by the EU and the US to engage Belarusian government in a dialogue may give new chance to the ‘multivector’ policy, when a prospect of Minsk’s shift to one side may motivate the other side.

Key questions:

• How far can Belarus move away from Russia and how serious is Lukashenka about the prospect of emancipating himself from it? How much can the official Minsk risk on relations with Russia in order to move closer to the West?
• Had the Georgian war indeed created a new context in Belarus’s relations with Russia and the West, or non-recognition of Ossetia and Abkhazia was a tactical and largely a PR maneuver?
• What are the Kremlin’s long-term plans regarding to Belarus? Will Medvedev’s presidency make any difference from Putin’s one?
• How will the recent political events and geopolitical shifts affect energy prices, the transit, and penetration of the Russian capital to Belarus?

Moderator: Valeria Kostiugova (Nashe Mnenie/BISS)

Speakers:

Tatiana Manenok (Belarusy I Rynok, Minsk, Belarus)

Andrei Suzdaltsev (Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia)