BELARUS DIGEST

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission competed its third review of the country’s Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) in Minsk on Nov. 10-19. The mission scrutinized the implementation of the economic program tied to IMF’s loan to Belarus.

Chief of IMF mission in Belarus Chris Jarvis concluded the country’s performance has been good and IMF benchmarks and criteria have been met. Upon the review by the IMF Executive Board in late- December, Belarus will receive an amount of US$700 million.

Jarvis said “monetary policy would continue to support the credibility of the exchange rate regime” and “prudent fiscal and monetary policies would narrow the current account deficit and bring inflation to single digits.” The IMF experts also discussed “the issues that would strengthen the financial system and the independence” of the National Bank of Belarus.

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“I brought you a greeting from the Axis of Evil,” ironized Chavez, who visited Cuba, Algiers, Libya, and Turkmenistan on his way to Belarus. None of these countries were actually included in the “Axis of Evil” coined by George W. Bush to describe Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea.

However, all countries Chavez visited on his trip have a roguish reputation in the West for their human rights violations, dictatorial tendencies, and widespread corruption. If Lukashenka takes up Chavez’s call to unite against “hegemonic” capitalism, one day some other political leader may enlist Minsk itself into the infamous Axis – jokingly or in earnest.

This September is not the first time Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visits his “favorite” country Belarus. This time he extolling Belarus as “a model social state like the one we [Venezuelans] are beginning to create.” No less enthusiastic, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka praised the benefits of the likely “strategic partnership” between Minsk and Caracas and thanked Chavez for his “colossal support.” The presidents agreed not “to be deceived or exploited by anyone” and “defend the interests of the individual and not the hegemonic interests of the capitalists, wherever they may be, in Europe or Latin America.” Chavez went as far as flaunting the idea of “a new union of republics” incorporating Belarus and Venezuela. “This will not be a union of Soviet or socialist republics,” he clarified. “It will be free republics with their own systems, but united in a union.”

Some may dismiss the presidents’ rhetoric as mere posturing. However, Belarus-Venezuela partnership could have far-reaching consequences, provided the marriage of Belarusian arms to Venezuelan oil lasts. Contemporary examples of such oil-for-arms arrangements include the US-Saudi Arabia partnership, in which American weaponry pays for Saudi oil, and China’s relationship with African oil-producers, in which Chinese arms pay for African crude.

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The Belarusian government not only violates human rights at home, but also hand over fist contributes to their violations abroad, going just as unpunished.

Last week Graduate Institute of International Studies issued a report titled “Small Arms Survey 2009: Shadows of War”, which named Belarus – along with principled regimes like Iran and North Korea – a “significant exporter” of small arms that provides little or no information on its exports. Produced annually by a team of researchers based in Geneva, Switzerland, the report estimates the undocumented trade of firearms to be at least US$ 100 million.

Little Belarus has been culpable of keeping the illegal arms trade up from its very birth as an independent state. In the new millennium it has only become better at it. In 2002, Mark Lenzi wrote in the Wall Street Journal Europe, that Belarus secretly delivered over $500 million worth of weapons to Palestinian militants. In 2003, Lebanon seized Belarusian weapons waiting to be smuggled into Iraq in defiance of a United Nations ban. In 2004, a report produced by Amnesty International accused Minsk of selling weapons and equipment “complicit in torture, rape and murder” in the western Darfur region.

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