By RIA Novosti
Brussels : The Council of the European Union has prolonged sanctions against Belarusian officials by another year, until April 10, 2009, an EU spokesman said on Tuesday.
The sanctions were originally introduced after the EU refused to recognize the results of parliamentary elections in Belarus in October 2004. The sanctions include restrictions on entering the EU and the freezing of bank accounts. In April 2006, the list was extended from six persons to 37, including President Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko, who was re-elected for a third term in 2006, and other senior Belarusian officials have been blacklisted from entering the U.S. and EU. The U.S. and the European Union have accused Lukashenko of clamping down on dissent, stifling the media and rigging elections.
Tensions between the two countries heightened after Washington imposed sanctions last November against Belarus’s state-controlled petrochemical company, Belneftekhim, and froze the assets of its U.S. subsidiary. American companies were also banned from dealing with it.
Minsk announced last week it would be making additional cuts to its embassy staff in Washington and urged the United States to do the same.
Belarus advised the U.S. ambassador to leave the country in early March, and recalled its own ambassador from Washington for consultations. It also demanded that the U.S. cut by half the number of embassy staff in Belarus. The U.S. agreed.