US Embassy made a protest to the Foreign Ministry of Belarus against the anti-US campaigns in the state-controlled media
On 15 November US Ambassador George Kroll staged a press conference devoted to a number of scandalous statements made by the state-run TV channels in Belarus against the US government and officers of the US Embassy in Minsk. Mr. Kroll argues: “Almost every day the state-run media of Belarus claim that the United States allegedly want to destabilize the situation in Belarus, unleash a revolution here and subordinate the country to the “imperial will" of the US. Some representatives of the Belarusian government made absurd statements, claiming that the US allegedly developed a plan for destabilizing Belarus – “down to an intervention”
At the same time the state media paint the US diplomats as persistent spies. Such statements that contain disinformation, distortions and even lies do not seek to inform Belarusian society rather form a negative attitude to the US, the values of democracy and free choice long supported by the US and other democracies of the region”.
Ambassador Kroll compared the atmosphere created by the Belarusian media with what was happening during the Cold War in the Warsaw Pact countries and in the USSR. He said that the US Embassy expressed its concern over these events to the Belarusian authorities, in particular to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, noting that it viewed this as a campaign launched by the state-run media of Belarus against the United Stated.
George Kroll, US Ambassador in Minsk, dismissed the charges leveled against the USA and US diplomats by the Belarusian state-owned media. Mr. Kroll said that the US Embassy expressed its concern over “the anti-US campaign in the state-owned media” to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus.
Mr. Kroll categorically said that the United States respects the sovereign right of the Belarusian people to determine their own political course and choose their own way of development without intimidation or compulsion both from inside or outside, and that his country openly supports democratic procedures, free and fair elections in Belarus, free media, freedom from coercion, intimidation and threats aimed at people or organizations that want to take a peaceful part in the political life of the nation.
At the press conference Ambassador Kroll also answered the questions regarding the “Act on Democracy in Belarus", the non-issue of the US visa to Mikalai Charginets, and also shared his overall evaluation of the situation in Belarus prior to the presidential elections due in 2006.
