Senior European Union officials called on Saturday for a thaw in ties with Russian ally Belarus after it freed political prisoners and declined to recognize breakaway regions of Georgia backed by Moscow. The United States has already eased some economic sanctions on what it until recently called Europe's last dictatorship, a US embassy source told Reuters on Friday. The EU is also looking at ways to bring Belarus, a key transit route for Russian oil and gas to Europe, closer to the West. "They have taken an important decision on the release of political prisoners... We would like very much to find something on our side to reward that sort of behaviour," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters at an EU meeting. The EU and Washington slapped visa bans on top Belarussian officials after accusing authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko of rigging his 2006 election, shutting down independent media and jailing opponents. Belarus last month freed Sergei Parsyukevich and Andrei Kim, the last two prisoners who had been in jail in connection with protests against Lukashenko's policies. EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said it was time to reopen a high-level political dialogue with Belarus, due to hold a Sept. 28 parliamentary election that will be under close international scrutiny. She suggested inviting the Belarus foreign minister to meet his EU counterparts in Brussels on Sept. 15 and cutting the cost of visas for Belarussian citizens visiting EU countries. "I am in favour of more openness and possibly of helping in terms of visas," Ferrero-Waldner told reporters on the sidelines of the EU meeting in the southern French city of Avignon. But French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who chaired the session, said that while the EU wanted to reach out to Belarus, a ministerial meeting would not take place so soon. Officials said she and Solana had held telephone contacts with senior members of Lukashenko's government in recent weeks. Neither Solana nor Ferrero-Waldner called for a lifting of the sanctions, which also include a freeze on certa in trade benefits and grants to which Belarus would normally be entitled under EU neighbourhood policy. However officials said sanctions could be dropped as early as October if the parliamentary election was judged fair. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that while he did not admire the Minsk government, "we should recognise what has been done." "We now have an anomaly. We dropped sanctions on Cuba where there are 260 political prisoners. Belarus has released its prisoners, Belarus is a less unfree country than Cuba, because you have private entrepreneurship, freedom to travel and hopefully an election which will be less restrictive, less rigged than before," he told reporters.
