MINSK, Jan 25 (AFP) - The authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has assumed control of the country's intelligence agency, his press service said on Tuesday.
"As head of state... I am capable of controlling the secret services myself," the president said in a statement.
Lukashenko fired the head of the intelligence agency, Leonid Yerin, last November for privately speaking to reporters and opposition members.
Yerin had met with the opposition during an unsanctioned October rally called to protest referendum results that gave Lukashenko the right to indefinitely extend his stay in office.
Lukashenko has come under strong international criticism for restraining media freedoms and cracking down on the opposition during his decade in power.
A former Soviet republic on Russia's western border, Belarus still calls its secret service the State Security Committee or KGB, even though Moscow has since renamed its own security agency because most people associate the name with its bloody past.
01/25/2005 19:51 GMT - AFP