VILNIUS - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped up pressure on Belarus Thursday urging the world to ensure that elections next year are free, and saying protestors have the right to take to the streets.
Speaking one day after calling the authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko "the last dictatorship" in central Europe, she said the ex-Soviet republic could not hide from the international spotlight.
"What we can do together is to shine a spotlight on places where people are still denied freedom," she said after meeting Belarus opposition leaders along with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
"This is not a dark corner in which things can go on unobserved, uncommented upon and as if Belarus were somehow not a part of the European continent," she added.
After talks with Rice in the sidelines of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Vilnius, a group of Belarus dissidents announced plans for massive street protests against the autocratic regime in Minsk.
The US secretary of state declined to say whether she thought that was the best way to achieve change, as has happened in other ex-Soviet republics such as Ukraine and Georgia over the last year or so.
"The people of Belarus will have to make determinations about how they move forward. But the key here is that people ought to be able to protest, to speak their minds, there ought to be free media," she said.
And she added: "We will support the idea that elections when they are held should be real elections. They should not be sham elections.
"The international community ought to be prepared and ready to help Belarus to carry out free and fair elections in 2006."
The landlocked state of 10 million people, still heavily dependent on Russian economic subsidies, has become the latest focus of President George W. Bush's drive to promote freedom worldwide.
Bush signed the Belarus Democracy Act last October, clearing the way for US financial aid to non-governmental groups mounting reform projects as well as radio and television broadcasts aimed at Belarussians.
04/21/2005 14:48 GMT