EU leaders vowed to slap sanctions on Belarus as they condemned the recent election and a police crackdown on political protesters in the capital city of Minsk.

President Alexander Lukashenko sent in riot police early Friday to break up a demonstration by about 200 protesters who had been camping in the Minsk town square. Reuters said the protesters were arrested and driven away in trucks to a pre-trial detention centre.

Protesters, seen earlier in the week, were removed from Minsk's central square.(AP file photo).
Protesters, seen earlier in the week, were removed from Minsk's central square.(AP file photo).

The 25 European leaders said in a declaration at the end of a summit conference in Brussels on Friday that they planned to "take restrictive measures against those . . . responsible for the violation of international electoral standards" because the recent election was "fundamentally flawed."

They were objecting to an election last Sunday that returned Lukashenko to office for the third time.




The polls showed that Lukashenko won with 82.6 per cent of the vote compared with six per cent for opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich. Turnout was 92.6 per cent.

Those results were ridiculed by Milinkevich's supporters, who had waged a sit- in protest in the square. The demonstrators had been planning a mass rally on Saturday in hopes of forcing a new election.

"The authorities ... only know the language of force," said Milinkevich, the opposition candidate who has spearheaded the peaceful resistance.

He called an emergency meeting and vowed to proceed with Saturday's big show of protest.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov defended the police action as restrained.

"I would not call what I saw on television a forced dispersal of people or say that there was a use of force," he said, according to Interfax news agency. "I don't think that the protesters asked for permission to have such a meeting in accordance with the law."

Lukashenko has been branded Europe's last dictator by the United States and is shunned by Western governments because of his Soviet-style policies at home.