Russia must hit gas pedal in Belarus

Following the bomb attack at an underground station in Minsk the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is taking a hard line against the opposition, claiming that the attackers may have ties to "political players". The liberal daily Sme sees it as Moscow's duty to put pressure on the dictator not to exploit the attack for his own interests: "Lukashenko is capable of using the tragedy for his own very dirty purposes. It would be surprising if the disaster didn't make the police state even worse than before. Europe has trouble reaching a consensus on how to deal with Belarus. Moscow wields much greater influence over Minsk. There is nothing Lukashenko reacts more sensitively to than pressure exerted through Gazprom. This is not to say that the EU has no economic or political leverage whatsoever here. … But the Europeans' only effective instrument now is talks with the Russian leaders Medvedev and Putin."

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