Belarus to kick out more U.S. diplomats

MINSK, Belarus (AP) -- Belarus on Wednesday declared most of the U.S. Embassy staff persona non grata and ordered them to leave the country.

The United States is one of the fiercest critics of the former Soviet republic's authoritarian president, and relations have deteriorated notably this year amid pressure from Washington for Belarus to release political prisoners or face punitive sanctions.

The U.S. ambassador left last month after Belarus pulled its ambassador from Washington. The embassy in Minsk, under pressure from authorities, cut its staff by half, reflecting similar cuts made by the Belarusian Embassy in Washington.

Belarus had called for further cutting the U.S. Embassy's staff to a skeleton crew of a half-dozen, which the U.S. rejected.

But charge d'affaires Jonathan Moore, the top U.S. diplomat in Belarus, was called to the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday and given a list of those being ordered to leave.

Moore told a news conference that the order meant the embassy would be reduced to five staff members plus the head of the mission.

Those being forced to leave would depart within 72 hours, Moore said.

Moore said the United States would continue to put pressure on Belarus to free political prisoners and would impose new sanctions in the near future.

"I don't know when and I don't know to what enterprises they will apply ... but I think it will happen soon," Moore said, in Russian.

"For the United States, the political prisoners in Belarus are much more important than the number of American diplomats in Belarus," he said.

Relations between Minsk and Washington have spiraled downward in recent months, mainly because of the U.S. decision to impose sanctions on a state-controlled oil-processing and chemicals company, Belneftekhim.

The sanctions are designed to punish the President Alexander Lukashenko's government for its heavy-handed treatment of critics and intolerance of dissent. E-mail to a friend

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