Mantas Adomenas (Main speech)

President and colleagues! I would not like to venture into the question of the advisability of opening such an office in Minsk, but very clearly that depends on what sort of office it will be. Will it be allowed to actually undertake the export of democracy, or will it be salvage for consciences while actually engaging only in the advertising of nice fjords? Whether the authorities would agree to a broader brief is a question which is worth asking.

Inevitably, the opening of such an office will be construed by the pro-democratic forces and the civil society of Belarus as a gesture of support of President Lukashenko, whereas no real political reforms apart from token concessions have been undertaken today. Indeed, next Saturday I am going to Minsk, to the founding congress of the Belarusian Christian Democratic Party, and the usual games of denying premises to opposition parties are taking place. As you know, without premises they can not be founded legally, so they are considered illegal institutions.

In any case, the founding of such an office should not be at the expense of existing and successfully working projects. One such is the European Humanities University, working in exile in Vilnius and doing a brilliant job in educating a democratic and European-minded élite for the future Belarus. That, I think, is a more productive use of funds. Lithuania is, even in a totally disastrous economic recession shouldering a disproportionately high proportion of the cost of the maintenance of the EHU, but in a couple of years this very worthwhile project might be endangered and threatened. This has to be taken into consideration in the overall view of democracy building in Belarus.