Europe-wide travel ban for 'abusive' Belarus President

The autocratic President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, was denied a visa yesterday to enter the Czech Republic and faces a Europe-wide travel ban, after threatening to gatecrash a Nato leaders' summit in Prague next week. Amid mounting embarrassment over Mr Luka-shenko's plans to meet leaders of the 19-nation alliance, EU foreign ministers are poised to put the Belarussian leader and his inner circle on a visa blacklist.

The Czech Foreign Minister, Cyril Svoboda, said his country had already rejected Mr Lukashenko's entry visa request. Western diplomats feared the summit, to be attended by President George Bush, Tony Blair and the French President, Jacques Chirac, would be overshadowed by the presence of the uninvited guest.

The action to isolate Mr Lukashenko, widely criticised for allowing human rights abuses, and condemned for electoral fraud, followed extraordinary comments he made in a radio interview on Wednesday. He threatened to withdraw Belarussian border guards and flood Western Europe with illegal immigrants, if he was kept out of the Prague meeting.

Mr Lukashenko said Europeans would be forced to "crawl and ask for our co-operation on drugs trafficking and illegal immigration", adding: "We will not defend Europe from the flood." He also threatened: "The Czechs will lose all their positions in Belarus for a long time, if not for ever".

Already larger-than-normal numbers of would-be emigrants have gathered at Belarus's borders, hoping to leave their country for the West.

The EU was already considering diplomatic retaliation against Belarus for its expulsion of observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the pan-European human rights body that condemned the President's re-election in September 2001 as fraudulent.

Diplomats said 14 of the 15 EU nations have agreed to a visa blacklist of Mr Lukashenko and up to 50 other officials, with the 15th, Portugal, likely to agree at an EU foreign ministers' meeting next week. EU candidate countries, including the Czech Republic, are expected to follow suit.

The Nato secretary general, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, made clear through diplomatic channels that Mr Luka-shenko would not be welcome, though Belarus is among the eight aspiring members of Nato on the Euro Atlantic Partnership Council. Although it is a member of Nato's Partnership for Peace, Belarus has also been accused of training Iraqi military officers.

With Mr Lukashenko excluded, attention focused on whether another unwelcome maverick, President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine, will turn up. Yesterday he warned that all Ukrainian officials will boycott the meeting if he is barred. "If the President does not go, no one will go," Mr Kuchma said.

The United States has accused Mr Kuchma of selling a radar system to Iraq. And two years ago, he was implicated in the murder of a journalist. But Nato has close military ties with Ukraine and Mr Kuchma is not seen as such a big embarrassment as his counterpart from Belarus.