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Lithuania has invited Lukashenka to its independence anniversary festivities, ambassador says

Lithuanian Ambassador Edminas Bagdonas on Tuesday confirmed that Alyaksandr Lukashenka had been invited to attend festivities that will be held in Vilnius on March 11 to mark 20 years since the Baltic state declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

Lithuania is waiting for a reply from Minsk, Mr. Bagdonas told reporters in the Belarusian capital city, BelaPAN said. 

In late January, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite made clear that a decision whether or not to invite Mr. Lukashenka to the independence anniversary festivities would depend on the progress in its effort to have a Soviet-era general extradited from Belarus.

On March 2, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s Office in Minsk said that the general was questioned a few days earlier at the request of Lithuanian law-enforcement agencies, and the interview records were sent to the Baltic state.

When asked as to whether the questioning had prompted Vilnius to send the invitation, Mr. Bagdonas only said, “The Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office questioned the general as a witness at the request of the Lithuanian side and the minutes of the questing were sent to Lithuania.”

This past January, the Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office notified the Lithuanian authorities of its refusal to hand over Uladzimir Uskhopchyk wanted by Lithuania on murder and other charges over his role in Soviet troops’ violent raids in Vilnius in January 1991.

The Office said that the extradition of a Belarusian citizen to Lithuania was impossible.

In a radio interview that month, Ms. Grybauskaite acknowledged that Vilnius had no legal grounds to demand the extradition of General Uskhopchyk from Belarus and said that she would seek to solve the matter through a "political dialogue."