LUKASHENKO: BELARUS “READY TO UNITE” WITH RUSSIA.

In an address to Russian participants in a V-E Day related conference, Belarusian president Lukashenko said that his country was “ready to unite” with Russia and that “the sooner it is done, the better,” Krasnaya zvezda said May 6. On the same day, Rossiikaya gazeta noted approvingly that the recently ratified Russian-Belarusian friendship pact based itself not on the documents that led to the destruction of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States but rather on Soviet-era legislation concerning interrepublic cooperation.

Ukraine Seen Joining Council of Europe in 1995.