MASS PROTEST IN MINSK AGAINST RUSSIA-BELARUS COMMUNITY.

Some 4,000 people demonstrated outside the Belarusan parliament yesterday, protesting against the holding of a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Russia-Belarus Community and the presence of a Russian Duma delegation headed by Chairman Gennady Seleznev. The demonstrators, many of them young supporters of the Popular Front, carried and chanted pro-independence slogans, such as "Integration is Occupation," and waved the banned Belarusan national flags. The OMON used force to break up the crowd and to stop a march on President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s residence. The parliamentary session is supposed to discuss "legislative integration" of Belarus with Russia. (AP, RTR, NTV, March 10) On Women’s Day, March 8, more than 1,000 women supporters of opposition groups rallied in downtown Minsk to protest against Lukashenko’s policies — the second women’s rally in the space of a week.

Transdniester Suspends Cooperation with OSCE.