MEDIATION OFFERED AS POLICE FIRE ON PROTESTERS

Lithuania, Poland and Latvia are ready to mediate between the Belarusian government and the opposition after Sunday’s presidential election prompted bloody street protests, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said on Wednesday.

First, Nauseda said, Belarusian authorities must stop violence against protesters, release detained demonstrators and form a national council with members of civil society that would seek to find a way out of the crisis.

Belarus said on Wednesday that police had fired live rounds at protesters in the city of Brest and arrested more than 1,000 people nationwide, intensifying a crackdown that has prompted the European Union to weigh new sanctions on Minsk.

Security forces have clashed with protesters for three consecutive nights after strongman President Alexander Lukashenko claimed a landslide re-election victory in a vote on Sunday that his opponents say was rigged.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets again on Wednesday. Women dressed in white formed a human chain outside a food market in the capital Minsk, while a crowd also gathered outside a prison where protesters were being kept.

Lukashenko’s rival in Sunday’s vote, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old former English teacher, has fled to neighbouring Lithuania to join her children there. She urged her compatriots not to oppose the police and to avoid putting their lives in danger.