WASHINGTON — State Department officials said Thursday that Belarus has been ordered to close its embassy in Washington and its consulate in New York and that the United States will shut down its embassy in the Belarusian capital.
In a new escalation of a diplomatic dispute, Belarus was given until May 16 to withdraw its six diplomats at the two missions, the officials told The Associated Press. Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in Minsk is to cease operations as early as Friday, they said.
The move is just a step short of severing diplomatic relations and is the latest in a series of tit-for-tat exchanges with the former Soviet republic led by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The officials said Belarus was notified of the decision in Minsk. A planned simultaneous notification to Belarus’ top diplomat in Washington did not take place as expected, they said. There was no immediate explanation as to why that did not happen. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement.
In Minsk, an official at the Belarusian Foreign Ministry had no comment.
Closing a U.S. embassy abroad is extremely rare and usually occurs only in conflict zones or in anticipation of instability, the officials said. It was not immediately clear when the United States had last shut down an embassy for purely political reasons.
The United States is one of the fiercest critics of Belarus’ authoritarian president, and relations have deteriorated notably this year amid pressure from Washington for Belarus to release political prisoners or face punitive sanctions. Belarus on Wednesday ordered most of the U.S. Embassy staff in Minsk to leave the country in 72 hours.
The U.S. ambassador left Minsk in March after Belarus pulled its ambassador from Washington. The U.S. embassy in Minsk, which had 35 diplomats at the beginning of the year, was being forced to cut its staff to four. The officials said the mission would not be able to function with such a small number of personnel.
The State Department had protested the expulsions as “unjustified and unwarranted” and on Wednesday said it was considering a wide array of options to respond.
“We want to have a good relationship with Belarus and work to try to improve that,” spokesman Sean McCormack said then. “But we are not going to do that and sacrifice the principles of pushing for freedom of expression, political freedoms and other freedoms in Belarus.”
The officials said arrangements were being made with a third country to assume “protecting power” responsibilities for the U.S. interests in Belarus, most notably looking after the care of an ailing American lawyer who is currently in Belarusian custody.
The United States has demanded that the lawyer, 54-year-old Emanuel Zeltser, who suffers from diabetes, be released from a psychiatric ward where he is being held. Zeltser was detained on March 12 on suspicion of using false documents and his family says Belarusian authorities are denying him medication. He faces three years in prison if convicted.
Relations between Minsk and Washington have spiraled downward in recent months, mainly because of U.S. sanctions imposed on a state-controlled oil-processing and chemicals company, Belneftekhim, as well as travel restrictions on Lukashenko and top government officials.
The sanctions are designed to punish Lukashenko, who U.S. officials routinely describe as “Europe’s last dictator,” and his government for its heavy-handed treatment of critics and intolerance of dissent.
The United States has repeatedly raised the case of imprisoned dissidents, including opposition leader Alexander Kozulin who was arrested during a protest after challenging Lukashenko in the 2006 presidential election, which the U.S. dismissed as illegitimate. He was convicted of organizing mass protests and sentenced to 5 1/2 years in a high-security prison.
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