EU issues 7-day deadline for capitals to return to Belarus

(BRUSSELS) - EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton wants the bloc's 27 member states to return their ambassadors to Belarus within seven days, diplomats said on the eve of Friday talks among governments.

"Foreign ministers are to meet on March 22 and 23, and we want the ambassadors back in Minsk before then," an EU official told AFP of Ashton's request, communicated to national governments ahead of high-level discussions on March 22-23.

Belarus accused the European Union at the end of February of escalating tensions in a growing diplomatic row, after the recall of all 27 member states' ambassadors from the ex-Soviet state.

Belarus had earlier told the EU and Polish envoys to leave over dissatisfaction at sanctions, in what the country's foreign ministry called "a path to a dead end".

Belarus has become Europe's most isolated nation under the strongman rule of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has effectively banned all forms of dissent since coming to power in 1994.

After also picking his battles with Moscow, he now relies on the exclusive economic assistance of Russia, whose current premier Vladimir Putin on Wednesday rose to Lukashenko's defence.

The EU's most recent sanctions in a 17-year political campaign against Belarus, which is sandwiched between the European bloc and Russia, placed 21 judges, prosecutors and police officials on a list of people penalised over a crackdown on post-election mass protests that shook Minsk in December 2010.

Poland has led the campaign in Europe to impose sanctions, but Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskite told AFP in a recent interview that the approach followed over the past two decades would only push other ex-satellite Russian republics into Moscow's sphere of influence.

Lukashenko has vowed not to bow to pressure, comparing Belarus' current struggle with Brussels to World War II, when its territory was occupied by Nazi Germany.