Lithuania slams Belarus nixing visa for vote observer

(VILNIUS) - Lithuania summoned Belarus's acting embassy chief Friday to protest Minsk's refusal to grant a visa to a lawmaker from the EU state who planned to observe upcoming elections in the neighbouring country.

Vilnius has expressed its "concern" to Minsk over its denial of a visa for the Lithuanian parliament's foreign affairs committee chief Emanuelis Zingeris, a foreign ministry spokeswoman told AFP.

On Wednesday, Europe's security and rights body OSCE said two of its observers in Sunday's elections in Belarus -- members of parliament from Germany and Lithuania -- had been refused visas.

In a statement, the Lithuanian ministry said "subjective methods in issuing visas for election observers raise serious doubts about Belarus's openness to free election and democracy values".

"It doesn't improve the chances of renewing dialogue between the European Union and Belarus," it said.

In a similar move, Germany on Thursday summoned the Belarussian ambassador, who was told that the German government failed to understand why the visas were denied.

Like Belarus, Lithuania won independence from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991. But the two countries have since taken very different routes.

Lithuania is firmly anchored in the West, having joined the European Unhion and NATO in 2004, but Belarus has turned into one of the world's most isolated states under the nearly 18-year leadership of President Alexander Lukashenko.

The European Union and the United States have issued travel bans against nearly 250 people linked to regime amid the crackdown on dissent after the controversial 2010 presidential election.

Belarus on Sunday elects a new parliament but the polls are largely boycotted by the opposition which have dismissed the results as fixed.