Merger Outline Calls for Belarus to Be Swallowed Up by Russia

For the first time since Russia and Belarus signed a “union” treaty six years ago, the presidents of the two countries outlined a merger scenario Wednesday that would in effect allow Russia to absorb the smaller country.

However, hours later the Belarussian leader appeared to back away from the proposal, leaving its future in confusion.

Under the plan described by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, Belarus’ six provinces would become members of the Russian Federation--which already has 89 regions and provinces. Belarus would in effect cease to exist.

The idea, Putin said, was to create “a single state in the full meaning of the word.”

Belarussian President Alexander G. Lukashenko, a Soviet-style dictator whose political and human rights abuses have made him a pariah in the West, sat next to Putin as the Russian leader spoke. Although Lukashenko did not openly express support for Putin’s plan, his presence and defense of Russian-Belarussian friendship seemed to imply some form of assent.

“Attempts have been made to create an atmosphere of misunderstanding and mistrust,” Lukashenko said. “But it is absolutely impossible to turn us against each other.”

However, once he returned to the Belarussian capital of Minsk late Wednesday, he described the plan as “unacceptable.”

“We will never agree to this,” Lukashenko said, according to Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency. “I have already said several times that the union cannot be built on the principles that destroy the sovereignty of Belarus and Russia. It must be built on the principles of equality.”

Putin’s proposal puts Lukashenko in a tough spot, forcing him to either accept a union with Russia that could remove him from power, or reject ties with Russia, which have helped boost his popularity and keep his anachronistic economy afloat.

“Russia is imposing humiliating conditions on Belarus and thus preparing to bury our very statehood,” Stanislav Shushkevich, who served as the first president of independent Belarus and is now an opposition politician, said in a telephone interview from his home in Minsk. “The time of hugs and kisses is over for Lukashenko. He got what he asked for.”

Forcing the issue, Putin laid out a timetable--referendums in both countries in March 2003 and elections for a president in 2004. Russia already has scheduled its elections for 2004, and most Russians assume Putin will win easily.

Putin also said the unified country would use the Russian ruble and Russian Constitution.

Lukashenko has pressed for the union for years. The idea is popular with his compatriots, whose lives have been impoverished by independence and who tend to be nostalgic for the Soviet Union. The existing union, though ill-defined, has already brought Lukashenko economic benefits in the form of reduced prices for oil and gas.

Analysts in both countries described Putin’s move as calling Lukashenko’s bluff.

“Lukashenko used this game to get more popular support inside the country and to continue getting cheap fuel and energy from Russia,” said Alexander Dobrovolsky, deputy chairman of the opposition United Civic Party of Belarus. “This ultimatum puts both the sovereignty of Belarus and the political future of Lukashenko himself on the line.”

Former Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin announced plans for a Russia-Belarus union during his reelection campaign in 1996, when he faced a severe challenge by Communists who favored a return to Soviet ways. Yeltsin signed the union treaty, apparently as a countermove to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s expansion into Belarus’ neighbor, Poland. It said the two countries would integrate their economies and political systems but retain sovereignty.

The question that has confounded the proposed union ever since is how such a mismatch could work in practice. Belarus’ population is just 6% the size of Russia’s. Its economy is hobbled by Soviet-style price controls long abandoned by Moscow. Any political and economic union that preserved Belarus’ sovereignty, as Yeltsin promised, would give Belarus out-sized power over Russia’s economy, foreign policy and military.

Putin himself had previously expressed skepticism at the idea of a union.

“Our partners should make up their minds and decide what they want,” he said in June. “We often hear that something along the lines of the Soviet Union would be desirable. But if it is to be along the lines of the Soviet Union, then why write in the draft constitutional act that the states will be sovereign, have territorial integrity and the right of veto on all decisions?”

Putin was careful in his remarks to speak of equality, although not an equality between Russia and Belarus. He stressed that under his proposal, the citizens of Russia and Belarus would enjoy equal rights.

“I think what happened today is a positive event for Belarus,” said Shushkevich, the former president. “It is a moment of truth which I am sure will help Belarus to cleanse itself of Lukashenko and his regime and move faster toward Europe.”

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Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.