You're reading: Belarus recalls entire embassy staff from Sweden

MINSK - Belarus said on Wednesday it was withdrawing its remaining embassy staff from Sweden in a rift over a pro-democracy stunt involving an air drop of teddy bears on Belarus and told Stockholm to take similar action with its diplomats in Minsk.

A foreign ministry statement said it was not severing
relations with Sweden. But the move marked an escalation in the
dispute and looked certain to worsen already strained relations
between the European Union and the former Soviet republic.

Belarus expelled Sweden’s ambassador on Aug. 3 following the
July 4 escapade in which hundreds of toy bears bearing
pro-democracy messages were parachuted into the hardline former
Soviet republic from a light aircraft chartered by a Swedish
public relations firm.

The Belarussian ambassador to Stockholm was also withdrawn.

The foreign ministry said Minsk was now pulling out its
remaining embassy staff because Sweden had aggravated the
situation by expelling two more diplomats and had refused to
allow a new Belarussian ambassador to take up his post.

“In this connection, the Belarussian side has been forced to
take the decision to withdraw its embassy in Sweden and bring
back all its (embassy) staff to Belarus,” the statement said.

The incident was a humiliation for President Alexander
Lukashenko, a hardliner who has been in power in Belarus since
1994 and is on poor terms with the West because of his harsh
policies towards the political opposition.