Border guards detain Belarus opposition leader

MINSK, Nov 29 (Reuters) Border guards in Belarus today charged opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich with passport irregularities as he returned home from a conference addressed by US President George W Bush, his spokesman said.

Ex-Soviet Belarus is accused in the West of human rights violations and Washington has said its President Alexander Lukashenko is Europe's last dictator.

Milinkevich was briefly detained after landing at Minsk airport from neighbouring Latvia, where he was attending a NATO summit, said his spokesman Pavel Mozheiko.

He was released a few hours later but has been formally charged with leaving the country without the correct travel documents, said Mozheiko.

The border guards service refused to confirm the detention.

''He managed to phone and tell me that after his passport was checked representatives of the border guards came up to him and said he was being held,'' Mozheiko told Reuters.

''A stamp to certify that he crossed the border was not put in Milinkevich's passport when he left Belarus, and now under the administrative code he faces either a fine or two months of community service for this violation,'' said Mozheiko.

Milinkevich was taking part in a conference that was part of the NATO summit. Bush addressed the conference yesterday.

Mozheiko said Milinkevich met Bush, who expressed support for Belarus's opposition.

Milinkevich ran a distant second to President Alexander Lukashenko in a March election which was dismissed in the West as rigged.

Announcement of official results giving Lukashenko 83 per cent of the vote in March, to six for Milinkevich, sparked four days of unprecedented protests in normally tightly controlled Belarus.

Police broke up the demonstrations after protesters tried to march on a prison where some of their comrades were being held.

More than 600 people were detained. Milinkevich was sentenced to 15 days in prison for staging an unauthorised demonstration in the weeks following the election.

The United States and European Union have long accused Lukashenko of crushing opponents and silencing media. They stopped issuing entry visas to the president and 30 other officials after the poll.

Lukashenko last week dismissed any notion that the vote giving him a third term had been rigged. He said he had actually won 93 per cent of the vote but deliberately depressed the figure to make it more credible for Western critics.

REUTERS SBA BST0128