'Revolution roadshow' rolls into town to urge regime change

Latvia: It was a line-up to torment the Kremlin: four Belarussian democracy activists, a Moldovan politician and an American…

Latvia: It was a line-up to torment the Kremlin: four Belarussian democracy activists, a Moldovan politician and an American from the International Republican Institute (IRI), with considerable recent experience in Ukraine.

With a hall full of US and European political advisers, they debated "democracy beyond the Baltics" ahead of president George Bush's arrival in the Latvian capital. The "revolution roadshow" that now accompanies Mr Bush on his east European trips had come to Riga to push for regime change, of the sort effected by the Georgia's so-called 'rose revolution' in winter 2003, and its 'orange' equivalent in Ukraine a year later.

Latvia was not the target but the perfect host, a vibrant, ex-Soviet EU member that likes to lecture its old master Moscow on democracy and human rights, and is happy to see Russia's sphere of influence shrink as that of Washington and Brussels expands.

After Georgia and Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova are the next targets for change.

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Many of these opponents of Belarus's authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, met Mr Bush in Slovakia in February, on the sidelines of his summit with president Vladimir Putin, and then plotted the political demise of "Europe's last dictator" with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, down the road in Lithuania last month.

Stephen Nix, the man from the IRI, insists that Moscow has more to gain than to lose from Belarus going democratic.

But, having destroyed independent TV and political pluralism in Russia, Mr Putin is unlikely to cheer the Belarussian activists' appeals for US and EU funding for opposition media, and their plans for huge rallies ahead of next year's elections.