EU considers hitting key Belarus exports over plane 'hijacking'
The EU is intent on making Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pay a high price for the forced landing of a European airliner to arrest regime opponents, the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told AFP. "The heads of state and government asked us on Monday (at a summit) to propose sectoral economic sanctions, something that we are not used to doing in the EU, and there are some that immediately come to mind," Borrell said in an interview Wednesday in Lisbon on the eve of an informal meeting of foreign ministers. "Belarus is a big exporter of potash: $2.5 billion. Everything goes through the Baltic countries. It's easy to control it, if you really want to," he said. "One can also imagine that the gas which arrives in Europe via Belarus could come to Europe via another pipeline, and Belarus would lose the transit fees, which is not negligible," he added. Lukashenko sparked international outrage by dispatching a fighter jet Sunday to intercept a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius carrying dissident reporter Roman Protasevich, 26, and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega. EU leaders hit back at Minsk, agreeing to ban Belarusian airlines from the bloc and urging EU-based...