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| - The Swedish Export Credit Agency (EKN) said Tuesday it was withdrawing export guarantee offers for deals involving two state-owned Belarusian companies, citing failure to live up to human rights standards. The guarantee offers, which totalled two billion Swedish kronor ($242 million, 197 million euros), concerned the sale of gas turbines from a Swedish subsidiary of Germany's Siemens and state-owned Belarusian energy companies RUE Minskenergo and RUE Brestenergo. "The prerequisites are not in place that would enable the two projects in Belarus to live up to human rights requirements in line with international frameworks," EKN said in a statement. The agency originally approved the guarantee offers in August last year, as massive protests disputing the presidential election broke out in the Eastern European country. According to EKN, the guarantees were never actually issued, and new information the agency received from members of the Belarusian opposition in March prompted a new analysis. The announcement came just days after Belarus' diversion of a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius while in Belarusian airspace over a supposed bomb threat. Among the passengers was dissident journalist Roman Protasevich. Intercepted by a Belarusian fighter jet on the orders of strongman Alexander Lukashenko, the plane landed in Minsk where Protasevich, a 26-year-old who had been living in Lithuania, was arrested along with his Russian girlfriend. However, the diversion of the flight was not the reason for the agency's change of heart, as the re-evaluation of the decision predated it. "It confirms that the situation in the country is grim, but it's not the reason," Beatrice Arnesson, EKN communications director, told AFP. jll/po/tgb
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