WASHINGTON — The United States has warned Belarus that it may order its embassy in Washington and consulate in New York closed, and shut down the U.S. Embassy in Minsk in an escalating tit-for-tat diplomatic spat, officials said.

The State Department was poised to announce those steps on Thursday but the decision was abruptly put off just minutes before Belarus was to be informed they were being taken in retaliation for the expulsion of most of the U.S. embassy staff in Minsk, the officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte had signed off Wednesday on the decision to close the Belarusian missions in the United States and the U.S. Embassy in Belarus. Only Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has the authority to reverse such an order.

The moves were delayed to give Belarus time to consider reversing the expulsions, the officials said. The change in plan came so late that the top U.S. diplomat in Belarus, Charge D'Affaires Jonathan Moore, was already at the Foreign Ministry in Minsk to make the notification when he was told to stand down, according to three State Department officials.

Instead, at that meeting and another in Washington, Minsk was told that United States would withdraw its diplomats in the 72 hours required by Belarus and also that it is considering "a full range" of retaliatory measures, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

"We told them we would comply with the expulsion order and we warned them that there is a range of actions that we can take," he said. "We have to consider whether, after drawing down our staff, we can effectively operate there."

In Minsk, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Moore had "confirmed that the officials who have been declared persona non grata will be leaving Belarus within the specified time frame." It gave no further details.

Casey would not elaborate on what measures might be taken in what has become a major feud between the United States and the former Soviet republic, a frequent target of U.S. criticism on human rights.

But, the State Department had been set to give Belarus a May 16 deadline to withdraw its six diplomats at its embassy in Washington and consulate in New York, the officials said. That order would have closed both missions. At the same time, Belarus was to have been told that the U.S. embassy in Minsk would shut down as early as Friday, they said.

Planning for the closure of the Minsk embassy has been under way for some time and had reached the stage of securing a third country to serve as a "protecting power" to represent U.S. interests in Belarus, the officials said.

The steps envisioned are just short of severing diplomatic relations and would be the latest in a series of nasty exchanges with Belarus. Closing a U.S. embassy abroad is extremely rare and usually occurs only in conflict zones or in anticipation of instability, the officials said.

The United States is one of the fiercest critics of Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, and relations have deteriorated notably this year amid pressure from Washington for Belarus to release political prisoners or face sanctions.

The U.S. ambassador left Minsk in March after Belarus pulled its ambassador from Washington. The U.S. embassy in Minsk, which had 35 diplomats at the beginning of the year, is now being forced to cut its staff to four.

The State Department has protested the expulsions as "unjustified and unwarranted."

Among the top U.S. concerns in Belarus is the welfare of an ailing American lawyer who is currently in Belarusian custody.

The United States has demanded that the lawyer, 54-year-old Emanuel Zeltser, who suffers from diabetes, be released. Zeltser was detained on March 12 on suspicion of using false documents and his family says Belarusian authorities are denying him medication. He faces three years in prison if convicted.

Relations between Minsk and Washington have spiraled downward in recent months, mainly because of U.S. sanctions imposed on a state-controlled oil-processing and chemicals company, Belneftekhim, as well as travel restrictions on Lukashenko and top government officials.

The sanctions are designed to punish Lukashenko, who U.S. officials routinely describe as "Europe's last dictator," and his government for its heavy-handed treatment of critics.

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/05/01/1463492-us-warns-belarus-on-embassy-closure