U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking about the contentious Belarusian presidential election and the ensuing police crackdown against peaceful protesters, says that "we want good outcomes for the Belarusian people, and we'll take actions consistent with that."
Pompeo, who earlier condemned the conduct of the election that handed authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka a sixth-straight term by a landslide, said in a wide-ranging interview Wednesday with RFE/RL in Prague that "we've watched the violence and the aftermath, peaceful protesters being treated in ways that are inconsistent with how they should be treated."
The vote Sunday, which the opposition has called "rigged," has resulted in three-straight evenings of mass protests marred by police violence and thousands of detentions.
Pompeo said that the United States had not yet settled on the appropriate response but would work with Washington's European partners to determine what action to take.
Asked whether the election and its aftermath would affect the future of U.S.-Belarus relations, including the promised delivery of U.S. oil, Pompeo said: "We're going to have to work through that...we were incredibly troubled by the election and deeply disappointed that it wasn't more free and more fair."
U.S. troops in Afghanistan
Pompeo, who was in Prague at the start of a five-day trip to Europe that will also take him to Slovenia, Austria and Poland, discussed a number of other issues, including allegations that Russia was involved in offering Taliban militants bounties to attack U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan; expectations that Washington will seek to extend the U.N. arms embargo against Iran; and the effect violence against protesters in the United States might have on Washington's image abroad.
WATCH: See Mike Pompeo's entire interview
The U.S. secretary of state declined to comment on whether he believed U.S. intelligence reports that said Russia had offered money to the Taliban and their proxies in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers, saying he never commented on U.S. intelligence matters.
"What we've said is this: If the Russians are offering money to kill Americans or for that matter, other Westerners as well, there will be an enormous price to pay," Pompeo said. "That's what I shared with [Russian] Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov. I know our military has talked to their senior leaders as well. We won't brook that. We won't tolerate that."
Last month, in an interview with VOA, CENTCOM Commander Gen. Frank McKenzie said the allegations were " very worrisome, it's very concerning, but it's not proven to my satisfaction that it actually occurred."
Regarding the prospect of resistance among European allies to U.S. efforts to extend the expiring arms embargo on Iran indefinitely, Pompeo said it "makes no sense for any European country to support the Iranians being able to have arms."
"I think they recognize it for exactly what it is," he said of the U.S. proposal, a draft resolution of which is reportedly currently being floated in the 15-member Security Council. "And I hope that they will vote that way at the United Nations. I hope they will see."
"The resolution that we're going to present is simply asking for a rollover of the extension of the arms embargo," Pompeo said. "It's that straightforward.”
Asked specifically about the prospect that Iranian allies Russia and China could veto such a proposal, the U.S. secretary of state said: "We're going to make it come back. We have the right to do it under 2231 and we're going to do it."
U.N. Resolution 2231 was passed unanimously by the United Nations in 2015, endorsing the Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)
The United States withdrew from the deal, which offered sanctions relief to Tehran in exchange for security guarantees aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, in 2018.
Russian media pressure
Pompeo also discussed recent efforts by Russia to target foreign media operating there, which the secretary of state earlier warned would "impose new burdensome requirements" on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice Of America.
In a statement Monday, Pompeo said that the two U.S.-funded media outlets already faced "significant and undue restrictions" in Russia, and that a recent draft order by Russia's state media regulator requiring all media registered as "foreign agents" to label their content as such or face fines of up to 5 million rubles ($70,000) had left Washington "deeply concerned."
In Prague on Wednesday, Pompeo said that he believed that "we think we can put real pressure and convince them that the right thing to do is to allow press freedom."
"We've condemned it. We've also imposed enormous sanctions on Russia for other elements of their malign activity," Pompeo said. "We hope that the rest of the world will join us in this. We hope that those nations that value the freedom of press, who want independent reporters to be able to ask questions, even if sometimes leaders don't like them, will join with us."
Asked whether the recent handling of protests against social injustice in the United States, which has included the use of police force against civilians and journalists, had harmed Washington's image and weakened its moral authority in scolding authoritarian regimes, Pompeo called the question "insulting."
He said that the "difference between the United States and these authoritarian regimes couldn't be more clear."
"We have the rule of law, we have the freedom of press, every one of those people gets due process. When we have peaceful protesters, we create the space for them to say their mind, to speak their piece," he said.
"Contrast that with what happens in an authoritarian regime. To even begin to compare them, to somehow suggest that America's moral authority is challenged by the amazing work that our police forces, our law enforcement people do all across America — I, frankly, just find the question itself incomprehensible and insulting."
VOA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
