Belarussia's Alexander Lukashenko on Sunday criticised EU politicians who have threatened him with further sanctions and in an apparent reposte to the German Foreign Minister's branding him "Europe's last dictator", said: "Better to be a dictator than gay."
Guido Westerwelle is Germany's first openly gay minister.
European Union leaders at a summit in Brussels on Friday called for new measures to pressure the Belarus President, in power since 1994, over alleged human rights abuses.
Lukashenko said Belarus would give a strong reaction to any sanctions, according to local news agency Belta. "This is absolute hysteria," Belta reported him as saying. "And as you can see, at the forefront there are two types of politicians ... one lives in Warsaw, another in Berlin. Whoever was shouting about dictatorship there ... when I heard that, I thought: it's better to be a dictator than gay."