Past and present east European leaders today called for EU action to back liberals challenging Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko in an election vote they said was certain to be rigged.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, brought to power by mass protests in 2003, said new sanctions were needed to address allegations that Mr Lukashenko crushed human rights.
Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, veterans of the fight to overturn communist rule in the 1980s, said backing Belarussian liberals could hasten the end of Mr Lukashenko's administration.
Both the EU and the United States accuse him of human rights violations and have warned of new punitive measures if international observers, as expected, criticise the election campaign which culminates on Sunday.
Mr Saakashvili, writing in the International Herald Tribune, urged the West to take note of upheavals against electoral fraud that helped unseat governments in Georgia and Ukraine.
He said that after "inevitable" protests in the Belarussian Minsk, the EU "will need to show leadership by publicly denouncing - and not recognising - the election and facilitating an EU-led negotiating forum for the two Belarussian sides".
"The EU also needs to stand with the Belarussian pro-democracy activists through such acts as imposing strict economic and political sanctions on the Belarussian government."
Mr Havel and Mr Walesa, former presidents of the Czech Republic and Poland respectively, said the liberals' campaign in Belarus was similar to what they had encountered under communism.
"Just like in our countries in those times, the reality in Belarus might seem unchangeable and chances for a political transformation slim," they wrote in a letter published in Polish and Czech newspapers.
Most of Belarus's opposition backs Alexander Milinkevich against the president, though even he says he has little chance.
The KGB security service has accused the opposition of plotting a coup and said protests would be viewed as "terrorism".
Mr Milinkevich has urged supporters to gather peacefully outside polling stations, as they did in neighbouring Ukraine. He said EU action "will finally send the unified message that no impediments to democracy exist in Europe's east and that no barrier or dictator can resist freedom's call".