MINSK, January 12 (RIA Novosti) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday he was convinced the March 19 presidential elections, which he is also running in for a third time, would be held without any incidents.

"You can be absolutely sure that the authorities won't let the situation to become destabilized," Lukashenko told journalists during his visit to the Vitebsk region.

"We do not need to falsify the elections. We will on the contrary do everything possible not to be accused [of doing so]," he said. "People have enough confidence in us," he added.

The U.S. State Department has called Belarus the "last dictatorship in Europe", and the West has consistently questioned Lukashenko's commitment to democratic values. Popular protests, known as "color revolutions", have swept aside regimes deemed to be quasi-totalitarian in other former Soviet republics in recent years, most notably Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004.