MINSK, June 22 (RIA Novosti) - The EU external affairs commissioner is due in Belarus on Monday for talks with President Alexander Lukashenko, a spokesman for the European Commission in Minsk said.

Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner is also to meet with Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov as well as representatives of the opposition and civil society.

Talks will center on the prospects for cooperation between the European Union and Minsk, particularly developing the EU-Belarus relations "if and when the authorities take further positive steps with regard to democratic freedoms, human rights and respect for independent media."

"How we proceed together, depends on the choices Belarus will make for itself," Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement.

The agenda for the talks will also include the Eastern Partnership initiative and its potential for Belarus, the spokesman said.

Prior to her visit Ferrero-Waldner said the EU would give Belarus 10 million euros ($13.9 mln) in aid for food safety programs.

A European Commission statement described food safety in Belarus, "where some 23% of the national territory remains contaminated after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster," as "a highly sensitive topic."

The visit by the commissioner, the second this year to the country, was rescheduled from March. Prior to the recent thawing, high-level contacts between Minsk and Brussels had been frozen for 12 years.

Lukashenko, who has run Belarus since 1994 and was once dubbed "Europe's last dictator" by Washington, has moved to rebuild ties with the West, freeing several political prisoners last year in line with EU demands.

The European Union has suspended a travel ban on the Belarusian leader, and the country has been invited to join the EU's Eastern Partnership program, seen by many as designed to curb Russia's influence on the six former Soviet republics - Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Moldova and Belarus - included in the scheme.

Earlier in June, the Belarusian president described cooperation with the EU as "part of a strategic plan."