MINSK: Belarus`s regime was increasingly isolated on Tuesday as Europe cut air links and calls grew for stronger action over its diversion of an airliner and arrest of a dissident on board.

After weathering a wave of protests and Western sanctions last year, President Alexander Lukashenko faced extraordinary new pressure over Sunday`s rerouting of the Ryanair flight to Minsk and arrest of opposition journalist Roman Protasevich.

More Western leaders joined calls demanding Protasevich`s release, after the European Union agreed at a summit on Monday to ban Belarusian airlines from the bloc and called on EU-based carriers not to fly over its airspace.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned on Tuesday that Lukashenko would pay `a bitter price` for the `heinous` flight diversion.

`Any dictator toying with such ideas must be made to understood that they will pay a bitter price,` he told reporters.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the EU needed to `profoundly redefine` its relationship with Russia and Belarus because `we are at the limits of sanctions policy`.

Air France, Finnair and Singapore Airlines became the latest carriers to suspend flights over Belarus, following Scandinavian airline SAS, Germany`s Lufthansa and Latviabased regional airline airBaltic.

Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said the international community needed to go further, urging the United States to take action in a call with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

Tikhanovskaya called for `comprehensive` international measures to force the regime to give up power.`This is the time to act, she said. `Suspension of flights over Belarus doesn`t solve the real problem. The problem is the terrorist regime that rigged elections lastyear.

She asked for the Belarusian opposition to be invited to next month`s G7 summit in Britain, an initiative that sources close to the French president said Paris supported.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined calls for Protasevich to be released, warning: `Belarus`s actions will have consequences.` The UN rights of fice also demanded the immediate release of Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega, who was also arrested after the Athens-to-Vilnius flight landed in Minsk.

EU leaders on Monday warned they would adopt further `targeted economic sanctions` against the Belarusian authorities to add to the 88 regime figures and seven companies on a blacklist.

Lukashenko and his allies are already under a series of Western sanctions over a brutal crackdown on opposition protests that followed his disputed re-election to a sixth term last August.

The erratic 66-year-old leader was due to address parliament on Wednesday, in his first comments since a jet was scrambled to intercept the Ryanair flight.

Protasevich, 26, was a cofounder of the Nexta Telegram channel, which helped organise the protests that were the biggest challenge to Lukashenko`s long rule.

He had been living between Poland and Lithuania.

Belarusian state television late on Monday broadcast a 30-second video of Protasevich confirming that he was in prison in Minsk and `confessing` to charges of organising mass unrest.-AFP