SHKLOV, Belarus (AFP) -- Pacing his apartment in a run-down block in rural Belarus, opposition activist Alexander Sherbak gestures to the desk where he and one-time friend Alexander Lukashenko drank vodka together and planned to reform the country.

"He was really positive and spoke out against communism," said the head of the Social Democratic Party, recalling how he and others nominated Lukashenko to Belarus' Soviet-era Parliament in 1990 before later discovering what he calls the president's "craving for power".

Lukashenko has steadily concentrated power in his own hands during the 12-year rule he hopes to renew at a March 19 election, leading U.S. President George W. Bush to dub Belarus the "last remaining dictatorship in Europe".

But for a while, with the Soviet Union in its death throes, Lukashenko seemed something of a freedom fighter, says Sherbak, whose outspokenness draws a mix of horror and amusement among residents of this small town on the Dnepr River where the president began his working life. Sherbak recalls how Lukashenko travelled to neighboring Lithuania to support that country's freedom struggle against a Soviet crackdown and how he went on to wage a war on officials he accused of corruption. ------Enthusiasm for democracy

But this apparent enthusiasm for democracy proved a blip in a life imprinted with Belarus' Soviet inheritance.

The Belarusian leader was born in 1954 to a single mother who looked after cows on a state farm.

"The 1950s were an awfully needy, hard time. I remember what a fight it was in the village -- the survival of the fittest," Lukashenko is quoted as saying in a biography by Pavel Sheremet and Svetlana Kalinkina, "Sluchainy Prezident" (Accidental President).

As a young man, Lukashenko shifted from job to job, including a post as a lecturer on communism, two periods in the army and -- according to "Sluchainy Prezident" -- two years as deputy head of a prison factory, before he became head of the Gorodets state farm near Shklov.

Former Gorodets mayor Vasily Gontsov remembers Lukashenko as a "cruel" boss who ran the place down. "The buildings were neglected. That standpipe over there -- when it broke he refused to have it fixed, saying his own mother had to walk 500 meters for water," Gontsov, 78, said, gesturing angrily across a snow-covered road.

Following his election to parliament in Minsk, Lukashenko built up his power base, pursued officials he accused of corruption and at the 1994 presidential election ran a populist campaign helped by television pictures of his wife Galina milking cows.

Once installed, Lukashenko halted reforms begun in the early 1990s and went on to expand his powers at a 1996 referendum.

A series of incidents strained relations with the West, including the 1995 shooting down by the Belarus' air force of a hot air balloon that was passing through Belarus' air space on a race, leading to the deaths of two U.S. citizens.

Tensions increased when Lukashenko ordered the expulsion of foreign ambassadors from their residential compound in 1998 on the grounds that plumbing and sewer repairs were needed. Workers at one point tried to shut out the U.S. ambassador by welding shut the gates of his residence.

Lukashenko renewed his grip at a 2001 election criticized by the West as flawed and in 2004 secured the removal from the constitution of a two-term limit on holding the presidency. The Belarusian leader regularly participates in winter sports tournaments -- some in Minsk's main street -- that he invariably wins. "It's forbidden to touch him in hockey or overtake him in skiing," said Lukashenko critic and Olympic medal winner Vladimir Parfenovich. "He shouldn't be getting medals when he participates in tournaments."

Meanwhile the first lady's public role ended with her husband's 1994 election win. She has not appeared at Lukashenko's side since he became president and lives in Shklov in a modest green-painted two-storey house surrounded by guards and a high wall. (Lukashenko)