News

     Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
     RIGA, Latvia (Reuters)—Latvia's president warned a new far-right political party Monday not to follow in the footsteps of Austria's Joerg Haider and compromise the Baltic state's drive for EU membership.
     Vaira Vike-Freiberga, speaking on Latvian state radio, urged the Latvian Future Party, founded by a group of well-known nationalist radicals, to draw lessons from European attempts to isolate Austria after Haider's far-right Freedom Party joined the cabinet.
     "I hope that the party, which is in the process of setting itself up, will take notice of the situation (in Austria) and will not provoke ... with statements that could be interpreted as samples of the extreme right-wing," she said.
     Austria has come under heavy fire from the EU and other countries around the world in recent days after Haider's party joined a coalition government.
Haider, who will not be in the government himself, has played down Nazi war crimes and praised elements of Hitler's Third Reich. In joining the coalition he apologized for such statements and committed to democratic principles.
     "We have very intense international attention devoted to Latvia and to come up with pronouncements of an extreme right-wing character at this moment would be considered as a deliberate provocation, as a deliberate harming of Latvia's good image," Vike-Freiberga added.
     In December Latvia was invited to begin detailed accession talks with the EU.
At a weekend conference the Latvia Future Party, which does not hold any seats in parliament, struck a strongly nationalistic tone saying it was opposed to the integration of Russian-speakers, EU membership and called for a reduction of the number of non-Latvians in state administration.
     About one-third of Latvia's 2.4 million people are Russian-speaking.
     REUTERS

     VILNIUS, February 8 (Itar-Tass)—The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry has expressed "bewilderment" in view of the recent statement by Latvian Foreign Minister Indulis Berzins, who asserted that Vilnius seeks to join NATO as soon as possible "in circumvention" of the other two Baltic States, national radio reported on Tuesday.
     Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Vygaudas Usackas said he is inclined to refer to such a statement as "misunderstanding." "In actual fact, Lithuania seeks to join the European Union and NATO through common efforts and it closely cooperates with Poland, Latvia and Estonia, which have common integrational goals," the Lithuanian diplomat said. Usackas emphasised that Lithuania seeks admission to the Alliance "not at the expense of Latvia or Estonia" and favours the admission of all the three Baltic States to NATO.
     NATO-Lithuania political consultations have been going on here for the second day, with the sides discussing a programme to prepare this Baltic republic for integration into the North Atlantic Alliance.
     pop/pop Copyright 2000

     WSJE: Ex-Soviet Bloc Nations Demand Greener Pastures From EU
     By Matthew Kaminski, Staff Reporter
     BRUSSELS—As former Soviet bloc countries edge toward fulfilling a decade-long dream of joining the European Union, accession talks are taking on a more acrimonious tone—and a big reason why is farming.
     At first glance, the recent chill can be attributed to quarrels over trade. Under pressure from farmers, Poland and Latvia in December raised agricultural tariffs, citing a widening trade deficit with the EU. The EU reacted angrily and said the moves violated the spirit of the enlargement process.
     But the dispute goes beyond the taxes levied on EU food exports. What's ultimately at stake is how good a deal on farming the candidates get inside the EU.
     The five ex-communist countries in negotiations—the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia - are pushing for the full benefits of the EU's costly farm subsidies, partly to dull the pain of restructuring their own inefficient sectors. The stance is likely to be shared by the other five Central European aspirants who formally launch talks with the EU Tuesday.
     The EU countries don't seem to be in a generous mood. The common agricultural policy, or CAP, already eats up nearly half of the EU's 89 billion euros annual budget. The European Commission, which handles the talks, is under pressure to hold down enlargement costs while the EU gradually reforms its farm system.
     Guenter Verheugen, the enlargement commissioner, reiterated Tuesday that EU member states probably wouldn't be willing to raise their financial commitments to the CAP until 2006, when the EU said it would revisit the policy.
     But Mr. Verheugen, the German commissioner, hinted at a compromise. He noted the commission might yet conclude that Central European farmers will be entitled to some direct payments support, which last year accounted for roughly half the EU's 40.5 billion euros farm budget.
     Another idea under consideration by the commission is to offer the new member states farm restructuring funds in lieu of some direct payments. Last month, it unveiled a 3.6 billion euro program to overhaul the farming economies of Central European countries ahead of accession. The EU's final negotiating position on agriculture, which the commission is working on now, must be approved by member states.
     Central European diplomats said their countries could agree to phase in the supports over time, but steadfastly oppose being excluded from the program altogether. To be able to compete in a single market, they added, the farmers must get the same benefits as their counterparts in Western Europe.
     "Agriculture is a question of money and principle," Jaroslaw Pietras, Poland's deputy minister at the Committee for European Integration, said in an interview. "We need to have an outcome that is satisfactory to the Polish public."
     Poland, the largest Central European state, is an important test case. Its farming economy will be the hardest for the EU to absorb: One in five Poles lives off the land, but farmers contribute less than 5% of the economic output. Like the other accession countries, Poland carries a large trade deficit with the EU, including 700 million euros in agricultural goods.
     As in Western Europe, Polish farmers make up a strong lobby with great influence in the streets—as well as in the halls of power—whose voice no government can ignore. On Tuesday, 80 farmers blocked a highway in southeastern Poland to protest the government's agricultural policy.
     In response to the protests, the government last year boosted price supports and raised tariffs twice. Criticizing the step, the EU said open competition, not protectionism, is needed to push ahead farm reform. In December, it froze "zero-zero" talks on an agreement to liberalize all agricultural trade between the EU and Poland, the European bloc's fourth-largest export market. EU officials said the dispute could also slow Poland's entry into the EU, which the government in Warsaw wants by 2003. The EU has set no formal timetable, but said it would be ready to take in new members by then.
     "It makes no sense to put barriers between two partners who are required to reduce barriers within two years," said Francoise Gaudenzi, the European Commission's chief negotiator for Poland, in a recent interview.
     Mr. Pietras, the senior Polish official, said Warsaw wants to restart the "zero-zero" process at the upcoming talks with the commission. Aside from the CAP, Poland would bring up other issues.
     But the spirit of discussions, moderate and reasoned in the first year-and-a-half of negotiations, has become more adversarial as the EU and the applicant countries hash out in public the controversial issues that will be discussed in detail in talks scheduled for April.
     Last Friday, at a conference at Belgium's University of Ghent, the Polish prime minister's senior adviser on enlargement shared the podium with the senior civil servant at the commission's enlargement department. Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, the Polish advisor, blamed "waiting fatigue" for the waning public enthusiasm for EU membership in Poland. And in a direct allusion to the dispute over the CAP, he said: "It's not the candidate countries that can't take up our responsibilities, but the countries of the EU that aren't offering them now."
     (END) DOW JONES NEWS 02-09-00 12:31 AM Copyright 2000 Dow Jones & Co., Inc.

     RIGA, February 9 (Itar-Tass)—The Latvian parliament on Wednesday approved the strategy of the country's integration in the European Union.
     The programme was okayed just an hour and a half before European Commission head Romano Prodi and EU commissioner Guenther Ferhoigen arrived in Riga.
     The strategy determines the area of activities for Latvia as a candidate for EU membership. Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said "this document is testimony to our irreversible movement towards the EU, the unity of our political will and the firmness of our determination".
     Members of different factions often criticised the strategy while agreeing on the need for integration in the EU. It drew particularly fierce fire from the left-wing opposition which objected to plans to switch to Latvian language in all state-run schools. It also reproached the government for its failure to fulfill the obligations to the European Union.
     There are still 41 differences between the rights of citizens and non-citizens (one in four people living in the country, mostly Russians, have no Latvian citizenship) and 19 of these differences limit non-citizens' right to engage in professional activities.
     Latvian has not ratified important European conventions which protect the rights of minorities.
     Prodi has arrived in Riga to familiarise himself with Latvia's efforts for integration in the European community.
     Ferhoigen, who is accompanying him, will clarify the European Union's position in connection with its expansion.
     Latvian Prime Minister Andris Skele will receive the guests in the Chernogolov House, the most beautiful building in the Baltics. [Sounds like Itar-Tass editorializing that the Russian legacy is the “most beautiful” of all in the Baltics!]
     On Thursday, Prodi will make a speech at the Latvian parliament. He is expected to have talks with the parliament speaker, the president of the country, the foreign minister and faction leaders.
     On Thursday afternoon, the guests will go to Lithuania where they will continue their tour of the countries seeking EU membership.
     The EU expansion is very beneficial to Europe economically, an expert on the EU, director of the European Policy Centre, John Palmer told the newspaper Business and the Baltics.
     He noted that economic growth begins in the EU's periphery and moves towards the centre. The next generation of progress will be Central European and Baltic states.
     Palmer believes that Latvia will be admitted to the EU in 2006.
     zak/Copyright 2000

     MOSCOW, February 10 (Itar-Tass)—Vladimir Putin, the Acting President of Russia, said here on Thursday while opening a meeting of the Russian government, devoted to the financing and building of the Baltic Pipeline System (BPS), that "we must proceed first of all from the interests of the state and must harmonise them with the corporate ones" in distributing the shares of companies involved in the implementation the BPS project.
     "Hence, we must reckon with the interests of the State, giving them pride of place, since this is a matter of the Russian Federation's energy and transport security," Putin said, stressing that an end to the transportation of Russian energy resources via Latvia would yield an annual saving of more than 100 million U.S. dollars, now paid for transit services and transshipment.
     Putin stressed that the "problem of corporate equity shares and of financing the BPS project has not been resolved since 1997." "Nothing has been done so far in this respect. Only an endless tug-of-war in apportioning the equity shares is going on," he added, noting the inadmissibility of further wrangling.
     Journalists were told at the Government Information Department that the BPS project was being implemented in keeping with the presidential decree to guarantee the transshipment of cargoes through coastal territories of the Gulf of Finland, which was signed in 1997. Oil transportation via the BPS system will allow Russia to get rid of the expensive services now rendered by foreign states through which the petroleum is being pumped. The per tonne spendings of companies, which will use the BPS route for this purpose, will be 3 or even 4 U.S. dollars smaller than those linked with oil transportation through the ports of Ventspils (Latvia) and Buting (Lithuania). Already after the commissioning of the first section of the project Russian companies will no longer be compelled to annually pay large sums of money for transit services and transshipment. For instance, they now annually pay Latvia more than 100 million U.S. dollars for these services.
     It is advisable to implement the project by stages in order to minimise the initial financial spendings and to boost the effectiveness of capital investments. The first stage envisages the creation of a new export conduit of 12 million tonnes a year. The cost of this stage is estimated at 460 million U.S. dollars. The second stage envisages the further boosting of the pipeline's capacity to thirty million tonnes of oil a year and the reconstruction of the Kharyaga-Usinsk-Ukhta-Yaroslavl- Kirishi oil pipeline.
     Practically all the preparatory work had been completed by now in keeping with the legislation in force and in accordance with the issued normative documents. The feasibility study of the first stage of the BPS has been drawn up. It has passed all the necessary state and departmental expert tests. The blueprints for the installations, included in the 2000 plan, are ready.
The government of Finland and the Finnish "Fortum" Company are evincing great interest in the BPS project. The question of building the Primorsk-MPZ-Porvoo pipeline and its connection with the BPS project is now being considered on the initiative of the Finnish side.
     kli/gor Copyright 2000

     Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
     By STEVEN C. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
     RIGA, Latvia (AP)—European Commission President Romano Prodi praised Latvia's democratic and market reforms Thursday, but prodded the Baltic state to work harder at integrating its large Russian-speaking minority.
     Nearly 40 percent of Latvia's 2.5 million people are Russian-speakers, most of whom immigrated to Latvia during Soviet rule, which ended in 1991.
     Many have failed to attain citizenship because they speak little or no Latvian and can't pass required language exams. They are not allowed to vote or hold certain jobs, including judge, lawyer and high-ranking civil servant.
     "Many people still feel alienated in Latvian society," Prodi told Latvian legislators. "They need to learn Latvian and they need your helping hand."
     Prodi also praised the former Soviet republic's success in building a modern, democratic society.
     Joining the 15-member European Union is one of Latvia's top foreign policy priorities. Latvia, along with Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Malta, will begin membership negotiations in March.
     The EU has said Latvia's success in integrating its Russian-speaking minority would be a factor in the eventual decision whether to admit it.
     "The European Union is a union of minorities," Prodi said. "There is no majority in Europe. This is why we pay close attention to language and equal rights."
     Under EU pressure, Latvia softened citizenship and language laws considered too restrictive, and pledged to improve language-teaching programs for Russian speakers.
     Prodi praised Latvia's open-market reforms, but said the country needed to do more to ensure its businesses could compete in the EU marketplace.
     Sitting next to Prodi, Latvian Prime Minister Andris Skele said he was confident Latvia would be ready to join soon.
     "Latvia is not and will not be a problematic country," he said.

     The STRATFOR intelligence update for 11 February highlights this story:
     STRATFOR.COM's Global Intelligence Update - 11 February 2000      Diplomatic Blitzkrieg: The West Responds to Russia's Assertiveness
     Summary
     European Commission President Romano Prodi said Feb. 10 that the European Union (EU) would extend absolute security guarantees to all of its members. This statement in a single stroke redefines Russia and the West's struggle for the countries of Central Europe. No longer will Russia have the luxury of viewing EU expansion as a harmless process. Prodi essentially announced de facto NATO expansion under the guise of EU security guarantees.
     Analysis
     European Commission President Romano Prodi surprised his Latvian audience Feb. 10 by declaring that "any attack or aggression against an EU [European Union] member nation would be an attack or aggression against the whole EU, this is the highest guarantee." If implemented as stated, this marks a quantum shift in EU policies from the purely economic into the security realm—a change that Russia cannot afford to ignore. Now Russia will feel just as threatened by EU expansion as it has by NATO expansion. Prodi's announcement intensified the ever-escalating race to establish a new frontier between Russia and the West.
     ...
     What makes the announcement more dramatic is Prodi’s choice of audiences—Latvia. Of all the former communist states, this small Baltic country has had the most venomous relations with its former master. Prodi’s statement and the locale in which he made it indicate Prodi’s willingness—even enthusiasm—to stare down Russia over issues of importance to Europe.
     [Our thanks to Girts for forwarding this on to Silvija]      Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
     By STEVEN C. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
     IRBENE, Latvia (AP)—Astronomer Juris Zagars is a man with a mission: to get one of the former Soviet Union's most powerful telescopes, fallen into disrepair and forgotten by almost everyone else, back searching the heavens.
     The 50-year-old professor has gone at the task obsessively and almost single-handedly since he and his wife found the 600-ton instrument in a desolate forest in 1994, when Soviet troops finally left this small nation on the Baltic Sea after five decades of occupation.
     "It's one of the 10 or 12 best telescopes in the world," Zagars said as he clambered up narrow stepladders and through tight, submarine-like tunnels to the telescope's apex, some 165 feet above the surrounding pines.
     Once an off-limits military outpost manned by 2,000 soldiers, scientists and their families, the area now is occupied by a couple dozen squatters and a few nature lovers.
     Zagars envisions this quiet retreat 125 miles west of Latvia's capital, Riga, as a mecca for astronomers.
     The radio telescope, dubbed Little Star, was a top-secret resource; the Soviets used it to monitor satellite communications between the United States and Western Europe.
     Latvians only learned it existed in 1993, two years after the country regained independence from Moscow.
     Zagars was one of the first to get a close look at it after the last Soviet troops departed. He and his wife Gundega found it by following cryptic military maps and abandoned guard houses nestled among the pines.
     As one of the elite scientists in the former Soviet Baltic republic, Zagars was familiar with military projects, having traveled to Antarctica, Mozambique and elsewhere for the Soviet missile program to measure the contours of the earth.
     "You had to know the shape of the earth and something about its gravitational field if you wanted to launch a rocket from Kazakhstan and land it on New York," he said with a hint of a smile.
     Little Star is one of the most powerful land-based radio telescopes ever made, capable of viewing far-off galaxies and participating in the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, much as does the world's largest one-dish radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
     Latvia's government didn't know what to do with Little Star, so Zagars sort of adopted it. He agreed to act as a weekend watchman in exchange for a small stipend and rights to use some labs at the site for his own research.
     Before departing, the Russians poured acid into the telescope's main motor and disconnected key electrical wires. Four technicians who worked only on weekends and holidays took three years to repair it.
     Today the telescope works, though not at full capacity. With additional renovation he estimated would cost about $2 million, Zagars says astronomers from top-notch institutes and programs would line up to use it.
     Dainis Dravins, an astronomer at the Swedish Royal Academy, agrees. Few countries could afford to build such a powerful instrument today, he said. "But it was considered a high-priority item by the Soviets with no regard to cost," he added.
     Radio telescopes are most effective working in tandem, he said, and Little Star could participate in the study of stars as well as help gauge sea level changes, monitor continental drift and other projects.
     But Latvia's leaders don't share Zagars' enthusiasm for Little Star—or for science in general. In 1999, the country spent just 0.02 percent of its national income on science, according to the ministry of finance.
     Zagars himself earns just $350 a month from four jobs: caretaker of Little Star, two teaching positions at Latvia University and curator of a Riga museum.
     Lawmakers say their cash-strapped nation of 2.5 million, struggling to improve everything from hospitals to roads, can't justify spending scarce public funds on a telescope.
     "There really are too many other priorities right now, and none are science-related," said Dzintars Abikis, chairman of the parliament's education and science committee.
     Zagars grumbles that government indifference to Little Star is a combination of disgust for all reminders of the hated Soviet past and of hostility to any enterprise that doesn't offer the promise of an immediate profit.
     When he went to Brussels to enlist NATO aid to help convert the telescope from a military spying device into an instrument of science only, he said he was received warmly but turned down cold.
     "I spoke about converting the telescope to a research facility, but they responded by asking if it was still spying on them," Zagars said. "When I said no, they said, `Then in our view, the conversion has already been made.' "
     End advance for Monday, Feb. 14

     Appearing on the news wire with the simple title: "Latvia-Nazis"      Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.
     By STEVEN C. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
     RIGA, Latvia (AP)—Latvia is reviewing 24 cases of men who had their convictions for Nazi war crimes overturned during the 1990s, the Supreme Court said Friday.
     Last month, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center accused Latvia of overturning the convictions of 41 men who took part in genocide during the country's 1941-1944 German occupation. Some 80,000 Jews were massacred in Latvia during the period.
     When the country regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, new laws allowed people who believed they were unjustly imprisoned or deported during Joseph Stalin's dictatorial regime to apply to have their criminal records wiped clean.
     The process was opened to thousands of people convicted of collaborating with the Nazis. Latvians say many innocent people, including political dissidents, were declared Nazis by the Soviets and wrongly convicted.
     Leonards Pavils, the court spokesman, said the cases of 17 of the 41 names on the Wiesenthal Center list were checked, and the overturned convictions were deemed proper. Fourteen cases are being reviewed by the court, and the remaining 10 are being reviewed by the general prosecutor's office, he said.
     Indulis Zalite, director of the government's Documentation Center for Totalitarian Crimes, said as many as 90,000 Latvians have had their Soviet-era convictions overturned, or otherwise had their good reputations restored, since 1991.

Picture Album

We continue the theme of Peters' 1996 autumn visit. This week's picture is from Kuldiga, Peters' father's home town. The black-iron sign hanging on the building reads: "1670 1745 1982." Kuldiga was founded in 1370, so our guess is that the first building on the site was built in 1670, the current building was built in 1745... now, as for 1982, we're stumped! It certainly wasn't its last paint job! Yet, even in its current state, we can imagine it in its heyday in our mind's eye.

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