GallerySunday, 30 April 2000
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Lat Mailer & AOL Chat Reminder for Sunday, April 30th, 2000
Date: 4/30/00
File:
D:\+www.latvians.com\Oct96\Picts\Vecriga-Balkons-4168-03.jpg (45866 bytes)
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We got home from at midnight, so we'll get right to the mailer!
This week's links are to the 11th Latvian Youth
Congress as well as the Institute of Geology (see the news).
- Latvia, Australia see pact leading to Kalejs return
- Kononov released from custody
- Latvian president picks nice guy for tough task
- Russia welcomes UN resolution on ethnic minorities
- Fossil find in Estonia, Latvia
- Latvia PM-designate says cabinet formation imminent
- Wreaths to Russian Europe war memorials to be laid
standings.
This week's picture is from a side street across from the Doma Church in Old Riga.
Remember, mailer or not, Lat Chat spontaneously appears every Sunday on
AOL starting around 9:00/9:30pm Eastern time, lasting until 11:00/11:30pm.
AOL'ers can follow this link: Town
Square - Latvian chat.
Ar visu labu and ar labu nakti!
IN ACCORDANCE WITH AOL'S MAIL POLICY and good manners, please let Silvija (Silvija) know if you wish to be deleted from our mailing list. Past mailers are archived at latvians.com. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.
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The 11th Annual Latvian Youth Congress, open to all
young Latvians worldwide from the ages of 16 to 35, being held in Toronto this
summer, can be found at:
http://www.vljk.com
For news on the
paleontological holy grail found in Estonia and Latvia, see the news item
below, and the following link to the Estonian Institute of Geology:
http://gaia.gi.ee/gi/ingl/Welcome1.html
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Latvia, Australia see pact leading
to Kalejs return
RIGA, Latvia
(Reuters) — Latvia said Tuesday it expected to sign an
extradition treaty with Australia at the start of June, paving the way for the
return of suspected Nazi war criminal Konrad
Kalejs.
The foreign ministry said in a statement
that both countries' representatives had met in Riga Tuesday to initial the
treaty and had agreed on sending it to both governments, and subsequently
parliaments, for approval.
The ministry said that
if all goes smoothly, the law may come into force at the end of the
year.
Latvia has been seeking the extradition of
Kalejs, accused of aiding in the Second World War slaughter of Jews, since the
86-year-old fled to Australia in February when he was forced to leave Britain
to avoid deportation because of his alleged involvement in lack of an
extradition treaty.
Once the legislation is in place
and sufficient evidence is found to warrant a trial, authorities can extradite
him.
Kalejs has denied all charges, saying while he
was a member of the Nazi-backed Arajs hit squad in Latvia he only fought Russia
on the eastern front or was studying at university when the killings took place
in 1941.
Ninety-five percent of Latvia's 70,000
pre-war Jewish population was murdered during the German occupation, sometimes
with local collaboration.
Copyright 2000 Reuters
Ltd.
Kononov
released
RIGA, Latvia (AP)
— Latvia's Supreme Court released convicted war criminal Vasily Kononov
from custody Tuesday and ordered an investigation of his controversial
conviction — a move welcomed by
Russia.
Kononov, 77, was sentenced in January to six
years in prison after being convicted of ordering the execution in 1944 of nine
civilians, including a pregnant woman and several children, who he suspected of
pro-Nazi sympathies.
At the time, Kononov led a
small band of pro-Soviet partisans who fought the Nazis occupying
Latvia.
Kononov, who had been in custody since his
arrest in 1998, has maintained his innocence, claiming those who died got
caught in the cross fire in a battle between pro-Soviet and Nazi-backed
forces.
Moscow has sharply criticized the detention
of Kononov, who many Russians consider a war hero. Russian President Vladimir
Putin granted Kononov Russian citizenship this month to underline his
displeasure.
The Riga court asked prosecutors
Tuesday to provide clearer proof the victims were unarmed civilians. It also
called for testimony from experts on whether the offenses amounted to war
crimes, said Leonards Pavils, a court spokesman.
Pending a final ruling on whether Kononov's conviction should be overturned, he
will be allowed to return to his home in Riga for health reasons, Pavils said.
He is not permitted to change residency or leave the
country.
Prosecutor Ausma Rubene said she was
surprised at the court's ruling and that she feared Kononov could try to flee
the country for Russia, the Baltic News Service
reported.
Russian Ambassador to Latvia Alexander
Udaltsov praised the move as "a serious step toward justice," Russia's
ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The ambassador planned to present Kononov later
with his Russian passport, the agency said.
Latvia
has vowed to bring both Soviets and Nazis who committed atrocities to trial.
But while it has convicted three Soviet sympathizers, no Nazis have been
charged or convicted.
Latvia was independent before
being occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. After the 1941-44 Nazi
occupation, Soviet troops occupied Latvia again, remaining until the Baltic
state regained independence from Moscow in
1991.
During World War II, many Latvians ended up
fighting on either side, often after being conscripted.
Copyright 2000 The Associated
Press.
Latvian
president picks nice guy for tough task
By Burton
Frierson
RIGA, April 25
(Reuters) — Andris Berzins, nominated on Tuesday to head
Latvia's ninth government in nearly 10 years, will have to prove that nice guys
finish first if he is to outlast his
predecessors.
President Vaira Vike-Freiberga picked
the popular 48-year-old Riga mayor and former welfare minister to succeed
Andris Skele, who resigned on April 12 in a dispute over privatisation in the
former Soviet Baltic republic.
In personal style,
the conciliatory Berzins could not differ more from the often abrasive
Skele.
"Skele's image is as the guy who knocks heads
together and gets things done. I think Berzins's image is as the guy who comes
in and smooths over all the rough spots," said Pauls Raudseps, deputy editor in
chief of the leading Daily Diena.
"Now does that
mean that things will go forward faster? It's difficult to tell," said
Raudseps.
Berzins is expected to cobble together a
government in the coming weeks from the three centrist parties in the current
ruling alliance plus, possibly, the small opposition New
Party.
With a minimum of 61 of the 100 seats in
parliament, Berzins would appear to have a strong hand to play
from.
But wounds from previous intra-coalition
clashes have left few with clean fingers, and the daunting task of
privatisation — the main reason the two previous administrations collapsed
— could scuttle his cabinet even before it takes
office.
"I think that it will be quite difficult for
all the parties to sit again at the table and without mentioning old sins to
agree on something (on forming a government)," Berzins told Reuters after a
news conference following his nomination.
He will
face a tough challenge in the privatisation of electric utility Latvenergo.
Ideas on how and whether to sell the firm vary according to political stripes,
and a union-led referendum drive is under way to halt
it.
The last government approved a restructuring
plan earlier this year, but the New Party, seen as key to adding stability to
the current coalition of three rivals, opposes
it.
"I don't think this government will go to a
(confidence) vote in parliament unless they at least think that they have found
a solution to that question," said Raudseps.
Enter
the nice guy.
Berzins spent most of the 1990s in the
Welfare and Economics Ministries dealing with labour issues, in which he had to
bring together workers, employees and international
experts.
"During his tenure Latvia adopted a whole
package of social welfare reform legislation, which is not particularly
popular," said Nils Muiznieks, a political analyst.
"Apparently he was very effective at maintaining that dialogue during a
difficult period."
Copyright 2000 Reuters
Ltd.
Russia welcomes UN resolution on ethnic
minorities
MOSCOW, April 26
(Itar-Tass) — By adopting a resolution on the rights of
ethnic, religious and language minorities, the U.N. Commission for Human Rights
"confirmed the exclusively important role of ensuring the right of minorities
to maintain stability and peace in any society", the Russian Foreign Ministry
said in a statement on Wednesday.
"The commission
called on all states and the world community not only to protect but encourage
as much as possible the rights of this category of people, ensure their full
and effective participation in all aspects of political, economic, social,
religious and cultural life in society, and primarily in adopting of decisions
which directly affect them", the ministry
said.
During the session, the Russian delegation
repeatedly pointed to the continuing discrimination against hundreds of
thousands of Russian compatriots in Latvia and Estonia. These two countries
"not only not objected to the adoption of this resolution but actually joined
its co-authors. We would like to believe that this is not a propaganda trick or
an attempt to play up to the Western public opinion, but the first sign of
understanding by Riga and Tallinn of the need to begin to introduce universal
standards of treatment for ethnic minorities, most of whom are ethnic
Russians", the statement said.
It stressed the need
to take concrete steps towards "eliminating statelessness and ensuring full
participation of minorities in the life of these countries, including elections
to various federal bodies of power, preserving their cultural and language
originality".
Russia hopes that "international
organisations dealing with the problems of minorities, including the U.N., will
take, jointly with the authorities and non-governmental organisations in Latvia
and Estonia, concrete steps to remedy the situation in these states", the
ministry said.
"We expect the U.N. High Commissioner
for Human Rights to keep her promise in this field," it said, adding that "the
unanimously adopted resolution of the U.N. Commission for Human Rights calls on
all interested sides to take such vigorous action".
zak/(c) 1996-2000 ITAR-TASS. All rights
reserved.
We checked the UN site but could not find the text of the resolution. If anyone has a pointer, we'll be glad to pass it on so folks can read the resolution for themselves.
Fossil Find
By MICHAEL TARM,
Associated Press Writer
TALLINN, Estonia,
April 27 (AP) — Like other paleontologists, Elga Mark-Kurik
had long pondered that moment in geological time when the first ancestor to all
land vertebrates, including man, stepped from the water and walked onto solid
ground.
But the 71-year-old never imagined a fossil
of that first half-fish, half-animal species may have already been in her
collection for more than 40 years.
At a recent forum
at London's Natural History Museum, scientists said the 375-million-year-old
jawbone Mark-Kurik found in 1953 and a similar fossil found in Latvia in 1964
could be the missing link between fish and
animals.
Scientists agree the 25,000 species of land
vertebrates, including homo sapiens, all descend from a small group of
creatures that were not yet quite land animals and no longer quite fish. But
nobody had ever unearthed proof.
The most developed
fish, whose fossils are relatively common, date back to about 385 million
years; the earliest, clearly land-roving animals are some 365 million years old
— leaving a gap of 20 million years between fish and
animal.
An article by Mark-Kurik and fellow
paleontologists Per Ahlberg of Sweden and Ervins Luksevics of Latvia claims
that the Baltic fossils fall within that gap. The article will be published in
the August edition of the prestigious British journal
Paleontology.
That one of paleontology's Holy Grails
may have been discovered in Estonia and Latvia has been celebrated across the
two former Soviet Baltic republics and at Tallinn's Institute of Geology where
Mark-Kurik works.
Sitting in her office, she proudly
pulled the thumb-sized fossil out of a small blue box and gleefully handed it
to a reporter.
But she hastened to explain that
thanks to repressive Moscow rule, which only ended with the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, it was a fossil find of a lifetime that was unnecessarily
delayed.
"This has been very exciting for scientists
here," said Mark-Kurik. "We had gone through such a long, dreadful period in
the Soviet Union."
As a schoolgirl in 1941, a year
after Soviet forces occupied the Baltic states, Mark-Kurik and her family hid
in fear one night when KGB troops knocked on their door. She said they were
lucky to escape deportation.
She also says it was
isolation behind the Iron Curtain that kept her and other scientists from
recognizing the importance of the fossil she found in an Estonian cave as a
graduate student.
For decades, the Soviet regime
kept her from traveling abroad to meet colleagues and see other fossil
collections, and the KGB closely monitored the rare Western scientist who
visited Estonia.
Scientific rules also generally
required that research papers be written in Russian, so Western paleontologists
couldn't readily glean insights from Mark-Kurik's published
works.
"Paleontology is very much a world science,"
she said. "You must see fossils from around the world and you must exchange
information with other scientists to understand what you have. We couldn't
under the Soviets."
After the country regained
independence in 1991, Mark-Kurik suddenly had the freedom but not the money to
travel. She still shares an office the size of a walk-in closet with two other
researchers and is paid less than 6,000 Estonian kroons — or $400 in U.S.
currency — a month.
The turning point came in
the mid-'90s, when Mark-Kurik, Ahlberg, Luksevics and a Russian scientist won a
grant from NATO to compare ancient rocks and fauna from Scotland and the
Baltics.
They weren't trying to find the fish-animal
link. But Ahlberg had studied the field in depth and the pieces of the puzzle
suddenly fell together during a routine look at the Baltic jaw-bone
fossils.
Jaw bones have distinctive, complicated
joints and undergo huge changes with evolution; by comparing and contrasting
them with other better-known specimens, jaw bones are especially good at
revealing traits of their owner.
The Baltic fossils
Ahlberg held in his hands had just the right mix of fish and land-vertebrate
features that he knew well from other fossil collections, and he understood
their significance almost instantly.
"These
(Baltic) fossils fall bang in the middle of the gap," he
said.
The animal was dubbed Livonia multidentata in
Latin after the region where the fossils were found and its unique, five rows
of razor-sharp teeth.
"I haven't seen anything like
it, with multiple rows of teeth," said Jenny Clack, a paleontologist at the
University of Cambridge who was not connected to the find. "This find is
certainly part of the story of the origin of tetrapods (early land animals).
It's the latest twist."
But unanswered questions
remain. One is whether it still had fins or already had legs. To find out,
Ahlberg said the search will turn to unearthing a whole
skeleton.
If it exists, it would likely be here in
northern Europe, which, because of the earth's shifting tectonic plates, was at
the equator and featured shallow, nutrient-rich tropical waters 400 million
years ago.
But Mark-Kurik says chances of finding a
full skeleton are slim.
That leaves paleontologists
extrapolating how it looked by comparing Livonia multidentata to its nearest
cousins, for which there are full skeletons: It probably looked like a small
crocodile, though with gills and a fish-like
tail.
She herself hardly seems enamored with man's
first terrestrial forefather.
"It must have been
horribly ugly ... I wouldn't want it walking around my house," she
said.
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
On the Net: Institute of Geology:
http://gaia.gi.ee/gi/ingl/Welcome1.html
Latvia PM-designate says cabinet formation
imminent
RIGA, April 27
(Reuters) — Latvian Prime Minister-designate Andris Berzins
said on Thursday he would have an outline of his cabinet ready in the next few
days and that policy should remain on the same track as his
predecessor.
"I plan that some time on Friday, or
the latest on Tuesday, to be able to reveal my model for forming a government,"
Berzins told journalists after holding a round of coalition
talks.
A second round of talks is planned for
Friday.
The new government, being formed after Prime
Minister Andris Skele resigned on April 12 amid a privatisation row, is
expected to stick closely to the previous administration's tight fiscal
policies, according to a working draft of the government
declaration.
It will also press ahead with
privatisations of large state firms.
However,
according to the draft, the cabinet would commit itself to keeping the current
government's aim of limiting the fiscal budget deficit to less than two percent
of gross domestic product (GDP) this year.
It would
plan a budget deficit of no more than one percent of GDP in
2001.
The draft also says the government would try
to limit annual inflation to two to four percent starting in 2001, ensure GDP
growth of five to seven percent per year and cut the current account deficit to
five percent of GDP in 2002.
The government would
also stick to decisions made by the last government regarding the
privatisations of Latvian Shipping, Latvenergo and Ventspils Nafta and invite
international investment banks to advise on further selloffs.
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.Wreaths to Europe war memorials to be
laid
MOSCOW, April 28
(Itar-Tass) — On May 9 wreaths on behalf of Russian
President-elect Vladimir Putin will be laid to memorials of Soviet soldiers in
the European capitals freed from the Nazi by the Soviet troops. That will be
done to commemorate the 55th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War
of 1941-1945, reads a report of the Russian Foreign Ministry, received by Itar-
Tass on Friday.
The unprecedented action aims to pay
tribute to the feat of Soviet soldiers who freed the peoples of Europe from the
Nazi at the cost of their lives, the report
says.
The wreaths will be laid to war memorials in
Berlin, Belgrade, Brastislava, Budapest, Bucharest, Warsaw, Vienna, Vilnius,
Kiev, Kishinev, Minsk, Prague, Riga, Sofia and Tallinn, the report
says.
Wreaths in other countries, where graves and
memorials of Soviet soldiers are, will be laid on behalf of Russian
embassies.
yer/dro (c) 1996-2000 ITAR-TASS
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Skonto is still on top!
RIGA, April 25
(Reuters) - Results from Latvian first division soccer league
games played at the weekend:
Policija FK 0 Skonto 5
Ventspils 3 Valmiera 0
Metalurgs 2
Liepaja 0
Daugava 2
Dinaburg 1
P
W D L F A Pts
1. Skonto 3 3 0 0 9
0 9
2. Metalurgs 3 3 0 0 6 1 9
3.
Ventspils 3 2 0 1 5 2 6
4.
Riga 3 1 0 2 3 5 3
5.
Daugava 3 1 2 0 4 3 5
6. Polcijas
FK 3 0 1 2 0 6 1
7. Valmiera 3 0
1 2 2 8 1
8. Dinaburg 3 0 0 3 3 7
0
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
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From the street next to the Doma Church in Vecriga (Old Riga). The grandeur and splendor of the past wait to be awakened once more.
