Sveiki, all!

To try and remedy some of the formatting problems folks have been having, we're sending this mail via alternate means as a test this week. Please let us know if this solves/creates any problems for you.

With reference to last week's news, we had a typo, as you read, it was Janis Pujats, Archbishop of Riga, who was named to the post of Cardinal. One of our readers expressed regret that we had not said more to highlight Pujats' life and achievements -- we're hoping to do a feature on Cardinal Pujats in a later mailer.

In the news,

• A bigger NATO to block the Gaullists? - Baltics are siding with continued American NATO involvement while the French want to play in their own sandbox
• Baltics ask Russia to clarify weapons reports - Asking for official assurance via diplomatic channels that the Baltic region continues to be nuclear-free
• Former NKVD staffer indicted in Latvia appeals court - Savenko's sentence to be reviewed (we'd only note that the western press seems to be gravitating to a more objective reporting in this area instead of parroting "Soviet partisan" as per the Russian press -- this is the first time we can recall actually seeing "NKVD" in a headline, the NKVD being the direct precursor of the KGB)
• Ex-Stalinist agent in Latvia told he won't have to go to jail - Savenko's sentence limited to time already served, including current house arrest, because of illness
• NATO enlargement could sink arms treaty -- Russia - Sounds like more Russian threats and blackmail, and then they ask to be trusted?
• Putin to meet Latvian president on Saturday - Vaira Vike-Freiberga to meet Putin in Austria in an informal session

and, perhaps more worrisome than Russian opposition to NATO expansion,

• Anti-American pop music is all the rage in Russia - It's only taken a decade of Russian independence for America to have gone from trendy and fashionable to trendy to be hated... what can be said of someone whose essence of self-definition is the hatred of one's enemies?

This week's link is to the Baltic American Freedom League.

This week's picture is of #2a, Alberta Iela, in Riga.

For you AOL'ers, 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. And thanks to you participating on the Latvian message board as well: LATVIA (both on AOL only, access from AOL web browser).

Ar visu labu!

P.S. To access previous issues, please visit the Mailer Archive at our home page: latvians.com. To subscribe or unsubscribe, please E-mail Silvija at: Silvija.

The Baltic American Freedom League looks out for Baltic interests in America, primarily lobbying Congress and the executive branch on issues important to the Baltics, including conducting campaigns to write/Email government officials when votes count (as, for example, in the case of potential cancellation of economic military aid). There's a wealth of news and analysis on their site.

Their site can be found at: http://www.bafl.com/

COMTEX Newswire Wednesday, February 07, 2001 5:58:00 PM
(c) 2001 UPI

    WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- The truth that dared not speak its name is finally starting to leak out.
    The small nations of Eastern Europe are starting to appeal openly to the new Bush administration to bring them into NATO quickly, in order to counter European plans for an independent defense system and keep the alliance firmly loyal to American leadership.
    At issue is the next NATO summit in Prague in October of next year, the agreed date for the next round of NATO enlargement. But there has been no agreement yet which of the nine applicant countries should be allowed in -- and NATO has yet to gird itself for the inevitable row with Moscow that is bound to follow.
    Nine countries want to join. The current betting is that two are certain: Slovenia and Slovakia. In terms of preparation to re-organize their armed forces to join NATO, the three Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia should be certain that NATO has the political will to withstand Russian objections.
    The Balkan states of Romania and Bulgaria, still struggling economically, may not be ready for the obligations of NATO membership. The small Balkan states of Albania and Macedonia, despite their support for NATO during Kosovo conflict, have even further to go in term of making their equipment and training procedures compatible with existing NATO members.
    But the ones who do qualify, and who fear that some existing NATO members in Europe would rather delay enlargement than embark on a major row with Russia, are now saying the U.S. needs them -- as extra voices within NATO for maintaining the American connection.
    Lithuania's defense minister, Linas Linkevicius, was the first to speak out, appealing to new US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top officials from across NATO to recognize that the Baltic states wanted to join the old American-led NATO -- not some French-dominated European replacement.
    "NATO enlargement means strengthening the Transatlantic school of thought in the context of Europe's Security and Defense Identity", he maintained. "If treated improperly, this issue may draw into question the very foundation of European security -- of which the U.S. engagement in Europe and its security guarantees to the European allies constitute the essential part."
    Other Baltic leaders made similar arguments at Munich -- despite worries that they might yet regret it if the French conception of Europe's future security system prevails.
    The problem, as so often in the NATO alliance, is France. Since the days of President Charles De Gaulle, who evicted NATO's troops and HQ from French soil in 1966, France has been a semi-detached ally, a member of the NATO alliance, but not of the NATO military command structure. De Gaulle always argued that Europe needed to develop its own military identity and pursue a strategic independence from the dominant American ally.
    When he heard that De Gaulle wanted all U.S. troops out of France, President Lyndon Johnson delivered one of the most crushing retorts of all time, asking "Does that include the ones in the cemeteries?"
    The Europeans are currently, with guarded and highly conditional American approval, developing their own European Security and Defense Policy, whose hallmark is to be a Rapid Reaction Force of 60,000 troops. Along with an associated naval task force and air wing, the plan calls for it to be ready for deployment in 2002, and able to maintain its mission for up to twelve months.
    The British, America's staunchest allies, helped launch the RRF -- as a way to reassure Americans that after failures in the Balkans, Europeans were finally ready to carry their share of the security burden. For the British, this meant a Euro-force that was firmly locked into the NATO structure and command system.
    The French had other ideas. President Jacques Chirac keeps stressing -- in a clear echo of De Gaulle -- the need for "an autonomous European force." The French are now digging their heels in against the British plan to put the Euro-force's planning offices inside the NATO planning office at Mons, Belgium. Paris wants a specifically European planning staff.
    Bush's new defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld confessed himself "worried" about the implications of this row, along with a large delegation of U.S. Senators and Congressmen gathered in Munich over the weekend for a big security conference. Canadian defense minister Art Eggleton argued that the Transatlantic link was under real strain.
    "Stress weakens even the strongest metal -- to the point of shattering. The link that unites us, that joins our continents and our strategic concerns, is no exception," Eggleton warned.
    And he added that it was hard to see he could allow the Canadian pilots and aircrew who fly NATO's AWACS early-warning planes to be put under Euro-force command -- unless NATO was in the command chain.
    This issue is going to provoke arguments across the Atlantic -- and in the U.S. Congress -- for the remaining eighteen months until the next NATO summit meets. And beyond, as Europeans try to decide whether they are now rich enough and secure enough to take some faltering steps away from the American umbrella. The question is whether the Baltic states and the others will be NATO members by the year 2003 -- when the new Euro-force is meant to holds its parade.

AP WorldStream Friday, February 09, 2001 11:53:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By STEVEN C. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

    RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- Leaders of the three ex-Soviet Baltic republics said Friday they want to keep the Baltic region nuclear-free and asked for official assurance from Russia that it has no nuclear weapons in the area.
    "We are interested in peaceful and friendly relations with our neighbors, so we want a nuclear-free zone here in the Baltics," Latvian Prime Minister Andris Berzins said after a meeting with Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar and Lithuanian Prime Minister Rolandas Paksas.
    Last month, U.S. media, citing unnamed U.S. officials, reported that Russia had moved tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland and home to the headquarters of Russia's Baltic Fleet.
    Moscow has strongly denied the reports, which raised concern among U.S. and Baltic officials, and says it continues to honor a nonbinding agreement from the 1990s with the United States and Europe that established the Baltic region as a nuclear-free zone.
    Baltic leaders said Russia has not directly denied the reports through official diplomatic channels.
    "We have not received any official assurance, and we hope very much that the situation will be made clear. This is very important information," said Laar, who added that the reports only reinforce the need for his country to step up its efforts to join the NATO military alliance.
    "For Estonia, it shows it's important to continue our NATO integration, which will give us the practical possibility to be ready for membership," he said.
    Since winning independence after the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Baltic nations have singled out NATO membership as a top priority. But Moscow strongly opposes their membership in the 19-nation alliance, saying it would be perceived as a threat to Russia.
    Some Baltic officials have suggested any alleged deployment, or threat of deployment, by Russia could be a tactic to persuade NATO not to invite Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to join the alliance at its next summit, scheduled for 2002.
    The prime ministers also discussed strategy for joining the European Union, another top foreign policy goal, a common Baltic electricity market and strengthening transport infrastructure linking the three countries.
    "Throughout history, the Baltic states have never cooperated as closely as they are now," Laar said.

AP WorldStream Wednesday, February 07, 2001 10:02:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press

    LIEPAJA, Latvia (AP) -- Latvia's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a Stalinist-era police agent convicted and sentenced to prison for deporting scores of people in the 1940s is too ill to go to jail.
    Yevgeny Savenko, 86, was handed a two-year jail term last July for ordering the arrest of 60 Latvians, including young students, who were later deported; many starved to death or were shot in Siberian prison camps, prosecutors said.
    Prosecutors said Savenko began working as an agent after the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states in 1940. Savenko pleaded innocent, saying he was just following orders and never had anyone killed or tortured.
    Savenko, who has Parkinson's disease, attended the hearing.
    The court did not overturn his conviction but reduced his sentence to one year and three months, then released him, saying he had already served this amount of time in pretrial detention and under house arrest.
    The Riga-based high court convened in the coastal city of Liepaja, 220 kilometers (140 miles) from the Latvian capital, since Savenko was too ill to travel.
    Savenko has Russian citizenship and Moscow has openly championed his cause, saying his conviction amounted to revenge against a dying man. The Baltic News Service reported that Russian diplomats attended Wednesday's court session.
    Savenko is one of a dozen ex-Soviet agents indicted or convicted by Latvia since it regained independence from Moscow in 1991. Latvia says the process brings overdue justice to victims and sheds light on the dark Stalinist-era.
    The other two Baltic states, Estonia and Lithuania, also have prosecuted former agents of Stalinist repression. None of the other 12 former Soviet republics have done so.

COMTEX Newswire Tuesday, February 06, 2001 9:27:00 AM
(c) 2001 ITAR-TASS

    RIGA, February 6 (Itar-Tass) -- The Latvian Supreme Court began hearings into the case of Russian citizen Yevgeny Savenko, aged 87, in Liepaja on Tuesday.
    Savenko, a former investigator on staff of NKVD (former Soviet secret police) had been indicted in Latvia last July on charges of genocide against peaceful population and sentenced to two years in prison. Yevgeny Savenko has appealed the court verdict.
    Savenko walked into the courtroom on Tuesday, supported by the arms because he could not walk himself, suffering from Parkinson disease. During the inquest the judge asked whether Savenko had been linked to student alliances which existed in pre-war Latvia and whether he had any contacts with members of pre-war armed formations.
    Savenko declared that in the capacity of an investigator of state security bodies he had merely conducted an inquest and put down testimony given by those he interrogated. "I had worked in compliance with the law on criminal procedure which was in force then, I have never beaten or insulted anyone," Savenko claimed.
    The court hearings in Liepaja were attended by the Russian consul, Valery Polyakov. The court resolution is expected on Wednesday.

Reuters World Report Monday, February 05, 2001 6:15:00 AM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.
By Jon Boyle

    MOSCOW, Feb 5 (Reuters) -- Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev said on Monday that NATO expansion eastwards into the Baltics and former Soviet states could destroy a landmark treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe.
    Interfax news agency quoted Sergeyev as saying ties with NATO had improved since Britain's George Robertson became secretary general, but potential pitfalls remained.
    Any offer of membership to the Baltic states and members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a Russian-led grouping of ex-Soviet republics, could severely damage ties.
    "If there was such a development, NATO's military infrastructure would virtually reach Russia's borders," he said.
    "And if among the new members of the alliance there were Baltic countries and CIS states, then that could destroy the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty," Sergeyev told Interfax.
    Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which regained independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, have striven to anchor themselves in the Western orbit by securing NATO membership. NATO is cautious because of deep Russian hostility to the move.
    "Every state can, of course, build its own security according to its own judgment, but not at the cost of the security of others," Sergeyev said.
    Signed in the dying days of the Cold War, the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, revised in 1999, limits the number of battle tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters deployed and stored between the Atlantic Ocean and Russia's Urals Mountains.
    RUSSIAN PLANS FOR "SON OF STAR WARS"
    The Russian minister also renewed Russian attacks on U.S. plans to build a "son of star wars" national missile defence (NMD) shield, in breach of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which has guided arms control for three decades.
    He said Russia would dust down countermeasures drawn up in the 1980s, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan vowed to build a space-based system dubbed "star wars," if Washington pushed ahead with NMD despite Moscow's objections.
    "At the time of Reagan's 'star wars' we had three powerful projects to counter the U.S. anti-missile defence system," Sergeyev said. The schemes had been frozen when 'star wars' was dropped, "but they remain and we could return to them," he said.
    Russia fears NMD would undermine its nuclear deterrent, and force it into a new arms race it can ill afford. Washington says the system does not target Russia and aims only to protect itself from attack by hostile states like North Korea and Iraq.
    The new U.S. defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, reiterated Washington's determination to develop the missile shield in a speech to a defence conference in Munich on Saturday.
    Sergei Ivanov, secretary of Russia's security council, told the same conference on Sunday that NMD would undermine world stability, and offered talks on deep cuts in strategic nuclear arms if the Bush administration dropped NMD and preserved the ABM Treaty.
    France and Germany are among Washington's NATO allies in Europe to have misgivings about NMD. Their defence ministers have recently sought details from Moscow of its counter-offer of joint work on a regional missile shield that would preserve ABM.
    Relations between Russia and NATO have slowly improved since hitting a post-Cold War low in 1999 during the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, a traditional ally of Moscow, over Kosovo.
    Although some bitterness remained, Sergeyev welcomed "positive tendencies" in a joint Russia-NATO council set up to give Moscow a voice in NATO affairs.
    NATO planners are now taking on board Russian views before taking decisions, said Sergeyev. "We don't have the right of veto, but we take part in the discussion and elaboration of approaches to the key problems of European security," he said.
    Joint peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans had also "changed for the better" with Robertson's arrival as NATO boss, he said.

Reuters World Report Friday, February 09, 2001 3:41:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.

    TALLINN, Feb 9 (Reuters) -- Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Innsbruck, Austria on Saturday, her press office said.
    Putin is on his first official visit to Austria since taking power just over a year ago.
    It was not immediately clear why Austria was chosen as a venue for the two to meet for the first time and no details of their planned discussions were available.
    Latvia and Russia have had strained relations since the Baltic state regained independence from Moscow in 1991, following 50 years of Soviet occupation.
    Russia has accused Latvia of discriminating against its large Russian-speaking minority, about one-third of the country's 2.4 million population. Latvia denies the charge.
    Russia has also objected to Latvia's aspirations to join NATO, a move that would bring Moscow's Cold-War-era enemy to its doorstep.

Time Europe Daily
BY YURI ZARAKHOVICH IVANOVO

    February 5, 2001 -- "Kill the Yankee! And all who love the Yankee!" The shrill, hysterical, mawkish voice belting out these lyrics spells out just how the enemy is to be handled: "Burn the kiosk with the American sh -- ! Advertise their hard-currency stores with a brick! Scratch on the billboards the word 'pr -- -'! Stuff the Stars and Stripes in the latrine! Kill the Yankee! Kill the Yankee!"
    Alexander Nepomnyashchy, 32, the author of these exhilarating lyrics, strikes a chord with his audience. He is one of the best know exponents of a new trend in Russian rock: anti-American pop. Nepomnyashchy hails from Ivanovo, a depressed regional center 288 kilometers southwest of Moscow. Once famous for its textile production, Ivanovo was never particularly prosperous, even when it worked to capacity. Now that only some 30% of its industries function, Ivanovo has the look of a dying city. Textile workers mostly get paid in kind. "Will swap three kilometers of calico for a one-room apartment," runs a typical add in a local daily.
    At night morose crowds loaded with piles of cloth--received, bought, or stolen from factories--pack into the only remaining Moscow-bound train: reselling cheap fabric at a meager profit in the capital is the only way to survive. Nepomnyashchy, and thousands of impoverished young people like him in Ivanovo-like towns all across Russia, blame the Yankees, and the Yankee lovers, for their sordid life. Books and newspapers are beyond their reach. They ignore TV and radio, which ignores them. Driven by a peculiar mix of hatred and envy, they thrive on their bard's pledge: "There will be a bullet for all of them."
    Songs of hate from Ivanovo echo in Tumen, the Siberian oil capital 1,700 km northeast of Moscow. Arthur Strukov, founder of the Cultural Revolution rock group, condemns "all that is the U.S.A." What should Russian patriots do about this abomination? Strukov provides the answer on his Cultural Revolution website (www.cultrevolution.ru). To find it, just click on "Destroy America!", splashed across a banner of the American flag, and read the refrain that pops up: "You want a life--destroy America ... The sweet slavery of foreign shores leads into a quagmire ... The Star of Bethlehem as ever is rising over the Russian Empire."
    The banner next to "Destroy America!" carries the portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Click on this and the lyrics read: "Our dear Putin, you are no Rasputin ... You are Joan of Arc ... Kill them, Putin!" Maybe these lyrics have not yet reached the Kremlin but Zavtra, a Moscow-based nationalist weekly, loves them. NepomnyashchyÕs "Kill the Yankee" has become the soundtrack of choice for rallies organized by Victor Anpilov, the radical Communist rabble-rouser, and Eduard Limonov, head of the National-Bolshevik Party.
    Promising that "the Statue of Liberty will have to fall," Nepomnyashchy spares a select group of Americans from his death sentence. Jello Biafra, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, according to Nepomnyashchy, were all "Russian, born in Moscow."
    The Soviets portrayed Moscow as the place where the proletariat of the world would unite. Now, the Russian capital enjoys the more dubious honor of bringing together some of the world's extremists. Marko Milosevic, son of the defeated Serb leader, is said to reside there, while former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke settled in Moscow to publish his book "The Jewish Question Through the Eyes of An American" in Russian. The book is now on sale at the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.
    In Russian, the word "nepomnyashchy" means "one who forgets." Back in 1917, the Russian social system was inane, unjust and corrupt, and poverty was rife. Those with short memories would not recall what came from extremist views.

We're hoping to have enough time someday to do a full feature on Alberta Iela, one of the greatest remnants of Jugendstil architecture in Riga. In the meantime, here's another tidbit, from No. 2a Alberta Iela, taken during our most trip last summer.