Sveiki, all!

While Putin and Vaira Vike-Freiberga chose to bypass discussions of Baltic membership in NATO during their meeting last week, this week NATO and Russia grappled over the issue directly, as the head of NATO visited Russia.

In the news:

• Russians in Baltics feeling abandoned by Russia--the real story is that Russia offers not much more than lip service when it comes to looking out for its ethnic fold abroad, and despite Putin's protestations last week to Vike-Freiberga, Russia is treating its kin worse than ever and seems to be getting fed up with foreign Russians (isn't there a saying about judging one's character by how they take care of their own?)
• Russia digs in and categorically states it cannot accept Baltics' membership in NATO "under any circumstances," further, that its military forces "will react" should that occur--the Baltics would appear to be the touchstone by which to judge whether the Cold War is really over (not to mention the FBI agent arrested as a Russian spy... yet one more case of Russia readily continuing something the Soviets started)
• NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson delivers a university lecture and appears on Russian radio; he reminds Russia that Norway, also on Russia's border, has been a NATO member for 50 years--that hasn't seemed to be a problem
• Newly ordained cardinals receive their rings from Pope John Paul II; the group includes the first native-born cardinals from Honduras, Bolivia, Ecuador, Latvia and Lithuania, and the first black South African cardinal--we're still hoping to get some more background information on Janis Pujats to share with you

This week's link is to one of the few pictures we've been able to find of cardinal Pujats with the Pope.

Despite the setback of snow here in New York, we're still thinking "warm... warm... warm..." This week's picture is of Latvian flowers.

Two other items to note this week... we've added a collection of renderings of Latvian folk costumes by Anna Darzina. You can access them via our home page, in the Reading ROom section. Peters' father collected the pictures (postcards) during DP times. Also, the mailer will be on hiatus for two weeks while we're on vacation, including a stop in Latvia for a centenary birthday celebration!

As always, 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).

Ar visu labu,

Details on cardinal Pujats are still few and far between in the world press. In the meantime, all the sites with pictures of the installation of the cardinals seem to be featuring the same "file photo" of Pujats and the Pope, taken in 1999. Here's a link to one of those copies:

http://news.excite.ca/photo/img/ap/vatican/cardinals/20010128/rom108?r=/photo/ap/010128/06/vatican-cardinals

Russians living in Baltics feel abandoned by Moscow

Copyright 2001 AFP

    RIGA, Feb 18 (AFP) -- Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin taking up their case, ethnic Russians living in the Baltic states feel largely abandoned by their mother country, with Moscow's attempts to draw attention to their plight ringing hollow amidst a lack of real aid.
    "Russia's law on the protection of compatriots has only had a declarative character and we've felt no real help from Russia," said Tatyana Zdanok, a leading member of Latvia's ethnic Russian community, in a recent interview.
    Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union several hundred thousand ethnic Russians still live in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; and their fate has continued to complicate regional security.
    Mostly economic colonists sent by Moscow to Russify the Baltics, the disintegration of the USSR turned the tables on ethnic Russians, who found themselves foreigners living in foreign lands expected to learn the local languages.
    The region has avoided violence, but integration has been slow, with strict language requirements having left some 150,000 people in Estonia and 300,000 in Latvia without citizenship, spurring resentment among local Russians.
    Moscow rarely passes up an opportunity to lambast Estonia and Latvia on the international stage over the situation, and Putin made the plight of ethnic Russians the centerpiece in a recent meeting with his Latvian counterpart Vaira Vike-Freiberga.
    "We are prepared to resolve all problems, no matter how acute they would appear. We are open to talks... We only ask that the same rules be applied (in relation to Latvia's Russian-speaking population) as are applied to ethnic minorities in Europe," Putin was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying after the meeting.
    "That would be well enough for both us and our compatriots in the Baltic states, including Latvia," he added, urging Riga in particular to lower administrative fees for low-income pensioners.
    But with diminishing educational, business and social opportunities in their native language, ethnic Russians in the Baltics now expect more concrete support from Moscow.
    "I dont feel that Russia is helping," said Anna Stroj, a journalist with a Russian-language newspaper based in Riga who follows integration issues.
    "Latvia is my country and I dont think Russia should take care of me," she said, but it is "necessary for Russia to assist schools. Russian teachers are not very qualified."
    Stroj complains that at her daughter's school in Riga Russian literature is not taught to pupils in the seventh grade.
    Moscow spends little to provide real help to its far-flung compatriots. With its 90 million rubles set aside in 2001 to help the approximately 25 million Russians living abroad Moscow spends some 3.6 rubles (0.12 euros, 0.13 dollars) per person.
    And local Russians say Moscow often seems to be trying to make life harder for them.
    Moscow recently imposed with little warning a visa requirement on Russians living in the Baltics, wreaking havoc ahead of the New Year holidays and more than doubling the cost of gaining entry to Russia.
    "Russia thus 'reclassified' more than half a million of its former compatriots as official foreigners. During the past 10 years of the Yeltsin era they didn't treat their compatriots thus -- at home or abroad," the Russian-language Riga daily Respublika fumed.
    Despite official pronouncements, the move may signal growing disillusion in Moscow over the failure of its compatriots in the Baltic states to wield any significant influence in their new countries.
    "They've had nine years to decide the country whose citizens they want to become," said a Russian diplomat who asked not to be identified.

Russia drawing line over further NATO expansion

AP WorldStream Sunday, February 18, 2001 12:03:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By DEBORAH SEWARD
Associated Press Writer

    MOSCOW (AP) -- For nearly a decade, "partnership" was the buzzword for Russia's relations with NATO. Now that venture is all but dead and the Kremlin is drawing a thick line to show the Western alliance where it says its eastward expansion must stop.
    Further NATO enlargement and Russian anger over the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia have been overshadowed recently by Russia's concern over U.S. plans to develop a national missile defense system.
    But when NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson starts a two-day visit Monday, he will face a Russia that categorically rejects membership of former Soviet republics in the alliance as a matter of pride, principle -- and policy.
    Robertson recently said the ice age in relations between NATO and Russia was over. But for Russia it seems the thaw has barely begun and the mere idea of the alliance including the three Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as proposed, has prompted a chilly response.
    "There is a negative attitude toward further eastward expansion among the political establishment, the military and the population," said Yevgeny Kozhokin, director of Russia's Institute for Strategic Studies.
    "Russia could not accept NATO membership for the Baltic nations under any circumstances. NATO does not sufficiently grasp this," Kozhokin said.
    Many Russians believe a new wave of NATO expansion would push Russia further toward the periphery of Europe and force them to seek closer ties with China and India, countries the Russians consider marginalized.
    Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov accused the United States of "ordering the music" for its NATO partners in order to isolate Russia.
    While many former Soviet bloc nations see NATO as a guarantee of their political survival, for Russians NATO remains a potential threat to their sovereignty.
    "Relations with NATO are worse than ever. Yugoslavia shattered the arguments that NATO is not an offensive alliance," said Sergei Karaganov, head of the influential Institute of Europe. "This attitude is prevalent."
    Russia and NATO still talk, and there are areas in which cooperation is successful.
    Robertson intends to open a NATO information office in Moscow during his visit, which will include talks on peacekeeping efforts, Russia's military doctrine, the alliance's strategic concept and control over armaments.
    The tempo at which relations improve, however, "will depend on how NATO takes into account Russia's interests," Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, head of the international cooperation department of the Russian Defense Ministry, told reporters Friday.
    Russian analysts say their country could not counter NATO expansion into Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which would bring the alliance to within 100 miles (161 kilometers) of St. Petersburg and greatly reduce the flight time for NATO aircraft to reach Russia.
    "The second wave of expansion is a serious issue that could strain relations," Vladimir Baranovsky, deputy director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, said. "People are thinking about it, but there really isn't a good idea yet."
    There is some belief in Moscow that NATO will realize the gravity of Russia's objections and refrain from inviting the three Baltic nations, a vital Russian economic outlet to the West and home to hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians.
    "We don't know how to get out of this situation, so there is hope that NATO won't go forward with it," Karaganov said.
    While Russia finally swallowed NATO membership for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, it fears that alliance expansion into the Baltics would have an overwhelmingly negative impact, including isolating the western Russian enclave in Kaliningrad.
    "The Baltic ports are of enormous importance. Our economic interests in the transportation infrastructure there are clear, and we are interested in guarantees that the transit routes remain open to us," Kozhokin said.
    Russian military officials have warned that their armed forces would react were the Baltic nations to join NATO, but they aren't saying what they would do.
    "It's absolutely clear that Russia can't stop expansion," said Karaganov. "But further expansion will mean the possibility that Russia will be in some kind of no man's land."

NATO secretary-general takes message to Russian public

AP WorldStream Wednesday, February 21, 2001 6:06:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer

    MOSCOW (AP) -- On the final day of his visit to Moscow, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson took his message of partnership to the Russian public Wednesday with a university lecture and an appearance on a live radio call-in program.
    Robertson addressed students and other scholars at the Moscow State International Relations Institute, the training ground for Russia's diplomats and other public servants.
    "The alliance was and continues to be ready to engage Russia," he said. "Not for sentimental reasons, but for good reasons of self-interest."
    Robertson then headed to the Echo of Moscow radio station. His appearance there was also a tacit show of support for independent media in Russia, since the station is part of tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky's embattled Media-Most empire.
    Robertson used the lecture and radio appearance to soothe Russian fears of NATO's possible further expansion to include the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- a move that would bring NATO to Russia's western borders.
    "Why should it be any more of a problem for NATO to have members that are close to Russia when there is already a NATO member, Norway, which is an immediate neighbor of Russia and has been for the last 50 years?" he asked.
    With Russian President Vladimir Putin saying that Russia itself may bid for NATO membership someday, "I don't see why there can be an objection to some other countries joining the NATO alliance," Robertson said.
    On Tuesday, Robertson took part in the ceremonial reopening of NATO's information office in Moscow, which had been shut down amid the freeze in Russian-NATO ties during and after the western alliance's air campaign against Moscow's Balkan ally Yugoslavia. The reopening reflected the rapprochement that Robertson has worked hard to achieve.
    Robertson said Wednesday that Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev had promised that Russia would also resume its participation in the Partnership for Peace program with NATO.
    "The potential is great for NATO-Russian cooperation," he said.
    Robertson's overtures were overshadowed by Russian President Vladimir Putin's proposal for a Europe-based missile defense system to counter short-and medium-range missiles. The proposal is Moscow's answer to the U.S. plans to deploy its own missile defense shield.
    Putin had put forward the proposal last year, but on Tuesday Russian officials spelled out a few details for the first time. The proposal envisages a joint assessment of risks and the deployment of small, mobile anti-missile defenses as a last resort.
    Robertson welcomed the proposal as evidence that Russia shares Western concerns about threats posed by the proliferation of missile technology, but he remained noncommittal.
    "After careful study of this Russian proposal, we can sit down and discuss where our interests meet and how we can take this project forward," he said Wednesday.

Pope bestows cardinal's rings on new princes of church

AP WorldStream Thursday, February 22, 2001 6:12:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By CANDICE HUGHES
Associated Press Writer

    VATICAN CITY (AP) -- St. Peter's Square was awash in scarlet and gold Thursday as Pope John Paul II bestowed the simple golden ring of a cardinal on 44 new princes of the church.
    The solemn Mass celebrating the feast day of the first pope, St. Peter, capped the elevation of the first new cardinals of the millennium and the largest group ever.
    A day earlier, the pontiff gave them their red hats, symbols of their willingness to die for the Roman Catholic faith. The rings -- symbols of their fealty to the pope -- sealed that ancient bond.
    One-by-one they approached the pontiff, bowing, then sinking to their knees on a plump golden cushion at the feet of his throne.
    "Receive then the ring, sign of dignity, of pastoral readiness and of the most binding communion with the Chair of Peter," he said to each in Latin, slipping the ring on the third finger of the right hand of each kneeling prince.
    And one-by-one, the cardinals responded. "I receive the ring from the hand of Peter and know that with the love of the Prince of the Apostles, your love for the Church is strengthened."
    A brief embrace, a few whispered words and the moment was over. One-by-one, the cardinals withdrew, many gently touching the rings as they returned to their seats.
    In contrast to the open jubilation of Wednesday's ceremony, where spectators cheered, applauded and even danced, Thursday's Mass was a study in quiet ecclesiastical elegance.
    The new cardinals donned robes of a shimmering pale gold for the day, their princely scarlet hats perched on their heads. The pope was in gleaming white and gold and the veteran cardinals in scarlet.
    The elevation of new cardinals is a great social occasion for the church as well as a solemn religious event.
    The new princes are feted throughout the week at dinners and receptions and pursued by eager journalists scouting for potential new popes. The official delegations of the new cardinals included prime ministers and presidents as well as hundreds of friends, family and well-wishers.
    The College of Cardinals now counts a record 184 members, with 160 of them under 80 and eligible to vote for the next pope. The new cardinals come from 27 countries on five continents -- a sign of the worldwide reach of the church and the ebb of Europe's long domination.
    John Paul spoke Thursday of the church as a ship sailing in a "vast ocean" and told his new cardinals he was counting on their help to keep it steady in the storm.
    "Dear brothers, let's go to sea, cast out our nets and go forward in hope!" he exhorted them in a strong voice, recalling the ancient Christian image of apostles as "fishermen" trolling for souls.
    The modern church has also flung its nets wide, growing fastest in Africa and Latin America.
    Europeans are now a minority of the cardinals under 80 and thus eligible to vote for pope. John Paul's latest group also includes the first native-born cardinals from Honduras, Bolivia, Ecuador, Latvia and Lithuania, and the first black South African cardinal.
    Third World cardinals now make up 41 percent of the College of Cardinals, up from 38 percent when John Paul became pope in 1978. Europeans have fallen from 50 percent to 48 percent. Latin America, where nearly half the world's Catholics live, now accounts for 20 percent, up from 16.7 percent in 1978.
    This "internationalization" of the College of Cardinals had led to intense speculation that the next pope, like John Paul, will not be an Italian. John Paul, a Pole, was the first non-Italian pontiff in nearly half a millennium.
    Some speculate that a Latin American could get the nod, especially if the Italian contingent, now 17.8 percent of the college, is in favor, along with the U. S. cardinals, the largest national group after Italians. Conventional wisdom says there will never be a "superpower" -- American -- pope.
    Among the new cardinals are four U.S. citizens: Fordham University theologian Avery Dulles, New York Archbishop Edward Egan Washington Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, and the leader of Eastern rite Catholics in Ukraine, Lubomyr Husar, who is also a Ukrainian citizen.
    Dulles, at 82 is the oldest of the new cardinals. Clearly unused to elaborate Vatican ritual, the respected scholar extended the wrong hand for his ring.
    John Paul also elevated prelates from the Middle East, where the church is struggling to survive, and installed two Ukrainians, a new battleground for the church in those parts of eastern Europe traditionally under the influence of the Orthodox church.
     John Paul, 80 and in frail physical condition with symptoms of Parkinson's disease, has appointed all but 10 of the voting-age cardinals. Almost all share his conservative views, supporting church bans on abortion and artificial birth control, celibate priests and the denial of Communion to divorced Catholics who have remarried.
 

We can think ourselves warm if we have to! A bee visits wildflowers in Alsviki. The picture is from Peters' trip in 1997.