Sveiki, all!

Like most of you (at least in the Northern hemisphere!), we've been busy with spring chores. You may have noticed we haven't updated the mailer archive on our site in the past (!!) 5 weeks -- however, we are hoping to get our web site mailer archive up to date some time this weekend! And happy Mother's Day in advance!

Apparently, we weren't the only ones alarmed by reports that Russian might be used for official communications with and regarding Latvia (a story published by the Deutche Presse Agentur). Alarm and indignation were widespread -- the story was published on some Latvian news sites as well.

In a story you won't find anywhere else... we contacted Jonathan Faull, the EU spokesperson quoted -- Mr. Faull is a Director-General of the EU and its official "Spokesman." We received a clear and unequivocal reply regarding the EU's rules on language, which follows:

    "Dear Mr Vecrumba,

    The information you received is the result of a complete misinterpretation
    of the statements made by Mr Jonathan Faull at our daily press conference.
    The rule is clear: it is up to the Member States to decide what their
    official language(s) is (are), and the EU institutions only recognise the
    languages indicated by the Member States. In other words, the European Union
    cannot impose to a Member State what his official language(s) should be. I
    regret that you have been misguided by such an unprofessional reporting.

    Regards

    Jean-Christophe Filori
    Deputy Spokesman of the European Commission"

It would appear that the Deutsche Presse Agentur was more interested in sensationalism than fact. As we noted last week, the story was less than favorable to Latvia in tone.

This week's news:

• an analysis piece by Reuters regarding NATO expansion eastward
• details on the (imminent) 10 NATO aspirant summit in Bratislava
• U.S. President Bush sends letter to Bratislava summit affirming neither past history nor geography will govern admissions to NATO
• Russia reacts to Bush's letter, calls enlargement a "grave mistake" which would destabilize Europe; so, the question is, how far is Russia prepared to go to be the agent of that instability? This type of bullying posturing only makes clearer the case for NATO expansion

and, regionally,

• Russia and Putin celebrate victory over fascism, Putin talks about WWII "unifying" the world in its fight against fascism, and Stalin fans carry posters outside the old KGB headquarters; instead of Russia acknowledging Stalin's crimes against humanity, it seems to more and more portray those times as some lost glory days, moving further and further from reality and from any reconciliation with the past

This week's link is to many things Latgalian.

This week's picture is of Peters' mother's cousin's pre-war home in Vidzeme, taking in 1994.

As always, AOL'ers, Remember, mailer or not, Lat Chat spontaneously appears every Sunday on AOL starting around 9:00/9:30pm Eastern time (most come on around 10:00pm), 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,

Find out more about the history of Latgale at the Latgale Research Center at Hood University:

http://www.hood.edu/academic/latgale/

Reuters World Report
Monday, May 07, 2001 10:03:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.
By Paul Taylor, Diplomatic Editor

    LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) -- The first shots in a potentially divisive diplomatic battle over NATO enlargement will be fired this week when 10 candidate countries meet in Slovakia to press their case for early membership.
    At stake is whether U.S. President George W. Bush and his European NATO allies will risk a crisis with Russia by including one or more of the Baltic states in the next wave of alliance expansion, to be decided at a Prague NATO summit late next year.
    The issue will be an early test of Bush's leadership of the transatlantic community and of his ties with a prickly Russia.
    It also reflects an underlying tension between the process of NATO expansion, led by the United States with the declared aim of a "Europe whole and free," and the European Union's parallel drive to build a "united Europe."
    Officially the two processes are described as complementary, but privately U.S. and European officials acknowledge some rivalry over who will call the shots in 21st century Europe.
    Bringing Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia, which were Soviet republics until 1991, into NATO would take the Western military alliance right up to Russia's border for the first time.
    President Vladimir Putin warned NATO last year against advancing that far eastward, saying: "If a country like Russia feels threatened, that would destabilise the situation in Europe and the whole world."
    Bush has avoided mentioning the Baltics explicitly. But he wrote to a Lithuanian American leader last August when he was running for the White House: "I believe that the enlargement of NATO to include other nations with democratic values, pluralist political systems and free market economies should continue.
    "Russia must never be given a veto over enlargement."
    So are NATO and Russia on a collision course, or will west European allies persuade Bush that the time is not yet ripe to expand into the Baltics or the Balkans?
    VILNIUS TEN OR CENTRAL EUROPEAN TWO
    Nine candidates -- Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Albania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- issued a joint declaration in Vilnius last year urging the Western alliance to admit them together in a single "Big Bang."
    Although Croatia does not yet officially have candidate status, it joined the group, dubbed the Vilnius Ten.
    Frederick Kempe, editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, wrote in an article advocating a bold NATO enlargement that it was the West's "unfinished moral and historic responsibility."
    However, many diplomats believe a wary NATO, keen to avoid a clash with Moscow, is more likely to go for a whimper than a bang -- perhaps only offering immediate membership negotiations to Slovenia and Slovakia.
    Since NATO operates by consensus, all 19 allies must agree on each new member.
    No one is staking out public positions yet, but diplomats say key west European allies France, Germany and Britain oppose putting any Baltic state in the next wave, arguing that NATO and Russia should take longer to build confidence first.
    Some Europeans would rather NATO took a complete breather from enlargement, arguing that the alliance, which takes decisions by consensus, is still digesting the entry of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999.
    Those three countries, facing heavy financial costs to prepare for EU accession, have been slower to modernise their armed forces than NATO had expected, prompting criticism from alliance headquarters.
    NO "ZERO OPTION"
    NATO officials say they expect Bush to rule out any "zero option" on enlargement when he makes his first visit to Brussels on June 13 to meet allied leaders.
    The president is unlikely to spell out his own preferences at this stage, but he must notify Congress 12 months before the next NATO summit which countries the United States will support. That means Washington must make its mind up by late November.
    Seventeen U.S. senators, ranging from Republican Jesse Helms on the right to Democrat Hillary Clinton on the left, wrote to Bush last month urging him to pursue enlargement in U.S. interests. They specified no candidates for the next wave.
    Some NATO experts believe the Bush administration will be cautious, partly because of misgivings about NATO's ability to remain effective in decision-making and military action with up to 29 members.
    Russia objected fiercely to NATO's decision to admit Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, former members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, in a first wave of enlargement.
    It was placated by being given its own special relationship with the alliance that survived a severe cooling when Russia angrily opposed NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo, but is still fragile.
    "Could the NATO-Russia relationship survive another round of enlargement if it included the Baltics?" a NATO official asked.
    France and some other European allies argued for Slovenia and Romania to be included in the first wave, but Washington vetoed any more than three at a Madrid summit.
    Those members may well argue that NATO should take in Romania and Bulgaria this time, despite their weakness, because stabilising the Balkans is more urgent than extending the alliance's protective wing to a stable Baltic region.
    OPEN DOOR
    When the 19 NATO allies held their last summit in Washington in the midst of the Kosovo campaign, they pledged to keep the door open, established a Membership Action Plan to help prepare aspirants and agreed to review the process at the next summit.
    Each candidate was given a carefully calibrated pat on the back, but none was offered a guarantee of membership.
    The action plan, providing for NATO benchmarking and individual reviews with each candidate, will provide some objective data on political and economic reform and the state of each country's armed forces to underpin the decision.
    British Prime Minister Tony Blair led Bulgaria and Macedonia to believe they were on the threshold of NATO when they provided vital staging bases for allied forces in the Kosovo war. Experts say their armed forces are a long way from NATO standards.
    Inconveniently for opponents of enlargement to the Baltics, Lithuania is doing rather well at meeting the criteria.
    But everyone agrees the Prague decision will be geostrategic and political, not technical.
    Supporters of rapid enlargement argue that Moscow knows it cannot stop NATO expansion and will swallow it provided Bush shows firm leadership and treats Russia as a strategic partner.
    Opponents say there is no security threat to the Baltics and thus no hurry to bring them in. They contend that the West could exacerbate Russian nationalism, wreck chances of a constructive partnership with Putin and drive Moscow into a spoiler's role if it forces the issue now.
    POSSIBLE COMPROMISES
    One possible compromise would be to pledge that all of the candidate countries will be admitted to NATO over the next few years, possibly by the end of the decade, but only to open negotiations with the first two next year.
    Some diplomats say the United States may eventually favour including a single Baltic state -- Lithuania -- in the next wave. That would satisfy ethnic lobbies at home, make the point that Russia has no veto but avoid the complication of taking in states with big Russian minorities.
    One problem with that idea is that it would make the Russian district of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea a Russian enclave inside NATO territory.
    Moscow denied reports earlier this year that it had moved tactical nuclear weapons to the impoverished territory, which was part of German East Prussia as Koenigsberg until 1945.
    Many European and some American diplomats argue it would make more sense for the Baltic states to join the EU, receiving so-called "soft security" guarantees, before they join NATO.
    Russia does not oppose their EU bids and would have time to adjust to their being part of a Western bloc before they eventually came under NATO's wing, the argument goes.
    It does not appeal to the Baltic states, who would see it as acceptance of a de facto Russian sphere of influence.
    "To grant Moscow effectively a veto over Baltic membership -- the only serious reason not to include them in the next expansion -- would be short-sighted, hypocritical and reinforce anachronistic Russian ideas about spheres of influence," Kempe wrote.

AP WorldStream
Thursday, May 10, 2001 4:38:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By ANDREA LORINCZOVA
Associated Press Writer

    BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) -- Leaders at a 10-nation summit of countries wanting NATO membership plan to outline the advantages such status would bring to the Atlantic Alliance when they begin discussions in the Slovak capital on Thursday.
    Called "European new democracies: Leadership and Responsibility," the conference is organized by the Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda. He will host his counterparts from Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia, Albania, Macedonia and Croatia.
    "The message of this conference is that Europe has a new chance for unification," Dzurinda told the Associated Press. "These countries that once were behind the Iron Curtain, are now democratic and want to join the alliance."
    Slovakia -- for years in international isolation while former authoritarian Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar was in power -- has since 1998 made extensive political and economic reforms. Dzurinda's goal is for this country of 5.4 million to join the alliance and the European Union.
    After few years in power and a change of regime, Dzurinda says it is now Slovakia which is trying to be the "engine of further (NATO) enlargement".
    Vaclav Havel, the President of one of the alliance's newest members -- the Czech Republic -- is expected to present what Dzurinda called a "very important message" to the conference participants.
    "I expect that President Havel will present a very positive vision, and that he will argue for further enlargement of NATO and the European Union," said Dzurinda.
    The Slovak prime minister said that he himself will call on the candidate countries to show more activity in the process of preparations for NATO membership.
    "The enlargement is in our interest, and that's why we have to be active and persuade the others that our membership will bring benefits," said Dzurinda.
    The three-day conference aims to produce a so-called "Bratislava declaration" calling for speeded-up efforts to enlarge NATO and declare the visions these countries have of the future alliance and Europe.
    Russia has fiercely opposed any expansion of the alliance as a security threat.
    Other participants include Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; former Hungarian President Arpad Goencz, and NATO Deputy Secretary-General Klaus Peter Klaiber. U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman is also to attend.

Reuters North America
Thursday, May 10, 2001 5:31:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.
By Michael Winfrey

    BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (Reuters) -- The United States issued an encouraging signal to NATO candidate states Thursday, saying no part of Europe would be left out of the military alliance's expansion on the grounds of history or geography.
    A letter by President Bush, delivered to a summit of nine NATO applicants, said: "Your nations and the United States share common values and a common goal: A Europe whole, free and at peace."
    "NATO must be open to all of Europe's democracies ready and able to meet NATO obligations and contribute to Europe's security. No part of Europe will be excluded because of history or geography," Bush said in the letter, delivered by U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman during a stopover in Bratislava.
    Nine NATO candidates -- Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia and Albania -- expressed a unified position on NATO expansion last May in Vilnius, in a joint call for all to be admitted.
    Earlier in the day, Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda said he expected Slovakia to receive an invitation to join NATO at its meeting next autumn.
    His words were echoed by Lithuanian Prime Minister Rolandas Paksas, who said he believed his country, along with its two Baltic neighbors, Estonia and Latvia, would also be invited.
    The Bush administration has so far avoided directly tackling the thorny issue of which countries should be admitted to the alliance in the next round of enlargement.
    Russia has firmly opposed NATO expansion, particularly a scenario involving the three former Soviet Baltic republics, which would stretch the alliance's frontier to Russia's border.
    NATO opened its doors to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999. Its nine new candidates started accession negotiations in March and have banded together in the hopes that NATO will opt for a wide-scale enlargement.
    "We expect an invitation to NATO during the next summit in Prague," said Dzurinda in comments to CNN.
    "It is my sincere opinion that the more countries that join NATO, the better. The better for the aspiring countries, and also the better for NATO and for security in the world."
    Paksas told Reuters in an interview he thought NATO members would not allow Russia to hold back the alliance's expansion.
    "Let's just assume the idea that the Baltic states are not accepted into NATO in 2002, which actually means that Russia has a veto right. And I hardly believe that the Western countries, NATO members, can imagine things like that," Paksas said.
    He added that Lithuania would prefer all three Baltic states to be invited to join NATO simultaneously, but he indicated it would also accept them joining in individually.
    "Our firm position is that in the best circumstances, all three countries could be invited at the same time to join NATO, but in case Lithuania is invited first, we won't be sad."

Reuters North America
Friday, May 11, 2001 3:23:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.
By Michael Winfrey

    BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (Reuters) -- Leaders from former communist states called Friday for NATO to expand into eastern Europe at the alliance's summit in Prague next year despite sharp opposition from Russia.
    The leaders from nine countries that once formed part of Moscow's sphere of influence pledged solidarity in their efforts to join NATO.
    Their push for membership received a boost during the second day of a summit to discuss the issue when they won the backing of Trent Lott, U.S. Senate Republican Leader from Missouri, and Sen. Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina.
    "We strongly endorse the emphasis on NATO enlargement -- the cornerstone of a Europe whole, free and Secure," the two influential senators said in a letter to the conference host, Slovak Premier Mikulas Dzurinda.
    "It is in America's interest that the process of NATO enlargement continues decisively. The Integration of Central Europe's democracies into the alliance will secure and expand the stability and security which has spread across Europe since the end of the cold war."
    Russia reacted quickly and sharply to the letter, in a statement issued by its embassy in Bratislava calling NATO's enlargement drive "a grave mistake" that could destabilize Europe's geopolitical balance.
    Russia has made clear it would regard the alliance's expansion into the former Soviet Baltic republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which border Russia as a hostile act.
    However Czech President Vaclav Havel urged the alliance to admit the three as soon as possible, saying there was no need to approach Russia "on tiptoe."
    "There is not much time left: any further delay would make admission of these countries more difficult. I therefore believe that the invitation to join the alliance should be extended to them at the next NATO summit in Prague," he said in a speech.
    The inclusion of the Baltics and other sticky questions such as instability in the Balkans and the poor military preparedness of individual candidates still cloud the debate on NATO's push to the east.
    The alliance has so far held back from naming potential front-runners for membership from among the group, which includes Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia. These countries began individual accession negotiations with NATO in March.
    "It is impossible to say what the final decision will be, but solidarity is the main word today...The best solution is to invite as many countries as possible. It would be the best for the aspirants, the best for NATO, and the best for creating a secure, stable Europe," said Dzurinda.
    President Bush sent an encouraging sign to all the hopefuls Thursday when he said no country would be left out on grounds of its history or place on the map.
    NATO gave Russia's voice a small role in its last wave of expansion in 1999, but ultimately ignored its opposition to enlargement and admitted Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The alliance has since criticized its newest members for lagging behind in bringing their militaries up to NATO standards.

AP US & World
Wednesday, May 09, 2001 10:24:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By DAVID McHUGH
Associated Press Writer

    MOSCOW (AP) -- Hundreds of aging veterans joined Russian President Vladimir Putin on Red Square on Wednesday for the Victory Day parade, the center of an anniversary most Russians still revere 56 years after the Nazi defeat.
    Some 5,000 troops -- including some returning from service in hot spots including Chechnya -- and military cadets marched straight-legged in dress uniforms, as a 600-piece military band played martial tunes and drummers beat out a rapid tempo. A banner on the huge GUM department store running along one side of Red Square read "USSR -- Victory!"
    "Today, the first time we look on this victory from a new century, its significance only grows," Putin said, standing before the red marble mausoleum where Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin lies in state. "It gave us the opportunity to live in peace and do creative work and made our state independent and proud."
    Putin spoke about how the war had unified the world against Fascism, then added an apparent dig at the United States, saying, "The entire experience of post-war history shows it is impossible to build a safe world for oneself alone." Russia strongly opposes U.S. plans for a missile shield.
    It was the first year that veterans of World War II did not march, because the government feared most were too old and infirm. Instead, they stood along one side of Red Square, jackets sagging with medals.
    Several thousand Communists and others nostalgic for the Soviet Union marched to a rally in front of the former KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, some carrying portraits of wartime dictator Josef Stalin. Veterans gathered in Moscow parks to dance, drink shots of vodka and eat boiled barley scooped out of huge cauldrons as they did at the front during World War II.
    In St. Petersburg, 82-year-old Valentin Dremlyug was given a U.S. commendation for humanitarian service. Dremlyug helped rescue more than 120 American and British seamen who were on an Allied convoy carrying supplies to the Soviet Union through the icy Barents Sea in July 1942 when German submarines and bombers attacked.
    The former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belarus -- which saw some of the worst fighting in the war -- also marked the day with marches. In the Ukrainian capital Kiev, veterans marched with children and grandchildren, many leaning on canes but still managing to raise their hands in salute to the onlookers.
    The Soviet Union lost a staggering 27 million people in WWII.

Tracing his roots in 1994, Peters visited the former homestead of his mother's cousin, in Vidzeme. Growing up, Peters' mother's cousin's mother (got that?!), Minna, was his "grandmother".