Sveiki, all!

Summer approaches quickly (at least for those of use not down under!)... house chores beckon, but not before perusing this week's news:

• Estonia arrests a dozen suspects, charged with the arrest and exile of 1,000 Estonians; Estonia prepares to commemorate the deportations of June 14th, as do Latvia and Lithuania
• U.S. Secretary of Defense Powell meets with Estonian foreign minister
• Russia to chair Council of the Baltic Sea States
• Russia Foreign Minister Ivanov plays the old saw again about Estonian and Latvian oppression of Russians, calls human rights improvements "slow" -- even as the press reports this week that Russian politicians have sunken to trash talk about the Chechens, some even suggesting summary executions -- even Putin has vowed to go after the Chechen separatist fighters and ''rub them out in the john''
• Irish referendum strikes a blow against EU expansion; anti-expansionists played on fear of losing influence and fears of having to pay out handouts to newer, poorer, members -- not a victory for Ireland, we fear, just a victory for selfishness
• Canada warns against hasty NATO expansion
• St. Petersburg-Kalingrad train to bypass Latvia -- in typical TASS fashion, reaction is to "hail" move; Latvians painted as unreasonable for requiring passports and visas -- in the meantime, the Russians have firmed up their visa requirements as well; and no mention is made, of course, that the Baltics tightened requirements based on meeting EU requirements
• Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld states new member will be admitted to NATO "when they are ready", but apparently waffles on early admission for Baltics

Beyond Russia's difficulties in Chechnya, we came across two interesting articles this week, one reflecting on Russia's path in the last decade, and its choices ahead; another, reporting the detention of a human rights activist going to a conference abroad, reminding us that free speech -- one of the most basic of human rights -- is a concept Russia is far from embracing. Those stories are on our website if you look for this week's mailer... www.latvians.com (home page), June 9th Mailer, then look for the "Russia -- Reforming?" Op/Ed section.

Looking forward to next year's Latvian songfest, here's the link to their brand new web site for Chicago, 2002:

    http://www.latviansongfest.org

Information on contacting the organizers for participation will be following shortly -- we'll keep you posted! (Actually, we'll be there, and we hope to see you, too!)

This week's regularly featured links are from the news, to NATO (featured once before), and to the U.S. State Department's European section.

This week's picture is of the gates to Rundale's Pils (palace), from Peters' trip in 1995.

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,

Russia -- Reforming?

We watched the news with dismay this week, as knowledgeable analysts appeared grim on the direction and future of Russia, even as the press reported detention of a Russian human rights activist. So, it seems, Russia' position on rights continues to be, "Do as I say, not as I do." The greater question is -- where is Russia heading? Will it integrate with Europe, and in 50 years NATO membership for the Baltics is a moot point? Ten years is perhaps too short a time to shake off five centuries of totalitarianism (whether czarism or Communism) -- but the question remains, whether or not Russia is already backsliding to old ways.

Two articles follow:

• West or East For Russia?, and
• Russian activist barred from flight to U.S.

West or East For Russia?

Washington Post
June 9, 2001
By Michael McFaul
The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

    Fifty years from now, scholars writing the history of Europe in this decade will have to address the introduction of the euro, Balkan reconstruction, the pace of NATO and European Union expansion, and maybe even the rise of Europe as a new global power. But the fundamental focus of their research will be Russia's success -- or lack of it -- in reintegrating into Europe.
    If, 50 years from now, Russia has rejoined Europe, then it will have become a stable democracy. Threats to European security will be fewer, and Europe as a political and economic space will have emerged as one of the major powers in the international system. If, on the other hand, Russia has not succeeded in reintegrating, then it most likely will have become a dictatorship and a threat to Europe.
    To date, the latter scenario appears the more likely. After a decade of flirtation with democracy, capitalism and the West, Russia is weaker than ever before. Dysfunctional government, economic collapse, massive corruption, infectious diseases and a declining population have destroyed Russia's power and spirit.
    Not surprisingly, many within Russia now argue that the country's reorientation toward Western countries, institutions and values was a strategic mistake that must now be reversed. Russia's only hope to remain relevant on the international stage, they contend, is to be threatening but businesslike with the Americans.
    Ironically, such a reorientation might be useful in the short run for President Bush as he prepares for his first meeting with Russian President Putin. A Putin interested in playing balance-of-power politics with the United States again might actually be willing to do a "deal" on missile defense. More generally, the atmospherics of the meeting could be businesslike and pragmatic, giving Bush a positive spin for his first encounter with his Russian counterpart.
    But Bush should aspire to more than a good press conference. He has a real opportunity to redefine U.S.-Russian relations. The tone he establishes and visions he outlines in Slovenia will chart the basic course of U.S. policy toward Russia for the next several years.
    In his meeting with Putin, Bush may be tempted to jump right into deal-making on missile defense. This is exactly what the Russians want. In fact, Moscow is filled with rumors about what Putin should ask for in return, with the wish list including everything from defense contracts to debt relief to American silence on Chechnya to a guarantee of no NATO expansion to the Baltic states.
    Engaging in this kind of trade-making would be a real mistake. Instead of redirecting U.S.-Russian relations along a new trajectory, we would be returning to the dynamics of U.S.-Soviet relations from 30 years ago, when summits were zero-sum negotiations between hostile countries.
    Equally disastrous, however, would be a chummy embrace between two new leaders who agreed on most issues. Bush must avoid looking like Putin's "friend" -- an image that would only serve to legitimate Putin's antidemocratic actions at home and threatening policies toward Russia's neighbors.
    Between a continuation of engagement and a return to containment is a third path: realistic engagement. Bush needs to communicate to Putin that he believes in the possibility of Russia's integration into Europe and the Western community of states. But he also needs to clearly articulate the real terms of integration, terms that will require Russia to undergo serious political and economic changes. To help Russia integrate into the West, the American strategy must still be engagement, but with more realistic expectations about when, and with real standards for how this integration might occur.
    Russian society is currently divided as to whether Russia can or should aspire to become part of Europe again. Russian foreign policy elites also articulate two paths -- West and East -- for Russia's strategic orientation. As former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov explained, Russia must decide whether it wants to be the weakest link in the core powers -- the eighth power in the Group or Eight -- or the strongest power among the "developing" countries.
    Within Putin himself, one can see these two impulses pulling in opposite directions. He consistently states that Russia must become more integrated with European institutions, but at the same time he undertakes antidemocratic policies at home that make it more difficult for Russia to join these Western clubs.
    President Bush thus must express his faith in Russia's ability to rejoin Europe as a democratic state with a market economy. Many within Russia do not believe the United States and the new administration in particular want to see Russia as part of the West. Bush should even be so bold as to present NATO membership for Russia as a real goal for the long term. Europe will only be whole and free, a goal Bush's father once articulated, if Russia is a member.
    But Russia is now decades away from qualifying for membership in the European Union or NATO. Members of the Western community of democratic states do not slaughter their civilians in rebellious provinces, sell nuclear technologies to rogue states or control the press. Without swagger or righteousness, Bush should state clearly that the rules of joining Western institutions will not be bent to accommodate a "special" Russia. Nor will the expansion of European institutions eastward stop because of Russian objections. The only real questions are whether Russia can make the necessary changes to join Europe again, and whether Russians want to join Europe again.
    Most Russians still hope their country can become a full-fledged member of Europe. They do not want to become an autocratic ally of China seeking to confront the West. But a decade of disappointed expectations about democracy and markets, coupled with seemingly hostile acts from the West, has fueled doubts about Russia's place in the world. President Bush cannot eliminate this self-doubt overnight, but he can make clear American intentions toward Russia. By articulating a positive but realistic vision for Europe -- whole, free and including Russia -- he can help to reverse Russia's dangerous anti-Western drift.

Russia bars activist from flight to U.S.

United Press International

    WASHINGTON, June 7 (UPI) -- A prominent Russian human-rights activist bound for a conference in the United States was detained at Moscow's international airport, then allowed to leave a day later, conference organizers said Thursday.
    Law enforcement officers detained Sergei Grigoryants, who heads the Glasnost Foundation in Moscow and was a dissident during the Soviet era, for five hours on Wednesday and refused to let him board his U.S.-bound flight, The Washington Post reported on its Web site and organizers of the conference, at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, confirmed.
    Grigoryants, who spent nine years in Soviet labor camps and prisons for speaking out and publishing articles against the government, said in an interview with the Post that his detention was in response to his criticism of President Vladimir Putin and Russia's security services. Putin served as a colonel in the Soviet KGB and was director of its main post-communist successor, the Federal Security Service.
    "Russia 10 years after hasn't gone anywhere," Grigoryants said in an interview with the Post on Thursday. "It took just one year of Putin to go back 10 years. Now we are going farther and farther back."
    He said he was allowed to leave on a flight for Chicago on Thursday, after having shown up at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport for the second day in a row.
    Grigoryants told the newspaper that four police officers stopped him as he prepared to pass through an airport metal detector, asked the activist to present his wallet and accused him of carrying unauthorized cash out of Russia, although he had already passed through Customs and had shown the agent there a bank authorization for the money. He said the officers held him at the airport for almost five hours, took $3,000 in cash and his airplane ticket and were conducting an investigation, without elaborating.
    Grigoryants was on his way to a Washington for a Carnegie Endowment conference on conditions in Russia 10 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
    "Their goal was clearly not to let me go to the conference," the activist said. "The message was not just to me but to America as well. They are trying to hinder the speech they expect from me."
    Grigoryants, through his foundation and its journal, Glasnost, frequently criticizes the KGB, Russia's two wars in its breakaway republic of Chechnya, and Putin's policies, which the activist says are a throwback to Soviet authoritarianism. Last August, armed and masked commandos stormed the Glasnost Foundation's office in central Moscow and forced Grigoryants and a dozen other people to lie face-down for nearly an hour, until a senior officer arrived. After the commandos, who had identified themselves as police officers, searched through several documents, they left, without stating a reason for the raid, Glasnost officials said at the time.

First, links for NATO and the State Department (as featured in the news):

    NATO: http://www.nato.int/
    State Department's Bureau of European Affairs: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/

And, on a much more cheerful note (pun intended), the link to the 2002 Latvian Folk Song and Dance Festival, in Chicago:

    Dziesmu Svetki Cikaga 2002: http://www.latviansongfest.org

They've had a change in personnel working on the site, so please bear with them if you have any temporary problem!

Estonian police charge 12 ex-Soviet officials with crimes against humanity

AP WorldStream
Tuesday, June 05, 2001 12:26:00 PM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By MICHAEL TARM
Associated Press Writer

    TALLINN, Estonia (AP) -- Twelve elderly Soviet officials face charges of crimes against humanity, accusations made public as Estonia gears up to mark 60 years since the first Stalinist-era mass deportations in this Baltic Sea state.
    The suspects, in their 70s and 80s, are accused of assisting in the arrest and exile of some 1,000 men, women and children on Saaremaa island on March 25, 1949, national security police spokesman Meelis Ratassepp said Tuesday.
    Police said the men, who were not identified, have not been detained but have been informed that preliminary charges were filed against them. More details were to be released pending formal indictments.
    Authorities have been investigating the suspects for six years, interviewing deportees and combing Soviet secret police archives for evidence. This is the largest group of humanity crimes suspects ever charged at one time in Estonia.
    News about the police action broke as this coastal nation of 1.4 million people prepares for solemn commemorations on June 14, the date in 1941 when some 10,000 Estonians were deported by the newly installed Soviet regime.
    To kick off weeks of commemorations, President Lennart Meri, himself deported on June 14 when he was just 12, began a three-week nationwide tour last Monday to meet one-on-one with surviving deportees.
    "I want to shake their hands, look them straight in the eye, and say, 'We survived," the 72-year-old Meri told Estonian Radio.
    Soviet forces invaded Estonia and neighboring Latvia and Lithuania in 1940; after a brief German occupation, the Soviets retook them in 1944.
    Thousands of perceived Soviet enemies were deported to Siberia, where many died in the harsh conditions. In Estonia alone, 60,000 people were shipped to Siberia in cattle trains in the 1940s.
    Josef Stalin is blamed for killing at least 15 million people and deporting another 40 million during his iron-fisted reign of the Soviet Union.
    After regaining independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states vowed to prosecute those who took part in Soviet repressions. They have tried over a dozen ex-agents. Most received suspended sentences, but several have been imprisoned.
    No other ex-Soviet republics have prosecuted Stalinist-era officials.
    Estonia has indicted six former agents, five of whom were later convicted. Only one ex-agent, 76-year-old Karl-Leonhard Paulov, has actually gone to prison in Estonia; he is currently into his sixth month of an eight-year jail sentence.
    Moscow has sharply criticized the Baltic prosecutions, calling them revenge. But officials here insist they're seeking long overdue justice and shedding light on some of the worst human rights abuses of the 20th century.

Powell meets with Estonian foreign minister

AP WorldStream
Wednesday, June 06, 2001 9:48:00 PM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell received an update on Estonia's bid to join NATO, a move Russia opposes.
    Powell "welcomed the briefing" on Wednesday from Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves about progress on joining the alliance, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
    "Once again, the secretary stated very clearly, no country has a veto over future NATO membership," Boucher said.
    Powell encouraged Estonia's commitment to the effort.
    "He welcomed the kind of actions that they are taking," Boucher said. "But there is no assessment or evaluation of individual countries at this point."
    Estonia wants to join NATO along with Lithuania and Latvia, also former Soviet Baltic republics, but some NATO allies fear the membership would offend Russia. That has made Baltic membership one of the most contentious hurdles to NATO enlargement.
    NATO, which admitted the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999, has said the door to the Baltic states is open but that they were not ready militarily.

Russia to chair Council of Baltic Sea States

COMTEX Newswire
Thursday, June 07, 2001 1:55:00 AM
Copyright 2001 ITAR-TASS

    BERLIN, Jun 07, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- Russia is to chair the Council of the Baltic Sea States, as of this Thursday. It will take over these powers from Germany at a meeting of foreign ministers of 11 CBSS member states in Hamburg on Thursday, where Russia will be represented by Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
    The German Foreign Ministry told Tass on Thursday that the ministers will discuss broad regional cooperaiton in the Baltic region, including the economy, science, cooperation between civil societies and in the sphere of environmental control.
    Meeting participants will also discuss prospects for cooperation between CBSS and the European Union. Besides, it is also planned to sign an agreement on exchanging information on radiation protection.
    Local diplomatic quarters do not preclude a chance that the Council's foreign ministers will also hold bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the Hamburg forum. Incidentally, the Council, apart from Russia and Germany, includes Denmark, Iceland, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Norway, Finland and Sweden.
    The forum will be rounded off by a joint news conference of German and Russian foreign ministers Joschka Fischer and Ivanov.

Ivanov says ethnic Russian rights abused in Latvia and Estonia

Reuters North America
Thursday, June 07, 2001 12:03:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.

    HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) -- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov criticized Latvia and Estonia on Thursday for abusing the rights of ethnic Russians and accused Estonia in particular of discriminating against Orthodox believers.
    "Provision of equal rights and freedom for all individuals in the Baltic region remains a most important direction of our efforts," he told a meeting of 11 foreign ministers from the Baltic Sea region in the north German city of Hamburg.
    "Unfortunately, I have to state that the pace of improvement of the human rights situation in some countries of the region remains low," he said.
    Russians traveling with Ivanov suggested he was referring to Latvia and Estonia, which have big Russian-speaking minorities. They have given citizenship only to those ethnic Russians who lived in the countries before 1940 when they were annexed and absorbed into the Soviet Union.
    This excludes most Russian speakers who arrived in the post-war Soviet period.
    Speaking at a news conference, Ivanov said Estonia, where there were 100,000 Russian Orthodox believers, had refused to register the Moscow patriarchy.
    "This is nothing but religious discrimination," he said.
    The third ex-Soviet Baltic nation Lithuania, which has far fewer Russian-speakers, has given everyone citizenship and enjoys better relations with Moscow.

-Irish reject Nice Treaty in blow to EU expansion

Reuters Financial Report
Friday, June 08, 2001 3:10:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.
By Michael Roddy

    DUBLIN, June 8 (Reuters) -- Irish voters, in a stunning blow to the European Union's eastward expansion plans, overwhelmingly rejected the Nice Treaty on EU reform in a referendum on Friday.
    The treaty, which must be approved by all 15 EU members, is intended to make reforms to allow the bloc to accept 12 new members, most of them from Eastern Europe.
    "The treaty is now dead as far as I can see," opposition Labour Party leader Ruairi Quinn said, summing up the rout for the Irish political establishment which had strongly backed ratification.
    The official in charge of the vote count said 54 percent of the electorate voted against the Nice Treaty and 46 percent in favour. The turnout was low, with just over 32 percent of the 2.9 million electorate casting their ballots.
    The EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Guenter Verheugen, said however the Irish rejection would not stop expansion despite a requirement for all EU states to ratify the treaty.
    "We would continue (the process) with the same speed and the same quality," he told reporters during a visit to Slovenia, adding that the EU Commission would immediately start to look for a solution.
    Britain said it hoped the Nice Treaty could still be ratified by all member states despite the Irish rejection.
    Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus began accession talks in 1998. They were joined last year by Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta.
    The timing of the rejection is deeply embarrassing for the EU, whose leaders meet late next week in the Swedish city of Gothenburg along with leaders of the candidate nations for their regular six-monthly summit.
    And Irish anti-treaty campaigners, who broke into cheers when the outcome was announced at the Dublin Customs House, vowed to beat the government again if it attempted another vote.
    FIGHT SECOND REFERENDUM
    "The government is talking about having a second referendum but we are not children," said John O'Dowd, a spokesman for the The National Platform.
    "In Irish or English, 'no' means 'no' and doesn't mean maybe."
    Officials in Hungary and the Czech Republic regarded the vote as bad news.
    Hungary saw it as a slap on the face just after Budapest overhauled its currency regime to prepare for EU membership.
    Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi said a no vote would be "pretty bad" and could hurt the mood of entry talks.
    He believed that "in the worst case scenario" some solution could be still worked out to keep the enlargement process on track. "I don't think that it has the potential to delay entry but the atmosphere (of accession talks) would definitely change."
    A Czech Foreign Ministry official that if the Nice Treaty was not approved, "it would be a bad sign for us and for other candidate countries...."
    Europe's common currency, the euro, was steady after the vote, holding near 85 cents in afternoon trading in New York, unchanged from its previous U.S. close.
    Some analysts had speculated that an Irish no-vote could depress the currency as it would indicate a lack of consensus among EU members.
    But others suggested it could be a blessing in disguise, as an EU expansion would include countries who are a weaker economic footing.
    Even Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's Dublin constituency voted strongly against the Nice Treaty. The overall tally was 529,478 against and 453,461 for the treaty.
    "GOVERNMENT DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED"
    "The result is clear, the government is deeply disappointed by the referendum result," Ahern told a news conference.
    "The result will come as an unexpected shock to our partners and to the applicant countries who are to meet in Gothenburg next week and now face a potential additional obstacle to the timetable for enlargement," he added.
    Ireland is the only EU member required by its constitution to ratify the Nice Treaty by referendum, and the outcome left its leaders scratching their heads about what to do next.
    "I fully respect the outcome of this referendum and we will need to study the lessons from it. They extend beyond Ireland," Ahern said.
    Campaigners against the Nice Treaty, a diverse mix of pacifists, environmentalists and Irish republicans, were delighted.
    "We're all overjoyed...this is a resounding victory," said Justin Barrett, spokesman of the No to Nice Campaign, whose bold red-and-white posters blanketed the country.
    The anti-treaty groups had made direct appeals to voters, saying that under the treaty Ireland would lose influence in the EU, forfeit its neutrality and have to start paying out to support the new countries joining from Eastern Europe.
    The government's campaign was generally seen to be remote and ineffective.
    Ireland has given strong backing to EU treaties in the past, but the mood had soured ahead of Friday's vote.

Canada Warns Against Hasty NATO Enlargement

Reuters Canada
Friday, June 08, 2001 6:05:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.

    OTTAWA (Reuters) -- Canada said on Friday that NATO should approach the question of further enlargement with great care to avoid the embarrassing disputes that marred the last occasion the alliance met to expand its membership.
    NATO leaders will meet in Prague at the end of next year to decide how many of nine membership candidates -- Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia -- should be invited to apply to join.
    "NATO has to start to reflect carefully on what sort of enlargement we're looking at -- (is it) a very narrow enlargement or a wider enlargement and how much can NATO realistically absorb?" said a senior Canadian official.
    "I think what we want to avoid is the set of circumstances we ran into in 1997 in Madrid where decisions were being taken at the last minute," he told a briefing.
    In July 1997, NATO leaders opened their first enlargement summit in Madrid still deeply split over how far and how fast to expand the organization.
    After heated closed-door debates they finally agreed to admit the three former Communist states of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Nine of the 16 NATO members at the time had also favored letting in Romania and Slovenia.
    The question of NATO enlargement will be on the table when alliance leaders hold an informal meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush next week.
    "I don't think leaders will get into specific decision on who and when. I think it will be more of a process discussion as opposed to the status of individual applications," the Canadian official said.
    "We'll want to make sure we use the next 18 months effectively to communicate directly with the nine aspirant countries to make sure they are as ready as possible and that NATO looks at this issue from a number of different perspectives."
    The nine candidates opened individual negotiations with NATO at the end of March. Officials say that those nations invited to apply for membership at the 2002 Prague summit can expect to be admitted to the alliance around two years later.
    Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic became full Alliance members in 1999.

St. Petersburg-Kaliningrad trains to bypass Latvia

COMTEX Newswire
Saturday, June 09, 2001 6:24:00 AM
Copyright 2001 ITAR-TASS

     KALININGRAD, Jun 09, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- Starting from Sunday, trains from the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad will go to St.Petersburg and back via Belarus bypassing Latvia following Riga's decision to extend visa regime to Russian citizens, deputy head of the local railway company, Viktor Yenkulev, told Tass.
    The new way will be 300 kilometers longer and due to numerous technical stopovers will take up to 11 hours more to travel from St.Petersburg to Kaliningrad, he said.
    But tickets will be up to RUR80 cheaper and, what is more imortant, travelers will not have to bear passports and appeal to Latvian authorities for visas, Yenkulev said.
    He praised the leadership of Belarussian and Lithuanian railway companies for cooperation in the prompt organizing of the new line.

U.S. defense chief says NATO will add nations "when they are ready"

AP WorldStream
Saturday, June 09, 2001 10:12:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer

    TURKU, Finland (AP) -- The United States favors adding new members to the 19-nation NATO alliance "when they are ready," U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told his counterparts from the Nordic and Baltic nations Saturday.
    The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has not defined a timetable or plan for expanding NATO, one of several major irritants in the U.S.-Russia relationship. Russia strongly opposed the last NATO expansion in 1999 when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined the alliance.
    Rumsfeld also assured the Baltic and Nordic nations they will be included in the administration's consultations on taking a new approach to security and defense, which Rumsfeld called a "new framework of deterrence."
    On the final stop of a seven-nation European tour, Rumsfeld met in this bustling Baltic Sea city with the defense ministers of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
    Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania are among nine countries considered candidates for NATO membership, although the alliance is not expected to decide which, if any, to admit until November 2002.
    Rumsfeld told Saturday's meeting that the administration has an "open door" policy on NATO expansion, but he was not prepared to say whether it would support early entry for the Baltic nations, a U.S. official said.
    It was not clear whether Bush, during his European trip next week, will present a more detailed U.S. position on NATO expansion, the official said. The subject is expected to come up when Bush attends a NATO meeting in Brussels on Wednesday and meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia on June 16.
    In the Turku talks, Rumsfeld was making the case that new circumstances in the world -- in particular the end of the U.S.-Soviet superpower competition and the spread of ballistic missile technologies -- require a new approach to defense.
    Many U.S. allies and friends wonder what this will mean, not only for U.S.-Russian relations but also for NATO and America's military presence in Europe.
    Rumsfeld was stressing that, in the U.S. view, missile defense is a necessary component of a new "framework of deterrence," along with modernized conventional forces and renewed emphasis on international cooperation to limit the spread of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, according to a U.S. official participating in the talks. The official discussed Rumsfeld's prepared remarks to the meeting on condition of anonymity.
    Rumsfeld was telling the ministers that an effective U.S. missile defense system cannot be built within the constraints of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, the official said. The administration has not said it will withdraw from the treaty, but that is an option.
    ------
    On the Net:
    NATO: http://www.nato.int/
    State Department's Bureau of European Affairs: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/

The gate to Rundales Palace's courtyard, from Peters' trip in 1995.