RIGA, Latvia (AP) — Latvia's gross domestic product increased 4.9 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period last year, the Baltic state's Central Statistics Bureau announced Monday.
      GDP totaled 1.257 billion lats (dlrs 2.095 billion) during the three months, from April to June.
      A 15 percent increase in retail sales, including a 30 percent jump in new car sales, helped fuel the increase, the statistics bureau said.

      RIGA, Sept 16 (Reuters) — Prime Minister Andris Berzins said on Monday he was confident Latvians would re-elect a centre-right government next month, although his own party might be left out in the cold.
      The ex-communist Baltic republic has returned centre-right governments to power ever since it embarked on a rapid transformation to democracy and market economy after regaining independence in 1991.
      Berzins has led Latvia to the doorstep of NATO and the European Union, but the "return to Europe" is seen by many as a foregone conclusion and the issue is unlikely to influence voters in the October 5 poll.
      "The election will not influence much on Latvia's political line," Berzins told Reuters in an interview, predicting a new centre-right government of three to four parties.
      While the newly founded centrist party New Time of former central bank chief Einars Repse looks to be the election's big winner, Latvia's Way might even fail to get past the five percent parliament threshold.
      "It is not too comforting," Berzins said, adding that his party might need a period in opposition as it has been part of every government since independence.
      An opinion poll last week by the independent Latvijas Fakti organisation showed Latvia's Way winning 4.5 percent of the vote, while New Time was the biggest party with 16.7 percent.
      The leftist For Human Rights in United Latvia coalition — a curious mix of ex-communists and former independence activists -- was placed second with 14.7 percent.
      BERZINS DOWN, NOT OUT
      Berzins said Latvia's immature democracy might opt for a political white knight who promises to solve all the country's problems.
      "But they are mostly sprinters and not marathon runners like us," he said, adding that his party was ready to negotiate with any party that shared its fundamental principles.
      That excludes the left-wing parties, which often functions as the political wing of Latvia's sizeable Russian minority but has yet to gain power in any parliament.
      Berzins gave the leftist block little chance of winning power although polls show a tight race. "I don't believe in a turn to the left," he said. "I think the electorate will be wiser than that."
      EU, NATO NOT ON AGENDA
      Latvia expects to see a NATO invitation in November and European Union membership by 2004, but the election campaign has been silent on these issues, focusing on corruption and farmers instead.
      "Corruption is quite a hot subject for the public," he said. "It is a problem and we are fighting this as much as possible."
      Analysts say that although corruption spans from traffic police to high-ranking officials lining their own pockets in the ongoing privatisation of former state companies, it is mostly low-level graft that comes as a result of low wages.
      Berzins said a campaign comprising 21 parties and involving 1,022 candidates was bound to focus on emotional issues at the expense of complex questions such as the EU.
      "It's easy to be a populist," he said. "But we stand for stability and predictability."

      RIGA, Sept 17 (Reuters) — Russian fears that Latvia will become a NATO outpost for nuclear weapons after its planned entry into the Western alliance are unfounded, a senior Latvian official said on Tuesday.
      "There are no immediate plans, no necessity and no intention of placing either nuclear weapons or NATO army bases in Latvia," Andrejs Pildegovics, a foreign policy adviser to President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, told Reuters.
      All three Baltic states firmly expect an invitation to join NATO at a Prague summit in November after a failed bid in 1997 when Russia put pressure on NATO to stop its expansion into the three tiny former Soviet republics on its western border.
      Pildegovics said he was surprised about comments from a high-ranking Russian army official that Russia feared NATO deployment of nuclear arms in the Baltics after the three join the alliance.
      Latvia has embarked on a rapid transformation after regaining independence in 1991 following five decades under Kremlin rule. Its "return to Europe" has brought it to the doorstep of both NATO and EU despite concerns from Moscow.
      "We think the speculations by the Russian official are unfounded," Pildegovics said. "These fears are not based on any policy from the Latvian side."
      Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of Russia's armed forces, was quoted as saying in Moscow on Monday that NATO's eastward expansion was a "potential threat," adding that it could lead to deployment of nuclear arms in its neighbourhood.
      "NATO has its nuclear arms deployed in Europe," Baluyevsky was quoted as telling a news conference by Baltic news service BNS. "There is no guarantee that the alliance will refrain from deploying it in one of the Baltic states, that is in the neighbourhood of Russia," he added.
      The Baltic states made NATO membership a top priority soon after they broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991, but have been wary of Russian misgivings until President Vladimir Putin softened his stance against Baltic NATO entry earlier this year.

      UNITED NATIONS (AP) — HIV and AIDS infection rates are skyrocketing in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, with young people comprising the majority of new cases, the U.N. Children's Fund warned in a report released Wednesday.
      Nearly 80 percent of newly registered infections from 1997-2000 in the Commonwealth of Independent States -- the grouping of former Soviet republics -- occurred among people under the age of 29, according to UNICEF's report, the Social Monitor 2002.
      "HIV/AIDS has a young face in this region," UNICEF director Carol Bellamy said in a statement. "Young people account for most new infections and their low level of HIV awareness, combined with increasingly risky behavior, herald a catastrophe."
      The UNICEF report parallels earlier warnings from the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Open Society Institute, a charitable foundation active in Eastern Europe.
      UNICEF reports that abuse of injected drugs accounts for most of the region's infections of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. However, it noted that sexual transmission is on the rise in Belarus and Ukraine.
      The total number of infections in the region more than doubled from 420,000 in 1998 to 1 million in 2001. While that is small compared with the 28.5 million HIV-infected people in sub-Saharan Africa, the rate of increase in some Eastern European and CIS countries is the world's highest.
      In Estonia, 38 percent of new infections occurred among those under age 20, and 90 percent among those under 30, the report states. The Baltic country's total rate of new infections -- more than one in every 1,000 people -- is 20 times the average for European Union countries.
      The report cites the increase in substance abuse, early sexual activity and an increase in the number of sex workers as underlying reasons for the rising rate.
      It recommends programs to educate people about AIDS prevention, ensure that schools address the issue openly and offer youth-friendly health care. Girls, the poor and others at risk should be especially targeted, it said.
      UNICEF found that less than 70 percent of teenagers in Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia knew that condoms offered protection against HIV, while 97 percent of French teens and 87 percent of German teens were aware of that.
      Some governments, especially among the former Soviet republics, traditionally have taken a punitive approach to drug use, sex work and homosexuality, the study says.
      Lithuania's national action plan, launched in 1995, may have helped the country keep its HIV-infection rate down, the report says. The plan features services that are easily accessible for drug users, offer anonymous treatment and don't require abstinence from drug-taking as a condition for service.
      Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova were the first countries in the region with rapid increases in HIV-infected people. Estonia and Latvia soon followed, and Kazakhstan appears to be on the same course.
      "However, current trends in the spread of HIV do not suggest that the epidemic has reached its peak," the report states.
      The high incidence of HIV and AIDS among children under 13 — 26 percent of all cases in the region -- can be traced mainly to infections in Romania in the early 1990s through blood transfusions and other procedures, the report notes.

      WASHINGTON (Reuters) — President Bush and Czech President Vaclav Havel discussed NATO expansion on Wednesday even as Russia reiterated its opposition to the western alliance accepting new members.
      Havel came to Washington saying he would be pushing for the military alliance to take in seven post-Communist states in Eastern Europe in meetings with U.S. officials this week.
      In his public remarks Havel did not mention how many countries he would like to see added to the 19-member NATO but said the alliance is increasingly important during a time of turmoil.
      "I think that now it will be important if NATO will be able to identify itself, to find its new identity in this very changed world," Havel said during a picture-taking session with Bush in the Oval Office. "And especially now, after Sept. 11, I think there is a lot of new kind of evil in this world, and it is necessary to face this evil and to face all who support it."
      White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush and Havel discussed NATO expansion as well as plans for a NATO summit in Prague Nov. 21-22. They also discussed Iraq, he said, while providing no details.
      The United States has been a strong advocate of a broad expansion of NATO, but has stopped short of mentioning a specific number of countries that should be invited to join at the Prague summit.
      The seven countries the Czech leader wants NATO to take in are: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the three Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
      That would add to the three countries — the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland -- the alliance accepted in 1999 in its first post-Cold War enlargement.
      "No final decisions yet," said a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
      "We encourage all the NATO aspirant members to continue to work on their goals laid out in the membership action plan. As the president talked about several times on his trips to Europe, there are no geographic limitations on expansion of NATO. His vision is of a Europe whole, free and at peace," the official said.
      In New York, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who meets Bush at the White House on Friday, reaffirmed Moscow's opposition to NATO's expansion, according to Russia's Interfax news agency.
      Ivanov said at a Eurasia summit that the international community should "live in keeping with the principles of the 21st century rather than old stereotypes."
      Other forms of military cooperation must be worked out to resolve contemporary problems, he said.
      Havel's views seemed likely to carry some weight with Washington, where the Czech leader is admired for his dissident past and his contribution to toppling the hardline Czech Communist regime in the bloodless Velvet Revolution in 1989.
      "Mr. President, you are a unique person who has helped changed the world. I am proud to call you friend," Bush told Havel in the Oval Office.
      Havel was to attend a social dinner with Bush at the White House on Wednesday night.

      BRUSSELS, Sept 20 (Reuters) — NATO and Russia sparred on Friday over the defence alliance's plans for enlargement, with Moscow insisting that the Baltic states commit to the landmark treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe before joining up.
      "There was an elaborate presentation of views," said one NATO official after a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council which was set up amid unprecedented cordiality last May to enhance cooperation between the former foes.
      "There are some points of principles involved: Russia is free to raise its point, but enlargement is our business," said the official, who asked not to be named. "I think they are raising this with greater energy."
      Russian President Vladimir Putin has softened Moscow's criticism of NATO plans to expand eastwards as part of his broad pro-Western policy. But there are still misgivings in Moscow about NATO taking in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991 after a 50-year occupation.
      The Baltic states are among seven countries which are expected to be invited to join NATO when the 19 alliance leaders meet in Prague in November.
      The NATO official said Russia appeared to be trying to stall the enlargement process by raising the question of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty.
      Signed in the dying days of the Cold War, the CFE 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.
      The Baltic states have not signed up to the CFE and so are not subject to legal restrictions on forces deployed in their territory -- forces that could theoretically belong to NATO once they become members of the alliance.
      STRONG FEELINGS
      Latvia this week shrugged off fears expressed by a senior Russian military official that it could become a NATO outpost for nuclear weapons or army bases after it joins the alliance.
      Part of the problem is that new accessions to the CFE can only take place once all signatories have ratified amendments adopted in 1999, and so far only two countries have done so.
      Diplomats say Russia may push for the three Baltic states to commit themselves to joining the treaty at the same time as they join NATO, probably in early 2004.
      The NATO official said that there was "no quarrel" at Friday's council meeting, but the alliance put its view strongly that there should be no linkage between enlargement and CFE.
      "CFE is CFE and enlargement is enlargement," he said. "They feel strongly about it and we feel strongly about it."
      The wrangling overshadowed what officials said were more encouraging signs of growing trust and cooperation between the allies and Russia.
      The two sides agreed on Friday on the political aspects of possible joint peacekeeping operations in the future.
      They are also due to hold a civil emergency exercise in Russia this month to test their response to a terrorist attack on a chemical production facility.
      The creation of the council followed Putin's decision to align Russia squarely behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism after September 11, giving Washington intelligence and access to Central Asian airbases for its Afghan operations.

      LANSING, Michigan (AP) — Michigan Gov. John Engler will meet with business and government officials in his last scheduled foreign trip as governor, his spokeswoman said Friday.
      Engler is headed to Latvia and Ireland next week, spokeswoman Susan Shafer said. He will meet with business and government leaders in both countries.
      In Latvia, Engler was scheduled to be presented with the Order of the Three Stars, the country's highest civilian honor, and the Medal of Merit on Saturday. Michigan National Guard troops have been helping Latvian troops for nearly a decade as the country transitions to a democracy, Shafer said.
      "There is quite a relationship between the two countries," Shafer said.
      Engler will then continue to Ireland, where he will attend the Ryder Cup golf tournament on Sept. 27. The Ryder Cup will be played in Michigan in 2004.