Sveiki, all!

Our apologies for no mailer last week, one of us came down with a bad cold and spent most of the weekend sleeping. The world, however, didn't sleep -- and there are a lot of items to catch up on in the news. In the news these past two weeks:

• U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell reaffirms Russia has no "veto" over Baltic memberships
• The Moscow Times trashes the idea of Baltic membership in NATO, echoing the party line; this is all the more interesting, as the articles in the Moscow Times often tend to be critical of the Russian government
• Russian border is still not fully negotiated, including Latvia and Estonia; well, if Russia gave back the Abrene district which it illegally annexed and never returned, that might prove some honorable intentions
• The Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports that Russian could become an EU language, as that is the "best known" language in Latvia; the tone of the report seemed unfavorable to Latvia, and the spokesperson interview seemed more like the DPA confronting the EU with a report it got its hands on rather than the EU coming to some determination; this report (in German) was not carried on any of the English news services
• Latvian economy minister Kalvitis faces no-confidence vote over 4th failure to sell Latvian shipping
• Latvia sentences three Russians for terrorism
• The prime ministers of Eastern European and Baltic countries hoping to join NATO will meet later this month
• In a stunning development, the U.S. loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights commission; Russia must be breathing easier given all the bad press they have gotten over Chechnya
• ITAR-TASS tows the party line, reporting Russian condemnation of the (above mentioned) terrorist convictions; the report goes on to be snide and sarcastic, and reminds us yet once more that the Soviet Union liberated Latvia from the Nazis; too bad they never mention the "out of the frying pan into the fire" part ... Yes, the Russians "liberated" Riga from the Nazis just as they "liberated" Peters' grandfather's mill (took the property and hauled everyone off to Siberia...) Oops, sorry, we usually try to stay above sarcasm...

This week's link is to another information source (see below).

This week's picture (sorry, this makes it a really big mailer this time!) is from Peters' trip in October of 1994, and is of one of the lakes around Mordanga.

For those of you on AOL, Lat Chat spontaneously appears every Sunday starting around 9:00/9:30pm Eastern time -- although we've been noticing lately that 10:00pm is when most folks come on to join, 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,

This week's link is to the "Central Europe Review", which includes items of interest regarding the entire central European region, including the Baltics. A spot check of the archives revealed a occasional twinge of melodrama (the restructuring of the pension system seemed like the end of all things...), however, coverage appears to be balanced and historically informed. The Central Europe Review can be found at:

http://www.ce-review.org

Reuters World Report
Monday, April 23, 2001 7:17:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.
By Elaine Monaghan

    WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told NATO hopeful Latvia on Monday that its entry to the Western alliance would not be thwarted by the objections of its powerful neighbor Russia.
    Powell gave the assurance to Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga during talks which included the Baltic state's plan to join the European Union, expected to be realized in the middle of this decade, and its aspirations to enter NATO.
    "I told her that Russia will never be given a veto over who is or is not part of NATO," Powell told reporters after the talks. The Latvian leader earlier met President George W. Bush.
    Heads of NATO member states will meet in Prague next year to consider further enlargement after admitting the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary two years ago.
    An EU expansion expected to take place in the middle of this decade will increase the number of member states bordering Russia from one -- Finland -- to three, by adding Estonia and Latvia.
    Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia welcomes Europe's expansion but that NATO expansion did not lead to enhanced security in the region. He said each country had the right independently to decide its security priorities.
    But Vike-Freiberga made clear Latvia was as keen as ever to distance itself further from its 50 years of Soviet occupation by joining NATO.
    "We very much would like to be under the security umbrella of NATO. We feel that we can contribute our part in international security missions and we can contribute our part to peace and stability in the new Europe, whole and free," Vike-Freiberga told reporters.
    "We are working very hard in completing our accession to the European Union and we are working doubly hard to be ready for all the criteria for NATO candidates," she added.
    In a nod to European fears that President George W. Bush's inauguration in January would mark an increase in U.S. isolationism, she said, "I feel that we can count on the United States to continue its leadership role in the world and its leadership role in the transatlantic alliance."
    By contrast to the warm welcome the Latvian leader received in Washington, Russia last invited a leader of the former Soviet republic to Moscow in 1994.
    Russia has similarly shunned the Baltic state of Estonia, angered by what it calls the two countries' discrimination against their large Russian-speaking communities.
    Latvia and Estonia, worried by the presence of big Russian-speaking minorities, gave citizenship only to those who lived in their states before 1940, the year they were annexed.
    This excluded most Russian speakers, who had arrived in the post-war Soviet period. Lithuania, which has far fewer Russian speakers, gave everyone citizenship.

AP WorldSources Online
Tuesday, April 24, 2001 10:21:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
Copyright 2001 THE MOSCOW TIMES

    MOSCOW -- In recent weeks, The Moscow Times has printed two opinion pieces by Americans urging the further expansion of NATO to include the former Soviet republics in the Baltic region. The authors would have us believe that such expansion is inevitable, that it is somehow in Russia's greater interests, and that Russia should cease its hopeless efforts to block it. Most recently, Michael McFaul of the Carnegie Endowment advised that Russia would be better off by "demonstrating that Russia is too strong and self-confident to worry about the ascension of the tiny Baltic States to the NATO alliance." Such advice is sophistry. The arguments of the pro-expansionists are ludicrous against the backdrop of NATO's strategic concept and the reality of what has happened in the wake of its thus-far limited expansion.
    NATO's first "new strategic concept" of November 1991 was a far cry from its previous cautious and highly defined doctrine, but it nonetheless retained some element of restraint in recognition of the fact that the Soviet Union still existed. After the Soviet collapse, however, NATO documents began to shift toward a more assertive posture, issuing warnings to Russia on its behavior toward former Soviet states and the countries of Central Europe. The logical culmination of NATO's emerging policy, as embodied in documents issued between November 1991 and April 1999, was NATO's revised strategic concept. This is an aggressive and preemptive doctrine that provided justification for the bombing of Yugoslavia and will justify similar responses to any situation deemed by NATO to be directly or indirectly "threatening" in the future. The 1999 revised strategic concept set forth an extremely vague rationale for NATO action military or otherwise in an undefined territorial area ("in and around the Euro-Atlantic area" and "at the periphery of the Alliance") and in response to a range of situations that could and almost certainly would involve strictly internal issues of non-member countries. Among the stated risks to NATO security that would serve as potential triggers for NATO action are "territorial disputes, inadequate or failed efforts at reform, the abuse of human rights, and the dissolution of states," as well as "organized crime" and "the uncontrolled movement of large numbers of people, particularly as a consequence of armed conflicts." NATO also identifies as a risk to its security states on NATO's periphery that sell or acquire or attempt to acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and delivery means. Last, but hardly least from Russia's perspective, NATO states in its 1999 strategic concept that there is potential for the reemergence of "large-scale conventional aggression against the Alliance." This is as close as the strategic concept comes to naming names without actually naming names. The merits of NATO's intervention in Kosovo have been and will long continue to be a subject of considerable controversy. What cannot be denied is that the effort to attain a quick and bloodless (for NATO combatants) solution to a centuries-old problem has not achieved the Alliance's stated goals. There is not and has never been a long-term strategy for preserving territorial integrity while protecting the rights of minorities. Kosovo is not a multiethnic society.
    Repression previously directed by Serbian authorities against ethnic Albanians now is directed by the criminal KLA against ethnic Serbs, Roma and politically irritating ethnic Albanians. On the bright side for NATO members, ethnic Serbs and others fleeing repression in Kosovo are by and large heading for Serbia proper rather than for Western Europe.
    In this sense, the bombing of Yugoslavia may be considered by some NATO members as a success. Most recently, we have witnessed a cynical "movement" of ethnic Albanians, armed from Kosovo, against the legitimate authorities in Macedonia. In that event, we were also treated to the spectacle of NATO which created the monster feverishly attempting to turn a blind eye to the dispute. Instead of joining forces with the Macedonian government to put down the terrorists, NATO and the EU urged the Macedonian authorities to come to a "political settlement" with those who took up arms against it in pursuit of Greater Albania. We thus see that NATO is very good at military adventures, especially against essentially defenseless "opponents," but pitifully incompetent when it comes to avoiding the negative political consequences of its military actions of which it was repeatedly warned in advance from many quarters. Despite this vivid and fresh history, we are still to believe that adding more countries to NATO to help out in future ill-conceived military adventures will add to stability on the continent (and no doubt on other continents, as well). Russia is right to consider further NATO expansion against this background. In the conflict against Kosovo, Russia was "protected" from the folly of disagreeing with NATO actions by having Hungary and Bulgaria (a non-NATO member, but a NATO "partner") collaborate in blocking Russian efforts to provide assistance to Belgrade.
    Now many are keen to invite Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the NATO fold, which would mean moving NATO infrastructure up to Russian borders and putting Russia squarely in the area of "the periphery of the Alliance" where NATO actions in response to that vast array of potentially destabilizing events would be justified by the Alliance's strategic concept. Indeed, with regard to Kaliningrad, it would put non-member Russia within NATO territory. It is in this context that we should judge arguments that the inclusion of the "tiny Baltic States" and no doubt everybody else in the former Warsaw Pact except Russia is in Russia's interests.
    NATO has already demonstrated its readiness to use its power and resources in pursuit of self-serving, short-term goals without any sort of long-term policy or vision.
    It has demonstrated a blithe lack of concern about using force unilaterally and in defiance of international law. Is there thus any serious reason to believe that advancing NATO to Russia's doorstep that is to say, up against a country that NATO's own strategic concept has set out as a potential future enemy would heighten European security? Is this a step that Russia should regard as helpful to its own security? Is the prospect of the Baltic and Central European states collaborating to block Russian defense of its vital interests in the face of NATO "crisis response" one that Russia should embrace? In the case of NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia, the only negative fallout was the expansion of armed separatist action to Macedonia.
    In the case of Russia, the results of miscalculation carry much graver risks. Russia should not abandon its efforts to persuade the more rational Europeans and Americans that further expansion of NATO is not in anybody's interests. What is needed today is a new European-Atlantic security system that recognizes Russia's right to be fully engaged as an equal partner. It is inarguably in the interest of Europeans and Americans to forge a genuine partnership with Russia that will avoid the creation of an artificial enemy. A bigger NATO is simply a bigger threat to both European and global security.

COMTEX Newswire
Wednesday, April 25, 2001 10:17:00 AM
Copyright 2001 ITAR-TASS

    MOSCOW, Apr 25, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- More than 13,000 kilometres of Russia's border are still not regulated by agreements or other legal documents, a high-ranking official said.
    Fifteen governmental commissions on border delimitation and demarcation are working on his now, Lieutenant-General Alexander Manilov, head of the international department of the Federal Border Guard Service, told journalists on Wednesday.
    He said the total length of the Russian border is 61,000 kilometres.
    Questionable stretches exist mainly on the border with Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The demarcation of the border with Lithuania has been finished, and an appropriate agreement has been signed, he said.
    Similar agreements are being prepared with Latvia and Estonia.
    "Russia has fully finished the delimitation and demarcation of the border with China. This work lasted 20 years", Manilov said.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur (German Press Agency)
Friday, April 27, 2001 4:53:00 AM
Copyright 2001, dpa
[our translation via technology]

    Riga/Bruessel (dpa) -- In few years, Russian could become an official language of the European Union. The reason is the European Union candidate state of Latvia, whose inhabitants are more fluent in Russian than the language of the country, Latvian. A spokesman of the European Union commission did not exclude on Friday that documents and conferences of the EU regarding the planned entry of Latvia could also be translated into the Russian. "We will see, when it gets to that point", said commission spokesman Jonathan Faull in Brussels.
    The Brussels commission basically respects the official language of a respective member state. Besides, the entry of Latvia is not imminent, said Faull. At the appropriate point in time, the EU, together with Latvia, will jointly advise regarding the language question.
    A study by the Latvian immigration office, which was presented to the dpa on Friday, conains the projection that Russian is the leading [language] in the Baltic republic: of the 2.4 million inhabitants of Latvia, 75 per cent are citizens and 25 per cent are so-called stateless people, for the most part, non-citizen Russians. Of these, according to the investigation, 16 per cent do not know any Latvian, and 56 per cent command only basic knowledge. However, of the citizens, only two per cent know no Russian, while 52 per cent know Russian with total fluency. The former Soviet republic of Latvia attained independence back in 1991 back. Of about 800,000 Russians remaining there, so far approximately 550,000 have not become citizens. Latvian language and citizenship laws have been repeatedly criticized internationally.

Reuters World Report
Friday, April 27, 2001 10:06:00 AM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.

    RIGA, April 27 (Reuters) -- Latvian Economy Minister Aigars Kalvitis will face a second confidence vote this year over the sale of the government's 68 percent stake in Latvian Shipping, the parliament's press office said on Friday.
    "The vote has been asked for by the opposition Social Democrats and the parliament presidium would have to decide on Monday (April 30), when to hold it," a parliament spokeswoman told Reuters.
    It could be held at the next meeting of parliament on May 3, she added.
    Kalvitis is widely expected to survive the vote as he did in February, when he was backed by the centrist four-party coalition, which controls 64 seats in Latvia's 100-member parliament.
    As a part of his ministerial duties, Kalvitis heads the Latvian privatisation agency's supervisory council, which is responsible for approving the rules for the sale of the state stake in Latvian Shipping.
    Social Democrats have said the sale of Latvian Shipping, the world's third largest shipping firm in terms of oil product handling in 1999, contradicts the country's economic interests and its shipping policy.
    The government has shortlisted two bidders to participate in the auction scheduled for May 11. The bidders had to pay $5 million in collateral by 1400 GMT on April 27 to be admitted to the auction.
    The cabinet has approved a starting auction price, which is kept confidential, but local media has reported it as ranging between $95-130 million for the 136 million share package.
    It is the fourth attempt in five years to sell Shipping, which operates 49 vessels, after political bickering hindered the process.

Reuters World Report
Monday, April 30, 2001 12:53:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.

    RIGA, April 30 (Reuters) -- Three Russians who threatened to blow up a Latvian church tower after barricading themselves inside were sentenced to between five and 15 years on Monday, a Latvian court said.
    Sergei Solovey, Maksim Zhurkin and Dmitri Gafarov, members of an ultranationalist Russian group, were jailed after being convicted of terrorism and crossing the border illegally.
    The court heard how the three men threatened to detonate hand grenades after climbing inside the tower of the 13th-century St. Peter's Church in the capital Riga on November 17 last year.
    They were demanding the release of a former KGB officer Mihail Farbtuh, 85, who is serving seven years for his role in deporting Latvians to Siberia in the 1940s.
    They also called for the release of four members of their group, the National Bolsheviks, who are facing trial in Latvia on separate charges of crossing the border illegally.
    Their threat to blow up the tower was also a protest against Latvia's desires to join the NATO Western military alliance, the court heard.
    Solovey, 29, and Zhurkin, 24, were sentenced to 15 years and Gafarov, 18, who was tried as a juvenile, was sentenced to five years.
    All three had denied terrorism, but Zhurkin and Gafarov had admitted illegal entry. The three men, who were detained last November, have 10 days to appeal.
    "The verdict is too strict. My client is going to appeal and I suspect the others are going to also. This was not terrorism," Gijs Rusins, Gafarov's lawyer, told journalists.
    A fourth defendant, Latvian resident Vladimir Moskovtsev, 39, who is head of the Latvian organisation of National Bolsheviks, was put on probation for two years for helping the three cross the border.
    Under an extradition treaty with Moscow, the three Russians could be sent home to finish their sentences.
    Latvia's population is about 30 percent ethnic Russian. The state was under Soviet occupation from 1940 until 1991.
    Moscow has criticised Latvia for trying former members of the Soviet security services and war veterans for Communist-era atrocities.

AP WorldStream
Tuesday, May 01, 2001 4:12:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press

    BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) -- Prime ministers of nine East European and Baltic countries hoping to eventually join NATO will meet in Slovakia later this month to underscore the advantages they could bring to the alliance.
    The three-day conference, which begins May 10, aims to produce a so-called "Bratislava declaration" calling for speeded-up efforts to enlarge NATO. Russia has fiercely opposed any expansion of the alliance as a security threat.
    "We see this conference as an opportunity to show that Slovakia wants to be one of the leaders in forming a united and free Europe," Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda said in a statement Tuesday.
    The conference will bring together the prime ministers of Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia, Albania and Macedonia. Croatia's premier also will attend.
    Other participants include Czech President Vaclav Havel; Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; former Hungarian President Arpad Goencz; and NATO Deputy Secretary-General Klaus Peter Klaiber.

Reuters World Report
Thursday, May 03, 2001 7:18:00 PM
Copyright 2001 Reuters Ltd.
By Evelyn Leopold

    UNITED NATIONS, May 3 (Reuters) -- The United States was voted off the key U.N. Human Rights Commission on Thursday for the first time since it helped found the body in 1947 to probe abuses around the world.
    The United States came in fourth with 29 votes in balloting for three seats allocated to Western nations that were up for re-election. France received 52 votes, followed by Austria with 41 and Sweden with 32 in a secret ballot among members of the Economic and Social Council, the parent group for the 53-member human rights commission.
    The United States, Russia and India had served on the commission, now based in Geneva, since its inception. Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the first U.S. delegate to the group and the main author of its 1948 landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
    Reactions were fierce, ranging from denunciation of the United Nations by Republicans in Congress to criticism of the Bush administration for ignoring the world body, delaying dues payments and isolating itself on some key rights issues.
    Others blamed the defeat on a group of countries accused of human rights violations themselves who vote as a bloc to stymie U.S. criticism of their actions. And Britain blamed it on deals among U.N. members against the world's superpower.
    "Understandably, we are very disappointed," James Cunningham, the chief U.S. representative, told reporters, declining to speculate on the reason for the defeat.
    "We very much wanted to serve on the committee," he said.
    In Washington, a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the commission would be weakened without U.S. participation.
    The official also would not speculate on the reasons for the defeat but said "there is no question that financial questions formed an important background to this vote."
    She was referring to the long dispute between Washington and the United Nations over U.S. arrears and the level of the U.S. contribution. The dispute has been settled in principle but Congress still has not paid its $1.7 billion debt.
    In the U.S. Congress, Rep. Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, said the vote was an embarrassment for the United States and a painful blow to U.S. leadership on human rights and democracy.
    "President Bush has dragged his feet in getting key foreign policy officials confirmed. It is unacceptable that we still have no U.N. Ambassador," she said, referring to the delayed appointment of John Negroponte, a retired diplomat.
    But Rep. Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican who chairs the House International Relations Committee, attacked the United Nations. "This is emblematic of the increasing irrelevancy of some international organizations," he said in a statement.
    Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican, attributed the vote to U.S. attempts to secure a resolution critical of China at this year's meeting of the commission.
    "STUNNING DEVELOPMENT"
    At the United Nations, Singapore's ambassador, Kishore Mahbubani, called the vote "a stunning development." "When I heard it, I couldn't believe it," he said.
    British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, whose country has a commission seat, said U.N. votes often involved deals. "This can mean less focus on the suitability of candidates. The U.S. has tended not to be keen on doing deals," he said.
    Some Western diplomats said the Bush administration's opposition to the Kyoto climate change treaty as well as its plans for a missile defense shield, contributed to the loss.
    But Joanna Weschler, the U.N. representative of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said both Western and developing countries bore grudges against the United States.
    "In recent years, the United States often failed to support important human right initiatives," she said. These include a measure calling for AIDS drugs to be made available to all, the treaty to ban landmines and the International Criminal Court.
    "It's not surprising that the United States was voted off. But to punish the United States and reward Sudan, which was elected, is clearly absurd," she said.
    Also elected were Bahrain, South Korea, Pakistan, Croatia and Armenia. Chile, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Togo and Uganda won uncontested seats. Failing to get seats were Iran, Latvia, and Azerbaijan in addition to the United States.
    Saudi Arabia was not a candidate, as U.N. officials reported earlier, but received a vote although it already had a seat on the commission.

COMTEX Newswire
Friday, May 04, 2001 3:59:00 PM
Copyright 2001 ITAR-TASS

    MOSCOW, May 04, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- Moscow has noticed the Latvian practices to proclaim hooligans as terrorists and punish them severely on political reasons, while real terrorists are acquitted, says a statement of the Russian foreign ministry obtained by Itar-Tass on Friday.
    The statement is made in connection with the sentence of the Riga district court on three members of the National Bolshevik Party. The sentence was passed on April 30 on the terrorism charge on three nationals of Russia, the oldest of whom is 24 and the youngest is 17.
    The youngsters came to Latvia without visas in November 2000. They occupied the tower of the St. Peter's Cathedral in Riga and threatened to blast themselves with a grenade, which appeared to be fake. They thus planned to draw the public attention to the persecution of anti-Fascist veterans in Latvia.
    The Russian foreign ministry denounced the act of hooliganism under noble slogans, but said that the Latvian justice "was deliberately cruel to the Russians by describing their conduct as terrorism."
    Meanwhile, Latvia was not so much principled in considering the blast of a monument to Riga's liberators from the Nazi by members of the Latvian Perkonkrusts ultra-radical terrorist organization in 1997. Nine neo-Nazi were sentenced to short terms of custody or had a suspended sentence in May 2000. The short terms of imprisonment were later cut by the Supreme Court.
    Therefore Russia has drawn a conclusion that "in certain political circles of Latvia the liking of home-bred Fascists comes together with primordial anti-Russian feelings," the statement runs.

This week's picture is of "Two Ruble" lake, one of the lakes around Mordanga -- so called because the owner used to charge two rubles for the locals to fish there. The picture is from October, 1994.