TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Karl-Leonhard Paulov, one of just a handful of former Stalinist agents ever convicted for crimes against humanity, has died in this ex-Soviet republic while serving an eight-year prison sentence. He was 77.
      Officials announced Paulov's death Thursday, saying he had died the day before of unspecified natural causes. He said in a rare interview inside Tallinn Center Prison last year that he had bladder cancer and liver disease.
      Prosecutors said Paulov was one of hundreds of young agents who helped the Soviet Union consolidate power in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Most of his superiors died long ago.
      He was convicted of shooting three anti-Soviet resisters hiding in Estonia's forests in 1946, just after Red Army troops had occupied the country toward the end of World War II.
      Paulov, who admitted killing the men but said it was in self-defense, complained about what he said were miserable conditions in the dreary, cavernous 19th century penitentiary in the capital.
      "I'll never last the eight years. I'll surely die here," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "What they're doing to me, it's a sin. It's unfair!"
      Prosecutors described Paulov as an eager-to-please agent who shot two of his victims in the back and pried a false tooth from one corpse to prove he had obeyed the execution orders.
      Jaan Sibul, 62, son of one of the men killed by Paulov, said Thursday that justice had been done.
      "Neither I nor any of my relatives ever heard a single apology from him or any sign of regret," Sibul said. "But those who do wrong, one way or another, have to answer to a higher judge."
      At least 15 million people were killed and some 40 million deported -- including more than 200,000 people from the Baltics -- by the vast communist secret police apparatus during Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's iron-fisted rule.
      Paulov had claimed he too was a resister and that he killed the others in self-defense during an argument. He also blamed what he said was the insanity of life in post-war Estonia.
      After regaining independence from Moscow in 1991, all three Baltic states pledged to prosecute anyone who participated, even in a minor role, in Stalinist abuses.
      Of more than a dozen men convicted by Baltic courts, only Paulov and three others were imprisoned. One died serving his term in 1996. Another was released last year after a judge questioned the evidence against him.
      Now, 85-year-old Mikhail Farbtukh, serving a term in neighboring Latvia on similar charges, is the only ex-agent known to be in prison. None of the other former Soviet republics, including Russia, has put ex-agents on trial.
      Moscow has criticized the Baltic prosecutions, calling them revenge, not justice. But Baltic officials insist they're attempting to shed light on some of the worst human rights abuses of the 20th century.

      RIGA, Latvia (AP) — Latvians are appealing for the U.S. television network NBC to finally show their national team marching into the Olympic stadium during opening ceremonies for the Salt Lake City Games that start Friday.
      In their domestic coverage, U.S. networks have cut to commercials without showing the Latvian team parading in each of the last five Games, beginning with Barcelona in 1992 -- a year after Latvia regained independence from the Soviet Union.
      Latvian television, via a seperate live feed, has been able to show the athletes marching to people in the former Soviet republic, but Latvian-Americans have missed it.
      Ojars Kalnins, who heads the Baltic republic's state-funded Latvian Institute, charged with promoting the country's image abroad, said 100,000 Latvian-Americans -- whose families fled Soviet repression -- take it personally.
      "We didn't have an Olympic team for 50 years and for those living in the United States seeing the Latvian team is symbolic of winning the Cold War," Kalnins, a recent Latvian ambassador to the United States, said Thursday.
      He added that coverage on U.S. television also would help raise awareness of this staunchly pro-West nation of 2.5 million people, explaining that "we're trying to establish our identity and fight being unknown."
      He said Latvian-American groups have held letter-writing campaigns to NBC to urge it give Latvia's 51 Olympic hopefuls airtime this year and have received positive signals from the network. They had a similar campaign before the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney -- but to no avail.
      U.S. television shows dozens of teams marching in, but after Kenya, both Koreas and Kuwait, they broke for a commercial; 18 teams, including Kyrgyzstan, Laos and, yet again, Latvia, have gone unseen by American viewers, Kalnins said.
      "They're probably not going to show athletes from these countries during the Games, so they should at least show every country during the opening ceremonies," he said.

      RIGA, Feb 8 (Reuters) — Latvia intends to keep the national currency's peg to the SDR basket of major world currencies unchanged before pegging the lat to the euro for two years from 2005, as required by single currency entry rules, central bank head Ilmars Rimsevics said on Friday.
      Rimsevics was elected in December to head the Bank of Latvia for six years, overseeing policy as Latvia bids to complete EU entry talks this year in the hope of joining the rich Western bloc in 2004 and earning euro membership three years later.
      "We don't plan to change anything because the peg to the International Monetary Fund's SDR basket has justified itself and it is hard to think of anything better," Rimsevics told Reuters in an interview adding that Latvia's economy was well-prepared for joining the European Union.
      "Latvia is an oasis of stability...we do not forecast inflation growth and on the contrary we foresee stable GDP growth," Rimsevics said.
      Many of the 10 mostly ex-communist EU hopefuls want to join the euro as soon as possible, perhaps by 2006, but the European Central Bank has urged caution, suggesting the candidates will need more time to adjust their economies to Western standards.
      The central bank introduced the lat currency in 1993, pegging it at 0.7997 to the IMF's world currency basket, in a move that helped tame inflation.
      The currency has since withstood a banking crisis in 1995 and global emerging markets turmoil in 1997 and 1998.
      Latvia is the only Baltic state whose currency is not yet tied to the euro. Lithuania repegged the litas to the euro from the dollar at the start of this month and the Estonian kroon is pegged to the euro under a currency board arrangement.
      Rimsevics said the SDR peg perfectly reflected Latvia's trade structure, requiring no change before the country begins the process of becoming absorbed into the single currency.
      JOINING THE EURO
      "We have harmonised all the financial sector regulation, have stabilised the currency and we meet the Maastricht criteria," Rimsevics said.
      "And everything we are waiting for now is when Latvia joins the European Union and negotiations with the European Central Bank on ERM-2 could begin," he added.
      To join the euro zone, which now embraces 12 of the 15 EU members, a country must undergo a two-year period in the ERM-2 exchange rate mechanism, which sets a band for a country's currency fluctuations against the euro.
      A euro-zone hopeful must also meet strict criteria on inflation, interest rates, bond yields and the budget deficit, which should not exceed three percent of gross domestic product.
      Although Latvia's fiscal deficit is expected to rise to 2.46 percent of GDP in 2002 from 1.8 percent last year, Rimsevics said this increase was necessary to cover the country's expenses linked to EU and NATO accession.
      He said the central bank believed the fiscal policy should be prudent, adding that it would keep a close watch on the government as it plans the 2003 budget. He said he believed the deficit for that year should be cut by one percentage point.
      Rimsevics said he hoped Latvia would have a deficit-free budget within three years and its economy would continue to grow between 4.5 percent and five percent this year and next.

      Primorsk — Oil major Transneft has proposed a tariff of $2.79 per ton for loading oil onto tankers at the new oil terminal opened in December, Interfax reported Thursday.
      According to Alexander Pospelov, the general director of the Primorsk Port, a subsidiary of Transneft, the tariff charged for loading of oil at the port of Ventspils, Latvia, is over $4 per ton.
      The Primorsk facility is at the Western end of the Baltic Pipeline System (BTS), which was built to transport oil for export from the Timano-Pechorskoye and Western-Siberian oil fields. The first part of the project was opened on Dec. 27, and is able to carry 12 million tons of oil per year, and was built at a cost of over $500 million. The second phase will raise capacity to 18 million tons per year, at a further cost of $228 million.

      RIGA, Latvia (AP) — Lubov Rebel was scanning the obituaries in a local Latvian newspaper earlier this week when she came across one of particular interest: It was hers, announcing her unfortunate death.
      Police said her 48-year-old son, Vladimir Rebel, had declared her dead a week before to collect a 40-lat (dlrs 64) premium provided by the government of this ex-Soviet Baltic republic to relatives of the deceased.
      His mother, 81, alerted authorities on Monday that she was most certainly alive, prompting an investigation and brief detention of her son in Limbazi, where both he and his mother live some 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of the capital, Riga.
      Police spokeswoman Sandra Pole said Vladimir Rebel was ordered to return the fee, meant to offset funeral costs, which can pose a hardship in this Baltic country in which the average monthly wage is 150 lats (dlrs 250).
      A final decision hadn't been made, but he probably won't be charged, Pole said.
      Police said Rebel admitted that a doctor issued him a death certificate without examining the alleged body and that he had used it to collect the money, but the suspect defended his actions on local television.
      He said he honestly thought his mother was dead. He claimed he had checked her pulse while she was lying in bed and that she "felt cold and didn't move."
      While Mrs. Rebel has established she's alive, her troubles aren't over. Since she was officially listed as dead for a whole week, authorities removed her name from state pension rolls -- and she'll have to apply to have it reinstated.

      SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Curt Lindstrom has been a hockey coach for 40 years, winning Olympic bronze medals with Sweden and Finland.
      Now he's tantalized by the possibility — and it's a remote one — of a medal with another country: Latvia.
      "If we win bronze, it would be a bigger upset than the United States pulled off in 1980," he says of the "Miracle on Ice" victory over the Soviet Union that led to the gold medal.
      Perhaps more realistic is a chance to make the quarterfinals.
      "That would be fantastic," he says.
      Latvia, which regained its independence during the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, is competing in Olympic hockey for the first time since 1936.
      The hockey-mad nation of 2.5 million has some of the loudest and most loyal fans. Thousands followed the team in last year's world championships in Germany. About 10,000 are expected in Sweden for this year's tournament.
      But first comes the Olympic preliminary round, and that could prove difficult.
      Latvia opens against lightweight Austria on Saturday at the E Center, followed by games against Slovakia and Germany later in the week.
      Only the top team from each of the two groups advances to the next round, where they are joined by the top six teams from the 1998 Nagano Games.
      Slovakia, which relies on a strong contingent of NHL stars, is expected to move on.
      Latvia is unbeaten — five wins and a tie in six games — since Lindstrom signed a three-year contract last summer, but the opponents were not among hockey's elite.
      The NHL will shut down from Feb. 14-25 during the final rounds of the Olympic tournament. That's perfect for defending champion Czech Republic, Canada, Finland, Russia, Sweden and the United States -- teams that have already qualified.
      But for players on the preliminary-round teams, the NHL schedule is troublesome.
      Carolina's Arturs Irbe, who shut out the United States 2-0 with sparkling goaltending in the preliminary round at last year's worlds, will join Latvia's team on Saturday.
      Defenseman Sandis Ozolinsh of Florida and Karlis Skrastins will arrive one day later. Center Sergei Zholtok wasn't released for the preliminary tournament by Minnesota.
      Lindstrom was an assistant coach when Sweden won the bronze at the 1988 Calgary Games. Six years later, the Swede was head coach of the Finnish team that came in third behind Sweden and Canada at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.
      He stayed in Finland for five years and became a household name. He led the team to its first world title in 1995 following a win over Sweden in the final in Stockholm -- the biggest moment in Finnish hockey history.
      Now his jump to Latvia presents another obstacle — language. Lindstrom doesn't speak Latvian or Russian with the Latvian players.
      "They're pretty good in English," he says. "I must admit they speak better English than the Finns."

      RIGA, Latvia, Feb 11, 2002 (UPI via COMTEX) — Sending the clearest signal yet for who's next in NATO, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Monday he expects the alliance to welcome Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
      The three Baltic states are among nine East Europe countries vying for new slots to be filled if, as expected, the 19-nation military pact expands next fall.
      Until now, NATO members, including the United States and Germany, have declined to name favored candidates for membership, though some have hinted at a significant expansion since last June, when a Brussels summit that included President George W. Bush ended with a decision to replace the "zero option" with an enlargement proposal.
      Last week, for example, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington he expects a "pretty good" number of new alliance members after the upcoming November summit in Prague, Czech Republic. And some leaders have called the next enlargement will be a "big bang."
      The Baltic states have been in the forefront of expansion proposals for years, despite objections from next-door neighbor and historic NATO adversary Russia.
      Those objections took a back seat after Sept. 11. Indeed, in the weeks since Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin held anti-terrorism talks in November, Moscow has drawn closer to the Western alliance and muffled its longstanding opposition to expansion. Germany and Russia have grown friendlier in military and diplomatic areas, too, as underscored by recent meetings between Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
      On Monday, NATO expansion plans became clearer at the sixth annual meeting of the German and Baltic foreign ministers in Riga when Fischer -- Schroeder's international affairs chief -- said without hesitation that he expects the Baltic states to be invited into the alliance next fall.
      "The federal foreign minister of Germany confirmed continuous, active support of his country to the accession of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to the European Union and NATO," said a joint communique issued by Fischer and his three counterparts. "The ministers expressed their belief that an invitation for the Baltic states to join NATO to be issued at the Prague summit will eliminate the lines of historical injustice and division in Europe."
      Fischer and the Baltic ministers also discussed Russia's role in military cooperation plans, concluding that they "welcomed the participation of Russia in the anti-terrorist coalition and supported close and constructive NATO-Russia cooperation, which would increase global stability." They also applauded democratic reforms in Moscow, and pledged economic cooperation between the Baltics and Russia.
      Since the recent Bush-Putin and Schroeder-Putin meetings, Russia has shelved the argument that Baltic membership in NATO would threaten regional stability and Russia's enclave Kalingrad on the Baltic Sea, which is accessible by land only through Lithuania. Russia now supports the war against terrorism and NATO members cooperate with Moscow.
      Russia's objections were losing clout even before Sept. 11. In a speech Aug. 24 in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told a receptive audience that the Baltics should join the alliance regardless of Moscow's view.
      "The strategic imperative is to secure the Baltics' relationship with the West," McCain said.
      And the Baltic states have worked hard to sell themselves and prepare for membership.
      For example, military reforms are under way to raise each country to NATO standards.
      Estonia's reforms include increasing the wartime defense force to more than 25,000 soldiers, developing air surveillance capabilities and building a rapid reaction force. And since 1993, all three countries have been building cooperative security networks, including the Baltic Naval Squadron and Baltic Defense College.
      Lithuania President Valdas Adamkus personally lobbied for NATO membership when he spoke with Bush last month in Washington -- a meeting originally set for Sept. 11.
      Lithuania's southern neighbor Poland was one of the three former Soviet-bloc countries accepted when NATO last expanded -- in spring 1999. The other newcomers were Hungary and the Czech Republic.
      Romania and Slovenia were NATO candidates in 1999 — and are among the nine leading bidders for the next growth spurt. Others are Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Slovakia.
      Along with the Baltics, top candidates are believed to include Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia -- countries that could help the alliance in the troubled Balkan region. But a need for military reforms in each country has been cited as a stumbling block to admittance.
      Stability problems in Macedonia and Albania jeopardize those countries' NATO bids, and alliance officials have said they will see whether how this year's election turns out in Slovakia before deciding its eligibility.
      In much of East Europe, the issues of NATO expansion and EU enlargement are closely linked. All NATO candidates also want to join the EU, which could add up to a dozen countries in 2004. The joint communique issued by Fischer and the Baltic ministers, for example, said their meeting included "extensive" talks on the EU and a "profound discussion of international security issues including NATO enlargement."

      TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — An outdoor public toilet in a tourist hot spot might sound like a good idea, but it becomes less so, perhaps, when it costs 2.3 million kroons (dlrs 130,000) in a nation with an average monthly salary of 5,000 kroons (dlrs 300).
      City officials in Tallinn, capital of this ex-Soviet republic, last month had such a toilet installed, prompting outrage in the cash-strapped nation of 1.4 million people.
      Prosecutor spokeswoman Inga Lill said Friday that an investigation has begun into whether city funds were misused in purchasing the car-sized, Swedish-made unit -- complete with electronic doors and chrome door handles.
      A scarcity of public toilets has been a problem in all three Western-oriented Baltic states, including Latvia and Lithuania.
      Estonia's Ohtuleht daily newspaper, citing local builders, said 200 toilets could have been constructed for the price of the single Swedish one, which had a retail value of 1 million kroons (dlrs 60,000). Shipping costs and other expenses added 1.3 million kroons (dlrs 70,000) to the tab.
      The daily said the bathroom was ordered last year from a Stockholm-based manufacturer called Danfo. Current city leaders, who came to power after the deal was made, said no more would go up.
      "But it makes no sense to demolish this outhouse of gold now. Too much money's already been sunk into it," Deputy Mayor Vladimir Panov said.
      The toilet, which has a small stall on either side and can be used for 2 Estonian kroons (11 cents), is located in the heavily visited medieval Old Town near parliament. It also is reportedly prone to breaking down.
      An "Out of Order!" sign was taped to its door on one recent evening -- and someone could be seen urinating in a nearby park.

      MOSCOW, Feb 11, 2002 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) — President Vladimir Putin believes that a mechanical expansion of NATO would be counterproductive, but admits that "every country has the right to choose a way to ensure its security," including the Baltic countries. He said so in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, that was published on Monday.
      In his opinion, NATO is a defensive bloc, in the first place, and its expansion "should promote the improvement of world security, as well as the security of its member states."
      "Ask residents of New York whether or not they will feel more safe, if Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia become NATO members. I think they will say No," President Putin said. He assumed as well that "many of them would ask where those countries are situated." If one asks Russians, whether the joining of NATO by the Baltic countries would be good for them, "the overwhelming majority of them will answer that it would be bad for Russia," Putin said. He thinks that in that case Russians would feel less safe, because "the infrastructure of the military bloc would come closeer to our borders."