GENERAL / ECONOMIC EVENTS
      SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, RIGA-Meeting of the prime ministers of the Baltic and Nordic countries in Riga.

      RIGA, Aug 7 (Reuters) -- A top Nazi hunter slammed ex-Soviet Estonia on Wednesday for failing to investigate war crimes suspects thought to have helped Hitler exterminate Jews in a massacre 60 years ago in Belarus.
      The criticism comes after weeks of urging by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for a probe into participation by some Estonians in the August 7, 1942, Novogrudok massacre. It also follows negative reaction in editorial pages and in the provinces to the Centre's new initiative to hunt war crimes suspects in the Baltic states.
      The issue has cropped up at a particularly sensitive time for the image-conscious Balts, who hope to win invitations to join NATO and wrap up talks on entering the European Union this year.
      Last month the Wiesenthal Centre sent a list of possible war crimes suspects to Estonian authorities.
      Separately, it also announced financial rewards for information leading to arrests and convictions of citizens of all three Baltic states involved in World War Two atrocities.
      Shortly after receiving the list, Estonian security police said they had found no evidence that the suspects, former members of the Nazi-organised Estonian 36th Police Battalion, had attacked Jews.
      This contradicted the conclusions of a special state commission that said the battalion took part in the 1942 killing of almost all the Jews still surviving in the town of Novogrudok. Some 2,500 Jews were murdered there.
      "Despite subsequent feeble explanations...the truth is that the stance of the Security Police Board is, more than anything else, a reflection of the lack of political will in Tallinn to bring Estonian Nazi murderers to justice," the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Jerusalem head Efraim Zuroff said in his English version of the editorial he submitted to the Eesti Paevaleht daily.
      The Nazis occupied Estonia in 1941, driving out the Soviets who had invaded the Baltics the year before in an occupation in which tens of thousands were executed or shipped to Siberia.
      Almost 95 percent of the pre-war Jewish population in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was killed after Germany invaded.
      NO CONVICTIONS
      Though there have been several attempts, no war crimes suspect has been convicted and sentenced in the Baltics in the decade since independence from Moscow. Nazi hunters have blamed foot-dragging on local prosecutors.
      In a final attempt to beat a race against time, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said last month it would pay $10,000 for information leading to successful legal action in a "Last Chance" programme unveiled in the Baltics.
      While reaction to the initiative has been negative in some quarters, Zuroff said the centre had received offers of information.
      "On the one hand we're getting a lot of information, on the other hand we're getting a lot of flack," he told Reuters.
      In provincial Lithuania, a far-right member of the Taurage district council last month burned a mock Israeli flag with the sounds of Nazi marches blaring in the background.
      In Estonia, a small county government representative offered $20,000 for information on Jewish communists responsible for Stalin-era crimes in a letter published in a small weekly newspaper.

      BRUSSELS, Aug 12 (Reuters) -- If the European Union achieves its historic goal of eastern enlargement in the next 18 months, don't be surprised if monuments start going up in the squares of Poland and Hungary to a German little known in Western Europe.
      Candidate states know that no one has worked harder than Guenter Verheugen, the EU commissioner for enlargement, to make sure they join the wealthy western European club after years of wrenching economic and political reform since the communist era.
      The plain-talking, bespectacled Social Democrat has become a household name in the swath of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea eyeing EU membership in 2004 or at the latest 2008.
      Nearly three years into a job he clearly loves, Verheugen tirelessly criss-crosses a region still dogged by unemployment, low living standards and environmental woes, exhorting governments to speed up reforms needed for membership.
      And he never misses a chance to tell the 15 current member states that enlargement is too important to fail and will bring big economic and political benefits to them too.
      "One day we will have to put up a monument to him," said Danuta Huebner, Polish Secretary of State for European Affairs.
      "He knows our psychology, our Polish reality," she said.
      Ten countries aim to conclude accession talks in December and to join the EU in 2004. They are Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus. Bulgaria and Romania hope to join a few years later.
      For the candidate countries Verheugen, a former confidant of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, is a skilful negotiator with the instinct of a seasoned politician for when to use the "stick" and when the "carrot" to achieve results.
      PASSION
      But his stolid, methodical manner conceals a passion for the cause of European unification that can be traced back to his early days amid the ruins of post-war Germany.
      "I was born in 1944, so I remember the destroyed German cities. Such experience shows that EU integration is not only the best way to guarantee peace but also the best way to achieve prosperity," the Rhinelander said recently.
      Enlargement is a quintessentially German interest -- effectively making Germany the geographical and economic centre of a reunited Europe. Who better than a German to sell the cost of enlargement to sceptical German voters?
      Yet while he is respected in Brussels as a competent operator in full command of a large and complex portfolio, Verheugen is sometimes suspected of taking orders from Berlin.
      For example, he has stated repeatedly that enlargement without Poland -- by far the biggest candidate -- is simply "unthinkable," echoing Schroeder.
      Diplomats say that while this may be true, especially given Germany's guilt feelings over its World War Two occupation of Poland, Verheugen's comments have fed fears among Hungarians and Czechs that they might be kept waiting for Warsaw.
      That is less of a concern now because Poland, which lagged its neighbours in accession talks last year, is back among the frontrunners. And Verheugen has on other occasions told Warsaw it risks missing the boat if it does not press on with reforms.
      Verheugen's critics have also pointed to his very German insistence that workers from candidate states be excluded from the EU jobs market for up to seven years after accession.
      This position reflected German and Austrian fears of being inundated with cheap labour from the east after enlargement.
      POLITICAL REALISM
      Verheugen's supporters say it merely shows his political realism. In any case, the final arrangements allow member states to admit eastern workers from day one after enlargement if they wish -- and several have pledged to do so.
      On the other side, candidates grumbled loudly of discrimination when the Commission proposed in January to grant their farmers only 25 percent of the income support received by current member states.
      The figure would rise to 100 percent over 10 years, according to the proposal, which has yet to be endorsed by the EU member governments.
      Giving the lie to suggestions that Verheugen does only Berlin's bidding, Germany led criticism of the Commission plan, saying any farm aid for the candidate countries would complicate efforts to reform the costly Common Agricultural Policy.
      Verheugen stuck to his guns, predicting calmly that the final deal offered to the candidates in late October or November will include some direct payments but not on the scale that the applicant countries would like.
      As one EU diplomat observed, "when he is criticised by the candidates for offering too little and by the member states for giving away too much, you sense that he has probably got it just about right."
      Nevertheless, accusations that the Commission, and Verheugen personally, have whitewashed the candidates' true state of readiness for EU membership refuse to die down.
      The gross domestic product per capita of most candidate countries is half or less that of current member states.
      Several candidates -- the three Baltic states, Slovenia and Slovakia -- have existed as independent states for only around a decade and had to build institutions virtually from scratch.
      Even old, established states such as Poland and Bulgaria are struggling to modernise their creaking legal and administrative systems in line with EU requirements.
      FEARS OF DELAY
      Yet Verheugen plays down such fears, saying that in some cases the candidates have even surpassed some member states in transposing EU laws and regulations into national legislation.
      He fears that setting unrealistically high standards for the candidates risks stoking anger and disaffection among their voters and possibly delaying enlargement for a generation.
      Born on April 28, 1944 in the Rhineland town of Bad Kreuznach, Verheugen worked as a journalist before entering German politics to work for the liberal Free Democratic Party.
      In 1982, he switched to the Social Democrats in an unusual move that underscored his antipathy to Helmut Kohl, the Christian Democrat then chancellor of Germany who led a coalition with the Free Democrats.
      Verheugen steadily built contacts in eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, though he was initially sceptical about prospects for any early enlargement of the EU.
      He entered Schroeder's government in 1998 as deputy foreign minister, playing a role in maintaining domestic support for Germany's participation in the Kosovo war.
      As a member of Romano Prodi's Commission since 1999, he spearheaded the drive to double the number of candidates negotiating for entry from six to 12 -- overruling more cautious Commission civil servants -- and to hold out the prospect of eventual EU membership for Turkey.
      In sharp contrast to some German Christian Democrats, who say predominantly Muslim Turkey does not belong in the Union, Verheugen said: "I don't see the EU as a Christian club. The criteria (for membership) are political, not religious."
      Though he insists Ankara must meet EU standards on human rights and political freedoms, Verheugen says Turkey is "strategically the most important of the applicant countries."
      Maybe Ankara too will one day boast a statue of Verheugen.

      SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, LATVIA -- General elections