WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- After meeting President Bush, Latvia's leader said on Monday there would be developments in the confrontation with Iraq within weeks.
      President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, one of 10 eastern European leaders to support U.S. efforts to disarm Baghdad, papered over transatlantic divisions on using military force to rid Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
      She cited a European Union emergency summit to forge a united front on the Iraq crisis as a sign "there is not really deep disagreement about the ultimate aims that we have to achieve."
      "The question is how are we going to go about it and what is the time frame that Iraq is to be given and, of course, what happens if it doesn't comply," she told reporters after her Oval Office talks with Bush. "The disagreement really is about the time frame and about the criteria of proof."
      The Bush administration, which says Iraq's arms programs are a threat to nations around the world, is evaluating all options to disarm Iraq -- including a possible new U.N. resolution implicitly authorizing the use of force.
      On Friday, the United States was rebuffed at the U.N. Security Council where some members lined up behind France's call for more weapons inspections and against military action
      The United States says inspections are failing but France has led the push for extended inspections and wants to wait on a second resolution at least until March 14, when inspectors report back to the 15-member council. They report on March 1 to the five permanent members with veto power -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.
      "I think time is running out. Time is running out and I think that we will be seeing developments within a matter of weeks," said Vike-Freiberga, whose nation is on the verge of joining NATO and the EU, said.
      The United States has said it would wait weeks -- but not months -- to give diplomacy a chance to disarm Iraq.
      "In a way, it was encouraging to see today that even (French) President (Jacques) Chirac conceded that, at some point, military intervention might be necessary to disarm Iraq if they have not complied," she said.
      SECOND RESOLUTION
      Chirac also said there was no need for a second U.N. resolution while inspections continued and France would oppose it. Arriving in Brussels for the EU summit, he said the international community was pursuing the aim of the peaceful disarmament of Iraq through inspectors, and they alone should say when that effort had reached an end.
      Consultations among Bush's foreign policy aides and with allies such as Britain on the possibility of another resolution were continuing but no final decision has been made to put one forward.
      With several council members shying away from taking a position and others making clear they are against the U.S. stance, Washington and London face a tough challenge to avoid a veto and win the minimum nine 'yes' votes needed for adoption.
      Bush has said he would welcome a second resolution if it did not block the quick use of military action to enforce Resolution 1441 passed in November that demanded Iraq disarm or face "serious consequences." He has also said he would lead a coalition of willing nations against Iraq without further U.N. backing.
      Latvia is likely to applaud any fresh U.N. resolution sanctioning military action against Iraq, partly due to history, even though a recent poll showed three quarters of Latvians opposed to a U.S. war on Iraq.
      "We certainly have seen the results of appeasement or rather the lack of them," Vike-Freiberga said. "It is much easier to tolerate a dictator when he is dictating over somebody else's life and not your own."

      The following is the ranking of 82 nations' ability to benefit from information and communication technology, according to the Global Information Technology Report by the World Economic Forum, the World Bank and the French-based international business school INSEAD.
 

      RIGA, Feb 19 (Reuters) -- Latvia's Foreign Minister said on Wednesday the ex-Soviet republic has European Union and U.S. backing against Russian state pipeline monopoly Transneft's decision to halt crude exports to its Ventspils oil port.
      Sandra Kalniete told Reuters EU Commissioner for Foreign Affairs Chris Patten had promised to bring up Ventspils during the EU-Russia energy dialogue in late March.
      "I feel and do believe that the EU will support us in this," she said. "Our problems with third parties are now seen as EU problems."
      Transneft has not scheduled exports from Ventspils in the first quarter of 2003, stretching Russia's export capacity.
      Russian oil firms normally use the ice-free port to ship abroad some 350,000 barrels per day but this winter without it they have faced delays at other ice-bound Baltic alternatives.
      Some traders see the move as part of Transneft's attempts to pressure Latvia into selling it a cheap stake in the Ventspils Nafta oil terminal which is due for privatisation at the end of the year.
      But Kalniete said the oil market was wrong in regarding the sale of the government's stake to Transneft as a done deal, adding that the government might call off the sale if it found it impossible to sell the stake under open market conditions.
      "There is no certainty at all that we will sell, not at all," she said, adding that she regarded Russia's decision to halt oil shipments to Ventspils as a clear breach of free-market principles.
      "It is clear that it is a political decision to exclude Latvia from oil exports," she said.
      "It is done to extend economic pressure, to force the Latvian government to sell them its stake. Secondly, it is a strategic decision to gain influence in east European and north European energy markets after our EU accession," she said.
      Latvia was recently invited to join both the EU and the western NATO defence alliance in 2004.
      BUSH SUPPORTS LATVIA
      Latvia's President Vaira Vike-Freiberga met U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington on Monday, and Kalniete said Bush had raised the issue of Ventspils as he was worried about Russian pressure on Latvia.
      "His attitude was that Russia had been recognised as a market economy and in a market economy the rules of the market must apply," Kalniete said.
      She added that she did not expect Ventspils to damage the long-term relations with Latvia's mighty Eastern neighbour, adding that Latvia strived to have a good working relationship with Russia.
      "But there will be an important landmark when we become members of NATO and the EU which will change our relationship with Russia," she said, adding that Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had yet to respond to an invitation to come to Riga to discuss bilateral issues including Ventspils.

      Your World -- Transcript. This is a partial transcript from Your World with Neil Cavuto, February 19, 2003, that was edited for clarity.
      NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: If the French have problems getting tough with Iraq, they might want to chat with this next lady. Her country knows very well the scourge of terror and totalitarianism. With us now, the president of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga.
      Madam President, thank you very much for joining us.
      VAIRA VIKE-FREIBERGA, PRESIDENT OF LATVIA: It's a pleasure being here.
      CAVUTO: I don't know if you had a chance, ma'am, to hear the British professor who said that there's not enough convincing proof, essentially, to go after Saddam, what do you say?
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: I think if we start looking at it in terms of burden of proof, then it could go on forever as a debate as to how much proof you would require and where would be the line and the criteria that you would accept. I think we have to go back to the resolution of the United Nations, Resolution 1441, where one had complete agreement, one had unanimity about what the definition of the situation was. And I haven't seen evidence or proof of things having so substantially improved since the time this resolution was taken.
      CAVUTO: You know, your strong position, ma'am, has put you conflict with some of the more established nations, certainly within NATO and the European Union. But you have stuck to that. What do you think of the French who all but dismiss your position?
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: It is, of course, their right to think as they see fit. We in Eastern Europe and certainly in Latvia have felt the results of indecision. We have felt the pain of tyranny. We have felt the price of oppression for half a century or more. There is hardly a family in Latvia that hasn't been touched by it. And in many ways you could say what we have been through has been the result of appeasement and of acceptance of tyranny.
      CAVUTO: Madam President, Jacques Chirac seemed to threaten some of these Eastern European countries, your own included, that they should just be quiet. What did you think of that treatment?
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: I think the Europe that we're all trying to build together, which we would like to think of as our Europe, is one where every nation will have a voice. And the more recently joining nations, as far as we're concerned, we haven't heard a precondition for membership that says that we should be seen but not heard. We've just completed our negotiations, got our invitation to Copenhagen, and such a clause was not included.
      CAVUTO: Let me ask but the state of Europe these days. Has anyone ever told you, Madam President, that you stuck your neck out long before many other nations did. My hat's off to you for that. But you took a great deal of political risk in doing so. And that now France and some of the more established countries, including Germany, seem to be threatening your very membership eventually in the E.U., and NATO. Are they strong-arming you?
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: That remains to be seen. We would like to think that our negotiations with the European Commission, the process -- the enlargement of the European Union -- will proceed according to the Copenhagen criteria, according to our ability to close all the 31 chapters of negotiations. And that other considerations which are not in the books as we were starting negotiations or indeed finishing them, that these will not prevail. And that the kind of Europe that we have been thinking we are joining is the one that we will, in fact, be joining in First of May, 2004.
      CAVUTO: Have you feared that because you stuck to this position, you have never wavered, you have never vacillated, that there's going to be hell to pay for you and other Eastern bloc countries that have essentially sided with America?
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: I would like to think not. I think it's something that may raise certain feelings of disappointment in some countries. But I think it is nothing that diplomacy could not settle. And I would like to.
      CAVUTO: Well, are you bitter, ma'am, at the French? They are the ones who seem to be telling you, Mr. Jacques Chirac, to shut up.
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: With the past that we have had in Latvia, we can't afford the luxury of being bitter at anybody.
      CAVUTO: So you just accept it, you take it.
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: Oh, yes.
      CAVUTO: What do you do if the French or the Germans come back to you and say, you want in to the E.U., you want in to NATO, you'd better change your view?
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: Well, the European Union has 15 members in it. And I would like to think that they would have to have a serious debate about changing the rules of admission. So far, you see, we have come complied with them all. If any new ones are to arise, then certainly two countries alone will not set the tone, it will have to be a consensus. That's why we like the European Union. It works by consensus.
      CAVUTO: All right. Madam President, a real pleasure.
      VIKE-FREIBERGA: It's been a pleasure.
      CAVUTO: Thank you very much. The president of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga.

      Riga, Latvia -- Diena, on France-EU:
      French President Jacques Chirac's discontent with EU candidates' wish not to keep their mouths shut and not to allow Paris to speak for all of Europe eventually will be good to unite the continent. His attempt to tell others how to think and behave only confirmed that it's impossible in Europe to do that.
      The agitation and protest caused by his tirade shows perfectly how absurd some euroskeptics' arguments are about losing sovereignty, a Brussels "dictatorship" or the feeling that "EU equals USSR." Europe cannot exist without diversity of membership, tolerance, dialogue and unity, which are achieved in talks -- not by decree. This is not Napoleon's Europe anymore, this is dissident Vaclav Havel's Europe -- one run by consensus.
      Maybe someone in Paris would like to play the role of Europe's "patriarch," one who makes other countries stoop to knock on Europe's door. But by forbidding others to express their independent views, France risks remaining alone with its own opinion.
      Even now Chirac's attempts to speak for all Europeans can't be taken seriously. It will look even more childish after 10 more countries join the EU.

      SIGULDA, Latvia (AP) — Three-time Olympic champion Georg Hackl led Germany to the team title at the luge World Championships Friday, a fraction of a second ahead of suprise second-place finisher Latvia.
      Germany posted a time of 2 minutes, 15.618 seconds to win the team event -- which awards consistency in the men's and women's singles run and men's doubles combined format.
      Hackl finished in 49.078 seconds to place second in the men's run. Sylke Otto's time of 43.292 seconds was third among women. Germany's men's doubles team of Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch were fifth overall with 43.248 seconds.
      Latvia's Anna Ortlova, the ex-Soviet republic's top luger, clocked the fastest women's run -- 43.166 seconds -- and is a medal contender in Saturday's women's singles event on her home track.
      Team Latvia finished in a combined time of 2:15.934, to pick up the small Baltic Sea coast nation's first luge World Championship medal since it declared independence during the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
      The brothers team of Andreas and Wolfgang Linger's doubles time of 43.066 led Austria to third place.
      Americans Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin, the 2002 Olympic silver medalists, were second in the doubles at 43.165. The United States finished seventh overall.
      The women's and doubles finals will be held Saturday and the men's singles are Sunday.

      SIGULDA, Latvia (AP) — Results Saturday from the World Luge Championships (heat times in parentheses).
Women's Singles
1, Sylke Otto, Germany, 1 minute, 25.602 seconds (42.713 seconds-42.889).
2, Silke Kraushaar, Germany, 1:25.628 (42.733-42.895).
3, Barbara Niedernhuber, Germany, 1:26.151 (43.050-43.101).
4, Anna Orlova, Latvia, 1:26.182 (42.978-43.204).
5, Veronika Halder, Austria, 1:26.292 (43.035-43.257).
6, Sonja Manzenreiter, Austria, 1:26.373 (43.109-43.264).
7, Liliya Ludan, Ukraine, 1:26.542 (43.132-43.410).
8, Anke Wischnewski, Germany, 1:26.547 (43.356-43.191).
9, Anastasia Antonova, Russia, 1:26.587 (43.213-43.374).
10, Brenna Margol, United States, 1:26.796 (43.449-43.347).
Men's Doubles
1, Andreas Linger and Wolfgang Linger, Austria, 1:25.363 (42.634-42.729).
2, Tobias Schiegl and Markus Schiegl, Austria, 1 minute 25.386 seconds (42.658 -42.728 seconds).
3, Patric Leitner and Alexander Resch, Germany, 1:25.413 (42.665-42.748).
4, Mark Grimmette and Brian Martin, United States, 1:25.444 (42.763-42.681).
5, Christian Oberstolz and Patrick Gruber, Italy, 1:25.464 (42.635-42.829).
6, Gerhard Plankensteiner and Oswald Haselrieder, Italy, 1:25.733 (42.776-42.957).
7, Andre Florschuetz and Thorsten Wustlich, Germany, 1:25.761 (42.986-42.775).
8, Lubomir Mick and Walter Marx, Slovakia, 1:25.820 (42.759-43.061).
9, Steffen Skel and Steffen Woller, Germany, 1:26.981 (43.051-42.930).
10, Kurt Brugger and Wilfried Huber, Italy, 1:26.027 (442.986-43.041).