RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- Latvian consumer prices in February rose 0.3 percent from January to February, driven higher by increases in food and gasoline and pharmaceuticals, Statistics Latvia reported Monday.
      Year-on-year, prices gained 2.1 percent.
      Latvia, a Baltic state of 2.4 million residents, did see a decline in prices on some goods, notably clothing, shoes and cigarettes.
      At the same time, the country's industrial output for January gained 6.7 percent compared to the year-ago period, driven mostly by an increase in production of food products, clothing and machinery.
      Compared with December 2002, industrial output was down by 2.4 percent.
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      VILNIUS, March 10 (Reuters) -- Lithuania has completed its last IMF-sponsored programme with a strong performance that bodes well for continued economic growth and rapid entry into the euro zone, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
      "Lithuania has come to be considered a star among the countries which the IMF reviews," Zuzana Brixiova, IMF Resident Representative in Lithuania, told reporters.
      The official said that the IMF had now performed the final review of a last stand-by arrangement, and relations with the small Baltic country would now be limited to surveillance and technical assistance.
      Lithuania outperformed Baltic neighbours Latvia and Estonia in 2002 as its gross domestic product (GDP) rose a "remarkable" 5.9 percent even as budget and current account deficits were kept in check, Brixiova said.
      The IMF expected economic growth to continue at 5.3 percent in 2003 and nearly 6.0 percent in coming years, while the fiscal deficit, which was just 1.2 percent of GDP in 2002, was seen remaining at moderate levels of about 2.0 percent of GDP in 2003-2004.
      Brixiova said Lithuania was well placed to adopt the euro as its national currency more rapidly than most of the other east European countries invited to join the European Union in 2004.
      "It is in a very favourable position since the litas is already pegged to the euro and it has held a good macroeconomic position for an extended time," she said, but warned against complacency since the European Central Bank would still have to be convinced.
      Brixiova said the Fund supported Lithuania's plan to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM-2), the waiting room for the euro, upon joining the EU in May 2004, and to maintain its currency board arrangement and euro peg until entering the single currency, perhaps as soon as 2006.
      She said the country's ongoing development would mostly depend on continued fiscal discipline and European integration, both of which were clearly boosting investor confidence.
      Other policy priorities were pension reform, better municipal finances, and job creation schemes to reduce stubbornly high unemployment levels and even out regional inequalities.

      WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) -- With the backing of the Bush administration, the Senate's foreign policy chief on Monday introduced a bill to repeal a Cold War provision that has long linked U.S. trade relations with Russia to emigration concerns.
      The move to establish "permanent normal trade relations" with Russia comes as President George W. Bush is trying to win Moscow's support for a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would give Iraq a March 17 deadline to disarm or face invasion.
      Bush needs nine votes out of the 15-member U.N. Security Council -- and no vetoes from permanent members France, Russia or China -- to get the resolution through.
      A spokesman for Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar said introduction of the bill to repeal the "Jackson-Vanik" provision for Russia was deliberately timed to coincide with the U.N. debate.
      It follows the Senate's unanimous vote last week to approve a treaty that slashes the United States' and Russia's deployed nuclear weapons by two-thirds over 10 years and places them in storage, the spokesman said.
      In a statement, Lugar said the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment was no longer needed to ensure Jews and other minorities could emigrate freely from Russia.
      "Over the years, (Jackson-Vanik) has been an effective tool to promote free emigration, but its continuing applicability to Russia no longer makes sense," the Indiana Republican said. "Since 1994, successive (U.S.) administrations have found Russia in full compliance with the requirements of freedom of emigration."
      RUSSIAN BARRIERS
      The Bush administration has repeatedly urged Congress to repeal the Jackson-Vanik provision in regards to Russia.
      However, it has been stymied on that front largely because of congressional unhappiness with Russian import barriers that block U.S. poultry and other meat products.
      Also, many lawmakers have not wanted to vote on permanent normal trade relations with Russia until Moscow has finished its negotiations to join the World Trade Organization.
      In practice, the White House no longer makes an annual decision on whether to maintain normal trade relations with Russia, as it did for many years with China.
      But it is still required by Jackson-Vanik to report semi-annually to Congress on Russian emigration practices.
      Repealing the provision would eliminate that "irritant" from U.S.-Russian relations and allow the two countries to establish permanent normal trade relations, Lugar said.
      Congress has already taken that step for a number of Eastern European countries and former Soviet Republics since 1991.
      That list includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Kyrgyzstan, Albania and Georgia.
      Maintaining the provision on Russia creates the impression "we think the Cold War is still going on," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick recently told lawmakers.
      Democrats in the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives plan to introduce their own bill to graduate Russia from Jackson-Vanik and establish permanent normal trade relations.
      That bill would also allow Congress to vote on the terms of Russia's entry in the WTO once those negotiations are done.

      THE HAGUE, March 11 (Reuters) -- The world's first permanent war crimes court swore in its first 18 judges on Tuesday to try the 21st century's worst crimes in a move hailed as the biggest legal milestone since Hitler's henchmen were tried at Nuremberg.
      The International Criminal Court's (ICC) judges, 11 men and seven women, were sworn in to tackle cases of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes at the court's inauguration in the Dutch seat of government amid pomp and ceremony.
      But even as the judges -- from Samoa and Latvia to South Africa, Brazil, Britain and France -- took their oaths, there were concerns the court would struggle to flex its muscle in the face of opposition from the United States, China and Russia.
      "By the solemn undertaking they have given here in open court, these eleven men and seven women, representing all regions of the world and many different cultures, have made themselves the embodiment of our collective consciences," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said.
      Some 89 countries have thrown their weight behind the court to try alleged crimes committed from when it came into being in July 2002. But lack of support from the United States and Russia -- two powers behind the Nuremberg Trials -- has been a setback.
      Support for the ICC -- a descendent of Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials spawned by World War Two -- was given added impetus by ad hoc U.N. war crimes tribunals set up to try crimes in the Balkans in the 1990s and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
      "The court which we have created, and in which we install judges today, responds to one of the darkest parts of our human experience, and yet this is also a ceremony of hope," said Jordan's Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, head of the assembly of states who backed the Rome Statute in 1998 to set up the ICC.
      WORLD JUDICIAL CAPITAL
      The ICC takes its seat in The Hague -- dubbed the world's legal capital -- alongside the U.N. war crimes tribunal trying ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the U.N.'s World Court, which only rules on disputes between states.
      The United States, Russia and China -- three of the five permanent members of the 15-seat U.N. Security Council -- have shunned the court with Washington leading a dogged campaign to ensure the court does not try to prosecute U.S. citizens.
      Fearing U.S. troops could face politically motivated prosecutions, Washington strongly opposes the ICC and declined an invitation to join Annan for the ceremony.
      The United States, which has withdrawn its signature from the 1998 treaty that set up the ICC, has been busy persuading other countries to seal bilateral agreements exempting all U.S. citizens from the court's authority.
      Supporters of the court said the row would not remove the symbolism of the inauguration hosted by Dutch head of state Queen Beatrix. The European Union, a staunch advocate for the court, also welcomed its becoming a reality.
      "The court sends a powerful message to any potential perpetrator of such crimes: impunity has ended," said EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten.
      Anyone -- from a head of state to an ordinary citizen -- will be liable to ICC prosecution for human rights violations, including systematic murder, torture, rape and sexual slavery. But it is still some way off being ready for its first case.
      The court officially opened in The Hague last year after 60 states backed it, but with just a skeleton administrative staff.
      Benjamin Ferencz, an 82-year-old former U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg at the ceremony, lamented Washington's stance.
      "The current leadership in the United States seems to have forgotten the lessons we tried to teach the rest of the world," Ferencz said.
      The ICC's first judges were elected in New York earlier this year. A prosecutor is expected to be appointed in April. The court has already received more than 200 complaints alleging war crimes, though it will say nothing about the nature of them.
      The new tribunal has jurisdiction only when countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute individuals for atrocities. Cases can be referred by states that have ratified the treaty, the U.N. Security Council or the tribunal's prosecutor after approval from three judges.
      Unlike the U.N. war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda -- based in The Hague and Arusha in Tanzania -- the ICC is not a United Nations body.
      (With additional reporting by Abigail Levene)

      RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- Support in Latvia for joining the European Union has remained steady in recent months, with 52 percent of those asked saying they'd vote "yes" in a referendum, according to an opinion poll released this week by Latvijas Fakti.
      Thirty-two percent said they'd vote "no," while 16 percent said they still hadn't decided whether they want this ex-Soviet Baltic republic of 2.4 million residents to join the EU.
      The survey of 1,001 people -- questioned a month ago -- had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.
      A similar study by the same polling agency in December 2002 found that 50 percent would vote in favor of joining.
      Latvia is one of 10 countries expected to enter the EU in 2004. It, along with Baltic neighbors Lithuania and Estonia, were invited to join last year.
      Latvia's EU referendum is scheduled for Sept. 20.
      EU backers argue membership will open up new trade markets and boost security by enmeshing Latvia irreversibly with the West. Critics claim that entry will mean a loss of Latvian sovereignty -- regained in 1991 after 50 years of often repressive rule by the Soviet Union.

      Associated Press Writer
      STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Swedish researchers said Tuesday that the Baltic Sea's population of gray seals is threatened by pollution.
      The sea mammals, which can be found along the Baltic Sea coast from Germany to Lithuania, are suffering from intestinal ailments, said Per Bjurholm, a spokesman for Sweden's environmental protection agency.
      "All we can say is that the number of gray seals affected by intestinal ulcers has increased dramatically," said Bjurholm.
      He said the likely culprits are pollutants and other substances that "we do not know very much about today."
      Anna Roos, an environmental scientist with the Swedish Museum of Natural History, said researchers are looking at several forms of pollutants.
      The number of seals infected could put the already small population at risk, Roos said.
      About 10,000 gray seals swim wild in the Baltic Sea, down from nearly 100,000 in 1900.
      In the 1970s, the population fell to just about 4,000 because of PCB, or polychlorinated biphenyl, pollution.
      "The seals were our alarm clock. If we hadn't had the Baltic Sea seals, the use of PCB may have continued to increase until we humans swallowed such concentrations that we, too, had become sterile and suffered intestinal ulceration," she said.
      Last month, a Danish government agency said that a virus that killed thousands of harbor seals in northern Europe in 1988 wiped out nearly half the population. Researchers said they were puzzled why the phocine distemper virus only hit harbor seals and not gray seals.

      Associated Press Writer
      RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- A newspaper in this ex-Soviet republic said Tuesday it has refused to publish an advertisement offering US$10,000 for information about Nazi war criminals, calling cash rewards an improper way to hunt down Holocaust perpetrators.
      Kurzemes Vards, a newspaper in the port city of Liepaja -- about 200 kilometers (120 miles) southwest of the capital, Riga -- is the only one among the country's several newspapers not to publish the war-crimes ad.
      "The Holocaust was too horrifying to try to find those who are to blame by using such methods," Kurzemes Vards editor Andzils Remess told The Associated Press. "There are proper investigative offices for this purpose."
      He said the newspaper regularly publishes articles about how Jews in Liepaja were killed during the 1941-44 Nazi occupation of Latvia, now an independent country of 2.5 million people.
      Four other regional newspapers said they would run the ads this week. Four newspapers in Riga printed similar ads in January.
      Remess said the paper would consider printing the ad if the reward offer was removed.
      The advertisements are the centerpiece of "Operation Last Chance," an effort to prosecute any still-living Nazi war criminals in the Baltic states -- including Estonia and Lithuania -- led by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.
      The ad that Kurzemes Vards refused to run includes a grainy, black-and-white picture of two nude Jewish women, their hands bound with rope, being led to the edge of a sand pit on a Liepaja beach to be shot. Most victims were buried in mass graves near the beach, just outside Liepaja.
      "This is about your Jewish neighbors ... the ones who were murdered," boldface text above the photograph states.
      Some 7,000 Jews from Liepaja were killed during the Nazi occupation, with both Germans and Latvians taking part in the killing.
      In all, approximately 80,000 Jews in Latvia -- 90 percent of the prewar Jewish population -- were killed.
      Lithuanian newspapers ran similar ads in December, but Estonian papers refused to run them after police officials complained that their phone numbers on them intimated they had sponsored the campaign.
      Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office, criticized Kurzemes Vards for withholding the ad.
      "We're going to do whatever we can to get them to run it," he said from New York.
      Zuroff said the Baltic states haven't done enough to prosecute Nazi war criminals since they gained independence during the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse.
      Soviet prosecutors tried and convicted hundreds of people accused of Nazi atrocities in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia immediately after the war.

      MOSCOW, March 11 (Reuters) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin shuffled key security posts on Tuesday, boosting the authority of the main successor body to the Soviet-era KGB security service he once served.
      Putin, a KGB agent in now-defunct East Germany for six years, issued a decree disbanding the tax police and turning its resources over to a new agency for fighting drug trafficking -- to be headed by a close ally from his native St Petersburg.
      The Interior Ministry will take over the tax police job.
      Also disbanded was the FAPSI agency responsible for government communications, with its duties handed over to the FSB, the main successor to the KGB, and the defence ministry.
      The FSB, or federal security service, further secured control over Russia's border guards. Putin headed the body from 1998 for about a year.
      "An initial analysis of this would lead you to believe that the FSB has virtually taken on the form of what used to be the KGB," liberal member of parliament Boris Nadezhdin said.
      Putin, in comments to government ministers broadcast on television, said the changes were dictated by a mixed record by government agencies in tackling crime and terrorism.
      "The fight against illicit drugs...and even terrorism is becoming tougher," he said. "Unfortunately, it cannot be said with any certainty that authorities have been acting effectively and in a generally agreed fashion."
      Appointed to head the drugs-busting body was Viktor Cherkesov, an ex-intelligence officer and one of Putin's seven prefects, for the region around St Petersburg.
      Analysts said the strengthened position of security agencies reflected public support for them ahead of parliamentary elections in December and presidential polls next April.
      "Putin's decision is logical and rational," said Boris Makarenko, deputy head of the Institute of Political Technologies think tank.
      "Previous years were devoted to rooting out the image of the KGB by decentralising it and this was done well. But the sheer size of security agencies was not reflected in their success."
      With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the KGB was split into several bodies, with the FSB responsible for domestic security and the SVR for foreign intelligence.
      Heads of bodies affected by the reshuffle were given new jobs -- the FAPSI chief was put in charge of weapons industries, the head border guard was appointed Russia's envoy to NATO and the tax police boss was made ambassador to the European Union.
      Putin's backers said the moves were part of administrative reforms launched in 2000. But some analysts said these had failed to extend to a promised overhaul of regional government.

      Associated Press Writer
      MOSCOW (AP) -- Aslan Dzhabrailov says he wasn't supposed to be seen again, dead or alive.
      He says Russian troops in Chechnya dragged him from his bed last month and tortured him, then ignited explosives under him and his dead brother, apparently to erase the evidence. Had the explosives gone off, the men's remains would have been unrecognizable.
      In what would be a grisly twist to the pattern of alleged military abuses in Chechnya's 3 1/2-year war, residents and human rights campaigners say fragments of blown-up bodies are being found all over the war-ruined region. Rather than put a stop to human rights violations, the military appears to be doing its best to hide them, critics say. Some even see signs of a coordinated campaign of killing Chechens.
      "Lately, near a pipeline not far from our village, (Chechen) policemen have been finding people's blown-up remains," said Murzabek Saidulayev of Belgatoi, about 29 kilometers (18 miles) south of Grozny, the capital. "That's where the federals (troops) like to blow up corpses. They drive there in armored personnel carriers."
      Lawmaker and rights campaigner Sergei Kovalyov theorizes that the intent is to make it difficult for independent investigators to connect the corpses to the soldiers who allegedly arrested them. Bodies blown up beyond recognition can more easily be blamed on the rebels, he says.
      Kovalyov traveled to the United States and Britain last month to press for action, but was told "quiet diplomacy" was preferable. He says that isn't working.
      President Vladimir Putin and other officials have repeatedly called on troops to obey the law during security sweeps that civilians say often lead to disappearances.
      Last year the military ordered arresting troops to fully identify themselves and inform relatives of detainees' whereabouts. But rights advocates say the order is ignored and most likely meant to appease critics.
      The pattern of blown-up bodies, and the fact that remains of people from different parts of Chechnya are found in the same place, point to a centralized system of violence, Kovalyov said.
      "What comes to mind immediately are death squads. ... The question of genocide could be raised," he added.
      Igor Botnikov, a Kremlin spokesman on Chechnya, scoffed at the charges, saying he would "leave those words on Mr. Kovalyov's conscience."
      Asked if the charges were worth checking, he said all allegations of military abuse are investigated.
      Independent verification is impossible because violence and government restrictions prevent Western journalists from working unimpeded in Chechnya.
      Dzhabrailov, 23, spoke to The Associated Press on condition his location not be revealed because he feared reprisals. The details of his story match the patterns Kovalyov's allies at the Russian human rights group Memorial have documented.
      His head bandaged and his face covered in bruises, Dzhabrailov said masked troops stormed his house in the village of Pobedinskoye, 14 kilometers (9 miles) west of Grozny, at dawn on Feb. 16. They pulled him and his brother Valid, 30, from their beds, and -- ignoring the pleas of their mother and sister -- handcuffed them, put sacks over their heads and drove for about an hour until they heard gates opening.
      He said he heard helicopters and believed he was at Khankala, the military's main base in Chechnya.
      Dzhabrailov was separated from his brother and brought to a basement, where he remained chained to a pipe for a day and a half. Masked men visited him periodically, jabbing his kidneys with guns and breaking his nose with flashlights.
      They demanded Dzhabrailov confess to having fought with the rebels. Dzhabrailov said he was never involved in fighting.
      In the evening, he said, an unmasked man came, silently put a bag over Dzhabrailov's head and led him to a vehicle.
      "A cold body lay under me," he said.
      After a long ride, the men removed the corpse from the truck and dragged Dzhabrailov onto the ground, his head still covered. He said he heard a shot and a bullet took off some skin above his ear.
      Dzhabrailov said he heard the men put something underneath him and the corpse and light it with a cigarette lighter.
      Then the truck left, and Dzhabrailov freed himself and extinguished the lit fuse.
      He looked at the corpse next to him and recognized his brother's mangled body by his clothes.

      VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) -- Police said Friday they seized more than 3 metric tons (8,818 pounds) of radioactive zirconium found stored in a garage in this port city.
      The zirconium was discovered as wrecking crews prepared to demolish several illegally built garages on the outskirts of Klaipeda, 300 kilometers (186 miles) west of the capital, Vilnius.
      The zirconium was found in 100 plastic bags and initial tests showed they were radioactive, police spokesman Gintaras Tamulaitis told The Associated Press.
      He said the bags were on the floor inside the abandoned garage made from sheet metal.
      Police cordoned off the area and brought in hazardous materials units to transport the zirconium to a nuclear waste site near the Ignalina nuclear power plant.
      Police said they didn't know what type of zirconium it was, but were investigating its origins and type.
      Zirconium is a grayish-white material that ignite spontaneously at high temperature. A naturally occurring substance, it can be found in the earth's crust, but not typically in large deposits.
      A variant, zirconium-93, is found in spent nuclear fuel and waste.
      Tamulaitis said they were searching for the garage's owners, whom he refused to identify. He said investigators were also trying to determine where the zirconium came from and how long it had been in the garage.
      Klaipeda, with a population of 200,000, is Lithuania's third biggest city and the country's biggest port. Ships come in and out of the port there with cargo from around the world.

      RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- Unemployment in Latvia showed a slight increase from January to February, Statistics Latvia reported Wednesday.
      The agency said that 7.9 percent of Latvians were without a job in February, up from 7.7 percent in January.
      The figure was down compared to the same time a year ago when unemployed stood at 8.2 percent.
      The Baltic state has a population of 2.4 million residents.
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      RIGA, March 21 (Reuters) -- American golfer Natalie Gulbis, hailed as one of the most promising young players in the game, will visit Latvia this summer to find her family roots and try to swap her citizenship, the Baltic News Service said on Friday.
      "Gulbis' interest in Latvia is simply incredible," the BNS quoted Latvia's Golf Federation spokesman Armands Puce as saying. "It is important for her to become a Latvian citizen."
      The 20-year-old, who was runner-up to American Beth Bauer in the LPGA Rookie of the Year standings in 2002, would travel back to the small former Soviet republic her father John left more than 50 years ago during World War Two.
      Gulbis, the youngest player to qualify for an LPGA tournament at the age of 14, wants to set up a foundation to promote golf among young people in Latvia.
      Latvia is on the threshold of joining the European Union and NATO next year after breaking free from Moscow's rule in 1991.