EU warns 9 states over failure
to implement telecoms directives
10/13/05 01:32 pm
By Simon Zekaria
Copyright
2005, AFX News Limited
BRUSSELS (AFX) — The European
Commission has warned nine member states to take swift action to implement
parts of the bloc's directives on telecoms liberalisation, as it filed
proceedings for breaching requirements laid down under EU laws.
"They must get their act together. Two years down
the line, we think it is time for them to get down to work," said Peter
Rodford, head of the commission's regulatory unit for media and information.
The commission late last night said it opened
infringement proceedings against nine states — Belgium, the Czech
Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland and Slovenia
— for allegedly failing to keep up with electronic communications market
reviews required by law.
It added that it has also sent formal charges as the
second stage of the infringement procedure — set out in a 'reasoned
opinion' — against Cyprus and Slovenia on alleged lack of independence of
their national regulators.
The commission is also charging Malta for allegedly
allowing different operators to prevent users keeping the same mobile phone
numbers when seeking competitive rates on different nertworks.
The member states charged have two months to respond
to the commission.
Continued non-compliance could lead to an appearance
at the European courts where fines can be imposed.
Ukrainian, NATO troops
participate in massive anti-terror drill
Oct 13 2005, 21:23
Copyright 2005, Kyiv Post
Copyright 2005, Associated Press
YAVORIV MILITARY TRAINING FACILITY, Ukraine
(AP) — Ukraine staged a major NATO-led anti-terror and disaster
relief exercise on Oct. 13, a step that this ex-Soviet republic hopes might
improve its chances of joining the Western military alliance.
The four-day drill, held near Ukraine's border with
NATO-member Poland, finished with a simulated terrorist attack on a chemical
facility. The maneuvers, officials said, provided important training for
nations involved in the global war on terror.
Elite Alfa troops of the Ukrainian State Security
agency parachuted from a helicopter, while a separate assault team set off stun
grenades to subdue the pretend terrorist group that seized the dilapidated
Soviet-era building, being used as the chemical facility for the drill.
Multinational emergency crews rushed to the scene to
fight a giant plume of fire and smoke.
Hosting the Joint Assistance 2005 maneuvers is
Ukraine's latest effort in its bid to join NATO. The alliance has said its door
remains open to this nation of 47 million, which shifted to a pro-Western
course after last year's Orange Revolution.
"This is an important step toward making our ties
with Europe even closer, particularly in combatting such a serious threat as
terrorism and the use of chemical weapons," said Ukrainian Major Gen. Volodymyr
Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine's Security Service.
The exercises involved 12 countries and 30 observer
nations, and included a major deployment of field hospitals, rescue equipment
and reconnaissance armored vehicles. The NATO-led Department for Emergency
Situations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were
among the 1,000 personnel involved, including 250 Ukrainians.
NATO's Assistant Deputy Secretary-General Maurits
Jochems, who was the highest ranking NATO official to attend the exercises,
said such multinational maneuvers would help bring Ukraine closer to NATO.
"One thing is to share values, objectives and
political ideas," he said. "But another thing is the performance, what do you
do in practice and, in that sense, this is yet another contribution."
NATO has stepped up cooperation with Ukraine, but
has refused to speculate when it might offer Kyiv membership. NATO says Ukraine
still must prove its democratic credentials, fight corruption and modernize its
bloated military.
A NATO delegation headed by Secretary General Jaap
de Hoop Scheffer is expected in Ukraine next week, and Ukrainian officials hope
to receive more clear signals about Ukraine's possible membership then.
President Viktor Yushchenko made membership in both
NATO and the European Union key goals for his nation, and many believe that
Ukraine will follow a path similar to other former Eastern bloc nations, who
were offered NATO membership years before the EU opened its doors.
Analysts say that Ukraine's best chance of being
invited to join NATO could be at the alliance's 2008 summit. But opinion polls
show that most Ukrainians remain suspicious of NATO, their old Cold War foe.
Mykola Sungurovskiy, a military analyst with the
Kyiv-based Razumkov think-tank, predicted that Ukraine's pro-NATO course was
set.
"Too much effort has been employed, and it's easier
now to move forward than to turn the river upstream," he said.
Ukraine already has started trimming its
285,000-person military, which Defense Minister Anatoly Gritsenko promised
would be cut in half within the next six years.
Ukraine is a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace
program, which includes many former Eastern bloc countries and is considered a
stepping stone toward full NATO membership. A Ukrainian battalion is also
deployed in the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Serbia's southern province of
Kosovo.
But Ukrainian membership in NATO could complicate
Kyiv's relationship with its giant eastern neighbor, Russia.
Moscow, which sent just three observers to this
week's Ukrainian drill, has participated and even hosted past NATO exercises,
but the Kremlin bristles at the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine.
Ukraine's military is based on Russian military
technology, as virtually all of Ukraine's weapons and equipment are of
Soviet-era design.
In the Oct. 13 exercises, French soldiers wearing
airtight rubber coveralls and gas masks combed through the pretend chemical
facility. A Ukrainian SWAT team seized surviving black-clad terrorists,
throwing them to the ground and handcuffing them, while rescue teams from
Georgia, Portugal and Latvia milled around inside the seven-floor structure
evacuating casualties.
Shrill sirens went off as a misty rain fell over the
training grounds. Emergency crews from multiple countries provided medical
aide, while rescuers hosed each other off with a decontaminating liquid.
SEB AB Latvia unit aims for 35
pct of Latvian market
10.13.2005, 02:49 PM
Copyright 2005, AFX News Limited
RIGA (AFX) — SEB Dzivibas Apdrosinasana
(SEB Life Insurance) aims to keep its leading position on the Latvian life
insurance market and eventually take at least a 35 pct share, BNS news agency
reported.
The company's president Ugis Voronovs said to
journalists that this will be challenging because there are many rivals in the
industry.
In eight months of this year SEB Dzivibas
Apdrosinasana took 32 pct of the Latvian life insurance market.
Latvian parliament votes for
tightening law on demonstrations
13.10.2005, 18.44
Copyright 2005, Itar-Tass
RIGA, October 13 (Itar-Tass) —
Latvia’s parliament has adopted in the first reading amendments tightening
the law on pickets, street processions and rallies.
The right-wing majority
supported the bill, while the Russian-speaking opposition sees it as a
crackdown on the freedom of speech and an attempt to hinder protest actions in
defense of ethnic minorities.
If the amendments eventually take effect, all those
punished in the past for various abuses during protest actions will be
prohibited from staging them again. Holding demonstrations on certain days will
be prohibited, too.
Many Russian-speaking opposition politicians,
including parliament members, have been subject to various administrative
punishments, mostly fines, over the past few years. Most such cases occurred
during protest demonstrations in defense of Russian schools. If adopted, the
amendments will ban many leading opposition politicians from the list of
official organizers of future protest actions.
“Latvia looks like a police state ever
more,” the leader of the opposition Party of Popular Accord parliamentary
faction, Janas Urbanovich has told Itar-Tass.
Of late, the Latvian authorities more and more often
denied permission to hold protest actions.
The Riga city legislature has systematically refused
the organizations of Russian speakers permission for pickets and street
processions. The opposition protests such steps in courts of law and wins in
most casts.
October 14, 2005
St.Petersburg Times
OPINION
By Alexei Pankin
Moscow — President Vladimir Putin
hailed an agreement on visas reached at last week’s European Union-Russia
summit as a step toward visa-free travel. The agreement will make it easier for
certain categories of Russian citizens, including students, academics,
journalists and businesspeople, to obtain visas to 11 of the EU’s 25
member countries.
On one hand, as a journalist I’m pleased that
it will soon be easier for me to travel to Europe. On the other hand, I find it
appalling that when it comes to the universally recognized right of freedom of
movement, Russians are once more being divided into the haves and the
have-nots.
The whole thing reminds me of the 1970s and 1980s,
when Soviet citizens also had a difficult time traveling abroad. In those days,
of course, the hard part was getting out of the country. Now, the trick is to
get other countries to let you in. By signing the Helsinki Accord 30 years ago
under pressure from the West, the Soviet regime recognized — at least on
paper — the right of its citizens to travel freely abroad. In practice,
however, this right was enjoyed by roughly the same categories of citizens who
have now been promised a simplified visa application procedure by the EU.
In the early 1980s, my father served as Soviet
ambassador to Sweden. For a long time, I refused to visit him because the
procedure for obtaining permission to travel to “capitalist
countries” was both lengthy and humiliating. Why should I have to endure
endless interviews with Komsomol and party officials just to visit my parents?
Eventually, the restrictions on foreign travel were
lifted, but before long I once more began to avoid taking trips to the West.
It’s not enough that we have to stand in line for hours just to get into
foreign consulates — the questions on the application forms pry much too
deeply into our private lives. Why, for example, do I have to furnish foreign
consulates with my salary details, not to mention bank statements, when that
information is considered confidential even within my own company?
In a way, the treatment of Russians by foreign
governments is reminiscent of hostage-taking. It used to be that Russians
vacationing in Croatia, for example, could travel to Venice for one day without
a visa. Travelers left their passports at the border and were informed that the
privilege of a visa-free day in Venice would remain in effect until such time
as someone failed to return for his passport; that is, until someone decided to
stay in Italy illegally.
The difficulties we face in obtaining visas are
usually justified as a response to the large number of Russians living
illegally abroad. Moskovskiye Novosti has reported that nearly half of the
150,000 to 200,000 Russians living in Britain are illegal aliens.
But isn’t this another form of hostage-taking?
After all, law-abiding citizens are being denied the presumption of innocence
simply because a number of their compatriots have chosen to break the law.
EU expansion has also restricted Russians’
freedom of movement. We now need visas to travel to countries we had visited
freely our whole lives, including the former Soviet republics of Lithuania,
Latvia and Estonia.
Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union made
possible the fall of the Berlin Wall. Boris Yeltsin’s Russia set loose the
republics that had made up the Soviet Union. The Iron Curtain was gone.
In its place the West has now erected a barbed-wire
fence. And the question of which Russians enjoy special treatment is being made
not by the KGB, but by democratic European governments. The only thing left is
to hang portraits of Felix Dzerzhinsky in the consulates of EU member
countries.
Alexei Pankin is opinion page editor at
Izvestia.
Congressman Shimkus Makes
Historic Speech in Latvia
10/14/05
Copyright 2005, WJBD Radio
Latvia — Congressman John Shimkus made
history recently on a Congressional trip to Lithuania and Latvia.
Shimkus was asked to address the Latvian Parliament
— the first non-head of state or non-Parliamentary leader ever asked to
do so. In the speech, Shimkus urged Latvia to maintain its troops as part of
the coalition serving in Iraq.
Shimkus is co-chair of the Baltic caucus, of
Lithuanian descent, and active in Baltic causes in the United States. He is
also a US delegate to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Offering Asylum in Chernobyl's
No Man's Land
RADIOACTIVE REFUGE
Copyright 2005, DER SPIEGEL
By
Volker ter Haseborg in Minsk
Minsk — The dictator of Belarus,
Alexander Lukashenko, is making a cynical offer to refugee asylum seekers. You
can stay here, but only if you live in the No Man's Land created by the
Chernobyl disaster.
Sladria, 17, and her family could soon find
themselves living in a radioactive area.
Sladria, 17, and her family could soon find
themselves living in a radioactive area.
Sladria lost her homeland when she was seven. She
fled war-torn Afghanistan with her parents and six brothers and sisters, with
the aim of coming to the West. After first reaching Kazakhstan, they headed
towards Europe. But where they actually ended up was Belarus. That may be
Europe geographically speaking, but not politically. "We can't get to the
West," says Sladria, who is now 17 years old. The borders to the new EU
member states of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania are closed, she explains.
Sladria works in a facility for children of migrants
in Minsk. Together with other children, the young girl embroiders tablecloths
and oven gloves in return for a little bit of pocket money. Her parents have no
time for her, as both have to work in order to provide for the seven children.
Sometimes, Sladria says when the state-hired supervisor is out of earshot,
people call her names and curse her because of her dark skin color. In the
capital of Belarus, some here argue, there is no space for foreigners —
and people like Sladria are unwanted.
According to the wishes of the Belarussian dictator
Alexander Lukashenko, more than 200,000 refugees will soon be removed from
cities like Minsk, Brest and Grodno. Their new home will be a place in which
not even the poorest Belarussians would want to live.
Lukashenko wants to settle 22,000 immigrants in the
area around Gomel. They will be able to live in the places abandoned by the
population who once lived there. And straightaway they would receive asylum
status, which would formally grant them the same rights as Belarussians.
But the real reason for this new conciliatory tone
has nothing to do with looking after minority interests. Gomel is about 130
kilometers north of Chernobyl and is one of the areas most affected by
radiation after the nuclear reactor disaster of 1986. With this new settlement
policy Lukashenko wants to transform the contaminated area into a region of
economic prosperity.
A radioactive political issue
Radiation scientists are appalled by Lukashenko's
latest deal. "From a medical point of view this policy is insane," said
Sebastian Pflugbeil, president of the German Society for Radiation Protection.
Pflugbeil knows the area around Gomel and, with other scientists, has been
involved in work in the region since the 1990s.
Belarus is thought to be the country which was most
affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe. The wind carried about 70 percent of the
radioactive emissions from the reactor meltdown across Belarus. "Children in
the area around Gomel are 55 times more likely to suffer from thyroid cancer
than the average. For adults the risk is five to six times higher," said
Pflugbeil.
As things stand, the World Health Organization
already predicts that one in three of the young people who were no older than
four years old in 1986 will at some point in their lives suffer from thyroid
cancer. Nevertheless, Pflugbeil has observed that, during the past few years,
more and more people are settling in the region around Gomel.
"People move there because they are left in peace,"
he said. "Another reason is they can choose the nicest of all the empty
houses." The once prohibited zone is especially popular among impoverished
veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Now, Lukashenko is exploiting
these people and others like them in an effort to give a boost to the
devastated area with his new settlement policy. "Lukashenko wants to draw a
line under the Chernobyl catastrophe and allow the area to regain its economic
value." The government is especially keen to get the agricultural sector back
on its feet again. Berries and mushrooms, which absorb radiation especially
well, flourish here. Pflugbeil's criticism is that the Belarussian authorities
are trying to play down the impact of the radiation. In fact the effects of the
radiation are being felt much longer than originally thought. "It's criminal,"
says the president of the German Society for Radiation Protection.
2 million illegal immigrants wait to get in
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko wants to
revive the economy of the area near Chernobyl by settling refugees here.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko wants to
revive the economy of the area near Chernobyl by settling refugees here.
Originally, Lukashenko wanted to wave refugees like
Sladria's family straight on through to the European Union. Afghans, Pakistanis
and Vietnamese — in Lukashenko's eyes all nuclear-weapon armed criminals
— should go to the West. In the dictator's eyes this would be a possible
revenge for the EU's refusal to nurture political relations with him.
Meanwhile, the EU is preparing to defend itself
against a flood from the east. According to a report by the German intelligence
agency this year, up to 2 million illegal immigrants are waiting to travel West
in the "black triangle" — the area between Moscow, Kiev and Minsk. In
2003, the EU allocated €400 million for efforts to increase security at
its outermost borders. A new agency for protection of the outer frontier has
also been set up.
Belarus plays a particular role in the EU plans.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), every
year 40,000 people pass through Belarus as they try to get to the West. At
1,128 kilometers, the former Soviet republic's border with the EU is the
longest frontier to the expanded Union. That is why the UN and the EU invest
€5 million in border controls. There are watchdogs on the border
crossings, and a computer system to track illegal immigrants is about to be set
up.
But none of that helps the refugees, who find
themselves trapped on the other side of the border in a country that doesn't
want them. Throughout Belarus they get names shouted at them and are sometimes
even beaten up. Outside of Gomel, nobody in Belarus seems willing to allow them
to make a home here.
It's a bitter situation — one that Pflugbeil
addresses with gallow's humor. "The region around Gomel is certainly very
beautiful," he said. "Just as long as you don't have a Geiger counter."
Slovenians Keen on EU
Enlargement, Austria Lowest
October 15, 2005
Copyright 2005, Angus Reid
(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Many adults in
Slovenia believe the European Union (EU) should add more members, according to
the Eurobarometer poll conducted by TNS Opinion & Social. 79 per cent of
respondents in the country support the further enlargement of the EU to include
other countries in future years. Poland is next on the list with 76 per cent,
followed by Slovakia with 73 per cent, and Greek Cyprus with 70 per cent. At
least 60 per cent of respondents in Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Hungary,
Latvia, Malta and Greece are in favour of enlargement. Conversely, 33 per cent
of respondents in Germany and Luxembourg, 32 per cent of respondents in France
and 31 per cent of respondents in Austria would not add more members to the
continental group. In May 2004, ten countries—Cyprus, the Czech Republic,
Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and
Slovenia—joined the EU. Croatia became an official candidate for
membership in June 2004. Last April, the European Parliament approved the entry
of Romania and Bulgaria into the EU in 2007, but warned that both countries
still need to enact reforms, eradicate corruption and fight organized crime.
The accession treaty contains a clause that could force a one-year delay in
case certain conditions are not met. On Oct. 3, Turkey and the EU agreed to
start accession talks. Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul expressed
satisfaction with the developments, saying, "We have reached a historic point."
Polling Data
Do you support the further enlargement of the
European Union (EU) to include other countries in future years?
(Positive responses only)
European Union 50%
Slovenia 79%
Poland 76%
Slovakia 73%
Cyprus (Greek) 70%
Lithuania 69%
Czech Republic 66%
Hungary 66%
Latvia 64%
Malta 63%
Greece 60%
Italy 59%
Spain 56%
Portugal 56%
Estonia 56%
Ireland 52%
Sweden 51%
Belgium 50%
Denmark 48%
Britain 48%
Netherlands 45%
Finland 45%
Germany 33%
Luxembourg 33%
France 32%
Austria 31%
Non-EU
Bulgaria 71%
Romania 71%
Croatia 67%
Turkey 66%
Cyprus (Turkish) 64%
Bulgaria 71%
Source: TNS Opinion & Social / Eurobarometer
Methodology: Interviews to 29,328 people ages 15 and
over in the 25 European Union (EU) member nations, conducted from May 9 to Jun.
14, 2005. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.
http://www.angus-reid.com/admin/collateral/pdfs/polls/Eurobarometer_Sept.2005.pdf
for complete report
Balts, NATO, EU digesting
lessons from Russian plane crash in Lithuania
Copyright 2005, Eurasia Daily Monitor
Publication
date: 17 October 2005
Vilius — Lithuania has completed a
three-week investigation into the Russian Su-27 fighter jet's September 15
intrusion and crash in the country (see EDM, September 20, 27). The plane,
flying tail in a seven-plane squadron en route from Russia's Leningrad Region
to Kaliningrad Region over the Baltic Sea, deviated some 200 kilometers
overland into Lithuania, lingered more than 20 minutes in Lithuanian airspace
while changing its direction and altitude several times, and finally crashed
into a field. Radar spotted the Russian plane belatedly, and NATO jets only
"intercepted" it when it was already nose-diving, after the pilot had ejected.
Lithuania's Defense Ministry has released a summary
of the classified investigation results. This lays to rest the hypothesis that
the incident was a botched intelligence mission or attempt to test NATO air
defenses. Lithuania has lifted the charges against the pilot, Major Valery
Troyanov, and repatriated him to Russia.
The investigation has traced the incident to a
combination of technical, organizational, and human factors on all sides.
Troyanov, an experienced pilot and deputy wing commander, did not make full and
correct use of the Su-27's navigational equipment, and had only clocked 14
flight hours in 2005 prior to the crash. Russian maintenance personnel
overlooked some technical problems when preparing the plane for the flight.
Russian ground control in Kaliningrad made some mistakes of its own in losing
contact with the plane.
Unusually, Russia's Air Force says publicly that it
concurs with some of Lithuania's findings. General Vladimir Mikhailov, Russian
Air Force and Air Defense Commander-in-Chief, told the press at his
headquarters that the pilot had failed to use some components of the
navigational system to restore his lost bearings and was late in issuing a
distress signal. Mikhailov further conceded that the squadron and the Russian
ground control made mistakes in losing contact with the plane. In another,
equally unusual televised interview, Troyanov's regimental commander and deputy
commander described him as "one of the best," but conceded that he and other
Russian pilots are inadequately trained because they do not spend enough time
flying (NTV Mir, October 7).
The Lithuanians have found the IFF (identification
friend-or-foe) system, the plane's most prized component from an intelligence
standpoint, at the crash site. Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, Armed
Force Chief of Staff General Yuri Baluyevsky, Armed Forces' flight safety
service chief Maj.-General Sergei Baynetov, as well as Mikhailov, have all
deemed it necessary to make public statements dismissing the possibility that
the plane's IFF fell into "wrong hands." The IFF is designed to self-destruct
automatically when the pilot ejects and/or when the plane crashes.
It remains unclear why the Russian plane was fully
armed as if for combat (four missiles and a loaded gun with a reserve
ammunition box) on this flight. The Russian side was uncooperative with and
indeed obstructive of the investigation until the end. It initially denied that
the plane was armed, changed the story on various technical matters several
times, withheld critical information at all times, and orchestrated an
anti-Lithuanian propaganda campaign by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
controlled media.
For its part, the Lithuanian side followed the
letter of international law, treated the Russian pilot with full courtesies,
and allowed a Russian team of officers headed by Baynetov to witness all phases
of the investigation. The Lithuanians rejected Russia's demand to turn the
Lithuanian investigation commission into a joint Lithuanian-Russian commission.
Lithuania dismissed its air force commander, Colonel Jonas Marcinkus, for
carelessly revealing classified information about the investigation to Russian
officers over drinks.
The Su-27 incident exposed gaps as well as technical
and organizational flaws in the air defense system, which in Lithuania as well
as in Estonia and Latvia forms an integral part of NATO's air defenses. The
obsolescent radars briefly spotted and lost the intruding Russian plane several
times over. Three-dimensional radars are urgently needed in this NATO sector.
Lithuania's defense budget can only afford the purchase of one such radar over
a three-year period. Meanwhile, Lithuania as well as Estonia and Latvia spend
their scarce resources in NATO peacekeeping and expeditionary operations in
distant theaters. This is a national choice of the Baltic states in the spirit
of allied solidarity, but it takes away resources from homeland defense, as
this incident demonstrates. NATO allies could reciprocate that solidarity by
funding radar coverage of air space over the Baltic states, which is NATO's own
air space.
The three Baltic states do not and cannot afford to
have combat air forces. Since March 2004, NATO conducts an air-policing
operation using four interceptor fighters based at Zokniai airfield near
Sauliai in north-central Lithuania, covering Latvia and Estonia as well.
Lithuania and NATO have invested in the upgrade of Zokniai. NATO allies rotate
on a three-month basis providing those four planes and the crews. Germany with
four F-4 planes was in charge when the Su-27 incident occurred, and the United
States took over on September 30 with five F-16 planes as part of the
prescheduled rotation.
Under the existing modus operandi, military and
civilian radars in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania transmit information to
NATO's Regional Airspace Surveillance and Control Center (RASCC) at Karmelava
in Lithuania, which is manned by personnel from the three Baltic states and
other NATO countries. RASCC transmits the information if necessary to a
German-based NATO Joint Air Operations Center, which analyzes it and is
authorized to order NATO's planes at Zokniai to scramble. The reaction time for
those planes is said to be 15 minutes based on a political decision.
The Su-27 incident has demonstrated that this entire
air defense system requires urgent improvements. NATO allies can assume greater
responsibility for deploying adequate radars in this sector of the alliance's
air space. They also need to reconsider favorably a long-standing request for a
Command and Reporting Center to be based in the Baltic states, with authority
to analyze real-time radar information and to order the planes to scramble if
necessary. And they must make certain that all of Estonia's territory is
reliably covered by the air-policing operation. Until now, most of the Russian
violations have occurred over parts of Estonia.
Russian trucks to be
assembled in Latvia
13:40 - 17/ 10/ 2005
Copyright 2005, RIA Novosti
MOSCOW, October 17 (RIA Novosti) — The
Moscow city government and a Latvian company, Ferrus, will set up a joint
venture in the Latvian city of Jelgava this year to promote sales of Russian
truck giant ZIL in eastern Europe, the Moscow administration said Monday.
The company, AMO PLANT, will first establish an
assembly line for ZIL trucks. Moscow and Ferrus will own stakes of 51% and 49%
respectively in the project, the authorized capital of which could reach 11
million euros in 2006.
Historical Treasure: Hidden
Torah Scroll Discovered in Latvia
Copyright 2005, Federation of Jewish Communitites of CIS,
Russia
Oct 17, 2005
LIEPAYA, Latvia – During repairs to an old
building in the Latvian city of Liepaya, a great discovery has been made –
an old Jewish manuscript, likely rescued from one of many Synagogues destroyed
during World War Two. Aigar Prusis found the scroll while removing a partition
separating the walls of his home. He noticed a thick Hebrew scroll hidden
between two pieces of veneer, a secret hiding place that was thoroughly covered
with layers of newspapers from the spring of 1941.
"These parchment-like sheets are hand-written with
Hebrew letters, attached to one another and very long – about 10 meters.
One of its corners is a little bit burnt," he explained. Historian Gunar
Silakaktinsh said that although he had not yet seen the scroll, he believed it
to be Torah. His intuition was correct, as confirmed by his colleague Yuris
Rakis upon finally examining it.
The parties believe that this house, which was built
in 1901, was a logical hiding place for the Torah scroll. It was most likely
hidden here immediately after the neighboring Synagogue was destroyed by
occupying Nazi forces in June 1941. What was then the city’s largest
Synagogue, located at 9 Peter Street, was destroyed at that time and never
rebuilt.
Aigar Prusis decided to pass this scroll on to the
Jewish Society of Liepaya, since he believes it constitutes important
historical evidence and should return to Jewish community hands after its long
absence.
Our Shrinking Language
Tapestry
By Richard C. Hottelet
World Major Languages
Copyright 2005, The Seoul Times Company
October 2, 2005
WILTON, CONN. — The headlong rush of "progress"
and "development" has made the world poorer. As whole species of animals and
plants are endangered and disappear, the human family, too, is a loser. Not in
terms of number, to be sure, which increases without letup. It is the marvelous
miscellany of human expression that suffers.
Of the roughly 6,000 languages (plus their dialects)
spoken around the world, 3,000 or more are classified as endangered, seriously
endangered, or dying. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization, this year published an "Atlas of the World's Languages
in Danger of Disappearing."
The atlas's editor, Prof. Stephen Wurm of the
Australian National University, writes that the death of languages is a very
old phenomenon. A few, like Latin and Sanskrit, have been kept alive
artificially, but many have left no traces. Some remain undeciphered while
others have evolved and given birth to new languages. Our own era, he says,
with the upsurge of new means of communication, seems to have created more
situations of conflict between the languages of the world than ever before,
causing more to disappear at an accelerating pace.
Experts in linguistics consider a language
endangered when it is no longer learned by at least 30 percent of a community's
children. It is seriously endangered when the youngest speakers have moved to
middle age and beyond. It is moribund when only a handful of speakers are left.
Five years ago, researchers found the last speaker of Bikya, an African
language. In Europe, Livonian – related to Finnish – was registered
in Latvia and spoken by only 200 people.
In the United States, 200 or more languages are
thought to have been in use before the Europeans arrived. Today, fewer than 150
remain, all endangered, many moribund. Even tongues with many thousands of
speakers, such as Navajo, are used by few children, and it is believed that
almost half the Navajos do not speak it.
The pressure of English is too great, as has been
that of French and English in Canada. In America's lower 48 states, the
treatment of native Americans was harsher than in Alaska and Canada, and recent
waves of conservatism and "English only" policies have hastened the extinction
of native languages. Imperial Russia's surge across Siberia, followed by the
heavy Soviet hand in Central Asia, supplanted native languages with Russian.
Natural phenomena have disrupted societies over the
centuries but, in the main, the process has been less dramatic. Where more
dynamic cultures have moved in on local communities, their traditional idioms
may be inadequate, putting them economically and politically at a disadvantage.
They tend then increasingly to adopt the speech of the dominant culture.
Language is, obviously, key to a society's identity.
Hebrew, which seemed lost, was revived as the tongue of Jewish nationalism and
flourishes now, meeting all the semantic needs of science, politics, and the
arts. Ethnic consciousness, and the freedom to exercise it, has been bringing
back fading idioms as a rebellion of particularity against globalization. The
language of Ainu in northern Japan, down to eight elderly speakers in 1980, has
reawakened, with strong official support. Maori in New Zealand and Hawaiian on
Hawaii have been reborn.
Languages of Central Asia, steamrollered by Russian,
are coming back after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The 40 languages
of the Caucasus fiercely proclaim ethnic pride. Circassian and Abkhaz, which
have the largest number of consonants of any language, sound so alien, says
Professor Wurm, that outsiders doubt they are listening to human discourse.
The other side of the coin is the fluctuation of the
mega-languages, especially English. This tongue of a small people on an island
off the coast of Europe is becoming the world's lingua franca, not by conquest,
but by acclamation.
Little more than a century ago, the language of
science was German. Today it is English. Well into the 20th century, French was
the vehicle of diplomacy. Today it is English, which has become the language of
global business and aviation while making inroads into sports, the arts, and
even the vernacular of many countries. Even so proud a language as Arabic feels
besieged.
The prospect of a homogenized world is depressing.
The Inuit languages have many different words for what English can call only
"snow." Others encapsulate traditions, myths, and community experience that
enrich the tapestry of human life.
Each disappearance diminishes the whole. But there
is a remedy: not artificial respiration or intensive care, but the cohabitation
of multi-lingualism and the acceptance of others that cushion a world running
out of elbow room.
Richard C. Hottelet was a longtime correspondent
for CBS.
EU wants U.S. to open
airports
17:58 2005-10-17
Copyright 2005, Pravda
Washington, Brussels — EU and U.S.
officials met Monday to relaunch stalled talks that would open up U.S. airports
to European carriers. The negotiations this fall are the last clear chance to
make a breakthrough, said John Byerly, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state
for transport, ahead of the meeting.
The EU's executive office has warned it will take
legal action next year to end bilateral air services agreements between
national governments and the United States that EU courts ruled illegal in
2002.
EU airlines can only operate routes between their
home countries and the United States, which caps the number of airlines flying
the trans-Atlantic route.
The European Commission said an agreement would mean
an extra US$5 billion (?4 billion) and 17 million passengers for the aviation
industry.
Some 60 percent of all world air traffic flies into
or out of the EU and the United States and 40 million passengers travel between
the two each year.
The talks are due to continue until Friday and
reopen in Washington on Nov. 14.
Virgin Atlantic Airways chairman Richard Branson
called on the EU to avoid a "one-sided deal" that only benefits U.S. carriers.
He said the U.S. government wanted to see American
airlines able to fly within Europe, but was refusing to allow European airlines
fly within the United States.
"What we don't want is an unbalanced deal giving the
U.S. all it wants with little more than empty promises in return," Branson
said.
Britain takes up the lion's share of the
trans-Atlantic routes with 40 percent of all traffic between the EU and the
United States. London's Heathrow airport is the world's busiest international
hub.
The EU head office pressed its 25 member states
earlier this year to renege their air service agreements with the United States
and allow the commission to negotiate on their behalf.
In March, it sent legal warnings to 11 governments
that have independent "open skies" accords with Washington, bringing to 20 the
number of countries it has brought to court.
The commission argues that a 2002 ruling by the
European Court of Justice gave it authority to act against member states
defending the bilateral deals. The court said language in the agreements ran
counter to the EU's authority.
The only EU members against which the commission
has not opened proceedings are Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus and
Slovenia.
"Open skies" agreements aim to improve market
opportunities for airlines, promote common security, safety and environmental
standards and foster technical cooperation.
Closer cooperation urged
among Baltic, Caucasian countries
2005-10-18 13:07:02
Copyright 2005, XKINHUA News
Service
RIGA, Oct. 17 (Xinhuanet) — Lithuanian
President Valdas Adamkus called on Monday for closer cooperation among the
three Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the three Caucasian
countries of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, said reports from Lithuanian
capital Vilnius.
Meeting with visiting Armenian Foreign Minister
Vardan Oskanyan, Adamkus said his country is willing to make efforts to boost
such cooperation.
On Armenia's bid to join the European Union (EU),
Adamkus said Lithuania has always been supporting more active and coordinated
relations between the EU and Armenia.
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia joined the EU on May 1,
2004.
English Becoming The New
World Language
The Triumph of English
A World Empire by Other Means
October 18, 2005
Copyright 2005, The Economist
Article — The new world language seems
to be good for everyone — except the speakers of minority tongues, and
native English-speakers too perhaps.
It is everywhere. Some 380 million people speak it
as their first language and perhaps two-thirds as many again as their second. A
billion are learning it, about a third of the world's population are in some
sense exposed to it and by 2050, it is predicted, half the world will be more
or less proficient in it. It is the language of globalization — of
international business, politics and diplomacy.
It is the language of computers and the Internet.
You'll see it on posters in Cote d'Ivoire, you'll hear it in pop songs in
Tokyo, you'll read it in official documents in Phnom Penh. Deutsche Welle
broadcasts in it. Bjork, an Icelander, sings in it. French business schools
teach in it. It is the medium of expression in cabinet meetings in Bolivia.
Truly, the tongue spoken back in the 1300s only by the "low people" of England,
as Robert of Gloucester put it at the time, has come a long way. It is now the
global language.
How come? Not because English is easy. True, genders
are simple, since English relies on "it" as the pronoun for all inanimate
nouns, reserving masculine for bona fide males and feminine for females (and
countries and ships). But the verbs tend to be irregular, the grammar bizarre
and the match between spelling and pronunciation a nightmare. English is now so
widely spoken in so many places that umpteen versions have evolved, some so
peculiar that even "native" speakers may have trouble understanding each other.
But if only one version existed, that would present difficulties enough.
Even everyday English is a language of subtlety,
nuance and complexity. John Simmons, a language consultant for Interbrand,
likes to cite the word "set," an apparently simple word that takes on different
meanings in a sporting, cooking, social or mathematical context — and that
is before any little words are combined with it. Then, as a verb, it becomes
"set aside," "set up," "set down," "set in," "set on," "set about," "set
against" and so on, terms that"leave even native speakers bewildered about
[its] core meaning."
As a language with many origins — Romance,
Germanic, Norse, Celtic and so on — English was bound to be a mess. But
its elasticity makes it messier, as well as stronger. When it comes to new
words, English puts up few barriers to entry. Every year publishers bring out
new dictionaries listing neologisms galore. The past decade, for instance, has
produced not just a host of Internettery, computerese and phonebabble
("browsers," "downloading," "texting," and so on) but quantities of teenspeak
("fave," "fit," "pants," "phat," "sad").
All are readily received by English, however much
some fogies may resist them. Those who stand guard over the French language, by
contrast, agonize for years over whether to allow CD-Rom (no, it must be
cederom), frotte-manche, a Belgian word for a sycophant (sanctioned), or
euroland (no, the term is la zone euro). Oddly, shampooing (unknown as a noun
in English) seemed to pass the French Academy nem con, perhaps because the
British had originally taken "shampoo" from Hindi.
English-speakers have not always been so Angst-free
about this laisser-faire attitude to their language, so ready to present a
facade of insouciance at the de facto acceptance of foreign words among their
cliches, bons mots and other dicta. In the 18th century three writers —
Joseph Addison (who founded the Spectator), Daniel Defoe (who wrote "Robinson
Crusoe") and Jonathan Swift ("Gulliver's Travels") — wanted to see a
committee set up to regulate the language. Like a good protectionist, Addison
wrote:
I have often wished that ... certain Men might be
set apart, as Superintendents of our Language, to hinder any Words of Foreign
Coin from passing among us; and in particular to prohibit any French Phrases
from becoming current in this Kingdom, when those of our own stamp are
altogether as valuable.
Fortunately, the principles of free trade triumphed,
as Samuel Johnson, the compiler of the first great English dictionary, rather
reluctantly came to admit. "May the lexicographer be derided," he declared,
"who shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language ... With this
hope, however, academies have been instituted to guard the avenues of their
languages...but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain ... to
enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of
pride."
Pride, however, is seldom absent when language is
under discussion, and no wonder, for the success or failure of a language has
little to do with its inherent qualities "and everything to do with the power
of the people who speak it." And that, as Prof. Jean Aitchison of Oxford
University points out, is particularly true of English.
It was not always so. In the eastern half of the
Roman Empire, Greek remained the language of commerce, and of Christians such
as St. Paul and the Jews of the diaspora, long after Greek political supremacy
had come to an end. Latin continued to be the language of the church, and
therefore of any West European of learning, long after Rome had declined and
fallen. But Greek and Latin (despite being twisted in the Middle Ages to
describe many non-Roman concepts and things) were fixed languages with rigid
rules that failed to adapt naturally. As Edmund Waller wrote in the 17th
century,
Poets that lasting marble seek, Must carve in Latin
or in Greek. We write in sand, our language grows, And like the tide, our work
o'erflows. English, in other words, moved with the times, and by the 19th
century the times were such that it had spread across an empire on which the
sun never set (that word again). It thus began its rise as a global language.
That could be seen not just by the use of English in
Britain's colonies, but also by its usefulness much farther afield. When, for
instance, Germany and Japan were negotiating their alliance against America and
Britain in 1940, their two foreign ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Yosuke
Matsuoka, held their discussions in English.
But however accommodating English might be, and
however much of the map was once painted red, the real reason for the latter
day triumph of English is the triumph of the English-speaking United States as
a world power. Therein lies a huge source of friction.
Damn Yanks, Defensive Frogs
The merit of English as a global language is that it
enables people of different countries to converse and do business with each
other. But languages are not only a medium of communication, which enable
nation to speak unto nation. They are also repositories of culture and
identity. And in many countries the all-engulfing advance of English threatens
to damage or destroy much local culture. This is sometimes lamented even in
England itself, for though the language that now sweeps the world is called
English, the culture carried with it is American.
On the whole the Brits do not complain. Some may
regret the passing of the "bullet-proof waistcoat" (in favor of the
"bullet-proof vest"), the arrival of "hopefully" at the start of every
sentence, the wholesale disappearance of the perfect tense, and the mutation of
the meaning of "presently" from "soon" to "now." But few mind or even notice
that their old "railway station" has become a "train station," the "car park"
is turning into a "parking lot" and people now live "on," not "in," a street.
Others, however, are not so relaxed. Perhaps it is
hardest for the French. Ever since the revolution in 1789, they have aspired to
see their language achieve a sort of universal status, and by the end of the
19th century, with France established as a colonial power second only to
Britain and its language accepted as the lingua franca of diplomacy, they
seemed to be on their way to reaching their goal. As the 20th century drew on,
however, and English continued to encroach, French was driven on to the
defensive.
One response was to rally French-speakers outside
France. Habib Bourguiba, the first president of independent Tunisia, obligingly
said in 1966 that "the French-language community" was not "colonialism in a new
guise" and that to join its ranks was simply to use the colonial past for the
benefit of the new, formerly French states.
His counterpart in Senegal, Leopold Senghor, who
wrote elegantly in the language of Moliere, Racine and Baudelaire, was happy to
join La Francophonie, an outfit modelled on the (ex-British) Commonwealth and
designed to promote French language and culture.
But though such improbable countries as Bulgaria and
Moldova have since been drawn in — France spends about $1 billion a year
on various aid and other programmes designed to promote its civilization abroad
— French now ranks only ninth among the world's languages.
The decline is everywhere to be seen. Before Britain
joined the European common market (now the European Union) in 1973, French was
the club's sole official language. Now that its members also include Denmark,
Finland and Sweden, whose people often speak better English than the British,
English is the EU's dominant tongue. Indeed, over 85 percent of all
international organizations use English as one of their official languages.
In France itself, the march of English is
remorseless. Alcatel, the formerly state-owned telecoms giant, uses English as
its internal language. Scientists know that they must either "publish in
English or perish in French." And though one minister of "culture and the
French language," Jacques Toubon, did his utmost to banish foreign expressions
from French in the mid-1990s, a subsequent minister of education, Claude
Allegre, declared in 1998 that "English should no longer be considered a
foreign language ... In future it will be as basic [in France] as reading,
writing and arithmetic."
That does not mean that France has abandoned its
efforts to stop the corruption of its beautiful tongue. Rearguard actions are
fought by Air France pilots in protest at air-traffic instructions given in
English. Laws try to hold back the tide of insidious Albion on the airwaves.
And the members of the French Academy, the guardians of le bon usage, still
meet in their silver-and-gold-embroidered uniforms to lay down the linguistic
law.
Those who feel pity for the French, however, should
feel much sorrier for the Quebeckers, a minority of about 6 million among the
300 million English-speakers of North America. It is easy to mock their efforts
to defend their beleaguered version of French: all those absurd language
police, fighting franglais, ensuring that all contracts are written in French
and patrolling shops and offices to make sure that any English signs are of
regulation size.
But it is also easy to understand their concern.
After all, the publishing onslaught from the United States is enough to make
English-speaking Canadians try to put up barriers to protect their magazines in
apparent defiance of the World Trade Organization: Canada's cultural industries
are at stake, they say. No wonder the French-speakers of Quebec feel even more
threatened by the ubiquity of English.
Germans, Poles and Chinese Unite
French-speakers are far from alone. A law went into
effect in Poland last year obliging all companies selling or advertising
foreign products to use Polish in their advertisements, labelling and
instructions. Latvia has tried to keep Russian (and, to be more precise,
Russians) at bay by insisting on the use of the Latvian language in
business. Even Germany, now the pre-eminent economic and political power in
Europe, feels it necessary to resist the spread of Denglisch.
Three years ago the Institute for the German
Language wrote to Deutsche Telekom to protest at its adoption of "grotesque"
terms like CityCall, HolidayPlusTarif and GermanCall. A year earlier, an
article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in which a designer had been
quoted using expressions like "giving story," "co-ordinated concepts" and
"effortless magic" so infuriated Prof. Wolfgang Kramer that he founded the
Society for the Protection of the German Language, which now awards a prize for
the Sprachpanscher (language debaser) of the year.
For some countries, the problem with English is not
that it is spoken, but that it is not spoken well enough. The widespread use of
Singlish, a local version of Shakepeare's tongue, is a perpetual worry to the
authorities in Singapore, who fear lest their people lose their command of the
"proper" kind and with it a big commercial advantage over their rivals.
In Hong Kong, by contrast, the new, Chinese masters
are promoting Cantonese, to the concern of local business. And in India some
people see English as an oppressive legacy of colonialism that should be
exterminated. As long ago as 1908 Mohandas Gandhi was arguing that "to give
millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them." Ninety years later the
struggle was still being fought, with India's defence minister of the day,
Mulayam Singh Yadav, vowing that he would not rest "until English is driven out
of the country." Others, however, believe that it binds a nation of 800 tongues
and dialects together, and connects it to the outside world to boot.
Some countries try, like France, to fix their
language by fiat. A set of reforms were produced in Germany a few years ago by
a group of philologists and officials with the aim of simplifying some
spellings — Spagetti instead of Spaghetti, for example, Saxifon instead of
Saxophon — reducing the number of rules governing the use of commas (from
52 to nine), and so on. Dutifully, the country's state culture ministers
endorsed them, and they started to go into effect in schoolrooms and newspaper
offices across the country. But old habits die hard, unless they are making way
for English: in Schleswig-Holstein the voters revolted, and in due course even
such newspapers as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung abandoned the new
practice.
Spain strives for conformity too, through a Spanish
Royal Academy similar to the French Academy. The job of the 46 Spanish
academicians is to "cleanse, fix and give splendour" to a language that is very
much alive, although nine out of ten of its speakers live outside Spain. The
academy professes a readiness to absorb new words and expressions, but its
director admits that "changes have become very rare now." No wonder
Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America — as well as the Philippines
and the United States — have set up their own academies.
Keeping Tiny Tongues Alive
Rules alone may be unable to withstand the tide of
English, but that does not mean it is impossible to keep endangered languages
in being. Mohawk, for instance, spoken by some indigenous people in Quebec, was
in retreat until the 1970s, when efforts were made first to codify it and then
to teach it to children at school. Welsh and Maori have both made a comeback
with the help of television and government interference, and Navajo, Hawaiian
and several languages spoken in Botswana have been reinvigorated artificially.
Iceland has been extraordinarily successful at
keeping the language of the sagas alive, even though it is the tongue of barely
275,000 people. Moreover, it has done so more by invention than by absorption.
Whereas the Germans never took to the term Fernsprechapparat when Telefon was
already available, and the French have long preferred le shopping and le
weekend to their native equivalents, the Icelanders have readily adopted
alnaemi for "AIDS," skjar for "video monitor" and toelva for "computer."
Why? Partly because the new words are in fact mostly
old ones: alnaemi means "vulnerable," skjar is the translucent membrane of
amniotic sac that used to be stretched to "glaze" windows, and toelva is formed
from the words for "digit" and "prophetess." Familiarity means these words are
readily intelligible. But it also helps that Icelanders are intensely proud of
both their language and their literature, and the urge to keep them going is
strong.
Perhaps the most effective way of keeping a language
alive, however, is to give it a political purpose. The association of Irish
with Irish nationalism has helped bring this language back from its increasing
desuetude in the 19th century, just as Israeli nation-building has converted
Hebrew from being a merely written language into a national tongue.
For some nations, such as the Indians, the pain felt
at the encroachments of English may be tempered by the pleasure of seeing their
own words enriching the invading tongue: Sir Henry Yule's 1886 dictionary,
"Hobson-Jobson," lists thousands of Anglo-Indian words and phrases. But for
many peoples the triumph of English is the defeat, if not outright destruction,
of their own language. Of the world's 6,000 or 7,000 languages, a couple go out
of business each week. Some recent victims from the rich world have included
Catawba (Massachusetts), Eyak (Alaska) and Livonian (Latvia). But most are
in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, which still has more languages than any
other country, or Indonesia, or Nigeria (India, Mexico, Cameroon, Australia and
Brazil follow).
Pundits disagree about the rate at which languages
are disappearing: some say that by the end of the century half will have gone,
some say 90 percent. But whenever a language dies, a bit of the world's
culture, history and diversity dies with it. This is slowly coming to be
appreciated. The EU declared 2001 to be "European year of languages," and it is
striking that even France — whose hostility to linguistic competition is
betrayed by the constitution's bald statement that "the language of the
Republic is French" — now smiles more benignly on its seven regional
tongues (Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Flemish and Provencal).
Yet the extinction of most languages is probably
unstoppable. Television and radio, both blamed for homogenization, may,
paradoxically, prolong the life of some by narrow-casting in minority tongues.
And though many languages may die, more people may also be able to speak
several languages: multilingualism, a commonplace among the least educated
peoples of Africa, is now the norm among Dutch, Scandinavians and,
increasingly, almost everyone else.
Native English-speakers, however, are becoming less
competent at other languages: only nine students graduated in Arabic from
universities in the United States last year, and the British are the most
monoglot of all the peoples of the EU. Thus the triumph of English not only
destroys the tongues of others; it also isolates native English-speakers from
the literature, history and ideas of other peoples. It is, in short, a
thoroughly dubious triumph. But then who's for Esperanto? Not the staff of The
Economist, that's for sure.
Latvia Prepares for a Tourist
Invasion
Copyright 2005, The Seoul Times Company
By Jonathan
Charles
Article — The tourists have started
arriving at this new EU destination
Low-cost airlines in Europe are fuelling a tourist
boom, but as Latvia is now finding, there is a price to pay for a slice of this
lucrative cake.
For decades during the Cold War, Latvia was prepared
for an invasion from the West.
Nuclear bunkers set deep in the ground, litter the
capital, Riga.
As an outpost of the Soviet Union, Latvia felt
vulnerable, but 14 years on from the collapse of communism, it is facing an
invasion from the West of a different kind, one which also poses a threat to
its culture and natural beauty.
Latvia — which joined the European Union last
year — is one of many countries now working out how to deal with an
influx of tourists.
Cheap flights
Tourism is now the world's biggest single industry,
the steelworks and coal mines of our age.
This year people will take more holidays than ever
before.
In Europe, the low-cost airlines are serving more
destinations with cheaper fares, fuelling the growth in tourism.
Latvia wants the money and the jobs but it is also
considering how to cope with the downside.
The Director of Riga's tourism office, Sandra
Inkena, is worried about some of the projections for growth.
"At the moment we have about one and a half million
tourists a year visiting Riga, but the vice mayor says he wants that to
increase to 10 million visitors a year," she said.
"I don't think we could cope with that. I personally
wouldn't like to see Riga so overcrowded."
Wild weekends
In one of the old Cold War nuclear bunkers are some
of the new wave of visitors. The bunker is now a shooting range, popular with
British stag parties who want to fire off a pistol or a Kalashnikov assault
rifle, as part of a fun-packed trip to Riga.
The stag groups are typical of those taking
advantage of cheap flights. One British man in his 20s said:
"We're here for the cheap beer and the girls. We're
here for fun."
Amidst the rattle of gunfire and the whoops from
people having a good time, the organiser of the stag weekends, Linas from
Active Holidays, said his company alone now has around 10 groups coming to Riga
every weekend, about 100 people in total.
A year ago, there were very few.
"It's been influenced by cheap flights which have
just started to fly here," Linas said.
"Riga was undiscovered for a long time, but we have
a lot to offer including cheap beer and nice women. There are lots of things to
do here."
Boisterous presence
It is impossible to know exactly how many stag
groups there are visiting Latvia, nor what percentage of the tourist numbers
they make up, but they certainly make their boisterous presence felt on the
streets and in the clubs.
On a Friday night in Riga, the impact the stag
groups are having on Riga is starting to become evident.
Music blares from bar after bar in the old town, and
intermingled with the sound is the noise of groups of British men in their 20s
having a good time.
They tend to drink a lot and get drunk quickly, very
different behaviour to the measured approach of Latvians.
Jerry O'Brien owns an Irish bar in Riga. He thinks
the stag parties pose risks although there has been no real problem yet. But
their numbers will only rise.
He fears violence. "We're going to have to review
our security. You know what they're like when they've been drinking. They're on
a mission to get drunk," he said.
"Latvians don't go to pubs to get drunk. It's a
society problem in Britain and Ireland. It's not a Riga problem. It's our
problem, and it's coming to Riga."
'Horror stories'
The stag parties certainly aren't coming to Riga for
culture, and they give little impression of caring about which country they're
visiting. It could be anywhere as long as the alcohol is cheaper than in
Britain.
Some in Riga now worry about the damage their city
might suffer as a result of an association with stag weekends.
Ojars Kalnins, Director of the Latvian Institute, a
state-funded body which promotes the country, said he does not want Riga to be
associated with sex tourism.
Mr Kalnins said he hopes people will visit Latvia
for other reasons:
"We've been getting a lot of horror stories and
there is a little bit of concern," he said.
"There is the more positive feeling about the
general increase in tourism. I want people to come here for the culture, the
music and the history."
Mr Kalnins admitted though, that right now Latvia is
only interested in getting as many people as possible to visit and to spend
their money.
Rowdy place
Economic growth depends on pulling the tourists in.
Mr Kalnins said the country will worry about the consequences later:
"We've only had this increase in tourism for the
past year, so it's all new to us.
"Perhaps later we will work out what type of
tourists are coming and whether we can influence that in any way."
The danger of worrying later though is that it will
be too late, the damage will be done. If other tourists start thinking Riga is
a rowdy place, they won't visit.
Tourism is too important economically to treat as a
short-term income. Every city wants a share of the growth.
In Europe alone, over the next 20 years, the number
of tourists is expected to double. For governments, the issue will be how best
to manage that growth.
As cities like Riga are discovering, it is not easy,
but unless they start to plan properly they could be overwhelmed.
Patriarch of Russian
'perestroika' dies
Tue Oct 18, 2005 10:17 PM IST12
Copyright 2005,
Reuters
By Oleg Shchedrov
MOSCOW (Reuters) — Alexander Yakovlev,
who masterminded Soviet "perestroika" reforms together with Soviet Communist
party leader Mikhail Gorbachev, died on Tuesday aged 81, a spokeswoman for his
foundation said.
For Russians, who watched in suspense Gorbachev's
cautious efforts in late 1980s to breathe new life into the Soviet empire by
allowing greater freedom, Yakovlev was the "liberal face" of reforms constantly
challenged by communist hardliners.
"Yakovlev's death is a huge loss for all those who
linked their lives with the struggle for freedom and democracy," Interfax news
agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.
In the close circle of Soviet reformers Yakovlev was
in charge of glasnost (openness) — the only truly successful element of
perestroika aimed at ending the communist party's monopoly of ideology.
In the heady days of Gorbachev's reformist rule,
Yakovlev's jowly face with his prominent eyebrows was always in the background
behind the Soviet leader as he sent the idols of communism tumbling.
He played a key role in launching a series of bold
projects that laid the foundation for an independent Russian media, and
protected writers, theatre directors and film-makers who broke new ground by
challenging Communist dogmas in art.
As head of the Kremlin's commission on
rehabilitation of victims of political reprisals, Yakovlev did much to lift the
lid on the horrors of dictator Josef Stalin's rule.
He also played the key role in making public the
secret parts of the 1939 treaty between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany under
which Poland was divided and Moscow annexed the three Baltic states of Latvia,
Estonia and Lithuania.
Throughout his career as a top reformer, Yakovlev
survived many attempts by orthodox opponents in the party led by Soviet
Politburo member Yegor Ligachev to turn back the tide and get rid of him.
In June 1991, Yakovlev followed another Soviet
reformer — Foreign Minister and future Georgian President Eduard
Shevardnadze — in warning Gorbachev about a looming hardline coup.
Just days before the hardliners launched their
botched attempt in August that year to topple Gorbachev, Yakovlev quit the
Communist Party and ended his political career.
Most of Yakovlev's career was that of a party
apparatchik, but it was heavily influenced by the liberal winds of Soviet
leader Nikita Khrushchev in late 1950s that ended the Soviet Union's isolation
from the outside world.
He was among those few pioneers who were allowed to
spend a year studying foreign relations in the United States in 1958-59.
Gorbachev noticed his future ally Yakovlev in 1983
when as a top party official he visited Canada where the liberal-thinking
diplomat was serving as Soviet ambassador.
Even now, mainstream pro-Kremlin politicians who
regret the collapse of the Soviet Union, acknowledge his historical role.
"The whole epoch of those who stood at the root of
Russia's democracy ... and fought until the last to establish civil society, is
gone," Itar-Tass news agency quoted a top member of pro-Kremlin majority party
United Russia, Vladimir Pekhtin, as saying.
A spokeswoman for his International Democracy
Foundation said he died "after a long illness", but she gave no further
details.
Transparency report puts
Czech Republic among EU countries with worst corruption
19 October
Copyright 2005, Prague Daily Monitor
(PDM staff with CTK) — The Czech
Republic is one of the countries with the highest level of corruption in the
European Union as only Latvia and Poland placed behind it, according to
the Transparency International (TI) report released yesterday.
"The position of the Czech Republic is very bad as
compared with other EU countries," Adriana Krnacova, head of TI's Czech branch,
told CTK.
Krnacova considers the causes of the situation to be
the indifference of the government and parliament to the struggle against
corruption.
She named inefficient public spending,
non-transparent work of state bodies and the influence of politics on the civil
service as key contributors to corruption. According to her, the area of public
orders and public budgets is especially at risk.
The Czech branch of TI believes that three laws are
needed to improve the current situation: a law on conflict of interest, a law
on public orders and an insolvency law. A conflict-of-interest law is now in
its second reading in the lower house.
Among the 159 world countries assessed, the Czech
Repubulic has the 47th-50th position, along with Greece, Namibia and Slovakia.
The Czech Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is 4.3,
while last year it was slightly worse, 4.2, within the scale from 0 to 10 where
ten is best.
"The Czech Republic has been stagnating for a long
time while some other countries who became new EU members at the same have been
improving in recent years," Krnacova said.
Krnacova said that the country is markedly worse in
this respect than Estonia (6.4), Slovenia (6.1) or Hungary (5.0).
"Now we can't excuse ourselves that it is a legacy
of the past anymore. The situation in the Czech Republic is bad and prospects
for improvement are not encouraging," Krnacova said.
She said that the Czechs could use the example of
Slovakia where the CPI has been improving over the last several years.
The Slovak improvement is also the result of
measures such as the introduction of police stings and the extended powers of
the Slovak Supreme Audit Office (NKU), she pointed out. But there is no
political will to take such steps in the Czech Republic, Krnacova added.
The Czech branch of Transparency International is
one of the non-governmental organisation's more than 80 branches that monitor
corruption worldwide.
CTK news edited by the staff of the Prague Daily
Monitor, a Monitor CE service.
Berezovsky Declared Persona
Non Grata in Latvia
Created: 19.10.2005 19:53 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 19:53
MSK
Copyright 2005, MosNews
Riga — Latvia has declared the exiled
Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky persona non grata.
Latvia’s National Security Council made a
decision on Wednesday to include Berezovsky in the list of persons whose visits
to the country are “undesirable.”
The council will pass this decision to the
Latvia’s Prosecutor General’s office and Interior Ministry.
Berezovsky, a fierce critic of Russian authorities,
has visited Latvia several times after his exile to London in 2000. In the end
of September, he met there with Neil Bush, the U.S. president’s brother.
In August, newspapers wrote that he had bought a TV channel there.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office
launched a criminal case against Berezovsky in August 2002, accusing him of
embezzlement in the VAZ auto manufacturing company. Russia officially demanded
Berezovsky’s detention and extradition from Latvia but Latvia’s
Interior Ministry rejected Moscow’s request and said Moscow should ask
Britain to detain and extradite Berezovsky.
New EU Members Get Mixed
Marks From List
Wednesday October 19, 2005 7:16 PM
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2005, Associated Press
VIENNA, Austria (AP) — Bribes in
exchange for business. Conspiratorial whispers and cash-stuffed envelopes.
Public powers routinely used for private gain.
Corruption remains widespread across the ``New
Europe,'' and the latest global rankings give a mixed report card to the
European Union's ex-communist newcomers and neighboring nations still aspiring
to join.
``Chances for improvement are not encouraging,''
conceded Adriana Krnacova, who runs the Czech office of Transparency
International, which this week released its 2005 corruption perception index
— an annual ranking that is closely watched in eastern Europe.
Many of the EU's newest members have shown
improvements in fighting corruption since they joined the bloc in May 2004,
which ``points to the leverage of the accession process in promoting
anti-corruption reforms in candidate countries,'' the group said.
Among them was Slovakia, which managed its best
score yet: 4.3 points on a 10-point scale, with 10 reserved for the
least-corrupt countries. Last year, Slovakia scored 4.0.
Slovak Justice Minister Daniel Lipsic hailed the
results as ``the greatest progress'' the country has seen in the last few
years. ``It seems that specific anti-corruption steps we've made are starting
to bear fruit,'' Lipsic said. But he cautioned: ``We're not at the end of the
road yet.''
But fellow EU newcomers the Czech Republic and
Poland ``have performed relatively poorly and show little or no sign of
improvement,'' Transparency International said, singling out rampant
bureaucracy and frequent conflicts of interest.
Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek vowed to redouble
efforts to fight corruption ahead of general elections next year. Ordinary
Czechs, however, reacted with a mixture of fatalism and antagonism to their 4.3
ranking, a mere tick better than last year's 4.2.
``Frankly, we don't need Transparency International
to see how corrupt our country is. And how are our politicians fighting it?
Mostly by mouth. .... What about buying ourselves at least the 20th position
next year?'' the daily Mlada Fronta Dnes said Wednesday in a wry commentary.
Romania and Bulgaria, which hope to join the EU in
2007, scored 3.0 and 4.0 — well below the 5.0 Transparency International
considers acceptable — and would have the greatest perceived corruption
in the EU if they were members today.
``Corruption exists in every country,'' Bulgarian
Interior Minister Rumen Petkov said Wednesday, insisting his office was
``making every effort to curb such practices.''
Croatia, which is pressing to join the EU by 2009,
fell three places from a year ago to a 3.4 — a ranking it shares with
countries including Burkina Faso, Egypt and Syria. Prime Minister Ivo Sanader
said his government was working to stamp out graft in the former Yugoslav
republic, which he acknowledged once ``was fertile ground for corruption and
bribes.''
Albania, one of Europe's poorest countries, slipped
18 places to 126th among the 159 nations surveyed, dealing a blow to its
aspirations of one day joining the EU. Kreshnik Spahiu, the head of the
nation's Citizens' Protection Office, urged the government to undertake
``radical political, judicial and institutional reforms.''
EU newcomer Estonia, by contrast, scored a 6.4 and
moved up to 27th place. ``Conducting official business has been simplified in
several spheres, which reduces the risk of corruption,'' said Tarmu Tammerk,
who co-chairs the watchdog group Corruption-Free Estonia.
But Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania, which
also joined the EU last year, didn't fare nearly as well — both scored
below 5.0.
``Latvia is among the most corrupt countries,''
lamented Roberts Putnis, who heads Transparency International's Latvian branch.
``We have made few steps, we have spent millions — but without
result.''
EU newcomer Hungary has hovered near the 5-point
level for years, despite a government ``Glass Pocket'' program launched in 2003
to make public procurement procedures and bureaucracy more transparent.
Associated Press writers Nadia Rybarova in the
Czech Republic, Andrea Dudikova in Slovakia, Eugene Brcic in Croatia, Tim
Jacobs in Latvia, Llazar Semini in Albania, Nevyana Hadjiyska in Bulgaria and
Pablo Gorondi in Hungary contributed to this report.
On the Net: Transparency International,
www.transparency.org
Latvian interior minister
resigns
Daily Journal, Caracas Venezuela — Oct 19, 2005
Copyright 2005, Associated Press
RIGA, Latvia (AP) – Latvian Interior Minister
Eriks Jekabsons is resigning because he does not believe the government has
allocated enough money in next year’s budget to raise the salaries of
police officers, firefighters and border guards, his aide said Wednesday.
The 46-year-old Lutheran minister and martial arts
expert will hand in his resignation on Friday, his aide Krists Leiskalns said.
Jekabsons, who represents the Latvia’s First
Party, has held the post since December 2004.
‘‘He said he could not look into our
police officers’ eyes after this budget is passed,” Leiskalns said.
The government is expected to approve next
year’s budget on Thursday, which includes a 40 lats per month (U.S.$68;
euro 57) wage increase for the country’s police, firefighters and border
guards, who are some of the lowest paid in the European Union.
Leiskalns said Jekabsons was also angry over the
amount of money allocated in the budget for Interior Ministry equipment.
Lithuania cops start
nationwide search for sailor
Delhi Newsline, India — Oct 19, 2005
Copyright
2005, Delhi Newsline
By Sourav Sanyal
New Delhi, October 19 — TO UNRAVEL the
mystery of Gurgaon sailor Gautam Malik’s disappearance from MV Spar Cetus
off the Lithuanian port of Klaipedia, the Lithuanian Police has officially
declared him missing and flashed his photograph in the national media.
Besides, since the vessel was registered in Norway,
a joint investigation has been mounted by Norwegian and Lithuanian authorities.
The Indian Embassy in Poland is assisting Gautam’s sister Preeti Sekhri
and brother-in-law Munish — in Lithuania — to piece together
Gautam’s whereabouts.
Superintendent at Ebony Ship Management’s Delhi
office Capt Rishi Sharma said, ‘‘Gautam’s disappearance is being
investigated by the Norwegian administration and the Lithuanian authorities.
The company has not approached the Interpol yet,’’ he said.
Gautam’s elder sister Neeti Malik said,
‘‘We still maintain it’s a conspiracy. Though the company paid
for my sister’s and brother-in-law’s tickets, the clearance letter
from the company’s agent in Lithuania was handed over to us only on
October 13, the day they left Delhi. Though our Embassy in Warsaw has assisted
them, they could hardly get into the facts of the case as the ship had already
sailed off from Lithuania on October 12.
“The Lithuanian Police has already declared him
missing and we have been told that a high-level inquiry would be conducted once
the vessel reaches Latvia. Investigations are on at a very slow
pace,’’ she said.
Gautam’s employers have informed the family
that his baggage, on board the ship, is being sent back to their house in
Sushant Lok.
The family of 23-year-old marine engineer Hasan
Zaheer — who has been missing from MSC Carmen off the Kenyan coast of
Mombasa — today demanded a CBI probe. ‘‘They should order a
high-level CBI investigation and help of other investigative agencies like the
Interpol should be sought to probe such cases,’’ said Hasan’s
father Zaheer Zaidi. The shipping company maintains that Hasan had committed
suicide by jumping into the sea.
Marks & Spencer Opening
in Baltics, Latvian Chocolates in Estonia
Copyright 2005, Baltic Times
19.10.2005
Company briefs — Marks & Spencer
will open its first shop in Tallinn after studying the market for nine months.
The 120-year-old U.K.-based department store is considering two locations
– next to the Kristiine or Viru shopping centers, the business daily
Aripaev said. The chain’s Tallinn store will open next spring, with shops
in Riga and Vilnius to follow. Marks & Spencer’s annual sales
surpassed 181 billion kroons (11.6 billion euros) last year. It operates more
than 400 stores in 30 countries.
Emila Gustava Sokolade, Latvia’s gourmet
chocolate producer, started selling its products in Tartu. A spokeswoman said
the company was going to open its first outlet in Tallinn soon. “Estonia
is the first country for us to gain foreign experience. We are planning to also
expand to other countries – in the EU and the CIS,” she said. The
company is satisfied with the start of its Estonian operations. “We have
made our first step outside Latvia, and we already see how right this decision
was. In the first week following the opening of the shop most of our products
have been sold, and we have doubled our output,” co-owner Zane Berzina
said. In order to raise the profile of the brand in foreign countries it is
being promoted as Emihls Gustavs Chocolate. The company’s owners are Zane
and Janis Berzini, who also own Stendera Ziepju Fabrika, a luxury soap
producer.
Baltics and Ukraine top the
list of Europe's new investment spots for real estate investors
20 October 2005 - 11:30
Copyright 2005, Wall Street
Journal
By Sara Seddon Kilbinger
Article — The Baltics and Ukraine top
the list of Europe's new investment spots for real estate investors.
Real-estate investors are raising the stakes. As
competition in popular European markets such as the U.K. intensifies, investors
are turning to emerging markets such as the Baltics and Ukraine for potentially
lucrative opportunities.
While investors have long targeted countries such as
Poland and the Czech Republic, former Soviet states such as the Baltics —
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia — are garnering interest following their
accession to the European Union in May 2004.
In particular, their capitals — Estonia's
Tallinn, Lithuania's Vilnius and Latvia's Riga — are on investors' radar
because they offer the best-quality buildings.
Scandinavian investors are the most active in the
Baltic region because of their proximity and close trade links. The size of the
Baltics makes the region a target for small to midsize funds, said Peter
Morris, managing director of real-estate firm Ober-Haus in Warsaw.
Investment group Middle Europe Investments BV, which
is based in the Netherlands, is developing 750,000 square meters of logistics,
office, residential and retail space in Lithuania and Latvia, Chief Executive
Jan Willem van Otterlo said.
The Baltics also are a "stepping stone to Ukraine,"
he said. "I think we'll see a lot of investors come to Ukraine —
eventually more than the Baltics — because of its size."
Ukraine, which had GDP growth of 12% last year, has
a population of about 47 million, compared with 3.5 million for Lithuania, two
million for Latvia and 1.3 million for Estonia.
However, Ukraine is considered much riskier than the
Baltic states because it is unlikely to join the euro zone and is politically
unstable.
But the opportunists are unlikely to be put off by
Ukraine's problems, spurred on by yields of around 13% for both office and
retail space, Mr. Lange, managing director of Russia at real-estate advisory
firm Jones Lang LaSalle in Moscow, said.
"If your strategy is to be opportunistic and look
for a market offering tremendous upside and depth that isn't that developed
yet, then Ukraine should be your first hit," Mr. Lange said.
Russia accuses EU is
"shielding" Tallinn, Riga from criticism over human rights
Oct 20 2005 4:52PM
Copyright 2005, Interfax
ASHGABAT. Oct 20 (Interfax) — Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the European Union of defending
Latvia and Estonia from criticism over the human rights situation in the
republics in the OSCE and the Council of Europe.
"The European Union is actually 'shielding' Riga and
Tallinn from criticism over their human rights dossiers in the OSCE and the
Council of Europe," Lavrov said in his speech at the Turkmen National Institute
of Democracy and Human Rights in Ashgabat on Thursday.
Boris Berezovsky declared
persona non grata in Latvia
Copyright 2005, Regnum News Service
October 20, 2005
Riga — Russian oligarch Boris
Berezovsky who are living in London now and was put on wanted list by the
Russian General Prosecutor Office will be put on the list of non grata persons
in Latvia. The decision was made on Wednesday by the Latvian National Security
Council chaired by Latvia’s President Vaira Vike-Freiberga. Before making
the decision, consultations were held with all the agencies concerned including
the General Prosecutor Office of the country.
As REGNUM earlier reported, Berezovsky had twice
visited Latvia and each time disregarding inquiries made by the Russian
Prosecutor Office, Latvia declined to extradite him to the Russian Federation.
It was Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis who
offered to examine the question of putting Berezovsky in the list of non grata
persons (usually, such decisions are made by Interior or Foreign Ministers).
EU offers pension-friendly
proposal
By ROBERT WIELAARD
Copyright 2005, Associated Press
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The European
Commission, which has long promoted the free flow of workers in the EU,
proposed legislation Thursday that would let people take the benefits of their
supplemental pension plans with them when they take a new job in another EU
nation.
European Union Employment Commissioner Vladimir
Spidla said his bill — which has been debated on and off for at least 15
years — will let workers who move to a new country simply continue to
contribute monthly payments to their supplemental plan the way they did before.
"If we expect workers to be mobile and flexible, we
cannot punish them if they change jobs," Spidla said. "Pension rights must be
fully transferable."
The change is meant to encourage more mobility of
workers to boost Europe's economic output, with the idea being that more
flexible workers will mean the right skills gravitate more easily to the right
parts of the EU labor market.
Under current rules, workers must close their
credits in one country, freeze them and start over again in another country.
However, there are different waiting periods and rules in many countries
— and all the while the frozen credits may lead to diminishing returns.
At the moment, moving to a new country can lead to
"significant losses," Spidla said.
The pensions issue has been batted around for many
years as trade unions, employers federations and national governments are not
accustomed or authorized to negotiate something EU-wide.
Spidla's bill comes at a time when governments are
at pains to enact social and labor market reforms to get Europeans to work
longer to contribute to social security programs.
But it faces formidable hurdles given the hodgepodge
of rules and regulations in the 25 EU nations. Participation in the
supplemental pension programs — to which both a worker and his or her
employer contribute — varies greatly.
Eight countries — Estonia, the Czech
Republic, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia — now
have no retirement plans other than their tax-funded, government-run
programs.
Transferring any private plan from elsewhere to
these countries would be difficult, officials said.
There are also significant differences among
countries with supplemental plans, notably Germany, that would be exempted from
the legislation for a decade.
Germany's supplemental pension credits now total 354
billion euros ($423 billion), according to EU figures. Sixty percent —
210 billion euros ($250.95 billion) — exists not as saved funds, but as
"book reserves" — basically, IOUs to be paid out upon retirement.
"It would be difficult to transfer" virtual savings
to another country, EU spokesman Katherina Schnurbein said.
The new proposal must be approved by the European
parliament and individual countries before it becomes law. Even under the new
law, a 10-year transition period is expected and significant exceptions would
remain.
Latvia Invites Tourists to
Relive Soviet Era
Created: 25.10.2005 16:59 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:59
MSK
Copyright 2005, MosNews
Latvia — A tourist organization in the
Latvian region of Kurzeme is creating a tourist route for visitors interested
in Soviet military facilities, left in former republic after the collapse of
the USSR, the Rosbalt news agency reports.
In 2006 a museum in Zante, a radar station in Irben,
a military harbour and prison in Liepaja and the site of a show titled Soviet
Charm in Kuldiga that includes test-drives of a Soviet car, a visit to a
pioneer camp, a lesson in civil defense and a banquet at a Soviet restaurant
will appear on Latvia’s tourist map.
The project, led by Belgian Ghent University and
Brussels-based Iris Consulting, is being developed by 15 partner organizations
from nine countries: Belgium, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the
Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The partners believe their project will be a unique
addition to the tourism industry.
Latvia Adopts the Law on
Reparation of Damages Caused by State Administrative Institutions
Contributed by Lejins Torgans & Vonsovics
25
October 2005
Copyright 2005, By Andrejs Lielkalns / Jurgita Spigule
Riga — After a lengthy drafting process
and more than a year after the introduction of new administrative procedure in
Latvia, on 2 June 2005 the parliament of Latvia finally adopted the Law on
Reparation of Damages Caused by State Administrative Institutions. The Law
entered into force on 1 July 2005.
The Law has been adopted to implement the rights of
private persons provided for in the Constitution of Latvia and the
Administrative Procedure Law to have an entitlement to reparation of material
and personal, including moral, damage caused to private persons by an unlawful
administrative act or unlawful action of a state institution. The Law sets out
the conditions that a private person must satisfy in order to be entitled to
claim damages from a state institution and the limits up to which the damage
claims are satisfied by the state institutions.
Several preconditions must be met in order for the
obligation to compensate damages to arise. Thus, first, the person claiming the
damages must show that the state institution has either issued an unlawful
administrative act or performed an unlawful action. Damages may also be claimed
if the state institution has failed to act when it had an obligation to do so.
Secondly, damages can be claimed only by the private person to whom the
unlawful administrative act has been directed at, or a third party, the rights
or lawful interests of which may be affected by the unlawful administrative
act, or the private person directly affected or targeted by the state
institution’s unlawful action or failure to act. Third, there must be a
direct causal link between the unlawful act or action and the damage caused to
the private person, i.e. the unlawful administrative act or action must have
caused and determined a real possibility for the damage to arise and must be
the main contributing factor to the arousal.
Three types of damage may be compensated pursuant to
the Law on Reparation of Damages Caused by State Administrative Institutions
– material, personal and moral. Personal damage relates to the harm or
loss caused to the life, physical integrity, health, freedom, reputation,
honor, personal and family secrets, commercial secrets, copyright and other
rights of an individual. A legal person may claim personal damages in respect
of business reputation, commercial secrets and copyrights. Lost profits may be
claimed as part of material damages if the claimant can prove that such profits
would have been obtained in the ordinary course of business. Moral damages may
be claimed by individuals in respect of personal suffering due to a material
abuse of its rights or legally protected interests. A private person does not
have a right to reparation of damages and his/her entitlement to damages may be
proportionally reduced if that person has not used all of their knowledge,
abilities and practical possibilities to do everything possible to prevent or
mitigate the damages. No damages may be claimed if the person has deliberately
facilitated the arousal of damages or the increase of their amount.
The burden of proof in a damages claim is on the
person claiming the damage. The moral damage is presumed to have been suffered
if it can be proved that the abuse of the individual’s rights or legally
protected interests has occurred. Nevertheless, the individual claiming moral
damage needs also to substantiate the amount of damages claimed.
One of the most controversial issues during the
drafting process of the Law on Reparation of Damages Caused by State
Administrative Institutions was the issue of the limitation of damages to be
paid. Currently the Law on State Liability provides that material damage is
"usually" compensated in the following amounts:
a) if the amount of damages does not exceed 100 000
LVL (~142 290 EUR) – the entire amount of the damages is paid;
b) if the amount of damages is between 100 001 LVL
and 1 000 000 LVL – the damages are compensated in an amount from 50% to
100%;
c) if the amount of damages exceeds 1 000 000 LVL
– the amount of damages to be compensated can be less than 50%.
It remains to be seen whether the use of the word
"usually" in determination of the damage compensation limits will be
interpreted and applied so as the award the claimant damages in the actual
amount in excess of the above limits.
Personal damages are normally limited to 5 000 LVL
(~7 115 EUR), and moral damages to 3 000 LVL (~4 270 EUR). In case of grave
personal or moral damage the limit of damages can be increased to respectively
7 000 LVL (~9 960 EUR) or 5 000 LVL (~7 115 EUR). LVL 20 000 (~28 470 EUR) can
be claimed in personal or moral damages if harm to a person’s life or
significant harm to person’s health has been caused.
The claims for damages must be submitted to the same
institution which has caused the damage. The institution must forward the claim
to its supervising institution, which is under an obligation to review the
claim and make a decision in respect of the claim within one month. The
decision may be appealed to the courts of general jurisdiction.
Damages may be claimed within one year of the date
the claimant became aware or should have been aware of its entitlement to
damages, however not later than five years after the date the unlawful
administrative act entered in force or the unlawful action (failure to act) was
committed.
So far no major legal controversies have yet arisen
in enforcement of the Law on Reparation of Damages Caused by State
Administrative Institutions.
McCreevy defends support for
Latvians
Published: 26th October 2005 12:39 CET
The Local,
Copyright 2005, The Local Europe
EU — European Commissioner Charlie
McCreevy has repeated his support for the Latvian company Laval in its row with
Swedish unions.
“Just because Latvia is a new member state and
one of its smallest states does not mean its concerns are less important,”
McCreevy told the European Parliament, after he was asked to explain comments
he made on the case last month.
McCreevy, who has responsibility for the internal
market and services, said it was extraordinary that he had to justify his
statements, as he was merely defending the EU’s single market rules.
He was backed up by Commission president José
Manuel Barroso, who said he would not “attack Sweden’s or
Scandinavia’s social model”, but vowed at the same time to
“respect and defend the rules spelled out in the European treaties.”
McCreevy was summoned to the European Parliament
after members demanded he explain his position on the conflict over the Latvian
builders hired to build a school in Vaxholm near Stockholm.
The building site was blockaded when Laval refused
to sign the unions’ collective agreements.
On a recent visit to Stockholm, McCreevy said the
European Commission would take Laval’s side when the conflict comes to the
European Court of Justice.
This resulted in letters of protest from among
others Thomas Östros, Swedish union organization LO and the European Trade
Union Confederation.
McCreevy's views also sparked an angry debate in the
European Parliament on Tuesday. Socialist leader Martin Schulz demanded
concrete answers from the Commission on questions about the right to strike.
"We don't want employees in Sweden to be played off
against Latvian workers," said Schulz.
Jan Andersson, a Swedish Social Democrat member of
the parliament, said that McCreevy had said simply repeated what he had said
earlier in Stockholm.
"If that isn't going againt the Swedish model, then
I don't know what is," said Andersson.
The ultimate challenge, Gidon
Kramer Interview
Copyright 2005, Telegraph Group Limited
(Filed:
26/10/2005)
By Ivan Newett
Berlin — There's nothing more
difficult than Bach, violinist Gidon Kremer tells Ivan Hewett on the release of
his new recording of the composer's sonatas and partitas.
I'm due to speak to Gidon Kremer at a hotel in
Berlin. But the interview gets put back 24 hours and when I finally get to talk
to him he's moved to a hotel in Paris. "Sometimes I forget what country I'm
in," he says ruefully. "These days I'm on the road for 11 months out of 12.
It's very wearing, but I can't see it changing for many years yet."
'The best music speaks quietly, so it cannot reach
millions,' says Gidon Kremer
Of course, all starry violinists have hectic
schedules. But there's a mystique about Kremer, something that sets him apart
from Vengerov or Mutter or Mullova. If I had to put a phrase to it, it would be
high seriousness.
Mutter is serious enough too, but even she will
sometimes deign to charm her audiences with a virtuoso show-piece, or even a
little "gypsy" sentiment. Kremer wouldn't stoop to such stuff. He's reluctant
even to smile at the audience, let alone charm them.
But there's one topic on which Kremer and all those
more bankable stars are agreed, and that's the pre-eminence of Bach's sonatas
and partitas for solo violin. "There's nothing more challenging than Bach," he
says. "It's even more difficult than the solo piece Luigi Nono wrote for me,
partly because everybody knows them.
They're the Old Testament for violinists, just as
Bach's cello suites are the Old Testament for cellists." Completed in about
1720, when Bach was 35, each one is a substantial piece lasting a good 20
minutes. The sonatas are quite severely abstract, and include fugues written
for just the four strings of the violin — an amazing technical feat both
to compose and to play.
The partitas seem more approachable, being sequences
of baroque dances. But they include the monumental Chaconne, the single most
famous piece ever written for solo violin.
Kremer has just released a new recording of all six
on the ECM label, his first since 1980. I ask him what it was about the first
version he wanted to do differently. "I don't know", he says candidly. "I
haven't listened to it. I don't want to make comparisons." So what made him
want to revisit the music? "Just the feeling that now I'm a different person,
and the music would inevitably come out differently. I won't say better, but
perhaps more mature."
I hazard a guess that trying to sustain four-part
counterpoint on one violin is the hardest aspect of the pieces, but Kremer
doesn't agree. "The dances are just as hard as the fugues. This music cannot be
grasped just with mathematical accuracy. A computer that could bring out all
the lines equally wouldn't do better than a live player who has to choose which
lines to bring out oraccentuate."
In the 25 years since his first recording, the
"period performance" way of playing Bach has moved to centre-stage. But Kremer
is guarded about its influence on him. "You know, many superficial things are
done under the banner of authenticity. But often there's no blood and nerves in
the music-making.
"I've had the privilege of working with some
musicians of that persuasion who are really great artists, such as Nikolaus
Harnoncourt. But it's not that he was my master: he's just one of many great
musicians I've learned from, like Bernstein, Rattle, Eschenbach or Martha
Argerich."
The sense that Kremer cleaves to an older, more
romantic aesthetic is borne out by his answer to my next question, about the
kind of sound he was looking for. "Sound was not uppermost in my mind. In a way
I'm not interested in violin playing as such. I would say my priority was not
to sound like a violinist. I wanted to find the spiritual message behind the
notes, and that means I have to invest myself in the music. If you are going to
tangle with a piece, you must do it the honour of collaborating with it and
adding your own self."
The word "spiritual" keeps recurring in Kremer's
talk, and it reminds you of his roots. Kremer is not a Russian — in fact,
he comes from Latvia, a country that suffered under the Soviet yoke until
liberation came in 1989.
But he has a Russian sense that human worth is
located on some invisible spiritual level, below mundane reality — which
is why he's disturbed by the galloping westernisation of the Baltic States and
Russia. "I can feel a change in audiences there since 1989. In the Soviet
times, a concert would be attended by people who had a real passion and hunger
for music as a spiritual food. It's strange — now we have freedom in
daily life, but some of the spirit of freedom in the music-making has gone."
So is capitalism killing the spirit of music?
"Market forces set up a different set of values. For the market, what is best
is what will sell in millions. But the best music speaks quietly, so it cannot
reach millions. It is a secret spiritual message to mankind. That is why I love
Bach — to me it is music that is full of secrets."
Gidon Kremer's recording of Bach's Sonatas and
Partitas for Solo Violin is released on ECM 476 7291
Latvia blacklists exiled
Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky
AP WorldStream Wednesday, October 26, 2005 7:20:00 AM
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press
RIGA, Latvia (AP) — Prime Minister
Aigars Kalvitis on Wednesday signed an order blacklisting exiled Russian tycoon
Boris Berezovsky, barring him from entering Latvia.
The order comes a week after the country's National
Security Council, on which Kalvitis sits, recommended barring Berezovsky from
entering the country.
Kalvitis has said he believed Berezovsky poses a
threat to Latvia and that his trips to Latvia created "more problems than we
may want."
Berezovsky has said his two trips to the Baltic
country this year were tied to a charity he funds and a business venture. He
has accused the Latvian government of caving to pressure from Moscow.
"The notion that Boris poses a threat to Latvian
security is sheer nonsense," Alex Goldfarb, who heads Berezovsky's Foundation
for Civil Liberties charity in Riga, said from Ukraine. "This would be
appropriate for a banana republic but not for a self-respecting European
country."
"It is, of course, up to the Latvian people to
figure out what in the world pushed the Latvian government to do this to a
private person at such a level and with such force. It is bizarre."
The trips have angered Moscow, which criticized
Latvia for not honoring its commitments to Interpol, through which Russia has
issued an international arrest warrant for the tycoon.
Berezovsky, who lives in Britain, where he was
granted political asylum, amassed a fortune in dubious privatization deals in
the early 1990s in Russia but fled the country to avoid an investigation into
the alleged laundering of Aeroflot airlines revenues.
At 70, he finds marathon is
no longer a challenge
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Copyright 2005, North
Jersey Media Group Inc.
By CAROLYN FEIBEL
STAFF WRITER
Englewood,NJ — The unathletic —
even the normally athletic — might regard Ojars Stikis with a sort of
horrified admiration: He runs 50-mile races. He runs 100-milers. He has run
through snow and lung-searing cold for 30 hours straight. He runs through black
nights, alone in the woods, so tired that he suffers delusions of bears and
monsters lurking just beyond the narrow beam of his headlamp.
The world of ultra running is full of extremes,
where people like Stikis push their bodies and minds to unheard of limits.
But wait. It's even more extreme: He's 70.
In August, Stikis, an Englewood resident, placed
first in his age group in the Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Run. That honor earned
him a nomination for "GeezerJock of the Year" from GeezerJock magazine.
Another New Jerseyan, Mary Bennett of Lawrenceville,
also was nominated for being a champion diver in the 50-59 age group.
Stikis, a study in modest understatement, brushes
the honor off as almost inconsequential.
"Big deal," he says. "I beat out two other
70-year-olds. I think I won by five minutes."
Ultramarathons — races much longer than the
traditional 26.2-mile marathon — have always attracted older athletes,
Stikis says.
"Their speed days tend to be over," he says.
"Whatever glory they can get now in their age group is outlasting someone
else."
Ultra running requires endurance: in your heart,
lungs, knees and feet. The chief opponent is pain. Hours and hours of pain, and
psychological swings that can mirror the rocky hills and muddy valleys of the
trail.
"As you're running, you swear you'll never do this
again," Stikis says. "You always feel that. Once you stop running, and you walk
away from the race, you start forgetting."
"I think humans don't have a good memory of pain,"
he adds.
If they did, they probably wouldn't continue in a
sport that causes vomiting in many regular participants, that requires you to
urinate in the woods and forgo sleep and carry water and protein bars on your
back so your body doesn't fall apart completely.
Not to mention the danger of bears, snakes, ticks
and falls. When you're so tired that you forget to lift your feet, you trip
over tree roots or rocks, Stikis says. Judgment becomes clouded. In every race,
you fall. Stikis has been lucky to escape with cuts and bruises; other ultra
runners break bones.
So why do it?
"There's no simple answer," he says. "I guess I'm a
person who likes to keep challenging myself and keep raising the bar. It's just
scary and there's some attraction in that."
Stikis didn't start running until he was 51 and his
blood pressure and weight increased. He began at the gym, but soon started
pounding the streets of Manhattan, where he worked as a computer guru for
financial companies. At age 55, he finished the New York City marathon.
Once in the marathon world (he's run about 30), he
started hearing about ultramarathons, and couldn't resist the challenge. "You
can't quite believe it goes on," he says.
So he tried one, and lived. And actually had fun and
made friends. "You're thrown together with people and they enjoy the same pain
and joy you do," he says. Once, in a Vermont race, he ran through the night
with a dentist from Alabama, the two chatting and running the whole way.
Stikis has a lot of stories to share. He was born in
Latvia, but the turmoil of World War II swept his family from their home, and
they ended up living in displaced persons camps in Germany for years.
When he was 10, the family immigrated to Australia.
Stikis played sports and became an avid musician, playing baritone sax and
flute. At 26, he moved to the U.S. to follow his jazz heroes and work as a
musician. Instead, he learned how to program computers for Citicorp back when
computers were a novelty. He spent 25 years running his own computer consulting
business for financial corporations.
Now, his life consists of a little day trading in
stocks and running. That includes training for races, traveling to races,
buying clothes and shoes, and recovering after races.
Stikis typically runs five to 10 miles every day,
and "once in a while" will increase the length to 15 to 20 miles, often along
the rocky and steep trails of Palisades Interstate Park.
Marathons no longer bring the same thrill of
accomplishment. "I use marathons as a fun run, a training run if you like," he
said. "Marathons are becoming — let's face it — pretty
commonplace."
Commonplace for ultra runners, maybe. The most
competitive among them continue to look for even harder and longer races than
100-milers.
There's the non-stop 135-mile Kiehl's Badwater
Ultramarathon, which starts in the desert of Death Valley and climbs 4,700 feet
to Mount Whitney in California. Or they can try the 124-mile Jungle Marathon,
which takes place over five days in Brazil. Runners are told to climb trees to
escape from dangerous wild boars and to shake branches to drive off hungry
jaguars.
Stikis says he's never run more than 100 miles, but
confesses that he's intrigued by a multi-day 3,100-mile race.
"It's nibbling at me, it's daring me," he says.
Latvia prepared for bird flu
pandemic: minister
2005-10-28 12:53:45
Copyright 2005, XINHUA
RIGA, Oct. 28 (Xinhuanet) — Latvia is
prepared to combat the birdflu pandemic, said Latvian Minister of Agriculture
Martins Roze on Thursday .
The state veterinary and food administration, which
is responsible for national animal disease control, is monitoring closely the
number of fowl and animal health in the country, Roze said.
Roze also pointed out that Latvia is not a high risk
area of bird flu according to the analysis of the birds' migratory routes.
However, possibilities still can't be ruled out that wild birds migrating to
warmer regions via Latvia could make contact with those from countries affected
by bird flu.
Therefore, the state veterinary and food
administration will strengthen its surveillance effort next spring when the
migratory birds return, he said.
Edvins Olsevskis, the chief of animal epidemic
surveillance department under the state veterinary and food administration,
said they had worked out a plan to prevent and control animal epidemic.
He added that the plan is very important for it lays
down specific counter measures against different animal infectious diseases
including bird flu.
Olsevskis said that last year, they also worked out
emergency measures against bird flu and conducted related maneuvers. Enditem
Belarusian security official
says U.S. trying to destabilize Belarus
AP WorldStream Thursday, October 27, 2005 12:50:00 PM
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press
By YURAS KARMANAU
Associated
Press
MINSK, Belarus (AP) — A top Belarusian
security chief on Thursday accused the United States of doing all it can to
destabilize the former Soviet republic "up to the point of intervention."
Vasiliy Dementei, a top officer in the KGB —
Belarus' security agency — also told parliament that Western security
services were trying to set up surveillance points in Latvia and Poland to
monitor Belarusian communications.
"The facts prove that the basic goal of the security
services of foreign nations, in particular the United States, is to destabilize
the political situation in the our country ... up to the point of
intervention," Dementei said.
He also said political activists, in particular from
a Ukrainian youth movement, were planning to use "extreme methods" to disrupt
the country's authoritarian regime.
President Alexander Lukashenko routinely accuses
political opponents and foreign forces of plotting to unseat him by fomenting
changes similar to the protests that helped bring opposition leaders to power
in other ex-Soviet republics.
Human rights activist Tatyana Protko accused
Lukashenko of using the excuse of "extremism" to continue repressing the
country's beleaguered opposition.
Also Thursday, Lukashenko presented Cuba's
ambassador with an award, saying Belarus and Cuba shared a "single view on
international problems" and making veiled reference to U.S. policies toward the
two countries.
"Our countries have similar points of view regarding
the aspirations of people to defend the principle of self-sovereignty,
independence, justice and mutual respect, which is threatened by the hegemonic
policy conducted by certain states," Lukashenko told Omar Medina Kintero at an
award ceremony.
Lukashenko has led the nation of 10 million people
since 1994, reintroducing Soviet symbols, disbanding parliament, closing
independent media and maintaining rigid Soviet-style state controls over the
economy. Many opposition leaders have been jailed or have disappeared.
The United States has labeled Lukashenko "Europe's
last dictator."
Latvian court sentences
murderers of U.S. missionary
AP WorldStream Friday, October 28, 2005 6:27:00 AM
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press
By TIMOTHY JACOBS
Associated
Press Writer
RIGA, Latvia (AP) — A Latvian court on
Friday sentenced two men convicted of murdering a North Carolina missionary to
lengthy jail terms.
The Riga Regional Court sentenced Karlis Magonis to
20 years and Ingus Smitkus to 15 years in prison for murdering and robbing Drew
Rush, a missionary from Charlotte, North Carolina, last year. Both men also
received three years probation and will have their property confiscated.
The sentences were stiffer than the 17 years for
Magonis and 12 years for Smitkus prosecutors had requested.
It was not immediately known if they would appeal.
The men were convicted of murder in the act of
robbery for strangling Rush to death in his apartment on Oct. 27, 2004. They
robbed Rush of 1,000 Lats (US$1,725, Ç1,425) in cash and stole two
laptop computers and other items from his apartment.
Magonis, 20, met Rush as a military conscript while
Rush was working as an English teacher and missionary at his army base and had
borrowed money from Rush in the past. Police told Rush's family that Rush had
counseled Magonis and was scheduled to meet with him the night of the killing.
Two days before the killing, Magonis escaped from a
psychiatric hospital in Riga where he had been sent by his battalion commander
for evaluation.
Military police caught Magonis on Oct. 29 and
returned him to the psychiatric hospital where police arrested him a few days
later.
Rush, who lived in Charlotte for more than 20 years,
had lived in Riga for more than two years while working with Military Ministry,
a branch of Campus Crusade for Christ.
Latvia celebrates national
instrument
2005-10-30
BBC News
By Laura Sheeter
Copyright 2005, BBC
RIGA — A festival to celebrate an
instrument played by only 500 people is taking place this weekend in Latvia.
The 10th annual festival of Latvia's national
instrument the kokle, features a performance by the largest kokle ensemble in
the world.
Ninety-nine young women — one in five of all
kokle players in Latvia — will be performing a piece written especially
for them by one of the country's leading composers.
Latvia's national instrument is traditionally played
by women and girls. It's a triangular wooden box on legs with up to 33 metal
strings, which the musicians pluck.
It is unique to Latvia, and although neighbouring
countries do have similar instruments — the Finnish kantele and
Lithuanian kankle for example — Latvians say nothing sounds quite like
the kokle.
Playing the kokle was banned for a time under the
Soviet Union, but now more and more people are taking it up and contemporary
musicians are using the kokle in new works.
Master craftsman
There is a problem though — there is only one
master kokle-maker in Latvia, and he has a five-year waiting list for new
instruments.
It takes Imants Robeznieks a month to make each
instrument — he says parents are now ordering kokles before their
children have even started playing.
"I work 12 to 14 hours a day and still the waiting
list keeps growing," he says. "The telephone rings non-stop. I have to turn it
off or I'd never get any work done."
Mr Robeznieks has been making kokles for more than
20 years and says finding suitable wood is the biggest problem. He searches
building sites where old wooden houses are being demolished, and uses off-cuts
from old pianos, if he is lucky enough to find one.
The Latvian ministry of culture is so worried about
the future of kokle-making that they have just agreed to fund two students to
study with Mr Robeznieks. But it will take years of hard work before they are
ready to take over the work of making kokles for the country's leading
musicians.
But Mara Vanaga, the organiser of this weekend's
festival, is far more optimistic about the future. She says that as Latvia has
changed since independence, so has the kokle — with alterations to the
instrument itself, and its adoption by young musicians playing music of all
kinds.
The kokle cannot die, she says, as it is becoming
ever more popular. She believes it is reasserting its place at the heart of
contemporary Latvian culture.
U.S. not legally bound to
reveal dump sites
Monday, October 31 2005 @ 11:12 AM PST
By John Bull
Special to The Morning Call
Copyright 2005, The Morning Call
Article — Editor's note: For decades,
the U.S. Army secretly dumped millions of pounds of chemical weapons off the
coasts of America and other nations throughout the world. Today, in the second
day of a two-part series, we examine the extent — and the potential
environmental disaster — of the dumping that occurred worldwide.
As World War II drew to a close, the U.S. Army was
faced with scant storage space in ordnance depots at home and massive chemical
weapons stockpiles overseas.
The solution: Dump the weapons off the coast of
whatever country they were in.
The result: U.S.-made weapons of mass destruction
litter the coasts of more than 10 countries including Italy, France, India,
Australia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Japan, Denmark and Norway, and the French
territory of New Caledonia, according to a 2001 Army report recently released
to the Daily Press of Newport News, Va.
The chemical weapons remain there to this day. They
are extremely dangerous.
Some of them have washed up on shore or have been
dredged up by fishermen. At least 200 people have been seriously injured over
the years.
The Army now admits it secretly dumped at least 64
million pounds of chemical warfare agents as well as more than 400,000 mustard
gas-filled bombs and rockets off the U.S. coastline, and much more than that
off the coasts of other countries, a Daily Press investigation has found.
The Army can't say where all the dump sites are.
There may be more.
The Army is missing years of records on where it
secretly dumped surplus chemical weapons from the close of World War II until
1970, when the practice was halted. It has not reviewed records of post-World
War I at-sea chemical weapons dumping, but knows the practice was commonplace
at the time.
In addition to at least 26 dump sites off the
American coast, more than 30 U.S.-created chemical weapons dump sites are
scattered throughout the world's oceans off the coasts of other countries,
according to the newly released Army report. The report was created by the
chemical weapon historical research and response team at the Aberdeen Proving
Ground in Maryland.
''It's a disaster looming, a time bomb, say,'' said
Gert Harigel, a physicist in Geneva, Switzerland, who has been active in
international chemical weapons issues. ''The scientific community knows very
little about it. It scares me a lot.''
The United States is not legally bound to do
anything about the dangers it created in the world's oceans, whether from its
own weapons it dumped or those of captured enemy stockpiles.
A 1975 treaty signed by the United States prohibits
ocean dumping of chemical munitions. But it does not address dump zones created
before the treaty was signed.
And the overseas chemical dump sites are presumed to
be in international waters, inoculating the U.S. government from legal
responsibility, said Peter Kaiser, spokesman for the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at The Hague in the Netherlands.
''Legally, nothing can be done,'' said Harigel, a
member of the Geneva International Peace Research Institute. ''But from a
humanitarian point of view, they need to be pressured to do something.''
At the least, Harigel said, the U.S. government
should monitor the chemical dump sites it created and spread warnings if
environmental evidence shows they are leaking.
Other nations with dump sites
In recent years, the Army quietly has gone through
decades-old classified records and identified five other countries where U.S.
chemical-laden bombs, rockets and grenades were thrown into the sea. The names
of those countries remain classified, but records at the National Archives
provide hints.
The Daily Press uncovered an Aug. 24, 1944, memo
classified at the time as ''restricted'' that revealed in which other allied
countries the United States kept stockpiles of chemical weapons during World
War II.
Those countries include New Zealand, China, the
former Soviet Union and unidentified ''Latin American countries.'' The United
States used parts of Panama as chemical weapons bombing ranges for years. Other
National Archives records detail two shipments of unidentified chemical
weapons, totaling 20,000 pounds, in 1953 and 1954 from the United States to
Fort Amador in Panama.
The Army says it informed the governments of those
five unidentified countries in recent years of the dangers lurking off their
coasts, but was asked by those governments not to release the information to
the public.
Two summers ago, researchers for the New Zealand
government searched U.S. government records at the National Archives, seeking
information on chemical weapons ocean dump sites, said archivist Tim Nenninger.
Harigel said residents of those unidentified
countries should be told by someone, either their governments or the U.S. Army,
of the potential dangers.
''Whether or not anything can be done at this point,
the people there deserve to know,'' he said. ''The danger increases with time.
The shells are more and more corroding. The fishermen can easily get this stuff
into their nets and get seriously hurt.''
Scientists have determined the mustard agent damages
DNA, causes cancer and survives for at least five years on the ocean floor in a
concentrated gel. Nerve gas lasts at least six weeks when it is released into
seawater, killing every organism it touches before breaking down into nonlethal
component chemicals.
Chemical-filled munitions now on sea beds are slowly
leaking, and more surely will as years pass, depending on the depth of the
water, the thickness of the containers and water temperature, according to a
2004 study by Jiri Matousek, a Czech scientist.
The hazard of leaking shells probably will last for
''another tens to hundreds of years,'' he concluded. ''It is also without doubt
that long-term monitoring at areas of concern is needed as a categorical
imperative.''
The problem is so bad in the Baltic Sea that Denmark
has covered portions of some shallow-water dump sites with concrete to contain
leakage.
Other nations not told
The Army has known for decades of its overseas
chemical weapons dumps, yet left other governments to discover and deal with
the problem on their own.
Japan's problems from U.S. chemical weapons dumping
didn't come to light until a government inquiry in 1973, after more than 85
fishermen were injured by chemical warfare agents dumped by either U.S.
occupation forces or the Japanese military at the close of World War II.
It wasn't until 2003 that Australia discovered on
its own that the U.S. Army had dumped more than 60 million pounds of chemical
weapons off Brisbane, and pinpointed precise quantities and nautical
coordinates. The Australian government posted the area off-limits to mariners
and released a well-publicized report on its findings.
The Canadian Department of National Defence has
worked for three years to identify offshore chemical weapons dump sites created
by either the U.S. or Canadian military. Three have been found, and the
Canadians believe the United States may have created one of them.
The well-publicized Warfare Agent Disposal project
began after a Halifax area antiques dealer named Myles Kehoe discovered that
the Canadian military had moved some of its post-World War II chemical
munitions through Nova Scotia for disposal. When his fisherman father
remembered hearing that the ordnance was loaded onto ships and dumped somewhere
at sea, alarm bells went off in Kehoe's head.
''He laughed about it,'' Kehoe said. ''They did it
all the time, he said.'' At Kehoe's insistent prodding, the Canadians have
identified three chemical weapons dump sites in Canadian waters and are
researching roughly 1,200 other underwater locations that their records show
may be ordnance dumps.
Stockpile unaccounted for
The Canadian government believes the United States
may have jettisoned chemical weapons roughly 100 miles off the coast of
Vancouver Island in British Columbia, north of Washington state. The U.S. Army
says it has no record that was done, but won't rule it out.
''I won't say there's nothing there that belongs to
us,'' said William Brankowitz, a deputy project manager in the U.S. Army
Chemical Materials Agency and a leading authority on the Army's chemical
weapons dumping.
The United States had an 18-ton stockpile of
chemical weapons in Alaska after World War II, National Archives records
reveal. The Army doesn't know where it all went.
The two other chemical weapons dump sites in
Canadian waters are off the coast of Sable Island and Nova Scotia, near the
Grand Banks, one of the world's best fisheries, with one site spread out over
at least 30 nautical miles. It is presumed to have been created by the Canadian
government after World War II.
''Fisheries are dying. The sea bottom is going bare.
It's terrible,'' Kehoe said. ''We are finding crab mutations that no one can
explain. Cod are dying at their larval stage. Most of that stuff is starting to
leach now'' from their steel containers into the sea.
Kehoe's campaign for information and action has
spanned 13 years and is becoming increasingly frantic.
A few years ago, the U.S.-based Hunt Oil Co. was
granted a license by the Canadian government to conduct seismic testing for
potential petroleum products off the coast of Nova Scotia.
''There is absolutely no scientific documentation on
what effect oil exploration has on these dump sites,'' Kehoe noted. ''There is
absolutely no research on it. The National Defence Department went public, on
air, saying we don't know the impact of seismic testing on these sites.
''This nightmare is going to be happening to you
over there. It's horrifying.''
170,000 tons to sea bottom
In the most publicized of all chemical weapons
dumps, British and U.S. forces loaded dozens of German ships with captured
nerve and mustard gas from 1945 to 1947 and sank them in the Skagerrak strait.
The wrecks are off the coasts of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and near the
Danish island of Bornholm in the relatively shallow Baltic Sea.
It was called Operation Davy Jones Locker. An
estimated 170,000 tons of German chemical weapons went to the bottom. Most, but
not all, went into deep water.
Russia also dumped some if its chemical weapons
stockpile in the ocean. So did Australia, not far from the Great Barrier Reef.
And England dumped much of its stockpile so close to land in the North Sea that
chemical ordnance routinely washes up on its shore to this day.
The United States' ocean dumping of chemical weapons
stockpiles both at home and overseas made logistical sense at the end of World
War II, and no one in those days had much environmental awareness.
At the time, U.S. ordnance depots across the country
were packed with war supplies, including a stockpile of 60 million gas masks,
National Archive records show.
Room had to be made for chemical weapons still in
production but not yet delivered, and there was little space to put overseas
stockpiles if they were brought back to the United States.
By early 1945, a blizzard of memos out of the War
Department demanded that ordnance depots reduce unnecessary stock by emptying
and burying drums of chemical warfare agents and selling nonhazardous material
to the public as war surplus, National Archives records show.
War surplus sales were so frenzied that in October
1945 a colonel in the Chemical Weapon Service issued a memo warning that
bomb-packing crates must be better inspected before being sold. Buyers, it
turned out, had discovered some of the crates still had bombs in them.
Sailors jeopardized en route
Besides having nowhere to put them, chemical weapons
were dangerous to transport by ship and jeopardized sailors, the Army
discovered. Several shipments back to the United States resulted in leaks.
Leak detection was unsophisticated at the time.
If nerve gas was shipped, crates of rabbits were
placed on deck. If the rabbits died, the crew knew there was a serious problem.
Edward Aho, of Astoria, Ore., was on the SS Isaac
Wise as it was loaded in spring 1946 with captured German mustard and phosgene
gas bombs. During the trip from Antwerp, Belgium, to the former San Jacinto
Ordnance Depot in Houston, 16 of the bombs leaked and at least five people were
burned, declassified Army records show.
Aho said the only precaution taken before the ship
sailed was to build wooden bulkheads against the steel skin of the ship, in the
hope the wood would cushion the blow if the ship's movement dislodged the
bombs.
Aho, 78, said he was sent into the ship's hold once
to look for a leak, protected only by a gas mask and armed only with a
primitive gas detection device that looked like a ''battery with a gauge on
it.'' ''I'll never know if what [nervous system] problems I have [are] related.
I'll never know,'' he said in a phone interview, declining to specify his
health problems.
Those leaking bombs were destroyed in Texas. The
rest of the bombs were taken by railcar to Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas.
During the trip, more of them leaked. What happened to them after that is
unclear from the sketchy Army records that still exist.
Hundreds injured
Over the decades, many fishermen overseas have been
seriously injured after being exposed to U.S. chemical weapons dumps created
after World War II.
''Around the world, accidents have happened,'' said
the Army's Brankowitz. ''Fortunately, there has been nothing I would call
colossal or catastrophic accidents.''
Denmark's government estimates that chemical warfare
agents dumped in the sea by either the United States or Britain have hurt 150
mariners and have been discovered washed up on shore. In 1984 alone, 11 Danish
fishermen were burned by mustard gas while fishing in the Baltic Sea.
Crews of fishing boats off the Danish island of
Bornholm routinely wear chemical protection suits when at sea near a known
chemical weapons dump site. Vessels working other areas of the Baltic are
required to keep gas masks and special medical kits on board.
The problem is so bad in the relatively shallow
Baltic Sea that the seabed is surveyed every summer by Latvia, Russia and
Finland to determine whether long-dumped chemical shells are leaking.
At least 52 Japanese were injured in 11 accidents at
one of eight known U.S. chemical ocean dumps, mostly of Japan's captured
chemical weapons stockpiles. When the Japanese government publicized the
locations of those dump areas in the 1970s, the number of injuries dropped.
Disclosure by Australia
In 1983, an Australian fishing trawler snagged a
one-ton steel container of mustard agent dumped off the coast of Cape Moreton
in Australia by the United States and pulled it to shore, according to a 2003
Australian government report. No one was injured.
The partially filled container was snared in
relatively shallow water not far from where the U.S. Army now admits it dumped
an estimated 32,000 tons of mustard agent and toxic Lewisite in drums, and in
hundreds of thousands of chemical-filled artillery shells.
It was the second time a trawler in that area pulled
up a one-ton mustard gas container dumped by the United States. The first was
on Jan. 17, 1970. A few years later, a similar, partially filled container
washed up on shore. No one was injured in those two incidents.
In 2003, the Australian government created an
in-depth report on what it calls chemical warfare agent dumps, identifying
exact latitudes and longitudes of U.S.-and Australian-created chemical weapons
dumps. The information was released to the public and widely publicized in the
news media there.
''The publication of this paper will, hopefully,
prevent accidents occurring at the CWA dump sites where coordinates have been
revealed,'' the report concludes. ''It will also, hopefully, encourage other
governments to reveal locations of their CWA sea dump sites for the same
purpose.''
That's something the United States has not fully
done, and should do out of simple decency to its citizens and residents of
other countries where the Army created chemical weapons hazards, said Harigel,
of Switzerland.
''The government is not open to the public in the
United States,'' he said. ''There should be pressure put on them.''
Latvian parliament appoints
Dzintars Jaundzeikars next Interior Minister
AP WorldStream Thursday, November 03, 2005 4:13:00 AM
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press
RIGA, Latvia (AP) — The Latvian Saeima,
or parliament, on Thursday approved Dzintars Jaundzeikars to be the country's
next Interior Minister.
Sixty-four lawmakers in the 100-seat Saeima voted in
favor of his appointment, 14 voted against, and 22 lawmakers either abstained
or were absent.
Jaundzeikars, 49, takes over for fellow Latvia's
First party lawmaker Eriks Jekabsons, who resigned last month to protest what
he said were insufficient raises for police, firefighters and border guards in
next year's government budget. Jekabsons had been in the post for a year.
Before joining the Saeima in 2003, Jaundzeikars ran
a milk processing company in the northern Latvian city of Limbazi.
Baltic presidents call for
closer EU scrutiny of plans for gas pipeline
AP WorldStream Thursday, November 03, 2005 11:14:00 AM
Copyright 2005, The Associated Press
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The presidents
of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on Thursday called on the European Union to
take seriously their countries' environmental concerns over a planned gas
pipeline that would run through the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany.
Estonian President Arnold Ruutel, Lithuanian
President Valdas Adamkus and Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga met in the
Estonian city of Maardu to discuss regional issues, including the planned gas
pipeline.
They said they were concerned the pipeline would
wreak further damage on an already polluted Baltic Sea and called on the EU to
consult their governments more closely on the matter in the future, said
Vike-Freiberga's spokeswoman, Aiva Rozenberga.
The many unexploded munitions left over from World
War II and chemicals dumped for decades in the sea by the Soviet Union made
building an underwater pipeline risky, Adamkus and Ruutel were quoted as saying
by the Baltic News Service.
The 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) pipeline, intended to
boost Russia's gas sales to Europe and secure uninterrupted energy supplies for
Germany, is to be commissioned in 2010, and will eventually carry 55 billion
cubic meters (72 billion cubic yards) of gas each year.
It will span from Vyborg, in northeast Russia, to
Greifswald, in northern Germany, bypassing current routes through Poland,
Belarus and Ukraine.
The deal has provoked opposition in the Baltics and
neighboring Poland because of its impact on the Baltic Sea and on local energy
markets.
The construction of the pipeline should be
undertaken under the watchful eyes of all the countries bordering the Baltic
Sea, Ruutel said.
The presidents also discussed how they could better
relay their countries' experiences in joining the EU and NATO to other
post-Soviet republics like Ukraine and Moldova, Rozenberga said.
Passport to a job at
£2.50 an hour
November 4, 2005
Copyright 2005, Johnston Press New
Media
Blackpool, UK [seaside resort on west coast of
central England /pjv] — EASTERN European workers in Blackpool are
being exploited by shady employers and dodgy landlords, The Gazette can reveal.
Some workers from new EU countries such as Poland,
Latvia and Lithuania are being asked to work long hours for a pittance –
and crowded into flats with no hot water or heating.
The Gazette can reveal one Polish worker juggles
four jobs in a 120 hour week, while others are paid as little as £2.50 a
hour – less than half of the Government's minimum wage.
It is estimated around 3,000 Eastern European
workers are now in Blackpool, with the height of the summer season seeing
thousands more flooding the resort.
One, Marek from Poland, said: "Some of my friends
get only £2.50 to £3 – and can work 10 or 12 hours a day in
the same job.
"Some are so grateful for a job, they stay at it and
don't want to leave, so they do what they are told to do, not always what is
right to do.
"The conditions some live in are terrible. Landlords
put four people into a flat and charge them all too much. Then they have to pay
extra for hot water and heating.
"A lot of people will come back the next season
because they have to. There are bad conditions in Poland and these people came
to Blackpool to make a better life."
A good friend of Marek's works a 120 hour week
— working round-the-clock as waiter and barman.
The recent invasion of foreign workers has helped
the seasonal economy with many only too eager to do the jobs some employers
find hard to fill.
So successful has the move to foreign labour been
some large Fylde employers are now rumoured to be only block recruiting from
abroad, rather than advertising vacancies locally.
And while many of the workers, including those at
Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Leisure Parcs, are happy with their new lives
— often earning much more than they can back home — others
elsewhere are being exploited.
Blackpool's Trades Union Council has expressed
concerns about the activities of some less reputable employers and the agencies
who provide the workers.
Secretary Mick Martin said: "The workers are here
quite legally, but our concern lies with the agencies and whether the employees
are getting a fair deal.
"The minimum wage stands at £5.05, but there
could be a temptation to employ workers on less if you can get away with it."
Documents of the Soviet
Intelligence Testify: Abrene Region is Latvian Territory
Simon Araloff, AIA European section
Copyright 2005,
Axis Information Analysis
Analysis — "They'll get the ears of the dead donkey, and not
Abrene."
Vladimir Putin, press conference, May 2005.
In May 2005, the issue of control over Pytalovo
(Abrene) district emerged as the main obstacle on the way to signing an
agreement for the State border between Russia and Latvia. Moscow refused to
recognize legitimacy of the Latvian reclamation of this territory. Secret
documents of the Soviet intelligence that happened to reach the author of this
article give evidence: during the World War II, position of the Russians in
this issue was different. Soviet intelligence considered Abrene a part of the
Latvian territory…
Russian historical science traditionally calls the
lands of Pskov region "indigenously Russian territory". A vivid example to this
is the book by Boris Ribakov that was published in the Soviet time –
Kievskaya Rus I Russkie Kniajestva (Kievan Rus and the Russian Dukedoms, 1982).
This book tells of resettlement of the Slavs, the predecessors of the modern
Russians, in the district of Chudskoe and Ilmen lakes. However, nothing is said
about the peoples that were driven out of there or extinguished by the Slavs.
Numerous examples of such a preconceived attitude towards history can be found
on the modern Russian historical websites. One such instance is the article
"The history of Pskov region" published in July 2005 on the "Russian
civilization" website, claiming that this region is part of the most ancient
Russian lands. Meanwhile, in reality the history of Pskov region is somehow
different from what the Russians present. Before the latter emerged here
approximately in the 9th century AD, this area was inhabited by the peoples of
Finno-Ugric and Baltic origin, kin to modern Estonians, Latvians, and
Lithuanians. Ancient Latvians inhabited the riverside of Velikaya river,
located in the very center of Pskov region. Its ancient Latvian name is Mudve,
"the fast river". In the same location was the ancient Latvian dukedom called
Adeles. A lot of geographical names in this area till today are of a non-Slavic
origin, in many cases having Baltic roots — Drisa, Dzisna, Jazna, Jelna,
Kleva, Osveja, Plisa, Sebeþa, Sula, Vedega. Regardless of this fact, the
Russian historiography does not at all mention the ancient Latvian inhabitants
of the western districts of Pskov region. Thus, Ribakov's book mentions the
peoples of Finno-Ugric origin that lived to the north of Pskov. However, there
is not a single word in it about the population of the Baltic origin, which
lived on the territories invaded by the Russians. Today it is clear that the
reason for such a silence of the Soviet and the modern Russian historians is
totally political. Acknowledging a historical link of the Latvians with the
western districts of Pskov region, Moscow would automatically lose its main
argument, by which it motivated the annexation of this territory in 1944. Then
the argument was to return "the indigenously Russian lands" that were lost by
the Bolshevik Russia in 1920.
Myth of the landlord Pytalov's heritage
History of Pytalovo regional center, after which the
disputable region was called, begins at the end of the 18th century, during the
reign of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. According to a well-known
Russian legend, Catherine granted the local lands to the officer of the
Emperor's Army Pytalov, who then built his mansion here. However, the real
meaning of this toponym is completely different. Actually, in the ancient
times, the nearby Latvian territory was called Tâlava (a legend about a
trumpeter from Tâlava is very popular in Latvia). Correspondingly, the
Latvians called the territory of today's Pytalovo district "Pie Tâlava",
which means "near Talava". The irony is in the fact that today the Russians use
this name, being unaware of its Latvian origin. It is also worth mentioning
that in the Russian archives there is no mention of the mythical officer
Pytalov. The first landowner of Pytalovo was another person.
The first mention of Pytalovo in the Russian
documents is dating 1782. In that period, the area surrounding Pytalovo was
inhabited by plural Russian and Latvian population. Local Latvians kept active
ties with their relatives in the neighboring area called Latgale. The border
between the two areas that were both part of the Russian Empire was open.
Therefore, it is possible to talk of a common realm inhabited by the Latvians,
including western districts of Pskov region.
In 1920, while establishing their own independent
state, the Latvians demanded from the Bolshevik Russia to return them their
historical lands inhabited by their compatriots. This demand laid in the basis
of the so-called Riga Peace Agreement (1920). According to this agreement,
Pytalovo and its surroundings were submitted to independent Latvia. Pytalovo
was first renamed into Jaunlatgale, and later – into Abrene (1938).
According to the population census of 1935, some 109.646 people were living in
Abrene district, out of whom 60.145 (55%) were Latvians; 45.885 (41.6%) were
Russians; 648 (0.6%) were Belarusians. There were also Jews, Poles, Estonians,
and some other nationalities. The town of Abrene was inhabited by 1.242 people.
Inhabitants of this region were economically very strongly connected to the
rest of Latvia.
At the end of the World War II, after the repeated
invasion of the Latvia's territory (second half of 1944), the Soviet
authorities gave Abrene its old Russian name of Pytalovo. Annexing it to Pskov
region was carried out following a directive from Moscow from November 21,
1944. As there was no independent Latvia any longer, Moscow did not plan to
follow the agreement that had been signed with it in 1920. Together with
Abrene, a number of other Latvian localities were annexed by Russia: Kaceni
(Kachanovo), Upmale, Unava (Tolkovo), Purmale (Bokovo), Augšpils
(Vishgorodok), Gauri (Gavry), Punduri (Ponderi). Part of the Latvian population
left these localities at the end of the war. The other Latvians were
systematically driven out of there by the Soviet authorities from the first
post-war days. As a result, in 1945, the Latvians were only 12.5% of Pytalovo
population. In 1985, some 10 thousand people were living in the town of
Pytalovo, practically all of them Russian. As a whole, after the WWII, the
Russians annexed some 2.000 square kilometers of the Latvian territory (which
is almost equal to the territory of Luxembourg).
Soviet intelligence against the intelligence
officer Putin
There is yet another interesting fact connected to
the current territorial dispute between Russia and Latvia, not mentioned by the
Russian historians. It refers to the WWII documents of the Soviet intelligence,
in which Abrene is mentioned not as Soviet, but as Latvian territory. The
author of this article got hold of the secret documents from the Russian
archives that were not published. All these documents give evidence to the fact
that the Soviet agents, who were acting in Latvia during the WWII, described
Abrene only as part of Latvia, and not as part of Russia. The same was the
attitude of the intelligence headquarters in Moscow towards this region.
First of all, attention is drawn to the following
interesting fact. Practically in all the documents (and there are many tens of
them) Abrene region is called by its Latvian name, and not by its Russian name,
Pytalovo. For example, the document that tells about work of the Soviet
Partisan Movement agents in the Latvian territory during the WWII, notifies
that some 237 agents were acting in Abrene region (photocopy no.1). Another
document, which concerns the creation of the first Latvian partisan brigade,
informs that it is acting "in the northern part of Latvia", from Abrene to
Valmiera. The document about deployment of the agent subversive network of the
Soviet intelligence in the Latvian territory tells about the work in Abrene
region of the group commanded by Petr Petrov.
It is noteworthy that other localities in Abrene
region are also mentioned in these documents by their Latvian names. For
example, in the summary of intelligence information of the Partisan Movement
Central Staff from October 1943, the locality Vishgorodok is mentioned as
Augšpils. In the dispatch of Soviet intelligence resident Maksimov from
August 1944 concerning agent recruitment in Abrene region, the Latvian name of
the railway station Punduri is mentioned.
It is worth mentioning in this connection that in
the internal correspondence of the Soviet intelligence, at the command level,
Abrene region is mentioned as the Latvian territory. For example, on June 20,
1944, the director of the intelligence department of the Second Baltic Front,
Colonel Maslov received a summary about the enemy forces in the Latvian
territory. Among other facts, the following localities were mentioned in this
summary as the Latvian territory: Punduri, Gavry, and Augšpils, as well as
Jaunlatgale, which is Abrene. At the same time, the districts of Gavry,
Karsava, Ludza, and Rezekne (the latter three are today located in the
territory of Latvia) and Vilaka, Jaunlatgale, Gavry (the first one of them is
located in the territory of Latvia) are mentioned as the integrated territorial
units, which they were in reality.
This way, reading these and the other documents of
the Soviet intelligence, one get an impression that they tell about the
activity in the territory of Latvia. Nowhere, in none of these documents,
Abrene region is called the Russian territory. Such approach completely
confronts position of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, who states that
Latvia's territorial reclamation of Abrene region is baseless. Accordingly,
position of the Latvian politicians, who insist on historical right of their
country to return Abrene, appears to be completely well-grounded.
In spite of the fact that the abovementioned
documents do not have any legal power, they clearly testify that Abrene region
was invaded after the WWII, and not "returned" to Russia. During the war no
one, even the Soviet intelligence Command, had any doubts that this region
belonged to Latvia.
[Full article with illustrations, including
photocopies of documents, is
available here»]
Latvia's Prokopcuka wins
women's title
Biloxi Sun Herald
Posted on Sun, Nov. 06, 2005
Copyright 2005, Associated Press
NEW YORK — Jelena Prokopcuka of Latvia
pulled away from struggling Kenyan Susan Chepkemei re-entering Central Park and
won the New York City Marathon by 14 seconds Sunday, grabbing a record prize of
$130,000.
Prokopcuka, who fell behind by 17 seconds with about
5 miles left in the race, rallied to catch the leaders and then passed
Chepkemei on their first time through the park. Chepkemei, who was stumbling
and spitting up, managed to hold on for second place for the third time in New
York.
Prokopcuka (pronounced Pro-kop-CHU-ka) had never won
a major marathon before, though she was fifth in her New York debut last year.
Her winning time was 2 hours, 24 minutes, 41 seconds.
Prokopcuka shocks
BY CHRISTIAN RED
DAILY NEWS
SPORTS WRITER
Originally published on November 7, 2005
Copyright 2005,
The Daily News
New York — Jelena Porkopcuka shows
she's No. 1 in New York, and in Latvia, whose flag she proudly waves.
There is a new star in Latvia.
Actually, with the exception of NHL defenseman
Sandis Ozolinsh, Latvia has not generated its fair share of famous athletes.
Yesterday, Jelena Prokopcuka changed all that.
 The 29-year-old surged into the
lead during the final stretch along Central Park South and moments later
captured first place among the women in the New York Marathon. Her time was two
hours, 24 minutes and 41 seconds. It was Prokopcuka's first win here and also
the first time a Latvian has won the city's signature road race. Hard-luck
competitor Susan Chepkemei of Kenya finished second (2:24:55) for the second
consecutive year, her third time as runnerup here. Ethiopia's Derartu Tulu
finished third (2:25:21).
"My victory is a huge success for me," Prokopcuka
said. "After this week, I will be famous. For a small country, (Latvia is
slightly larger than West Virginia) this is a very big victory."
Not to mention a big paycheck. This year, the
first-place female finisher earned $130,000, $30,000 more than the first-place
man. Prokopcuka already has plans on what she'll do with the windfall.
"It's my dream to build a family house," she said.
Prokopcuka and her husband of nearly seven years, Aleksander, live in the
Baltic Sea resort town of Jurmala.
Prokopcuka's window of opportunity yesterday came
during the stretch down Fifth Avenue when Chepkemei, who was in the lead,
vomited. "I had some problems," Chepkemei said, though she didn't blame the
higher than normal temperature (68 degrees was the high). "When I start to
throw up, it was the time I lose some seconds. That's why (Prokopcuka) came
closer."
As the two entered Central Park, Prokopcuka pulled
even. She got her second wind as the two neared the Plaza Hotel on 59th St.
Prokopcuka pulled ahead by as much as 100 yards and never looked back.
"The weather was good. It could be a little colder
because I like colder weather," Prokopcuka said. "New York is very important.
Maybe I want to win Chicago and Boston and London. My long-time dream is to win
the New York City Marathon. And my dream has come true."
Mary Wittenberg, the marathon's CEO and director,
had said before the start that Prokopcuka was "our secret weapon." She
clarified the statement later.
"I was in Osaka (Japan) in January (when Prokopcuka
won the marathon) when on a tough, windy, cold day (Prokopcuka) ran very tough.
To be honest with you, we knew she could win this race. She runs like a champ,"
Wittenberg said.
Prokopcuka's husband holds the Latvian record for
the marathon, but his wife now was the bigger celebrity.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Our town is very small, only
50,000 people. A lot of people recognize us. Especially in the last year,
(Prokopcuka) became really popular."
Europe pledges to cut road
deaths
Sun 6 Nov 2005
4:13am (UK)
Copyright 2005, Press
Association Ltd 2005
Verona, Italy — Britain has joined in a
pledge to cut the number of deaths on Europe's roads.
The pledge was made by all 25 European member states
at a conference in Italy. It aims to see improvements in road safety across the
EU in support of the EU target to reduce road deaths by 50% by 2010.
The conference, called Lifelong Learning for Road
Safety, was co-hosted by Britain, as European Union president, and Italy. Its
theme was the need to promote improved road safety for all road users.
Transport minister Dr Stephen Ladyman said Britain
had joined in the pledge because better road safety across Europe also
benefited Britain.
He said: "More and more British people are
travelling overseas for work or pleasure, so road safety throughout Europe
translates into benefits for the UK traveller.
"The Government is determined to improve road
safety. The UK's record is among the best in the world, but nine people still
die on our roads every day.
"We want to find out from out European partners what
works in their countries, to see if there are lessons we can learn."
A Department for Transport spokesman said the
British government was committed to reducing the number of adults killed and
seriously injured on UK roads by 40 per cent by 2010 and the number of children
by 50 per cent.
In Britain, 56 people per million of population are
killed on the roads, where a fatality is classed as a death within 30 days of
the accident.
The average for the 25 EU countries is 96 per
million of population. Latvia has the highest rate at 220 and Malta the
lowest at 33.
Duma Deputy Alksnis: Former
Soviet Union republics owe $2 trillion to Russia
11/07/2005 17:43
Copyright 2005, Pravda
[Some things never change /pjv] — Where
would all those countries be without the "Soviet occupation?" Obviously
nowhere.
Several republics of the former Soviet Union
calculate the damage, which they suffered from the so-called "Soviet
occupation." Deputies of the Russian Federation parliament asked specialists of
the Auditing Chamber to give their financial estimations of to how much money
Russia could claim from the members of the former USSR in return.
State Duma deputy, Viktor Alksnis, said that
auditors could receive the information regarding the share of the three Baltic
states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) in the foreign debt of the USSR —
$3.06 billion. The property of the Soviet Army, which was left in those
countries, is evaluated in the sum of 32.2 billion rubles (according to the
price level of 1991). In addition, Russia had to spend five billion rubles more
on the deployment of military units which had been withdrawn from the
above-mentioned states. It is worthy of note that the cost of the Russian ruble
was equal to the cost of the US dollar in 1991.
Russia used to be the object of rapacious and
cynical exploitation during the Soviet era. Seventy-five percent of the USSR's
budget was made of assignments from the Russian Federation. The money was used
for the development of economic systems of the Caucasus, Asia and the Baltic
region.
The Baltic countries always
took top positions of the list of Soviet investments. [Most heavily
Russified/pjv] The government of the USSR used to invest billions of rubles in
their economies: their debt to Russia was thus evaluated at $220 billion. The
Soviet Union wanted to organize unique, elite and high-tech productions on
their territories. The nuclear power plant, which was built in Lithuania at the
expense of the USSR, still guarantees 60 percent of this country's demand in
electric power. The ferry-boat communication with the German Democratic
Republic cost some $3 billion; the airbase, which currently stations NATO
bomber planes, cost one billion dollars.
About 28.3 billion rubles were invested in the
economy of Georgia from 1935 to 1975. The cash flow was not interrupted in the
republic even during the wartime years. According to official statistics of
that period, the Georgian tea industry was manufacturing 82,5 thousand tons of
tea a year in 1975 (the tea was consumed all across the USSR).
The republic of Armenia, which currently experiences
serious problems with electric power supplies, left Italy behind in 1975 on the
electric power production per capita. No wonder that electricity vanished in
Armenia afterwards: there are hardly any mineral resources in the country.
A mammoth earthquake leveled Tashkent, the capital
of the Uzbekistan republic, in 1966. A beautiful city appeared on the ruins of
a sadly-looking town several years later: Russia recreated 664.8 thousand
square meters of its territory.
The city of Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijan
republic, used to be a fortress until a Russian merchant launched the
development of the oil industry in the country.
Where would all those countries be without the
"Soviet occupation?" Where did the industrial system of the Caucasus go after
the collapse of the Soviet Union? They successfully destroyed the
infrastructure that they inherited from the erstwhile superpower. To crown it
all, the citizens of those republics still prefer to leave their homes and
travel to the Russian Federation where they can earn some money.
Furthermore, Russia still has special prices for the
former Soviet republics to purchase electric power, oil and gas. On the other
hand, as soon as the Baltic states became EU members, they told Russia to buy
their goods at standard European prices, in which discounts were excluded.
According to expert estimates, up to 40 percent of the Latvian budget is formed
with the help of Russian freight transits.
The USSR used to be formed around Russia. Russia did
not occupy the neighbouring republics. Russia today is a piece of the Soviet
Union, like any other republic, which used to be connected with it in the past.
One may say that Russia did not have its present before the collapse of the
USSR: there was no Russian Academy of Sciences, no institutes of Russian
traditions, history and language, etc. There were not enough teachers in small
Russian towns, because there was a strong lack of teachers in Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, etc.
If all democratic countries, which used to be
included in the structure of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were
asked to pay their debts to Russia, if one could expand it with the debt
amounts, which Russia pays for them now to foreign creditors, they would have
to return more than two trillion dollars.
Modest Kolerov: If we connive
at integration problems, Paris problems will come to Latvia
November 7, 2005
Copyright 2005, Regnum News Agency
Riga — The question of human rights is
principal for Russia in settlement of compatriots’ problems in the
neighboring countries and it excludes substitution of integration by
assimilation. If we connive at the integration problems,
“Paris may come” to the post-Soviet
territory, Head of the Department for Interregional and Cultural
Relations with Foreign Countries and the CIS Modest Kolerov said at a meeting
with social and veteran organization representatives in Russian Embassy in Riga
on November 8, a REGNUM correspondent informs.
“Despite the existing comprehension of term
‘compatriots’ often selected by their ethnicity, nationality or
language, we follow the Russian legislation. Our legislation makes us consider
as compatriots all natives of the former USSR and even the Russian Empire
disregarding ethnical, national or language distinctions. (…) So, we
without any exclusion must defend their rights,” explained Kolerov.
As Kolerov said, not everyone likes this approach:
“It often causes nervous reactions in the neighboring countries: why do we
regard everybody as compatriots, without any distinctions. Nevertheless, for me
it is one of the best ways to assess the level of the national elite and
political system of the neighboring countries. If the political elite have
created ethnocracy, our non-ethnical approach to compatriots provokes nervous
reactions, but if they build democracy, it is a normal approach that brings
about an adequate understanding of the problems of multitude and fundamental
human rights.”
According to Kolerov, when he meets the Latvian
executive authorities, he tries not to put accents on who lives better or
worse, who got bigger pensions because “the question of the fundamental
human rights is principal to us,” stressed Head of the Department for
Interregional and Cultural Relations. “During the meeting with the
Integration minister, of Latvia we (with Russian Ambassador to Latvia Viktor
Kalyuzhny — REGNUM) again accentuated the problems of fundamental human
rights, because according to the Russian point of view and European values,
integration is not equal to assimilation, creation of coercive space and
imposed rules of play. Integration can only mean expansion of freedom,
linguistic independence, humanitarian and cultural rights, improvement of
minorities right to self-realization. Any attempt to substitute integration
with assimilation will meet our hard resistance,” said Kolerov.
During the meeting, Kolerov was asked, how he sees
the dynamical development of the situation in Latvia. “I’m still
investigating this case. I do think, that time given to Latvia to solve this
problem is quickly running away, because Latvia made time limits to the problem
settlement by itself. Besides, while Latvia was joining the EU (which also puts
some time constraints to the process), the EU itself was changing. The current
situation in France shows to the Latvian authorities that everything is not
over yet, that everything can change. At the meeting with the Integration
minister of Latvia we said that Paris may come to the post-Soviet territory. It
is symbolical that the Latvian government can see all the omissions of the
integration process that have become apparent in France. It also concerns other
Baltic countries, so I feel that the tempo is rising, as does the risk and
responsibility for errors.”
Besides, Modest Kolerov said, that he recently met
Latvian Ambassador in Moscow Andris Teikmanis. “Before I met him, in a
newspaper I read his statement that there will be no null choice (of
citizenship). It is good, when there are thing on which tough statements can be
made. I told the Latvian envoy in Russia in the same tough way that there would
be no selective, repeated, coercive repentance from Russia for someone
else’s crimes. It is useless to put pressure on us regarding this
question. When we make our positions clear this way, it makes the dialogue
easier. I have the feeling, that, maybe because of change of generations, it
becomes easier to speak about principal problems – not in terms of
material values, but in terms of fundamental human rights. The European values,
justice and truth are on our side in this matter,” said Kolerov.
Head of the Department for Interregional and
Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries and the CIS Modest Kolerov is
currently on a three-day visit in Riga. Right before meeting the compatriots in
the Embassy, he had a long conversation with Integration minister of Latvia
Ainars Latkovskis (the New Era party).
[Putin appointed Kolerov head of the newly
created presidential department in March 2005. As reported in the Russian
press, his primary task is to prevent further "velvet revolutions" in the
ex-CIS republics./pjv]
Eastern European countries
pledge to support Georgia
AP WorldStream Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:40:00 PM
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Eight Eastern
European countries pledged Wednesday to support Georgia in resolving two
separatist conflicts which have plagued the former Soviet country for more than
a decade.
The group, which includes Romania, Lithuania,
Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova and Bulgaria, gathered in Bucharest
in a reunion dubbed "The new friends of Georgia."
The eight former Communist countries offered to help
Georgia in its drive to get closer ties with the West and better enforce its
borders.
Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in South
Ossetia and Abkhazia since the early 1990s.
Georgian authorities have repeatedly accused the
peacekeepers of siding with separatists and failing to help the return of
ethnic Georgian refugees to their homes.
"We have presented a detailed peace plan for South
Ossetia," said Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili. "Russia says it's
not realistic but I ask them to read it again and come back with a positive
position," she added.
Both breakaway provinces have enjoyed close ties
with Moscow, which has granted Russian citizenship to many of their residents.
Alexy II invited to visit
Latvia
Copyright 2005, Interfax
10 November 2005, 14:01
Moscow, November 10, Interfax — Latvian
President Vaira Vike-Freiberga has invited Russian Patriarch Alexy II to visit
Latvia.
"I have conveyed an invitation of our president to
his Holiness," Latvian Ambassador to Russia Andris Teikmanis said after a
meeting with the patriarch on Thursday. "She invited him to pay an official
religious visit in the first half of next year. His Holiness accepted the
invitation," the ambassador said.
The ambassador thinks that the visit will build up
common values, tolerance and mutual understanding between religions in Latvia.
Alexy II thanked Teikmanis for the invitation and
agreed to visit Latvia.
Russian WWII Veteran
Sentenced for Genocide Dies in Latvia
Created: 10.11.2005 17:24 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:24
MSK
Copyright 2005, MosNews
Riga — A World War II veteran sentenced
to six years in prison for genocide, has died in Latvia, RIA Novosti reported.
In 2001, the agency reports, a court found
84-year-old Nikolai Larionov guilty of killing and mutilating Latvians in the
1940s, an era known in the Baltic state as “Soviet Genocide”. He was
due to be sent to a closed prison, but his lawyers had appealed the verdict. A
new sentence had not been passed since the appeal.
However, a medical commission decided shortly before
his death that the veteran was strong enough to serve his prison term.
“In the meantime his health condition did not
allow him to even attend court sessions,” his attorney Mikhail Ioffe
claimed.
Latvia has already convicted 10 Soviet veterans for
war crimes.
Monument to KGB Founding
Father Dzerzhinsky Returns to Moscow Police Headquarters
Created: 08.11.2005 12:48 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:48
MSK
Copyright 2005, MosNews
Moscow — A bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky,
founder of the Bolshevik secret service — the predecessor of the
Soviet-era KGB security committee, has been re-installed in the courtyard of
Moscow’s main police authority, an officer at the Moscow crime
investigation directorate told the Interfax news agency.
The bust of the Cheka boss, made by sculptor Anatoly
Bichukov, was dismantled in August 1991 shortly after the Communist GKChP coup
failed.
The agency’s source said that upon arriving at
work on Tuesday morning they saw workers installing the bust where it had stood
before August 1991.
The Moscow main police authority was not available
for official comment, Interfax reported. |
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