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Subj: Lat Chat mailer and more - for Sunday, October 24, 1999
Date: 10/24/99
From: sturgalve
File: D:\+www.latvians.com\Oct99\Picts\68231-07-sigulda.JPG
(49495 bytes) DL Time (32000 bps): < 1 minute

Sveiks!

Nothing like getting the mailer out at the last minute again... no chance to do it before today (we've been in Latvia, in transit, or just catching up in general, with work and otherwise :-). It's certainly good to be back home, although every time we leave Latvia, someone is still unvisited or some sight unseen! For those of you who've set us mail, bear with us, we're still catching up.

Assuming that we're not jet lagged, we certainly hope to see you on Lat Chat tonight, starting around 9:00pm to 9:30pm Eastern time or thereabouts. If you join and no one's there yet, patience—stick around and wait a bit, and folks are sure to show up! Follow this link... Town Square - Latvian chat

This week's link from Gunars Zulis is to a site featuring the history of the Baltics.

Catching up on the news of the last several weeks, the most important news is that the Russians finally completed moving out of their radar base installation at Skrunda, formally ending 60 years of military occupation. Of course, there's still that piece of Latvia annexed to the Russian republic...

This week's news items include (remember, we're catching up on three weeks!):

• sweeping WWII mines from the the Baltic waters off of Latvia's coast
• legislative efforts to change the pension law
• Russia suggested that relations with NATO, chilled since the bombings in Yugoslavia, would be chiled more if the Baltics joined NATO—and thawed if there were a commitment to not have the Baltics join
• the “Peace Shield” training drill in 2000 will expand to include Latvia
• indictment of former Soviets in Latvia on war crimes
• Russia calls the indictments a “witch hunt” and a “dangerous tendency” which will [negatively] impact bilateral relations
• the shutdown of Skrunda
• Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga meets with NATO

This week's picture is from our vacation this month in Latvia, looking out the tower of Turaida's castle in Sigulda. (It's a LONG way down—Silvija was holding on to my coat just in case!)

And, just in case the mailer wasn't long enough for you—or you're needing some comic relief by now—Andrejs (pupedis@aol.com) has provided us with You Might be a Latvian If... Part Deux, a compilation of responses to his original contribution. Love that pig jello! (Galerts) <–Peters, not Silvija

Still waiting for those contest entries! Silvija has returned from Latvia with the prizes, so don't wait until the last minute! Ironically, since procrastination is a Latvian trait, our only respondent so far is Italian. :-)

Ar visu labu,

LATVIAN HISTORY

This site is by the Institute of Baltic Studies and gives a somewhat dry but well-researched summary of the History of the Baltic Nationalities. The length is just short enough that the rather uninspired presentation doesnt get in the way, and it is worth reading. Loads more history sites to come. —Gunars

Link: Baltic Nationalities (IBS)
URL: http://www.ibs.ee/ibs/history/baltics.html

By PA News Reporter
A Royal Navy minehunter was today joining a multi-national naval operation to clear wartime mines from waters off the coast of Latvia.
HMS Inverness, based at Faslane on the west coast of Scotland, was joining warships from Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Estonia and Norway for the nine-day operation.
They will search a 50-square-mile area for defensive sea mines laid by the Germany navy in the First and Second World Wars, as well as searching for other munitions which may have been dropped there in wartime.
The Swedish navy, leading the group, has been involved in operations to clear Latvian waters for fishermen and other shipping since 1995.
HMS Inverness's deployment follows the success of a similar project in waters off Estonia last year involving another British minehunter.
The vessel carries sonar gear which locates mines ahead of the ship, and also carries unmanned miniature submarines equipped with cameras and searchlights.
© 1999 PA News

RIGA, Oct 12 (Reuters)—The Lativan electoral commission on Tuesday set November 13 as the date for a referendum on parliament's pension reforms.
Parliament during the summer approved pension reforms to gradually raise the retirement age for men and women to 62 from 58 years and make it more difficult for pensioners to work.
But opposition deputies held a signature drive to force a plebiscite on the issue.
The tactic was successful with 13.7 percent of the electorate—well over the 10 percent minimum required to force a poll—signing petitions.
Prime Minister Andris Skele has said amendments to the pension law will have to be made irrespective of the referendum result to prevent the system from collapsing.
© 1999 Reuters Ltd.

By Martin Nesirky
MOSCOW, Oct 14 (Reuters)—Russia urged new NATO Secretary-General George Robertson to take greater note of Moscow's interests and concerns if he is to succeed in thawing ties frozen since alliance air strikes on Yugoslavia.
Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov compared relations with NATO to a heavy stone and described the alliance a remnant of the Cold War. On Thursday, his spokesman was asked to comment on Robertson as he started his new job.
“We in Russia know George Robertson well, including through business contacts when he headed the British Defence Ministry,” spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin told reporters. “We have pretty good business-like relations with him.”
He said Russia noted Robertson's aim of improving ties.
“Of course we will judge by concrete steps taken by NATO which show the organisation's readiness to take greater account of Russia's interests and concerns in solving the main problems of European and international security,” he said.
This was a reference to Russia's desire to see the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe play a bigger role and for NATO not to enlarge further to include the three Baltic states Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
ADHERE TO FOUNDING ACT
Rakhmanin also said NATO would need to adhere strictly to the NATO-Russia Founding Act, which was signed in May 1997 and outlines relations between the two sides.
He said if NATO took these measures, they could provide “the preconditions for unfreezing our relations with the alliance.”
Russia suspended relations with NATO in March when the alliance began its 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Ties were already under strain because of NATO's enlargement to 19 member states earlier this year to include three former Soviet allies—Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
At NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, Robertson said that enlargement round would not be the last.
Ivanov said in a newspaper interview earlier this week that further NATO enlargement “could aggravate the environment, as happened in the Balkans.”
“We are once again dragging the stone of trust up the same old hill,” Ivanov said.
A new draft Russian military doctrine published at the weekend has a distinctly anti-Western and anti-NATO tone, according to defence analysts. They expect little change in the rhetoric before next year's presidential election.
UPHILL STRUGGLE TO IMPROVE TIES
Further underscoring Robertson's uphill struggle to improve ties, Rakhmanin said a number of parliamentarians from NATO states had applied for Russian visas despite the freeze.
He said the parliamentarians were also members of the North Atlantic Assembly, which is independent of NATO but brings together members of parliaments from all states in the alliance.
“Relations between Russia and NATO are frozen under orders from the Russian president. That means Russian state structures do not take part in any joint Russian-NATO events, not least, it goes without saying, on Russian territory,” he said. “There has been no change in that policy.”
The ministry could not immediately say whether this meant the parliamentarians had been refused visas. It was not clear which countries were involved.
© 1999 Reuters Ltd.

LVOV, October 15 (Itar-Tass)—Ukraine has proposed to enlarge the area of the Peace Shield multinational peace-making drill scheduled for July 2000.
It is decided to have a command-staff warfare game in an expanded computer web, sources at the press service of the Ukrainian Armed Forces western operational command told Itar-Tass on Friday. Training staffs will be opened in Bulgaria, Latvia, Moldova and Estonia alongside the chief headquarters at the Yavorovsky training grounds. A conference to coordinate the future drill will start on November 29, 1999, in Lvov—the seat of the western operational command.
Ukraine began holding the Peace Shield multinational drills at the Yavorovsky training grounds in 1995. The number of states, taking part in the drill, has reached 25 this year. The drill is held under the NATO Partnership for Peace program, and most of the expenses are covered by the U.S. Defense Department. The latter has been investing money in the Yavorovsky training center, the largest in Europe, since the 1990s.
Now the training center is used for peace-making drills. An American multinational air borne battalion and a Ukrainian-Polish battalion formed three years ago will take part in the drill next year.
yer/fil-© 1999 Itar-Tass

RIGA, Oct 18 (Reuters)—The Latvian Prosecutor General's office on Monday said it has filed charges against Nikolia Larionov, a former Soviet official, for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Larionov, a 77-year-old Latvian citizen of Russian descent, is accused of deporting about 150 people from the western Latvian regions of Talsi and Ventspils to Siberia in 1949.
A spokesman told Reuters Larionov, the seventh former Soviet official charged in Latvia with war crimes, had not been arrested but was “under police surveillance.”
At the weekend 85-year-old former secret police (KGB) agent Yevgeny Savenko was arrested in western Latvia for allegedly signing arrest warrants against Latvians opposed to Soviet rule of the Baltic nation.
Both cases are expected to be heard by a district court at the end of November.
Latvia, which emerged in 1991 from 50 years of rule by Moscow, is still dealing with the legacy of the Soviet Union when thousands were jailed, deported or killed by Soviet security forces.
At the end of September, Mikhail Farbtuh, an 82-year-old security police officer, was sentenced to seven years in prison for deporting 31 families to Siberia in the late 1940s.
© 1999 Reuters Ltd.

RIGA, October 20 (Itar-Tass)—Russia's envoy to Latvia Alexander Udaltsov has likened the accusations against former Soviet secret service agents currently gaining momentum in the republic to a witch hunt, saying they are unlikely to improve relations with Moscow.
“It creates the impression that a true witch hunt is unfolding in Latvia,” Udaltsov said on Tuesday, adding that many of the accused are elderly people with health problems.
On Tuesday, the Russian Embassy sent a note to the Latvian Foreign Ministry over the arrest of Yevgeny Savenko, a 85-year- old resident of Liepaja. The former investigator is charged with persecuting people regarded by the Communist regime as dangerous and hostile to the country.
Another Latvian resident, Nikolai Larionov, 78, is charged with “crimes against humaneness.” Larionov, now released on recognizance, was involved in the deportation of some 150 Latvian families in 1949, according to prosecutor Janis Osis.
A Latvian court recently sentenced Mikhail Farbtuh, 83, to seven years in prison for involvement in the deportation of 31 families.
Three more criminal cases have been referred to court, including one against World War II guerrilla Vasily Kononov.
The Russian ambassador said the on-going indictment is motivated by revenge. “This dangerous tendency unquestionably has a projection on bilateral relations,” since most cases are made against Russian citizens. “If it is the prosecutors who set the tone in our relations, we are unlikely to make progress in improving them,” Udaltsov said.
myz-© 1999 Itar-Tass

MOSCOW, October 21 (Itar-Tass)—Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday the timely shutdown of its radar station in the Latvian town of Skrunde and the completion of its dismantling ahead of schedule shows Moscow's consistent adherence to its international commitments.
The fulfilment of the relevant agreement with Latvia “became possible due the constructive approach of both states and the helpful role played by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,” the Ministry said in a statement received by the Itar-Tass news agency.
The objective of commissioning a new radar station near the Byelorussian town of Baranovichi assumes special urgency at present. Russia, while reiterating its policy of fulfilling international obligations, cannot allow a unilateral decrease in its defense capability, the Foreign Ministry stressed.
According to the agreement, Russia turned over the premises of the former radar station together with infrastructure to Latvian authorities on October 21. The ceremony took place in the presence of newsmen.
An act of turning over the territory will be signed by co-chairmen of the Russo-Latvian mixed commission at a special ceremony.
The signing of the document was preceded by a conclusion submitted by OSCE experts about completion of the dismantling of the radar station which had been monitoring airspace to prevent a possible missile attack. As soon as diplomats of both countries exchange corresponding notes to this effect, an agreement on the last Russian military facility in Latvia, fulfilled four months earlier than scheduled, will merely become a historical document.
Latvia has inherited a compound with houses numbering 540 apartments, a hotel, a polyclinic, a kindergarten for 140 children, two recreation centers seating 300 - 400 guests each, a canteen, eight warehouses, a bath house, a laundry, garages and other facilities.
A local real estate agency is urgently looking for a new owner. The local authorities with their scanty budget cannot afford to upkeep the compound. Foreigners will be unlikely willing to own the place since the work force which used to be cheap in Latvia is not cheap any more. It is more advantageous to create industries in neighboring CIS countries because of low salaries there, “but without industries developed the compound will not survive,” managing director of the real estate agency Yuris Stepinjs told Tass.
The Latvian Interior Ministry has initially planned to establish a kind of a closed zone there to keep people temporarily detained for various offenses, but there are not enough funds for this project either, Stepinjs said. Unlike the uncertain future of the compound itself, sixteen families who live there and have the right to stay in Latvia will be provided with funds to buy apartments elsewhere.
Almost all the Russian personnel of the former radar station have left Latvia. The remainder, who had to stay longer to complete the dismantling of the radar station, are leaving Latvia soon.
myz/gor-© 1999 Itar-Tass

Oct 22, 1999 ©M2 Communications—The President of Latvia, Mrs. Vaira Vike-Freiberga, will visit NATO Headquarters on Tuesday, 26 October 1999, to meet the NATO Secretary General, The Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen.

You Might Be a Latvian If... Part Deux

From GnuLat399:

• You see fabulous Baltic cruise vacations advertised, and you're mad as Hell when Tallin, Helsinki & St. Petersburg are mentioned, but Riga isn't...

From MaijaCats:

• You know about galerts....and the horror of it all
• You consider piragi the ultimate food for the Latvian soul
• You're considered strange if you can't sing.
• Piragi are religion to you
• You can't say no to piragi
• You express almost everything in a negative
• You know 40,000 dainas and can recite them all
• You ligo your brains out on the Summer Solstice

From Pucite:

• You've never stayed in a hotel room with the actual number of people registered there...

From DAAUZINS:

• You can't sing Dievs Sveti Latviju without choking up someplace along the way.
• You feel naked walking out of your house without your Namejs ring on.
• You wear a silver ring on every finger but your thumb.
• You are hunch-backed from years of wearing heavy amber necklaces around your neck.
• You eat herring for breakfast.

From Zulis:

• You were born singing.

From Pupedis:

• You love Melnais Balzams, as long as you don't have to drink it.
• You have to explain, more than once, how to pronounce your name.
• You are related to someone who speaks with an accent.
• You talk back to the TV set.
• You respect authority, but you never stop questioning it either.
• Your idea of a fairy tale is “... they would have lived happily ever after, but were devoured by wolves the next day.”

From PetersJV:

• This wasn't in the contributions to Pupedis, but I felt morally compelled to add it... My lovely wife just returned from Latvia with a bag of dried Baravikas mushrooms to make soup. Only a Latvian would have paid sixty lats a kilo (nearly fifty dollars a pound)!!!

Silvija was holding on to me...I wonder why!