Sveiki, all!

First of all, our best wishes to all, celebrating the 82nd anniversary of Latvia's independence this November 18th just past. We were in Philidelphia for the the commemoration activities there and for the concert by the New York Latvian Choir.

Our apologies, we have been extremely busy the last few weeks--and anytime close to or during the weekend is not proving to be a good time to work on the mailer. Accordingly, we will try out adjusting our schedule to publish during the middle of the week, with the next mailer due out in a week and a half. In the meantime, this mailer will bring you up to date on all the news since our last issue.

We have also had issues with the mailing list size since converting over to AOL 6.0. We've addressed that by splitting up the lists, however, this will be our first mailing using AOL 6.0. (We also experienced an unusually large number of "This is not an AOL member" rejection messages.) Please let us know if you hear of or experience any problems.

As always, mailer or not, Lat Chat spontaneously appears every Sunday on AOL starting around 9:00/9:30pm Eastern time, lasting until 11:00/11:30pm. AOL'ers can follow this link: Town Square - Latvian chat. And thanks to you participating on the Latvian message board as well: Click here: LATVIA (both on AOL only).

Ar visu labu,

IN ACCORDANCE WITH AOL'S MAIL POLICY and good manners, please let Silvija (sturgalve@aol.com) know if you wish to be deleted from our mailing list. Past mailers are archived at latvians.com. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

We do have a link to share with you this week. It's to www.LRFA.org, the Latvian Relief Fund of America.

COMTEX Newswire Tuesday, October 31, 2000 11:35:00 AM
yer/dro (c) 2000 ITAR-TASS

    RIGA, October 31 (Itar-Tass) — The long-term partnership between the European Union and Russia, an agreement on which has been reached in Paris, is beneficial for Latvia, a future EU member and a neighbor of Russia, Latvian Foreign Minister Indulis Berzins said Tuesday.
    The strategic cooperation is dictated even by geography (one only has to take a look at the map) and historical relations between Russia and Europe, the minister said.

Reuters World Report Wednesday, November 01, 2000 9:27:00 AM
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.

    RIGA, Nov 1 (Reuters) — Latvia's ruling coalition is expected to oppose proposals to increase the 2000 deficit beyond 3.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) when parliament votes on budget amendments on Thursday, a spokesman said.
    "The coalition does not support the increase of (the fiscal deficit), but of course it's the parliament that makes the final decision," the prime minister spokesman Andris Lapins told Reuters.
    The 100-seat house approved the amended budget, with a total deficit of 129.9 million lats ($209.2 million) or 3.1 percent of GDP, in it first reading.
    But since then, parliament's budget and finance commission has approved additional spending proposals for extra funding in areas such as education and health spending.
    Asked if the four parties that make up the majority coalition would support extra spending proposals at Thursday's vote, Lapins said: "In principle, no."
    A finance ministry spokeswoman told Reuters the additional spending would ammount to 3.4 million lats.
    "The additional spending of 3.4 million lats okayed by the parliamentary budget commission would mean an increase in the fiscal deficit to just below 3.4 percent of GDP," she said.
    The goverment initially pledged to limit this year's budget deficit to two percent of GDP, but later said it would break that promise due to increased spending on social services, education and agricluture.
    The four-party coalition, with 69 seats in parliament, has firmly opposed increasing the budget deficit further.
    "Earlier these proposals were reviewed by the cabinet. The cabinet has expressed its opinion that only those proposals could be supported that don't require additional financing but just redistribution of funds within the exisiting budget," Lapins said.
    Finance Minister Gundars Berzins had said Latvia could receive a negative evaluation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if the increased deficit was approved.
    Latvia has a precautionary agreement with the IMF that paved the way for a three-year, $120 million programme of structural adjustment loans.

Reuters World Report Friday, November 03, 2000 5:12:00 AM
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.

    RIGA, Nov 3 (Reuters) — A Latvian court said on Friday it would allow prosecutors to seek the arrest and extradition of elderly war crimes suspect Konrads Kalejs from Australia.
    Attorneys had appealed a court's decision last month allowing prosecutors to seek the arrest of the 87-year-old, who was a member of the Nazi-backed Arajs hit squad during the German occupation of Latvia during World War Two.
    Kalejs, who has denied Nazi hunters' claims that he aided the wartime slaughter of Jews, is now an Australian citizen living in Melbourne.
    His lawyers had appealed a court's order on October 23 granting permission for prosecutors to order his arrest, saying the Kalejs was too old and sick to stand trial and that the charges against him were insufficient.
    "I think that this court decision will not serve as a decisive precondition to achieve Kalejs's extradition because, first and foremost, the charges (brought against Kalejs) are not grounded enough for Australia to extradite its citizen," Maris Mezitis, one of Kalejs's lawyers, said.
    If extradited, Kalejs would be the first Latvian Nazi-era war crimes suspect to be brought to trial since the country regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
    Charges against Kalejs stem from his time as an alleged concentration camp commander during the war.
    Although he has admitted being a member of the hit squad, which was responsible for 30,000 murders in the Baltic country, Kalejs has denied all war crimes, saying he was at university when the killings took place in 1941.
    Prosecutor Liana Dadzite could not tell journalists how long it would take to achieve the extradition.
    "We will continue preparing documents for Australia to demand (Kalejs's) extradition," she said.
    "Heads of prosecutor general's office have to decide how to go about achieving this given that the extradition treaty (with Australia) has not yet been ratified," she added.
    Under Latvian law, the appeal ruling is final and cannot be overturned.
    Ninety-five percent of Latvia's 70,000-strong Jewish population died during the World War Two occupation.
    Latvia was accused abroad of being soft on elderly Nazis after Kalejs surfaced last year in a British old people's home.
    He later flew back to Australia to avoid a deportation order.

COMTEX Newswire Sunday, November 05, 2000 1:08:00 PM
yer/ (c) 2000 ITAR-TASS

    RIGA, November 5 (Itar-Tass) — A monument was unveiled and blessed at the cemetery of the SS Latvian Legion in Lestene, 70 kilometers west of Riga, on Sunday. The 150,000 strong Legion fought against the anti-Hitler coalition in the World War Two.
    The Sunday ceremony was attended by Defense Minister Girts-Valdis Kristovskis, the army commanders, former members of the Legion and former guerrillas from Estonia and Lithuania.
    It is planned to open a museum at the cemetery. Donations for the cemetery are being raised, and the government has given about 73,000 dollars.

Reuters World Report Sunday, November 05, 2000 3:07:00 PM
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.

    RIGA, Nov 5 (Reuters) — About 1,000 people, including Defence Minister Girts Kristovskis, gathered on Sunday in western Latvia to unveil a monument to men who fought alongside the Germans during World War Two, local media reported.
    The Nazis drafted some 146,000 Latvian men into a Waffen SS unit in 1943 and 1944 in a last-ditch mobilisation after heavy setbacks at the hands of the Soviet Red Army.
    The Latvian unit, known as the Latvian legion, was one of the last holdouts during the war, helping the Germans to fend off the Red Army in the Western Latvian region of Kurzeme until Berlin surrendered to the Allies. The unit has been at the centre of controversy for several years.
    Sunday's meeting in Lestene, about 100 km (60 miles) from Riga, was the culmination of several years of efforts by the legionnaires to gather the remains of fallen comrades for a cemetery burial and build a memorial to them.
    News agency BNS reported that Commander in Chief of the armed services Gundars Abols also attended Sunday's rainy ceremony.
    In 1998, Latvia's parliament sacked then Commander in Chief Juris Dalbins for taking part in a commemoration of the Waffen SS legion in Riga after the government had told officials not to participate.
    Their annual processions through the capital Riga have been criticised by Jewish groups for making heroes out of those who fought for the Third Reich and have embarrassed Latvian leaders eager to guide their country into the European Union.
    However, the legionnaires say they have been misrepresented as ageing Nazis nostalgic for the days of Hitler and note that they were drafted illegally by the Germans.
    At the end of the war, the Allies effectively cleared the members of the legion, saying membership would not be a hindrance to immigration.

Reuters World Report Monday, November 06, 2000 6:26:00 AM
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.

    RIGA, Nov 6 (Reuters) — Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said on Monday Russian nostalgia for the Soviet empire was still troubling its relations with Moscow nine year's after the Baltic state regained its independence.
    Freiberga also told the BBC in an interview that Latvia would expect help from NATO if Russia threatened her country, even though it is not a member.
    "I think Kosovo is not a member of the NATO alliance and yet the alliance was able to take action when it felt that, according to the principles on which it is founded, action and intervention was necessary," she said.
    "I would expect it to do no less anywhere else in Europe."
    Latvia's post-Soviet relations with Russia have been icy due to Moscow's accusations that the Baltic state discriminates against its Russian minority. Moscow also opposes Latvia's bid to join NATO, which Riga hopes to be ready to do by the alliance's next summit in 2002.
    Russia also accused Latvia of rehabilitating Nazism earlier this year in its prosecution of elderly former Red Partisan Vasili Kononov, whom Russia sees as a hero of the Soviet Union's struggle against Nazi Germans, for war crimes.
    The case is still under appeals review and Kononov accepted Moscow's offer of Russian citizenship following his prosecution.
    Latvia has defended its right to try Kononov and suspects accused of similar crimes against civilians, but Russia says the country is punishing Russians for fighting against fascism.
    "I think the Kremlin is trying to create a problem where there isn't one in the faint hope that they can still recover the empire that collapsed because it was unable to survive," Vike-Freiberga said.
    Latvia has been criticised for pursuing Communist-era suspects while not trying a single suspect in Nazi-era crimes, even though 95 percent of its 70,000 pre-war Jewish population died at the hands of Germans and their local collaborators.
    Vike-Freiberga said the Soviets executed or exiled many Nazi collaborators after it pushed the Germans out in 1944.
    Prosecutors in September announced Nazi crimes charges against Latvian-born Konrads Kalejs, now an Australian citizen. They are now preparing extradition papers.

COMTEX Newswire Monday, November 06, 2000 9:29:00 AM
yur/ (c) 2000 ITAR-TASS

    RIGA, November 6 (Itar-Tass) — Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said his country is ready to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin "in any time when there is a possibility for such a meeting".
    In an interview with a radio station on Monday, she said that Latvia has been always ready to involve in dialogue with Russia. The president expressed regret that the two sides postponed a session of the intergovernmental commission, adding that she pins great hopes to the commission's session which will facilitate the development of dialogue with Russia.

COMTEX Newswire Tuesday, November 07, 2000 9:18:00 AM
yer/ (c) 2000 ITAR-TASS

    RIGA, November 7 (Itar-Tass) — The Council of Europe will continue to watch the Balkan and Caucasian developments in the six months of Latvia's presidency in the European organization, Latvian Foreign Minister Indulis Berzins said Tuesday.
    Latvia will come to preside in the Council of Europe on November 9, and Berzins will head the CE Committee of Ministers.
    Another priority task is to provide for compliance with the European human rights convention in member-countries and candidates to the Council of Europe.
    The six-months plan has been coordinated with the CE secretariat.

AP Sports Tuesday, November 07, 2000 3:55:00 PM

    MADONA, Latvia (AP) — Four road rally officials were convicted and sentenced to at least two years each in prison for a 1999 race in which eight spectators died.
    The accident happened when two cars collided and spun off the track, with one catapulting into a crowd. Among those killed was a 9-year-old boy. Twenty-five were injured.
    The court ruled the organizers failed to observe safety precautions by allowing spectators at the edge of a makeshift dirt track.
    The four officials were convicted Monday of criminal negligence. One, 70-year-old Dina Daugule, collapsed in tears as the sentences were read.

Reuters Financial Report Monday, November 06, 2000 6:07:00 AM
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.
By Burton Frierson

    RIGA, Nov 6 (Reuters) — The Baltic states expect praise from the European Union this week for their preparations for membership, with approval likely for Latvian and Estonian efforts to improve their treatment of minorities.
    Lithuania should also earn a mention in the Wednesday report for fixing its fiscal policy while the EU could spur one or all three on economic restructuring and improving their ability to implement Union laws and regulations.
    Officials in Estonia — a member of the first group of countries to start negotiations in 1998 — are optimistic after what they say was their best year yet for membership efforts.
    The government approved 64 draft laws connected to EU integration and over 70 government directives. Parliament has approved 53 and is currently processing 32 more drafts.
    "I can confidently state that this year has been more successful for Euro-integration than ever and through this we have obtained a better position among candidates ready to join the EU," Prime Minister Mart Laar said at a recent conference.
    "I believe (the report) as earlier will be strict but fair," said Laar.
    Estonia, whose small size will make it relatively easy for the EU to absorb, expects praise for harmonising its language law with EU norms — a major issue for the country of 1.4 million people, a third of whom are native Russian speakers.
    Other areas of progress were on judicial training and agriculture, particularly setting up structures to receive EU aid for farm sector modernisation.
    Areas of improvement for next year could be fisheries and customs and strengthening of civil services — as last year.
    Neighbouring Latvia, hoping to catch up with the fast track group of applicants, also expects praise for harmonisng regulation of language use in public and private spheres.
    Officials note progress on judicial issues — training and cutting case backlogs — and measures to curb corruption.
    "The general message is — we are much more satisfied than not (satisfied)," said EU delegation head Guenther Weiss, adding administrative capacity would be a key challenge ahead.
    The judiciary will also need further improvement and integration of the local Russians — a third of the population of 2.4 million — is expected to remain a long-term issue.
    In Lithuania, seen as slightly behind Latvia, last year's report singled out fiscal policy. Outgoing Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius addressed this with massive budget cuts that contributed to his loss in the October 8 general election.
    "We would anticipate in this report that there will be a positive note on...the outgoing government's effort to insure fiscal stability, fiscal discipline and reducing the current account deficit," said top EU negotiator Vygaudas Usackas.
    However, the Commission's report is expected again to question the ability of the economy to compete in the EU and call for further economic restructuring through privatisations and progress in agriculture.

COMTEX Newswire Wednesday, November 08, 2000 8:24:00 AM
(C)2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

    NOV 8, 2000, M2 Communications — The Nordic Council Parliament decided at a meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland yesterday (7 November) not to pass the proposal that the Baltic states should be offered membership of the Council.
    Instead it was agreed to aim for closer co-operation between the Nordic countries and the Baltic states — Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia — as well as northwest Russia, reported the Iceland Review.
    The Council also debated ways to improve the competitiveness of the Nordic region. A schedule was reportedly drawn up for increased co-operation in the employment market between 2001 and 2004 in order to increase flexibility and remove border hindrances to allow Nordic citizens to move freely between countries to find work.

Reuters North America Saturday, November 11, 2000 4:04:00 PM
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.

    LONDON, Nov 11 (Reuters) [Excerpted] — Following are some of the major events to have occurred on November 18 in history:
    1477 — William Caxton produced the first printed book in the English language, "The Dictes and Sayengis of the Phylosophers."
    1626 — In Rome, St Peter's Basilica was consecrated by Pope Urban VIII.
    1918 — The Latvian National Council proclaimed the independent Republic of Latvia, with Janis Cakste as president.
    1993 — Black and white leaders in South Africa approved a new democratic constitution which gave blacks the vote and ended white minority rule.

COMTEX Newswire Monday, November 13, 2000 11:31:00 AM
(C)2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

    NOV 13, 2000, M2 Communications — The Finnish kiosk chain operator Rautakirja Oyj is to take over the management of the convenience stores connected with the Finnish oil company Neste's petrol stations in Estonia and Latvia.
    Neste's Baltic petrol station chain comprises 23 units. The shops linked with the stations are expected to have sales of up to FIM50m this year.
    In October Rautakirja signed a letter of intent regarding the purchase of 85% of the shares in the Latvian kiosk chain Preses Apvieniba.

Reuters North America Friday, November 17, 2000 3:40:00 AM
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.

    VILNIUS, Nov 17 (Reuters) — Lithuanian Presdient Valdas Adamkus on Friday appointed diplomat Giedrius Cekuolis, 41, to coordinate the Baltic state's efforts to secure membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO). Lithuania hopes to secure an invitation to join the defence alliance — one of its key foreign policy goals — at the next NATO summit due in 2002.
    "The president believes this appointment will consolidate Lithuania's diplomatic efforts in securing NATO memebership," Adamkus's spokeswoman Violeta Gaizauskaite told Reuters.
    Lithuania, together with neighbouring Baltic states Latvia and Estonia, were deeply disappointed by a NATO decision to exclude them from its expansion last year when former Warsaw Pact members Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined.
    The three view NATO membership, vehemently opposed by Russia, as the best way of guaranteeing the independence they won from Moscow in 1991 after 50 years of Soviet occupation.

Reuters World Report Friday, November 17, 2000 8:21:00 AM
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd.

    RIGA, Nov 17 (Reuters) — Three youths threatened to blow up a church in Latvia on Friday unless a jailed former KGB officer and four members of a Russian ultra-nationalist group were freed, but police managed to arrest them.
    The Russian-speaking men, apparently armed with hand grenades, entered St Peter's church — a tourist attraction in a historic part of the capital Riga — and hung flags of the former Soviet Union from the spire, state police spokesman Krists Leiskalns told Reuters.
    They threatened to detonate hand grenades and called for the release of 82-year-old Mihail Farbtuh, a former NKVD Soviet secret police officer serving seven years for his role in deporting Latvians to Siberia in the 1940s.
    They also demanded the release of four members of a Russian ultra-nationalist organisation detained earlier this week for illegally entering Latvia, whose population is about 30 percent ethnic Russian.
    "They had hand grenades, but it is still unclear whether they were dummies or real ones," Interior Ministry spokesman Normunds Belskis said.
    Friday is Latvian independence day, marking the 82nd anniversary of the setting up of the first republic. The Baltic state's sizeable ethnic Russian minority is a legacy of 51 years of Soviet occupation that ended in 1991.
    Russia has repeatedly accused Latvia of denying its Russian population their human rights and relations between the two countries have often been frosty.

AP US & World Saturday, November 18, 2000 12:09:00 PM
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
By STEVEN C. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer

    RIGA, Latvia (AP) — Leaders of Latvia's four largest religious denominations refused to participate in Saturday's Independence Day worship service to protest what they called rampant corruption and lax abortion laws.
    In a letter to President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the heads of the Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox and Russian Old Believers churches said numerous scandals have weakened support for elected officials and increased public skepticism in this Baltic nation.
    "This year, I feel deeply sad and ashamed about our country and it would be extremely difficult for me to head the official service as if everything were in the best order," Lutheran Archbishop Janis Vanags wrote in a letter sent to the president and released to the press.
    "Ordinary people, far removed from the elite, have had the state they might have been proud of stolen away from them," he said.
    Latvia's Independence Day marks the Baltic country's first declaration of independence on Nov. 18, 1918. Latvia was free until 1940, when Soviet forces invaded.
    Since regaining independence after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the nation of 2.4 million has been plagued by various corruption scandals and has had nine different governments.
    The church leaders also criticized a draft law before parliament that would allow women under 18 to have abortions without parental consent and bar fathers from having a say in the matter.
    "Already, it's not difficult to have an abortion in Latvia, and this law would pretty much do away with any restrictions on abortion," Dean of the Riga Lutheran Church Janis Ginters said.
    According to the Latvian Central Statistics Department, 19,400 babies were born in 1999 and 18,031 abortions were performed.
    Vike-Freiberga did not comment on the content of the letter but said she was disappointed that the religious leaders did not take part in the service, which drew some 1,000 people to the Dome Cathedral in Riga's old town. The service was led by a lower-level Lutheran priest.
    Juris Calitis, dean of the theological faculty at Latvia University, said the protest letter was long overdue.
    "This is the last hour for religion to start talking about serious problems in this country," he said. "These things should be talked about constantly and all the churches should be at the forefront of the fight."

AP WorldSources Online Wednesday, November 15, 2000 12:14:00 PM
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
Copyright 2000 THE MOSCOW TIMES

    MOSCOW — Just four and a half years after opening, the Sakharov Center and Museum in Moscow could be forced to call it quits.
    The feared closure is not the result of governmental pressure, nor does the museum think it has finished its mission of documenting the horrors of Soviet times.
    It's about money.
    Western grants and donations that kept the center running dried up in September, and the staff, unable to find Russian donors, found themselves living off the meager funds collected in donation boxes.
    Sakharov museum director Yury Samodurov warns he could be forced to close the museum as soon as December.
    Opened in May 1996, the museum was named after one of the most striking personalities of Soviet times double Nobel Prize winner, dissident physicist and fervent human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov.
    The two-story building on the banks of the Yauza River tells the story of the Soviet regime with displays that include pictures of political prisoners being sent off to labor camps and a short note by Josef Stalin ordering an increase in the "execution quota." Visitors can also see guitars used to sing protest songs and leaf through dusty, underground editions of forbidden books.
    Registered as a noncommercial cultural institution, the Sakharov center functions as both a museum and a human rights organization. It hosts news conferences, seminars, roundtable discussions and free excursions for schoolchildren.
    A public library on the premises lends books on Soviet history, civil society and human rights, and its archive contains numerous files on former dissidents.
    To date, the center has been supported almost solely by foreign grants, with less than 1 percent of the $1.7 million spent coming from Russian sources, director Samodurov said last week.
    About 80 percent of those funds were provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development. That financing was good through September of this year.
    Samodurov said a new foreign donor has been found, but has postponed the start of financing until May due to its own problems.
    Now the museum is mired in a financial hole and the prospect of a closure is looming, he said.
    Samodurov said that most of the trouble in finding Russian sponsors probably comes from a lack of laws promoting nongovernmental and noncommercial organizations.
    "Why would anybody want to finance us if they get no tax write-offs for it?" he said.
    "Finding money for human rights organizations is a challenge everywhere in the world, not just in Russia," said a Western diplomat involved with the museum. "Here it's even more difficult because of the legal issues, such as nonexistence of tax write-offs. Plus there is a problem of education. People still don't fully understand the importance of human rights."
    Samodurov said another problem is that there's little interest among businessmen in sponsoring a museum that condemns the Soviet regime, especially at a time when President Vladimir Putin is honoring Soviet agents like former KGB chief Yury Andropov and celebrating the 80th anniversary of the security services that sent millions of people to prison camps.
    "We've sent 240 letters to various Russian businessmen during the last two years," the director said. "We got only eight answers, and only one of them was positive. The message is: Leave the past alone."
    But the director concedes that part of the problem may also lie with the museum's inability to navigate through the world of Russian business.
    "Neither I nor any of my co-workers have any contacts in these circles," Samodurov sighs, correcting his horn-rimmed glasses. "It's another world from ours, I feel rather clumsy in their presence."
    The museum cannot afford such clumsiness, said Nikolai Nikishin, a museum specialist at the Culture Ministry, who advised the Sakharov museum on financial matters for a few months in 1998.
    "The problem of the Sakharov museum is that it has been in a privileged position for a very long time, receiving grants of $200,000 to $300,000 a year from the West, and they got a bit self-contented," he said in a telephone interview.
    But Nikishin thinks that the current financial crisis will not spell the end of the museum.
    "I believe the museum will survive," he said. "This is a serious crisis, but far from fatal.
    "Anyway, it can have positive results," he added. "The Sakharov museum is conducting a very serious fight for the souls of the Russian people, and it cannot afford complacency. This will toughen them up."