Saturday, 27 May 2000
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Latvian Mailer & AOL Chat Reminder for Sunday, May 28th
Date: 5/27/00
File:
D:\+www.latvians.com\JUL95\Picts\Vecriga-square-6728-01.jpg (78246 bytes)
DL
Time (TCP/IP): < 1 minute
Our best wishes for a safe and happy holiday weekend for those of you
celebrating Memorial Day! We're still moving... a bit overwhelmed... taking a
break, hence the mailer!
This week's link is to a
compendium of governmental links.
In the news:
- European Bank for Reconstruction and Development gets a new head; Vaira Vike-Freiberga quoted on Russian stability
- A fresh scholarly look at the breakup of the Soviet Union... integration of the Baltics after WW II helped sow the seeds of destruction
- Vasili Kononov takes up Putin's offer, renounces Latvian citizenship
- Iceland's Prime Minister argues for NATO expansion
- "Russia makes me nervous," Vaira Vike-Freiberga quoted in Der Spiegel
This week's picture is of Vecriga (Old Riga) in July of 1995. The sky
is overcast, but the flowers are still radiant!
Remember, 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.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH AOL'S MAIL POLICY and good manners, please let Silvija (Silvija) 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.
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The general link to this week's site is:
http://www.gksoft.com/govt/
"A comprehensive database of governmental institutions on the World Wide
Web: parliaments, ministries, offices, law courts, embassies, city councils,
public broadcasting corporations, central banks, multi-governmental
institutions etc. Includes also political parties. Online since June 1995.
Contains more than 15,000 entries from more than 220 countries and territories
as of April 2000. Frequently updated." The site is available in English and
German.
There's quite the compendium on the Latvian page:
http://www.gksoft.com/govt/en/lv.html
with more than two dozen
links to various institutions.
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EBRD Meeting Elects Lemierre, Ponders
Russia's Future
By Paul Hannon
RIGA, Latvia (Dow Jones) — It
was a tale of a Frenchman with a new job, and a Russian who had just lost his.
As expected, on the final day of the annual
meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the bank's
shareholders Monday approved French Treasury Director Jean Lemierre as the
bank's new president.
One of Lemierre's main
tasks will be to oversee an increase in the bank's investments in Russia, which
fell sharply in 1999 in the wake of the country's financial
crisis.
But the Russian delegation to the
annual meeting had little concrete to say about economic policy under the new
presidency of Vladimir Putin. It wasn't helped by the fact that the delegation
was led by Andrei Shapovalyants, who lost his job as economics minister shortly
before boarding the airplane for Riga.
One
EBRD official said Shapovalyants had been placed in a "humiliating" position,
and it was hard to argue with that assessment. But the real issue was why
Russia's new government, which claims it wants to attract more foreign
investment to the country, sent as its representative a man who no longer has
any official position.
Caution On
Russia's Future
Shapovalyants
managed to perform his official tasks, meeting with EBRD officials and
delivering a speech to other shareholders, although there was some irony in his
having to tell them that Russia "is becoming...more
predictable."
European Union officials were
cautious about Russia's future under Putin, preferring to wait until the
government's economic program is announced before making enthusiastic
declarations of support.
"It seems that he
(Putin) is in favor of positive developments, but we are waiting to see what
happens," said French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius. "If it is as it seems,
the government will have the support of the international
community."
However, German Deputy Finance
Minister Ciao Koch-Weser made it clear Russia shouldn't expect large amounts of
foreign aid.
"It (the government) has to rely
far less on foreign support," he
said.
Russia's neighbors were even more
cautious.
"The election of a new president in
Russia offers some hope that Russia's capacity to act as a stable partner will
be enhanced," said Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga. "Doubts remain about
Russia's ability to strengthen its frail economy...and improve relations with
its neighbors."
Regional Focus
Debated
With the economies of
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union expected to grow more strongly this
year than at any time since the fall of communism in the region, the mood of
the annual meeting was upbeat.
Progress
within the region isn't uniform, however. Business people expressed concerns
about the growth of Poland's current account deficit, while many countries in
the Commonwealth of Independent States have what is at best a patchy record of
implementing structural reforms.
"We are
seeing a widening of the gap between the leaders and the stragglers in the
reform process," Koch-Weser said.
There were
also hints of lingering disagreement between some of the EBRD's leading
shareholders about the speed at which the bank reduces the proportion of its
lending to the more advanced countries of Central Europe, and toward countries
in the CIS and Southeastern Europe.
The U.S.
government favors a rapid move to the East, while most E.U. members would
prefer a more gradual shift.
"The crucial
task...is to identify and target those geographical and functional areas where
the EBRD can have maximum transition impact, shifting resources from activities
where the impact is more limited," said U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for
International Affairs Timothy
Geithner.
Lemierre was reluctant to discuss
specific issues affecting the bank.
"I don't
like arrogance; I like facts and decisions," he said. "It would be very
arrogant for me today to say what should be the policy of the
bank."
The mood may have been generally
upbeat, but attendance was down at 2,625, only 1,150 of whom were business
people.
Paul Hannon; Dow Jones Newswires;
44-7776-200 927;
paul.hannon@dowjones.com
© 2000 Dow Jones
& Co., Inc.
Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup
of the Soviet
Union
STANFORD, Calif., May
22, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Renowned Eastern Europe scholar Roman
Szporluk sheds new light on the history of the Soviet Union after 1945 in the
Hoover Institution Press volume, "Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the
Soviet Union."
Many analysts have interpreted
the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union as a consequence of the collapse of
Moscow's central government. Szporluk presents evidence to support the idea
that the Soviet Union was destroyed by the actions of its opponents, most
importantly those who took up the causes of an independent Ukraine and an
independent Russia.
According to Szporluk,
Josef Stalin's 1939-1945 annexation of Ukrainian ethnic territories previously
belonging to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania, and their inclusion in the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic, transformed the Ukrainian problem in the Soviet
Union into a major issue and had a profound impact on Ukrainian-Russian
relations for decades. He argues that Russia's and Ukraine's simultaneous
emergence as independent states in 1991 was made possible, in the long run, by
what Stalin had done.
Szporluk also argues
that the wartime annexation by Moscow of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had a
lasting impact on relations within the U.S.S.R. because the Baltic republics
were perceived as being the most modern, and at the same time the most
pro-Western, of all Soviet republics. Their quest for independence helped turn
others away from communism and contributed to the Soviet breakup in
1991.
Beginning in the early 1970s, Szporluk
was among a minority of Western analysts who viewed Russian nationalism as a
serious threat to the Soviet regime. His thesis that the "Russian problem"
hampered Soviet nationality from 1917 until 1991 is a common thread throughout
the entire volume.
"Russia, Ukraine, and the
Breakup of the Soviet Union," is an indispensable source for those who want to
understand the challenges in state- and nation-building that the post-Soviet
successors are facing.
Roman Szporluk is a
professor of history at Harvard University and director of the Harvard
Ukrainian Research Institute. His previous books include "The Political Thought
of Thomas G. Masaryk" and "Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus
Friedrich List." Before coming to Harvard, Szporluk taught East European
history at the University of Michigan.
CONTACT: | Public
Affairs, Hoover Institution Sharon Storm,650/723-0603 stormhoover.stanford.edu or Harvard Roman Szporluk, 617/495-4053 szporlukfas.harvard.edu |
URL: | http://www.businesswire.com © 2000 Business Wire |
Red Partisan Kononov gives up
Latvian citizenship
© 2000
Reuters Ltd.
RIGA, May 25
(Reuters) — World War Two Soviet partisan Vasili Kononov, sentenced in
Latvia for war crimes, has asked for his Latvian citizenship to be annulled and
will take the Russian passport granted to him by President Vladimir
Putin.
"The department has this week received
a request by Kononov for his Latvian citizenship to be annulled," Janis
Kahanovics, deputy head of the Latvian naturalisation department, told Reuters
on Thursday.
The department has six weeks to
accept or reject the application, he
added.
Moscow and Riga have been arguing since
1999 over the case of Kononov, a 77-year-old former Communist partisan
sentenced to six years jail last year for his role in killing nine civilians in
1944.
Russia regards him as a persecuted hero
of the Soviet Union's struggle against Nazi German invaders and Putin granted
him Russian citizenship in mid-April.
Latvia,
which saw the Nazi occupation replaced by that of the Soviet Union, has said
all war crimes must be punished irrespective of the ideology which motivated
them.
Latvia's Supreme Court has released
Kononov for the duration of his appeal, and has asked international experts to
review the case.
If the court upholds the
conviction, Kononov is expected to seek extradition to Russia to serve out his
sentence there, though most experts admit he would probably not be imprisoned
there.
Icelandic PM calls for
continuing NATO
expansion
RIGA,
May 25 (Itar-Tass) — Visiting Icelandic Prime Minister David Oddsson
called for using a historic possibility of continuing NATO expansion to the
East.
Addressing Latvian parliamentarians on
Thursday, Oddsson said that one cannot ignore the countries's drive for joining
NATO.
The expansion of the North Atlantic
Alliance will facilitate stability on the continent and in the whole world, the
Icelandic prime minister said.
He also
welcomed the Baltic countries's strive for becoming EU
members.
Oddsson will take part in opening new
joint ventures created by Icelandic entrepreneurs. He will also visit a
Latvian- Icelandic joint venture, which has begun its operation in the
country.
yur/© 2000
ITAR-TASS
Russia makes me nervous- Latvia's
Vike-Freiberga
© 2000 Reuters
Ltd.
BERLIN, May 27 (Reuters) —
Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said on Saturday that instability in
Russia made her nervous and meant that she could never rule out the prospect of
another Russian occupation.
Asked in an
interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel if she could see the Russian
army occupying her small Baltic country again, Vike-Freiberga said it was not
beyond the realms of the imagination.
"Russia
is extremely unpredictable. The country is not very stable. Its democratic
basis is questionable. There is not as much economic security as one might
wish. We are not saying Russia will do this or do that. But the simple fact of
its unpredictability makes me afraid," she
said.
The Latvian president angered the
Russians earlier this month when she accused Moscow in an interview of harking
back to the Cold War because of statements Russia made about Latvia's bid to
join NATO.
Vike-Freiberga said in the
interview that relations between Latvia, which celebrated 10 years of
independence this month, and Russia under President Vladimir Putin had not
improved as much as she had hoped.
"We have
just had another attack on our embassy in Moscow. That is not a sign of
peaceful behaviour. We hope that the Russian government will condemn this
attack and start an investigation," she
said.
Vandals, apparently reacting to
allegations of mistreatment of Russian nationals in Latvia, have several times
daubed the Moscow embassy with paint and broken
windows.
About one-third of Latvia's 2.5
million peole are ethnic Russians, most of whom came there during its 50 years
as a reluctant Soviet republic.
"Russia has to
come to terms with the fact that we are no longer a Soviet republic. Latvia is
a sovereign state," Vike-Freiberga said.
She
said Latvia was keen to join both NATO and the European
Union.
"We want both. If you ask me if I'd
rather cut off my right arm or my left arm, I'd say I want to keep both of
them."
She said she was optimistic that
Latvia's bid for NATO membership would be
successful.
"I have just spoken to U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and and she welcomed our joining NATO
enthusiastically, provided we make our contribution and invest in our defence
forces," Vike-Freiberga said.
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This week's picture is a view from July, 1995 of Vecriga, with summer flower plantings in full bloom.