News Highlights from January 7-January 14, 2002
Two Estonian parties from opposite ends of the political spectrum began talks January 14 on forming a new government to replace one that recently unraveled because of coalition infighting. Spokesmen for the center-right Reform Party and center-left Center Party said they were confident they could hammer out a coalition deal by next week and assume power shortly thereafter. “There’s a strong expectation these talks will succeed,” Reform spokeswoman Triinu Rajasalu said following several hours of cross-party talks in Tallinn.
Both would-be government parties back Estonia’s bids to join the European Union and NATO, though some Center Party leaders have complained that too much time has been spent on European integration and not enough on domestic problems.
The parties are seen as strange bedfellows, with pro-business Reform advocating low taxes and strictly balanced budgets and the populist Center Party backing more state funds for the poor and higher taxes on wealthier Estonians. But a breakdown in relations between center-right parties have left virtually no other political alternatives, and the alliance between Reform and the Center Party has been widely anticipated since outgoing Prime Minister Mart Laar resigned the week before.
If they succeed in forming a government, Reform and the Center Party—with their sharp differences over economics—would likely serve more as caretakers than policy-makers in the lead up to 2003 parliamentary elections. Combined, they have just 46 seats in the 101-seat Riigikogu but should be able to win legislative approval with support from several small parties and independent deputies. But their slim hold on power would make passing any even slightly controversial legislation very difficult.
Siim Kallas, Reform Party head and outgoing Finance Minister, is seen as the most likely leader of a Reform-Center Party government. President Arnold Ruutel is expected to nominate a new premier by January 22. The 53-year-old Kallas—known as the father of the kroon, Estonia’s currency, for overseeing its introduction as Central Bank head in 1992—is seen as a strong fiscal conservative. He was charged in the mid-90s with misappropriating 10 million dollars as bank president. While courts acquitted him, some, including the Center Party, said during the last election that the affair raised questions about his fitness to govern.
Center Party leader Edgar Savisaar resigned as Interior Minister in 1995 amid charges he secretly tape recorded rivals in a scandal dubbed the Estonian Watergate; many Estonians have said they’d find his return to power disturbing. Savisaar’s been dogged by other allegations of corruption as well.
In resigning, outgoing Prime Minister Laar blamed Reform, saying it betrayed his center-right government—made up of Pro Patria, the Moderates and Reform—by joining the Center Party to form a new Tallinn city government. Laar was Estonia’s longest-serving prime minister and was responsible for implementing a series of successful post-Soviet reforms; he led the government from 1992-94 and again from 1999.
The United States urged Estonia on January 9 to salvage an agreement to sell its state energy plants to Minnesota-based NRG Energy—a deeply unpopular deal annulled the day before. In canceling what was projected to be the largest privatization in the country’s history, Estonia cited NRG’s failure to meet a Dec. 31 deadline to secure a multi-million-dollar loan to refurbish the aging, Soviet-built plants.
A statement released by the U.S. embassy in Tallinn expressed “disappointment” that the deal, signed in 2000 after five years of tense talks, had fallen through. “We believe the NRG’s investment is a great opportunity for Estonia’s economy and we continue to support NRG’s efforts to find a mutually beneficial way forward for this proposal,” the short statement read.
The embassy argued earlier that the deal, valued at over 300 million dollars, would enhance the security of Estonia—still weary of neighboring Russia—by enmeshing it more closely with the United States. But government spokesman Priit Poiklik said there was little to no chance that talks would ever resume with NRG, the world’s fifth largest independent-energy producer. He added that the U.S. economic downturn complicated NRG’s financing efforts.
NRG representatives in Tallinn were unavailable for comment, though financial observers agreed that economic troubles, especially for big U.S. energy producers, had complicated NRG’s efforts at financing the Estonian and other purchases. Based in Minneapolis and majority owned by Xcel Energy, NRG was to buy 49 percent of two plants producing over 90 percent of Estonia’s electricity; it was to pay some 70 million dollars and invest some 300 million more.
Critics consistently blasted the deal, saying it promised unfairly high profits to NRG and would lead to sharply higher electricity prices. Others said both NRG and supportive American officials applied undue pressure on Estonia. “This deal going wrong showed how complicated large-scale privatization are,” said analyst Toomas Reisenbuk, of Estonia’s Trigon Capital. “But it also showed U.S. companies are much more aggressive than others in their approach.”
Reisenbuk said that outgoing Prime Minister Mart Laar, who had backed the deal in the face of extreme political pressure at home, was offended by reported remarks from top NRG officials in the United States last month that scuttling the deal could hamper Estonia’s bid to join the EU; the annulment of the NRG deal was one of his last acts as prime minister. “For Laar, (the NRG officials’ statements) appeared to be the last straw,” he said.
Estonia has privatized virtually all state firms—mostly to Nordic investors—since the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Poiklik said it’d be up to any successor to Laar to decide what to do next. But Reisenbuk said Estonian leaders would now almost certainly choose to leave the power plants in state hands. He said Estonia has near-zero government debt and so itself could secure loans to modernize the oil-shale generated stations. “This agreement’s been such a hot potato,” he said. “No politician in his right mind is going to try to restart this process.”
Also see the new feature article: Defector’s Daughter —about a Latvian woman torn from her homeland during the Cold War as her double-agent father defected to the United States.
News Highlights from December 31, 2001-January 7, 2002
Special Report: Estonian Leader Set to Leave Office—Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar bounces off a squash-court wall, doubles back, leaps at a tiny black ball, then slaps it into a corner to win a point—punching his fist through the air in triumph. But the youthful, fiercely competitive Laar—who at just 41 has been Estonia’s longest serving premier—has recently had considerably less success in the corridors of power in Tallinn.
He abruptly announced his resignation before Christmas, saying friction in his center-right coalition made governing impossible. His resignation was slated to take effect January 8, though he remains a caretaker until a new government is formed. The center-right Reform and left-wing Center Party are thought to have the best chance of stitching together a new coalition over the next few weeks.
Since he first became prime minister—at just 32—in 1992, Laar’s been a poster boy for proponents of unfettered capitalism, with policies to slash subsidies and taxes, and his devotion to balanced budgets. In an interview days before he was slated to step down, Laar insisted he’d achieved his main goals since taking office in 1999; he was also premier from 1992-94, when most key post-Soviet reforms were drawn up. “In my first term, the goal was to turn Estonia from the East to the West,” he said, leaning into an office chair and smiling. “This time, it was to make that turn irreversible. We’ve done that.” He said Estonia was now on the verge of entering the European Union and NATO—added that he’d stick to a pledge he made last year to shave his trademark blond beard if Estonia received a NATO invitation.
His playful spontaneity, which included attendance at rock concerts and invitations to journalists to play squash, has been a hallmark of Laar’s rule. It’s also sometimes landed him in hot water. Last year, he was accused of shooting at a picture of leftist opposition leader Edgar Savisaar for target practice. He apologized, but refused calls for him to resign.
Observers abroad are quick to credit Laar with solidifying Estonia’s image as one of the most progressive, Western-oriented ex-communist states. But there’s less adoration for him at home. Critics say the one-time school teacher and Soviet-era dissident is too brash, too arrogant and too dismissive of those, especially the elderly, who haven’t benefited from the fast-paced growth his reforms prompted.
He appears sure about his legacy, however, saying that whoever proceeds him will maintain the pro-market policies he introduced. One guarantee of that, he said, was the conservative state budget for 2002, approved by parliament literally hours before he announced he’d resign. “It’s my budget,” said Laar before donning a pair of shorts and stepping onto the squash court. “Altering it over the next year will be very, very difficult.”
Laar said he would enter parliament after leaving office, and begin to prepare for national elections slated for 2003.
The January 4th edition of The Wall Street Journal Europe criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated policy of protecting the rights of Russians in the Baltic countries, comparing it with Hitler’s policies, the Baltic News Service reported.
The American newspaper pointed to Putin’s appearance in a live phone-in television show on Christmas Eve was “a trial balloon which had for time been in preparation”. In the December 24 TV show, broadcast on all of Russia’s state television and radio channels, Putin urged Russians and “Russian speakers” in the Baltic states to demand official status for the Russian language and numerical quotas of representation in government bodies. “The staging was elaborate enough to reveal advance planning,” The Wall Street Journal editorial said.
The TV presenter, introducing a Russian viewer from Latvia’s capital, helped relay this phoned-in question to Putin: “Is Russia ready, not in words but in deeds, to defend the rights and interests of Russians in the Baltic republics, Central Asia and other regions of the former Soviet Union?” BNS said that a ready-on-cue president replied at length, announcing “a much more vigorous stance on protecting the interests of the Russian-speaking population, primarily in the CIS countries of course.” Putin spoke of waging a “fight for official status for the Russian language … I want to assure you that we will intensify our efforts in this area. There is no doubt about that.”
“Can you imagine the chancellor of Germany appearing on television to urge Alsatians or German-speakers in Italy to demand more “rights,” promising support? Inconceivable in today’s Europe, you’d say. Hitler patented this sort of intrusion, and Slobodan Milosevic tried his hand at it,” The Wall Street Journal wrote.
“Historically, politically, legally, socially, demographically and in every other way, the situation could not be more different in Macedonia than in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These are successful modern democracies, thanks to which local Russians are also palpably better off than those in Russia itself,” the editorial went on.
The newspaper said that the Kremlin apparently calculated that the appearance of local ethnic strife could dissuade NATO leaders from admitting the Baltic states as members. Some in the alliance have feared that to admit the Baltic states would be to “import” ethnic tension with the local Russians and risk more trouble with Russia. But, said The Wall Street Journal, “at present, Moscow can ill-afford to come out openly against NATO’s growing consensus to issue membership invitations to the Baltic states this year. An overt, obdurate resistance could ruin Russia’s quest for a still higher stake that of a decision-making role within the alliance. Mr. Putin’s televised remarks suggest that Russian policy between now and the Prague summit may follow two parallel tracks.”
The newspaper recalled that at its year-end meetings last month, the OSCE decided that Estonia and Latvia were in full compliance with the organization’s standards and recommendations, and on that basis resolved to close the OSCE’s monitoring missions in the two countries. Lithuania, which has far fewer Russian residents, had received its good marks earlier. “Russia now threatens to carry its campaign to other international organizations, in which it can only count as was the case in the OSCE on the support of its dictatorial satellite Belarus. By now, the European Union and NATO also take the view that the Balts have done everything that could reasonably be asked of them for societal integration and constructive relations with Russia. In the run up to NATO’s Prague summit, however, Moscow will try hard to prove the opposite,” The Wall Street Journal wrote.
Russia opened a new port to handle oil exports at the end of December, facilities which Russian President Vladimir Putin said will help reduce his country’s dependence on ports in the Baltics; the port at Primorsk, near St. Petersburg, is at the end of a pipeline that carries oil from far-flung oil fields in southern Russia.
Russia is the second biggest producer of oil in the world, and a high percentage of its oil exports go through the Baltic states _ providing a boost to their economies, especially Latvia’s. Some Russian analysts say diverting significant amounts of Russian oil from the Baltics could badly damage Baltic economies, though observers outside Russia say the affect won’t be as drastic.
Construction on the Primorsk port began two years ago and is still only partially operational.
While some port officials in the Baltics have expressed fears, other observers have been more optimistic, saying Russian trends towards increasing oil production meant there should be enough transit oil to go around in coming years. “The opening of Russian ports won’t have devastating affect,” according to Maris Lauri, an analyst at Hansa Markets, a leading pan-Baltic investment firm. She added that even in a worst case scenario, which she said would be a 20 percent fall in the amount of Russian oil going through Estonian ports, Estonia’s economic growth would only drop by 1 percent at most.
She said that while the lucrative transit business generated high turnovers, relatively few jobs were tied to the sector, so any impact on employment, at least in Estonia, would be minimal. Lauri said Russian oil exporters also have come to rely on the modernized Baltic ports and that Russian ports won’t be able to take their business for granted. “Bureaucracy is worse in Russia than here,” she said. “Russian businessmen aren’t looking for only the cheapest routes, but they also want to ensure there aren’t delays, that their ships aren’t standing around for weeks.”
Others have been more circumspect, saying they still don’t know how to assess the consequences of the Primorsk port opening but that they were watching anxiously. The port of Ventspils in Latvia, the region’s largest port by far, has said that it could see business fall by as much as 50 percent thanks to competition from Russia.
News Highlights from December 10-December 17, 2001
Baltic parliamentarians on December 8 called for their countries to hold referendums on joining the European Union on the same day—which would be the first simultaneous EU polls of their kind.
Legislators from the three countries adopted a non-binding resolution calling for the same-day vote during a meeting of a joint parliamentary organization, the Baltic Assembly, in Tallinn; the Assembly is mainly a symbolic body bringing together lawmakers from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Each Baltic government and parliament would still have to approve any such proposal.
Estonia’s government appears the least enthusiastic about the idea, with Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves telling journalists over the weekend that he didn’t see the point of such a common poll. But Latvian Prime Minister Andris Berzins has already thrown his support behind the idea, saying earlier this month that a pan-Baltic EU referendum would display Baltic unity; Berzins also argued that a joint poll would also help ensure a yes vote in all three nations.
Support for EU membership has hovered around 50 percent, with large blocs of undecideds—so any referendum on joining the EU stands a good chances of passing in all three countries. But Berzins says if the three Baltics vote separately, a negative result in one could lead the other two Baltics to follow suit and also vote no.
Neither the Estonian nor Lithuanian governments have come out publicly supporting the idea of a joint referendum—though they haven’t formally opposed it, either. Latvia, which has always been the strongest proponent of close Baltic cooperation, appears the most enthusiastic about the proposal. Estonia, which has tried to cozy up closer to the Nordic nations in recent years, is likely to be less gung-ho.
Former prime minister and leftist leader Edgar Savisaar was elected the new Tallinn mayor on December 13; his rise to the influential position has altered the political landscape in Estonia and could lead to the dissolution of the national government within a matter of several weeks.
Savisaar, seen by many as the Richard Nixon of Estonian politics for an apparent penchant for dirty tricks, stormed back to power after forming an unlikely coalition in the Tallinn city council with the center-right Reform Party, one of the parties making up the three-party national government.
The move by the Reform Party to join Savisaar’s Center Party angered the other two parties in the national government; Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar told the December 17 edition of the Paevaleht daily that the ruling coalition was facing a “serious crisis,” though he wouldn’t say whether a government collapse was inevitable. Many analysts say that, with the Reform-Center alliance on the city level, the government’s position is now untenable and that it will now fall apart, possibly sometime after Christmas.
During campaigning for parliamentary elections three years ago, Savisaar was widely castigated by all the current ruling parties, including Reform, as an untrustworthy figure with a questionable grasp of democratic norms. The dour-looking, heavy-set Savisaar became the bogeyman of the campaign with center-right parties warning of dire consequences should be take over the reins of power. Critics pointed to Savisaar’s ads featuring his eyes blown up to billboard size and his slogan, “The Center Party knows the solutions.” Toomas Ilves of the Moderates, now foreign minister, said at the time that a 1995 scandal in which Savisaar was forced to resign as interior minister for secretly tape recording rival politicians illustrated his undemocratic tendencies. “He’s the real threat to Estonian democracy,” Ilves said then. “The Orwellian eyes, the claim to the truth, the taping scandal: Savisaar just doesn’t get the notion of liberal democracy.”
The investigation of alleged Nazi Konrads Kalejs will formally continue even though he died last month in Australia, prosecutors told the Russian-language Chas daily on December 13. Latvian prosecutors charged Kalejs with genocide for allegedly taking part in the murder of Jews during the 1941-44 Nazi occupation of Latvia. But he died recently in Australia before he could be extradited to face trial. He was 88.
Prosecutor Eriks Zvejnieks was quoted as telling the Riga-based newspaper that there was no legal mechanism for closing cases against alleged war criminals even though there was no chance of there ever being a trial; posthumous trials are not permitted under Latvian law.
Six people died on December 14 and at least four others were injured in an explosion at a match factory in Riga, one of the worst incidents of its kind in Latvia in recent years. Police have opened an investigation, though they have not yet speculated about possible causes.
The blast occurred around 12:30 local time at a packaging division of the sprawling Kometa plant; the AFP news agency said that two of those injured were in serious condition and taken to a burn trauma center. Fire fighters brought a subsequent blaze under control within 20 minutes, preventing the rest of the complex from being damaged.
Kometa is partly German-owned and is the largest maker of matches in the Baltic states. In addition to matches, Kometa also produces a variety of cork, paper and pulp products, according to BNS; it said the company exports 90 percent of its production to 15 countries.
Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar has vowed to shave off his trademark blond beard if Estonia receives an invitation to join NATO—long one of the nation’s top foreign policy priorities.
The blond-haired Laar, who has sported a stubby beard for most of his 10-year political career, was quoted as telling Thursday’s Eesti Ekspress newspaper that shaving would be his form of celebration. “I’ll do it,” the 41-year-old, who was also prime minister right after Estonia regained independence, was quoted as saying. “But I’m afraid it will grow back—because I’m a lazy prime minister.”
Priit Poiklik, spokesman for the government, confirmed the prime minister had made the shaving pledge but said he couldn’t provide details, including whether Laar might wield his razor in public.
Laar’s pledge echoes a promise made in the early 1990s by then-Estonian President Lennart Meri that he would not drink Champaign until all Russian troops had withdrawn from the country; they finally did leave in 1994.
The Baltic states are hoping that NATO will formally invite them to join when the U.S.-led alliance holds its summit next year in Prague, the Czech capital. Moscow objects to Baltic membership, saying their entry would be seen as a threat to Russia. NATO says the Baltics are good candidates, though it’s stopped short of promising that they will receive invitations in 2002.
Also see daily news, here.
New Highlights from December 3-December 10, 2001
The political landscape in Estonia was shaken after one ruling party in the national government, the Reform Party, joined forces with the main opposition Center Party to form a new Tallinn city government. While there are no signs of its imminent collapse, leaders have warned that the national coalition government could come under serious strain as a consequence.
The center-right Reform Party and the center-left Center Party agreed to form a new Tallinn city government on December 6, a day after Reform withdrew its support from the local administration. It cited disputes over spending, with the Reform Party advocating tough budgetary restraints and opposing moves by the city to secure large construction loans.
The new two-party city coalition could make Center Party leader Edgar Savisaar the new Tallinn mayor. The irascible, heavy-set Savisaar, who once stepped down as Interior Minister after accusations he secretly tape recorded his political rivals, has been widely reviled by most center and center-right parties.
Savisaar’s alliance with the Reform Party has angered the other two parties that make up the national government, Pro Patria and the Moderates—with some leaders in those two groups hinting that Reform’s move could cause the national coalition government to disintegrate. Many voters who backed the Reform Party in the last parliamentary election are also likely to be outraged.
The Eesti Paevaleht newspapers quoted some Pro Patria and Moderate party officials as saying that the Reform Party would have to leave the national coalition if it follows through with its agreement to set up a Tallinn city government with the Center Party.
Without the Reform Party, however, the national government would lose its already slim majority in the Riigikogu parliament.
The Reform Party was one of three core parties in the outgoing city government, which also included Pro Patria and the Moderates; it also relied on the support of several small, Russian-dominated parties.
Commentators say that the various parties are begin to position themselves for the 2003 parliamentary elections, with many of the ruling government parties now fairing badly in opinion polls.
Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, considered one of the architects of Washington’s pro-NATO expansion policy, was awarded one of Lithuania’s highest state medals on December 6 for making the country’s membership in the NATO alliance possible, officials in Vilnius said.
Critics in Washington had said their membership would spoil U.S.-Russian relations. But Talbott, an adviser to then-President Bill Clinton, was seen as a strong Baltic advocate. President Valdas Adamkus presented Talbott with the Order of Grand Duke Gediminas, handing him the silver medallion at an awards ceremony in Vilnius, the capital. “I thank you on behalf of the entire nation,” Adamkus said.
Baltic officials say they’re optimistic about receiving invitations to join the alliance during next year’s NATO summit in Prague, the Czech capital. Talbott said he shared those high hopes. “I am very optimistic about next year,” he said.
Police said on December 5 that they have charged two ex-Soviet officials with crimes against humanity for hunting down and executing men who had withdrawn to Estonia’s forests in the 1950s to resist Soviet rule. The indictment says Vladimir Penart, 75, was involved in killing three men; 76-old-old Rudolf Tuvi helped kill one of those three, according to national security police spokesman Henno Kuurmann. They face maximum 15-year jail terms.
The murders allegedly occurred when Penart and Tuvi worked for the Soviet Interior Ministry in 1953 and 1954, a decade after the Red Army occupied Estonia. Kuurmann declined to provide further details before any trial. Murder normally carries a 20-year statute of limitations in this Baltic Sea coast nation. But there’s no time limit on crimes against humanity.
During Soviet rule, thousands of people fled to Estonia’s thick forests to escape arrest or to take up arms. Tens of thousands of perceived enemies of the new communist regime were deported to Siberia, where many died. After regaining independence following the 1991 Soviet collapse, Estonia and the other two Baltic states, Latvia and Lithuania, vowed to prosecute those who took part in such atrocities. They’ve held over a dozen trials so far. No other former subject states of Moscow have conducted similar criminal proceedings.
Estonia has convicted five former Soviet officials, most of whom received suspended sentences. Only 76-year-old Karl-Leonhard Paulov went to prison; he has served nearly one year of his eight-year term. Estonian authorities say they are securing long-delayed justice for some of the worst abuses of the 20th century. But Moscow has sharply criticized the prosecutions, calling them revenge.
(For an account of those who withdrew to the forests during Soviet rule, see Forgotten War.)
CITY PAPER magazine held a 10th anniversary gala party on December 10, attended by dignitaries from around the Baltic states, including regional ambassadors, parliamentarians and former Estonian President Lennart Meri.
The event, held at the Gloria Restaurant in Tallinn, was attended by some 200 people and featured music by the Estonian-Finnish Symphony Orchestra and Modern Fox.
Edward Lucas, The Economist’s Moscow correspondent, was a keynote speaker. President Meri and CITY PAPER’s founders, Eve and Michael Tarm, also spoke.
The English-language CITY PAPER, one the oldest and largest foreign language publications in the Baltic states, first edition rolled off the presses on July 29, 1991. It was one of the first privately owned publications at the time.
CITY PAPER’s print run has grown from several thousand to over 25,000, and its total readership is estimated at around 80,000. The magazine is distributed in all three Baltic states, in Finland, and elsewhere in Europe and the United States.
CITY PAPER also produces this website, the Baltics Worldwide, which is one of the most heavily visited English-language websites about the Baltic states.
(For further information, see a recent interview with the CITY PAPER publisher here; there’s additional information about CITY PAPER here.)
Also see daily news, here.
News Highlights from November 24-December 3, 2001
Analysis—As recently as a year or two ago, the three Baltic countries were still seen as long shots for NATO membership, mainly because of vehement Russian opposition to their entry. But there is growing optimism that the Baltic states now have excellent chances of entering the alliance—and much sooner rather than later; officials here say they’re confident they’ll be invited to join during next year’s NATO summit in Prague. “The signals are strong. We’re optimistic that the year 2002 will be the year of Baltic accession,” said Lithuanian Foreign Ministry spokesman Petras Zapolskas.
Many hardened NATO-watchers appear to agree. Nicholas Redman, a defense analyst in England for the Oxford Analytica, said he was more bullish about Baltic prospects than he was speaking to CITY PAPER a month earlier (see CITY PAPER November/December, 2001). “While the outlook could change, I think it’s more likely than not that all three Baltics will get invitations in 2002,” he said.
After meeting with Estonian leaders in Tallinn on November 29, NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson was encouraging but stopped well short of any promises vis-a-vis invitations. He said the Baltic states needed to “stay focused” and that final assessments about whether countries are ready militarily won’t be made until next year. “It’s always good to be optimistic,” said Robertson, though he quickly added a note of caution. “There are no rumors that have foundation and no indications that have substance….There will be no decision until the summit itself.” He said 2001 would be “a critical year” in deciding which countries would be asked to join.
Baltic leaders have said been heartened by a 372-46 vote in the U.S. House of Congress in November to grant 55 million dollars in security assistance to NATO candidates, including the Baltic states. “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that you don’t give money to countries that you don’t want in NATO,” Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves told journalists after the House vote.
Fears here following the Sept. 11 attacks that closer NATO-Russian cooperation to fight terrorism could give Moscow an effective veto over Baltic membership have also allayed. Calls for greater international cooperation to fight terrorism, instead, appear to have bolstered the Baltic membership cause.
So has an apparent softening of the Kremlin’s position.
Redman said there was still strong opposition to Baltic NATO membership in Russia’s parliament, the military and among average Russians who would see Baltic entry as a security threat. But he pointed to recent comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the United States suggesting a change in the approach of Russia’s leadership. Putin told NPR Radio that, regarding Baltic membership, he “cannot forbid people from making certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a certain way.”
“While seemingly innocuous, these remarks flatly contradict Russian policy with regard to Baltic membership of NATO as it was throughout the 1990s,” said Redman. “This doesn’t mean Putin agrees with (Baltic membership). It’s simply that he’s a pragmatist and recognizes the U.S. is determined on this and there’s no point in deluding himself or the Russian public that Baltic membership can be prevented.”
Robertson, who was in Moscow the week before he came to Estonia, said he detected a similar change in attitude. “Russia is still unenthusiastic about NATO enlargement. But I think President Putin recognizes that NATO will not be stopped from the enlargement process,” he said. “Russia is interested in a more practical relationship with NATO rather than being fixated with something they can’t have influence over.”
Robertson said the airborne attacks on the United States highlighted the importance of ensuring NATO remained an effective, credible military alliance. “The standards for membership have not become tougher, but these events have underlined their importance,” he said at a Tallinn news conference, flanked by Estonia’s foreign and defense ministers.
In the membership process, the NATO chief also emphasized the need for the public at large to back alliance membership. “NATO does not welcome governments or countries as members–but people who want to become members,” he said, adding that entry brought benefits but also burdens and responsibilities. “I’ve been assured that public opinion here won’t be treated complacently.”
Some analysts have expressed concern that pro-NATO sentiment, consistently expressed by over 50 percent of the populations in all three Baltic states, could start to slip. They say that, paradoxically, the more Russia appears to soften its opposition to NATO, the less some people here feel NATO membership is necessary.
A sprawling monument to 30,000 Jews killed in 1941 was unveiled on what was a Nazi killing field on the outskirts of Riga. The 250,000-dollar monument was paid for by a German charity and dedicated by Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga on November 30.
The dramatic monument, in a forested area known as Bikernieki, consists of hundreds of stones scattered across a small field; each stone is meant to represent those killed as they were forced to lay down in a pit and then shot in the back of the head.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Latvian president, now in her mid 60s, said at the ceremony that she recalled as a small girl smoke drifting passed her family home not far from Riga; she said she was told later that the smoke was from the bodies of Nazi victims being burned.
“The land on which we stand is soaked in blood,” she said at the dedication Friday. “We will do our utmost to ensure those who died here are not forgotten and to ensure this will never happen on our soil again.”
Bikernieki was earlier marked only with a concrete slab with hammer-and-sickles across it. Communist authorities had described the victims as “Soviet” not as “Jews.”
Many Jews killed at Bikernieki were brought to Latvia from Germany, Austria and what was then Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The killings took place in 1941 and in 1942.
News Highlights from November 19-November 26, 2001
Estonian investigators said on November 26 that they haven’t determined why a Russian-made AN-28 commercial airplane crashed without warning into a forested island marsh with 17 people on board, killing one and severely injuring several others. The November 23rd mishap, the first major aviation accident in Estonia in decades, occurred just a few kilometers short of its assigned runway on Hiiumaa island.
The head of the accident investigation team, Tonu Ader, said media reports that ice on its wings or a sudden gust of wind may have caused the plane to suddenly lose altitude were premature.
“It’s too early to say anything about causes,” he said Monday. “Anything at this point is pure speculation. The investigation will take at least two months.”
Eight survivors remain hospitalized, including a pilot and 10-year-old boy in comas. The one fatality was a passenger, a 49-year-old man who lived in Hiiumaa, which is located 130 kilometers southwest of Tallinn, Estonia’s capital.
Photos of the accident scene showed the fuselage badly crumpled and twisted, with the wings snapped off and at least one gapping hole by the cockpit.
A co-pilot who survived with minor injuries was quoted as describing the crash landing with only one death as a “miracle,” the Baltic News Service reported.
The plane was carrying 14 passengers and three crew on a regularly scheduled route from Tallinn and appeared to be landing normally in a light snow at around 6:30 p.m. after its 30-minute flight, survivors said.
Passenger John Pass, a 38-year-old Canadian businessman, said he could see the pilots from his seat, when they suddenly started flipping control switches frantically. Within seconds, the plane drifted sideways, then plowed into the ground.
“I’ve flown on this plane many times and the approach to the airport could always be shaky” he said. “But it was only when I saw the pilots doing this that I realized something wasn’t right and put my head down. There’d been no warning over the intercom from the captain.”
As it began to bread up, water poured into the plane. It was only as it came to a halt that Pass realized they’d hit land.
“My first thought was, ‘My God, we’re crashing into the sea,’” he recalled in a telephone interview from a house he owns on Hiiumaa. “I couldn’t image what I would have done if we had gone into the sea.”
Several children seated in the front, the most heavily damaged section of the airplane, were screaming and crying as the plane slid to a stop, said Pass.
He said he helped carry one small boy, whose foot appeared to be partly severed, out of the damaged craft and laid him briefly on a wing before carrying him farther away. He helped several others out as well.
He said passengers were covered in what appeared to be airplane fuel and were rushing to get of the wreck because they thought it might ignite.
Once he climbed off the wreckage, he said there were so many trees and the marsh waters were so deep that it was hard to walk through the dark to a nearby road.
He speculated the conditions may have prevented the plane from exploding.
“The trees weren’t that large, so they seem to have broken the fall of the plane. And the water pouring in almost immediately may have kept it from catching fire,” he said. “If it wasn’t for those trees and the water, I think we would have all been dead.”
Pass, a Canadian of Estonian decent who grew up in Sydney, Nova Scotia, said he went to the hospital to treat what appeared to be a pulled muscle but that he was otherwise unhurt.
Most of the passengers were Estonian. There was one other passenger in addition to Pass who carried a foreign passport. Raudjalg said she was a Norwegian and that she wasn’t badly hurt; BNS gave her name as Anna Helena Gjelstad.
Many of the some 10,000 islanders on Hiiumaa are farmers, while many also work in the fishing industry. The picturesque, heavily forested island is also a favorite retreat for Estonians living in cities on the mainland.
The small Enimex company that only the ill-fated plane was the only airline servicing the island. Ferries are the only other way residents and visitors travel to and from Hiiumaa.
A 16-year-old girl who could go to jail for 15 years for hitting Prince Charles across the face with a carnation sent the heir to the British throne a note apologizing for her actions. Several days later, however, she was quoted as saying she didn’t regret what she had done.
Alina Lebedeva gained instant notoriety at home and abroad after she struck Charles in the face with a red carnation on Nov. 8 as he stopped to greet children on a street in Riga. She said later she was protesting Britain’s involvement in the Afghan war, and that she sympathized with fringe, far-left groups.
“I didn’t want to offend you personally and I ask for your forgiveness and hope you understand,” Lebedeva wrote in a letter published in the Russian-language Chas daily on November 21.
But just a few days later she was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying, “I’m not sorry.” She added to the Chas Russian-language daily that she thought the flower attack was comparatively mild. “In other countries, they throw pies or rotten tomatoes. I thought a flower showed more human consideration,” she said.
The prince at the time was on a five-day tour of the three Baltic states to mark British recognition of their independence from Moscow 10 years ago.
Charles wasn’t hurt and a spokesman for the prince called the affair “a trivial incident.” But police arrested Lebedeva and charged her with threatening the life of a foreign dignitary, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
Lebedeva spent three days in police custody before being released to her parents, who have appealed to authorities for leniency.
Lebedeva attends a high school in the city of Daugavpils, southeast of the capital and near the Russian border, and teachers have described her as “strong-willed.”
Her case was turned over to prosecutors and a decision on whether to push forward with her prosecution is expected within several weeks.
Some observers in Latvia and in Britain have questioned the wisdom of prosecuting her, saying a trial and sentence could be out of proportion to the crime. Critics also say the legal proceedings are giving her and pro-communist causes added status and publicity.
Officials in Latvia have given new meaning to “graveyard shift” by establishing a cemetery police force meant to prevent thieves from stealing, then reselling graveside flowers.
The unit, which will include 17 full-time staff, will patrol two dozen cemeteries in and around Riga starting the beginning of next year.
While Latvia’s economy is booming, poverty is still widespread. The average monthly wage is some 250 dollars, and one fresh rose can cost as much as 1 dollar—providing incentive for some poorer Latvians to try to steal and sell fresh flowers.
Anyone caught robbing flowers from graves would be arrested and charged. The crime carries as maximum sentence of one year in prison.
The special unit will also be used to try to prevent vandalism of graves, something that happens in the city a couple times a year.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said on November 23 that it has fulfilled its mission in Estonia and now wants to close its doors after an eight-year presence here. The move was seen by many Estonians as final confirmation of its pro-West, democratic credentials.
Concerns raised in Russia about Estonia’s Russian minority led to an OCSE office being set up two years after the Soviet occupation ended in 1991–though some Estonians grumbled the OSCE presence was politically motivated, unnecessary and an affront.
But Tallinn-based officials of the leading human rights oversight group said a language requirement for candidates running for elected office had been its last major bone of contention. Estonia’s parliament canceled that provision a day before, on November 21.
“We said for a long time that we haven’t noticed serious human rights violations here,” Deputy Director of the OSCE’s Tallinn office Sabine Machl said in a telephone interview. “And the change in the language rule was very positive.”
She also praised Estonia for implementing what she said were well-thought-out programs to integrate Russian speakers, adding that “there have been tremendous developments, great progress, since the OSCE arrived here in 1993.”
The recommendation came from the OSCE’s office in Tallinn, and is still subject to approval by the organization’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria. But Machl said the Tallinn office could be closed as soon as Dec. 30.
Harri Tiido, deputy undersecretary at Estonia’s Foreign Ministry, welcomed the OSCE moves to close its office, adding that “we’ve done all we’ve been asked to do and there is nothing else the OSCE has asked—so their mandate’s fulfilled”
Russia expressed particular anger at Estonian language laws—which it argued disenfranchise Russian-speakers, mostly ethnic Russians who moved here during the Soviet occupation and now make up 40 percent of the 1.4 million population. The issue soured bilateral relations.
Estonia said its language laws met international norms and were meant to counteract five decades of repressive Soviet policies which often favored Russian over native Estonian, a vowel-laden language closely related to Finnish and spoken by barely one million people.
But over the years Estonia soften the laws, culminating in the cancellation of the rule that those running for office be able to speak Estonian. Critics said it discriminated against Russian speakers—most of whom speak little or no Estonian.
The 101-seat parliament abolished the language provision by a vote of 55 to 21, with one abstention; 24 deputies either weren’t present or didn’t vote. The yes votes were nearly all cast by members of the three parties forming the government.
“This was the one deviation from democratic norms the world community pointed to in Estonia’s case,” said Marju Lauristin, a deputy from the center-right ruling coalition, adding Estonia otherwise receives high marks in democracy building.
The opposition said discarding the rule would weaken the status of Estonian. Even many government deputies said they only grudgingly backed the changes.
Estonia’s center-right coalition government argued that failure to strike the language provision from the books would have jeopardized Estonia’s long-cherished goals of membership in the European Union and NATO.
Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar also lobbied hard for the amendment, though Moscow was angered by arguments he made that the language provision could have been used by Russia as a propaganda tool.
Some Moscow officials said they would disagree with any moves by the OSCE to close up shop in Estonia.
News Highlights from November 12-November 19, 2001
The head of the Latvian central bank, one of the boy wonders of Latvia’s post-Soviet reforms, said on November 14 that he will resign to pursue a political career—leaving the post he has held ever since the country regained independence.
The 39-year-old Einars Repse, who has consistently ranked among the most popular public figures in Latvia, said he will submit his resignation to Latvia’s Saeima parliament by the end of this month to begin his campaign for political office in earnest. He started raising money for his newly founded political party, called New Time, earlier this year, prompting questions about possible conflicts of interest with his position as central bank head. He has largely weathered criticism from some quarters and stayed atop popularity polls.
Repse has set his sights on the 2002 parliamentary elections, hoping to capitalize on widespread dissatisfaction with ruling parties, like Latvia’s Way, which has been a central part of virtually every government for the past 10 years. The long-established parties are seen as vulnerable and some analysts believe Repse could take his party from no where to win at least 20 percent of the popular vote. That could give New Time the balance of power in the next legislature, would would convene at the end of 2002.
Repse, who has the reputation of a numbers-crunching genius, guided the country through complicated financial reforms in the 1990s. He was the chief architect of Latvia’s monetary reform that replaced the Soviet ruble with the lat, and he oversaw the national recovery from a crippling commercial banking crisis in 1995. While he is seen as a strong fiscal conservative, his political views are otherwise less well known.
In his 20s, Repse was a leading independence activist. He was elected to the Soviet-era legislative body, the Supreme Soviet, in 1990 and helped lobby Moscow and the West to restore Latvian independence.
Moscow blasted Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar on November 14 for an alleged e-mail in which Laar warned of a coming propaganda offensive by Russia to foil Estonia’s bid to join NATO. The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Laar in a toughly worded statement of “crude attacks against Moscow,†adding that “such rhetoric from the period of the Cold War is regrettable.â€
“(This) sheds light on the true motives of Tallinn’s willingness to join NATO at any cost—to build a European barrier against Russia behind which Laar thinks Estonia will find it simpler to continue its nationalist policy and perpetuate its legislation discriminating against non-Estonians,” the statement said.
Estonian government spokesman Priit Poiklik declined to comment on Laar’s alleged e-mail, saying the office doesn’t comment on “questions of the prime minister’s private or party correspondence.”
The full text of Laar’s alleged e-mail appeared in Estonia’s Eesti Ekspress this week; the popular Estonian-language weekly said it had received a copy from a member of the prime minister’s Pro Patria party. It said Laar sent the message to leaders of the center-right group. The text said Russia would in the near future try to undermine Estonia’s efforts to integrate its Russian minority by criticizing Estonian language laws. It said Moscow would attempt to taint Estonia’s image abroad because Russia was afraid of losing regional influence. “Enlargement of NATO into the Baltic countries will complete the unification of Europe and prevent Russian enlargement into Estonia. Instead of carving a window on to Europe with an ax, Russia will have to learn to politely knock on the door,” the published text said.
The text urged that Pro Patria members back a proposal to drop legal requirements that candidates for elected office be able to speak Estonian, the sole state language. Some European bodies have criticized the rule as undemocratic, saying voters should be able to decide themselves whether or not they want someone who speaks Estonian representing them.
Russian-speakers, mostly ethnic Russians, make up about 400,000, or some 30 percent, of Estonia’s 1.4 million people. Many Russians don’t speak Estonian or speak it badly. Over the years, Estonia has already modified stricter provisions of its language laws.
Many members of Laar’s party have expressed opposition to
dropping the language rule for candidates, saying it would undermine the status of native Estonian, which they say suffered under five decades of Soviet rule in which Russian was favored by communist authorities. But Laar has said striking the language rule from the books posed no threat to Estonian, and would boost the nation’s European integration efforts. In the published e-mail text, Laar reportedly argues that party members who opposed changes to the law are inadvertently handing Russia a potential propaganda weapon.
Many Estonian newspapers, including the leading Postimees daily, scriticized Laar for what they described as such awkward, undiplomatic comments, saying he should have been aware that even an in-party e-mail would be leaked.
Also see daily news, here.
News Highlights from November 5-November 12, 2001
Fairytales weren’t supposed to go quite like this: Pretty girl meets prince, slaps him upside the face, gets thrown into jail, is charged, and now faces a 15-year jail sentence. But that unlikely narrative is exactly what happened for real in Latvia on November 8 when 16-year-old schoolgirl Alina Lebedeva slapped the heir to the British throne with a long-stemmed red carnation. The affair caused a minor international incident and was splashed across the front pages of of major British newspapers, with headlines like Prince in Flower-Power Attack, Royal Bouquet Turns into Brickbat and Charles’s ‘Flower Girl’ Jailed.
Prince Charles, who was on a five-day tour of the Baltics that started earlier in the week in Estonia, had stopped to talk to a group of school children waving British flags on a street corner when the red-haired teenager leaned over them from behind and smacked the prince across the face. She said she’d done the deed to protest Britain’s role in the U.S.-led bombings in Afghanistan; as armed police led her away to a waiting police van, she added that she also opposed Latvia’s bid to join NATO.
Police later said that the girl had planned the attack in advance and intended to stalk the prince at other public functions had she not succeeded when she did. The incident prompted considerably more chuckling than horror in much of the world. But Latvian authorities for their part, where not amused, keeping the teenager in prison for three days and, to the disbelief of many observers, charging her with endangering the life of a high official. If convicted and given the maximum penalty she could theoretically step out of a Latvian prison cell when she is 31.
A security officer said the 11th grader was well known as a political activist in her hometown of Daugavpils, in eastern Latvia, where she attends a Russian school. “When the police told her parents (what had happened) her mother was not surprised,” an official was quoted as telling The Times of London. “It was as if she expected the call. “She had planned it very carefully. She was absolutely determined. If she had not succeeded in Riga, she planned to try again when the prince visited Daugavpils (later in the week).”
When the heir to the throne was struck once, he flinched, raised his hand and appeared to duck. While he looked startled, he didn’t seem hurt. After casting a bewildered look to his security guards, he he kept moving along the street talking to bystanders, among several hundred people who had turned out to see him. The Times, as other British newspapers, noted that the prince ordered a scotch and ice (rather that his usual water) at a reception an hour later, suggesting that he may have been shaken by the incident.
After hitting the prince, the girl calmly turned and walked away but was quickly grabbed by police. “I’m against the Afghan war,” she told journalists in Russian as she was loaded into the vehicle. “Britain’s the enemy of the world.” She also said she backed the National Bolsheviks, a tiny, pro-communist fridge group based in Latvia and Russia. The group advocates the restoration of the Soviet Union and bitterly opposes Baltic entry into the NATO alliance. Several of its members were convicted for terrorism earlier this year for briefly taking over a Riga church and threatening to blow it up; it turned out later that the explosive they said they were carrying was a fake grenade.
Royal spokesman appear to appealed for leniency for Lebedeva, with some British newspapers alleging that Charles himself was shocked her imprisonment and prosecution. The prince’s office in London, at St James’s Palace, dismissed the incident, saying: “It was a minor incident that was over in seconds and the prince continued unaffected,” adding that “we hope and trust the Latvian authorities will take that into account when looking into this case.”
But Latvian authorities seemed unapologetic, defended moves to throw the book at at the young, flower-wielding assailant, and fending off criticism in some British and Latvian newspapers that her punishment was way out of proportion to the crime. Officials insisted that the girl could have badly injured Charles, while other argued that she had to be made an example of to dissuade anyone from staging similar protests in the future.
Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga later issued an apology to Charles, saying “there are mentally unstable and ill people who wish to stick out at such occasions in all countries,” she was quoted as saying. All three staunchly pro-West Baltic governments have backed the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan, support that reflects widespread sympathy for the United States in the wake of Sept. 11 airborne terrorist attacks.
Just before the slapping incident, Charles left a wreath at the
Freedom Monument, a towering stone obelisk that has come to symbolize independence, regained in the Baltic states as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The prince arrived in Latvia from Lithuania during a tour to mark Britain’s recognition of Baltic independence a decade ago. He started the week in Estonia on Monday and left the region Friday.
The Baltic states, with combined populations of just over 7 million people, had close economic and diplomatic ties with Britain before World War II. British investment now lags far behind that of the nearby Nordic nations.
(You can see a picture of the incident at http://www.ananova.com
/news/story/sm_444422.html)
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News Highlights from October 29-November 5, 2001
Britain’s Prince Charles arrived in Estonia on November 5 on the first leg of a schedule-packed, five-day tour of the three Baltic states. The 52-year-old heir to the throne is expected to express his country’s backing for these staunchly pro-West nations in stops across the region.
Writing in Monday’s Telegraph newspaper, he praised Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for successfully reforming their post-communist societies, and he hinted at long-standing British support for their bids to join the European Union and NATO. “They are all thriving parliamentary democracies, determined to join the main Western institutions,” the prince said. “My visit will help to symbolize Britain’s wholehearted support of their preparations for doing this….The Baltic states matter to Britain.”
He added a note of admiration for the Baltic role in repeatedly challenging Kremlin authority starting in the late 1980s. “The courage of these countries helped to precipitate the final break-up of the Soviet Union,” he said.
The royal visit, roughly timed with Britain’s recognition of Baltic independence a decade ago, is the prince’s second to the region. He stopped briefly in Latvia in 1995, but didn’t travel on to either Estonia or Lithuania.
He met Estonian President Arnold Ruutel at a reception Monday in a Baroque palace built by Peter the Great. Other attendees were to include Estonian Mart Poom, goalie for England’s Derby County, the Estonian winners of the 2001 Eurovision Song Contest and what an official schedule described as “some Estonian models.” Among some 50 other scheduled stops, the prince will see army bases Britain has helped modernize, lay flowers at graves of Lithuanians killed during a 1991 Soviet crackdown and meet survivors of Nazi and Stalinist atrocities in Latvia. Charles, who farms organically at Highgrove, his country estate in southwest England, will also visit organic farms in the Baltic states—which have struggled to overhaul their unwieldy, inefficient agricultural sectors.
“I also want to look to the future—to meet young Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians, to hear of their vision for their countries,” the prince, who will also stop at area schools, wrote in the British daily.
Britain is fondly remembered here for lending military aid during Baltic independence wars against Russia in 1920. After the Red Army annexed the Baltics in 1940, London refused to formally recognize their absorption into the USSR. The Baltic states, which have combined populations of just over 7 million people, had close economic ties with Britain before World War II. But British investment in the Baltics now lags far behind that of the nearby Nordic nations.
Prince Charles was slated to fly from Estonia to Lithuania Tuesday, and then on to Latvia Thursday. He was scheduled to leave the region Friday.
A Lithuanian lab said on November 5 that four mailbags from the U.S. embassy showed no signs of anthrax after the same lab dramatically confirmed several days before that a fifth bag did have traces of the potentially deadly bacteria. At the time, it was the first such discovery of anthrax in Europe since it started showing up in letters in the United States.
The find caused some anxiety in Lithuania in the first few days, though government leaders quickly acted to allay any fears, saying the anthrax in the U.S. mailbag posed no danger to the public at large. While there was no panic in the country, many Lithuanians expressed shock that the current international crisis over terrorism had struck so close to home.
Five bags were brought to the lab early last week from the U.S. embassy in Vilnius as part of worldwide tests of mailbags from all U.S. embassies after anthrax was detected at the State Department in Washington. Preliminary findings indicated that at least two out of the five were contaminated. But the Lithuanian Public Health Center that conducted the tests said it was now clear that suspect material in a second bag was not anthrax. It said plans were being made to send samples of the anthrax that was discovered in the one bag to investigators in the United States.
Meanwhile, emergency teams on November 5 began decontaminating parts of the embassy in downtown Vilnius. Workers in bright orange bio-hazard suits could been seen carrying buckets and what appeared to be large pumps in and out of the building. After first suggesting the whole building would be cleaned, embassy spokesman Michael Boyle said it was decided to disinfect just limited sections, including the mailroom. He said the clean-up would take no more than two or three days. He said mail distributed from the one contaminated bag wasn’t dangerous since such minute amounts of anthrax were found and only in the lining of the bag. Boyle said he didn’t know if the mail had been retrieved or destroyed.
Most of the embassy was open by Monday, and Lithuanians were lined up outside the building to apply for visas. Most embassy staff took the day off last Friday but were almost all were back to work Monday.
Boyle said the diplomatic pouches had come straight from the State Department _ saying that “common sense leads me to believe that this is part of the same contamination that has been documented at the State Department.”
Following the discovery of anthrax in the one U.S. mailbag last week, most of the embassy’s 120 employees began taking antibiotics as a precaution, although none showed symptoms of anthrax.
The last known case of anthrax in Lithuania was in 1974, when a farmer who had been digging soil where anthrax infected cattle were buried, fell ill and then later recovered.
Over the past month, there have been dozens of anthrax scares across the Baltic states—and scores more elsewhere in Europe—but all of these previous cases turned out to be hoaxes.
Lithuania’s Soviet-built nuclear power plant is still vulnerable to terrorist attacks despite security upgrades following the Sept. 11 airborne assault on the United States, Lithuanian officials said on October 31.
Environmentalists have long raised questions about the safety of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Station, located some 130 kilometers north of Vilnius, and near the border with Belarus. Concerns focused on possible accidents at Lithuania’s sole atomic plant, which has no containment shell and is over 15 years old. But U.S. developments prompted new fears that it could also be a terrorist target.
In response, anti-aircraft guns were recently placed by the plant, a no-fly zone was declared in a 20-kilometers radius around it and more guards were assigned inside, according to Ignalina security head Vytautas Slaustas.
The director of the Lithuanian State Security Department, Mecys Laurinkus, wouldn’t discuss details about what he called “security loopholes” at Ignalina. But he said 1 million litas (250,000 dollars) were being sought to close them. Laurinkus, responsible for securing state utilities in this nation of 3.5 million people, attended a Tuesday meeting with President Valdas Adamkus. Anti-terrorism measures at Ignalina topped the agenda.
Ignalina’s two reactors are the same type as those at Chernobyl, Ukraine—site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986—though safety improvements have been made over the past ten years.
Under Western pressure, Lithuania promised to close one of two reactors at Ignalina, which generates over 70 percent of Lithuania’s power. But it called for more economic-impact studies before it would commit to closing the second.
Fears about possible attacks by terrorists have also been raised vis-Ã -vis nuclear plants in Western Europe and the United States. While some analysts say containment shells widely utilized in the West could withstand the impact of an airliner, others say they could not. The vulnerability of Soviet-built plants could be greater since they, like Ignalina, do not have these specially reinforced outer shells.
Coast guard ships and aircraft kept searching for four Estonian islanders after their small motorized boat went missing on October 30 in stormy seas. If it sank or overturned, there’s little chance the men could have survived for more than 24 hours in the frigid waters, according to Urmo Kohv, spokesman for the Estonian Border Guard that is conducting the search and rescue mission. “There’s not much hope. They’ve been out there so long,” he said the day after the boat was lost. He added, however, that the search would continue during daylight hours for at least a week.
He declined to release the names of the missing, but said their ages ranged from 22 to 46. They lived on the tiny Estonian island of Ruhnu, 250 kilometers southwest of Tallinn. Their small vessel departed from Ruhnu at 2 a.m. local time on Tuesday loaded with scrap metal that they intended to sell in Estonia’s coastal city of Parnu, 125 kilometers to the northeast, Kohv said.
They were warned the weather could worsen but chose to leave anyway, Kohv said. Within hours, winds topped 15 meters a second (33 miles an hour) and waves peeked at 2 meters. Their cargo would have made the boat even more unstable.
The wife of the boat’s captain contacted maritime authorities when the crew didn’t arrive at their destination in Parnu by dawn.
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News Highlights from October 22 to October 29, 2001
Lithuania has formally requested that Israel extradite 81-year-old Nachman Dushanski, charged by Lithuanian prosecutors with genocide for allegedly taking part in mass repressions during the Soviet era.
Dushanski, a Lithuanian-born man of Jewish decent who emigrated to Israel 12 years ago, allegedly worked for the Soviet secret police for over thirty years, starting in 1940—the year Red Army forces first occupied Lithuania.
A Vilnius court earlier this month issued an arrest warrant for Dushanski, opening the way for prosecutors on October 29 to ask for his deportation from Israel to stand trail.
The indictment names nine people that Dushanski allegedly either helped to deport or execute. Prosecutors say his victims included anti-Soviet resisters who had sought refuge in area forests to escape persecution by communist authorities.
After regaining independence as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Lithuania vowed to bring perpetrators of both Nazi- and Soviet-era abuses to justice.
Some Jewish groups have said Lithuania hasn’t done enough to bring Nazis to justice, while some Lithuanians, in turn, complain of a double standard: that while Nazi criminals are widely sought, Soviet ones are mostly ignored.
Israel has earlier refused to cooperate with investigations of Dushanski, denying several Lithuanian requests for help in questioning him.
Israel said in a statement last year that the proceedings amounted to “discrimination” against Dushanski and raised “very serious, troubling concerns.”
The statement said there were 20 other men in Lithuanian who had taken part in actions similar to Dushanski during Soviet rule but who had not been prosecuted.
Lithuanian prosecutors denied discriminating against Dushanski, arguing that they’ve tried several Lithuanians for similar Soviet-era crimes. They said most of the 20 other suspects cited by Israel have long since died.
An Estonian court on October 29 sentenced a former pub manager and soldier from Bathgate, Scotland to three years in prison for trying to smuggle a record stash of narcotics out of Estonia to Western Europe.
William Hain, a 43-year-old father of three, was arrested last year after police found 20 1-kilogram packets of opium stuffed inside the gas tank of his car as he tried to board a vehicle ferry bound for nearby Finland.
Flanked by a translator and an armed bailiff, Hain looked tense, fidgeting and biting his lip as he stood in a courtroom dock to hear his sentence read out. He didn’t address Judge Merle Parts Monday but made an emotional appeal to her for leniency last week.
“I want to apologize for what I did. I behaved stupidly,” he told the City Court in Tallinn. “I’ve shamed my family…. This incident has broken me.”
Hain had faced a maximum sentence of seven years. By Estonian law, he now has to serve half his three-year term before he’ll be eligible for parole.
He pleaded guilty last month, saying he planned to use money from the deal to pay business debts. But he claimed he was a minor player, expecting a one-off 30,000-dollar fee for transporting the opium, which police said came from Afghanistan.
Police said the opium could have made 6.5 kilograms of heroin with an estimated street value of at least 1 million dollars. The seizure last Nov. 2, following months of police surveillance, was the largest in Estonian history.
Estonia has requested the extradition from Scotland of Robert Bruce Wright and Leslie Brown for allegedly masterminding the scheme. Police spokesman Haino Kurman said he was confident the suspects would be deported here to stand trial.
Brown, 44, is said to be a company director in Glasgow while Wright, 35, is reportedly a millionaire in the same Scottish city who collects expensive cars.
Estonian Sergei Petrenko, arrested with Hain last year, was sentenced to three years and eight months in jail. The 42-year-old pleaded innocent, insisting that, partly because of his poor English, he didn’t know he was transporting drugs.
“I was imprisoned last year,” he told a courtroom during closing arguments last week, “and I still haven’t gotten over the shock.”
Latvian sledder Girts Ostenieks was killed while practicing on the country’s famed Sigulda Bobsleding Track on October 28. He died instantly when he plowed head first into an empty four-man sled that had drifted into his path.
The 33-year-old was reportedly traveling on a sleek, one-man sled at 60 kilometers an hour when his head struck the blade of the errant sled.
The Sigulda Bobsleding Track, 50 kilometers outside Riga, is slated to host the 2003 World Luge Championships.
The second vehicle involved reportedly belonged to the Russian women’s national bobsled team, practicing nearby when they lost control of their sled. It slid onto the track and overturned seconds before Ostenieks sped into view.
Officials said the Russian women’s bobsled team failed to close a safety gate that would have prevented their sled from coasting onto the track.
The track was built while Latvia was still under Soviet occupation, though a number of national teams, including Russia’s, still train at the facility.
Also see daily news, here.
News Highlights from October 15-October 22, 2001
Environmentalists say a proposed new dam in Latvia threatens increasingly rare stocks of fish in the region, according to an October 17 report by the AFP news agency.
The report said the dam, meant to increase regional electricity production, could end up killing off one of the Baltics’ last thriving stocks of wild salmon. Already, over 80 percent of salmon around the Baltic Sea region are raised by fish hatcheries.
The dam is planned for the Salaca River, some 100 kilometers north of Riga; many municipal authorities say it will help make the region more energy self-sufficient and draw new investment.
But AFP quotes environmentalists as saying the project could disrupt one of the last breeding grounds for Baltic salmon. It said the majority of wild Baltic Sea salmon comes from 10 Latvian rivers, including the Salaca.
Detractors said the dam also would endanger other fish species, including sea-trout, lamprey and vimba. The area also draws scores of visitors each year—and damage to wild fishing stocks would negatively impact tourism as well, critics say.
AFP said that there are already 91 hydroelectric dams in Latvia, including several large ones on the Daugava River that flows through Riga. Combined the dams provide just 0.4 of the country’s total electricity.
A top judge who presided over several high-profile criminal trials in Latvia was shot dead on October 15 in what police said may have been a contract killing. There have been no arrests in the murder, one of the highest profile killings in the country since the restoration of independence a decade ago.
Many Latvian leaders characterized the attack as a bid by criminals to subvert the criminal justice system, but they vowed to track down the culprits. Special parliamentary committees have been established to investigate the incident.
Janis Laukroze was shot seven times, including once in the head, outside his apartment late in the day. He died at the scene.
Laukroze, who was 69, was the chief judge on the Riga District Court, subordinate only to the Supreme Court. Earlier this year, he and two other judges handed down a guilty verdict against three members of a radical communist group charged with terrorism.
He was the first judge murdered in Latvia since independence was restored.
A homemade 7.62 caliber pistol, the presumed murder weapon, was found near Laukroze’s body, and ten witnesses were interviewed by police. A composite drawing of a suspect was made based on those interviews.
Police said the murder may have been related to the judge’s work, but they offered no details.
Murder rates rose in Latvia after independence, but murders of public figures have been rare. The killing of Laukroze, however, follows the shooting death in June of a leading tax official, Vjaceslavs Liscovs—shot by someone in a passing car.
Estonia made it into the top half of a prestigious economic competitiveness survey conducted by the World Economic Forum and Harvard University Professor Jeffrey Sachs that is designed to single out countries that should experience strong growth over the long term; Estonia ranked 29th out of the 75 nations assessed, with Lithuania and Latvia coming in 43rd and 47th, respectively.
The report compares economic indexes of the countries with the results of interviews with 4,600 business executives, who answer questionnaires about factors that aren’t easily measured, like government efficiency and the strength of supply networks.
Estonia ranked ahead of Slovenia, Greece and the Czech Republic, and just behind Italy, Chile and Hungary.
Estonia’s northern neighbor Finland dramatically rose to first place for the first time, forcing last year’s leader, the United States, down one peg. Authors cited its focus on technology and strong macro-economic management.
Singapore, which led the list for four years and fell to second place last year, dropped to fourth place. The first ten countries in the list also include Canada (3), Australia (5), Norway (6), Taiwan (7), the Netherlands (8), Sweden (9) and New Zealand (10). Zimbabwe had the dubious distinction of being at the very bottom of the list.
Below are the full rankings, from most to least competitive. The country’s rank last year is in brackets; the Baltic states weren’t surveyed last year.
1. Finland (6)
2. United States (1)
3. Canada (7)
4. Singapore (2)
5. Australia (12)
6. Norway (16)
7. Taiwan (11)
8. Netherlands (4)
9. Sweden (13)
10. New Zealand (20)
11. Ireland (5)
12. Britain (9)
13. Hong Kong (8)
14. Denmark (14)
15. Switzerland (10)
16. Iceland (24)
17. Germany (15)
18. Austria (18)
19. Belgium (17)
20. France (22)
21. Japan (21)
22. Spain (27)
23. South Korea (29)
24. Israel (19)
25. Portugal (23)
26. Italy (30)
27. Chile (28)
28. Hungary (26)
29. Estonia (-)
30. Malaysia (25)
31. Slovenia (-)
32. Mauritius (36)
33. Thailand (31)
34. South Africa (33)
35. Costa Rica (38)
36. Greece (34)
37. Czech Republic (32)
38. Trinidad and Tobago (-)
39. China (41)
40. Slovakia (39)
41. Poland (35)
42. Mexico (43)
43. Lithuania (-)
44. Brazil (46)
45. Jordan (47)
46. Uruguay (-)
47. Latvia (-)
48. Philippines (37)
49. Argentina (45)
50. Dominican Republic (-)
51. Egypt (42)
52. Jamaica (-)
53. Panama (-)
54. Turkey (40)
55. Peru (48)
56. Romania (-)
57. India (49)
58. El Salvador (50)
59. Bulgaria (58)
60. Vietnam (53)
61. Sri Lanka (-)
62. Venezuela (54)
63. Russia (55)
64. Indonesia (44)
65. Colombia (52)
66. Guatemala (-)
67. Bolivia (51)
68. Ecuador (59)
69. Ukraine (57)
70. Honduras (-)
71. Bangladesh (-)
72. Paraguay (-)
73. Nicaragua (-)
74. Nigeria (-)
75. Zimbabwe (56)
Also see daily news, here.
News Highlights from October 8-October 15, 2001
The founder of Lithuania’s Stalin World, a cross between an amusement park and a museum to Stalinist repression, has won Harvard University’s Ig Nobel Peace Prize—a spoof on its more famous counterpart handed out in Norway.
The 60-year-old Viliumas Malinauskas officially opened the park in April this year, with many critics in the region saying its efforts to poke fun at the era of Stalinist mass repression was in bad taste.
The facility is circled by barb wire and guard towers, and dotted with some 65 bronze and granite statues of former Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, and assorted other communist VIPs.
The jury of the Harvard prize includes several actual Nobel Prize winners. One of its guidelines is that Ig Nobels should be given to those whose achievements “cannot or should not be reproduced.”
Winners in other categories included a professor who researched why shower curtains tend to bend inward when the water is turned on and a man who invented airtight underwear with a charcoal filter that absorbs ill-smelling gases.
Milinauskas says his is the only Soviet theme park in the world. The 30-hectare complex is officially called the Soviet Sculpture Garden at Grutas Park. But residents of the nearby Grutas village have dubbed it Stalin World.
“It combines the charms of a Disneyland with the worst of the Soviet gulag prison camp,” Milinauskas once told journalists.
Malinauskas, considered one of the wealthiest men in Lithuania, launched the project after he won a competition for rights to use Soviet-era statues that were taken down following the restoration of Lithuanian independence.
Leonas Kerosierius, a critic of the park, said it makes light of some of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.
“Imagine that in your country, one day armed KGB men come to your door. They beat your neighbor, rape your sister, your mother, kill your brothers. They exile your family,” Kerosierius was quoted as saying. “And now someone is building monuments to these killers, these rapists? No country has ever built monuments for tyrants. Are there any monuments for Hitler or Goebbles?”
(You can see a full report on Stalin World on this site, here. Harvard’s Ig Nobel website is here.)
Seven people have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in Estonia’s worst ever case of alcohol poisoning that has left 67 people dead, police said on October 15.
The number of fatalities during the week when several more victims died from drinking the same batch of homemade liquor, though most of the deaths occurred last month.
Nineteen people were still hospitalized after taking the illegally made alcohol, laced with highly-toxic methanol, according to police spokeswoman Kadri Palta. She said several of those injured were in serious condition.
Palta wouldn’t say if the suspects—who face maximum prison sentences of just three years if convicted—might have known the brew they were selling could kill those who drank it. She declined to provide the names of those charged.
Most victims drank the spirit in or near Parnu, a seaside resort some 125 kilometers south of Tallinn, during the weekend of Sept. 8-9.
Police believe they were mostly poorer Estonians who bought the illegal alcohol because it was cheaper than commercial brands sold in stores, costing only about 2 dollars per half-liter plastic flask.
Methanol, also called methyl or wood alcohol, is sometimes used by illegal distilleries to increase the potency of their liquor or added by mistake. It’s used in antifreeze and blamed for hundreds of deaths worldwide each year.
Alcohol poisonings have occurred sporadically each month in Estonia, where black-market alcohol is widely used, but never before in such large numbers. Over 150 such deaths occurred during the whole of last year.
A Scottish man is awaiting sentencing on charges of smuggling a million dollars worth of opium. He has pleaded guilty, but has to wait for the conclusion of his alleged accomplice’s trial before he is sentenced.
William Hain, 42, of Bathgate, Scotland, was arrested on Nov. 2, 2000, while boarding a ferry bound for Finland. Police found 20 1-kilogram packets of opium, believed to have come from Afghanistan, stashed in the gas tank of his car.
The opium could have been used to make nearly 7 kilograms of heroin with an estimated street value of dlrs 1.4 million, making the seizure the largest in Estonian history.
Hain pleaded guilty last month to one count of smuggling narcotics. But he must wait for a verdict on Sergei Petrenko before he is sentenced. Petrenko, arrested with Hain, pleaded innocent.
The judge was expected to hand down a decision in Petrenko’s case on Oct. 25, and sentences for both men could be announced that day.
The men, if convicted, face up to seven years in prison. Both have been in prison since their arrests last fall.
News Highlights from October 1-October 8, 2001
Arnold Ruutel, a ranking communist during the Soviet era, was sworn in on October 8 as Estonia’s second president since the restoration of independence.
Ruutel, 73, replaces the popular Lennart Meri—who was president from 1992 but constitutionally barred from a third term—after a surprise victory in a vote last month by a special assembly.
The white-haired Ruutel, a long-time leftist opposition leader with strong support from people in rural areas, said after taking the presidential oath that he would stay Estonia’s course toward European Union and NATO membership.
Speaking to deputies in parliament, he also said more needed to be done to address growing mistrust of government and to reduce disparities between rich and poor.
“There’s a need to narrow this gap that has gotten too wide,” said Ruutel, dressed in a black tuxedo and flanked by ministers from Estonia’s pro-business, center-right government that had opposed his candidacy.
The outgoing Meri, who warned during campaigning against electing an ex-communist, smiled as he placed a badge symbolizing the transfer of power around Ruutel’s neck. He urged all Estonians to stand behind the new leader.
While Ruutel long ago renounced communism, many expressed initial dismay and embarrassment at the return of someone who once served on the local Communist Party’s Central Committee.
Some feared he could tarnish Estonia’s pro-West image abroad.
Others pointed to contrasts with Meri, who never joined the Communist Party. Meri could wow audiences with lectures on poetry to philosophy; Ruutel, an agricultural specialist, speaks in plodding, hard-to-follow sentences.
Ruutel has appeared unruffled.
“The word ‘communist’ and what I am all about have nothing in common,” he said in a recent television interview.
Even critics concede that Ruutel was, as communists went, a benevolent one. By 1990, he had sided with pro-independence forces and he stood up to the Kremlin when it ordered Estonia to end its push for sovereignty.
The president isn’t involved in the day-to-day running of the country—a duty of the prime minister. He commands the military, helps form governments and is a key foreign envoy.
Prime Minister Mart Laar, who has called on the Communist Party to be declared a criminal organization for the historical record, said he could work with Ruutel.
The new president is widely described as affable. He’s also quick to admit his shortcomings, which critics say include a lack of English—crucial for wooing other world leaders and lobbying for Estonia’s EU and NATO goals.
Ruutel told journalists he’d soon begin English lessons.
Over a hundred cherry trees from Japan were planted in Lithuania’s capital on October 2 to honor a Japanese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis as World War II began.
Chiune Sugihara, Japan’s deputy consul general in Lithuania at the time, defied his own government by issuing more than 6,000 visas to stranded Jewish refugees desperate to travel abroad before an impending Nazi invasion.
He has sometimes been called the ‘Japanese Schindler’ after German industrialist Oskar Schindler whose efforts to save Jews were made into a Hollywood movie.
Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, Japanese Ambassador Shohei Naito and Sugihara’s widow Yukiko Sugihara attended a tree-planting ceremony, roughly timed to mark the 100th anniversary of Sugihara’s birth.
Adamkus planted one of 108 cherry trees shipped to Vilnius from Japan.
An alley of the white-blossom cherry trees, or sakuras, was planted along the capital’s Neris River. Others went up by the president’s office and some will be planted in Kaunas, the prewar capital where Sugihara was based.
As Germans were poised to invade, Sugihara remained in Kaunas, some 100 kilometers west of Vilnius, to keep issuing visas
enabling Jews to travel to Japan. He was soon the only foreign diplomat left in the city.
With the help of his wife Yukiko, Sugihara wrote nearly 300 visas a day, working almost continuously for 29 days. Even as he was forced onto a train, he kept signing and passing out visas through a carriage window.
Sugihara was fired from the diplomatic service after the war for
defying orders that he not issue the visas. He was honored by Israel in 1985 but was virtually unknown in his homeland until after he died in 1986 at age 86.
Japanese businessmen helped finance the 100,000-dollar memorial.
News Highlights from September 24-October 1, 2001
Analysis—Brazauskas: Lithuanian Survivor
The political landscape in Lithuania is strewn with the corpses of those who underestimated Algirdas Brazauskas. Yet more bodies litter the ground after the ex-president and one-time communist recently maneuvered himself into none other than the prime minister’s chair. As a former ranking communist, the 68-year-old certainly doesn’t seem to have the credentials to lead a nation that is as devoutly anti-communist as it is devoutly Catholic. But he has proven consistently throughout his career that he has uncanny political instincts—a remarkable ability to quickly determine which way the winds are blowing, and to adapt accordingly. In 1989, he led the Lithuanian Communist Party when it formally cut ties with Moscow, a bold move at the time that appeared to anticipate the very collapse of the Soviet Union. While Brazauskas started positioning himself early for the inevitable breakup, it took most other Soviet-era leaders—not least of all Mikhail Gorbachev—years to grasp what was happening then (Some are still trying.)
The window of opportunity opened for Brazauskas again when the centrist government of Rolandas Paksas suddenly collapsed in July after the center-left New Union, citing differences over economic policy, withdrew its support and formed an alliance with Brazauskas’s Social Democrats. In a speech following his approval by parliament, Prime Minister Brazauskas promised to stay the country’s pro-EU, pro-NATO course while also doing more to help the poor. “We will seek to channel Lithuania’s progress and growth towards a socially oriented market,†he said.
In contrast to typically weak-kneed ex-communists and in spite of his track record as an opportunist, the burly, white-haired Brazauskas has at times shown surprising political backbone. Over the grumbling of some of his countrymen, for instance, he traveled to Israel when he was Lithuanian president to apologize on Lithuania’s behalf for the role some of his countrymen played in murdering Jews during the Nazi occupation. When one Holocaust survivor confronted Brazauskas on an Israeli street explaining that his family was massacred by Lithuanian collaborators, he leaned over, kissed the man, and asked him for forgiveness. Brazauskas was president as a member of the Democratic Labor Party, made up of reform-minded ex-communists, until 1998. Afterwards, he spent much of his time on hunting trips and many believed he’d stay in the political background; convinced of that themselves, local journalists dubbed him “Lithuanian Pensioner No. 1.†Before elections last year, though, he stormed back, helping the Social Democrats win more legislative seats than any other party. He expressed anger when his party was locked out of power by the centrist Liberal Union-New Union coalition.
Many average Lithuanians see Brazauskas as affable and down-to-earth. But some businessmen worry that he’ll raise taxes and delay what they say is a badly needed war on bureaucracy. Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus is thought to prefer center-right parties but reluctantly nominated Brazauskas when it became clear he was the only candidate capable of winning parliamentary approval. But Adamkus said he would be watching and wouldn’t hesitate to criticize the new administration.
Baltic airlines have come under financial strain with increasing cost of terrorism-related insurance in the wake of the airborne attacks in the United States.
The Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian airlines scrambled to find ways to pay for higher insurance costs, with all three coming up with at least temporary solutions. They have warned though of possible rises in the cost of tickets to help foot the bill for the pricier insurance.
The fully state-owned Lithuanian Airlines was discussing how it could receive government-supported insurance, something that airlines based in European Union countries have received.
Latvia’s national carrier, Air Baltic, got a helping hand from shareholder SAS to keep it flying—though the majority state-owned Latvian company was also trying to negotiate a permanent solution with the government.
Estonia’s national airline Estonian Air has been the hardest hit, having to suspend all of its flights from Wednesday though Friday of last week because it said insurers would no longer offer sufficient coverage against terrorist attacks.
It continued some flights using planes leased from its parent company, the Danish-owned Maersk Air, but most others were cancelled completely for the three-day period.
But by later in the week, insurance companies reportedly did agree to offer their full 1 billion dollar terrorist coverage to Estonian Air. Insurers had threatened to cut that coverage back to 50 million, a low level of coverage that Estonian Air said would have exposed them to unacceptable economic risk.
The partly state-owned Estonian airline has appealed to its government for an insurance guarantee of 590 million dollars, though fiscally conservative Estonian officials suggested they wouldn’t be in a position to comply with that request.
Also see daily news, here.
News Highlights from September 17-September 24, 2001
Special Report: Shock Victory in Presidential Election
TALLINN_No way. Not here. Not ever.
But the thing many Estonians long insisted couldn’t possibly happen here has happened: A former ranking communist has been elected the nation’s president.
Reformed communist Arnold Ruutel won a shock victory on September 21 in a special electoral assembly that was convened to pick a replacement for popular outgoing President Lennart Meri—who had himself warned the day before about selecting someone with a communist past.
Estonians had scoffed when Lithuania recently swore in ex-communist Algirdas Brazauskas as its new prime minister. Estonians, proud of their mostly deserved reputation as progressives, also pooh-poohed when Brazauskas earlier became Lithuania’s first post-Soviet president.
Many Estonians have appeared at once stunned, embarrassed and bewildered at how a reformed communist managed to win. Eesti Paevaleht ran a telling photo of one legislator, Liis Klaar, burying her head in her hands in apparent dismay as the voting results were read out at the assembly meeting in Tallinn.
The 73-year-old Ruutel, a chairman of the Soviet-era legislature, won by a close margin in a second-round battle Friday with Parliament Speaker Toomas Savi of the center-right Reform Party.
Most fingers of blame were pointed at the three-party center-right coalition government for failing to agree on a single presidential candidate; Pro Patria, the Reform Party and Moderates each backed a different candidate—ensuring none could win the required votes.
The inter-coalition dissension gave Ruutel the golden opportunity he might not have otherwise had, according to Prof. Rein Toomla, a leading Estonian political scientist.
“The ruling parties didn’t do their homework. They left the door open for this to happen,” he said.
But the victory wasn’t a total fluke, the result just of ill-conceived election strategies by ruling parties.
It also revealed genuine societal divisions between upwardly mobile Estonians in the cities and poorer Estonians in the countryside who see few avenues for improving their lot. Ruutel, of the leftist opposition People’s Party, drew particularly strong support from assembly delegates representing rural areas, where unemployment is high and where a host of social problems are more pronounced than elsewhere in the country.
“This goes to show how little Tallinners, living in their own world of strong growth and rising living standards, understand people in the country,” said one commentator.
Many people also find the affable, modest, sometimes shy Ruutel, well, likeable. He at least appears to avoid the dirty political background dealing and arrogance that seemed to be a hallmark of the ruling parties leading up to the September 21 vote. When he said he didn’t think he’d win, he seemed to mean it.
But Ruutel has long been a controversial figure because of his past, though he long ago renounced communism and played a role in Estonia’s independence drive ten years ago.
Fielding a barrage of questions after his victory about his track record as a communist, Ruutel was unapologetic.
“The word communist and what I am are very far apart,” he told the Eesti Paevaleht, adding that he had done nothing during the Soviet era that he regrets or should have to answer for. As a communist official, he claimed he always lobbied behind the scenes for pro-Estonian policies.
Many commentators agree that Ruutel was indeed a relatively benevolent communist, responsible mainly for agricultural matters when he sat on the Estonian Soviet Central Committee—though they question his claim that he was an Estonian patriot underneath his red Party clothing. But critics say Ruutel simply doesn’t have what it takes to lead Estonia into the 21st century, that he is a yesterday man and that he should have long ago slipped into quiet retirement.
Ruutel himself has said that he will meticulously stay Estonia’s course towards European Union and NATO membership, though he and other leftist politicians have complained that too much time and money has been spent on European integration and not enough on social problems at home. He’s also consistently backed the country’s open-market reforms since 1991, while also complaining that too many Estonians feel estranged from the process.
“I promise to do everything I can do to improve dialogue between the state and the people,†he told assembled delegates the night of this election. The delegates applauded politely under glittering chandeliers in the Estonia Concert Hall.
Center-right Prime Minister Mart Laar, who has recently called for parliament to declare the Communist Party a “criminal organization” for the historical record, also walked into the hall to hand Ruutel a bouquet of flowers.
On the eve of the election, it was Meri who cautioned delegates most dramatically about the prospect of Ruutel becoming president, saying a former communist could spoil Estonia’s established image as one of the most dynamic and forward-thinking of ex-communist states.
“Based on the outcome, the world community will judge if Estonia’s maintaining the course of a small European nation or making a stupid communist U-turn,” he was quoted as telling Thursday’s Maaleht, a weekly newspaper.
Ruutel certainly couldn’t be a sharper contrast to the witty, polyglot current president, a former writer who never belonged to the Communist Party, and critics say Ruutel isn’t fit to pick up the mantle from Meri. Ruutel doesn’t speak English, which critics say will also hamper his ability to deal with Western governments.
Meri, credited with leading Estonia back into the Western camp, was elected in 1992 and again in 1996. He leaves office on Oct. 7 and Ruutel is slated to be sworn in the next day.
The president isn’t involved in the day-to-day running of the country—a duty of the prime minister. He is the commander of the military, helps form governments and is a key foreign envoy. But the constitution describes the presidency as a mostly ceremonial post.
Meri was an influential president largely by force of his charismatic personality and by sheer displays of brainpower and, at times, stubbornness (see Portrait of a President). But observers say Ruutel, a much less forceful character, is likely to accept and even prefer a more ceremonial role.
Few expect him to have a major impact on the policies of the pro-business government.
Nevertheless, many politicians opposed to Ruutel appeared shaken as they left the makeshift election hall immediately after Friday night’s surprise result.
“It will be very hard to explain to the world why a progressive country like Estonia elected a former communist as president,” Peeter Tulviste, a candidate forced to drop out earlier in the day, said.
“But it’s not a disaster.”
He said Ruutel had several “good qualities,” including his ability to parley with farmers in the countryside. He said he hoped Ruutel will explain to many Euroskeptics in rural areas that European Union membership will benefit them.
Ruutel won 186 votes Friday in the assembly, made up of 101 parliamentarians and 266 local government delegates. Savi received 155. Two ballots were spoiled, 23 were unmarked, and one delegate was ill and didn’t participate.
The electoral assembly was called after parliament failed last month to reach a decision.
A round of voting earlier in the day Friday failed to give any of the four candidates a majority, forcing the runoff between the top two vote-getters—Ruutel and 58-year-old Savi.
Tulviste, 55, a former university rector from the center-right Pro Patria party, and Peeter Kreitzberg, 52, of the leftist Center Party, dropped out.
The presidents of Poland, Finland and the Baltic states said at a one-day summit in Estonia on September 18 that the integration of ex-communist states into Europe should continue and even speed up after the attacks in the United States.
Four of the nations at the Tuesday meeting are vying to enter the European Union, while one, Finland, is already a member. The Baltic countries also hope to join NATO, with Poland already belonging to the alliance.
“In this difficult period in history it’s especially important to integrate,” Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski told a joint news conference in Tallinn. “Anything now that creates stability and security is critical.”
The summit, scheduled prior to the terrorism in Washington and New York, was also attended by Estonian President Lennart Meri, Finnish President Tarja Halonen, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus.
“We focused on the barbaric aggression against the United States,” Estonian President Meri said. “We are unanimous that this was a declaration of war against all states sharing principles of democracy, free speech and human rights.”
The meeting took place a few blocks from the U.S. embassy, where well-wishers kept placing flowers near its entrance in memory of the terrorist victims.
There’s deep sympathy for the U.S. here in the staunchly pro-West Baltics. But there’s also been some concern about the consequences as Washington launches its war on terrorism.
But the Baltic presidents said they’d didn’t believe that, with the United States distracted, NATO expansion may now be put on the back burner.
“NATO enlargement becomes a higher priority than ever because you are looking at a world that is becoming more unpredictable ….We would like to join the ranks of those who fight against terrorism,” the Latvian president said.
Polish President Kwasniewski said he agreed.
“Today’s situation after this dramatic attack in the U.S. shows that the whole world needs more security. And new countries in NATO means more security,” he said.
All three Baltic leaders also said that, if they were members of NATO, they wouldn’t hesitate to comply with provisions calling on members to militarily aid the U.S.
President Meri said Estonia was already doing its part in the fight against terrorism, pointing, as an example, to Estonian laws banning the trade of illegal arms.
“Supporting the fight against terrorism doesn’t necessarily mean you have to chase someone around the street with a knife in your hand,” he said.
