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News highlights from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

News Highlights from July 13—July 20, 1998

• Joint military maneuvers under NATO’s Partnership for Peace got underway in Lithuania on 16. They are among the largest military exercises ever held in the Baltic states, and the largest in Europe so far this year.
          Flanked by hundreds of troops and assorted regional leaders at opening ceremonies, Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Vagnorius hailed the start of the exercises, saying they would show the Baltic states could contribute to regional security and stability.
         "We cannot remain indifferent to the tragic conflicts of history," he said, speaking at a windswept military field near the port city of Klaipeda, about 350 kilometers west of Lithuania’s capital Vilnius. "These exercises will only strengthen military trust in the region."
          The exercises, dubbed Baltic Challenge ‘98, involve some 5,000 troops from 11 countries—the United States, Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Nordic countries and the three Baltic states. Some 2000 U.S. soldiers make up the largest participating force.
          The exercises, which end on July 25, are meant to increased preparedness for possible joint peacekeeping missions, organizers said.
          Among those taking part are five dolphins involved in mine sweeping. The dolphins, from San Diego, Calf., are specially trained to locate underwater mines and then lead divers to defuse them. It is the first time U.S.-military dolphins are being used in Europe.
          Regional power Russia, which has a massive naval base in its nearby Kaliningrad enclave, is not participating—though it has sent observers to the exercise.
          Some media reports in Lithuania said the Russians asked to take part, but were rebuffed. Other observes speculated that Moscow may consider the maneuvers provocative.
          While Russia belongs to NATO’s Partnership for Peace, it has opposed NATO expanding to include the Baltic nations.
          Addressing troops and dignitaries at the opening ceremony, U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Keith Smith addressed the controversy, reiterating the American view that expanding NATO would be good for all countries in the region. "One of the biggest difficulties is convincing people that everybody can win with NATO (expansion)," he said. At a press conference later in the day, the Lithuanian premier said his country understood the sensitivities surrounding Lithuania’s bid to join NATO. But he said Lithuania was nevertheless determined to get in. "We are not asking for a complete opening of NATO’s door, just a small enough opening so that Lithuania can get through it," he said. Other Baltic officials said there was no direct link to the exercise and NATO membership. But they said such large-scale exercises will make their armies more professional, thereby improving their chances of qualifying for alliance membership. "These exercises will help us greatly in reaching our goal of getting into NAT0," said Daniel Vaarik, the government press chief in Estonia. "Because, as NATO itself has said, it’s not weapons we need so much, but improving our communication and cooperation skills."

• Saying they are fed up with economic hardships, hundreds of residents in the Russian border town of Ivangorod have threatened to break with Russia and become part of more prosperous Estonia.
          In a petition sent to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, some 500 residents of the town have urged the Kremlin leader to solve their economic problems, saying they would otherwise request that Ivangorod be annexed by neighboring Estonia.
          Among other grievances, the petitioners complained of rising unemployment, patchy public services—and even poor TV reception.
          Economic hardships were aggravated this past week when the town’s water supply was cut by 75 percent because the municipal government had failed to pay a 400,000-dollar water bill.
          Like many provincial Russian towns, Ivangorod (pop. 10,000) has been especially hard hit by the post-Soviet economic downturn, and has missed out on major economic investments, which have tended to go to larger Russian cities.
          Estonia, just across the Narva River from Ivangorod, has fared better. Growth in Estonia neared 10 percent last year—compared to negative growth in Russia.
          Ivangorod officials, who have also been heavily criticized by residents, have downplayed talk of an Estonian annexation, saying the disgruntled locals were simply trying to get the attention they deserved from Moscow.
          "This is a political action so that the government of Russia turns its attention to a town that has been completely forgotten," the deputy mayor of Ivangorod, Antonina Kostitsina, was quoted as telling Estonia’s ETA news agency.
          Daniel Vaarik, the Estonian government’s press spokesman, said that Estonia had received no appeals from Ivangorod, and he said his country was not taking the annexation talk seriously.
          "This seems to be linked to economic problems in Ivangorod, but we doubt anyone there could really be serious about being annexed by Estonia," he said. From 1920 to 1940, Ivangorod—then called Jaanilinn—belong to Estonia. But after Estonia was forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union during World War II, Joseph Stalin put Ivangorod under Russian jurisdiction.

• A Lithuanian woman who said she killed her bedridden son to relieve him of severe physical pain has been charged with murder.
          After keeping a vigil at his hospital bed for months, Zivile Slavinskiene gave her son Sarunas a lethal injection two weeks ago, and then tried unsuccessfully to kill herself by taking an overdose of pills.
          The 19-year-old boy had been suffering from serious burns over his entire body after earlier attempting suicide by setting himself on fire. To repair his injuries, he had undergone seven operations and both his hands had been amputated.
          In a note to her relatives found later by police, the boy's mother said her son was in constant pain and had asked her to take his life.
          She is currently undergoing treatment in a Vilnius psychiatric clinic. If convicted, the woman could face up to 20 years in prison.

• Lithuania said on July 16 that it would ask how France wants to care for recently discovered graves of around 700 French soldiers who died in Nazi captivity during World War II.
          Two burial sites with the bodies of the French POWs were uncovered this past week, one near the resort town of Nida and another site close to the port city of Klaipeda. Both coastal cities are about 350 kilometers west of Vilnius.
          Lithuania, site of fierce battles in both World War I and II, has agreements with Germany about caring for the graves of German soldiers. Graves of Nazi fighters killed during World War II are excavated and reburied in a special cemetery outside Klaipeda.
          But the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for overseeing the care of war-era grave sites, said Lithuania has no agreements with France. It said it wants to conclude one. "There is no such agreement with France now, so it's up to them what to do with the remains of POWs we found," said ministry spokesman Algimantas Galinskas, head of special service dealing with the remains of soldiers slain during the war.
          Alain Nicolas-Nicolaz, the military attaché at France's embassy in Vilnius, said French authorities were seeking further information about the find. "We are eager to see the site, take photographs of it and then make a decision only after we have all the information," he said. Lithuanian authorities said they would forbid commercial development around the sites during excavation, which is slated to begin before the end of summer. Algimantas Galinskas said Lithuanian archeologists had long suspected there were French graveyards in the area. But he said crosses marking the graves had been removed during the war, and their exact locations were lost. Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944.At a meeting with his Baltic counterparts on July 15, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said Germany strongly backed Baltic membership in the European Union and NATO. At the one-day gathering in Lithuania’s coastal town of Nida, Kinkel told journalists he hoped the Baltics would win EU membership "as soon as possible." He also repeated NATO policy that the alliance door was open to all three Baltic countries. Russia adamantly opposes the inclusion of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in NATO, and because of Bonn’s close relationship with Moscow, some Balts have questioned Germany’s commitment to Baltic NATO membership. While Kinkel said Germany backed the Baltic effort to join NATO, he also told journalists that "Russia has the central role in Europe that it deserves." The meeting in Nida, some 370 kilometers west of Lithuania’s capital Vilnius, was the third such get-together in recent years, part of an agreement between the German and Baltic governments to consult each other regularly on regional affairs.
          Another topic on the agenda was visa-free travel with Germany, which the Baltics have been lobbying hard for in recent years. Kinkel told reporters that Germany hoped to sign visa-free treaties with all three Baltics by the end of the year.
           Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus broached the subject of visas in a meeting with Kinkel earlier in the day. The president told Kinkel that he sees a long line of Lithuanians outside the German embassy waiting to get visas on his way to work every day. "The president joked that this was the only such line in Lithuania," the president’s press chief, Violeta Gaizauskaite, said.

News Highlights from July 6—July 13, 1998

• At a high-level meeting on Baltic security on July 8, U.S. officials assured the Baltic countries that they would get a fair shot at joining NATO, saying Russia had no right to foil their bids to enter the alliance.
         Moscow has adamantly opposed Baltic inclusion in NATO, but U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said at the Riga gathering that the three Baltic nations had every right to make their own decision about signing up.
         "I can only say that I think it is counterproductive for any countries to question that right and to engage in rhetoric or to otherwise engage in pressure tactics or intimidation," Talbott told journalists at a news conference in the Latvian capital.
          His remarks came at the conclusion of the inaugural meeting of the Partnership Commission, a joint U.S.-Baltic committee set up earlier this year to address security and economic issues of concern to the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
         Officials said NATO questions topped the agenda at the one-day gathering, which was attended by ranking U.S. State Department officials, Baltic foreign ministers and also by business delegations from the Baltics and the United States.
          The Baltic nations have been lobbying hard for NATO membership since independence, arguing that the U.S.-led alliance is the only sure guarantor of their security. But Moscow says the admittance of ex-Soviet republics, like the Baltic states, would be a threat to Russia.
         While some have expressed reservations about Baltic membership for fear it would antagonize Russia, Washington has been outspoken about the right of the Baltics to join NATO, saying the fledgling countries should not be consigned to an ill-defined zone of security.
          In opening remarks at a roundtable discussion earlier in the day, the U.S. Deputy Secretary urged Russia to stop viewing the Baltic countries as possible avenues of invasion and to begin seeing them as assets in Russia's own drive to open up to the West.
          "If Russia can come to see the Baltic states not as a pathway inward for invading armies, or as a buffer against imaginary enemies, but rather as a gateway outward to the new Europe then everyone will benefit," he told his Baltic counterparts. "We will all be safer and secure."
          Talbott also encouraged Latvia and Estonia to address outstanding issues with Moscow over their large Russian-speaking minorities, which has been a point of contention in their relations with Russia.
          The Kremlin has accused both countries of discriminating against Russian-speakers by making it difficult for them to qualify for citizenship. Latvia, in particular, has seen its relations with Russia nosedive in recent months over the issue.
          Without directly criticizing Latvia, Talbott urged the Latvian government to follow through on pledges to make citizenship more accessible to tens-of-thousands of Russian-speakers in the country. He said Latvia would benefit if more of its residents won citizenship.
          But Talbott also criticized Russia for resorting to economic pressure against the small Baltic state, which says it is facing low-level sanctions from Moscow--including the imposition earlier this month of higher transit fees for Latvian transport companies.
          "The bottom line is that no country, Russia included, is justified in economic pressure tactics against Latvia," Talbot said.
          While there seems to be dispute among experts about the extent of trade sanctions, Latvian Foreign Minister Valdis Birkavs argued at the security conference that Russian economic pressure was beginning to harm to Latvia's economy.
          "This meeting is occurring at quite a serious time, when business in Latvia has come under attack from Moscow," he told attendees of the U.S.-Baltic meeting. "We are witnessing an operation which has been directed and inspired from above...such conduct makes Russia itself appear stuck in old ways of thinking."

• Lithuanian archeologists have finally revealed the secret of an ancient cache of treasure, a secret they kept to themselves for over ten years.
          The treasure, including gold goblets, jewels and church artifacts dating back to the 16th century, were uncovered thirteen years ago when Lithuania was still ruled by the Soviet Union.
          But archeologists feared that the treasure, thought to come from the era when Lithuania was a monarchy, would be spirited away to Moscow by Soviet central authorities had they revealed the find.
          They made an announcement about the treasure only this past week, seven years after the country gained its independence.
          Workers came across the cache in 1985 while fitting the Vilnius Cathedral with air conditioning. Archeologists were then brought in to explore further.
          Experts this week valued the treasure at 100 million dollars.
          Archeologists believe the treasure was hidden in 1655 when troops of Czarist Russia stormed Vilnius, which was then part of a Lithuanian-Polish political union.
         Archeologists informed Soviet Lithuania’s Ministry of Culture about the find at the time. But, at great personal risk, they vowed not to pass the news on to central authorities in Moscow.
          On Jan. 13, 1991, at the height of a Soviet military crackdown on Lithuania, the archeologists moved the treasure to what they felt was a safer location. Only three people knew where it was.
         Lithuanian authorities said they plan to arrange an exhibition of the treasure. But Lithuania’s Catholic Church has also laid claim to it, which could prompt a protracted battle over ownership.

• Officials in Estonia say they are worried a meeting on July 11 of World War Two veterans who fought with the Germans could be used by Russia "to slander" Estonia.
         A gathering of the Freedom Fighters Union, which brings together Estonian men who fought on the German side during the war, took place in a city center conference hall in Tallinn.
          The gathering of some 1,500 veterans including members of the Estonian Waffen SS--a force put together by the Nazis to battle the Soviet army in the waning days of the war. Estonians who fought with Finland against the Red Army also participated.
         A similar gathering in Latvia earlier this year sparked an angry reaction from Russia and contributed to a downward spiral in Latvian-Russian relations.
          The Waffen SS reunion in Latvia was attended by several officials, including the head of the Latvian armed forces. But the Estonian government made clear it would have nothing to do with the Tallinn reunion, and no officials attended the gathering. Unlike in Latvia, there was no parade by the veterans and their meeting was held behind closed doors.
         Estonia was occupied by Communist Russia in 1940 and then by Nazi Germany in 1941. As Russian forces advanced on Estonia again, Germany sought volunteers and also conscripted thousands of Estonians into the Waffen SS. Non-German were barred from serving in the regular German army, the Wehrmacht.
          Estonians who fought in the Waffen SS have said their units are confused with the notorious SS, special Nazi forces which guarded Nazi concentration camps. The veterans insist they were strictly a fighting force deployed near the front with Russia. They also say they never felt they were fighting for the Nazis, but instead had taken up German arms in the hopes of regaining Estonian independence.
          But many Jewish groups have said that such gatherings by men who once fought in German uniform are insensitive and illustrate an unwillingness to face up to Nazi crimes that took place in the Baltics during the war.
          In a strongly worded statement released the day before the Friday gathering, Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves said Estonia was committed to seeking out and punishing war criminals from both the Nazi and Stalinist eras.
          But he also echoed wide-spread anxieties in the Estonian press that Russia might try to use the gathering of the elderly veterans against Estonia.
         "I’ve extensively studied Soviet-style disinformation tactics and the implementation of such campaigns, and I this time I can clearly identify the first signs pointing to the launch of such a campaign," the statement quoted him as saying.

• Amid criticism about the effectiveness of regional cooperation, Baltic prime ministers said on July 10 they were forging ahead with plans to make a common Baltic market a reality.
          At a one-day meeting in Sigulda, on Latvia’s Baltic Sea coast, the government leaders signed a series of new economic agreements, including one standardizing customs procedures to speed up the flow of traffic at Baltic borders.       
          Estonia’s Mart Siimann, Latvia’s Guntars Krasts and Lithuania’s Gediminas Vagnorius also agreed to an action plan for next year, which would include the drawing up of treaties on the free movement of labor.
          Since they regained independence from the Soviet Union, the three Baltic nations have tried to speak with one voice on major foreign policy issues, especially about their determination to join the NATO alliance and the European Union.
          But there have been complaints about the level of practical cooperation between them, with particular criticism about failures to establish a workable Baltic common market—-which would incorporate some 8 million consumers.
          Many businessmen say that because the countries individually are so small, creating a single economic space is key to long-term growth and investment. But red tape at Baltic borders, plus many contradictory laws and regulations have deterred many investors. 
          Latvian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrejs Pildegovics conceded that Balts were finding the creation of a common market more difficult than they imagined, but he insisted things were moving in the right direction.
          "Since we had such spiritual unity when we fought for independence from Moscow, there was a kind of illusion that things would develop fast,"he said. "But we have realized that setting up a joint economic area is a tremendous task that takes time and resources."
          The Latvian spokesman said his country, as the middle Baltic nation, has a lot to gain from making sure a common market becomes a reality.
          "In this sense, we see ourselves as one of the main engines of Baltic economic cooperation," he said.  "For us, it is a very high priority."