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News highlights from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

News Highlights from November 2—November 9, 1998

• Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis on November 3 named Vilis Kristopans as his candidate for prime minister, asking the centrist politician to begin forming a new government.
          The nomination of Kristopans, a head of the Latvia’s Way party, came as the country’s newly elected parliament, the Saeima, convened for the first time and followed a month of sometimes acrimonious political talks.
          Latvia’s Way came in second in the October 3 parliamentary poll and, the day before parliament convened, it signed a coalition deal with the rightwing Fatherland and Freedom and the centrist New Party.
          The three parties have just 46 out of 100 parliamentary seats, which means prime ministerial candidate Kristopans will have to woo the support of other parties to win approval for his government. If he succeeds in drawing additional support, Kristopans would replace incumbent Guntars Krasts of Fatherland and Freedom.
          The party with the most votes in parliament, the center-right People’s Party, has not agreed to join a coalition led by Latvia’s Way and its absence could seriously complicate the process of stitching together a workable coalition government.
          The People's Party won 24 seat in the recent election, Latvia's Way won 21, Fatherland and Freedom 17 and the New Party eight seats. If he can’t agree with the People’s Party, Kristopans may have to seek support from the leftist Social Democrats, who have 14 seats.
          On policy, the People’s Party differs little from Latvia’s Way. But Andris Skele, the flamboyant leader of the People’s Party, is deeply disliked by other Latvian politicians and personality clashes have so far prevented his party from joining any coalition.
          Skele has received heavy backing from the country’s food industry, though has fallen into disfavor with the nation’s powerful oil-transit industry, which helped finance the campaign of Kristopans’s party, according to widespread reports in the Latvian press.
          Observers, however, say there is still a chance the People’s Party will come on board. President Guntis Ulmanis has signaled a preference for a government that includes the People’s Party, saying Latvia needed a government with a large, stable majority in parliament.
          During the legislature’s first session, a member of Fatherland and Freedom was elected speaker of parliament and a member of Latvia’s Way was elected first deputy speaker, which could indicate that the proposed three-party coalition already has sufficient parliamentary support.
          Vilis Kristopans, a minister of transport in the outgoing government and one-time basketball star, is known as a pragmatist who has broadly supported the country’s market reforms. As Minister of Transport who also gained respect for his administrative skills and creativity. But the 44-year-old also has a reputation for being unpredictable and sharp-tongued, once calling outgoing Prime Minister Guntars Krasts "a lice-eating hawk" and another time, in a fit of anger, describing Latvia as "a land of fools."
          The tall, lanky Latvian has called for efforts to improve Latvian-Russian relations, which have been strained in recent years over the status of Latvia’s huge Russian-speaking minority.
          Addressing the newly elected deputies earlier on November 3, President Ulmanis said Latvia’s bid to join the European Union should be a top priority.
          "This parliament will take Latvia into the finishing phase of the EU integration," he told legislators. "Bringing Latvian legislation into conformity with EU norms is one of the priorities in the work of the parliament and the government."
          The president has said he would like to see a new government confirmed by Nov. 18, Latvian Independence Day, though many observers said the deadline would not be met.

• Six decades after she and her family left Estonia, American-Estonian Melissa Wells has returned to the land of her birth to serve as U.S. ambassador.
          Wells, the daughter of 1930s Hollywood actress Miliza Korjus, handed her credentials over to Estonian President Lennart Meri on November 3, officially beginning her tenure as the No.1 American envoy to Estonia.
          "To come back to the place where I was born, with Estonia as a free and independent country and after its occupation and its tragic history...it is a dream come true, it’s a miracle," the 64-year-old Wells said in an interview.
          Wells, who has also served as U.S. ambassador to Zaire, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, was only 1 year old when her opera singer mother decided to leave Estonia in 1933 to pursue a career in Western Europe and then in Hollywood.
          Seven years later, at the outbreak of World War II, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Estonia. Mass deportations and arrests followed the communist takeover, and the Korjus family never returned. Estonia regained its independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
          The family eventually settled permanently in the United States, where Meliza Korjus got her big break in Hollywood in 1938, playing a leading role in the critically acclaimed film "The Great Waltz," about the life of composer Johann Strauss.
          Wells traveled to Estonia for the first time in more than sixty years last Friday, insisting on returning the same way she had left: by ship. She said she thought about her parents, now both deceased, as her ferry approached the Estonian capital. She said they would have been amazed at her becoming ambassador to Estonia.
          "I thought of them as the city of Tallinn rose up on the skyline," said Wells. "I thought, 'Mummy and daddy, if you could see me now!'"
          As ambassador to Estonia, Wells says she hopes to help raise Estonia’s profile.
          "I want Estonia to be better known in the United States," she said. "I'd also like to focus on increasing investment between the two countries."

• Latvia and Lithuania expressed deep disappointment at a recommendation by the European Union executive council on November 4 not to put them on the fast track to EU membership.
          The decision by the European Commission (EC) dashed hopes in the two countries that they would soon join Estonia, which is the only Baltic country to have begun talks on full EU membership.
          Six countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Cyprus and Estonia—were invited lasted year to start negotiations with the EU. Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, were named as candidates for future EU membership, but they were told they needed to make further progress on economic and political reforms before joining formal talks.
          Both Latvia and Lithuania have been lobbying hard all year to get the nod from Brussels, and many observers believed they had a good chance of winning EU approval–especially Latvia. In a report accompanying its recommendation this past week, the EC singled out Latvia as having made excellent progress towards meeting EU criteria and suggested that it could be invited to membership talks as soon as 1999.
          Reacting to the news from Brussels, Latvian Minister Valdis Birkavs told a Latvian radio station that there was a discrepancy between the positive assessment of Latvia by the EC and the decision not to recommend it for membership talks.
          The ministers said the EU report suggested that Latvia met the criteria and so should be invited to start talks on EU membership. He expressed concern that internal considerations among EU membership states may have affected the EC deliberations, which he said violated the spirit of the enlargement process.
          "I think this should be explained before the EU ministers summit in Vienna so that the EU member countries do not link their own internal problems to candidates ability to start talks," Birkavs said.
          Said another Latvian official: "We don’t think the EU is telling us we can’t start talks because Latvia isn’t ready. They seem to be telling us that yes Latvia, you are ready, but we are not."
          Some Latvians complained that they had jumped through all the hoops set up by the EU, still only to face rejection. Latvia has consistently implemented radical free-market reforms, and this year also eased citizenship requirements for its Russian-speaking minority. The EU had said softening naturalization rules was important for Latvia’s EU bid.
          Recent Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves also expressed disappointment that Latvia was not given the green light by the EU. He said Latvia was at least as prepared for EU membership as Estonia was when it was invited to start talks in 1997.
          "It is sad that political criteria seem to be more important than objective criteria," Ilves told KUKU Radio on Sunday.
          Other Baltic observers said Latvia had been unlucky to come up for consideration at a time when enthusiasm for EU expansion, especially among German leaders, was on the wane.
          While expressing disappointment, few Latvian and Lithuanian leaders lashed out at Brussels as many did last year when only Estonia received a coveted invitation to the elite European club.
          "We got some very positive signals from the EU and we are trying to look on the positive side," said one Latvian diplomat. "We prefer to look at the situation as the glass being half full, rather than it being half empty."
          The EC recommendation not to immediately open membership talks with any new candidate countries is not binding. But EU ministers, who will make a final decision in December, are expected to follow the recommendation.

• Estonian President Lennart Meri on November 4 cautioned that the whole drive to expand NATO appeared to be losing momentum and he called on members of the alliance to reinvigorate the process.
          "Sadly enough, I do not find the rhetoric of enlargement in the political speeches of decision-makers anymore," Meri told a NATO gathering in Brussels. "Other problems have overshadowed this truly important issue."
          Last year, the 16-nation military alliance invited three new members into NATO--Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The Baltic states, plus Romania and Slovenia, are among the countries hoping for invitations in a second wave of expansion.
          But Estonia’s president suggested that there was little constructive discussion about sending out new invitations.
  "People are not actively discussing the logic of the second wave, its reasons and its implications," he said. "Enthusiasm for enlargement has faded to the background, and this is most unfortunate."
          Meri said he understood that the NATO expansion question was now more complex, but he said the alliance needed to stick to pledges to bring in new members. He also called on NATO to provide specific criteria for countries striving to join the alliance, saying requirements were still too vague.
          Meri’s comments reflect long-standing nervousness here that NATO may not be entirely sincere about its open-door policy. Russia has bitterly opposed Baltic NATO membership, and observers say most Western nations are afraid of angering Moscow and so will be hesitant about sending out NATO invitations to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
          Denmark, however, has taken up the Baltic cause, coming out this past week with strong statements of support for Baltic membership in the alliance.
          Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen minced few words in a meeting this week with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, telling her that his country wants the three Baltic countries in NATO, and the sooner the better.
          "The second round of invitations to join the NATO alliance should include our neighbors in the Baltic states," Petersen told Albright as their meeting in Washington D.C. got underway.
          Another NATO member, Norway, has also emerged as a strong advocate of Baltic membership. During a visit to Norway by Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Vagnorius this week, Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik said his country believed Baltic membership would contribute to security in northern Europe.
          "For Norway, based as we are up in the high north, it is important for us to have a northern dimension in the NATO enlargement process," Norway’s prime minister told a news conference in Oslo. "We are working inside NATO in favor of Lithuania’s and the other Baltic states’ aspirations for membership."
          At the same news conference, Lithuanian Prime Minister Vagnorius said he hoped NATO would take a step further in its established policy on expansion.
          "What we hope for is that the (NATO) door will be even more open," he said.
          He also countered assertions by skeptics that the Baltics didn’t stand a chance of ever getting into NATO.
          "I think that in 1990 not very many of us really did believe that the independence of the Baltic states would be recognized," he said. "Therefore, we have grounds to believe that our membership in NATO is not going to be a more difficult and complicated case than the recognition of our independence."

• Alleged Nazi Aleksandras Lileikis, 91, was forced to face a court of justice on November 5, showing up at his hearing in Vilnius in a wheelchair. But within minutes of protesting his innocence and reciting the Lord’s Prayer, he was rushed away in an ambulance.
          "I was working for my nation and my country for all my life…and now I am old and week," Lileikis said, speaking from his wheelchair. "But I can still say I did nothing wrong in my lifetime."
          But minutes after beginning his statement, his hands began trembling, he started reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and asked for more air. His daughter rushed to his side, crying and handing pills to her father.
          The judge called for a recess and asked doctors to examine Lileikis. He was then taken to an adjoining room and then rushed away in an ambulance.
          A statement from a court-appointed medical panel said that Lileikis’s condition was serious and that he may have suffered a heart attack. The statement said the over-excitement of the trial and attention from some 60 journalists and photographers may have triggered the attack. The judge later ruled that the court proceedings would be postponed until November 9.
          In October, the panel concluded that Lileikis was fit to stand trial, but warned that the stress of a trial could endanger his life. The trial was scheduled to start in September, but was delayed pending the medical commission’s finding.
          In October, a judge subpoenaed Lileikis to show in court, though his lawyers strongly protested the decision. His defense team said their client suffered from 20 different ailments, including arterial sclerosis.
          Jewish groups have criticized Lithuanian justice officials, saying they have been too slow to bring Lileikis to trial. Most Lithuanians say they have no sympathy for Lileikis, but at the same time have complained about what they see as a double standard; that alleged Nazis are actively sought while Stalinist-era criminals are not pursued with the same vigor.
          Lileikis headed the security police in Vilnius during the 1941-44 German occupation, and is accused of handing scores of Jews over to Nazi execution squads. Over 90 percent of Lithuania's 240,000 Jews were killed during Nazi rule.
          Lileikis emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, where he worked in the Boston area in a publishing house. In 1996, he fled to Lithuania as a U.S. court was moving to have him deported.

 

News Highlights from October 26—November 2, 1998

• In marketing itself to the world, Estonia should sell itself as a Nordic country and avoid the 'Baltic' label, recent Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Hendrik Ilves said on October 27 at a special forum organized by CITY PAPER and the American Chamber of Commerce in Estonia (ACCE).
          "When it comes to economics and how integrated Estonia is with the Finnish and Swedish economies, it shows this country is much more like a post-Communist Nordic country than a Baltic country," Ilves said at the forum, entitled Marketing Estonia: Making Estonia's Image Mean Business.
          "I don't see any advantage in the so called Baltic states. I don't think Estonia is a Baltic state. I think the idea of a Baltic state is a construction made up elsewhere...as foreign minister, my goal was to separate Estonia from being a Baltic state."
          Ilves , foreign minister until earlier this month when he resigned to focus on campaigning for parliamentary elections in March, said Estonia's image was too often tarnished by the mistakes of Latvia or Lithuania.
          "I've seen Estonia suffer through the years because of misguided polices in other Baltic countries," he told 150 participants at the Tallinn conference. "My line has been all along that Estonia pursued its reforms and that if they were not pursued elsewhere, then why should Estonia suffer as a result...each country should take responsibility for its own actions."
          Ilves said the perception in the West that the Baltic countries were a single unit had been useful in regard to NATO because the U.S.-led alliance saw geopolitical advantages in treating the Baltics as one.
          "But I have yet to see one positive advantage of being treated as a Baltic state once you go beyond the NATO issue," he said.
          Ilves, Estonia's foreign minister until earlier this month, added that he also did not see the Baltic states as a viable single market.
          "I mean look at all the cars bought in Estonia," he said. "But there are three times fewer purchases of cars in Lithuania, which has three times the population of Estonia."
          The comments, widely reported in the Estonian media, provoked sharp criticism from several leading politicians. Eino Tamm, chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, told KUKU radio that Baltic cooperation had played an important role in Estonia's development since 1991. He said the continued progress of all three Baltic nations would also require that they work together closely.
          Other panelists at the CITY PAPER/ACCE forum also strongly disagreed with Ilves, saying Estonia would be foolish to play down Baltic unity and to write off the potential of a pan-Baltic market.
          Allan Martinson, of MicroLink computers and BNS news, said the concept of Baltic unity and of a workable Baltic market was critical to Estonian businessmen.
          "The Baltic states is a market of 8 million people, and these are all people who eat, drink, drive cars, use computers and read news...salary levels, too, are roughly the same in all three Baltics," said Martinson. "The Baltics is very much of a market, and a very important one...foreign investors also want to treat the Baltics as a single market."
          Scott Diel, a regional director of Saatchi & Saatchi advertising, argued that while there may be reasons to separate the Baltics in marketing to foreign investors, marketing to foreign tourists was another matter.
          "If the object is to get as many people on buses and fill as many hotels in the region, I can certainly see the benefits of selling the Baltics as a package," he said.
          In trying to attract tourists, Diel also suggested that Estonia not shy away from marketing itself as a former subject of the Soviet Union, saying this was one aspects that intrigued outsiders and made them want to come to the region.
  (A full transcript of the CITY PAPER/ACCE forum is now available.)

• Lithuania's foreign minister has warned that the country's reliance on a Soviet-built nuclear power station could spoil Lithuania's chances of early European Union membership.
          Algirdas Saudargas told a television audience on October 27 that Lithuania's economy was strong but that the continued operation of the Ignalina atomic power plant could be the reason the EU decides against extending Lithuania an invitation to start negotiations on membership.
          At a summit in December, EU ministers will consider whether to invite additional emerging-market countries to begin membership talks. Lithuania and Latvia are thought to have a very good chance of getting the nod from the EU.
          Last year, the EU sent out its first invitations to five countries--the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus.
          The European Union has not officially made the shutdown of Lithuania's nuclear power station a prerequisite for Lithuanian membership, but behind the scenes has pushed hard for a Lithuanian commitment to eventually close the plant.
          Even with safety upgrades in recent years, many environmentalists say Ignalina, located some 130 kilometers northeast of Vilnius, remains a potential danger to the region.
          Lithuanian President Valdas Admakus said earlier this year that he would like to see one of the plant's two RBMK reactors shut down within 10 years and the other within 20 years.
          The Lithuanian government, however, has not committed itself to closing Ignalina and has repeatedly called for further studies. Ignalina supplies over 80 percent of Lithuania's energy needs, and many government officials have said costs of closing the plant and developing new energy sources are prohibitive. Western experts have suggested that total costs could amount to more than 4 billion dollars.
          On October 28, six major environmental groups urged the European Union to tie aid to ex-communist states, including Lithuania, to the closure of their nuclear plants.
          "EU accession offers a unique chance to close reactors which threaten citizens across Europe," said Linas Vainius of Friends of the Earth Lithuania, one of the groups that made the appeal in a special report. "Unless this opportunity is seized and a clear closure strategy adopted, the consequences could be catastrophic. If left to their own devices, the governments of the region will likely do nothing to close these reactors. On the contrary, they will operate them to their limit and beyond, regardless of the risks."

• A four-nation mine sweeping operation, one of the largest of its kind in the region since the Soviet collapse, got underway off the Estonian coast on October 26.
          A flotilla of nine ships from Estonia, Sweden, Holland and Great Britain is focusing its search for World War II sea mines in bays and inlets near Tallinn.
          During World War II, some 85,000 sea mines were laid in waters near Estonia and the other two Baltics. Most were laid by Nazi Germany, and the rest by the Soviet Union, Great Britain and Sweden.
          While virtually all sea mines elsewhere in Europe were cleared after the war, mine-clearing operations in Soviet waters were not as thorough. An estimated 30,000 mines still remain off the Baltic coast. The mines, however, are not thought to pose a major threat to anyone. Many of the 50-year-old explosives have become duds and all the main Baltic shipping lanes were cleared years ago. The mine sweeping exercises are seen largely as a precaution.

• Latvian legislators have adopted an education law that will eventually make Latvian the sole language of instruction at public schools, including those attended predominately by Russian-speakers.
          The law, adopted in a third and final reading on October 28 by a 64 to 4 vote, has been criticized by many Russian-speakers, who make up around 40 percent of Latvia's 2.5 million population.
          The language requirement will be phased in over the next decade, with the first categories of Russian students switching over to Latvian instruction in 2004. The use of Russian in private schools and in some special education institutions will be permitted under the law.
          Legislators say their goal is to see virtually all public schools eventually shift to Latvian. Supporters of the bill say it will boost the status of Latvian, which they say suffered under 50 years of Soviet rule. They argue the law will also encourage the process of integrating Latvia's Russians, the majority of whom still speak little or no Latvian.
          But many local Russians have said the education law imposes the use of Latvian on Russian-speakers against their will. They have also complained that making Latvian the main language of instruction in schools will make it difficult for Russians to maintain their cultural identity.