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News highlights from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

News Highlights from November 22—November 29, 1999

• Latvian police on November 24 arrested a retired security official for participating in Soviet repressions in the 1940s, part a long-running drive here to bring Stalinist-era agents to trial.
         Vassily Kirsanov, 85, was charged with genocide. He is the fourth person indicted on similar charges since October, and the ninth since Latvia regained independence in 1991.
         Kirsanov, who began working for the Soviet secret police a year after Latvia's 1940 occupation by Stalin's Soviet Union, is accused of taking part in the arrest of 32 people and the deportation of many others.
         One of his alleged victims was a high-school boy, arrested and later executed for participating in Latvia's boy scouts.
         The other two Baltic states have also aggressively sought prosecutions of those they say are responsible for Stalinist crimes. Across the region, there have been around 10 convictions.
         There have been two convictions in Latvia: Alfons Noviks, who died in 1996 while serving a life term, and Mikhail Farbtuh, who was recently handed a seven-year sentence—but is free pending appeal.
         The Baltic states say the prosecutions are primarily meant to shed light on the dark Stalinist past. But Moscow has accused them of exacting revenge on ailing, elderly men, many of whom hold Russian passports.

• Estonia has dramatically stepped up enforcement of copyright laws to reduce rampant piracy of computer software, according to an alliance of software companies.
         Earlier this year, software companies said 90 percent of software used in Estonia was illegally bought or copied, warning that a lack of police action threatened to undermine the nation's bid to join the European Union.
         But over the past month, 20 firms suspected of using pirated software have been raided by police. Earlier, enforcement of piracy laws was scant and focused almost exclusively on producers, not users, of illegal software.
         "There have been more raids in the last month than in the previous two years combined. This is a serious operation," said Anneli Heinsoo, chairman of Estonia's Business Software Alliance, which pressed for the police intervention.
         She said the campaign was the first of its kind in any of the former Soviet subject states.
         The highly publicized raids, and threatened fines of more than 15,000 dollars have prompted a virtually stampede on local software stores.
         "Our sales of software have jumped four or five times," said Pilkku Aasma of Baltic Computer Systems, one of Estonia's largest computers companies. "Our phones are ringing off the hooks. We're extremely busy."
         Aasma said companies were spending around 3000 dollars to buy legal software at Baltic Computer Systems stores. Before, they would have spent a fraction of that buying illegal copies of the same software.
         Because companies are now rushing to buy software legally, Heinsoo said the rate of pirated software may have already dropped by 10 percent—a dramatic reduction for a one-month period, she said.
         "We've found that you can talk and talk about how piracy is wrong, but people won't move unless you take action. Now they're moving," she said.
         The average rate of software piracy in the EU is around 45 percent; China has one of the world's highest rates of pirated software—of around 97 percent, according to the Business Software Alliance.

• Parliament in Lithuania has passed a law calling on former KGB agents and informers to confess their collaboration with the one-feared Soviet secret police.
         The law, adopted on November 23, asks Lithuanians who cooperated with the KGB during fifty years of Soviet rule to register with a special committee; their names would be kept in a confidential database.
         If suspected collaborators don't come forward voluntarily, and evidence later points to their KGB connections, their names would be made public and they could be banned from certain jobs.
         The legislation was scheduled to come into effect on Jan. 1, 2000. KGB collaborators would have six months to register with authorities.
         Supporters say the law will help Lithuania come to terms with its communist past and also offer legal protection to one-time collaborators, including from blackmail. Critics say the law is unnecessary and vindictive.
         Lithuania has limited access to KGB archives and some question whether officials will be able to prove someone's KGB links—possibly leading to false accusations.
         Since it broke with Moscow in 1991, Lithuania has adopted a number restrictions on ex-KGB. Courts have also prosecuted Stalinist-era agents who took part in mass deportations in the 1940s.
         Earlier this year, Lithuania began enforcing a 1998 law banning former KGB staff from working in government, key state-owned enterprises and some private companies. The job-ban does not apply to KGB informers.
         Officials say the job restrictions are needed because ex-KGB staff can't be trusted and could even try to sabotage strategically important companies.

 

News Highlights from November 15—November 22, 1999

• Lithuania has begun enforcing a controversial law banning former KGB agents from working in government, key state-owned enterprises and some private companies.
         Some 90 individuals were recently identified as falling under terms of the ban and their employers were told to sack them; eleven of the ex-agents have already been fired.
         The KGB ban was adopted in 1998, with some critics complaining it was unduly harsh and infringed on rights of private employers. But a constitutional court okayed the law.
         The ban prohibits former workers of the once-might Soviet secret police from working in most government jobs and in many state-owned sectors, including ports, railways and the country's giant Ignalina nuclear power plant.
         Positions in some private companies, like banks and security firms, are also prevented from employing former KGB staff.
         Officials justified the ban by saying the former Kremlin agents can't be trusted and could even attempt to sabotage strategically important companies. The law does not apply to one-time KGB informers.
         It's estimated that as many as 4,000 ex-KGB staff in Lithuania could be subject to the legal restrictions. Around 300 one-time agents are now under investigation and could also soon be handed pink slips.

• Estonian President Lennart Meri refused to attend a key summit this week in protest over European inaction on several key issues, especially Russia's Chechen invasion.
         Meri had been scheduled to join leaders from around Europe, plus U.S. President Bill Clinton, at the November 18 meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Istanbul, Turkey.
         "I'm very disappointed that a number of states who should have been active in support of human rights at the summit have been more than passive," Meri said in a telephone interview on November 15.
         Meri said he was displeased by what he described as the festive tone set for the meeting in Istanbul, saying more serious attention should be given to Chechnya, anti-semitism in Europe and free-press issues.
         "I find that the OSCE will be celebrating when it should be acting," he said.
         Estonia, along with Latvia and Lithuania, have been particularly outspoken in their criticism of Moscow's use of force in Chechnya.
         A few Baltic parliamentarians have even urged recognition of Chechen independence, though Baltic leaders, including the Estonian president, have been quick to distance themselves from those calls.
         But Meri criticized those in Europe who seemed ready to accept Russian claims that the conflict in Russia was strictly an internal affair.
         "This is an internal problem of Europe," Meri said. "And Europe should treat it as one if it wants to be treated seriously as an entity."
         The Estonian president said Europe should offer economic aid to Russia only after it first showed good will.
         "But what Chechnya seems to show there are politicians (in Russia) who speak about democracy, openness and free market, but who have a deep distrust for democratic and free-market principles," he said.

 

News highlights from November 8—November 15, 1999

• A court in Riga convicted 10 former Soviet officers on November 9 for trying to overthrow the government in 1991, when Latvia was still struggling to restore its independence from the Soviet Union.
         The soldiers, from a special-forces unit called the OMON, were charged with taking part in an attack on a government building in January 20, 1991. Four people, including a high-school student and a journalist, were killed.
         The court gave suspended sentences—from one to four years—to seven of the men, and decided not to impose any sanction on the other three.
         The officers had all pleaded innocent in court, arguing they fired their weapons during a night-time shoot-out around the government building only in self-defense.
         Five other former OMON officers accused of involvement in the incident are presumed to be in hiding in Russia and are being tried by the Latvian court in absentia.
         The 1991 attack was part of a general crackdown on the independence-minded Baltics. A week earlier, 14 Lithuanians were killed when Soviet troops stormed a TV tower in Vilnius.
         The violence in Riga and Vilnius helped galvanize Baltic freedom movements, which had become bogged down in talks with the Kremlin. The bloodshed also helped win sympathy abroad for the Baltic cause.

• The Baltic states have begun carrying out plans to construct a joint radar system covering all three countries, saying its completion will be a major step towards NATO membership.
         The 100-milion-dollar network will be used both by Baltic armies and commercial air traffic controllers, who now rely on aging, Soviet-built installations. Baltic armies currently have no general military radars.
         The construction of the entire pan-Baltic system is expected to take five years.
         Entering NATO has been a top policy goal since Baltic independence in 1991. Despite Russian objections, NATO says the door to the Baltic countries is open—but that they are not yet ready militarily to join.
         NATO has cited the lack of an air defense network as one example of Baltic ill-preparedness. Officials in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania say the new radar system, dubbed BaltNet, will go a long way towards filling that gap.
         The Baltic-coast nations are buying the radar hardware, but the United States and Norway have agreed to train soldiers how to use the equipment. NATO has also backed the project.
         Once the radar network is completed, Baltic air-defense forces would cooperate closely with NATO. But officials denied Russia had reason to perceive the facility as directed against it.
         Russia in the past has expressed alarm about NATO ever using Baltic-based military facilities. But it has neither expressed opposition nor support for the BaltNet project in public, according to Baltic military officials.
         The Baltics, hugging Russia's western flank, were key military outposts for the Soviet Union, which stationed tens of thousands of troops here and established hundreds of bases, including air-defense radars.
         Virtually all Russian troops withdrew from the Baltics in 1994. The last Russian military object, the giant Skrunda radar station in western, Latvia, was turned over to Latvian authorities last month.

• Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar said on November 9 that the West should seek closer ties with Russia's regions as the best way to foster political and economic change in Russia.
         The Estonian leader said dealing almost exclusively with Moscow ignored regions that were more enthusiastic about reforms than the Kremlin.
         Western governments tend to orient policies towards sitting-Kremlin leaders, which was a mistake, Laar said in an interview at his Tallinn office.
         "Forget only Moscow, forget the good Czar," he said. "Russia's not Moscow. The West needs to realize this. It needs to create contacts with the regions, to help them develop."
         Estonia is trying to develop direct ties with Russian regions, but Laar said those efforts are hampered by laws drawn up in Moscow that restrict the regions' decision-making power.
         Capital-to-capital relations have generally been cool since the Soviet collapse.
         Laar said Estonia's relations with nearby regions of western Russia, major importers of Estonian diary products, were based on clear, mutual economic interests.
         "Relations with the regions are a lot better than our relations with the central power in Russia," Laar said. "We understand each other much better."
         Laar denied that any reorientation of Western policy towards the regions would lead to the breakup of Russia, a federation of 21 autonomous republics and 49 oblasts.
         "The idea wouldn't be to split up Russia," he said. "Russia has very big problems, often related to the regions. So every step that helps the regions helps Russia as a whole."

 

News Highlights from November 1—November 8, 1999

• Baltic stock market officials said this week they hope to link their exchanges up with the Nordic Stock Exchange (NOREX) as soon as 2001 in a bid to breathe life back into their ailing bourses.
         The officials said in a joint statement that they intend to sign a letter of intent to join the NOREX stock market alliance—which currently includes the Stockholm and Copenhagen bourses—by year's end. NOREX has already extended an invitation to the Baltics to join.
         Officials here say tying up with NOREX would hook the Baltic bourses into a worldwide network of brokerages, raise awareness of Baltic stocks and make it easier for foreign investors to buy Baltic shares.
         "It'll make our markets more liquid. That could boost prices," according to Eva Palu, spokesperson for the Tallinn Stock Exchange—who said NOREX effectively operates as a single, unified exchange.
         The strongly pro-market Baltic states set up stock markets within several years of regaining independence in 1991.
         Prices started to skyrocket in 1996. But world financial turmoil triggered panic selling in 1997, with prices tumbling by more than 50 percent. Spooked, many investors have stayed away ever since.
         In August, 1997, the main index on the Tallinn Stock Exchange (the TALSE) peaked at around 500; today, it's stuck at around 100. Daily exchange turnovers have fallen from dlrs 10 million to just 1 million.
         Turnovers on the other two Baltic stock markets, the Riga Stock Exchange and the Lithuanian National Stock Exchange, are even lower.
         Many Baltic analysts say moves to join larger, more dynamic Western exchanges are crucial for the local stock markets, which they say threaten to peter out and die without renewed interest from major foreign investors.
         "This is the only possibility for our stock market to survive, period," leading stock market analyst Tõnu Laks was quoted as telling Estonia's Äripaev business daily.
         Baltic stock market officials say the main obstacle to joining NOREX - and also to the goal of easier inter-Baltic trading -- is slow legislative action, including delays in adopting updated securities laws.
         "We're very unhappy with our regulators and legislators," said Eva Palu of the Tallinn Stock Exchange. "Things really need to be speeded up."
         Baltic bourses considered unifying with the London or Frankfurt stock markets, but concluded the Nordic link was the most logical.
         The Nordic countries are the main trading partners for the Baltic states, and Nordic investors hold majority stakes in many key Baltic corporations, including the largest Baltic banks.

• Lithuania's parliament on November 3 confirmed Andrius Kubilius to head a new government, ending weeks of political uncertainty.
         The 42-year-old Conservative leader and recent deputy parliament speaker replaces fellow party member Rolandas Paksas. Paksas resigned the week before after refusing to sign a major oil deal strongly backed by his own party.
         The 138-seat Seimas parliament voted 82 to 20 to approve Kubilius; 18 legislators abstained. The Conservatives were joined in supporting Kubilius by their coalition partners, the Christian Democrats.
         Before the vote, Kubilius told deputies he'd concentrate on putting Lithuania's financial house in order, including balancing the budget. And he said he would continue the open market, pro-West policies of his predecessor.
         Many ministers from the previous government are expected to rejoin the new one. Prime Minister Kubilius has two weeks to form his Cabinet. It will be Lithuania's third government in six months - all headed by Conservatives.
         Kubilius, a leader of the independence drive in the early 1990s, is a one-time staunch nationalist whose views have softened in recent years. He is a close ally of parliament speaker and former President Vytautas Landsbergis.
         The new prime minister is seen as a capable administrator, hard-working and honest. But he is thought to lack charisma and has so far demonstrated little voter appeal, regularly appearing at the bottom of opinion surveys rating Lithuania's best known politicians.
         He's also been an unapologetic advocate of the controversial oil deal, which was signed by a caretaker administration just days after Paksas resigned.
         The deal with the U.S.-based Williams International gives the Americans an initial 33 percent of the state-owned Mazeikiai Oil for dlrs 150 million.
         But the government also has to pay dlrs 350 million to cover a capital deficit in the concern. Then-Prime Minister Paksas said that would worsen the nation's budget deficit and cripple the economy.
         Prime Minister Kubilius is expected to lead the Conservatives into national elections, slated for late 2000. He faces an uphill battle, with his party's popularity sinking following its public support for the Williams-Mazeikiai deal.
         Backers say Williams will revitalize the oil giant and lessen economic dependence on Russia. But 80 percent of Lithuanians oppose the deal, polls say. Some nationalists argue key industries should remain in Lithuanian hands.
         The oil deal could emerge as a major issue prior to the national election. Some observers have said the Conservatives have already calculated they will lose the election.

• The first jail term ever handed down in a Stalinist-crimes trial in Estonia has been commuted by an appeals court, which ruled the one-time Soviet police agent was too ill to go to prison.
         A lower court earlier this year gave Mikhail Neverovsky, 79, a four-year prison term for taking part in Soviet deportations in 1949. Prosecutors said he helped deport some 300 Estonians, including women and children.
         But in its November 1 ruling, the court of appeals commuted the sentence to four years probation, saying Neverovsky had advanced liver cancer that confined him to bed.
         The court, however, refused Neverovsky's request to quash the conviction itself. Among his arguments, made in a written appeal to judges, was that forcible exile was not illegal in the Soviet Union in the 1940s.
         Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were occupied and annexed by Soviet forces at the start of World War II.
         Neverovky's July conviction was part of an ongoing drive in all three Baltic states to bring agents of Stalinist repression to justice. Hundreds of cases have been opened, and there have been a dozen convictions.
         Most convicted agents have received suspended sentences. Only one, ex-KGB boss Alfons Noviks, has actually served time. A Latvian court gave him a life sentence in 1995, and he died in prison a year later.
         Estonian prosecutors said they were disappointed judges overturned Neverovsky's jail sentence, saying he enthusiastically participated in the deportations and deserved to go to prison.
         "Neverovky needs real punishment," prosecutor Anne Kasesalu told the Postimees newspaper. "He was aware of what he was doing."
         But a spokesman for police investigators said he wasn't bothered by the appeals court decision, arguing that proceedings against Stalinist agents were always primarily meant to help Estonia come to terms with its past.
         "In this sense, it's the process itself that's most important," said Hannes Kont, press chief for the Security Police. "The main idea is convictions, not punishment."

• Latvia on November 4 denied accusations its embassy in Moscow has been engaged in illegal financial activities, including secretly funneling money out of Russia.
         "There are no banks, banking operations or money transactions at the embassy. Any financial transactions would be impossible," Liga Bergmane, a spokesperson for Latvia's foreign ministry said.
         Earlier in the week, Latvian Ambassador Imants Daudiss was summoned to the foreign ministry in Moscow and told about "established facts of illegal activity" at his embassy, according to a Russian foreign ministry statement.
         Russian tax police also seized what they described as large sums of money from people leaving the Latvian embassy last week, a report in the Moscow Times newspaper said.
         Latvian spokesperson Bergmane said a banking association rented space in the embassy, but that it carried out market studies and did not engage in financial transactions.
         While denying suggestions the embassy may have been involved in illegal activity, she said an inspector general from Latvia's foreign ministry would go to Moscow to investigate the allegations.
         Latvian media have speculated that Russia has concocted the allegations—possibly in a bid to undermine Latvia's image as it strives for European Union and NATO membership.