RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 3, No. 182, 99-09-17

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RFE/RL NEWSLINE

Vol. 3, No. 182, 17 September 1999

CONTENTS

[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA

[01] OSCE CHAIRMAN-IN-OFFICE VISITS YEREVAN

[02] ARMENIA, IMF REACH AGREEMENT

[03] PACE PRESIDENT IN GEORGIA

[04] JOURNALISTS CALL FOR MORE KAZAKH-LANGUAGE BROADCASTING

[05] ANOTHER CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES DISCOVERED IN KAZAKHSTAN

[06] KYRGYZ PRESIDENTIAL AIDES DENY GERMAN MEDIA REPORT

[07] KYRGYZ OPPOSITION POLITICIAN DELIVERS HUMANITARIAN AID TO

[08] IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER ENDS VISIT TO TAJIKISTAN

[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE

[09] RUSSIAN GENERAL URGES ETHNIC ALBANIANS TO TRUST HIS SOLDIERS

[10] UNMIK PREPARES VOTER REGISTRATION

[11] OSCE, UN LAUNCH 'RADIO AND TELEVISION KOSOVA'...

[12] ...DISAPPOINTING SACKED 'RADIO AND TELEVISION PRISHTINA'

[13] U.S. GENERAL SAYS UCK LEADERSHIP 'COMMITTED' TO DISARM

[14] BELGRADE CALLS UCK DISARMAMENT 'FARCE'

[15] FBI BACKS STORIES OF MASSACRES

[16] GLIGOROV SAYS WEST MISREAD SERBS, MISLED MACEDONIA

[17] ANTI-MILOSEVIC COALITION CALLS FOR 'PEACEFUL REVOLUTION'

[18] PENSIONERS WANT MILOSEVIC TO GO

[19] WILL HIS FRIENDS OUST HIM?

[20] MONTENEGRO: MILOSEVIC MOBILIZING POLICE

[21] ALBANIA'S MAJKO SLAMS POLITICIANS FOR LINKS TO CRIMINALS...

[22] ...AND CHALLENGES NANO

[23] HUNGARY SIDES WITH BULGARIA IN DISPUTE WITH ROMANIA

[24] CLUJ EXTREME NATIONALIST MAYOR DOES IT AGAIN

[25] ROMANIA, RUSSIA, DIFFER ON EVALUATING EXPERT MEETING

[26] COMPROMISE IN OFFING ON MOLDOVAN PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM?

[27] BULGARIAN LOCAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED

[C] END NOTE

[28] AMBIGUOUS ANNIVERSARY

[A] TRANSCAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA

[01] OSCE CHAIRMAN-IN-OFFICE VISITS YEREVAN

tour of the South Caucasus originally scheduled for April

(see "RFE/RL Newsline," 8 April 1999), Knut Vollebaek held

talks in Yerevan on 16 September with President Robert

Kocharian, Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, parliament

deputy chairman Ruben Mirzoyan, and Arkadii Ghukasian,

president of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic,

Noyan Tapan reported. At a press conference after those

meetings, Vollebaek expressed approval of the recent direct

talks between Kocharian and his Azerbaijani counterpart,

Heidar Aliev, saying that the Minsk Group and the OSCE are

ready to rejoin the negotiating process, in which, he added,

representatives of Karabakh should also be included. He

suggested that there is no need for a new draft peace plan

for Karabakh, given that previous Minsk Group initiatives are

still on the table. Vollebaek also greeted Oskanian's

announcement that Armenia is releasing three Azerbaijani

prisoners of war as a gesture of good will. LF

[02] ARMENIA, IMF REACH AGREEMENT

Barkhudarian said on 16 September that the Armenian

government and the IMF have reached agreement on the terms of

the release of a vital new $28 million loan tranche, which

will almost certainly be made available by the end of 1999,

RFE/RL's Yerevan bureau reported. That agreement also paves

the way for disbursement of a $25 million World Bank loan to

cover Armenia's budget deficit. Originally expected in June,

the IMF and World Bank loan tranches were frozen due to a

higher-than-projected budget deficit. The Armenian parliament

last month approved the government's package of austerity

measures aimed at reducing that deficit (see "RFE/RL

Newsline," 30 August 1999). The freezing of the funds has led

to widespread wage arrears in the public sector. Barkhudarian

said the government will pay all back salaries and pensions

by mid-October provided that the World Bank makes the money

available. LF

[03] PACE PRESIDENT IN GEORGIA

parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, held talks

in Tbilisi on 14 September with Georgian Minister of State

Vazha Lortkipanidze and President Eduard Shevardnadze,

Caucasus Press reported. Those talks focused on the prospects

for the admission of Armenia and Azerbaijan to full

membership of the Council of Europe, the possibility of

Georgian mediation in the Karabakh conflict, and the

situation in the North Caucasus. Shevardnadze argued that

Armenia and Azerbaijan should be admitted simultaneously to

full membership of the Council of Europe. Shevardnadze

emphasized the importance of the planned meeting under the

aegis of the U.S. of the prime ministers of the three South

Caucasus states, adding that Russia, Turkey and the OSCE may

also be invited to send representatives, "Nezavisimaya

gazeta" reported on 17 September. The meeting is to focus on

the security problems in the South Caucasus. LF

[04] JOURNALISTS CALL FOR MORE KAZAKH-LANGUAGE BROADCASTING

of Journalists of Kazakhstan chairman Kamal Smailov told a

press conference in Almaty on 15 September that of the 150

hours of programming broadcast weekly by the electronic

media, only 10 percent is in Kazakh, RFE/RL's bureau in the

former capital reported. The Law on the State Languages

requires that a minimum of 50 percent of all broadcasts

should be in the Kazakh language. LF

[05] ANOTHER CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES DISCOVERED IN KAZAKHSTAN

ammonal, together with 190 electric detonators, in a

warehouse in a town near Almaty, Interfax reported on 16

September. In late August, police found grenades, detonators

and two explosive devices in an abandoned garage in Astana

(see RFE/RL Newsline," 31 August 1999). LF

[06] KYRGYZ PRESIDENTIAL AIDES DENY GERMAN MEDIA REPORT

to Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akaev on 16 September said a

report in the Berlin daily "Der Tagesspiegel" that Akaev may

return to academic work rather than contend next year's

presidential poll is incorrect and based on a

misunderstanding, Reuters and RFE/RL's Bishkek bureau

reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 16 September 1999).

Presidential press spokesman Kanybek Imanaliev explained that

in referring to "elections of a new president" in 2000, Akaev

had not excluded the possibility that he would run himself.

Presidential aide Gulnara Myrzhambetova said that the

Constitutional Court ruled in 1998 that Akaev had been

elected president of Kyrgyzstan only once (in December 1995)

since the adoption of the present constitution in May 1993,

and may therefore seek re-election for a second term. Akaev

was first elected president in October 1991. The 1993

constitution bans one individual from serving three

consecutive terms. LF

[07] KYRGYZ OPPOSITION POLITICIAN DELIVERS HUMANITARIAN AID TO

Former Bishkek mayor Feliks Kulov, the

most authoritative potential challenger to Akaev in next

year's presidential poll, on 16 September delivered food,

clothing, and medication worth some $5,000 to villagers who

fled their homes in Batken Raion to escape from the Uzbek

guerrillas who entered the region in August and took

hostages, RFE/RL's Bishkek bureau reported. Kulov publicly

blamed the National Security Ministry, which he headed from

1996 to March 1998, for the hostage crisis. LF

[08] IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER ENDS VISIT TO TAJIKISTAN

Dushanbe on 13-15 September, Kamal Kharrazi met with his

Tajik counterpart, Talbak Nazarov, President Imomali

Rakhmonov, and Prime Minister Yahyo Azimov to discuss

expanding bilateral relations, in particular economic

cooperation, and the civil war in Afghanistan, which they

agreed should be resolved through further meetings of the so-

called "Six Plus Two" group under the aegis of the UN, Asia

Plus-Blitz reported. Kharrazi also discussed the situation in

Afghanistan with that country's ousted president, Burhanuddin

Rabbani, who likewise called for a new meeting as soon as

possible of the "Six Plus Two" group," Nezavisimaya gazeta"

reported on 17 September. Kharrazi and United Tajik

Opposition (UTO) leader Said Abdullo Nuri discussed the

possible participation of both Iran and Tajikistan in

securing the release of the four Japanese geologists held

hostage in Kyrgyzstan by ethnic Uzbek guerrillas, according

to ITAR-TASS. Nuri said the UTO has already sent

representatives at Kyrgyzstan's request to try to mediate

with the guerrillas. LF

[B] SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE

[09] RUSSIAN GENERAL URGES ETHNIC ALBANIANS TO TRUST HIS SOLDIERS

Prishtina on 16 September: "We will not use force, but we

will continue our talks to find a solution that allows

Russian troops to deploy in [Rahovec]. We believe that we

will find a positive result," an RFE/RL South Slavic Service

correspondent reported. Ethnic Albanians have been blocking

the roads to that town since late August to prevent the

deployment of the Russian KFOR contingent there, arguing that

Russian mercenaries committed atrocities in that region

during the war. Yevtukovich stressed that the Russian forces

must go to Rahovec as part of the [18 June] Helsinki

agreements and reassured the Kosovar Albanians that the

Russian forces are neutral. He stressed that "the Russian

Federation [is] not responsible for the things that

[mercenaries had done, and those things] must not be linked

to the Russian peacekeeping mission." FS

[10] UNMIK PREPARES VOTER REGISTRATION

Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) announced in Prishtina on 16

September that on 1 October they will begin to register

voters for the upcoming elections, for which no date has been

set. The registration process will last for six months,

RFE/RL's South Slavic Service reported. Meanwhile, several

key political parties of Kosova have decided to form a joint

body which will assist with organizing the upcoming

elections. FS

[11] OSCE, UN LAUNCH 'RADIO AND TELEVISION KOSOVA'...

Dill, the interim director of Radio and Television Kosova

(RTK), told an RFE/RL South Slavic Service correspondent in

Prishtina on 16 September that the UN and OSCE have given the

green light for his station to begin broadcasting on 19

September. Dill said that the program will be transmitted via

satellite. He stressed that RTK is a public service that does

not belong to any government or investor but exclusively to

the people of Kosova. Dill added that RTK intends to

broadcast programs from Kosova, which are produced by

Kosovars in Kosova in cooperation with UN television. He

predicted that it will become the basis for the creation of a

full-fledged public service broadcaster and train the staff

of such a station. The programs will be in Albanian and

Serbian. FS

[12] ...DISAPPOINTING SACKED 'RADIO AND TELEVISION PRISHTINA'

Martin Cuni, the chairman of the Coordinating

Council of Radio and Television Prishtina, issued a

declaration in Prishtina on 16 September saying that his

council has nothing in common with RTK. The council was

founded by ethnic-Albanian journalists who were

demonstratively sacked by the Belgrade regime in 1990. Cuni

stressed that neither the UN nor the OSCE or the European

Broadcasting Union have consulted his council about the

creation of RTK. Dill, however, made clear that RTK is not a

continuation of Radio and Television Prishtina, even though

it will broadcast from its former premises. FS

[13] U.S. GENERAL SAYS UCK LEADERSHIP 'COMMITTED' TO DISARM

Chiefs of Staff, said in Prague on 16 September that the

Kosova Liberation Army (UCK) has "not complied as rapidly as

any of us would have liked to have in terms of the local

level, but at the leadership level they have remained

committed," Reuters reported. He added: "As of right now they

are moving steadily toward that and we have no reason to

believe that they don't intend to comply." Shelton declined

to answer what he called "hypothetical" questions about what

NATO will do if the UCK does not fulfill its obligations. He

said: "It is something we will deal with when and if the date

comes and they do not comply." FS

[14] BELGRADE CALLS UCK DISARMAMENT 'FARCE'

who is Yugoslavia's top diplomat at the UN, said in New York

on 16 September that the disarmament of the UCK is a "farce"

because the guerrillas are handing in only outdated weapons.

He charged that the UCK is hiding its best weapons in

Albania, Macedonia, and secret locations in Kosova. Jovanovic

did not provide any proof of his assertions, but added that

"everybody knows" that what he says is true, AP reported. He

stressed that the UCK seeks to become the dominant military

and political force in the province. PM

[15] FBI BACKS STORIES OF MASSACRES

Washington on 16 September that they are prepared to

substantiate eyewitness claims of massacres in Kosova during

the recent conflict. The experts noted that their conclusion

is based on having examined 124 bodies from 21 sites in

Kosova. One spokesman noted that the victims ranged between 2

and 94 years of age. PM

[16] GLIGOROV SAYS WEST MISREAD SERBS, MISLED MACEDONIA

"Vreme" that he well remembers the 40 years he spent in the

Serbian capital as a communist official. He stressed that

Western governments were mistaken if they thought that the

Serbs could be defeated by only a few weeks' bombing. He

added that those same governments made "big promises" to

Macedonia but did little to help with his country's huge

refugee burden during the recent conflict. His political

rival, Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, was wrong to treat

the UCK's Hashim Thaci as "almost a head of state," Gligorov

argued. He noted that ethnic Albanians could constitute the

majority of the population in Macedonia by 2015 if present

demographic trends continue. PM

[17] ANTI-MILOSEVIC COALITION CALLS FOR 'PEACEFUL REVOLUTION'

organization's convention in Novi Sad on 16 September.

Alliance leader Vladan Batic told cheering crowds that the

nationwide protests slated to begin on 21 September will mark

the start of a "peaceful, social revolution." He stressed

that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic "must go." Several

other prominent speakers--including senior banker Dragoslav

Avramovic and Democratic Party leader Zoran Djindjic--echoed

a key theme of the convention's resolution, namely that

prosperity and integration into Europe will come only after

Milosevic goes. Other prominent persons in attendance

included Vojvodina's Nenad Canak, Cacak's Velimir Ilic,

former General Vuk Obradovic, and Archbishop Artemije, who is

a key leader of the Kosova Serbs. PM

[18] PENSIONERS WANT MILOSEVIC TO GO

demonstrated in Belgrade and Kragujevac against the

government on 16 September. They protested plans by the

authorities to give them vouchers for electricity payments in

place of unpaid pensions. PM

[19] WILL HIS FRIENDS OUST HIM?

New Democracy Party, said that the main threat to Milosevic

comes not from the opposition but from those members of the

ruling establishment who want to end Serbia's international

pariah status, AP reported from Belgrade on 17 September. PM

[20] MONTENEGRO: MILOSEVIC MOBILIZING POLICE

Vujanovic said in Podgorica on 16 September that Milosevic

has increased the number of his military police in Montenegro

without consulting with or informing the republic's

authorities, Reuters reported. He did not provide any details

but added that the Montenegrin government will not "take any

countermeasures." The Belgrade press is wrong when it reports

that Montenegro has set up paramilitary formations, Vujanovic

added. He stressed that his government will seek

international aid in response to Serbia's blockade on food

shipments to his mountainous republic (see "RFE/RL Newsline,"

10 September 1999). In other news, the Montenegrin parliament

began discussions of Podgorica's future relations with

Belgrade, RFE/RL's South Slavic Service reported. And Serbian

Renewal Movement leader Vuk Draskovic told Montenegrin

Television that he helped block a plan by Yugoslav Prime

Minister Momir Bulatovic to launch a putsch in Montenegro in

April. PM

[21] ALBANIA'S MAJKO SLAMS POLITICIANS FOR LINKS TO CRIMINALS...

that unspecified Albanian politicians have "encouraged crime,

supporting it not only morally," AP reported. He added that

these politicians, abusing their parliamentary immunity, have

protected criminals who would have had to be convicted under

the law. Majko explicitly said that this applied to both his

Socialist Party and the opposition Democrats. He said:

"Before shooting, a policeman has to think first which

political clan a given criminal represents." Majko pledged

that his government "will work for a definitive and full

separation of politics from crime [and attack] crime without

any compromise." FS

[22] ...AND CHALLENGES NANO

September that he will run against his predecessor Fatos Nano

for the chair of the Socialist Party on 10 October, an RFE/RL

South Slavic Service correspondent reported. Majko dismissed

recent charges by Nano that he is too close to opposition

leader Sali Berisha by saying that "it is better to shake

hands with Berisha than with Milosevic." He was referring to

a Balkan summit on Crete in 1997, where Nano met Milosevic.

Responding to recent claims by Nano that Majko has allowed

Kosovar guerrillas to smuggle arms through Albania,

Information Minister Musa Ulqini said that "the Albanian

government has acted in accordance with the constitution and

has fulfilled all its obligations towards what is called the

'national question.'" FS

[23] HUNGARY SIDES WITH BULGARIA IN DISPUTE WITH ROMANIA

Minister Janos Szabo on 16 September told his visiting

Bulgarian counterpart Georgi Ananiev that he will inform his

NATO colleagues at an informal meeting in Toronto next week

on "the need to build a bridge between Vidin and Calafat" and

will "insist on their support." Bulgaria and Romania have

long disagreed on the location of a new bridge over the

Danube River, with Romania wanting the bridge to be built

further east than the Vidin-Calafat stretch favored by

Bulgaria. Szabo said that he is convinced that the passage of

NATO troops, including Hungarian troops, across Bulgaria to

Kosova would be greatly facilitated by a Vidin-Calafat

bridge, BTA reported. MS

[24] CLUJ EXTREME NATIONALIST MAYOR DOES IT AGAIN

September dismantled a sign put up during the night in front

of the Hungarian general consulate in Cluj at the order of

extreme nationalist Mayor Gheorghe Funar, Romanian radio

reported. The inscription read "Seat of Hungarian espionage."

Funar said the inscription had been put up "in line with the

provisions of the law" and that it came to "draw attention to

the appointment of Laszlo Alfoldi as general consul, a person

declared persona non grata and expelled from the country in

1988." Interior Minister Constantin Dudu Ionescu ordered

police to dismantle the inscription after being warned by

Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania Executive

Secretary Csaba Takacs that a diplomatic incident was

imminent. MS

[25] ROMANIA, RUSSIA, DIFFER ON EVALUATING EXPERT MEETING

and Russian foreign ministries on 16 September, Romanian

radio reported that the two sides agreed to further develop

"pragmatic collaborative relations" and that "the absence of

a bilateral treaty must not hinder" such ties. But the head

of the Russian team, Aleksandr Tolkach, was cited by ITAR-

TASS as saying that "Romania lacks the political will to

really sign a bilateral treaty." Tolkach said Russia rejected

Bucharest's insistence on having the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact

mentioned in the document, as well as the Romanian raising of

the state treasure deposited in Russia during World War I. MS

[26] COMPROMISE IN OFFING ON MOLDOVAN PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM?

President Petru Lucinschi is "satisfied" with the results

achieved at a meeting held one day earlier with leaders of

political parties represented in the parliament, at which he

presented his proposals for changing the political system

into a presidential one, Infotag reported. Golea said that

Lucinschi "once more stated that he is open to a compromise

and once again invited the party leaders to join him in the

search for a mutually-acceptable formula." Former President

Mircea Snegur, leader of the Democratic Convention of

Moldova, said that the meeting revealed that Lucinschi and

the parliamentary leaders were "ready to compromise in order

to avoid confrontation between the two power branches." MS

[27] BULGARIAN LOCAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED

September. Ninety-six parties are competing in the elections,

compared with 64 in 1995. Fifteen parties registered

candidates for the post of Sofia mayor, for which the ruling

United Democratic Forces nominated Mayor Stefan Sofiyansky

for a second term. Thirty parties, nine party coalitions, and

three initiative committees are running lists for the

municipal council in the capital, BTA reported. The first

round of the elections will be held on 16 October, and a run-

off a week later between the two front runners in localities

where no mayoral candidate wins more than half of the votes

cast in the first round. MS

[C] END NOTE

[28] AMBIGUOUS ANNIVERSARY

Poland marks the 60th anniversary of the Soviet invasion

today. While Polish armies were involved in an unequal but

heroic fight against Nazi Germany, some 600,000 Soviet troops

moved into Poland on 17 September 1939. The 25 border guard

and police units in eastern Poland were no match for the

Soviet forces. On 25 September, German and Soviet troops met

along the length of the demarcation line that had been

determined in a secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop

Pact of 23 August 1939. Three days later, Berlin and Moscow

signed a friendship and border treaty erasing Poland from the

map of Europe for almost six years.

The Soviet annexation of eastern Poland was presented by

Moscow as the "liberation of Belarusian and Ukrainian

brothers from the oppression of Polish landlords." Eyewitness

accounts testify that most Belarusians and Ukrainians greeted

the Soviet troops as friends, if not liberators, and promptly

cooperated in organizing a Soviet system of power. "Popular

assemblies" of western Belarus and western Ukraine were

swiftly elected in October 1939 and requested the unification

of the newly conquered areas with the Belarusian SSR and

Ukrainian SSR, in particular, and with the USSR in general.

Historians have cited many reasons for this Belarusian

and Ukrainian attitude toward the Soviet invasion. Two appear

especially persuasive.

First, pre-war Poland--which experienced a measure of

democracy during its initial years of independence but became

an authoritarian state following Jozef Pilsudski's coup

d'etat in May 1926--did not develop a policy toward its

ethnic minorities that those minorities, accounting for

nearly 30 percent of the country's population, found

acceptable. Belarusians and Ukrainians were especially

treated by the state as second-rate citizens in terms of

their civil rights. In Poland's "eastern outlands" (kresy

wschodnie, the name applied to eastern parts of pre-war

Poland), economic, social, and ethnic inequality and

injustice were widespread.

Second, Belarusians and Ukrainians suffered under the

delusion--skillfully promoted by Soviet propaganda at the

time--that Soviet Belarus and Soviet Ukraine embodied the

national statehood that they so intensely desired. The

Polish-Soviet border was hermetically sealed, as a result of

which Polish Belarusians and Ukrainians were completely

unfamiliar with the real state of affairs in the Soviet Union

(as, incidentally, was the rest of Europe). Therefore, even

anti-Communists among Belarusian and Ukrainian political

circles in pre-war Poland generally welcomed the unification

of all Belarusian and Ukrainian ethnic territories as an "act

of historical justice."

Some 20 months later, when Hitler's armies invaded the

Soviet Union, many people in western Belarus and Ukraine who

had greeted Stalin's soldiers were now somewhat inclined to

welcome the Germans as the "liberator." From September 1939

to June 1941, Stalin's persecution machine was used against

not only "Polish landlords" but also their allegedly

liberated victims: Belarusian and Ukrainian peasants. The

legendary communist paradise proved a socio-economic hell for

those hapless "brothers" of the Soviet Union.

The 1945 Yalta Conference endorsed the Polish-Soviet

border foreseen by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (with some

post-war corrections), leaving Poland without its former

"eastern outlands." For more than 40 years, the official

Soviet interpretation of the 17 September 1939 military

operation as the "liberation of the oppressed" prevailed in

Poland's communist historiography. Only after Solidarity took

over in 1989 were Polish historians able to openly identify

the invasion by its proper name.

Belarusian and Ukrainian historians, or at least those

who have renounced the Soviet historiography tradition, offer

interpretations of the significance of the 17 September

anniversary that are more ambiguous. The notion of

"liberation" appears to be gradually disappearing from their

versions. However, there is hardly any historian in Belarus

and Ukraine who would take issue with the argument that the

Soviet invasion against Poland 60 years ago was "positive"

for their nations in so far as it unified formerly divided

nations into one political organism. That organism collapsed

in 1991 and gave birth to two independent states--Belarus and

Ukraine.

At a recent conference of Belarusian historians in

Minsk, one delegate spoke for many when he argued that the

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its territorial consequences

cannot be viewed as separate from the Polish-Bolshevik Treaty

of Riga in 1921. Under that treaty, Warsaw and Moscow

arbitrarily carved up between themselves Belarusian and

Ukrainian ethnic territories without taking into account the

interests of the indigenous people who inhabited them.

According to this line of argument, the Soviet Union in 1939-

-even in the role of an aggressor--ensured that justice was

done by bringing Belarusians and Ukrainians together.

Whether Polish historians will accept such a viewpoint

remains to be seen. Currently, the differing attitudes toward

the Soviet invasion 60 years ago are reflected in the planned

official commemorations of the anniversary. Polish President

Aleksander Kwasniewski has visited sites in Russia and

Ukraine of the mass murders of Polish officers taken prisoner

by Soviet troops in 1939. Belarus's Alyaksandr Lukashenka

will preside over official events in his country marking the

60th anniversary of the reunification of Belarus. And Lviv in

Ukraine will host a congress of anti-Communists from Eastern

Europe who will discuss Soviet repression in the 1930s and

early 1940s. When history serves different policies, a single

historical interpretation is the exception rather than the

rule.

17-09-99

Reprinted with permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
URL: http://www.rferl.org

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