Eesti in brief - 2004-07-28

  • 2004-07-28
Real estate developer MSI Grupp's plan to build a crescent shaped six-story hotel in Parnu Maantee, the conservation area of Tallinn's Old Town, has incensed residents and may be sent to UNESCO for assessment.

The plot currently has a three-story building about 10 meters tall, but the height of the new hotel would be 24 meters. Residents said the city should only permit renovation of the existing building.

The government last week granted a permanent residence permit to Evald Pern, an ex-Soviet military officer, after rejecting his application three times. Pern, 77, is an ethnic Estonian citizen of Russia who retired as a three-star general. His name resides on the list of persons connected with the Estonian-Russian agreement on military pensioners signed on July 26, 1994. The government first refused to issue Pern a permit in 2001.

Rein Veetousme, long-time director of the Estonian Statistical Office, announced he would resign after more than 13 years. "It's time," he said, adding that he was leaving on his own accord and that the Statistical Office needed new challenges. A public tender will be announced to fill the office's top post.

Interior Minister Margus Leivo (photo) said that in addition to Nazi symbols, the public and the press should condemn the sale of Soviet attributes. "We must change the point of view that Nazi symbols alone are not welcome – the communist regime has done just as much bad to the Estonian people," he said. Prime Minister Juhan Parts asked Leivo to investigate the circumstances behind the sale of an Adolf Hitler T-shirt in an Old Town shop.

Interior Minister Margus Leivo said that Finnish authority representatives had no reason to criticize Estonia for its attitude toward cross-border organized crime. Leivo's Finnish counterpart, Kari Rajamaki, said more effective measures and better international police cooperation were necessary in fighting Estonian and Russian organized crime. Leivo asserted that cooperating groups have been set up between the two countries to work on this issue.

A polar bear at the Tallinn zoo bit off the hand of an inebriated man trying to offer the bear a cookie after waking up in the zoo's territory on July 22. The 31-year-old reached toward the bear with a cookie he found in his pocket at approximately 1:30 a.m. After the bear grabbed his hand, the man hit the animal with a half-litre bottle of vodka, prompting the bear to bite off his hand, police said. The man's screams alerted security staff.