The extended board of the Reform Party unanimously backed a proposal by Defense Minister Jurgen Ligi that military conscripts be paid compensation for their time spent in the military. The remuneration should be equal to the monthly minimum wage. Ligi, a vocal supporter of transition to a fully professional army, said society has been neglecting those who are carrying out mandatory conscript service. "When we take the freedom to make individual choices away from young people and make them work for society, we have to pay for it too. There has to be reciprocity in the relationship between the citizen and the state," the minister said.
Members of the Estonian Democratic Party decided in favor of the party's merger with the right-wing Pro Patria Union. "Since our principal views of the more remote goals of Estonia's development are the same, today's decision will offer a new impetus," party chairman Jaan Laas said. Founded in 1994 as a party representing the interests of people active in the field of culture, the Estonian Democratic Party originally carried the name Estonian Blue Party. It has 1,007 members but no seats in Parliament.
The first 12 police officers from Georgia graduated from a training course at the Public Service Academy's police academy in Parnu County. The training was sponsored jointly by Estonia, Finland and the U.N. Monitoring Mission in Georgia. In Estonia, the money was taken from sums earmarked in the Foreign Ministry's budget for development cooperation, spokespeople for the Foreign Ministry said. Georgia is one of the main target nations for Estonia in bilateral development cooperation and stands to receive 1.7 million kroons of the money earmarked for bilateral development aid projects this year.
A 41-year-old sergeant-major, who has been serving in the Estonian military for 10 years, was detained at the Sharjah airport in Dubai last month after allegedly entering the office of a female police officer while drunk. Andrei Korol was part of a group of Estonian servicemen returning from a mission in Afghanistan. Korol's lawyer claims that his client faces a jail term of three to 15 years. The Eesti Paevaleht daily reported that the female police officer admitted that Korol didn't harass her. "I woke up and saw a stranger, a soldier in my room. He didn't touch me, but I thought that he might," the female officer of Egyptian nationality, Mirvat Ahmed Younis, was quoted as saying. When asked why she was accusing the soldier of harassment, that is, of grabbing and touching her, Mirvat said she had "children to support." The newspaper said the accuser's words may be referring to a cash claim that her lawyer plans to put forward during the trial.
