The Duma screams sanctions while Latvia yawns

RIGA — As Moscow's campaign season began to churn toward next month's parliamentary elections, Russia's Duma blew steam at Latvia last week by easily passing legislation that would impose drastic economic sanctions and further chill already frosty relations between the two countries, at odds over Latvia's treatment of its ethnic Russian minority.

Latvian government officials and foreign relations observers label the sanctions, which would bar any trade between Russian individuals, companies or government and Latvia, as campaign fodder that will never get past the parliament's upper house or Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

The communist-party led Duma, the parliament's often tempestuous lower house that has been stripped of much of its power in post-Soviet Russia and has taken numerous swipes at Latvia since independence in 1991, passed the bill on second-reading Nov. 16.

Passage virtually ensures it will move to the Federation Council, the parliament's more temperate upper house made up of regional governors.

"At this point it is not the end of the world, there are some very important steps before this law becomes valid," said Latvia Foreign Ministry spokesman Janis Selins. "We know that the Russian foreign minister and the Russian president are against this law."

Selins and others see the law as an attempt to bully Latvia under the guise of highlighting human rights infringements on the country's ethnic Russian population.

Soon after passing the proposed economic sanctions, the Duma passed a statement 258-1 criticizing pending changes to Latvia's language law.

Though the pending law softens language requirements for citizenship, the Duma accused Latvia's parliament of instituting "a doctrine of guilt" against Russian people and recommends the U.N. Security Council investigate the law immediately.

Atis Lejins, head of the Latvian International Relations Institute, has heard it before.

"Russian people are going through hard times and they need someone to bash," he said. "Latvia is the perfect sacrificial lamb."

In the past, a carping Duma might have been more cause for alarm. But Latvia in recent years has loosened economic ties with Russia, allowing the parliament here to more zealously hold its political ground.

Since the devaluation of the ruble in August 1998, trade with Russia has been cut in half as Latvian companies have looked to western markets.

Some industries, most notably oil and gas, still have trade bonds and are subject to Russia's often fickle foreign policy. But even they aren't scared by the Duma's recent grumbling.

"We don't see any reason that we'll be in a position to be cut off," said Andra Yeshinska, who heads international relations with the Latvian natural gas firm Latvijas Gaze.

Latvijas Gaze is so confident of its relations with Russian suppliers that it recently signed its first multi-year contract with Gazprom, a Russian company that owns a 16 percent stake in the Latvian company.

As one of the countries largest energy suppliers, Gazprom can shout nearly as loud as the Duma, said Yeshinska.

"Gazprom is so powerful that we don't think anything could spoil our good relations with them," she said.

Following the 1998 economic collapse, Russia did take substantive steps to hinder economic growth in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

All three countries are still smarting from increased transport tariffs that have Latvia's railway Latvijas Dzelzcels bleeding red from its commercial cargo bottom line.

Critics point to the proposed sanctions as evidence Russia is taking another step back from European integration onto its own national interest.

After all, they point out, Latvia actually pays for its Russian imports in hard currency, unlike Ukraine and Belarus.

"It doesn't make any sense," said Lejins "The amazing thing is that no one in the Duma is saying, 'Alright, enough of this.'"