OFF THE WIRE

STANDING TOGETHER: Foreign ministers from the 10 candidate countries hoping to join the European Union in 2004 agreed in Warsaw May 22 on a set of common principles as membership talks enter their final phase later this year. "We concluded that we agree on the most fundamental issues and principles in the talks," Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said after the meeting. The 10 candidate countries called for immediate full access to EU aid funds upon accession in their joint statement. Any delays should be limited to the current EU budget that lasts through 2006, and equal conditions for farmers from new members should be ensured in order to guarantee their competitiveness with farmers in current member countries. The candidate countries also called on Brussels to ensure that aid flows to them increase after accession and that they are net contributors to the EU budget. (Agence France-Presse)

OUTBREAK: Lithuania's Interior Ministry set up a special commission on May 23 to respond to an HIV outbreak in the country's prisons that initial tests show may have hit about one-third of prisoners. The country's AIDS Center announced the previous day that 87 out of 346 prisoners tested in an Alytus prison were HIV positive, in one swoop exceeding the 72 new HIV cases registered throughout Lithuania in 2001. "The results reveal a very negative tendency in Lithuanian prisons and unbelievable facts about the scale of use of intravenous drugs," the center said in a statement. Results of tests from another 600 prisoners from the Alytus prison are expected next week, and officials are hesitant to speculate whether the trend may hold throughout the total prison population of 11,000. Prison officials say they do not have sufficient funds to stop the flow of intravenous drugs reaching prisoners. Lithuania has had one of the lowest HIV infection rates in Europe, with only 361 registered HIV cases in the country of 3.4 million people to date. (AFP)

TOP THREE: With just a few months to go until Latvia's next general election, the three most popular political parties remained unchanged in May, according to the latest opinion poll conducted by Latvijas Fakti pollster. The New Time party, established by former Bank of Latvia President Einars Repse bent on making a political career, is still at number one, despite losing 1.3 percent of its rating over the last month to 18.7 percent in May. The For Human Rights in a United Latvia alliance of left-wing forces, currently in opposition in the Parliament, comes second, supported by 9.9 percent of the electorate, up 0.5 percent from April. Ruling coalition member Latvia's Way, backed by 8.1 percent of respondents, is in third place, down 0.2 percent from previous month. For Fatherland and Freedom ranked fourth in April, but fell back to sixth, watching helplessly as the Latvian Social Democratic Workers Party and the Peoples' Party made their way up. General elections take place in October. (Baltic News Service)

TOURISM BOOST: Russian President Vladimir Putin met his Finnish counterpart Tarja Halonen on May 27 for talks that focused on regional and economic issues including transport and the environment. Putin met Halonen at Pushkin, formerly Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg, after saying farewell to U.S. President George W. Bush, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported. Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said the Russian and Finnish presidents looked at areas of concern for their adjacent border regions, including environmental protection, agriculture and forestry projects, transport and telecommunications. Specific projects to be discussed included a high-speed rail connection between St. Petersburg and Helsinki, and the restoration of the seaway linking St. Petersburg, Finland and the Baltic states. In March, Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen visited Russia to discuss a European Union project called the "Northern Dimension," designed to develop commercial and economic cooperation between Finland, the Baltic countries and the northwestern regions of Russia. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, decided in February to allocate 28 million euros ($24.4 million) to Finland to spend on the "Karelia" program to develop business and tourism and create 800 jobs on the Finnish-Russian border. (AFP)

CHERNOBYL PROTEST: Human rights and environmental groups held a demonstration in Geneva on May 25 to call for the release from prison of a Belarusian professor who was critical of the country's handling of the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Professor Youri Bandajevsky, a doctor specializing in the effects of nuclear radiation, was jailed in June 2001 for eight years, charged with corruption. He is well-known for his criticism of the Belarusian authorities, whom he accuses of irresponsibly managing the fallout of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. Bandajevsky ran a medical institute in Gomel, southern Belarus, a few kilometers from the ill-fated Ukrainian nuclear power station. Since the reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded in April 1986, nearly 6 million people have continued to live in contaminated zones, according to U.N. figures. Nearly 90 percent of Belarus was affected by radiation. (AFP)

RADIATION FOR KIDS: Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear power plant has organized the publication of a book for children about its upcoming closure. The book, by the writer Jeronimas Laucius, with its allegoric name "A Giant Waiting For a Lullaby," is a continuation of a book written by the same author 16 years ago about the construction of the power station. It was called "The Birth of a Giant." In the book, Laucius tells children about the history of electricity and nuclear energy, and the functioning of a nuclear power plant from the lips of a fictional ecologist, an energy scientist, a scientist, a writer and a reader. Illustrations for the book were prepared by the children of Visaginas, a town in eastern Lithuania where the power station is located. The publication of 20,000 copies was sponsored from a project of Swedish assistance for Ignalina safety. (BNS)