MOSCOW-RIGA - Even if Russia imposes economic sanctions against Latvia for alleged violations of minority rights, such sanctions will not cause great damage to the economy, the Latvian ambassador to Russia said.
Even if Russia imposes economic sanctions against Latvia for alleged violations of minority rights, such sanctions will not cause great damage to the economy, the Latvian ambassador to Russia said.
Speaking in a news conference on Feb. 17 in Moscow, Normunds Penke explained that over 60 percent of Latvia's trade takes place with European countries, and Russia has become a small partner.
"Even if the sanctions appear Latvia will not be hurt by them in economic terms because it is not dependent on Russia," said Penke.
The State Duma, the lower house of Russia's Parliament, supported an initiative this week toward imposing sanctions. Specifically, it ordered a committee to prepare a statement on consideration of a draft law that would envisage a whole line of sanctions against Latvia.
The initiative was a direct result of President Vaira Vike-Freiberga's decision to promulgate amendments to Latvia's education law that provide for minority high-school-age students, who are primarily ethnic Russians, to study 60 percent of subjects in Latvian starting this fall.
Commenting earlier remarks by Eleonora Mitrofanova, Russia's deputy foreign minister, that Moscow was linking Latvia's minority problems to ratification of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union, Penke said Latvia's automatic accession to that agreement as of May 1 was a legal process not related to Russia's objections and concerns.
However, "if Russia is against automatic accession to this agreement, there, most likely, will not be such an agreement," he said.
Meanwhile, in Riga, a new study on citizenship revealed that most noncitizens want to obtain Latvian citizenship.
The study, carried out by naturalization department to learn more about minority attitudes toward citizenship, found that slightly over 64 percent of noncitizens want to acquire citizenship, while 14 percent don't want it and nearly 20 percent have not thought about it.
The study also revealed that a factor most frequently preventing people from acquiring citizenship is a belief that citizenship is due to them automatically and a hope that the naturalization process will be simplified in the future.
The study encompassed 80 municipal territories where the portion of the noncitizen population is high and involved interviews of 200 specialists and 6,950 noncitizens.
In 2003 Latvia had 504,300 noncitizens, or 22 percent of the country's population.
