BONJOUR L'ESTONIE

Baltic Gas prices to rise most

By Anatoly Medetsky

* Gazprom is planning to raise prices for most European customers by an average of 14 percent next year, but the hike will be much steeper for the Baltic countries, national newspapers reported Monday.

Europe may pay an average $293 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas next year, up from $257 this year, Vedomosti reported, citing company documents prepared for a board meeting Wednesday.

The hike simply reflects the growth of world oil prices, which serve as the basis to determine the gas price, said Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

"What Gazprom must have calculated is that oil prices have already moved," he said by telephone Monday. "Gazprom doesn't decide. It's not Gazprom's guess, it's everybody's guess."

Price increases for the three Baltic countries will probably vary from 30 percent to 54 percent, Kommersant reported. Gazprom will hike their prices to the European average, Gazprom spokesman Denis Ignatyev confirmed by e-mail.

Estonia could pay as much as $260 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, a 36 percent rise, Raul Kotov, head of sales for Eesti Gaas, told Kommersant.

Latvia is negotiating to pay about $220, a 54 percent increase on this year, Latvijas Gaze spokesman Vincents Makaris said, the newspaper reported.

Estonian Environmental Inspectorate now flying Enstrom 480B

Menominee –At a ceremony in Estonian’s capital Tallinn, the Environmental Inspectorate accepted an Enstrom 480B presented by the President and CEO of Enstrom, Mr. Jerry Mullins. The helicopter will be based in Tallinn and will be operated throughout the Estonian region. 

“The 480B is the perfect fit for the Estonia Environmental Inspectorate due to the low operating costs and the flexibility to meet a multitude of missions.  This delivery establishes Enstrom’s presence in the Baltic region and is expected to lead to additional sales in the area” said Mr. Mullins.

The Environmental Inspectorate is planning on 250-300 operational hours in 2007, and anticipates the usage will probably grow in following years. The Enstrom 480B will also be used jointly by other organizations of the Ministry of the Environment; such as the Nature Protection Centre, the Land Board, the State Forest Management Centre and local branches of the Environmental Ministry. The Nature Protection Centre has already booked flight time for next spring to count nesting birds in red beds.

President Bush and President Ilves in a press availability

WASHINGTON -  PRESIDENT ILVES : Again, I'm very happy to greet the President of the United States, George W. Bush, in our fall weather here in Tallinn. Unfortunately, the weather isn't better than it is, but that's how it happens. This visit and these very open meetings that we have had, President Bush has had with me, as well as with the Prime Minister, Andrus Ansip, truly prove that Estonia and the United States are close allies.

One of the main messages today was the message of freedom to those states who, like us, have chosen the way to democracy and freedom and will not bow to pressure from any of their neighbors, and by these countries we mean Georgia, Ukraine, the Balkan States. We should not hesitate to support these states. And we should not falter when any of our allies are losing hope or faith, and we will help them in every way we can.

We will also not falter in making Afghanistan more secure, where Estonia soldiers are helping to protect the welfare of Afghan citizens, again, together, hand in hand with the United States. NATO's greatest foreign operation in the post-Cold War period, it is the greatest challenge of the postwar period. It is a challenge not only for the neighbors of these countries, but also for the whole world, as was proved by September the 11th.

We are hoping to strengthen the ties between European countries and the United States. Conflicts between us are minor or nonexistent, and any issues will be easy to resolve. President Bush's visit to Tallinn is taking place at a time immediately before the summit of NATO in Riga. This summit shows how far the Baltic States have developed and how strong the support of our allies is for us. We want to give a strong message at the summit, and that is that the doors to NATO are not closed and this is becoming a very mature, good organization.

And I want to tell Mr. Bush, welcome to Estonia.

Estonia to raise import ban with Brussels

TALLINN - The head of the Estonian veterinary and food authority will raise the issue of a Russian ban on fish imports at a meeting of European chief veterinary officials in Brussels on Nov. 28.
On Nov. 24 Russia unexpectedly closed its border checkpoints to shipments of fish through Estonia, citing problems relating to forged documents and illegal trade.
Estonia's fish exports to Russia consist mostly of frozen sprat and Baltic herring. The export to Russia are worth 500 million EEK (EUR 32 mln) a year, and accounts for about one-fifth of total fish exports.
As the embargo concerns all European Union member states, the matter should be addressed by the bloc's executive Commission, director general of the Veterinary and Food Board Ago Partel told BNS.
Estonia has sent an official diplomatic note to Russia asking for further explanations about the ban, and the Estonian veterinary authority has sent an official inquiry about the restrictions to the Russian veterinary agency.

Air crash victims return to Germany

TALLINN - The three men who crash-landed a small plane in the south of Estonia are in a stable condition and will return to Germany soon.
The men, an Austrian and two Germans, executed an emergency landing on Nov. 24. Their Piper aircraft was headed from Tartu to Dresden, but was forced to land shortly after taking off.
A search operation was launched after one of the men managed to walk back to the airfield and inform the authorities.
Rescue crews found the aircraft 500 meters from the end of the runway and freed the two remaining men from the mangled body of the plane.
An investigation is underway into the cause of the accident.

Bush : Estonia is our important partner in developing democracy

Stenbock House — The meeting between Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and President of the United States George W. Bush focused, above all, on the relationship between Estonia and the US, and the development of democracy in countries who are striving for freedom and stability. President Bush thanked Estonia as a brave and reliable partner in spreading peace, stability and democracy.

According to President Bush, Estonia’s success is impressive. “Estonia is a convincing example of a country that has enjoyed rapid development and improvement in people’s welfare thanks to the right decisions,” said Bush. The President also acknowledged our open worldview and highlighted Estonia’s simple and transparent taxation system.

Both Bush and Ansip admitted that bilateral relations between Estonia and the US are very good. Bush specifically emphasised Estonia’s active contribution to missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Andrus Ansip noted that, to date, the Estonian mission in Afghanistan had expanded from the original five soldiers to 130 men. Considering the size of the Estonian State, the President of the US highly values our contribution.

Bush says U.S. troops will stay in Iraq until their mission is complete

RIGA - President George W. Bush, under pressure to change direction in Iraq, said Tuesday he will not be persuaded to withdraw American troops before the country is stabilized.

“There’s one thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” Bush said in a speech setting the stage for meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. “We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.”

A bipartisan panel on Iraq is finalizing recommendations on Iraq. The group, led by former U.S. secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic representative Lee Hamilton of Indiana, is expected to present recommendations to Bush next month.

The New York Times reported Monday that the commissioners are expected to debate the feasibility of withdrawal timetables.

Recent U.S. elections added fuel to the argument from Democrats that U.S. soldiers need to withdraw. But Bush has resisted that, even while projecting the need for a different approach.

US still the Baltics' best friend - but for how long ?

Riga - Fifteen years after the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the US is still seen as the Baltic states' most reliable ally.

But with European Union enlargement offering Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the prospects of growing influence within the Brussels-based bloc, some analysts begin to question how long the US will retain its pivotal role in the Baltic region's world view.

For the three Baltic states, the US was the hero of the Cold War. Thousands of Baltic exiles - including all three countries' current presidents - spent much of their lives in North America.

'Who was our friend during the Cold War?' Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves asked in an exclusive interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

'Our neighbours were extremely concerned about the state of human rights in Guatemala and Chile, but (there was) not a word about what was going on here,' he said.

Moreover, the vocal US refusal to recognise the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940 provided the Baltic region with vital moral support, survivors of exile believe.

'I think there's that understanding on the part of Americans of what these countries have gone through,' said Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga told dpa.

Gazprom plans steep price hikes in Belarus, Baltics : reports

MOSCOW - Russian gas monopoly Gazprom plans major price increases for deliveries of natural gas in 2007 to ex-Soviet Belarus and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, newspapers in Russia reported.

Gazprom, which controls the world's largest reserves of natural gas, will quadruple prices for Belarus, a close ally of Russia, according to Vedomosti daily, citing the company's 2007 draft budget.

Gazprom expects Belarus to pay 200 dollars (153 Euros) per 1,000 cubic meters of gas next year, up from just over 46 dollars today, according to the leaked internal document.

A proposed price hike has alarmed Belarus, which is deeply dependent on Russian economic support, including subsidised energy. In September, President Alexander Lukashenko warned he would cut all ties with Russia if forced to pay a fourfold increase.

Vedomosti cited a source close to Lukashenko as saying that no agreement had yet been reached between Gazprom and Minsk over a price increase.

Estonia demands explanation from Russia for fish import ban

TALLINN - Estonia's Foreign Ministry handed a note Monday to the Russian ambassador in Tallinn demanding an explanation for Moscow's ban on imports of Estonian fish and seafood.

Russia stopped fish and seafood imported from Estonia to Russia passing its border checkpoints on Friday evening, over alleged problems with forged documents and smuggling.

Estonia exports one fifth of its fish and seafood to Russia, which receives mainly Baltic sprats and herring.

Russia imposed a temporary ban on deliveries of canned fish produced by two factories in Latvia, Brivais Vilnis and Gamma-A in late October, saying their canned sprats contained high levels of benzopyrene, a carcinogenic substance.

Last week Russia and Latvia resolved their dispute over the quality of canned sprats imported from the ex-Soviet EU member.

"The issue of Latvian sprats has been settled," the Latvian ambassador said.

Sestre tuleb taas Eestisse

* Sestre, kes esindas Sloveeniat Eurovisiooni lauluvõistlusel 2002. aastal Tallinnas, tuleb taas Eestisse. Showtrupp osaleb Angel Café & Gayclub teisel sünnipäeval 2. detsembril.

Showtrupp astub üles oma suurepärase elava showprogrammiga ning kindlasti esitatakse ka Sestre kunagist eurolugu Only Love (Samo Ljubezen). Club Angel avab sünnipäevalistele oma uksed 2. detsembri südaööl. Pileti hind on 200 krooni ja klubikaardiga 175 krooni.

Sestre (tõlkes 'Õed') on Sloveenia drag queen bänd. Liikmete hüüdnimed on Daphne, Emperatrizz ja Miss Marlena. Enne EMA 2002 (Sloveenia rahvuslik voor) võitmist tegutsesid nad juba mitmeid aastaid nime Strumpantl Sisters all. Sestre saavutas Tallinnas 2002. aastal toimunud Eurovisiooni lauluvõistlusel oma looga Samo Ljubezen 13. koha.

In english :

EuroChem to open its own handling terminal in Estonia

MOSCOW - On Dec. 6 EuroChem will open its first Estonian unit - TankChem tanker loading facility at the port of Sillamäe, Estonia. The opening ceremony is expected to be attended by the company's senior management and Estonian government.

TankChem is the first terminal in the North-East of Estonia for petrochemical products handling. It includes a 5.7 Ha industrial site at the Free Economic Zone near the town of Sillamäe. The handling terminal has a strategic location which is ideal for the company : 25 km from the Estonia - Russia border, and virtually at the EU - Russia border. In addition, the terminal is linked to Tallinn - Saint-Petersburg rail line. Thus, the chemicals can be loaded directly from rail cars to tankers, and then exported to Europe and South America.

The 30-40 time increase of the terminal handling capacity is planned, while in September 2006 the throughput reached 15,000 tonnes per month.

The construction of its own multipurpose state-of-the-art handling terminal is an important step for EuroChem towards logistics cost optimization. It also provides a good opportunity for other companies to handle their products.

Estonia’s drug-related deaths ratio is one of the highest

TALLINN - Estonia ranks among the six countries having the highest ratio of drug-related deaths in Europe, a report by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) shows.
The countries having more than 25 cases of drug-related deaths per one million residents are Denmark, Estonia, Luxembourg, Finland, Britain and Norway.
The average ratio for European countries is 13 deaths per one million residents. The ratio is highest, or 40 deaths per one million people, among males aged from 15-39.
Estonia occupies the second position in the European statistics of drug-related deaths in the under 25-age group.

Moscow out to harm NATO with release of files

By Patrick McLoughlin

RIGA - Latvia said on Friday Moscow's release of documents stating the United States and Britain gave tacit approval to Soviet occupation of the Baltics was an attempt to sour NATO relations ahead of next week's summit.

Russia's foreign intelligence service SVR this week released declassified files and said in a statement the West regarded the removal of pro-German influences from the Baltics and occupation by Soviet forces "a necessary and timely step".

Latvia on Friday attacked the timing of the release ahead of the Nov. 28-29 summit of NATO leaders.

The subject of the Soviet occupation of the Baltics, in 1940 and resumed again in 1944 after the Germans were driven out, is an emotionally-charged one in the region.

"First, this is an attempt to indirectly disrupt relations between our countries," Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks told Reuters. "Second, it looks like they are trying to find someone to share the guilt with, which would anyway fall on Russia."

Latvia will welcome 26 heads of state, including U.S. President George W. Bush, and 5,000 guests to its capital Riga for the first meeting of the alliance on ex-Soviet soil.

HIV increases in U.K., spread by unprotected sex between men

By Jason Gale

* HIV is spreading faster in the U.K. than any other country in the European Union, driven by a resurgence of men having unprotected sex with other men.

The virus that causes AIDS was diagnosed in 8,868 people in the U.K. last year, a prevalence of 148.3 cases per million people, according to a study published yesterday in Eurosurveillance, an online journal of peer-reviewed information on communicable diseases. The country's HIV prevalence has climbed each year since at least 1999 and is now almost twice as high as the Netherlands and five times higher than Germany.

AIDS has killed about 28 million people since it was first recognized in 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. Males accounted for two-thirds of the 23,620 new HIV cases reported in the European Union last year. Sex between men accounted for 34 percent, researchers in Sweden and France said in the study.

"In the EU, major advances in treatment have prolonged and improved the lives of infected people,'' said the authors, led by Francoise Hamers at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm. "These therapeutic advances have been paralleled by a decreasing emphasis on HIV prevention and a resurgence of high-risk sexual behaviors among gay men in major EU cities.''

Finland gets first electricity via Estlink

* Eesti Energia has announced that the first electric current has been sent to Finland via Estlink as ABB began testing the submarine part of the cable.

Submarine cable constructor ABB has been carrying out tests in the converter stations in Espoo, Finland and Harku, Estonia since the middle of October but tests of the Estlink submarine cable had been temporarily put on hold.

Indrek Aarna, the manager of Nordic Energy Link, described the sending of the electrical current through the cable as a "historical moment." He also confirmed that ABB will continue testing the cable and, should no further hitches occur, the cable will be inaugurated on December 4, 2006 in the converter stations in Estonia and Finland.

Estonia film missing

* A film that may hold vital clues to the mystery surrounding the worst disaster in the Baltic Sea in modern times, the shipwreck of the passenger ferry Estonia, has vanished.

"We don't have a clue about its whereabouts. This is deeply regrettable," Johan Franson, chief of Sweden's Shipping Inspectorate, told Swedish magazine Ny Teknikk.

In August Sweden's State Forensic Laboratory (SKL) asked for the film to be delivered there after beginning a comprehensive investigation of existing film and photographic evidence from the shipwreck.

The Inspectorate has searched for the film for three months without success, and cannot explain how it has disappeared from its archives.

The film was taken at the turn of 1995-96 and investigated the depth to which the Estonia had sunk and the conditions of the seabed around the wreck.

The sinking of the Estonia on Sep. 28, 1994 cost 852 lives, 501 of them Swedish. The cause of the disaster, the worst in European post-war history, has been hotly discussed for over a decade. Of the 830 passengers and crew of 159 from a total of 17 nations, only 137 survived. The German built ship now lies off the southeast coast of Finland's Utö.

Ilves launches defense think tank

TALLINN - Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves launched a new defense think tank on Nov. 21, urging the nation’s academics to come up with innovative solutions to security challenges. Ilves said Estonia should not focus solely on itself, but consider how it could influence other nations undergoing similar transitional challenges.

Ansip pushes nation toward prosperity

By Joel Alas

* Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has again annunciated his bold goal of pushing Estonia to become one of Europe’s five most prosperous nations. The goal, which has been questioned by economists for its feasibility, has put an even greater strain on the governing coalition, with the three ruling parties showing further signs of moving apart. The renewed prosperity statement emerged in a recent bout of electioneering, with Estonians enduring the most expensive political advertising campaign in history.

Ansip said that, after the coming March elections, his Reform Party would form a coalition of parties aiming to make Estonia one of the most prosperous nations in Europe within 15 years.

“[We] will create a government that is prepared to make the biggest contribution to fulfilling the Reform Party’s long-term vision - making Estonia one of Europe’s five most prosperous countries,” Ansip said.
He added that Estonia was under threat from irresponsible and stupid politics that served short-term interests, such as increasing the tax burden and the regulation of the economy – both objectives of Reform’s current coalition partners, the Center Party and the People’s Union.

“Most of these ideas are clearly recognizable in the recent agreement between the Center Party and the People’s Union, and I think it would be a great mistake to underestimate those two parties’ determination to carry out all the things listed above,” Ansip said.

Do you really want a EEK 10 oak tree for EEK 400 000 .. ?

* The government plans to spend 400,000 kroons (26,000 euros) to purchase an oak tree worth just 10 kroons, according to the money it's printed on.

The Ministry of the Environment said it would purchase a property in southern Estonia that is home to the nation’s oldest and most famous tree - the oak featured on the back of the 10 kroon banknote. “The tree is a symbol of Estonia, which even has been perpetuated on a banknote,” said Olav Etverk, the Ministry’s deputy secretary-general. “Once this property belongs to the state, we can ensure the best possible protection for the oak and its surrounding landscape.”