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Estonian Chief Commander Starts with a Scandal
The parliament of Estonia confirmed Maj. Gen. Ants Laaneots as chief commander of defense forces yesterday. While still a candidate for that post, however, he had already provoked a major scandal between Estonia and Russia by telling Eesti Paevaleht newspaper that “ to put it mildly, we have an unfriendly state as a neighbor. And relations with Russia really are the biggest security problem” for Estonia. He added that he is in favor of retaining the draft and of Estonian participation in NATO missions. “At a time when many people who are responsible for national security follow the fashion of speaking about new security threats' like terrorism, Laaneots has not forgotten the old threats,” Eesti Paevaleht wrote in an approving editorial. Laaneots was confirmed with the support of 77 out of 101 parliamentarians.
Laaneots graduated from the Kharkov Tank School in 1970 and rose through the ranks to become chief of staff of a tank division. He was a military advisor in Ethiopia from 1987 to 1989. From 1989 to 1991, he was a military commissioner in Tartu, where Dzhokhar Dudaev was a strategic aviation commander. His Soviet military career was a disadvantage in independent Estonia, however, and he became head of the NATO international military college in Tartu in the 1990s.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov, now in Athens, reacted quickly to Laaneots's statements. “Speaking diplomatically, such statements cause surprise, incomprehension and concern, at a minimum,” Ivanov stated. “Many, or some, people continue to perceive us as the USSR… full of dark forces that dream of seizing others' territory.” He recalled a statement made by Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga before the NATO summit in Riga that “I am counting on NATO to react immediately and make every effort to organize our defense if Martians should attack us.”
“It seems to me that Russia and Russians are not similar to Martians,” Ivanov commented dryly. He went on to criticize Estonia for not meeting the democracy standards of the European Union, discriminating against Russian speakers and attempting the political rehabilitation of Nazism.
Such an exchange at this high a level is new in Russian-Baltic relations. Relations between Moscow and Tallinn are at a low point. In September 2005, Russia quickly withdrew its signature from a border agreement. Since then, the two countries have been unable to settle their border dispute and a string of scandals has arisen, which includes Russia's refusal to issue a visa to the Estonian foreign minister and Estonian legislation placing Soviet symbols in the same category as Nazi symbols. The frequency of such spats is likely to increase, since Estonian parliamentary elections approach.
www.commersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 07, 2006
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