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Show Thursday, November 22, D pifflE y By NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC For AP Newsfeatures Their minister of culture is 28 years old and lives in a student dormitory. Their president is an unassuming musicologist. Their leaders say to treat Russians they meet in the streets with kindness their "nuclear weapon." Such is the spirit of the revolu- tion in Lithuania, as the tiny Baltic nation and its even smaller neighbors Latvia and Estonia struggle toward independence from the Soviet Union. "This parliament is like the campus radicals who occupied your college buildings in the 1960s, with their feet propped up on the dean's desk, smoking his cigars," a Lithuanian journalist told National Geographic writer Prut J. Vesilind. Vesilind and photographer Larry C. Price recently toured the three countries spireadls mev H to measure changes wrought by liberation movements. For Vesilind, the visit had a special dimension. He was born in Tallinn, Estonia's capital. In 1944, when he was 18 months old, his family fled as the Red Army approached. He has returned six times in recent years. "The old city of Tallinn, built as a medieval citadel seemed much the same," Vesilind writes in the current magazine. "At night I could smell again the damp and crumbling stone, the cabbage cooking somewhere up an alleyway patrolled by silent cats. I could see the yellow glow from windows on the cobblestones and the lights of offshore ships blinking in the dawn." While some aspects of his homeland changed little, Vesilind found dramatic changes in expectations in all three countries. Today, maneuvering amid the collapse of communist ideology, they have come within a few precarious steps of regaining their Latvia Estonia, and Lithuania are the most urbanized and wester- nized willing and perhaps the least republics within the unraveling Soviet Union, Vesi!ind writes. Separate nations by all measures of culture and inclination, they tasted independence for 22 years between the two world wars. In those years they we-- e parliamentary democracies. They belonged to the League of Nations, sent teams to the Olympic Games and competed in the European marketplace. They were occupied again in 1940, in a division of Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union's Josef Stalin. The Soviet occupation since 1944 has left disturbing marks. "The challenges of restoring statehood are daunting," Vesilind writes. "But it is not the economy, nor the politics, nor the eroded culture that concerns Baltic leadit is the widespread ers most degradation after 50 of the human being years of communism. They worry about the kind of people they have become." Lithuanian parliamentarian Emanuelis Zingeris said his countrymen since early childhood have been "injected with fear and submission." h Latvian physician Leopold lives in a seaside resort where the beaches have been closed by massive pollution. "We are in a state of ruin, and no one is left to protest," says Ozolinsh. "Most of our people who had brains were bought out by the Ozo-lins- government. Our scientists were with coffee, vacasimply bribed tion homes, apartments. We have very few honest people left." With 8 million people, the Baltic republics "intend to move as far away as possible from this failed experiment," writes Vesilind. He detected evidence of the ebbing of Soviet domination everywhere. . In Tallinn, despite little new construction shoddy consumer goods, he found an "energy beneath the surface, a new willingness to take risks." Much new enterprise was aimed at Western tourists with desperately needed hard currency. The team rented a red Volvo station wagon. "A year earlier you could not rent a car," Vesilind writes. "You could not travel by yourself without a watchdog of a chauffeur on the payroll of the KGB. Certain roads were taboo, certain subjects forbidden." Now they drove from republic to republic. In an apartment in Vilnius, Vesilind found Vytautas Landsbergis sipping tea while struggling with his necktie. 1990 THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, Page H7 states Balilo d J! rapher "I had come to interview the president of Lithuania that morning, but he told me he had some work to do first. Statecraft, I imagined. But Landsbergis took out a folder full of sheet music. 'I promised a friend I'd edit this, he said apologetically." T WK 4 If? National Geographic SocietyLarry C. Price Disarmed by civility, Soviet soldiers leave the streets of Riga after a rally celebrating Latvia's historic declaration of Independence. Landsbergis spcke of his people's declaration of freedom, which he said makes Western governments uncomfortable. "We are sorry for them," he laughed. "But for us, it would be much more uncomfortable staying in the Soviet Union for the next 50 years." Stronger Singapore presidency seems designed for retiring Lee SINGAPORE (AP) The cere- monial presidency is being replaced by an elected office with executive powers, which Lee Kwan Yew may intend for himself sometime after he retires as prime minister. Lee steps down Nov. 28 after 31 years of running the government, but is not bidding farewell to power. He will be a senior member without portfolio in the Cabinet of new Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, and continue as head of the governing People's Action Party. Goh, 49, has been first deputy prime minister of this tiny island republic since 1984, spent 13 years in the Cabinet and now is defense minister. He expects the current Parliament session to end about two montlis after he takes over, as soon as it amends the constitution to strengthen the presidency. The revised office will have wide veto power over budgets and 's spending of the prosperous financial assets, estimated to total more than $47 billion. city-state- Appointments to key posts in the civil service, police, military and judiciary, on statutory boards and d in companies would be subject to approval by the president, who is to be elected directly term. for a He also would have power over the use of the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial. Presidential candidates must be state-owne- six-ye- ar former government ministers, judges, speakers of Parliament, top civil servants or heads of companies with paid-u- p capital of at least $58.8 million. President Wee Kim Wee, a former diplomat and journalist, was Parliaelected by the ment in 1985. The legislation provides that Wee, 75, may exercise the new duties for the rest of his current term, which expires in 1993, "as if he had been elected." one-hou- se The proposed constitutional change was the main issue of the last general election in 1988. In responding to opposition charges that he intended to retain power after retiring as prime minister, Lee pledged not to be the first of the new presidents. He has not, however, ruled out seeking the office later. Lee is a fit 67. Critics say the presidency will be so powerful it will virtually end the country's British style of government, in which Parliament is supreme. To that argument, Goh responds: "So long as any government abides by the principles of financial prudence and meritocracy in governing Singapore, this bill will not have any real effect on it." Opposition politicians contend the amendment would institutionalize the People's Action Party by eroding the powers of Parliament. The party has been in power, led by Lee, since 1959 and holds 80 of the 81 elected legislative seats. Some Singaporeans feel the amendment "is designed for the prime minister" and enacting it now indicates the "new leadership is not confident of itself. National Geographic SocietyLarry C. Price Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, a musicologist, edits a score in his Vilnius apartment governments reign in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Albanians fleeing in record numbers BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP; -Hundreds of people are fleeing repressive Albania, but the welcome is wearing thin in Yugoslavia, a troubled neighbor that already has ethnic problems with a large Albanian minority. Officials say more than 600 Albanians have crossed the heavily guarded border from their communist homeland so far this year, compared to only 40 in 1989. Albania's leaders have begun cautious reforms and seek to emerge from decades of isolation, but many of their people are taking a faster route to freedom. "We were forced to escape after enduring years of horror," said Pashko Preldakaj, who led 20 people through the rugged mountains of northern Albania last month. "I cannot describe what it is like to live in Albania." Preldakaj's group evaded Albanian frontier guards in an trek that covered 20 miles from Nike, his home village, across a mountain range more than 6,000 feet high. Adults carried children in their all-nig- ht arms, scrambling in the dark over narrow, rocky trails above deep gorges, Preldakaj said. Yugoslav authorities routinely give escaping Albanians up to 30 days in jail for illegal entry, then turn them over to representatives of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Judith Kumin, deputy director of the refugee agency, said they may be kept in Yugoslavia temporarily if the United Nations pays their expenses. She said the high commissioner's office has no way of knowing how many people are caught trying to flee Albania. On average, Albanian refugees spend six months in Yugoslavia before emigrating. Most go to the United States. The influx has created resentment in Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic, where the refugees are kept while awaiting resettlement outside the country. Exaggerated claims in Serbian media that 300,000 Albanians have moved into the restive southern province of Kosovo in the past 50 years have incited ethnic hostility. Official statistics indicate only 3,- - 000 people from Albania have moved to Yugoslavia since 1945. Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent the 1.9 million people in Kosovo, the heart of medieval Serbia, where 60 people have been killed in ethnic violence during the past year. Only four of the eight refugee centers in Yugoslavia still accept Albanians. About half of them are housed in the federal detention center at Pad-insSkela, where conditions are described as overcrowded and unsanitary, with up to three people sharing a cot. 03BSEHB Dami im U)itftTi Albanians were moved out of a refugee center in Kovilja-csouthwest of Belgrade. VAN 4 5 A LAYAWAY SKI PACKAGE ka About 100 LTD J LAYAWAY SALE N SKI PACKAGE SALI 4BUIZARD SKI PACKAGE SKIS - IUZIAD l i loots -i- aicmu I I J'lA ivoH HMOWOS MAtKtt 113.00 icon SKI PACKAGE 00 mm moo iMi 543.00 2100 ClT it i TOiA,vuui a, Townspeople accused them of molesting local women and, after allegations in the Serbian press that the refugees had poisoned the town's water supply, held a public protest to demand the Albanians be removed. "We had to comply quickly before someone got hurt," Ms. Kumin said. t !TOTMVMU, t i. MOUMTMO) ACM 430.00 MM 96699 rv &Rollerblade SKATES MTN. TEK I MTN. 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