In Baltics, Bush Hails 'Freedom Movement'

RIGA, Latvia, May 7 -- President Bush urged Russia on Saturday to make peace with the "freedom movement" spreading around its borders and vowed to continue helping opposition forces working to topple authoritarian governments in countries such as neighboring Belarus.

In a symbolically potent visit to this picturesque seaside city, Bush paid tribute to the people of the three Baltic republics who threw off Soviet rule in 1991 after a half century of occupation and linked it to more recent revolutions in places like Georgia and Ukraine.

Instead of seeing such changes as a threat, Bush said, Moscow ought to embrace its newly free neighbors as friends.

Bush's remarks at a news conference with leaders of Latvia, Lithuania and Estona preceded a speech in which he said that Soviet domination of central and eastern Europe after World War II will be remembered as "one of the greatest wrongs of history" and acknowledged that the United States played a significant role in the division of the continent.

In the speech, Bush said the agreement in 1945 at Yalta among President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill "followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbontrop pact."

"Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable," the president said, opening a four-nation trip to mark the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat. "Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable."

"We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations -- appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability."

While U.S. officials usually disclaim responsibility for fomenting uprisings in Moscow's traditional orbit, Bush, at the news conference, embraced the idea of assisting those beleaguered activists in other nations fighting for democracy. "The idea of countries helping others become free, I would hope that would be viewed as not revolutionary," he said, "but rational foreign policy, as decent foreign policy, as humane foreign policy."

He singled out nearby Belarus, a flat expanse of farms and factories to the south of here that is ruled by President Alexander Lukashenko, an open admirer of Josef Stalin often described as the last dictator of Europe. Lukashenko's security forces regularly arrest protesters, shut down newspapers and intimidate would-be opposition figures, some of whom have disappeared or died in recent years. Considered a pariah in Europe, Lukashenko counts Russian President Vladimir Putin as his most important ally.

"They should be allowed to express themselves in free and open and fair elections in Belarus," Bush said, Belarus has an election scheduled for next year after Lukashenko pushed through a constitutional change eliminating term limits.

Bush said he would discuss the matter with Putin when he arrives in Moscow on Sunday night. "I will continue to speak as clearly as I can to President Putin that it's in his country's interests that there be democracies on his borders," Bush said. "I mean, after all, look at the three nations here. These are peaceful, prosperous nations that are good neighbors with Russia."

Bush scheduled his stop here as a way to temper his participation in Monday's celebration on Moscow's Red Square of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, an event that meant freedom for Western Europe but Soviet tyranny for the East. The trip has ended up reopening old wounds between Moscow and the Baltic states that were absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940 after a secret deal between Stalin and Adolph Hitler.

Russia in recent days has reprised the old Soviet assertion that it never occupied Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia because they asked to join the Soviet Union, an assertion that has outraged people here. Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and Estonian President Arnold Ruutel had already decided to boycott the Moscow events, although Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga plans to attend in hopes of improving relations with the Kremlin.

At his joint news conference with the three leaders, Bush acknowledged and honored their suffering but then urged them to find a way to move on.

"I recognize that in the West, the end of the Second World War meant peace," he said, "but in the Baltics, it brought occupation and Communist oppression. And the American people will never forget the occupation and Communist oppression of the people of the Baltics. We recognize your painful history."

He then added, "My hope is that we're now able to move beyond that phase of history into a phase that is embracing democracy and free societies. These are extraordinary times that we're living in, and the three Baltic countries are capable of helping Russia and other countries in this part of the world see the benefits of what it means to live in a free society."