NEW COMMANDER OF LATVIA’S ARMED FORCES APPOINTED.

Prime Minister Guntars Krasts, in his concurrent capacity as Acting Defense Minister, has appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Raimonds Graube to the post of acting commander of Latvia’s armed forces, in place of Colonel Juris Eihmanis. Graube has until now been the home guard commander, in which post he had succeeded Eihmanis only three months ago when Eihmanis became the armed forces commander. Eihmanis replaced Colonel Janis Dalbins, who had been forced to resign for political reasons (BNS, November 6). Eihmanis, Defense Minister Talavs Jundzis and a group of senior officers recently lost their posts due to financial irregularities in the ministry and the general staff (see the Monitor, October 27, 30).

Latvian political leaders openly admit that the instability at the command level–with three commanders succeeding one another this year in each of the two top posts–is detrimental to implementing overdue military reforms. Yet once the evidence of misappropriation had surfaced, this latest measure became unavoidable. It became, in fact, a precondition of moving ahead on military reform.

NOVEMBER 7 IN UKRAINE: LEFT, RIGHT RALLY WITH EYE TO ELECTIONS.