Amber Gateway Picks Up Where the Hanseatic League Left Off

By Nora Boustany, The Washington Post . November 07, 1997, Page A24

Who said small countries cannot have big ideas? A lot depends on how well they can play the Washington circuit. Ambassadors who have glided to global glamour here are often influential at home and trusted conduits for new concepts shaping the world. So, Latvia's Ambassador Ojars Kalnins is trying his hand.

"In diplomacy you can move things along by launching intriguing ideas and then other embassies will report back to their governments," he said in an interview Monday. If it is a good idea, it will have a life of its own, he figures. If the Silk Road can still fuel the imagination of strategists for a geo-commercial route in Asia, why not an " Amber Gateway " for the Baltics? Amber, the pine sap that solidifies over the ages and washes ashore after storms, is common in the Baltic Sea region. So the name Kalnins has coined describes a symbol as well as a process of doing business.

The rationale is that while some of the Baltic countries await admission into the European Union and NATO, which may take 10 to 15 years, they will try to reclaim old historic ties and, together, become a commercial passage in and out of Russia. "We are patient, but we also want to be realistic," Kalnins said. For example, Russia needs Ventspils, the end point of a Russian oil pipeline in Latvia.

Peter the Great opened up a window to the West through St. Petersburg and occupied the Baltics to secure sea lanes and access through their harbors, but nowadays Russia can be engaged in projects that are in its interest, so it does not need to capture any ports, the ambassador explained. "We know that the best way to help ourselves is to help the entire region," he added.

The Amber Gateway would be fashioned after the old Hanseatic League, one of the world's earliest free-trade zones, which came to fruition in the 14th century and connected major ports such as Riga in the Baltic region and others all the way to the eastern shore of the Atlantic. Four German port cities, Bremen, Hamburg, Luebeck and Rostock, still issue license plates identifying them as HB, for Hanse Bremen, HH for Hanse Hamburg, HL for Hanse Luebeck and HR for Hanse Rostock.

The proposal for the Amber Gateway has as its organizational heart members of the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS), formed in 1992 in Copenhagen by Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Germany and Iceland. Baltic countries being offered security guarantees by Russia as an alternative to NATO are not interested in bilateral security arrangements as much as in an economic blueprint that will bind them with Russia. "This is an indirect way for us to ensure our security,"Kalnins said.

According to Kalnins, 90 percent of an offer made by Russian President Boris Yeltsin two weeks ago for security arrangements with the Baltics covers the same ground he is proposing. On Oct. 30, the embassy of Lithuania here distributed its answer to the Russian Federation's proposal to provide unilateral security guarantees for Baltic Sea states by stressing it will stick with the EU and NATO. On cooperation however, it said: "As the future CBSS chairman, Lithuania is interested in involving the Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg areas in regional cooperation."