"Historical tragedies never disappear and are never forgotten. The terrible interethnic conflict between Ukrainians and Poles in Volyn, which claimed tens of thousands of human lives in 1943-1944 on two warring sides, was hushed up in this country for decades: even in the already independent 1990s, this subject seemed to be taboo." [article number five]

"Ukraine Report 2003," Number 51
Ukraine Market Reform Group (UMRG)
ArtUkraine Information Service (ARTUIS)
Kyiv, Ukraine and Washington, D.C.
WEEKEND EDITION, May 31-June 1, 2003

INDEX OF ARTICLES:

1. UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT BOASTS ECONOMIC GROWTH DWELLS ON POLITICS Kuchma says Viktor Yushchenko Made the Wrong Decision Ukrainian Television first programme, Kiev, in Ukrainian, 28 May 03 BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, May 28, 2003

2. ENERGY AND UKRAINE'S EURO-ATLANTIC FUTURE U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual, Sixth International Conference, "Energy Security of Europe in the XXI Century" Energy Security Forum, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 28, 2003

3. SHEVCHENKO AWARDED UKRAINE'S TOP SPORTS HONOR AC Milan Soccer Striker Andriy Shevchenko Reuters News Service, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 30, 2003

4. U.S. LAWMAKERS PLEAD CASE OF JAILED FORMER AGRICULTURE OFFICIAL IN UKRAINE By Tim Vickery, Associated Press Writer The Associated Press, Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, May 30, 2003

5-A. VOLYN 1943-1944, AN UNKNOWN TRAGEDY The Terrible Interethnic Conflict Between Ukrainians and Poles in Volyn National dignity means truth for ourselves and our descendants. Prepared by Serhiy Makhun, Ihor Siundiukov, Vyacheslav Darpinyants, and Mykhailo Mazurin, THE DAY Weekly Digest in Two Parts Part I, May 13, 2003; Part II, May 27, 2003, Kyiv, Ukraine

5-B. UKRAINIAN LAWMAKERS DIVIDED OVER ASSESSMENT OF VOLYN MASSACRE IN 1943 RFE/RL NEWSLINE, Prague, Czech Republic, May 30, 2003

6. RUSSIA'S LARGEST BREWER BALTIKA BREWERY OPENS ITS FIRST OFFICE IN UKRAINE TO EXPAND SALES Just-Drinks.com Editorial Team, Bromsgrove, Worcs, UK, May 30, 2003

7. RECONSTRUCTION OF ANCIENT CHURCH BEGINS IN KYIV Original Church was Destroyed in 1970 During Soviet Times R.I.S.U., Lviv, Ukraine, May 24, 2003

8. POLISH PAINT PRODUCER HAS GOOD RESULTS Polifarb built a production plant in Ukraine Polish News Bulletin, Warsaw, Poland, May 29, 2003

9. UKRAINIAN NEWSPAPER SAYS BRITAIN IS ON "FREE SPEECH" BANDWAGON AGAINST UKRAINE Ukrainian Weekly Newspaper 2000 in Russian, May 30, 2003 BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, May 30, 2003

10. STUDENTS COME TO MASSACHUSETTS FROM UKRAINE Four Ukrainian Teenagers from Butch, a town of 14,000 in western Ukraine Lisa Press, Hamilton Wenham Chronicle, Town.com Hamilton, Massachusetts, May 28, 2003

11. UKRAINIAN GREEK CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS LEADER CARDINAL LUBOMYR HUSSAR IN CHICAGO TO INSTALL NEW BISHOP Ukrainian Greek Catholics in the USA greet the religious leader By Ron Grossman, Tribune staff reporter Chicago Tribune Online, Chicago, Illinois, May 29, 2003

12.MOSCOW EXHIBIT CELEBRATES A SOVIET-ERA INTELLIGENCE AGENCY SMERSH, "DEATH TO SPIES," RUTHLESS IN UKRAINE SMERSH fought the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement SMERSH "acted very ruthlessly" in Ukraine, sometimes destroying villages that had helped the nationalists and sending the entire surviving populations to Siberia. David Holley, Staff Writer for the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, May 25, 2003

13. UK CHARTER FIRM IN AIR CRASH ROW Firm Brokered Hiring of Aircraft Belonging to Ukrainian Mediterranean Airlines. V. Gorbanovskyi, deputy director of UM Air, defends airplane. Passenger called home and said, "Pray for me, this airplane is shit." Giles Tremlett in Madrid, David Pallister in London The Guardian Newspaper Online, UK, Friday, May 30, 2003

This has been the best year since 1999 in terms of economic performance despite serious problems in the energy sector, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has told a news conference. Speaking about a political reform initiative he put forward, Kuchma said no constitutional changes will be made in violation of Ukrainian laws.

He also regretted that popular reformist Viktor Yushchenko had joined the opposition, adding that the opposition had the right to stage protests.

Ukraine's developing economic cooperation with the CIS does not hinder Kiev's European integration, Kuchma said. He also indicated that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko may retire because of old age and said he was worried by regional differences in Ukraine.

TO READ THE ENTIRE TEXT OF THE INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT KUCHMA ON UKRAINIAN TV CLICK ON:

http://www.artukraine.com/buildukraine/kuchma_boasts.htm

Energy markets are global. Supplies of oil and gas come from every corner of the globe - the Caspian, Russia, Middle East, Africa, South America and North America. Importers determine their energy sources by the price and quality offered, seeking the most competitive source for their needs.

Increasingly the quality of fuel and high environmental standards affect supply choices. To succeed in this international market, countries must be able to compete as suppliers and transporters and as efficient users of the energy they consume.

Ukraine is a player in this global market. The actions Ukraine takes in the coming years will fundamentally determine whether it plays this market to its advantage and secures a place as a European transit hub. There is much to build on. Ukraine is blessed with a wealth of natural resources, substantial domestic production potential and one of the largest oil and gas pipeline infrastructures in the world.

Due to its strategic location between oil and gas suppliers in Russia, Central Asia and the Caspian Basin and consumers in Europe, Ukraine is also a key transport country. Clearly. Ukraine has the foundation to ensure its own energy security and integrate politically and economically with Europe. With the right policy choices and a long-term energy Strategy. Ukraine has all the resources at hand for success.

TO READ THE ENTIRE IMPORTANT ENERGY PRESENTATION BY AMBASSADOR PASCUAL CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK:

http://www.artukraine.com/buildukraine/pascualsp5.htm

KYIV, Ukraine..May 30...AC Milan striker Andriy Shevchenko has been awarded Ukraine's "Merited Master of Sports" honor by the country's State Sports Committee, it was announced on Friday.

Shevchenko scored the decisive penalty in a shootout to give Milan a 3-2 victory over rival Italians Juventus in Wednesday's Champions League final.

"The Merited Master of Sports" is Ukraine's highest sports honor, a legacy from the Soviet era usually presented to Olympic or world champions.

The Dynamo Kiev teams which won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1975 and 1986 were the last Ukrainian footballers to receive this honor.

KIEV, May 31 (Reuters) - AC Milan striker Andriy Shevchenko heads a 27-man strong Ukraine squad named on Saturday for next month's Euro 2004 Group Six qualifiers against Armenia and Greece.

Ukraine coach Leonid Buryak also called up one newcomer, Shakhtar Donetsk midfielder Adrian Pukanych, for the games at home against Armenia on June 7 and away to Greece four days later.

Club Bruges midfielder Serhiy Serebrennikov will miss both games with a knee injury, while Shakhtar's Anatoly Tymoshchyuk is suspended for the Armenia match. Buryak has singled out the game in Athens as the most important.

"It will be crucial for us to do well there because that match will probably decide second place in our group," he said. "Anyway, I expect at least four points from these two games."

Ukraine and Greece have six points each from four matches, while the Armenians have four points. Spain lead the group on 10 points. Squad:

Goalkeepers: Olexander Shovkovsky, Vitaly Reva (both Dynamo Kiev), Dmytro Shutkov (Shakhtar Donetsk)
Defenders: Oleh Luzhny (Arsenal), Olexander Holovko, Andriy Nesmachny, Yuri Dmitrulin, Serhiy Fyodorov (all Dynamo Kiev), Olexander Radchenko, Volodymyr Yezersky (both Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk), Serhiy Popov (Shakhtar Donetsk), Vyacheslav Shevchyuk (Shinnik Yaroslavl)
Midfielders: Adrian Pukanych, Anatoly Tymoshchyuk (both Shakhtar Donetsk), Andriy Husin (Dynamo Kiev), Serhiy Zakarlyuka (Metalurg Donetsk), Serhiy Kormiltsev (Torpedo Moscow), Maxim Kalinichenko (Spartak Moscow), Olexander Gorshkov (Saturn Ramenskoye), Olexander Prizetko, Serhiy Snytko (both Chernomorets Novorossiisk), Denis Onishchenko (Hapoel Tel Aviv)
Forwards: Andriy Shevchenko (AC Milan), Serhiy Rebrov (Fenerbahce), Andriy Vorobei (Shakhtar Donetsk), Oleh Venglinsky (Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk), Andriy Voronin (FSV Mainz, Germany) (UMRG-ARTUIS)

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Leading Ukraine backers in the U.S. Congress have sent a letter to President Leonid Kuchma complaining that the arrest of a former high-profile agriculture official and steps to reimpose state control over the grain market threaten to derail key reforms and drive out international investors.

The letter signed by U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur and Curt Weldon, co-chairs of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, hailed the former Soviet republic's "major accomplishments" in privatizing much of the agricultural sector. But in the letter dated Thursday they also expressed "growing concern" that the "continued detention of a leading advocate of reform has had a chilling impact on market sentiment" among domestic and foreign business leaders.

The lawmakers also urged Kuchma to "take whatever steps necessary" to ensure an open, transparent agricultural market. They claim that some Ukrainian officials have begun lobbying for greater government intervention in grain markets to control prices after harsh weather wiped out the bulk of Ukraine's winter crop in some regions.

This month, prosecutors opened a criminal case against Leonid Kozachenko, who won the praise of business and Western governments for advocating market-based reforms as head of Ukraine's agriculture policy before being ousted in a Cabinet reshuffle in November. Prosecutors accuse him of abusing his office by allowing underpriced grain exports that cost the government US$283 million.

Prosecutors also claim Kozachenko received some US$282,000 in bribes from two prominent European companies while director of the Ukrahrobiznes concern prior to joining the government.

Kozachenko, who now heads a confederation of agribusiness organizations, has denied the charges. He has been in pretrial detention since March.

The case against him was among dozens opened after Kuchma ordered prosecutors to investigate corruption in the grain market that it claims caused a critical shortage of grain in Ukraine, once the Soviet Union's breadbasket.

Kaptur and Weldon pressed Kuchma to ensure that Kozachenko is "treated fairly and afforded his freedom if no evidence exists of wrongdoing."

Agriculture business leaders, reformist lawmakers and former Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh have claimed the charges against Kozachenko were trumped up to disguise the government's failure to implement key reforms or allow shady deals to go forward.

One of the world's largest grain exporters, Ukraine plans to import grain this year after severe weather destroyed up to 90 percent of the winter crop in some regions. (tv/bh)

Historical tragedies never disappear and are never forgotten. The terrible interethnic conflict between Ukrainians and Poles in Volyn, which claimed tens of thousands of human lives in 1943-1944 on two warring sides, was hushed up in this country for decades: even in the already independent 1990s, this subject seemed to be taboo.

It is the extreme zeal with which the Polish side brought the bloody Volyn events into focus that forced (alas, this is the right word) our leadership to more or less adequately react to this in the year 2003. All of us, Ukrainians and Poles alike, cannot possibly escape from the following series of extremely difficult questions that arise over the tragedy of sixty years ago.

Who exactly is to bear historical responsibility for a mass massacre of people? What are the historical roots of the tragedy? Who should apologize? What should the further course of Ukrainian-Polish relations be if historical truth is not to fall victim to cheap political expediency?

The Day's round table on the Volyn events was special in that the answer to these (and many other) questions was sought by people well known throughout Ukraine, individuals whose rich lifetime experience allows them to see the terrible events of the past through the most valuable prism, that of their own deeply personal and inimitable perception.

The interviewees are people born and raised in that long-suffering land, members of the Volyn fraternity, first President of Ukraine Leonid Kruchuk, People's Deputies of Ukraine, Academician Mykola Zhulynsky, Serhiy Shevchuk, Lieutenant General Oleksandr Skipalsky, along with former ambassador of Ukraine to Poland and great poet Dmytro Pavlychko.

TO READ THE ENTIRE TEXT OF THE VOLYN 1943-1944 INTERVIEW CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK:

http://www.artukraine.com/historical/volyn_trag.htm

KYIV, Ukraine, May 30, 2003...A group of 39 Verkhovna Rada deputies published an open letter in "Holos Ukrayiny" on 29 May to condemn the massacre of Polish civilians by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Volyn in 1943 (see "RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 4 March 2003), Interfax reported.

The letter criticizes alleged attempts on the part of some current politicians to defend those who "sullied their hands with the blood of women and children" 60 years ago as "immoral and exceptionally cynical."

Signatories included parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, Viktor Musiyaka (European Choice), Nestor Shufrych (Social Democratic Party- united), Taras Chornovil, and Yuriy Karmazin (Our Ukraine).

On 16 May, "Holos Ukrayiny" published a letter from a group of 33 predominantly right-wing lawmakers requesting that Poland abandon the quest for "one-sided apologies" for the Volyn massacre from Ukraine.

"To achieve mutual understanding, Poland needs to revise cardinally its anti-Ukrainian prejudices," the letter said.

That letter was signed by Hryhoriy Omelchenko, Levko Lukyanenko, Stepan Khmara, Yaroslav Kendzyor, and Andriy Shkil, among others. Polish and Ukrainian Presidents Aleksander Kwasniewski and Leonid Kuchma agreed in February to organize a joint commemoration of the massacre (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 14 February 2003). [JM]

Bromsgrove, Worcs, UK..May 30, 2003....Baltika Brewery, a Russian company, announced the opening of its first office in Ukraine follows similar new ventures in the former Soviet Union republics of Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The company stated such a move was designed to improve export sales.

The former Soviet republics represent a good alternative to the Russian market, which fell 5% in the first quarter of the year. The republics have sizable populations and a cultural affinity with Russia which assists marketing.

The Ukrainian market, with a population of 50 million, is currently dominated by Russia's second-largest brewer, Sun Interbrew Ltd., a unit of Belgium's Interbrew SA. Sun Interbrew owes most of its growth in sales volume and profit to Ukraine.

Baltika, Russia's largest brewer, is controlled by Baltic Beverage Holding, a joint venture between Carlsberg AS and Scottish & Newcastle.

Lviv, Ukraine.. Archaeological and reconstruction work on the Church of the Presentation, Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), was started in Kyiv's Podil neighborhood on 24 May 2003.

Archpriest Vitalii Kosovskyi, dean of Kyiv for the UOC-MP, who initiated the restoration of this ancient church some years ago, held a prayer service in gratitude for the beginning of the new archaeological and reconstruction work.

A church in this location is mentioned in ancient chronicles from the times of the baptism of Kyivan Rus in the 10th century.

The Church of the Presentation was destroyed in 1970, during Soviet times, but now the local Orthodox community has received permission for reconstruction. After archaeological research has been completed, the reconstruction of the church will begin. [www.orthodox.org.ua]

Polish News Bulletin......Polifarb Cieszyn - Wroclaw, a producer of paints, maintained its position as market leader in 2002. The company controls over 30 percent of the paint market in Poland, its sales revenues amounted to ZL607m and net profit was ZL14.5m.

Last year, Polifarb invested heavily to develop its distribution network and improve customer relations. It also increased export sales, mainly to neighbouring countries - Russia, Lithuania, Czech Republic and Ukraine.

Polifarb built a production plant in Ukraine, and hopes to gain 15 percent of that market. In 2002, the company's export revenues grew by 2.2 percent.

During a press conference, Polifarb's president announced the company has no plans for withdrawing from the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The call for shares, organised in March, was due to procedural requirements - changes in the ownership structure of Polifarb's strategic investor, the Sigma Kalon group.

The Ukrainian pro-presidential weekly 2000 has criticized a reply by the UK minister of state for Europe, Denis MacShane, to a letter the British National Union of Journalists, MPs and academics sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair regarding the case of the murdered Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Gongadze.

The minister said it would be wrong to contemplate Ukraine's membership of NATO or the European Union before Ukrainian journalists were given proper protection.

The paper responded that the British government was turning a blind eye towards cases of persecution against journalists elsewhere and accused it of a biased attitude towards Ukraine.

The following is the text of the article by Oleksandr Holychev published on 30 May in Russian under the title "MacShane's demarche" and the published by the BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English on May 30:

Let's leave aside the question of what the reason for it was. In March, for one reason or another, a group of British journalists and politicians wrote a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair about the investigation into the Heorhiy Gongadze affair. Whether the authors of the message expected a reply or simply wanted the subject of "freedom of the press in Ukraine" to stay in the media limelight for as long as possible (it must be said once again that the subject has already become "transnational"), the letter went unanswered for two months - until the question of Ukraine's possible membership of the EU and NATO was again on the agenda.

The reply to representatives of the BBC, the Sunday Telegraph, the Observer and eight British MPs was sent not by Tony Blair himself, but by Denis MacShane, the minister of state for Europe.

It transpires that Ukraine's main stumbling block on its way into the EU is still "freedom of speech". According to the minister, Great Britain will not give its blessing to our country's being integrated into European and international structures "until Ukrainian journalists are given proper protection". If we are to believe a report from the Interfax-Ukraine agency on 27 May, the Gongadze affair "is still a British policy priority".

To be honest, this "priority" status is more worrying than it is surprising. After all, the world knows of hundreds of high-profile cases involving not just journalists, but also the highest officials of various states, yet official London is in no hurry to include them in its policy priorities. So you can't help wondering whether it's just a question of one isolated journalist.

Why, for example, did the death of another Ukrainian journalist from a shot fired by an American tank at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel (and he was not the only one to die) not give rise to a similar reaction among British parliamentarians?

The same applies to the arrest in Basra of a correspondent from Qatar's Al-Jazeera TV, who was released after a stern warning and a ban on filming "until further notice".

Moreover, during the Iraq war, the Blair government also came into conflict with the British media when it demanded "favourable coverage of the war in Iraq" from them, and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw even accused a section of the British press of "a lack of patriotism that complicates the war in Iraq".

If no British protection, let alone justice, is envisaged in such cases, how is one to explain the latest demarche against Ukraine from the minister for Europe, Denis MacShane? (UMRG-ARTUIS)

Hamilton, Massachusetts......In early May, four Ukrainian teenagers said "goodbye" to their parents and traveled 12 hours from their hometown to the capital city of Kiev, where they boarded a flight to Paris. For all four, it was their first journey on a plane.

In Paris, they transferred onto a flight to Boston. From there, they were escorted to homes in Hamilton and Wenham, several thousand miles from their native country, where they spent the next month doing typical teenager things.

For the past month, those four high school students have attended classes and activities at the Pingree School. In addition, they had some extracurricular fun shopping at the North Shore Mall; attending a Red Sox game, eating pizza and Junction ice cream, making tacos, watching a film at the Omni Theater at the Science Museum, catching a musical at the North Shore Music Theatre; and spending a weekend in New York City.

Their visit was organized by Pingree physics teacher Eva Sacharuk, a Wenham resident who is originally from Ukraine. She emigrated to the United States in 1950 after her family had been detained in a "displaced persons" camp in Austria after World War II.

Ukraine, a country in the southeastern part of Europe, bordered by Russia, Poland, Turkey and the Black Sea, became an independent state with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Previously, the land was known to most as "the Ukraine," a flat fertile republic in the western Soviet Union.

The four students, all 15- and 16-year-olds, are classmates from Buchach, a town of 14,000 in western Ukraine. Sacharuk describes Buchach as a historical town with 16th century churches and buildings, and the ruins of a castle in the center of town.

As they experienced the routines of American life - school, carpooling, shopping at the grocery store and eating meals - the cultural similarities and differences became apparent. "They noticed much more discussion in the classroom, but not as much lecturing," said Sacharuk.

Svetlana Nevistyuk, 16, said that in Ukraine her days at school are packed with more classes, but her after-school experience is more subdued than her new American friends. Ukrainian students take approximately 16 subjects at a time, including English, English literature, Russian, biology, physics, chemistry, geometry and algebra.

"Here, students go to the teacher," said Nevistyuk. "In my school in Ukraine, the teacher comes to us. We stay in one class all day."

Nevistyuk added that unlike Americans, Ukrainian students do not participate in an array of after-school activities and sports.

"We have a physical training class in school, and sometimes we play basketball." In addition, Nevistyuk added that most families do not have computers at home.

She uses the computer at school but, when she is at home, she communicates with her friends with the telephone. There is no emailing or instant messaging, means of communicating that have become the norm for young people in America.

Nevistyuk and her three travel mates learned as much from their host families as they did during the school day. Nevistyuk spent her first two weeks with the Bishop family in Wenham, and her second two weeks with the Riley family in Hamilton.

The Bishops, whose twins, Kyle and Drew, are in the ninth grade at the Pingree School, took Nevistyuk to Rockport, Singing Beach and "Mame," a musical at the North Shore Music Theatre.

Julie Bishop described Nevistyuk's first walk on a beach. "She started walking in the sand, and had never felt that sensation before. The sand was warm and she was just wide-eyed, like a 2-year old," said Bishop. "She loved finding the shells, things we take for granted because our kids have always been to the beach."

The Riley's, whose daughter, Paige, attends Pingree, also took Nevistyuk to the beach, in addition to going on shopping trips to Newbury Street, Fanueil Hall and the nearby malls. They also went to the Science Museum in Boston, Woodman's of Essex and Fire and Ice, a restaurant in Boston.

Like American teenaged girls, Nevistyuk loved shopping. She bought pants for her triplet sisters at Marshall's, and said she has loved most of the American foods she has eaten, especially pizza, sandwiches and pasta.

Nevistyuk said she misses borscht, sauerkraut and sour milk, three foods she eats regularly at home. She described sour milk as similar to sour cream, only not as heavy.

However, not all American food was equally appreciated. Host families soon learned that in Ukraine, broccoli is served only to farm animals.

The Kacoyanis family of Wenham, whose son, John, attends Pingree, hosted Vasyl Melnyk. They took their guest to a Red Sox game, to the Science Museum, a Chinese restaurant and miniature golfing.

"The time he showed the most emotion was at the Red Sox game," said Dr. George Kacoyanis. That evening, Nomar Garciaparra hit a home run and Melnyk instantly became a fan of the Sox shortstop, buying Nomar T-shirts for himself and his niece. Kacoyanis said Melnyk also went to see the musical, Mame.

"It was probably his first professional theater production," said Melnyk's American host. "Where he lives in Ukraine, it is two hours to drive to a movie or a theater, so it's a rare event to go to either. He thoroughly enjoyed it." Kacoyanis also took Melnyk to see the recently released action film, "The Matrix Reloaded."

"He kept his ticket stub to show all of his friends. Vasyl [Melnyk] said that movie wouldn't open in Ukraine until the fall," said Kacoyanis.

The Ukrainian students also noticed American families drive much more than people in their homeland, where most people walk to their destinations. Melnyk's parents, both physicians, walk several miles to work and back each day. "It has made me realize how hectic our lives are - by seeing it through someone else's eyes," said Jane Riley.

"Our expectations for entertainment are so much higher. With Svetlana [Nevistyuk], we can do something simple, like go to the Junction for ice cream, and it's fun. Here in America, we feel we have to fill every moment," she added.

Kacoyanis added, "I think life in Ukraine is a little slower. Here, we're on tight schedules." None of the three host families regretted hosting their visitors from far away.

"We thoroughly enjoyed the experience," said Bishop. "You realize the commonality of people throughout the world. That kids are kids and teenagers are teenagers throughout the world."

With pomp, circumstance and a little old-fashioned hospitality, Ukrainian Greek Catholics welcomed their cardinal Wednesday in the first of a series of ceremonies that will culminate with the installation of a new bishop for Chicago.

As Cardinal Lubomyr Husar came through the doors of St. Nicholas Cathedral, children from the parish school dressed in traditional costume sang their welcome to the worldwide head of their church, a lesser known form of Catholicism but the ancestral faith of many residents of Ukrainian Village.

George Matwyshyn, president of the parish council, presented Husar with a loaf of bread and a bit of salt, age-old symbols of welcoming a guest to a family table.

"In the hearts of our people," Matwyshyn explained, "he is the ultimate father of our church."

Husar came to Chicago from his headquarters in Ukraine to ordain a new bishop at an installation service to be held Wednesday. Until the selection of bishop-elect Richard Seminack, Chicago's Ukrainian Greek Catholics had been without a bishop for more than two years.

Considering the scale of the eparchy, as a diocese is known in the Ukrainian church, it is little wonder it took so long to find a suitable candidate. Seminack's new flock is spread out over a vast territory that stretches west from Chicago to Hawaii. It has an estimated 15,000 churchgoers, about 5,000 of whom live in or around Chicago.

Seminack, who is currently pastor of a church in Carnegie, Pa., won't arrive in Chicago until just before his installation. Honored as he was to be chosen for his new post, Seminack notes that it is difficult for him and his longtime parishioners to take leave of each other.

"For 20 years, I've married them, baptized their kids and buried their grandparents, so it's become like a family," said Seminack, 60, speaking by phone. "For them it's sweet and sour: They're pleased to see me elevated to bishop, sad to see me go."

Seminack will make his headquarters at St. Nicholas, in a Near West Side neighborhood dotted with churches that mark the convoluted religious history of the Old World homeland from which the inhabitants and their ancestors came.

A few blocks away is St. Volodymyr Cathedral. It is an Orthodox Ukrainian Church, whose parishioners were until recently separated from Seminack's and Husar's followers by centuries of bitter religious antipathies. But in a new spirit of ecumenicalism, representatives of the Orthodox Ukrainian community are expected to participate in the festivities accompanying Seminack's installation.

Ukrainian Village has so many churches because Ukraine sits on the ecclesiastical fault line that, in the Middle Ages, separated Christianity into a Western and an Eastern variety. The former centered on Rome and was headed by the pope. Its liturgical language was Latin. The latter centered on Constantinople (now Istanbul) and was headed by the patriarch of Constantinople. Its liturgical language was Greek. And after the pope and patriarch quarreled in the 11th Century, relations between the two churches soured.

Afterward, though, some Orthodox churches, as the Eastern variety are known, rejoined the Catholic Church. Known collectively as the Uniate churches, they are a kind of ecclesiastical hybrid. Their worship services are Eastern in feeling, their liturgy more mystical. But their clergy, like Cardinal Husar, report to the Holy See at Rome.

The largest of those Uniate Churches is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic, which Husar estimates to have more than 3 million adherents in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has an estimated three times as many members.

In the 16th Century, parts of Ukraine came under the rule of the king of Poland who, as a Catholic, sponsored the reunion of his Orthodox bishops and priests with Rome. The name "Ukrainian Greek" is said to stem from another historical accident, reports Matwyshyn.

"In the 18th Century, the Hapsburg ruler Maria Teresa had Ukrainian Catholics among her subjects," Matwyshyn said. "She knew we stemmed from the Greek church, so she called us `Greek Catholics.'"

After World War II, the Soviet Union took over parts of western Ukraine and tried to extinguish the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, noted Husar, who was born there but was brought to America where his parents took refuge from totalitarianism in the 1949. Priests were forced to swear a new allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church, of whose loyalty Stalin felt more assured.

Clergy who refused were sent to Siberia. Others went underground--in a rerun of early Christianity's catacombs days--until its legality was restored after the fall of communism in the late 1980s.

"Our church survived because people knew they could find a priest when they needed him to perform a marriage ceremony in secret," said Husar. "It shows you not just how strong their faith was, but also a facet of human nature: If you say people can't do something, it inspires them with the resolve to do it anyway." (UMRG-ARTUIS)

MOSCOW -- In Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels, villains like Dr. No and Goldfinger worked for SMERSH, a diabolical Soviet intelligence agency.

Readers could believe the organization was a real part of the KGB, or they might assume it was fictional -- particularly because it bore such a deliciously evil-sounding name.

SMERSH -- short for Smert Shpionam, or "Death to Spies" -- was real enough, right down to the spooky name. But it existed only for three years, and predated the KGB, according to a special Moscow museum exhibit celebrating the 60th anniversary of its birth. As portrayed in the displays and by guides, it had a glorious history outwitting Nazi intelligence during World War II.

Organized at the initiative of the agency's elderly veterans, the exhibit contains nothing to offend them. It received favorable coverage in Russian media, including nationwide television news. Its very existence reflects an increasingly tolerant view of the hard-nosed intelligence organizations that once inflicted terror and political suppression -- but also a degree of discipline -- on Soviet society.

This is, after all, a country whose highly popular president started out as a career KGB man and later headed the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the domestic successor to the Soviet-era KGB. After the tumultuous upheavals and rampant corruption that followed the fall of communism, many Russians think that maybe the old days of enforced order weren't so bad after all.

Also, it is easy to portray SMERSH as a more noble and patriotic organization than either its predecessor or successor agencies.

According to the exhibit and Russian scholars, SMERSH -- formed from a security and counterintelligence directorate within the notorious NKVD secret police -- existed under its own name only from April 19, 1943, until May 1946, a period of Soviet military glory.

"They're celebrating SMERSH deliberately," said Sergei Kozhin, head researcher at the Russian Armed Forces Museum, which is presenting the exhibit through the end of May. "That's a way to distance ourselves from the political terror that was happening in the Soviet Union before World War II and after World War II. The idea of this exhibit is to commemorate those people who were fighting against fascism during the years of the war."

About 7,000 SMERSH agents were officially listed as killed in the war, primarily in combat operations, and an additional 4,000 missing were presumed dead, Kozhin said.

While the exhibit projects an impression of nonideological objectivity mixed with patriotic fervor, critics say that it ignores SMERSH's darker role in terrorizing citizens viewed as enemies of the Soviet state.

"SMERSH was not controlled effectively by anyone, and they could do whatever they wanted," said Vadim Telitsyn, a scholar at the Institute of Russian History, who wrote a book about the agency. "They could arrest anybody of their own free will, from a simple peasant to an authority figure. The word 'SMERSH' terrified even Soviet officers who had fought the war."

The name "Death to Spies" was personally chosen by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Telitsyn said. "One of the leaders suggested it should be called, 'Death to German Spies,' " he said. "But Stalin logically replied, 'Why only German spies?' "

Whatever its shortcomings, the exhibit still opens a fascinating window on a once-secretive slice of Soviet history that through Ian Fleming and Bond now has a place in Western pop culture.

Most of all, the displays celebrate SMERSH's "radio games" against the Nazis' Abwehr military intelligence service, which Kozhin said parachuted thousands of agents behind Russian lines. Items they were said to have used, such as a cigarette bearing a coded message, are on display.

"At the beginning of the war, German spies who were caught were as a rule shot on the spot," Kozhin said. "That was a big mistake." SMERSH soon realized that it could use captured spies to lure more spies into traps, he said.

"The captured German agents were forced to take part in these radio games," Kozhin said. "It was a game because these agents or double agents would be sending messages to their headquarters as if they were at large, like they're expecting new paratroopers to land, money and weapons. It was really a game for SMERSH because the Germans usually fell for these tricks and would send all that was requested -- but SMERSH would be the final destination."

Captured agents also sent false reports back to their headquarters, claiming, for example, that the Russians were preparing an offensive in one sector while the attack was really to come elsewhere.

Also on display are documents relating to the discovery of Hitler's remains in his Berlin bunker and the destruction of all but a few key fragments.

Fragments of Hitler's jaw and a piece of his skull were sent to Moscow, Kozhin said. But the rest of his remains, according to the exhibit and Kozhin, were taken by SMERSH and held in East Germany by the agency or its successors until 1970, when the Politburo authorized then-KGB Director Yuri Andropov to carry out their destruction.

The remains were burned in a field, ground to powder and thrown in a river, according to the exhibit. The jaw fragments are kept in the FSB's central archive, and the piece of skull, bearing a bullet hole, is stored at the Central State Archive of Russia, Kozhin said, and is not part of the exhibit.

The exhibit also praises SMERSH's role in fighting a Ukrainian nationalist movement that Kozhin said was not defeated by Soviet armed forces until 1954. "Ukrainian nationalists managed to kill about 30,000 Soviet administrators and party members, but they themselves lost about 100,000 people in the battles with the Red Army," he said.

On display, labeled as items used by Ukrainian nationalists, are devices that could do James Bond proud: a pen that could fire a bullet, a finger ring with a special compartment for invisible ink, and a comb broken in half that could be matched up by two agents, each carrying one piece, to confirm each other's identity.

Anyone sympathetic to Ukrainian nationalism -- or even balanced history -- might well be angered by this part of the exhibit. Telitsyn, the history scholar, said that SMERSH "acted very ruthlessly" in Ukraine, sometimes destroying villages that had helped the nationalists and sending the entire surviving populations to Siberia.

SMERSH used "terrorist methods" such as poison and bombs to kill Ukrainian nationalist leaders in German and Austrian exile, he said, adding, "I don't think the exhibit tells anything about that."

He also criticized its failure to touch on the mistreatment by SMERSH of returned Russian prisoners of war, who were often treated as suspected spies.

SMERSH was also responsible for carrying on a practice begun early in the war, when special "stop-retreat" units were placed immediately behind the Russian front lines with orders to shoot any soldiers who tried to run from battle, Telitsyn said.

During the Soviet era, "this entire story around SMERSH and state security was not available to the public," Kozhin said. "Everything was secret. And the attitude toward state security bodies in this country was very negative for the first 10 years of Russia being a democratic state."

But now "democracy has degenerated into anarchy," with the result that "society is less critical about the former regime in general, and its leaders as well," he said. (UMRG-ARTUIS)

LONDON, A British company found itself in the middle of a row about how NATO charters civilian aircraft yesterday, as controversy grew over the deaths of 62 Spanish peacekeepers in an aircrash.

Chapman Freeborn, a London charter firm with offices in 19 countries, brokered the hiring of the Yak-42D aircraft belonging to Ukrainian Mediterranean Airlines (UM Air) that crashed into a mountain near the northern Turkish city of Trabzon in fog.

Chapman Freeborn had been contacted by NATO's maintenance and supply agency to supply an aircraft for the trip from Kabul in Afghanistan to Spain. Spanish newspapers have reported that peacekeepers boarding the aircraft were so concerned that one, Commander Fernandez Martinez, rang home and told his wife: "Pray for me, this airplane is shit."

The prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, and defence minister, Federico Trillo, were booed and called assassins by relatives when the coffins arrived at a Madrid air base on Wednesday. Lord Robertson, Nato secretary general, visiting Spain yesterday, declared: "Nobody was cutting corners, nobody was trying to do it on the cheap, nobody was putting lives at risk."

The Norwegian and Finnish defence ministries, however, admitted they had stopped using UM Air. "We take safety seriously, and that's why we stopped," a Norwegian military spokesman said.

"The type [Yak-42D] was not instrumental in our decision to cancel the contract, but rather the level of maintenance the company showed," said a Finnish spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Kimmo Salomaa. He added that few other companies were willing to fly to Afghanistan.

Volodymyr Gorbanovskyi, deputy director of UM Air, said the 15-year-old plane's navigation, communications, and safety systems had been renovated in June 2001 and a further check was made last month.

"It was not just a cosmetic upgrade, but a full technical modernisation to European standards," he told the Associated Press.

Ukraine's transport ministry, however, has publicly alleged "serious violations" in UM Air's certification, licensing, and reporting procedures - though a spokeswoman for its air transport department later said the ministry's information had been wrong. Mr Gorbanovskyi also denied these allegations.

A spokeswoman for Chapman Freeborn confirmed yesterday that the company's Frankfurt office had chartered the Yak-42 for Nato and said it had used the airline before.

But she declined to comment on the details of the charter. "That is a matter for Nato," she said. "But when we charter a plane we always do a thorough check for insurance and safety reasons."

An MoD spokeswoman said yesterday it used 10 charter brokers but chartered only "EU- or US-registered airlines" for transporting people.