Word: ruutel
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...following afternoon some 5,000 demonstrators filled the tiny square in front of Tallinn's pink-and-white Toompea Palace, the Estonian seat of government. It was a Russian-speaking crowd, carrying banners calling on workers to DEFEND SOVIET POWER and demanding the resignation of President Arnold Ruutel. When the protesters broke through a locked gate into the palace courtyard, Prime Minister Edgar Savisaar put out a radio call for help, crying, "We are being assaulted. This is a coup attempt." Crowds of Estonians rushed to the square and pushed the Russians...
Mikhail Gorbachev does not like waiting. After trying several times to reach Estonian President Arnold Ruutel by telephone last week, he was in no mood for small talk when he finally got through late Tuesday evening. The Soviet President told Ruutel that he had "lost his temper" over the Estonian parliament's decision two weeks ago that declared "the state supremacy of the Soviet Union to be illegal" in the republic. What exactly did that mean? Gorbachev demanded. If the Estonians no longer recognized the Soviet constitution, what law was operating...
...Ruutel had a ready response: Estonian law. Displeased, Gorbachev called the decision "improper" and summoned the Estonian President to Moscow immediately to explain himself. When Ruutel declined, the Soviet leader turned tough. If the declaration was not rescinded, Gorbachev warned, Moscow would impose the same "regimen" there as in rebellious Lithuania. Ruutel replied that Estonians understood the consequences of their actions...
...gauntlet was thrown down in another Baltic rebellion against the Soviets that could further complicate superpower relations. Even as Eduard Shevardnadze and the Bush Administration were trying to muffle Lithuania's impact in Washington, Estonia was setting off on a similar course of defiance. As Ruutel told a group of visiting TIME editors in Tallinn last week: "We understand the concern abroad that we are, perhaps, too bold in our demands and are undermining Gorbachev's position. But the interests of the superpowers should not be advanced at the expense of small nations...
...change of signal came too late to prevent most of the session's 37 speakers from sniping at the Baltic state. While Estonian President Arnold Ruutel watched impassively from the dais, his republic was accused of "creating a hotbed of tensions." In his own presentation, Ruutel repeated demands that Estonians be allowed to decide what form of parliament they wanted. There should be no place in the new laws, said Ruutel, for "formalistic texts that do not take into account the specific differences and demands" of each region...
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