NTV Minsk Correspondent Pavel Selin’s Open Address to “Seven Days” Weekly :: Charter'97 :: News

Distinguished editor-in-chief of the informational-problematic bulletin “Seven Days”!

As reads the original status of your weekly periodical (informational-problematic) you indeed have problems with information. To be more precise, with checking the authenticity of your information. Let me just remind you of the article by N.Amursky “Feel sorry for profession”.

The material mentions my report about the publication of the Belarusian version of Saparmurat Niyazov’s book “Ruhnama”. Mr.Amurskt writes: “It goes without saying that the NTV channel didn’t just highlight the information but also ridiculed it. My dear colleague somehow missed the fact that the news, voiced by him, isn’t really news. In August last year the book got published… in the homeland of our colleague – in Russia, in his native Russian tongue. And not only there! But also in Great Britain, Turkey, Japan, Arabic countries, being translated into many languages. However, the NTV program paid little attention to these facts.”

Another excerpt from Mr.Amursky’s article: “In Belarus planes don’t crush on the heads of the people, houses never get blown up, while theatre viewers aren’t taken hostage.”

Mr.Amursky, believe it or not but I will never change my poor, war-thorn Russia with crashing planes and hostages (though it really tries to democratize) for a “quiet” country, in which thousands claim indignation and demand death for public enemies, where the journalists get at best imprisoned for their convictions and where the political prisoners go missing. Where everything depends on the mercy and will of ONE person. Indeed, I do feel sorry for the profession, as your article’s heading goes.

I wish you luck, sirs, in your heavy informational-problematic activities!

Pavel Selin, NTV special correspondent in Belarus.

Baghdad Takes Interest in Belarusian Machinery Supplies
The delegation from Baghdad, headed by the city’s mayor Adan Abed Khamed, visited on Thursday the Minsk car-building plant MAZ. “Mediafact” was told by the director general of the Minsk company Valentin Gurinovich, that in course of their conversation with the delegation members, the latter took great interest in the shipment of Belarusian machinery to Iraq.

According to him, the Iraqi guests were astonished by the industrial capacity of MAZ plant. In particular, said the director of the company, “they never realized that we manufacture on the plant’s premises all different types of machines, including the fire-fighting ones”.

As noted by Gurinovich, the delegation members promised that upon their return to Baghdad “they will submit a request to the Ministry of trade of Iraq in order to purchase some types of the machinery, manufactured at MAZ facilities”.

He said that at the moment the company supplies no machinery to Iraq. Although there have been signed agreements and received UN commission’s prohibition to the shipment of over 700 machinery units, the contracts’ fulfillment was halted due to the situation development around Iraq, underscored Gurinovich.