Visiting Gorbachev-era
diplomat praises slain
Russian popular leader

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

The killing of Russian political leader Galina Starovoitova was political, says Gennadi Gerasimov, former high-ranking Russian diplomat and visiting fellow at the East-West Center.

"In Russia today, hired killings are common -- unfortunately so -- but usually these killings concern business transactions," Gerasimov said. "It looks like killing is one of the ways of doing business in Russia today. But this case is different. Galina had no business interests."

Gerasimov, chief foreign affairs spokesman for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev during glasnost, had words of praise for Starovoitova, gunned down in St. Petersburg on Friday.

"My impression of her was extremely positive," Gerasimov said. "She was straightforward, frank, sincere -- you name it -- and extremely intelligent."

Gerasimov said he met her first in Lisbon in 1992, when he was Russian ambassador to Portugal.

At this time, "the Russian press discussed her as a possible future minister of defense. It was very much in the news because we never had a civilian minister of defense, not to mention a woman," he said. "But of course, it did not materialize."

Portuguese military people were anxious to meet her, just in case, Gerasimov said.

Gerasimov met Starovoitova again several years later at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where she was a visiting professor, at a conference on the 1958-1964 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

"At that time, a group of Russian physicists came for a conference," Gerasimov said. "One of them (had seen) Galina on TV many times because she was politically active and got a crush on her. They married later."

A year or so later, Gerasimov and Starovoitova met by coincidence in Boston where they had a mutual friend and all had dinner together.

As a deputy in the Russian parliament or Duma, Starovoitova represented both her party and home district in St. Petersburg, Gerasimov said.

"Because she was very talented with sound bites with one liners, she was often on our TV."

Gerasimov recalled she allied herself with President Boris Yeltsin early in his ascendancy. She was one of the co-founders of the Democratic Russia party, he said.

"Later, she and Yeltsin drifted apart because the majority, if not all, of those who supported Yeltsin in the beginning now are his political enemies," mainly because under Yeltsin a system of crony capitalism appeared in Russia, he said.

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East-West Center to
update image to fit post-
Cold War times

By harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

The East-West Center, in facing the 21st century, looks to a far different world from 1960, when the center began.

Charles Morrison, who became center president in June, told the East-West Center Association on Friday that former Gov. George Ariyoshi had it right in 1997 when he said: "If you think you've seen change, you haven't seen change yet."

Continuity remains a necessary hallmark as cooperative study, training and research continue as important center missions in this changed world, he said.

Speaking briefly to about 200 at the Hale Koa Hotel, Morrison stressed that in fostering understanding between North America and the Pacific and Asia, the center must shape its image to fit the post-Cold War era.

"I think we will provide an East-West Center that has a good definition and a more valid and up-to-date program," he said.

"The East-West Center by itself is one big community, and it's going to take all of us working together to make a new and vital center for the 21st century," Morrison said.

Morrison, 54, a native of Billings, Mont., came to the center in 1980 and divided his time between the center and Japan until 1992 when he essentially permanently located at the center.

The annual meeting also featured an Outstanding Service Award to Puongpun Sananikone, 53, a Laos native who came to the East-West Center as a grantee in 1964 and is now president of Honolulu-based Pacific Management Resources.

In accepting the award, Sananikone said many former East-West Center grantees now hold important positions throughout Asia.

Sananikone credited this to their cross-cultural learning at the center.

"It's to them I share and dedicate this honor," he said.