Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga plans to visit both coasts of the United States during early April, including attending a conference devoted to the most influential women in the world.

The trip is to begin in New York, where Vīķe-Freiberga will attend the conference hosted by Forbes magazine, Aiva Rozenberga, the president’s press secretary, told Latvians Online. The president is scheduled to speak during the conference, the 7th Annual Forbes Executive Women’s Forum, which is set April 4-5 in the Palace Hotel in New York City.

Vīķe-Freiberga then travels to California where, among other activities, she is scheduled to meet April 9 with members of the Latvian community in San Francisco.

She returns to the East Coast where she is scheduled to speak at Harvard University in Massachusetts and meet with Michael E. Porter, Bishop William Lawrence university professor in the Harvard Business School.

Other business-related meetings during the U.S. trip also may be scheduled, Rozenberga said, but details are still being worked out.

The conservative party Jaunais laiks appears to be leading a swing to the right in balloting for seats on the Rīga City Council, while voters in Ventspils have overwhelmingly re-elected the controversial Mayor Aivars Lembergs.

Lembergs was one of 15,681 candidates running for office in the March 12 municipal elections across Latvia. Lembergs and the ticket he led, Latvijai un Ventspilij, got just over 72 percent of 11,447 votes cast in the city, according to provisional results reported by the Central Elections Commission.

In Rīga, Jaunais laiks looks to be pushing aside the socialdemocrats and a predominantly Russian party. Exit polling by the LETA news agency and the Rīga Stradiņš University suggests one in five voters picked Jaunais laiks. The leftist parties Par cilvēka tiesībām vienotā Latvijā (PCTVL) and the Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party, which currently control the city government, got 11.8 percent and 11.7 percent, respectively.

But news reports say that Jaunais laiks already has discussed forming a coalition with two other conservative parties, Tautas partija (TP) and Tēvzemei un brīvībai/LNNK (TB/LNNK). TP got 11.6 percent of the vote, according to the exit poll, while TB/LNNK got 10.2 percent.

Across Latvia, turnout was low, averaging 52.85 percent nationwide, according to the Central Elections Commission. Four years ago, almost 62 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

French President Jacques Chirac is among the latest European leaders to announce support for Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga’s decision to attend the May 9 Victory Day ceremonies in Moscow marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Although Vīķe-Freiberga’s decision in January continues to be a topic of debate in Latvia and in its Baltic neighbors, Chirac and other leaders have said it is important for all European leaders to be present during the ceremony and the summit meeting that is to follow. Victory Day commemorates the millions who died in defeating Nazi Germany during what Russia calls the Great Patriotic War.

Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, but Vīķe-Freiberga has said that for Latvia the end of World War II came only in 1991, when the nation regained its independence from the Soviet Union.

“France appreciates the tragic and complex nature of past relations between the U.S.S.R. and the Baltic peoples,” Chirac said in his March 10 letter. France never recognized the annexation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union, Chirac said, noting that the late President Charles DeGaulle refused to travel to Rīga during his 1966 official visit to the U.S.S.R.

Similar responses have been sent recently to Vīķe-Freiberga from other European leaders such as Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

Estonian President Arnold Rüütel and Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus both said March 7 that they will not attend the Moscow event. In all three Baltic nations, public debate has centered on whether the presidents should shun the May 9 celebration as a protest over the legacy of Soviet occupation, or whether it would be better to be present with other leaders in a show of European unity.

“Having already suffered severely during the war, we also had to endure, in the course of the ensuing peace, the persecution, deportation, and execution of thousands,” Rüütel said in a statement. “These sufferings affected almost every family in Estonia.”

Adamkus also declined Russian President Putin’s invitation to the event.

“Over 350,000 people, one tenth of Lithuania’s population, were imprisoned, deported to the Gulags or massacred in Lithuania,” Adamkus said in his March 7 statement. “The perpetration of such crimes continued in our country when the cruelest war in the history of mankind was officially over. The name of Lithuania disappeared from the map of Europe for five decades. And we probably would not find a single family in Lithuania who had escaped losses and terror.”

Vīķe-Freiberga’s acceptance of Putin’s invitation was not without bite. While she lauded the victory over Nazi Germany, the president also pointed out the effects of Soviet occupation.

“Under Soviet rule, the three Baltic countries experienced mass deportations and killings, the loss of their freedom, and the influx of millions of Russian-speaking settlers,” she said in a Jan. 12 statement.

The president also blamed both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union for Latvia’s fate, a view that has seen criticism by Russia.

“The thesis of an equal responsibility of the Soviet Union and Hitler Germany for this world tragedy and its victims can only be called absurd,” Alexander Yakovenko, spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Jan. 20 in a response to a reporter’s question.

Russia has refused to recognize that Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania were occupied by the former Soviet Union.

“(W)e see neither historical nor international legal foundations for the concept being put forward by the Latvian leader of the Soviet Union’s ‘occupation’ of the Baltic states in 1940,” Yakovenko said.