News bulletin, 5:00 PM, August 22, 1995

The first in Russia demonstration in solidarity with Bosnia was held today near the mission of European Union in Pevcheskij lane. Evgenij Krasnolobov with further details.

Organizer of the demonstration is the Transnational Radical Party. This party was created in Italy in the 50s, currently it acts in many countries of the world and it is registered by UN with consultative status. In Russia first transnational Radicals appeared in early 80s among dissidents and Jewish refuseniks. Since 1989 there is existing a full power Russian branch of this international party.

Transnational Radicals Party stands on left-liberal positions, in the spirit of such an internationalism of the beginning of our century. It advocates the united Europe, fights against every form of nationalism, fascism and racism.

Two months ago the party launched an appeal to adopt the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina into European Union. Activists of the party throughout the world, including Russia, collect signatures in support of this request. Moscow Radicals do it every day on Pushkin square. On August 22 they decided to hold a demonstration near the mission of the Commission of European Union in Moscow in order to hand over signatures already collected and to express their request. Nikolaj Khramov, leader of Russian transnational Radicals, says.

/KHRAMOV'S VOICE/

We demonstrate for adhesion of Bosnia to the EU, the European Union. Why? What is going on now in Bosnia - and it's time to understand it for Russian public opinion, as well as for public in the West - it is not a civil war. It is a real aggression of a state against another internationally recognized state, having internationally recognized borders - I mean Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. We want international community - European Union, NATO more concretely - to have all the reasons to accept this war not merely as a war occurring in Europe, but rather as a war going on the territory of the European Union. This is exactly a message laid down in our proposal: to defend territorial integrity and population living on the territory of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. And naturally, we are strongly against different plans of dividing.

If these people were living together during centuries, in one quarter people were living side by side many centuries - four years of war much mean, but nevertheless I suppose many centuries of living nearby in peace mean much more. /END OF TAPE/

Demonstrators were about a dozen. First, they simply stood, and when they begun to be frozen - they started to walk in single file along the embassy's fence. Militia didn't hinder the demonstration. The representative of the Commission of European Union Andreas Papadopoulos received two delegates of demonstrators, has listened to their wishes, but said however, that question of accepting new states into European Union could not be solved so simple.

Evgenij Krasnolobov, Open Radio, 2x2