HELSINKI ACCORDS WERE MORE BENEFICIAL FOR USSR, THAN WEST - YELENA BONNER

MOSCOW. Aug 1 (Interfax) - The Helsinki accords signed by the leaders of European countries, the United States and Canada exactly 25 years ago were more beneficial to the Soviet Union than the West, human rights activist and widow of Andrei Sakharov Yelena Bonner has opined. Bonner has belonged to the Moscow Helsinki Group promoting the implementation of the accords in the Soviet Union since the Group's formation on May 12, 1976.

"The West got nothing but an illusory promise to observe human rights that the Soviet Union got around perfectly well," Bonner told Interfax ahead of a trip to the United States. As an example, she recalled the Helsinki Groups in Moscow and the Soviet republics that saw almost all their members arrested.

In her opinion, she said, the West still has not learned the lessons of the past, otherwise it would not have allowed the war in Chechnya.

"The West had many mechanisms for that--financial, diplomatic and mere mechanisms for contacts," Bonner said. "And now the West in the person of, say, the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers is acting conciliatory and treacherously with regard to the principles of democracy in general and European democracy in particular," she said.

Bonner also said that the right of nations to self-determination is a priority in the world today. "I believe that the right to self-determination, whether UN countries want it or not, will duly materialize in the 21st century, and not only just be heard," she said.