[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 93 (Tuesday, July 14, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H5412]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             RUSSIAN MATTERS RELEVANT TO THE UNITED STATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, last evening I gave a 
keynote speech at the John F. Kennedy School of Harvard University to a 
group of 25 Duma members from Russia, parliamentarians who were here 
for 2 weeks of orientation in the ways of our operation of the American 
democracy, our Congress and our system of government. It was an eye-
opening experience, and I wish them well as they spend the next 2 weeks 
learning more about America and our democracy.
  Working in Russian issues as I do, I have two other facts I would 
like to bring to the attention of my colleagues. One is a very positive 
development in Russia, and we have all watched with a great degree of 
concern as this emerging democracy over the past several years has 
evolved in giving people additional rights and freedoms.
  One of my good friends, Aleksei Yablokov, who has testified twice 
before Members of this Congress and our subcommittees on issues 
involving the environment, nuclear contamination and small nuclear 
bombs, unfortunately had an incident where one of the Russian 
publications, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, wrote an article about Mr. Yablokov 
calling him a traitor because he came before the U.S. Congress and told 
in a very open setting about his concerns that Russia had, in fact, 
built small nuclear suitcase bombs, that these bombs might not be 
accounted for.
  Mr. Yablokov sued this publication and just recently, in fact last 
week, the Moscow Municipal Court ruled in favor of Aleksei Yablokov, 
ordered the newspaper, the Gazeta, to print a public retraction by the 
9th of September, 1998, and to pay Yablokov 30,000 rubles because of 
this libel case. It is a credit to the Russian system that an 
individual with the integrity of Aleksei Yablokov can sue and 
successfully win compensation for wrongs committed by the Russian 
media, and for that I applaud Russia.
  The second issue concerns me, Madam Speaker, because during the 
recent break one of my good friends, a member of the State Duma from 
the our home is Russia party, Lev Rokhlin was assassinated. He was the 
Chairman of the Duma Committee on National Security. I had met with him 
on numerous occasions, and while I in many cases did not agree with his 
political positions, I respected him. He was a retired Russian general, 
someone who was known for committing himself and his political 
leadership to support for the troops, for their quality of life.

                              {time}  1300

  Lev was also one of the most outspoken critics of Boris Yeltsin. In 
fact, last year he called publicly for Yeltsin to be impeached. For 
these calls, Lev was removed from his position as chairman of the Duma 
Defense Committee. He was involved more recently in investigating 
whether or not Russian oil companies took money for use in the 
Caucasus, to be used to buy weapons, instead of being used for the 
people and for the Russian government.
  There are suspicions that Lev Rokhlin was assassinated because of his 
outspoken comments. The official line out of Moscow is that Lev was 
killed by his wife, a wife who shot him in a fit of anger. But Lev's 
children have publicly come out and said that is not the case, that Lev 
was assassinated, and that his wife had to say what she did because she 
also was told she would be assassinated.
  In addition, Yuri Markin, a lawyer that worked with Rokhlin, said 
that he believed that there was an assassination attempt on his life 
the same night Lev Rokhlin was killed. Mr. Markin claims Lev was 
assassinated because he in fact was revealing things that were going on 
inside of Russia that were not legal and that in fact involved 
organized crime.
  I encourage, Madam Speaker, the Russian government to fully 
investigate, as Boris Yeltsin has promised, the unfortunate and 
untimely death of Lev Rokhlin, so we can, as we have in the case of the 
environmentalists winning the money from the slanderous article by the 
Russian newspaper, so that we can have peace of mind that Lev Rokhlin 
was not killed by some organized criminal element in Russia because of 
what he was saying and because of the job that he was performing as a 
member of the State Duma.
  The Russian people understand this issue. In fact, at Lev's funeral 
last week over 10,000 Russian citizens came out in force. Most of them 
have a suspicion that Lev was in fact assassinated by forces other than 
his wife.
  I would ask our administration to lend its support to my call for the 
Russian government to have a full accounting as to the circumstances 
and facts surrounding the death of Duma Deputy Lev Rokhlin.

                          ____________________