Latvian Minister Sacked over Plans to Join Pro-Nazi Parade

Latvia's environment minister is being sacked for planning to take part in a march by veterans who sided with the Nazis against the Soviets in World War II, the prime minister's office said Friday.

"No minister has ever attended this event, so it is important the dismissal happens before it takes place, not afterwards," Andis Blinds, spokesman of Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma, told AFP.

Einars Cilinskis' dismissal will take effect later Friday, he added.

Veterans of the Latvian Legion have staged a parade in the capital Riga every March 16 since Soviet rule ended in Latvia in 1991.

The date marks a failed 1944 battle to repel the Soviet Red Army, paving the way to nearly half a century of occupation.

Jewish groups, Moscow and Latvia's large ethnic Russian community -- accounting for quarter of its two million citizens -- see the parade as glorifying Nazism because the Legion, founded in 1943, was commanded by Germany's Waffen SS.

The veterans insist they were trying to defend their small homeland against Soviet occupation.

Straujuma, who took office in January, has banned her ministers from joining this year's parade.

There is concern in Riga that it could provide fodder for Russian state media alleging a "rebirth of fascism" in Ukraine and other eastern neighbors as Crimea votes Sunday in a controversial referendum on joining the Russian Federation.

Some 140,000 Latvians, mostly conscripts, fought in the Legion. Roughly a third died in combat or Soviet captivity.

Another 130,000 sided with the Soviets, of whom almost a quarter were killed, many in battles with Legion compatriots.

Moscow seized Latvia under a 1939 deal with Berlin carving up eastern Europe, and later deported 15,000 Latvians to Siberia.

Germany drove out the Red Army when it ripped up the pact and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

Some Latvians hailed the Nazis as liberators. But they brought their own terror, killing 70,000 of the country's 85,000 Jews, aided by local collaborators.

The Soviets recaptured Riga in October 1944 and held on to the country until the communist bloc crumbled in 1991.