BRITAIN TO HELP UKRAINE CLOSE CHORNOBYL. The British and Ukrainian governments on 23 October agreed that London will send British experts to help Kyiv close the Chornobyl nuclear power plant by the year 2000, ITAR-TASS reported. The memorandum of understanding, signed in Slavutich, also calls for Britain to supply some 200,000 pounds toward delinking the Chornobyl plant from the Ukrainian electric power grid.

YELTSIN ON TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM TRANSDNIESTER. Yeltsin told a press conference in Chisinau that he is ready to do whatever the Moldovan authorities say: "If you say 'now,' we withdraw [our troops from the Transdniester] immediately. If you agree to wait two to three months, we will postpone the removal till the situation is stabilized," Infotag reported. Moldovan presidential adviser Anatol Taranu told the news agency that although the summit ended without the signing of a document on the Transdniester, the meeting will "eventually have a favorable impact" on the process of finding a settlement. He said the absence of Transdniestrian leader Igor Smirnov from the summit (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 23 October 1997) was proof of Tiraspol's reluctance to work within a legal framework and its attempts "to play backstage politics." Taranu also said Presidents Yeltsin, Petru Lucinschi (Moldova), and Leonid Kuchma (Ukraine), agreed that Russia must play a more active role in the settlement.

The 15 October decision of the Crimean parliament to make Russian the official language of the region highlights the difficult position in which the Crimean Tatars find themselves. Because the Crimean Tatars form only a minority in the local parliament, they could not block the measure; instead, they simply abstained. And because of the complex political history of the area, the Crimean Tatars are likely to face a dismal linguistic future unless they take a series of actions soon.

For most of the post-World War II era, Russian has been the dominant language on the peninsula. The ethnic Russians there have always spoken Russian. Owing to Moscow's Russianization policies, even indigenous ethnic Ukrainians generally have gone to Russianlanguage schools and now speak Russian more often than Ukrainian in public, even if they learned their national language at home.

The situation of the Crimean Tatars with regard to language is even more serious. Deported to Central Asia by Stalin in 1944, the Crimean Tatars did not have access to schools in their own language there or even when they first began to return to the peninsula. The Soviet authorities in Stalin's time refused to recognize Crimean Tatar as a separate language and did not allow the publication of a newspaper in Crimean Tatar until 1957 or a journal in that language until 1980.

As a result, many Crimean Tatars now speak Russian far more often than they use their own language. Some younger Crimean Tatars do so because they have never been formally instructed in the language. At present, for example, there are only a handful of Crimean Tatar language schools in the Crimea, and there are none at all in Uzbekistan, where the majority of Crimean Tatars still live.

Many older Crimean Tatars who know the language well and speak it at home increasingly have found it either easier or even necessary to use Russian in the workplace and in other public functions.

Unless something is done soon, the situation may deteriorate beyond the point of no return for the Crimean Tatar language. Fortunately, there are three steps the Crimean Tatars can take to avoid the death of their language.

First, the leaders of the community should encourage all Crimean Tatars to speak their language. To that end, the leaders should always use Crimean Tatar themselves when they are acting in an official capacity.

Second, the Crimean Tatar leaders should insist that the Crimean parliament employ Crimean Tatar translators so that the Crimean Tatar members can use their language rather than being forced to speak Russian in order to be understood.

There are plenty of graduates of the Crimean Tatar literature and language department of Simferopol State University who could perform this function. Consequently, if the Russian-dominated parliament refuses to agree to this step, the Crimean Tatars can argue that the rejection of their proposal is politically motivated and they can then appeal to the European Union or other international bodies.

Third, the Crimean Tatars should insist that their national language rather than Russian or Ukrainian should be the exclusive language of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis (assembly). Once they take that step, they should also make sure that they prepare news items in Russian so that the ethnic Russian population of the region will not decide that the Crimean Tatars are using their language in order to conceal some broader political agenda.

Obviously, the Crimean Tatars will find it hard to accomplish those goals. Resistance by local Russians and Ukrainians is certain to be great, and the Crimean Tatars themselves remain divided on this issue, with many of them viewing the language question as secondary to their political goals.

But in fact, the language question is central to the survival of the Crimean Tatars as a nation. Unless the Crimean Tatars are able to maintain their own language, they will find it difficult to maintain themselves as a people or to gain recognition by local authorities in Crimea or further afield.

The Russian decision to make Russian the official language in Crimea thus forces the Crimean Tatars to act or to concede defeat. Those Crimean Tatars who argue that it is more convenient to use Russian now and who oppose making the language issue a major one are sending the wrong message to everyone concerned.

Indeed, they are perhaps without recognizing it raising the white flag of surrender of their national cause.

For most of the post-World War II era, Russian has been the dominant language on the peninsula. The ethnic Russians there have always spoken Russian. Owing to Moscow's Russianization policies, even indigenous ethnic Ukrainians generally have gone to Russian-language schools and now speak Russian more often than Ukrainian in public, even if they learned their national language at home.

Many older Crimean Tatars who know the language well and speak it at home increasingly have found it either easier or even necessary to use Russian in the workplace and in other public functions.

Indeed, they are perhaps without recognizing it raising the white flag of surrender of their national cause.