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Friday April 25, 1997

World Report

MOSCOW (JTA) -- Iran has made a first advance payment to Moscow for the construction of a nuclear power plant in the Islamic republic, according to Russia's deputy nuclear power minister.

Since last year, Moscow has been planning and building the facility that will house a nuclear reactor at Bandar-e Bushehr, an Iranian city on the Persian Gulf.

In recent days, Iran made the first payment toward the cost of building the reactor, a move slated to begin in mid-1998.

The cost of building the entire facility has been estimated at $800 million by Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry.

Russian sales of nuclear technology to Iran have angered Israel and the United States, which say Iran intends to use the Russian technology to make nuclear weapons.

Moscow has rejected the accusations, saying that the technology could only be used for civilian purposes.

Anti-fascist measure opposed in Russia

MOSCOW (JTA) -- Russian Jewish leaders and anti-fascist activists are voicing deep concern over the lower house's opposition to a measure to bar fascist propaganda.

The bill was rejected recently by Communists and ultra-nationalists, who make up more than half of the Parliament's lower house, known as the Duma.

Some of the measure's opponents described the bill as "Zionist."

A Jewish community activist in Moscow, Alla Gerber, said she doubted that the Duma would ever pass an anti-fascist bill.

The Communist and ultra-nationalist majority "will never pass such bill because they are scared of the very term `fascism,'" said Gerber, a former member of the Duma.

Gerber helped draft an anti-fascist measure in 1994, when such a measure was first proposed.

Death camp models of LEGOs displayed

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (JTA) -- The Danish LEGO Group is dissociating itself from a Polish artist who recently created an art exhibit of concentration camps he built from LEGO bricks.

He also fabricated and sold four imitation LEGO kits to construct model concentration camps for as high as $7,200, according to LEGO.

"We find the creation of these to be unconscionable," said Peter Eio, president of LEGO Systems Inc., the North American division of the Denmark-based LEGO Group.

Warsaw artist Zbignew Libera approached LEGO-Poland in 1996 requesting bricks to build what he described as "houses and hospitals," the toy company said.

The artist's models of generic concentration camps were first seen in Warsaw in late 1996. A formal showing opened at Copenhagen's Galleri Faurschou in February, and ran until March 22.

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