Dear fellow countrymen in Estonia and in the outer world,

The TV and radio programmes say that on the last day of the year I am supposed to appear before you with a message. A message - that of course sounds impressive. Actually I just want to wish you a happy New Year, to shake your hand and to look you in the eye. And of course to thank you for all the numerous good wishes you have sent to Kadriorg. Christmas mail from both this country and abroad was abundant, and it brought real joy for Christmas. To share that joy with you -- this is what I want to do now. It doesn't matter that the greetings were sent here: actually they belong to you. The greetings are addressed to the Republic of Estonia, thus to the people of Estonia. Last year the mantelpiece could hold all the Christmas and New Year cards. Not any more this year. I arranged them for you before the Christmas tree here and hope at least you can see how many they are. The number of Estonia's friends in the world is growing, and we all have reason to be pleased at it.

I would like to add something that was not mentioned last year. In the Internet you and the whole world are welcome to Kadriorg's Home Page, complete with our Guest Book. There you will find my weekly schedules, my speeches, opinions and addresses that have not made their way to the press, and I find your letters there. Fifteen thousand people from all the counties of Estonia, all countries and all parts of the world have visited the Kadriorg Home Page. It is a fine example of how modern technology helps enhance democracy. I was particularly moved by a pre-Christmas letter from Peter Hargrove. I had met him by chance in 1967 when I was on my first visit to East Berlin. He and his pals were young volunteers of the Kennedy Peace Corps on their way back from India to the United States. We spent the day together, and in the evening they returned to West Berlin behind the Wall. Of course we talked about Estonia, only about Estonia. Now, thirty years on, a message came from him by e-mail - - a greeting to all of us. He repeated a sentence I had said to them on departure: ''I come to this wall here to gasp for a breath of freedom.'' Peter wrote: ''I have thought about this sentence perhaps a thousand times.'' This example made me realize that no seed sown in the world of people gets lost. Just think: for thirty years this sentence had travelled with him all over the world and sown new seeds. Is that not a Christmas gift?

At present the world knows Estonia better than before the war. The English journalist Grey McIvor writes in the reputable journal ''The Economist'': ''Watch Estonia. No tariffs, no government deficit or debt, a flat-rate income tax of 26%, government spending at 27% of a GDP that will grow 6% in 1997.'' If Estonia is known better at present, it is to your credit, my fellow countrymen. It is your work, your pains, above all your will that has brought hue back to the country's face. It has not been easy. It has not appeared like manna from heaven. All our governments have been flayed by you, and not only governments. I also know that the cheerful assessment on Estonia by that English economist is likely to enrage quite a few people sitting at their Christmas trees now. Some are rich and others are poor. It was not so long ago that we all were at the same starting line, all of us equally poor on the average. Now social rifts are probably deeper than in pre-war Estonia. It makes me especially sad that the rapid development of Estonia has lashed most bitterly two groups that we indeed should lean on most of all. In the first place I mean old-age pensioners, in the country as well as in town, who have carried pre-war Estonia in their hearts and kept the younger generations awake with their faithfulness, memories and hopes. And in the second place I mean young families, whose children are to vouchsafe the future of the people of Estonia, the language of Estonia, the state of Estonia. One side holds the roots of our past, the other holds the fruits of our future, and as for ourselves, we are the connecting link in the chain that must not be broken.

And now I will speak of three things that worry me most of all.

First, alienation from power. People long for justice. An Estonian is extremely sensitive to greed and fraud. But justice will rule only when, and to the extent that, each Estonian wants to be a statesman. Not just a timeserver but a true statesman. The people and the state must have a goal towards which they would work from day to day. Every family can and must have different, normally diverging interests. But whatever unites us must overwhelm the differences. Ask yourselves if you do nurse a statesmanlike relation to the Republic of Estonia. Have you ever thought of that? In any case, it has to live within us. A people has to take pride in its state. The state has to do duty and bear responsibility for the past, present and future of the people. The aims and objectives of political parties vary with the changing world. A state, however, cannot live from hand to mouth, a day at a time. That would be the way Robinson Crusoe lived, who wanted to escape from his island. We Estonians, by contrast, have lived on our land for seven millennia. And we intend to go on living here as Estonians, in freedom and friendly harmony. This is why our parents and grandparents have established the Republic of Estonia in the first place. The outgoing year was an election year in Estonia. But it worries me that elections are becoming an aim in itself, indeed a thing in itself. Instead of doing real work, we are engaged in elections -- even today, even tomorrow. This is what worries both you and me. Democracy is not only about election returns. Above all, democracy is about the skill of behaving like a statesman in one's own state. This is an obligation of each and every citizen of Estonia. We are an adult people. The greatest misfortune of an adult people is an adolescent state.

The second concern. Within the past year the question of political ethics arose repeatedly. Estonians are a small people with rich historical experience. Everyone knows everyone else. We cannot afford cynical and irresponsible games of politicians where the good reputation of the Estonian state may be at stake, perhaps even the future of Estonia. Let no one try to explain it away by saying that even more cynical examples occur in the East or in the West. Let us reverse that justification: may a small and harmonious Estonia become a model for the East and the West, demonstrating how a small people is able to realize its dream. Our strictness has to address itself to the relationship between a person and the state, a person and a public servant. This is completely out of gear. Your assessment of the Estonian state is inevitably shaped by the public servant. Judging by the letters flowing to Kadriorg, by the experience of my acquaintances and friends as well as my own experience I can say that many a public servant is a disgrace to the Republic of Estonia. Rather than in the Republic of Estonia, they belong in the times of the French king Louis XIV where the public servant was sure that the state, it was he. Don't misunderstand me. Public servants in any state are as important as cogwheels in clockwork. However, it is not for the sake of cogwheels we procure a clock but to know the right time, to estimate our time accurately. Estonia is small, and maybe this is our advantage. We will only approve of such public servants as serve their country, in other words serve you, my fellow countrymen. An office desk is not a barricade between your worries and your state.

And the third concern. Can we be Estonians who are masters of their lives, or are we building a state where the citizen feels like a protege? This, curiously enough, is also a foreign policy question -- a foreign policy question in particular. We are back in Europe, where we are protected by a culture that from time immemorial has been our culture as well. Now we will have to write it out in legal form. We ought to understand that it is not the European Union joining Estonia, but Estonia joining the European Union, that it entails bigger responsibilities as well as bigger rights for Estonia. And that this final spurt requires the concentration of all our combined efforts, all our will, all our skills. The result is guaranteed only if every fellow countryman becomes conscious of this goal. And above all: that it is a choice between the past and the future. We still have plenty of homework to do in the economy, in legislation, in everyday attitude of mind which is occupied by silly jokes about the Euro-standards on bananas or condoms instead of a real knowledge of the European Union. Now is a time when along with the reconstruction of the Estonian state we simultaneously have to deal with tasks that developed countries are faced with. We have to talk to you frankly and daily about it, dear fellow countrymen, as well as about our mistakes and shortcomings, since it is the final spurt of the whole nation racing for the finish. Yet we have been able to spurt in the past and are able to do so now only if every one of us, including you in the so-called outlying areas -- be it in Mõisaküla or Sillamäe, Võhma or Võrumaa --, has a clear idea of the state's goal and if this goal coincides with that of your own. And what is more: we are pressed for time. Time is in short supply always and everywhere, but now in particular I can assure you that there is no corner in Estonia where spare time is lying about. When you wake up tomorrow morning, when it's New Year already, just tell yourselves: this is the first day of the remaining part of my life.

And now, dear fellow countryman, give me your hand so we can jointly step over the worries into the next year, into a slightly better Republic of Estonia that we shall recognize as our own even more than before.

Dear fellow countrymen, may the New Year bring you leanness and meanness, happiness, concord and peace!

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