Mrs Vike-Freiberga, 71, the former Latvian President and the Baltic state's first post-Communist leader after independence from the Soviet Union, attacked the EU for operating in "darkness and behind closed doors".

It was a very important test about the government loyalty to NATO and the country's foreign policy, as it concerned the first post-communist leader of Italy and the first military action formally ouside a UN mandate.

Many Bulgarians find his humble style refreshing after watching a succession of post-Communist leaders bankrupt the country before trying to reform it while well-connected criminals got rich.

The writer, who exposed the crimes of the Stalinist system but also criticised Russia's post-Communist leaders, will avoid burial alongside former Kremlin leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Boris Yeltsin in the Novodevichy cemetery.

Many of the Stasi documents relating to prominent post-communist leaders like Mr. Stolpe disappeared from Stasi files in the waning last days of communism.

Ever since Mr. Yeltsin took power in 1991, becoming as the first post-Communist leader of Russia, United States officials have kept up their public support for him.

The notion of a popular revolution also serves to validate the claims to power of the post-Communist leaders, especially Mr. Yeltsin.

Last month Mr. Lukashenko became the first post-Communist former Soviet leader to sign a union agreement with Moscow and now boasts of having czarlike powers.

Imitating post-Communist leaders from Poland to Bulgaria, he has announced plans to sell off state-owned industry.

Economic and political analysts here said today that the fall of Mr. Mazowiecki, Eastern Europe's first post-Communist leader, was in some measure the result of asking any nation to swallow extraordinarily bitter medicine.