Ukrainian Interior urges media not to politicize situation arnd

DONETSK, August 3 (Itar-Tass) - Ukrainian Interior Ministry has urged
the mass media and public quarters to refrain from politicizing the
situation around the change of itinerary of the pastoral trip that the
Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill is making to this country.

The ministry's public relations department rebuked the media for
hastily drawing a conclusion that the change of the Patriarch's route
might be linked to some kind of threats to his security during his stay in
the Western regions, known for the presence of strong nationalistic
sentiments there.
"The decision on changing the route of the trip was taken by Russian
representatives who are responsible for ensuring the Patriarch's
security," the ministry said in a statement.
"No emergency events that might do damage to this visit have been
registered," it indicated.
The ministry claimed that the police fully control the situation and
are capable of maintaining law and order in all the places Patriarch
Kirill is going to visit.
In the meantime, Dr Vladimir Legoida, the chief of Moscow Patriarchate'
s information department said Sunday the route had been changed pending
what he called "persistent recommendations and reports from local
authorities."
"We're acting in compliance with recommendations from Ukraine's
Presidential Administration and Presidential Secretariat," he said.
His Holiness Kirill's West-Ukrainian itinerary was to begin in the
city of Rovno where he was supposed to fly from Sevastopol, the Crimea,
Sunday afternoon. However, the Ukrainian authorities issued a strong
recommendation to him to stay away from visiting Rovno, saying they could
not guarantee his security there.
Rovno is known to be a mainstay of forces that support the dissenting
Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to Kiev Patriarchate, which aspires to
the status of Ukraine's only canonical national Orthodox denomination but
is not recognized as a legitimate Church by the global Eastern Orthodox
community.
The jet carrying Patriarch Kirill and the attending delegation landed
in Kiev instead. From there, an automobile escort took His Holiness and
delegation members to the Holy Trinity convent in the town of Korets.
The convent has the status of a stauropegeon - a monastic organization
or community reporting directly to the supreme hierarch of a Church, or
the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia in this case.
Patriarch Kirill is expected to lead a liturgy there Monday morning.
"Patriarch Kirill regrets the fact that he could not come to Rovno but
he hopes that his willingness to meet the clerics and laymen in that city
will materialize some time in the future," said the Most Reverend
Hillarion, the chairman of Moscow Patriarchate's department for external
relations.
Nothing has been reported so far about any other possible changes in
the itinerary. His Holiness plans to spend three days in the Western
regions of Ukraine, to visit the cities of Lutsk and Vladimir Volynsky and
to end this visit in the town of Pochayevo, the place where one of the
most famous monasteries of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church is
located.
The religious rift in Ukraine is particularly strongly felt in the
Western regions that are known for especially high religiosity typical of
all the denominations present here, as well as for a tense standoff
between the disciples of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to Moscow
Patriarchate, on the one hand, and various dissenting factions of Eastern
Orthodoxy and non-Orthodox denominations, on the other.
Patriarch Kirill will not visit the nationalistically-minded regions
where the popular hostility towards the canonical Orthodox Church and
Orthodoxy in general is especially high.

.Earthquake measuring 4 pts registered on Kamchatka's coast.

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, August 3 (Itar-Tass) - An earthquake
measuring 4.1 points on the open-ended Richter scale has occurred on the
eastern coast of the Kamchatka peninsula, officials at the Far-Eastern
Regional Center of Russia's Ministry for Emergency Situations and Civil
Defense told Itar-Tass.
There have been no destructions or victims.
The shock was registered Sunday afternoon. Its epicenter was located
27.5 kilometers to the south of the town of Klyuchi, Ust-Kamchatsky
district.
Emergency situations official in the Kamchatka territory said no
ground motions had been felt in the territory's population centers.
Earlier reports said a quake measuring 4.3 points
was registered in the small hours of Monday in the central part of
the Kurile Islands.
Tectonic cataclysms with the seismic focus lying 60 kilometers below
the surface of the Earth produced crust tremors in the areas where the
uninhabited islands of Simushir, Urup and some others are located, the
Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences said.
Over the past three days, about ten earthquakes have been registered
in other parts of the Kurile chain, on the Commander's Islands in the
Bering Sea, as well as in the Sea of Okhotsk and East-Siberian Sea.
The most powerful quake measured over 5.0 points on the Richter scale.
The shock was registered to the east of the town of Nikolskoye on the
Commander's Islands.
According to the data provided by Far-Eastern seismic researchers,
none of the ten quakes produced the risk of a tsunami, since the
super-have can be incepted only by the tectonic shocks measuring no less
than 7.0 points.
No victims or destructions have been reported.
-0-kle