COUNTYWIDE : Lagomarsino Takes Trip to Mongolia
After flying more than halfway around the world, Rep. Robert Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) was expected to arrive Monday in Mongolia for a weeklong visit.
The nearly 9,000-mile trip is aimed at helping the remote Asian country develop democratic institutions and a free-market economy, said John Doherty, the congressman’s spokesman.
Mongolia, a landlocked nation of 2 million people between China and the Soviet Union, held its first free elections in June. Communists remained in power, but they are interested in democracy and capitalism, Doherty said.
“They are about at the same point where Eastern Europe was 1 1/2 years ago,” he said.
The trip is sponsored by the National Republican Institute for International Affairs, which Lagomarsino chairs. He and two institute officials will spend the week in Ulan Bator, the capital, meeting with democratic opposition leaders to offer advice, Doherty said.
“He was in Moscow in December doing the same thing,” Doherty said, adding that Lagomarsino has served as an election observer in Bulgaria and several Latin American countries.
The Mongolia trip is no junket, Doherty said. “How many people go on junkets to Ulan Bator?”
Lagomarsino had to fly to Frankfurt and Moscow before catching one of the thrice-weekly flights from the Soviet capital to Ulan Bator.
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