SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1005 (72), Tuesday, September 21, 2004
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TITLE: Tourism Budget Hits Low
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Just a year after St. Petersburg made international headlines as it celebrated its 300th anniversary, the city's budget for tourism industry development is on the verge of being completely eliminated in 2005.
 
Viktor Pakhomkov, deputy head of the city government's tourism committee, said the tourism development program is already drastically underfunded this year and could be wiped entirely in next year.
 "In 2003 the program received all of the 35 million rubles ($1.2 million) of budgeted funding, but this year we have so far received only 17 percent of what was earmarked for development," Pakhomkov said last week at a news conference. "The funding for this year is a modest 6 million rubles."
 Industry professionals are crying foul, warning that the tremendous efforts invested in advertising the city's tercentenary may turn out to have been in vain.
 Sergei Korneyev, head of the Northwestern branch of the Russian Union of Travel Industry (RST), said that rather than cutting promotion, efforts should be intensified in the wake of the series of terrorist attacks in Russia within the last month. 
 According to RST, the two plane crashes and the hostage tragedy in Beslan have already led to the cancellations of 20,000 foreign tourist groups planning a trip to Russia. St. Petersburg has had a 20-percent decline in inbound tourism.
 "St. Petersburg and its region are considered the safest regions in all of Russia," Korneyev said. "But a terrorist attack typically affects the entire country, and not only the area where it happens."
 Pakhomkov said many trips to St. Petersburg have been canceled at the last minute.
 "It's not only the Beslan tragedy," he said. "Russia has experienced a whole series of terrorist attacks that have scared tourists away. In the Okhtinskaya hotel alone, 30 groups - consisting of 30 to 40 people each - canceled their tours, citing fears of terrorist attacks as the main reason." Tourism revenues - including both inbound and outbound tourism - account for 10 percent of the city budget. This figure was calculated on the basis of taxes paid by tourism companies in the city.
 Tour cancellations have become a nationwide trend. 
 Irina Tyurina, spokeswoman for RST in Moscow, said Russia's tourism industry has already lost $400 million from the decline in inbound tourism. 
 If current trends continue, the fall off will reach 30 percent to 40 percent next month. Losses over the whole year may reach $ 1.8 billion, if the tendency doesn't improve, she said.
 "There is a pattern across the globe of a temporary decline in inbound tourism after a major accident or terrorist attack," she said. "Normally, things return to normal after a couple of weeks, but in Russia there has been a horrendous concentration of terrorist attacks. We have been through five attacks within 8 days - something frightening enough to launch a general trend for inbound tourism to go downhill."
 Valery Fridman, director of Mir Travel Agency, called the situation critical. 
 The future looks bleak for St. Petersburg if something isn't done fast and promotion campaigns on a grand-scale are not organized, he added. 
 "We are losing whole markets of foreign tourists," he said. "The next season could well become a catastrophe because the tourists make up their minds primarily judging by what they see on TV and looking at the prices. Our American clients, for example are gradually getting more interested in vacations in China as an alternative to Russia."
 Experts said that even without the wave of terrorist attacks, the city's tourism infrastructure leaves much to be desired.
 Ala Osmond, director of sales and marketing at the Astoria hotel listed visas, expensive travel costs and negative press coverage as the top three factors keeping more people from visiting St. Petersburg. 
 "The visa problem is not as bad as before, but expensive flight costs, lack of flights in peak periods and the increasingly negative international coverage of street crime, especially those involving authorities, do affect the situation," Osmond said.
 The largest number of complaints concerns safety. 
 Foreign visitors report frequently being attacked and robbed by people with a Roma appearance, skinheads and even the police themselves. The environment and poor transport infrastructure also account for many complaints. Many travelers are disappointed by the polluted air, endless traffic jams and poor quality of water.
 Korneyev said it is most important for the city to boost and promote its image as Russia's safest city. A special security council has been created this summer to confront crimes against foreigners. The council brings together members of city administration, the police and tourism industry professionals. 
 Pakhomkov said additional patrols of the city center have been organized to tackle the "gypsy problem."

TITLE: Car Tied To Bomb Plot Linked To Chechen
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - One of three cars intended for use in a series of terrorist attacks in Moscow may have been registered to the wife of a Chechen rebel, police said Monday. 
 
The man who told investigators where to find the car, Alexander Pumane, 38, from Pushkin near St. Petersburg, died on Saturday after apparently sustaining severe injuries while being held in police custody. 
 The car, a Volga sedan, was found by police parked near the VDNKh metro station in northern Moscow on Saturday morning. It was registered to Rauza Abdulkaderova, Russian media reported Monday, citing police investigators.
 A source in the security services said that a Rauza Abdulkaderova was in their database as the wife of a Chechen rebel, Vremya Novostei reported Monday. Abdulkaderova is still at large and being sought by police.
 Pumane, told police where to find the Volga after being arrested while driving a Lada at about 1 a.m. on Saturday near Patriarch's Ponds. Police said they found two land mines in the Lada and 200 grams of TNT under a seat. 
 "All of it was connected by a system of wires with an antenna and remote control," Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko told Interfax.
 A second car was found parked on Bogoslovsky Pereulok, also near Patriarch's Ponds. The nearest apartment building was evacuated early Saturday morning.
 "We were sleeping," a woman living in the building told NTV television. "They called us around 5 a.m.... They said there was a bomb threat. We got up, got dressed and went outside."
 The car was opened after explosives experts hosed it down with a water cannon, but no explosives were found inside, Ignatchenko told Interfax.
 Citing FSB sources, NTV reported Saturday that the bombs were set to target participants of a conference of mayors from cities around the world, who were to have visited the Battle of Borodino Panorama Museum over the weekend. A spokesman for the city police, however, denied this theory.
 A visit to the museum "was not on the itinerary of the forum's guests," the spokesman said, Interfax reported.
 Pumane died at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday at Moscow's Sklifosovsky Hospital. He was taken there by ambulance after being interrogated.
 Law enforcement officials initially said that Pumane had died of a heart attack, media reported. But a spokesman for the City Prosecutor's Office told Interfax on Sunday that an investigation revealed the suspect had died of bodily injuries.
 An FSB spokeswoman reached by telephone Monday declined to comment, but sources close to the investigation told Kommersant that Pumane, a retired navy serviceman, said during interrogation that he had arrived by car from St. Petersburg last week, parked his Volga near the VDNKh metro station and taken the metro to Kutuzovsky Prospekt in western Moscow to look up an old friend. 
 Having not found his friend's building, the investigator said, Pumane said he had gone to a currency exchange booth to change $100 into rubles. There he met a stranger who offered him $1,000 to park two stolen cars near the panorama museum on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, a road often traveled by President Vladimir Putin's motorcade, Kommersant reported Monday.
 A spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General's Office on Monday referred all questions regarding the case to the City Prosecutor's Office, which could not be reached for comment.
 An investigator who took part in the interrogation said that about 100 officers from various law enforcement agencies were in the central police precinct when Pumane was interrogated, Kommersant reported.
 "The criminal investigations department, the organized crime department, FSB guys - everyone wanted to be in charge. Everyone wanted to talk with him first," the newspaper cited the investigator as saying. "In the office where he was being interrogated, the police were literally sitting on top of one another. I couldn't see who beat him - or if he was beaten at all. 
 But he was constantly being taken somewhere. At some point he started to feel sick. He asked to have his handcuffs removed and fell down."
 Pumane died at around 8:30 a.m. Saturday at Moscow's Sklifosovsky Hospital after being taken there by ambulance at about 4 a.m.
 A doctor at the hospital told Izvestia it was obvious at first glance that Pumane had been severely beaten. "They took him immediately to the general emergency room, which says a lot," the doctor said, Izvestia reported. "If he had had a heart attack, they would have taken him to cardiology. The general emergency room means he had serious injuries."
 City police spokeswoman Lydia Lagotkina said Monday she could not comment on whether any police employees were suspects in Pumane's death, and an FSB spokeswoman similarly would not say whether any FSB employees were suspects.
 The owners of the two cars near Patriarch's Ponds have been located, Izvestia reported Monday. The Lada Pumane was driving when detained is registered to an invalid pensioner, Gennady Ugolnikov, whose daughter Lyubov told the newspaper he had sold it recently, but not to a man named Pumane. 
 The other Lada is registered to Alexei Vasilyev, whose apartment was searched by police Saturday. It was unclear if any incriminating evidence was found.
 City Duma Deputy Sergei Goncharov, a counterterrorism expert and former member of the elite Alfa commando unit, said he did not rule out that the explosives were connected to the recent wave of terror attacks.
 "I can't say 100 percent that this incident is connected to the other terrorist attacks," Goncharov said. "But taken together with what has happened in the last month, it's very likely that this is one more sign that a war is going on right now in Russia and that terrorists will continue using such means."
 However, unidentified relatives told Interfax on Monday that Pumane had been set up.
 "We are certain that Alexander was set up," the relative was quoted saying. "It's not possible that the descendant of a naval officer could be connected to terrorism. Sasha [Pumane] has left three children, the oldest of which is not yet 2 years old.
 "He was very upset by the events in Beslan, and took items to the Red Cross for the victims," the relative added. 
 "And now he is considered guilty of a most serious crime without being found guilty in a court."
 The relative said that Pumane had no life-threatening illnesses, was healthy.
 The relative said Pumane had been "deliberately" killed, the report said.

TITLE: Critics Lash Putin at Baltic Forum
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: HAMBURG, Germany - Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and former NTV general director Yevgeny Kiselyov last week lashed out at President Vladimir Putin for muzzling the free press and oppressing businesses. 
 
Speaking at the 6th annual Baltic Development Forum, Kasparov, chairman of Committee 2008 that was formed to back a liberal candidate in Russia's next presidential elections, began his speech by saying that in Russia "business is politics."
 "Today we have a puppet parliament and no independent media, Russia is slightly back in the past," he said. 
 "Russian programmers could have created Microsoft ... but Putin's regime is standing in the way.
 "In contemporary Russia there's no room for political opposition, but there's room for Stalinism," he added.
 Hamburg has recently become Europe's center for political opposition in Russia with critical opinions about Putin being expressed openly by both Russian and foreign politicians, media and celebrities. 
 Firstly, Hamburg University postponed its plans to award the president an honorary doctorate after widespread criticism. Secondly, the international forum of the St. Petersburg Dialog saw major human rights advocates and the German media charging Putin with violating basic human principles. 
 The Baltic Development Forum is supposed to be primarily about developing economic cooperation within the Baltic Sea region, and the political posturing by their compatriots irked many Russian participants who said they had attended in the hopes of attracting investments. 
 Kasparov said Putin is walking in Stalin's footsteps, speaking the old Soviet language, cracking down on the free press and oppressing commerce and business.
 Yukos paid more taxes than any other Russian oil company, but still it turned out to be the only oil company to be prosecuted, he added.
 Kiselyov, another member of Committee 2008 and now chief editor of Moscow News, said that the committee has prepared and filed a suit against the Central Election Commission, contesting the results of the last December parliamentary elections. 
 "There have been violations regarding the equal access of various political parties to media," he told the forum. "We've enclosed hundreds of hours of video recording of the television programs and a profound analysis of it, supporting our claim. 
 "It's absolutely obvious, that the United Russia party had overwhelming advantages over other parties, especially on state-controlled television channels. People were informed about United Russia activities far more often and in a far more positive way than about other parties, especially the liberal ones." 
 Kiselyov said that if the election commission takes no action, the committee will file a suit in the Constitutional Court, or at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
 Kasparov called on foreign business people, politicians and future investors to shun Russia until it comes clean about its shameful past - for example, it should stop defending the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. 
 However, he added, "we need to separate current Russia's administration from Russia's people - in Russia, as in most oil-producing countries, the majority of people don't seem to benefit from that ... The average Russian gets the impression of Europe from the length of the queue to the German Embassy... so they think that Europe is closing doors." 
 Kasparov's harsh speech got an immediate response from the audience. Russian participants, however, were rather negative about it. 
 Most of them, such as Slava Khodko, general director of the Center for International Cooperation and Andrei Terentyev, head of the commission on construction and architecture of the European Economic Chamber of Commerce, Trade and Industry in St. Petersburg, said that the forum should not serve as a political arena.
 Igor Yurgens, vice president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, also said that "if we [ foreign investors] boycott Russia, we'll make things worse, not better.". 
 To the majority of foreign participants, Kasparov's speech was a surprise, and the topic was discussed with great interest and concern beyond the session's time limits.
 Kiselyov, who gave an addressabout the media's influence on trade and investments in the Baltic Sea region, said Putin had tormented the free press, leaving no independent television, and only a scarce number of printed media that are not pro-government.
 In an interview, he added that Putin's recent decision to cancel gubernatorial elections should be a "personal insult to every Russian citizen, because it abolishes their natural democratic rights. Why, being a Muscovite, and even not always agreeing on what our current mayor does, should I accept yet another governor being appointed by the president?" 
 Kiselyov thinks that it is this decision that might provoke the creation of a healthy political opposition, because "Putin has laid a delayed-action mine under himself."
 "I do not think that all local elites will swallow this bitter pill," he said. "Even though both the political and business communities in Russia are humbled by what's happening now and they prefer to remain silent and inactive, Russia's future is far richer than what we expect it to be. There's lots of unexpected things happening in our country."
 One Russian participant, who declined to be named, said the criticism of Putin was too unqualified.
 "There's not only one right way and only one wrong way," he said. "We can't just say that Yukos was perfectly clean and Putin is an atrocious tyrant. There are more sides to political life than that.
 "That's why both an outright pro-Putin position and an anti-Putin one, like Kasparov's, seem a bit too biased from the beginning, and thus, not trustworthy. An act of politics is an act of combining different points of view, an act of balancing", he said.

TITLE: Gore Sees Sense in Boosting Power
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin's moves to strengthen his government after the recent wave of terrorist attacks are understandable, former U.S. vice president Al Gore said Friday.
 
The U.S. leadership took similar measures in a similar situation, Gore, a former Democrat candidate for president, said in a reference to the Sept. 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
 Although critics have been scathing about Putin's proposal for the Kremlin to nominate candidates for governor, Gore said that vesting a president with additional powers was usually a provisional measure. 
 Speaking at an international forum in St. Petersburg on Russian economic development, Gore added that he opposed all a country's important economic decisions being made federally, saying this slows the process of development.
 The U.S. and Russia should join forces in the fight against terrorism, he said. 
 "Russians may not agree with what we do in the Middle East, and Americans may think that Russia has not made the wise choice in Chechnya ... But in the face of this threat [terrorism] we won't be broken, we will stand together," Gore said
 Gore, who said he considers himself a friend of Russia, said he was outraged to learn about the Beslan tragedy.
 "My heart is very sympathetic and outraged because of the great atrocity in Beslan. America is with you. ... We stand with you not only because it happened to you but also we remember what happened to us three years ago... Those are crimes against humanity," Gore said.
 Newspapers in Russia enjoy more freedom than federal TV stations, he said.
 "I have an impression that Russian TV has more control from the state than newspapers," Gore said.
 "While here I read The Moscow Times newspaper and saw very critical articles about President Putin," he said. "It means those newspapers are free. However, TV traditionally has more influence on the mass population." Gore said he was "optimistic" about Russia's economic prospects.
 Russia's friends in America "want it to achieve high levels of prosperity," he said.
 However, for the economy to grow, the country should attract more investment, keep its capital from leaving the country, and strongly denounce corruption, he said. 
 "Corruption is like inflation," he added. "You will always have a little, but if it dominates it has horrible affect on the economy." 
 Gore used to co-head the U.S.-Russian Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission in the 1990s that aimed to improve the commercialization of Russian technologies by American companies.
 When Russia enters the World Trade Organization it will have to be more open both economically and politically, he said. 
 Gore said Russia should regulate monopolies so that they don't smother competition. 
 Though "the predictions about Russian as well as American investment do not always come true more foreign investment should be welcomed to Russia," he said.
 Gore praised Russia's young programmers, who won several of the recent World's Computer Championships, and who mainly come from St. Petersburg's leading universities.
 "This is an example of what wonderful potential exists in Russia," he said.

TITLE: Moscow: Exclave Lacks Space for Consulates
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Foreign Ministry says a shortage of suitable buildings is the reason why the German Consulate General in Kaliningrad has been unable to find permanent premises in the exclave.
 
The consulate opened in February with the blessing of President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but is operating from the Albertina hotel in the suburbs of Kaliningrad and has not yet issued any visas.
 The Foreign Ministry was answering an inquiry from Frankfurter Allgemaine Daily Friday.
 "This is linked to the fact that there is an acute shortage of office premises that could be used by a foreign diplomatic mission," the Foreign Ministry said in response to a query from the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
 "And it is not only the German Consulate General that has this problem; other diplomatic missions that have recently opened in Kaliningrad have it too," the ministry said Friday in a statement.
 In July, the Kaliningrad region government offered the German diplomatic mission space in the Moskva hotel - 18 rooms with a total area of 360 square meters and the right to change the lay out, the ministry said.
 The German consulate declined the offer. The regional government is looking for other premises, the statement said.
 Cornelius Sommer, the German Consul General in Kaliningrad on Monday said that the mission has inspected several suitable buildings, but cannot get approval to convert them into a consulate; the ministry appeared to be playing some sort of game.
 "Yes, they offered [the premises in the Moskva hotel], but it was too small, completely run down and nobody knows who really owns it," he said in a telephone interview. "And just like everywhere else, there is no permission from the Russian authorities that we can take it.
 "We have just had a real estate offer, another very suitable building," he said. "And after we looked at it the owner told us, that it is not available. So this was just a game." 
 In the meantime Kaliningrad residents who want German visas have to send their documents to the German Embassy in Moscow, which is located 1,200 kilometers away, almost twice as far as Kaliningrad is from Berlin.
 A little over 8,000 Kaliningrad residents applied for German visas in 2003, but the diplomatic mission expects the number to grow if Kaliningraders can get their visas just around the corner. The consulate plans to issue from 10,000 to 15,000 visas annually. "It must be said that the problem of locating the German Consulate General looks very similar to the one that Russian diplomatic missions are facing in Germany," the Foreign Ministry statement said.
 "For four years in a row Russia has not been able to open its consulate in Frankfurt on Main because the Germans are not ready to offer suitable real estate," it said. "This reflects negatively on services that the consulate would offer to German and Russian citizens that live in the region."
 However, Sommer said the search for a site for the Russian Consulate General in Frankfurt was not being hindered by German authorities, whereas in Kaliningrad it is the authorities that is the sticking point.
 "This looks like Russian side is trying to make a trade of this," he said. "This is nothing to do with Germans."

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Sestroretsk Birthday ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg suburb of Sestroretsk celebrated it’s 290th birthday on Saturday.
 
 The anniversary was marked by festive entertainment, sports and cultural events. Sestroretsk was founded by Peter the Great in 1714. The first building in the area was the Tsar’s residence, Northern Monplaisir. Shortly after the Sestroretsk Armory Plant, which used to be one of the country’s main arsenals was founded. Today Sestroretsk is one of the biggest resort and sanatorium centers in Russia’s Northwest. Policemen Detained n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Three police service security men have been detained for robberies, Interfax reported Friday. The detained officers had for a year used their after-hours duties as an opportunity to steal mobile phones, money and valuables in the city’s central district, Vladislav Piotrovsky, head of the St. Petersburg criminal police, was quoted as saying. All the officers have served in the police for more than 10 years. Girenko Investigation n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg police has collected a lot of information about the murder of the city’s scientist Nikolai Girenko, Interfax reported Friday. “We’ve got many leads on that case,” said Vladislav Piotrovsky, head of St. Petersburg’s criminal police. The leads being investigated include one printed by a Novgorod newspaper that Girenko was to appear as an expert witness in a court case concerning incitement of racial hatred in connected to the extremist organization Shults-88, which is on trial in St. Petersburg, and other leads. Piotrovsky said many searches have been carried out in connection with the case in Moscow, Novgorod, and St. Petersburg. Girenko, an ethnographer, was murdered in St. Petersburg on June 19. The killer, who has not been identified, rang the bell of Girenko’s apartment, and when Girenko approached, the murderer shot him through the door. Negotiate, Says Public n MOSCOW (SPT) — The majority of Russians think that the authorities should yield to terrorists’ demands to save hostages’ lives, Ekho Moskvy reported the Levada Sociology Center as finding. A poll conducted by the center showed that 59 percent of the respondents believed negotiations should be attempted. Only 32 percent said that the main purpose of handling a crisis should be to neutralize criminals even if that led to victims among hostages, the report said. Thirty-nine percent said they are sure the reasons behind the current wave of terrorism in Russia lie in the war in Chechnya. Only 12 percent said it could be a result of the intrigues from the West. A total of 27 percent believed it had to do with international terrorism, the report said. Baby Put Up for Sale n KALININGRAD (SPT) — Kaliningrad investigators have finished investigating a criminal case against a 36-year-old resident of the city who was trying to sell his fivemonth- old daughter for $5,000, Interfax reported Friday. The man lived with a female partner and her two daughters aged 11 and 13 years. The investigation found that the man tortured his daughter Sonya, who was born in September last year. He beat her, added alcohol into the baby’s food, and then made several attempts to sell her to his drinking companions for $5,000. However, the girl’s elder sisters tried to defend the child and informed the police. The criminal case has been sent to court. If the man is found guilty he will face a large fine or two years imprisonment. Thief Detained n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A thief who robbed an employee of the Finnish Consulate General in St. Petersburg has been detained, Interfax reported Friday. The Finnish citizen was robbed in July. The detained man had previous convictions and was unemployed. Estonian Monument n TALLINN, Estonia (SPT) — Leaders of parties in Estonia’s parliament have supported a proposal by the government to erect a monument to the people who fought for freedom and against “foreign powers,” Interfax reported Friday. The initiative was created after a monument depicting an Estonian wearing a German SS uniform, representing Estonian soldiers who fought the Soviet Union in World War II, was demolished. A working group has been created to develop a suitable monument to Estonian independence fighters. Russian Schools n TALLINN, Estonia (SPT) — Estonian Prime Minister Juhan Parts is in favor of preserving all Russian-language high schools in Estonia, Itar-Tass reported Thursday. “Citizens of the republic should have the right to be educated both in the state language and their everyday language,” the premier said Thursday addressing Russian-speaking members of the Republic party that he heads. The statement suggested that Russian schools in Estonia will not suffer the fate of their counterparts in Latvia where under secondary education reform most subjects are now taught in Latvian. 1,326 Hostages n MOSCOW (AP) — Teachers from the Beslan school have counted 1,326 people who were held hostage — a tally far higher than the latest official figures, Izvestia reported Saturday. The newspaper said teachers, working with a UN-affiliated refugee organization, looked at official class rolls at School No. 1 and then tried to recall if the students had come to school Sept. 1. Officials have yet to give a final definitive tally for the number of people held hostage. Throughout the crisis, authorities insisted that just 354 people were being held. Tolboyev Apology n MOSCOW (SPT) — Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin has apologized to former cosmonaut Magomed Tolboyev, a native Dagestani who complained about being manhandled by police officers earlier this month, Itar-Tass said Friday. Tolboyev said he accepted the apology and considered the incident settled, Itar-Tass said.

TITLE: Basayev Says Beslan Was His Operation
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the Beslan hostage-taking and four other recent attacks and defiantly threatened to carry out more.
 
Basayev said in a statement posted on a rebel web site Friday that the attacks-which include two plane bombings, a Moscow metro suicide blast and a Moscow bus stop explosion-were part of a campaign to end the Chechen conflict, start the withdrawal of federal troops from Chechnya and force President Vladimir Putin to resign if he "doesn't want peace."
 Putin, whose government had earlier linked the terror attacks to Basayev and rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, did not make any public remarks about the statement. He told a meeting of world mayors Friday that Moscow is "seriously preparing" to launch preventive strikes against terrorist targets.
 A day after the claim of responsibility appeared on Kavkazcenter.com, a Lithuanian-based web site that has previously published statements attributed to Basayev, Vilnius shut down the site's server.
 Basayev said his followers would strike wherever is deemed necessary to further the rebel cause.
 "The fight against us continues without any rules and with the connivance of the entire world, so we are not bound by any obligations to anyone and we will fight the way we find comfortable and beneficial," the statement said.
 "We do not have any options. We are offered a war and we shall continue waging it to victory, whatever is said about us or whatever labels are stuck on us," it said.
 Basayev said his sabotage squad Riyadus Salikhin, or Gardens of the Pious, had carried out the recent attacks and offered a version of Beslan events that differed significantly from the account given by authorities.
 He said federal forces had planned in advance the Sept. 3 storming, which resulted in hundreds of deaths, and that it had not been sparked by the accidental detonation of a guerrilla bomb in the school. He denied that the guerrillas had shot at fleeing children.
 Basayev said 33 guerrillas participated in the raid, which he called "Nord West," in a reference to Moscow's "Nord Ost" hostage-taking in 2002, for which he has also claimed responsibility. He said the hostage-takers included 10 Chechen men, two Chechen female suicide bombers, nine Ingush, three ethnic Russians, two Arabs, two Ossetians, one Tatar, one Kabardin, and one resident of the Irkutsk region city of Guran.
 Officials say there were 32 attackers and initially declared that nine were Arabs. They say all were killed but one man, who is being held in custody. They also say the 12 attackers who have been identified so far include Chechens, Ingush and one Ossetian.
 Basayev said he trained the hostage-takers for 10 days in a forest near the village of Batako-Yurt, 20 kilometers from Beslan, and identified their leader as "Colonel Ortskhoyev." Former hostages say the attackers had referred to their leader as "the colonel."
 Deputy Prosecutor Vladimir Kolesnikov said Friday that the leader had been identified as Ruslan Khochubarov, a native of Chechnya.
 Basayev said the guerrillas would have provided water for the Beslan hostages if Putin had publicly ordered an end to the Chechen conflict. Food would have followed if federal troops had started to withdraw from Chechnya. Children under the age of 10 would have been freed if Putin had resigned. Then, the attackers would have left for Chechnya with the rest of the hostages, Basayev said.
 He said the Aug. 24 bombing of two passenger planes, in which 90 passengers perished, and the Aug. 31 suicide bombing at the Rizhskaya metro station, which killed nine passers-by, were in response to the Chechen presidential election on Aug. 29, which Kremlin-backed candidate Alu Alkhanov won.
 He said the Beslan siege cost 8,000 euros ($9,700) and the plane bombings cost $4,000, while the metro blast and a bus stop explosion on Kashirskoye Shosse on Aug. 24 that injured four people cost $7,000.
 He denied having any links to Osama bin Laden, but said he would not turn down bin Laden's money if it were offered.

TITLE: Killer of Chechen Woman Budanov May Be Pardoned
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Ulyanovsk regional governor Vladimir Shamanov on Monday signed a pardon for Yury Budanov, a disgraced army officer who was serving a 10-year prison sentence for murdering a young Chechen woman in early 2000. 
 
Shamanov, whose troops gained a reputation for abuses against Chechnya's civilian population, was formerly Budanov's commander. 
 President Vladimir Putin will now consider Budanov's pardon. 
 The regional pardons commission granted Budanov's request for a pardon last week. 
 An investigation found that Budanov kidnapped Elza Kungayeva, 18, on March 27, 2000. 
 Her family, which has now gained political asylum in Norway, says he also raped her. Budanov's defense was that he had believed she was a rebel sniper.
 When he was sentenced Budanov was stripped of his military rank and decorations. Two appeals, including one to the Supreme Court, have previously been rejected. 
 The three-year trial of Budanov has been widely seen as a test of Moscow's commitment to punishing abuses by the military in Chechnya.
 His imprisonment months before a Chechen presidential election was viewed as a Kremlin attempt to win Chechen support for its peace plan for the separatist province, showing it was capable of taking a tough line on lawless officials.
 Interfax quoted the head of the Ulyanovsk pardons commission, Anatoly Zherebtsov, as saying that if Putin backed the recommendation, Budanov would also get back his military rank and awards. The commission's decision sparked outrage in Chechnya, where never-ending kidnappings and murders of civilians are widely blamed by the local population on the Russian military.
 "Whether in jail or freed, Budanov will remain a person who has committed a grave crime, which took the life of an innocent girl," Taus Dzhabrailov, the head of Chechnya's pro-Moscow proxy parliament, told Interfax. 
 <i>(SPT, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: Lithuania Closes Site
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: VILNIUS, Lithuania-Lithuania shut down on Saturday a Chechen separatist web site operating from the country and used by warlord Shamil Basayev to claim responsibility for the Beslan school siege.
 
The web site, Kavkazcenter.com, was blocked by the state security department and now displays a message saying that it has been temporarily disabled pending the outcome of a court decision on its legality.
 In the past, Chechen rebels, including Basayev and former separatist president Aslan Maskhadov, had used the site for statements on the conflict.
 A state security department spokesman said the site had been closed while an investigation is conducted to determine whether the site had been used to &quot;blatantly propagate material that promotes terrorism and ethnic strife,&quot; the Baltic News Service reported.
 The closing of the site followed a meeting Friday of the country's defense council, after which Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said it would be shut down. 
 <i>(Reuters, AP) </i>

TITLE: Four Detained After 'Pogrom'
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Four people have been detained following an attack on Caucasians traveling in the Moscow metro on Saturday, Interfax quoted the Moscow prosecutor office's press as saying Monday. 
 
&quot;The suspects are being questioned, and operations aimed at searching for eyewitnesses and other people involved in the crime are underway,&quot; the press service said.
 Passengers told Interfax that the gang beat the four victims late Saturday as the metro car traveled between the Aeroport and Dynamo stations on the green line, shouting, &quot;This is what you get for terrorist attacks!&quot;
 Police spokesman Alexander Matonin said up to 50 young people participated in the attack.
 Police initially said they were treating the attack as hooliganism, but Moscow prosecutors told Interfax on Sunday that they were taking over the investigation and had reclassified it as the more serious crime of inciting racial hatred.
 <i>
(SPT, AP)</i>


TITLE: Putin Reiterates Refusal to Hold Negotiations
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ASTANA, Kazakhstan - President Vladimir Putin on Thursday reiterated his refusal to negotiate with Chechen separatists, warning critics against applying what he called a double standard in the definition of terrorism. 
 
Putin was speaking at a meeting of presidents from former Soviet republics that was supposed to discuss terrorism Thursday. While the leaders agreed in principal to cooperate to combat terrorism, lingering regional disputes dominated the day of talks rather than discussions on steps to reduce the terror threat.
 Putin rejected calls that the Kremlin should negotiate with renegade Chechen leaders, such as Aslan Maskhadov, in order to bring peace to the region. 
 &quot;We believe that there should be not only the same definition of terrorism for everybody but we should also mean the same thing when we talk about it,&quot; Putin said. 
 &quot;The atrocities that we faced in Beslan give us the right to say that those events were organized by members of the 'terrorist internationale,'&quot; he said. 
 Several of the militants who seized the school in Beslan were reported to be Chechens, and Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev is suspected of having organized the raid.
 Putin noted that Osama bin Laden had twice offered European countries a truce if they withdrew their troops from Iraq. 
 &quot;But nobody entered into negotiations with him, because the methods and means he chooses make it impossible to maintain a dialogue with him,&quot; Putin said. 
 The leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States adopted a declaration condemning terrorism and agreeing to fight it together. But there was little discussion of what practical steps would be taken to combat the threat. 
 Uzbek President Islam Karimov said CIS countries were &quot;absolutely&quot; not ready to counter terrorism and criticized some nations for not being tough enough on extremist groups. 
 &quot;Is it normal that some countries allow opening of numerous mosques ... where they practically train people who bomb Tashkent?&quot; Karimov asked in an apparent reference to Uzbekistan's neighbors. &quot;Why can't CIS countries draw up a list of most dangerous extremist organizations and outlaw them?&quot; 
 The leaders showed little interest in Kazakh President Nursultan Nazar-bayev's proposal to restructure the CIS to enable it to better respond to security challenges. 
 Putin and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili got in a heated exchange over Georgia's separatist region of Abkhazia, which has strong ties with Russia and over which Georgia seeks to regain control. 
 Saakashvili urged countries to refrain from having contacts with Abkhazia's &quot;separatist regime.&quot; 
 Putin said he believed economic pressure could not help solve the conflict. 
 There was also no sign of progress in the Moldovan-Ukrainian dispute over the fate of Moldova's breakaway Trans-Dniester enclave, with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma saying his government could not &quot;make sense&quot; of Moldova's policies on the issue. 
 Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin was skipping the meeting because of &quot;pressing internal issues.&quot;
 Meanwhile, the leaders were expected to adopt an appeal to the countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. In a recent Russia-inspired statement, the CIS members criticized the OSCE for allegedly deliberately focusing on democracy and human rights problems in their countries, while ignoring the same issues elsewhere.

TITLE: OSCE Criticizes Officials In Beslan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria - Authorities detained and harassed journalists covering the Beslan school standoff, a European media watchdog said Thursday, calling their actions &quot;a serious drawback for a democracy.&quot; 
 
In a report on Russia's handling of the Beslan crisis, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's media freedom office accused officials of confiscating videotapes and failing to provide truthful information in a timely manner. 
 As a result, local people attacked journalists who they believed had intentionally misinformed the public or exaggerated events, said Miklos Haraszti of the OSCE's press watchdog. &quot;A triple credibility gap arose - between the government and the media, between the media and the citizens, and between the government and the people,&quot; he said. &quot;This is a serious drawback for a democracy.&quot; 
 Haraszti's report is the latest in a growing chorus of global complaints by press freedom advocates. Amnesty International, the International League of Human Rights, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights and other groups issued a joint statement earlier this month saying Russian authorities &quot;concealed the true scale of the crisis.&quot; 
 At least 338 people were killed in the standoff that started when militants took more than 1,200 people hostage. 
 Russian and foreign media outlets struggled to make sense of &quot;insufficient, contradictory or incorrect information,&quot; the OSCE report said. &quot;Cases of detention and harassment of journalists occurred, seriously impeding their work,&quot; it said. 
 Local residents, irritated at what they perceived to be false reporting, beat up Alexander Kots, a correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda after he erroneously wrote - based on official accounts - that only about 300 hostages were being held, the OSCE said. 
 It said a Russian television crew also was beaten by local residents and men armed with hunting weapons who suspected the station's cameraman was an accomplice of the militants. A French journalist and a Swedish cameraman also were attacked. 
 &quot;Unofficially, the fact that journalists arrived at the school only 15 minutes after its capture was used as a fact to prove and accuse the journalists of having contact with the terrorists,&quot; the OSCE said. It said men in civilian clothing confiscated videotapes from Boris Leonov, a cameraman for Ren-TV. 
 &quot;There is no censorship, but there is a complete mess,&quot; the report quoted Leonov as telling Russian media after the seizure. 
 During and after the Sept. 3 storming of the school, tapes showing the dramatic episode were confiscated from television crews from Germany's ZDF and ARD, Associated Press Television News and Rustavi-2, an independent station in Georgia.

TITLE: U.S. Citizens Urged to Ready for Election
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: American citizens in St. Petersburg should act now if they want their vote to count in the U.S. elections on Nov. 2, the U.S. Consulate General says.
 
In many states, registration ends 30 days prior to elections, so would-be voters are encouraged to register immediately. 
 However, people from more sophisticated states have more time.
 &quot;Some states have facilitated the voting process by allowing people to electronically send in not only their registration, but also ballots,&quot; said Jeffrey Vick, chief consular section consul in St. Petersburg.
 The consulate is encouraging registered voters to make their choice by Oct. 1 and will not accept any ballots after Oct. 13. It will mail ballots to the appropriate county clerks free of charge.
 Ballots sent after Oct. 13 should be sent via a courier service. Courier companies will not deliver to post office boxes, so voters must contact their county election officials for a proper physical address.
 Those who are not registered must register in the county where they last resided. They can do so using the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA), which can be downloaded from the U.S. government's official voter assistance web site www.fvap.gov.
 The site also offers various states' voting procedures and information about absentee registration. 
 The consulate has application forms for those without access to a computer.
 &quot;The easiest way is to come into the consulate,&quot; Vick said.
 Depending on the state of residence, voters may have to have their FPCAs notarized. The consulate provides this service free of charge. 
 The FPCA should be filled out clearly and legibly, with care to answer all necessary questions. Providing an e-mail address is recommended so local voting officials have a quick and efficient method of contact. The consulate also can assist with the mailing of the form.
 &quot;We'll send it in for them through our own mail system,&quot; Vick said. &quot;We have a military mail system that's called an APO and we can get it back to the States quicker.&quot;
 Voters should include fax numbers if their states permit ballots to be faxed. The number should be complete, as dialed from the U.S.
 &quot;Some states will allow certain balloting procedures by fax and will send you things a lot more expeditiously than other states,&quot; Vick said.
 County clerks send out absentee ballots about 30 to 60 days prior to an election. For registered voters who do not receive their ballots on time, the alternative is a Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot (FWAB). This form is not available on-line, but is distributed at the consulate through a voting assistance officer. 
 The consulate keeps no statistics on how many American citizens will be voting from St. Petersburg, nor can it estimate the number of US citizens living in the city. About three to five people on average come in daily for voting assistance, Vick said.

TITLE: Officials Propose Tax Cuts for Big Investors
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg's investment climate and living standards are improving and the city government is eager to cooperate with foreign investors, city government officials said Friday.
 
They were speaking at the International Forum on Russian Economic Development in St. Petersburg which focused on U.S.-Russian economic relations in informational technology and other investment spheres. Former U.S. vice presidential nominee Albert Gore was a speaker.
 Governor Valentina Matviyenko said she welcomes foreign investment in the city and vowed that St. Petersburgers will have a better standard of living by 2010.
 &quot;By 2010, the living standard of St. Petersburgers will grow significantly,&quot; Matviyenko said.
 St. Petersburg is the second largest retail market in Russia, she said, with retail turnover in the first half of this year totaling $3.6 billion, more than the total for the whole of last year.
 Vice governor Mikhail Oseyevsky said foreign investment in the city will grow by 21 percent to 29 percent this year. 
 &quot;We received a total of about $700 million in foreign investments in the city last year, but this year we are planning to near the $850-$900 million mark,&quot; Interfax cited Oseyevsky as saying.
 While much of these investments come from Western credits and loans, &quot;the volume of direct investments [in the city] is also growing,&quot; he said.
 The city government &quot;is talking with a number of international companies about setting up manufacturing facilities in St. Petersburg,&quot; he added.
 Smolny is proposing a number of tax concessions to attract potential investors. The tax incentives law draft includes a 50-percent property tax cut for three years starting from January 2006 to any company that invests more than 150 million rubles or about $49 million into St. Petersburg during 2005, he said. 
 The incentives plan also includes a 2 percent revenue tax cut to such investors and a 4 percent revenue tax cut to those companies whose investments exceed 300 million rubles, Oseyevsky said.
 When asked what he thinks about the city's initiative, Deloitte &amp; Touche's tax and legal expert Artyom Vasyutin said that although it's good to see the administration willing to cooperate, the eligibility threshold for such concessions is rather high, which may exclude small and medium-sized companies. 
 &quot;Moreover, the additional administrative burden and actual insignificance of such concessions in comparison with general rates may discourage investors from their use,&quot; he said.
 Matviyenko said the stability of the Northwest region and the tax privileges and concessions for &quot;our main investors&quot; have a positive influence on the investment climate in St. Petersburg.
 &quot;St. Petersburg is a profitable destination for investors,&quot; she said. &quot;It is also because our final goal is to make the city one with a European standard of living.&quot; 
 Anton Mamayev, head of the St. Petersburg branch of Troika Dialog consulting company, agreed with the statement that St. Petersburg is very attractive for foreign investors.
 &quot;St. Petersburg has many production projects - both big and small ones, into which foreign businessmen can invest,&quot; Mamayev said.
 Among the big projects Mamayev mentioned the construction of the Western Speed Diameter, the new terminal for passenger ferries at Vasilevsky Island, and others.
 At the same time, he said, many St. Petersburg scientific institutes are engaged in developing new technologies in such fields as physics and chemistry, in which foreign businesses are interested to invest as well.

TITLE: Estonia Asks for a Russian Negotiator
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The lack of a Russian chief negotiator has halted the work of an Estonian-Russian government commission for more than a year, according to the Estonian Foreign Minister Kristiina Ojuland. This has held up negotiations about tax issues and the Russian-Estonian border-point.
 
&quot;There are many different agreements that haven't been signed yet,&quot; Ojuland said Thursday in an interview. 
 St. Petersburg's governor, Valentina Matviyenko, led the Russian side of the commission, but gave up the job when she became presidential envoy to the Northwest region in March last year.
 &quot;This is a technical question and each state must itself decide when and who it should appoint,&quot; Ojuland said. 
 &quot;We had a talk about it with Mr. [Mikhail] Fradkov when he was visiting Tallinn in June and we told him that we are very eager to have this question resolved.&quot;
 Among other things, the role of the commission is to work out the details of abolishing double taxation for companies operating in Estonia and Russia. 
 Estonian businesses said that it is in Russia's interest to appoint a new negotiator quickly because Russia is losing a lot more from the lack of a tax agreement than Estonia is. Russian companies are well represented in the Baltic State, particularly in logistics, while the number of Estonian companies operating in Russia is much less, they said.
 Meanwhile, Ojuland met Matviyenko on Friday to talk about cooperation between Russia's Northwest and Estonia. They discussed tourism, economics and culture. 
 The governor agreed to give the Church of the Holy Yan back to the Estonian community in St. Petersburg. It was taken from them by the Bolsheviks in 1917. The only condition the governor stipulated was that Estonia must pay for the church renovations. 
 Russia is also interested in developing border infrastructure with Estonia, including building a new bridge over the Narva river, 120 kilometers west of St. Petersburg, Ojuland said.
 &quot;We agreed that we will do more work on this question and I think we would be able to work out something specific because there is a mutual interest,&quot; she said, &quot;If there is interest from the Russian side, the plans could be completed within the next few years, because now that we are European Union members, we have many financial possibilities.&quot;
 Matviyenko has supported the idea on the condition that the project would be financed from European funds.
 &quot;Russia has a big interest in increasing the transit and flow of cargo,&quot; Interfax quoted the governor as saying Friday. &quot;However, because of a lack of resources, Russia has not been seriously involved in the question. But, if it is possible to use EU funding, Russia will be ready to get busy with this project in detail.&quot;
 The current bridge and border checkpoint are in the center of Narva, which is creating traffic and environmental problems in the Estonian border town.

TITLE: Smolensky Leaves Banking Business
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The man behind the spectacular August 1998 collapse of one of the country's biggest savings banks SBS-Agro, Alexander Smolensky, is giving up his only remaining banking interest in Russia, Kommersant reported Thursday.
 
Smolensky, who once famously told the Wall Street Journal foreign creditors deserved &quot;dead donkey ears&quot; for lending SBS-Agro money, is handing over his stake in Stolichnoye Kreditnoye Tovarischestvo (SKT) Bank to his nephew, board chairman Alexei Grigoriyev, the paper said.
 The magnate has already sold Pervoye OVK Bank, which was created out of the ashes of SBS-Agro's branch network, to Vladimir Potanin's Rosbank. Kommersant on Thursday cited a senior SKT executive as saying he now intended to completely exit the country's banking business.
 Neither he nor his son, Nikolai, will remain on SKT's board, the paper said. Nikolai Smolensky recently bought British sports car maker TVR for an estimated $27 million.
 Smolensky is considered a close ally of oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovsky. Via SBS-Agro, he backed Berezovsky's successful bid for oil company Sibneft in the 1995 loans-for-shares auctions.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Shipyard Stake Raised
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) - International Industrial Bank, Russia's fifth-largest bank by net profit last year, boosted its holding in shipbuilder Severnaya Verf to a majority stake.
 The bank, which first bought shares of the shipbuilder in 2002, increased its stake to 53.5 percent, it said in a statement, without saying how much it paid.
 Severnaya Verf, a 92-year-old St. Petersburg-based shipyard, has some $2 billion worth of orders, the biggest of which are contracts to build battleships for China and for the Russian Navy. The government owns 21 percent of the shipyard.
 The bank holds the stake in the shipyard through United Industrial Co., a unit that manages all of its industrial assets.
 
 
<b>RZD-DB Joint Venture
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - Russian Railways Co., or RZD, will set up two joint ventures with Germany's Deutsche Bahn for cargo shipment and passenger services, the state-owned rail monopoly recently announced.
 One venture will focus on cargo shipments from Southeast Asia and China via Russia to Western Europe, said RZD spokesman Anton Shapovalov.
 The other venture will establish passenger service with a tourist train running from Berlin to St. Petersburg, via Kaliningrad, Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn.
 
 
<b>Beer Profits Soar
 </b>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's second-largest brewery, Sun Interbrew, said second-quarter earnings rose 37.9 percent, while net profit hit an all-time high as the company successfully implemented its growth strategy.
 The firm is controlled by Belgium's InBev, formerly known as Interbrew.
 Its net income rose to 21.8 million euros ($26.71 million) from 11.6 million in the second quarter of 2003, while first-half net income rose to 20.0 million from 4.5 million in the first half of 2003.
 The company increased beer sales in Russia by 23.7 percent in the second quarter, making for an increased market share of 16.7 percent compared with 14.8 percent a year earlier.
 
 
<b>$60M Bottle Plant
 </b>

ISTANBUL, Turkey (Bloomberg) - Sisecam, Turkey's largest glassmaker, will spend $60 million to build a new factory in Russia to produce beer bottles.
 Sisecam said in a statement to the Istanbul stock exchange that the new plant will be built in Bashkortostan and will be able to produce 240,000 tons of bottles annually. The company had announced last month that it was considering building a factory in Russia. <b>Internet Traffic Up
 </b>

MOSCOW (RosBusinesConsulting) - National Internet traffic grew 245 percent to 18,400 terabytes in Russia in the first half of 2004 against the corresponding period in 2003, according to estimates by IKS Consulting company. 
 IKS also estimated that Internet traffic advanced 113 percent to 16,345 terabytes in 2003. 
 The level of Internet market penetration amounted to 4.1 percent in the first quarter of 2004, with the highest levels of market penetration being in Moscow and the Moscow region, where it was 12.4 percent.
 
 
<b>Telco Sector Growing 
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The total volume of communications services in Russia increased by 26.1 percent year-on-year to 238.7 billion rubles ($8.2 billion) in the first half of 2004, the General State Statistics Service reported.
 Currently, 75 percent of Russia's telecommunication sector's income comes from telephone communications, with 33 percent of that coming from mobile communications. 
 Long distance and international telephone communications made up 20 percent of the total national income from the telecommunications sector, according to the statistics service. 
 In the first half of 2004, long distance and international telephone communications increased by 13.2 percent to 139.8 million hours, and 9.9 percent to 10.1 million hours respectively, as compared with 2003, the service reported. 
 By July this year, the total number of cellular communications subscribers had reached 48.8 million people. An increase of 13.2 million, or 37.1 percent since the start of the year.
 
 
<b>More Mobile Users
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The total national revenue from mobile phones for 2004 will exceed $9 billion, according to estimates from Pyramid Research Group, a telecommunications research and consultancy firm.
 This number exceeds forecasts for the revenue for fixed communications services by 50 percent. 
 Pyramid also said that mobile-phone market penetration would continue to grow steadily, and, by 2009, would reach 74 percent.
 
 



TITLE: Yukos Cuts China Oil Exports
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Yukos has decided to halt two-thirds of its oil exports to China, a company representative said Sunday, as the company grapples with a multibillion dollar tax claim that management says could push it into bankruptcy.
 
The moves come as Yukos raises the stakes in its year-long legal battle with the authorities. By throttling exports to China, a key export market, the company could tarnish the country's reputation as a reliable oil supplier. 
 Last week Yukos management decided to halt shipment of 100,000 barrels per day to China National Petroleum Corp. because of financial difficulties in prepaying transportation costs for October, said a company representative, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Deliveries of some 50,000 bpd will continue to Sinopec Corp.
 It was not immediately clear when exactly the decision comes into force. 
 Russia supplied about 8.5 percent of China's crude imports in the first half of 2004. Yukos accounts for nearly all of the country's direct exports to China.
 With Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao due in Moscow later this week, Yukos appears to be pulling out all the stops in its legal fight with the government.
 &quot;It raises the embarrassment stakes for the government and that is a very high risk,&quot; said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank. &quot;This is a deliberately provocative action by the company at a very sensitive time. This raises the chances of a retaliatory action by the government.&quot;
 President Vladimir Putin and other government officials have insisted that the Yukos affair would not disrupt the country's oil exports. The export halt sent oil prices soaring Monday.
 News of the export halt comes on the heels of Yukos' announcement Friday that the reserves of its key production unit are five times as big as previously estimated.
 Yuganskneftegaz - which Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein is assessing for a possible government sell-off to collect Yukos' tax bill - has 93.7 billion barrels of recoverable resources, up from 19.4 billion barrels at the end of 2003, according to an unaudited 3-year study, the company said.
 Recoverable resources are different from recoverable reserves, of which Russia has at least 69 billion barrels, the seventh largest reserves in the world.
 &quot;The devil is in the details,&quot; said David Fyfe, an analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris.
 &quot;There isn't a worldwide standard for what is meant by recoverable resources. It could mean the oil in the ground, while recoverable reserves are usually seen as those which are economical to actually take out of the ground.&quot; 
 In a conference call with investors Friday, Yukos CFO Bruce Misamore called the findings &quot;stunning.&quot;
 He also said the company is &quot;close to bankruptcy&quot; and &quot;surviving on a shoe-string&quot; as all its income is being used to pay for billions of dollars of tax claims and current taxes, leaving the country's biggest oil exporter with no cash.
 Yuganskneftegaz, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of Yukos' production, has become a prime target in the clash between Putin and Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is currently being tried on charges of tax evasion, fraud and leading an organized criminal group.


TITLE: French Powerhouses Look to Expand
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - French corporate powerhouses Total, Alcatel and Renault intend to expand in Russia, French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said in Moscow on Friday, indicating President Vladimir Putin's tightening of political control and a yearlong probe of Yukos isn't deterring investment.
 
The French mission, which included chief executives of the companies, came four days after Putin said he will appoint regional rulers and change voting to aid national parties after four attacks killed at least 430 people. The political turmoil isn't enough to scare investors looking to tap the largest oil reserves not controlled by OPEC, said Al Breach, chief strategist at Brunswick UBS brokerage in Moscow.
 &quot;This is business as usual,&quot; said Breach. &quot;France over many years has put a lot of store in close relations with Russia and it is obviously keen to continue cementing economic ties with a country that is Europe's key source of imported energy.&quot;
 Total CEO Thierry Desmarest, and Alcatel CEO Serge Tchuruk were among the business leaders traveling with Sarkozy. 
 Paris-based Total hasn't expanded in Russia as quickly as some rivals, such as BP, Europe's largest oil company. Sarkozy said that may soon change.
 &quot;Total has certain plans to participate in [Russian company] equity, which are being developed now,&quot; Sarkozy said. He refused to give details, as did Total.
 Desmarest said uncertainty about the country's legal and tax framework has slowed Total's plans. 
 &quot;Russia isn't offering any greater visibility than it did in the past, particularly with the situation of Yukos, and the taxation rate of companies,&quot; Desmarest said last week. &quot;Acquiring major stakes in Russian oil companies is not something that present visibility would encourage us to do.&quot;
 Alcatel, the world's largest maker of broadband equipment, agreed to provide Russia's Satellite Communications Co. with electronics for two new satellites after a signing ceremony attended by Sarkozy and Tchuruk.
 Renault, France's second-biggest carmaker is pressing ahead with a plan announced in February 2003 to invest $250 million in Russian venture Avtoframos to tap what it calls its fastest growing market in Europe. Renault was slated to own 68 percent of the joint venture with the Moscow city government owning 38 percent.
 Kristenko said in his statement the Russian government is preparing a special customs regime for the Renault project. Details weren't disclosed.
 The venture is on track to start producing the Logan family sedan next spring. The car will be on sale from the summer and production will be 60,000 vehicles a year, said Renault's Moscow spokeswoman Vanessa Levy.
 <i>(Bloomberg, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Aeroflot Ups Sales Forecast
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Aeroflot forecasted $1.36 billion of targeted ticket sales this year, a $40 million increase, despite a drop by one-fifth in passengers on domestic carriers after terrorist attacks downed two airliners last month..
 
Thirty-two million dollars of the expected increase will come from additional sales, said commercial director Yevgeny Bachurin on Friday, and $8 million from lower commissions to travel agents.
 The downing of two Russian airliners in August, which killed 90 people, has hurt business badly, with traffic across the industry dropping 23 percent in Moscow in early September and 18 percent in Russia as a whole, Bachurin said. Passenger loads on Aeroflot dropped by about 10 percent on domestic flights, he said, with even greater losses on international flights, especially to Asia.

TITLE: St. Petersburg's Hot-Spots Aren't Proving All that Hot
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Wi-Fi Internet access may be one of the fastest growing Internet trends in western Europe, but in St. Petersburg it's been slow to catch on. 
 
Wi-Fi zones, or public wireless Internet access zones - hot-spots - first opened in St. Petersburg in 2003. Today, there are around 35 commercial Wi-Fi zones in the city, and they're hardly rushed off their feet.
 
 <strong>
WHAT IT IS
 </strong>Wi-Fi technology first appeared in the West in the 90s and one of its applications has been the development of the Wi-Fi zones, which allow access to the Internet in convenient spots like hotels, airports, train stations, cafes, business centers, even movie theaters. 
 
Wi-Fi Internet access operates through radio waves, and there is a special wireless network card needed for access. However, most modern IBM notebooks with Intel Centrino, and Apple PowerBooks with Airport technology, have it embedded. If not, the cards can be purchased for between $30 to $100.
 The speed of the Wi-Fi connection is much higher than in a dial-up connection and can go up to 11 MB per second. 
 It was predicted that Wi-Fi technology would have a great future at last year's Geneva Telecom convention, one of the trend-setting events in the telecommunications industry. 
 &quot;Wi-Fi technology will change the face of the telecom industry in the next decade. It will give us a chance to connect that part of the planet that does not yet have Internet access,&quot; said the acting vice president of Intel corporation and general manager of Intel Communications Group, Shon Melouni, at the convention, according to ComNews website. 
 
 <strong>
INSIDE OR OUT?
 </strong>In any large European or North American city, it is possible to get Wi-Fi Internet access in parks, on the street, or even in cars.
 
In St. Petersburg all the Wi-Fi zones are inside, and most of the city's 30 or so public Wi-Fi zones are provided by Peterstar or Quantum Communications. 
 &quot;During the city's 300-anniversary celebrations, Comset - a Wi-Fi provider which was later bought up by Peterstar - was allowed to provide outdoor Wi-Fi zones in the city center, but they were removed afterward,&quot; said Peterstar's Wi-Fi projects coordinator Denis Norkin. &quot;The State is not interested in developing outdoor Wi-Fi zones,&quot; he said.
 While it costs between $100 to $200 for a provider to register an indoor Wi-Fi zone in a cafe or a restaurant and takes a few days, it takes up to eight months and several thousand dollars to get GosSviazNadzor, the official communications regulations bureau to permit allocating a radio channel to an outdoor zone.
 There are plans, however, to install outdoor Wi-Fi access points on Moscow's Boulevard Ring, making the entire ring road Wi-Fi access enabled, much like central business districts in London and New York. 
 
 <strong>
DEMAND 
 </strong>Mobility and connection speed are the main advantages of Wi-Fi technology, which is why Wi-Fi zones are popular with tourists and business travelers. 
 
&quot;Wi-Fi is great for businesspeople because it allows them to connect to corporate networks instantly, without making settings changes that are sometimes restricted on company notebooks,&quot; Norkin said. 
 The growing popularity of digital devices like digital cameras and MP3 players has also contributed to the increased demand for Wi-Fi zones. Wi-Fi access makes it possible to instantly send a photo or download music while sitting in a cafe. 
 With about 37,000 such mobile devices used by the city residents, Norkin said, Internet traffic has doubled over the last few years, making Internet users seek higher speed and convenience. There are about 1.5 million Internet users in the city, he said.
 About 60 percent of Russian Wi-Fi zone users are students, with business representatives and tourists making up a smaller, though more lucrative segment of the market, said a market watch report published this summer by J'son &amp; Partners, a Luxembourg-based telecommunications consulting company.
 Since the Wi-Fi zone Internet is accessed on portable computers, its popularity depends heavily on how many people have laptops and pocket computers. 
 The average price for a modern notebook PC model equipped with Centrino is about $1500, which is expensive for middle-class consumers. &quot;I'm not a hot-spot user because I don't have a laptop I could carry around. The model I would want is too expensive,&quot; said a city resident who works for a medium-sized international company. However, research company Dataquest predicted the portable computer market is successfully growing in the region. 
 There were 9 million laptops sold nationally in 2002, 10 million in 2003, and by 2006, sales volumes should reach over 16 million, Dataquest said according to ComNews Web site. 
 
 <strong>
SELLING OUT
 </strong>When hot-spots first appeared in St. Petersburg in the spring of 2003, many of them were free. However, this summer the city Wi-Fi providers, Quantum and Peterstar announced their intention to make Wi-Fi zone access a strictly commercial service. 
 
With the exception of demo zones in computer stores, where access is free, connecting at user-pays city hot-spots costs about $5 or $6 per hour.
 Quantum Communications provides Wi-Fi connection and equipment for 18 hot-spots in the city, including two new zones at Evrika business center and Nevada entertainment complex. 
 Peterstar is the provider for 15 city Wi-Fi zones, including the hot-spots at the Grand Hotel Europe, the Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel, Emerald Hotel and Pulkovo airport. 
 However, the city's cafe, restaurant and entertainment industry does not seem convinced about the necessity of installing Wi-Fi zones. 
 Some are afraid the service will distract their clients from the venue's main activities. &quot;Our main business is casinos, so the more distractions there are, the less our clients will play the games,&quot; said a representative from Konti group.
 The general director of the trendy Le Goga cafe expressed a similar sentiment. It's not good for business if a customer occupies a place for an hour with just a cup of tea and the Internet, she said. &quot;We did think about getting [Wi-Fi], but not yet. Maybe when it becomes a bigger trend,&quot; she said. 
 Even cafes that have Wi-Fi zones installed are not overly enthusiastic about it. &quot;It's not used often by our customers,&quot; said the general director of Zoom, a cafe-club that has hosted a hot-spot for some time. An administrator at the Saigon cafe said its Wi-Fi zone gets two to three customers daily. 
 Though the demand for hot-spots is much higher at airports, hotels and train stations frequented by travelers and businesspeople, some cafes are looking at installing Wi-Fi as a way to attract clients and beat their competitors.
 The Idealnaya Chashka, or Ideal Cup, coffee shop on Vasilevsky Island will be sporting the international Wi-Fi zone logo, with the chain's first Wi-Fi zone opening soon, Norkin said. 
 Both Quantum and Peterstar charge for installing Wi-Fi equipment. Quantum rents out as well as sells the equipment, while Peterstar only sells it, website SpbIT.ru wrote recently. 


TITLE: Mobile Phones Captivate Youth
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Cellphone users are getting younger, and teenagers are spending more on mobile phones every year. A recent study showed that this year, young people in Russia will spend from $1 billion to $1.6 billion on cellphones. This makes the youth market, which accounts for almost one-third of the mobile phone market, one of the most important target groups for cellphone providers.
 
The study, which was conducted by Mobile Research Group - or MRG , said that youth spending on cellular communications grew by 80 percent in 2003, totaling $2.3 billion. Out of that, close to $1.8 billion was spent on cellphones and accessories and the rest on tariff plans and other services. A total of 15.1 million cellphones were sold in 2003, with 2.7 million of them being the trendy or so-called &quot;youth&quot; models. 
 &quot;The average age of [cellphone] consumers decreases annually, and, at the same time, the price of the kind of phones they're buying is increasing,&quot; said a leading analyst at MRG, Eldar Murtazin.
 Out of the 9 million cellphones sold in Russia in the first five months of 2004, 28 percent were purchased by consumers in the 12-to-22 age-group. &quot;We're seeing huge growth - about the same amount of youth models were sold though the whole of last year,&quot; said Murtazin, predicting the teenage market share to grow to 32 percent by the end of the year.
 Young people are the most dynamically growing sector on the market. According to a study conducted by Sistema Telecom, the number of cell-phone users in the under-18 age-group has almost doubled over the last year. The study also said that 70 percent of the youth surveyed who didn't own a phone said they were looking to get one.
 A survey conducted by MRG among people visiting city retail cell-phone stores showed that parents' safety concerns were the main reason for buying cell-phones for young people aged 12 to 22.
 Interestingly, 78 percent of the parents asked said they believed that cell-phones were bad for their children's health, but that the advantages of their child having a phone outweighed the health risks.
 The research also showed that taste in phones differed considerably between parents and children. Parents preferred cheaper phones, saying that phones that cost over $175 made their children targets for theft. Children, on the other hand, liked the models priced from $150 and up. Teenagers also wanted phones to include the latest technologies, like MP3 players, FM stereo, a large memory card, polyphonic melodies, games and other entertainment options. Murtazin said that the average price of models is growing, so the teenage cell-phone market share is getting bigger.
 The head of Systema Telecom's cellular communications department, Vladimir Kirillov, said that the youth segment is interesting in that it serves as a guinea pig for all the innovations the market comes up with. All cellphone operators try to attract the younger segment with various new mobile tricks. 
 Andrei Braginsky, the PR director of MTS, a major cellphone provider, said that to attract teenagers, MTS had developed special tariff plans and additional services, including SMS-personals and games and joint projects with television shows like Fabrika Zvyozd and MTV- Interactive. 
 MTS isn't the only one. Vimpelcom, another major mobile player, develops economy plans for high-school and college students, according to a company spokesperson, who also said that one-fifth of Bee Line tariff-plan users are aged 15 to 24. 
 Meanwhile, cellphone manufacturers always have a few new models up their sleeves. &quot;About 30 percent of the models we develop target the youth market,&quot; said Dmitry Kuznetsov, telecommunications manager at Samsung Electronics. 
 Retail dealers confirmed that youth models are becoming increasingly popular. Staff at cellphone chain Teckmarker said that they noticed an increasing number of teenagers among their customers. They also said that teenagers usually chose Megafon tariff plans and phones with in-built cameras.
 A spokesperson from Megafon Moscow said that while the average age of Megafon tariff-plan users is 25 to 27, the average age is decreasing every year.

TITLE: Multi-Functional Cellphones Flood the Market with Extras
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: A range of new multi-functional cellphones has flooded the local market this summer. While convergence - or combining a range of media and communication functions into one device - has been a buzzword in the cellphone industry for years, there is now a wide range of choice for consumers in both new-generation cellphones and smart phones.
 
The latest new cellphone models now have wider screens, better sound-quality, MP3 players and photo and video cameras.
 The newest Philips model, the Philips 855, is a 180-degree fold-up with a VGA-camera and TV-link. It is priced at around $300 and has been very popular, although not as popular as the latest Siemens model, the Siemens M65.
 &quot;Siemens returned to the idea of manufacturing waterproof and scratchproof phones, and they have a strong position on the market among people with active lifestyles,&quot; said the editor of Mobile Portal magazine, Alexei Revin. &quot;These models [Siemens M65] are well-designed and cost no more than $250,&quot; he said. 
 Another model targeted at 'active' consumers is the waterproof Nokia 5140. It is fitted with a thermometer and compass, and it costs twice as much as the Siemens.
 Samsung Electronics has presented eight new models on the Russian market this summer. The Samsung D410 sliding model has the most innovative design of the eight, industry experts said. Revin said the Alcatel 835 model - a high-quality fold-up, priced between $260 and $280 - has also proved popular, perhaps because it also has two color displays, games and a video camera. 
 Smart phones first appeared on the Russian market in 1998. They are essentially phones which have some of the capacities of pocket-computers.
 While basic Java programs can be run on regular cellphones, smart phones allow you to run a wide range of software. They cost about $300 to $800.
 &quot;Smart phones are great for people who want portable devices that include everything: computer, voice and camera facilities,&quot; said Dennis Dolginsky, a local freelance cellphone software developer. &quot;But, as yet, smart phones are not as powerful as pocket computers,&quot; he said. 
 &quot;An average pocket computer has 64 MB of RAM and a processor which runs at 200-400 MHz,&quot; he continued. &quot;While a Sony Ericsson P900 smart phone has 32 MB of RAM and runs at 153 MHz.&quot;
 A new smart phone with a particularly innovative design is the Nokia 7650.
 Another is the Russian-made Rover PC S2. This 176-gram fold-up is a fully-functional mini-computer with a multi-pixel display, a power processor, and an operational system that allows it to work with all the programs developed for pocket-computers, according to business daily Kommersant. 
 <i>
(Vedomosti, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Bond Issue to Tame Inflation
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Central Bank has sold bonds for the first time in nearly three years in an attempt to soak up ruble liquidity as a way to reduce inflation.
 
The Central Bank sold 34.5 billion rubles or $1.18 billion of the 50 billion rubles offered at an average yield of 1.75 percent.
 The bonds mature on Dec. 15, 2005, but have a put option, which allows holders of the bonds to sell them back to the Central Bank on Sept. 27 this year or Dec. 9 next year, making the bonds a short-term instrument.
 With a yield of 1.75 percent, the bonds give a return just higher than short-term deposits at the Central Bank, thereby attracting buyers, analysts said.
 &quot;This is a successful auction,&quot; said Yekaterina Leonova, a fixed-income analyst at Alfa Bank.
 &quot;This is another instrument to regulate the excess liquidity in the banking sector.&quot;
 The bonds are nicknamed &quot;beavers&quot; by traders, because they were sold without a coupon and so became &quot;Beskuponiye Obligations of the Bank of Russia,&quot; or BOBRi, the word in Russian for beavers.
 The Central Bank is trying to launch new instruments to reduce liquidity after it put more rubles into circulation to help lending institutions recover from a run on banks this summer.
 Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatyev and his team, appointed in 2002, have been striving to build up a wider selection of tools to control monetary policy.
 The country's economy is awash with extra cash with no place to go as commodity exporters benefit from high prices for oil, gas and metals and the Central Bank prints rubles to slow the appreciation of the currency.
 This cycle drives inflation, which the government wants to reduce to 10 percent this year after meeting its inflation target last year for the first time since 1997.
 The government managed to tame inflation to 12 percent last year from a peak of 2,600 percent in 1992.
 OBR bonds have had a mixed history. They were first sold in 1998 to replace the GKO bonds which investors shunned after the debt default.
 The OBR bonds lasted just a few months, with the last payment in February 1999. An attempted sale in December 2001 failed because of a lack of demand.
 Analysts said the new bond issue is important because GKO markets have so few trades, making them unattractive to investors.

TITLE: YOUR LETTERS: Security Services, Road and Street Safety, Terrorism
TEXT: <i>Editor,</i>
 Have you noticed that terror attacks or high-profile assassinations tend to occur almost every day in Russia? Take Aug. 24: a bomb goes off at a bus stop in Moscow and two passenger aircraft crash almost simultaneously. All three accidents are believed by experts to be terror attacks. A couple of days before up to 300 armed militants killed around a hundred public officials, policemen and civilians in Grozny in just a few hours. 
 
A bit earlier, a group of unknown militants in the relatively peaceful region of Kabardino-Balkaria fought local police and managed to escape. In June, a militant raid to Ingushetia claimed about 90 lives. Businessmen, politicians, even governors are murdered routinely. Mysterious explosions occur in Voronezh and Samara. Routine terror in the Northern Caucasus.
 What do our &quot;powers that be&quot; do? They sunbathe in Sochi or observe &quot;anti-terror&quot; mock maneuvers in the Far East. They put loyal people to oversee the influx of petro-dollars but nobody knows where these petro-dollars are going. They order investigations to those who let militants armed to the teeth to capture a theater full of people in Moscow. 
 They hunt innocent scholars and describe race crimes as &quot;hooliganism.&quot; 
 They extort money and steal from the rich but not to give the prey to the poor but to divide it up between themselves. They fine people taking pictures in the subway but cannot do anything to prevent explosions. Five hundred to 700 contract killings occur annually in Russia, according to official figures (which usually understate the reality). Most of them are never solved. 
 Hundreds of conscripts die in the army because of accidents, poor health and hazing. &quot;Military reform is over,&quot; proudly states Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. 
 Explosions, terror, assassinations keep increasing. &quot;An investigation is underway,&quot; proudly announces FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev. &quot;The situation is normalizing,&quot; a choir of Chechen pro-Moscow officials keeps reciting while Grozny is still in ruins, billions of rubles of federal funds are regularly stolen and hundreds, if not thousands, of Chechens seek asylum abroad. 
 What happened to the submarine, Mr. President? It sank. 
 With such an approach to public security, I don't feel safe in my own country and I don't trust those greedy top-ranking mediocrities who (paraphrasing a famous line from Mandelshtam) &quot;live unable to sense the country under their feet.&quot; 
 <i>Vladimir I. Krupsky 
 Shushenskoye, Siberia
 
 
Editor, </i>
 My Russian relatives were outraged by the recent terrorist attacks. I agree that these were terrible, but when I say that they should keep things in proportion, because 100 Russians were killed on the roads that same day, and 100 the next day, and 100 the day after that, they seem not to understand my point. Comparing Russia to Britain, there are the same number of vehicles on the road, but ten times the number of road deaths-35,000 per year, or 100 a day.
 
Most of these people could be saved by a relatively small investment in road-safety measures. For example, certain sections of the St. Petersburg-Moscow highway still lack a central barrier. Only a few weeks ago, two friends of my family were killed on a similar road, when a truck coming the other way swerved to avoid another car and crossed into their path. Had a central barrier been in place, the truck would have been deflected, and they would still be alive. 
 Drivers here seem to see the use of a seatbelt as an admission of cowardice. When Princess Diana's car crashed in Paris, the only man who survived was her bodyguard in the front passenger seat, and he was the only one wearing his seatbelt. Almost every four-wheel drive car here sports bull bars, yet in urban areas the main effect of these is to kill children. When the car hits a pedestrian, instead of riding up and over the front of the car as an adult would do, a child hits the bull bars, then goes under the wheels. One should also consider the ease with which crazy, dangerous drivers can bribe their way out of any difficult encounters with the traffic police.
 It seems that the lives of Russians murdered by terrorists are much more important than the lives of Russians who are killed needlessly on the roads.
 <i>Keith Anderson 
 St. Petersburg
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>Tackling Terrorism
 </strong><i></b>
In response to &quot;Hamburg Forum Sees Criticism of Russian President,&quot; an article by Vladimir Kovalev on Sept. 14
 
 Editor,</i>
 This article demonstrates what a short memory so many people in the world have. Just over 60 years ago, the rest of the world was preaching the same song and dance: pacify the aggressors (Nazis), don't confront them. You would have thought they would have learned a lesson that they would never forget: you cannot pacify aggressive forces of evil bent on destroying free peoples. The sad part is, the U.S. had to come and save their butts the last time they pulled this crap.
 
We, on the other hand, are not content to sit here idle while our attackers calmly blow us to pieces. We will hunt them down like the dogs they are. As soon as the rest of the world's butt is on the line, they'll be calling the U.S. for help. When that happens, I for one wish we would take the same position that the world has taken with us: oh, so sorry, we can't help you. Have a good time fighting al-Qaida.
 You should be proud to have a president in Putin who has the guts to take a similar viewpoint. Fight them wherever you find them, people, or you will most certainly fight them in your own backyard.
 <i>John Doney
 Brentwood, Tennessee
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>Russia has been sleeping for too long. The Beslan School No. 1 tragedy has caused you to now awake. What a shame it has taken such a tragedy.
 
Remember, Russia, while you have been asleep, your enemies have grown bolder and have moved closer to your borders. A nation with such a proud history must not forget the lessons of history.
 <i>David Heseltine
 Hobart, Australia
 
Editor,
 </i>
President Vladimir Putin needs to do whatever it takes to kill the radical Islamists before they kill innocent women and children again. This is a Global War and needs all allies to be deadly serious.
 <i>Tom Gentry
 Phoenix, Arizona
 
Editor</i>
 Yevgenia Albats remarked a few weeks ago, apropos of Yukos, that Putin was in danger of being boycotted like Alexander Lukashenko and I remember thinking that the Russian president cannot be boycotted. Russia is just too big! If the West wanted to go after Putin, they would do it by trying to destabilize him. Since he was elected primarily to bring order to Russia, the way to destabilize him was to create disorder and there was a fairly obvious way of doing that: Chechnya.
 
Then came Belsan and the comments in Catherine Belton's article that Putin thinks someone is out to get him. I think he's right, and his comments are probably based on solid intelligence. Where he may be wrong is the reason. I think the problem is primarily oil, and that brings us back to Yukos.
 The following quote from an article on the Counterpunch website is interesting:
 &quot;Just as Washington found it useful to validate Bosnian and Kosovar nationalism in the Balkans (entrenching its expanding NATO-self into what was once proudly non-aligned European territory), so it has (under the Clinton and Bush administrations alike) found it useful to promote Muslim separatisms in southern Russia, to better destabilize the Russian Federation. Why? Because Russia seeks to thwart U.S. oil pipeline ambitions and the U.S.'s general pursuit of geopolitical advantage in the Caucasus. Ruling circles in both the U.S. and Russia are acting rationally in pursuit of their ends. Those anti-people ends are the problem.&quot; 
 I think that Bush and friends want to control the world's oil supplies and Putin's desire to control companies like Yukos stands in the way of that. Yukos controlling Putin is OK. Putin controlling Yukos is not!
 So they set a trap for him. They figured, rightly, that one or other of the ex-Soviet cowboys in the security services would do something stupid in Beslan and they were right, probably beyond their wildest dreams! Then, to crown it all, Putin fell straight into the trap himself by announcing the change in the system of designating regional leaders. &quot;Putin abolishes democracy&quot;! The TV reports last night talked about nothing but that! Short of catching John Kerry in bed with a teenage boy, I can't imagine anything that would have made Bush happier!
 For all his KGB sophistication, even Putin, like everybody else in Russia, is going to have to learn how democracy works and that will take time. More time than anybody imagines.
 Moreover, experience shows the guerilla wars are unwinnable. In Northern Ireland, for example, a situation not unlike Chechnya, the British committed blunder after blunder and the thing went on for some 30 years before even the present, extremely fragile, peace process, got going.
 A final point. Nobody seems to have noted the significance of the location of the event: North Ossetia. South Ossetia is Putin's &quot;other war&quot; and that annoys the Americans, who support Georgia. The South Ossetians want to be joined to North Ossetia within the Russian Federation. Now they can see what happens to people who support Russia!
 <i>Michael Kenny
 Roodt-sur-Syre, Luxembourg
 
 </i><strong>
<b>Death Penalty
 </strong><i></b>
In response to &quot;Asking for death penalty is risking your own neck,&quot; a comment by Vladimir Kovalev on Sept. 10.
 
 Editor,</i><strong>
 </strong>I was a prison officer for 10 years.
 Just think of the cost of keeping convicts inside - in Britain this is Pound200 to Pound300 ($358 to $540) per week. We have no death row. Who pays for them to be inside - the taxpayer.
 
I can understand what you are saying about the Soviet Union in the 1930s but if criminals admit their crimes and the state can prove they did it why keep them at the cost of the state?
 Ask a lot of prisoners inside for life in Britain and they will say that if the rope was still used there would be a good chance that they would still be on the outside.
 <i>Roger Beale 
 Bristol, England
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>Beyond Lukashenko
 </strong></b>

 <i>
In response to &quot;McCain Slams Lukashenko,&quot; an article by The Associated Press on Aug. 24.
 
 Editor,
 </i>The second meeting of some of the opposition leaders of Belarus with Senator John McCain in Riga last month was a waste of time and money.
 
Telling them Alexander Lukashenko is a dictator will not change much..
 What we need is a program of reforms that either Lukashenko will carry out or will be carried out after he leaves office. For over two years I have advocated that the opposition gets together and draws a blueprint for reform, or even better, each of its leaders writes his version of needed reforms. Then a meeting of the opposition should develop a mutually accepted program.
 Unfortunately, my appeals fell on closed ears and only I have written a book - &quot;Euroremont for Belarus&quot; - describing the reforms.
 <i>Aleksander Pruszynski
 Minsk
 </i>
 <i>The author is a Pole from Belarus who returned home in 1992 and ran for president in 1994. As a Canadian pensioner he is the only financially independent person in the opposition living in Belarus.
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>Dinner Service</strong>
 </b>

 <i>
In response to &quot;Moscow Chains Overcharge Petersburgers,&quot; an article reprinted from Vedomosti on Sept. 17.
 
 Editor,
 </i>I am interested to read that Yekaterina Salagina, the Coffee House chain's marketing director uses the word &quot;service&quot; and says that the Coffee House clientele wouldn't want to wait by the cash register. 
 
On the occasions we visited this chain, both in Moscow and St Petersburg, this would not have been possible. 
 There was invariably more staff than customers and the staff were leaning on the counter by the cash register with their backs to the customers. 
 It always took a long time to be given a menu, then make our order, then get our coffee, then attract attention to ask for the bill, then get the bill, attract attention to pay the money, then there would be a long wait for our change. 
 We only went to the Coffee House when we had time on our hands! And here's an example of the &quot;service&quot; in a branch just off Nevsky Prospekt: I asked for a single expresso topped up with warm milk and was told this would not be possible as the cup would be too small, I'd have to have a double expresso topped up with warm milk in the larger cup. The waitress was completely inflexible and would not serve a single expresso in a double expresso cup!
 It took a long time for us here in Great Britain to take on board the concept of customer care, service with a smile, the customer is always right etc, but it makes so much difference to both the customer and the business. I cannot see that St. Petersburg has much chance of becoming a popular tourist destination while service comes with a sigh and no eye contact.
 <i>Best wishes
 Joanna Clarke
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>Street Crime
 </strong><i></b>
Editor,
 </i>I wish to use the chance to address foreigners who've suffered from pickpockets in St. Petersburg, to apologize on behalf of normal people, to say we deeply sympathize with them and do care.
 
I have nothing to do with tourism, but crime is a problem even for an ordinary St. Petersburger. Just by living in this city, you always have guests in summer, friends coming to see the White Nights, friends of friends, and parents bring their children to see the museums. Every time, I worry how to take them around safely.
 No one has yet figure out how to show people the city by avoiding the downtown, nor has anyone worked out how to make the police do their job. 
 Since April, I myself have been robbed once. Twice I saw foreigners being robbed - on a bus and near the Griboyedov Canal entrance to the metro. My most recent encounter with thieves was in July when I was taking friends around . I lost three buttons off my jacket in the struggle of trying to extract my friends from the crush set up by the gang. They encircle people in an artificial &quot;rush hour,&quot; and systematically strip them of their belongings. We all kicked, pushed and screamed in all possible languages, but anyway the experience cost us $100, 100 euros and a Visa card.
 The nearest policeman was 15 meters away in the metro station. As a local, I was not surprised he did not care that we had been robbed. The metro police's responsibility is the safety of passengers - from the moment they pay their token and enter. What happens in the entrance to the subway is, technically speaking, not in the metro police's jurisdiction. 
 To the daring few who still plan to visit St. Petersburg I recommend you write down these numbers: 1-410-5813836 in the U.S. to stop a Visa card, and 118 4894 in St. Petersburg to get help to have your card blocked. Not every hotel in the city knows these numbers.
 I won't believe the authorities when they say that the situation has improved until I see these gangs of pickpockets locked up.
 
 <i>Alexandra Ponomaryova
 St. Petersburg
 </i>

TITLE: There Is a Road Map for Peace in Chechnya
TEXT: Is there no solution to the nine-year-old Chechen bloodbath? President Vladimir Putin declares that the only acceptable outcome is the one he seeks to effect through a puppet government imposed on the dissident republic through rigged elections. Why? Because every other political force in Chechnya is made up of &quot;terrorists&quot; who offer no solutions other than complete secession from Russia and a state based on fundamentalist Islam.
 
Hence, he concludes, there is no one to talk with and no basis for compromise. And Putin would also have us believe that all right-thinking Russian political figures support this view. Thus armed, he is ready to push doggedly on with a brutal war that claimed the lives of 500 Russians in just one recent week and has killed some 200,000 Chechens - a quarter of their population.
 All these assertions by Putin are false. I know this because I twice participated in secret meetings between members of the State Duma and representatives of the only government in Chechnya's grim history ever chosen through reasonably fair elections - the one headed by Aslan Maskhadov between 1997 and 1999. Sponsored by the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, these unofficial talks were held in August 2001 in Caux, Switzerland, and a year later in Liechtenstein.
 The first session brought together nine people, including, from Moscow's side, the late Yury Shchekochikhin, deputy chairman of the Duma's committee on national security, and Abdul Soltegov from the Duma's Chechnya commission. Maskhadov, who could not leave Chechnya, sent a team headed by his mild and intelligent foreign minister, Ilyas Akhmadov.
 There was every reason to expect a hostile standoff. But it soon became evident that more united the two sides than divided them. Both realized that there was enough blame to go around and that everyone's hands were bloody to some degree. Both saw the war as being sustained by corrupt Russian officers who were reaping illegal profits from it and by the Russian security forces with whom they were in league. And both believed a solution under which Chechnya could have maximum autonomy while remaining part of Russia would work. On this basis they agreed on a number of practical steps to take in the coming period.
 The Russians and Chechens were sufficiently encouraged that they met again a year later. Again I was invited to attend. This time the Moscow group expanded to include Duma Deputy Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a highly respected general, an ethnic Chechen and today a Kremlin official on the spot in the Beslan schoolhouse massacre; Rustam Kaliyev, special adviser to the Duma's commission on Chechnya; and two former speakers of the Duma, Chechen-born Ruslan Khasbulatov and Ivan Rybkin, who served as national security adviser to Boris Yeltsin. The Chechen delegation was headed by Maskhadov's able vice premier, Akhmed Zakayev, who, like Akhmadov, was then living abroad.
 This time the group went further, agreeing on the outlines of a peace plan and charging Khasbulatov, a lawyer by training, with drafting it. They planned a Moscow news conference to disseminate the plan. Aslakhanov volunteered to go to Washington to brief key officials there. The group also called on Maskhadov to publicly condemn the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen Islamists, which had triggered the renewal of fighting in Chechnya. And in an effort to give Putin a further way out, the group proposed to focus on the corruption that was sustaining the war rather than criticize Putin directly. The peace plan on which Duma members and Chechen leaders agreed included the same formula worked out a year earlier: Chechnya's continued legal membership in the Russian Federation, but with firm guarantees that it would enjoy the maximum degree of self-rule and autonomy. Maskhadov was quoted as saying he would accept this outcome as the best way of preserving the ethnic existence of the Chechen people. This lay to rest the red herring of secession about which Putin preached to grieving parents in Beslan after the schoolhouse attack there. In Liechtenstein the two sides differed only on such secondary points as whether Russian or joint Russian-Chechen forces should guard the southern border or whether the rest of Chechnya should be demilitarized.
 What happened to these initiatives? When asked at a news conference about the first meeting, Putin flatly denied that it had taken place. When word got out about the second, the government said it was a scheme devised by Boris Berezovsky, a dissident oligarch, to discredit Putin, even though Berezovsky was in no way connected with it. In short, Putin brushed aside the proposals.
 The Liechtenstein plan would still work today, and Maskhadov, while weakened, remains the only viable partner for negotiations on the future of Chechnya. He had nothing to do with the monstrous attack in Beslan and has denounced it as barbaric. Maskhadov is the only credible Chechen leader who champions the separation of religion from the state and favors modern secular education, even while respecting the Islamic faithful. In office he opposed the fundamentalists. Many Chechens backed his moderate stance. It is true that the inexperienced Maskhadov failed to reverse Chechnya's downward slide during his brief rule, but it is doubtful anyone else could have done better without assistance from Moscow or abroad, which was denied him.
 But is Maskhadov a terrorist, as Putin claims ad nauseam? If he is, why would Britain offer asylum to his envoy and close associate, Zakayev? Why would the United States welcome another close ally, Akhmadov, as it has recently? Neither country is known these days for rolling out a welcome mat for terrorists.
 It is no secret that there are terrorists among revenge-seeking Chechens and that there are radical Islamists among the desperate population of that land. But if Putin persists in painting all Chechens with the same brush of terrorism and Wahhabism, he will block the only remaining path to a peaceful solution and deny Russians and Chechens the only approach known to have the support of responsible figures on both sides. 
 
 <i>Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, contributed this comment to The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: To Centralized a System Will Fail Because of Internal Contradictions
TEXT: Whether Vladimir Putin's latest initiative of changing the system of electing governors conforms to the constitution or not is not that important. Putin has more than enough political might to keep the whole procedure of introducing a change within the law if need be. The effectiveness of this method is a far more important matter. As usual, the idea is to increase his control of the country by strengthening the &quot;power vertical.&quot;
 
Such an approach reminds us of certain arguments for the basic necessity of reforming the Soviet regime cited by wholly intelligent and well educated Soviet intellectuals during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika. Let us remember them briefly.
 According to the fundamental law of cybernetics, as the size of a system and the quantity of connections between its elements increase, the quality of the centralized control of the whole system begins to fall. The system becomes less controlled and the natural remote development of the process results in restructuring - areas of concentrated control appear in the system, which is local regions, usurping functions of authority taken from the center. In other words, the centrally controlled system begins to break up into self-governing parts.
 In one sense, this process can be interpreted as a display of the system's &quot;survival instinct.&quot; To avoid total collapse, a large system changes the way it governs itself.
 In the 1970s and '80s this fact was used to describe socio-political systems. In particular, several Western soviet-experts used this approach to show the Soviet system was unviable (as founded on the centralized authority of a large and increasingly complex system - the Soviet Union) and its inevitable evolution into a democracy. Francis Fukuyama even formulated the concept of &quot;the end of history,&quot; because in proportion with the complexity of society, the political development of any country unavoidably leads to a democratic society. Gorbachev's perestroika appeared to corroborate these ideas.
 Soviet intellectuals made enthusiastic use of Fukuyama's articles as a motive for Gorbachev not to deviate from the strategically correct path. We don't know if Boris Yeltsin read Fukuyama, but a general adherence to the principles of liberal democracy was clearly felt in his policies. Popular elections of governors were introduced under him.
 Putin is moving in another direction. Not yet infringing the constitution, he is using different methods (the unclear wording of the law etc.) to decrease the sovereignty of the governors (for example, by redistributing regional financial sources to the center), to limit the freedom of the mass media, and to strengthen control over the legislative authority (by the reorganization of the Federation Council.) The election of governors by local Legislative Assembly after the president nominates a candidate is the next step in the same direction. In light of the above, this method will not lead to the desired result. Instead control of the country will clearly decline due, according to the cybernetics model.
 This is obvious at first glance. Although Putin has placed his people in every post of any significance, corruption is growing. Even the Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov openly talks about the fact that corruption has taken on threatening proportions. According to him, checks carried out showed that legislation on counteracting corruption was violated more than 22,000 times in the last 6 months alone. Ustinov says that officials everywhere are involved in commercial activities and derive extra profits from their position. Yet the eradication of this &quot;administrative income&quot; was one of Putin's main arguments for the necessity of strengthening the vertical. As those in the know maintain, all the state structures are corrupt, even law enforcement. Under Yeltsin, especially at the end of his rule, there was no such chaos.
 The president suggests that all this is the result of insufficient effort to strengthen the vertical. However, the reason is quite the opposite. According to cybernetic laws, a strong power vertical is only effective in a simple system - for example, Stalin's U.S.S.R. By Brezhnev's era it was already impractical. Now life in Russia has become complex enough for it to be absolutely impossible to control from the center.
 The prospects for Putin's model are even gloomier. The governors nominated by the president will inevitably become uncontrollable like the already uncontrollable officials. A clear example is Governor Valentina Matviyenko. In complete loyalty to Putin, she openly criticizes the Federal Government for, in her exact words, &quot;hogging more and more of the blanket for itself, trying to carry out functions that should be given to bodies of the federation to do.&quot;
 So how does Putin count on running the entire country personally (or with an inner circle) if now he cannot control even the 'vertical' itself? Yeltsin style 'chaos' is far more productive. Some day Russians will again elect swindlers and talentless rogues and sometimes criminal bosses as governors, but all this will end when citizens inevitably realize the real interest they have in having a sensible governor. For this happy moment to come, life in Russia has to become still more complex - not due to the necessity of battling with the authorities, but as a consequence of the natural increase of individual responsibility, which shouldn't be hindered by the vertical. And all this will happen, according to the laws of cybernetics. 
 <i>
 Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. This comment was broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday. </i>

TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: By the time the dynastic manipulations of his family put Tiberius Caesar in power, the Roman Republic had long been a gutted carcass. Although the outward lineaments of state retained many of the old forms of popular government, behind these bones and tatters of hide there was nothing left but pestilent corruption and vicious court intrigue.
 
Tiberius-a cynical mediocrity overwhelmed by his responsibilities but too weak to give up the privileges that attended them-knew full well the brutal reality that the ruling elite kept hidden beneath layers of pious sham and patriotic cant. When he saw how the great Senate-where giants once clashed in fierce, open debate-would come crawling to him, bowing and scraping, eager to act on his every whim, to accept his most brazen lies as sacred truth, he could not contain his disgust. &quot;Men fit to be slaves,&quot; he would mutter, as they bent once again to his will.
 No doubt the saturnine old ghost was smiling with grim satisfaction this month as another once-great deliberative body debased itself before a mediocre dynast. In one of the more shameless in a long series of vile and craven acts, the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives smeared partisan filth across a legislative memorial to the innocents murdered on Sept. 11, 2001, by conflating that national tragedy with George W. Bush's war of aggression against Iraq.
 The Bushist toadies couldn't simply mark the solemn occasion with a few appropriate words of common grief and resolve. Instead, they turned the resolution into a tribute to the Dear Leader, larding it with praise for Bush's &quot;reorganizing&quot; of the United States (that old Constitutional malarkey had to go) &quot;in order to more effectively wage the Global War on Terrorism&quot;-including, of course, the &quot;destruction&quot; of the &quot;terrorist regime&quot; in Iraq. Yet while the capture of Dick Cheney's former business partner, Saddam Hussein, was given prominent play in the resolution, the actual perpetrator of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, was never mentioned.
 Thus this witless assemblage of bagmen and bootlickers (including, as usual, the vast majority of Democratic jellyfish) officially affirmed Bush's blood libel, his Hitlerian Big Lie: the supposed connection between Saddam and 9/11. &quot;You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror,&quot; Bush said in September 2002, when rolling out what his staff called the &quot;product&quot;-i.e. a calculated campaign of fear and deception to drive the nation into war. &quot;We've eliminated an ally of al-Qaida,&quot; he declared in May 2003, while prancing about in military drag during his infamous &quot;Mission Accomplished&quot; speech. Bush and his minions have pounded this mendacious war drum so often, in so many ways, that even now, up to 50 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam was involved directly or indirectly in the 9/11 attacks-although this canard was debunked yet again this month, this time by Colin Powell, The Washington Post reports.
 These lies have already led to the deaths of more than 1,000 U.S. troops-and more than 30,000 innocent Iraqi civilians: a murderous hurricane 10 times the size of the storm that struck America on 9/11. Yet still the toadies crawled before the unelected pipsqueak, the oath-breaking coward who walked away from his own military service during wartime but now press-gangs soldiers into combat even after they've fulfilled their sworn duty requirements.
 The House measure slavishly regurgitated Bush's ludicrous assertion that the attack by Mr. Unnameable and his al-Qaida crew was an assault on &quot;the principles and values of the American people.&quot; But Bush knows that bin Laden doesn't care one way or another about American &quot;values and principles,&quot; just as he didn't care about Soviet &quot;principles and values&quot; when he and the CIA were feasting on Red meat in Afghanistan back in the day. It's not &quot;principles&quot; but power politics that fuel bin Laden's aggression-the same as with Bush. 
 And both men's ultimate goal is the same: domination of the world's oil supply, which will bring them and their cronies untold riches and the power to further advance their harsh, perverted visions of society and religion. As we've said before, the &quot;war on terror&quot; is not a &quot;clash of civilizations&quot; or a &quot;battle for freedom&quot;-it's a falling out among thieves, a gang fight over juicy turf.
 The Congressional toadies are right about one thing, however: America's principles and values are under ferocious assault. But the assailant is their own little tin-pot Tiberius. This month saw more damning revelations of the torture regime that Bush and his chief warlord, Donald Rumsfeld, have spread across the face of the earth. Seymour Hersh's new book, &quot;Chain of Command,&quot; lays out in bone-chilling detail the system of assassination, sadism, rape and psycho-terror established by Bush, who issued secret presidential directives lifting legal constraints and even administrative oversight on his hitmen and torturers. The dark heart of this black-op beast is the &quot;Special-Access Program,&quot; created by Bush and Rumsfeld in late 2001 and sent forth with this sinister dictum, according to top intelligence officials: &quot;Grab whom you must. Do what you want.&quot;
 These are the true &quot;principles and values&quot; that Bush is defending in his toady-lauded &quot;war on terror&quot; - values he shares with his cave-dwelling doppelganger, Osama. Each uses the other to justify his own outrages, each feeds on the other to fuel his own bloodlust and political ambitions. Only a fool, or a hireling - or a slave - would bend to the will of such loathsome creatures.
 
 
 Chris Floyd's new book, &quot;Empire Burlesque,&quot; is available at www.globaleyefloyd.com </i>

TITLE: HBO Scoops Coveted Emmys
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - HBO showed its muscle at the Emmys Sunday, with &quot;The Sopranos&quot; becoming the first cable series to win best drama and &quot;Angels in America,&quot; the miniseries about the AIDS crisis, getting a record-setting 11 trophies. The premium cable channel received more than triple the awards of its next closest competitor.
 
After major comedy acting awards went to series that have ended, Fox's &quot;Arrested Development&quot; provided cause for optimism among the broadcast networks by being named best comedy.
 As the broadcast networks begin their new season this week, the television industry's chief awards show provided fresh evidence that cable's accomplishments were overshadowing the traditional networks.
 &quot;Angels in America,&quot; the adaptation of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about Americans facing AIDS in the 1980s, was honored as outstanding miniseries and won acting trophies for Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeffrey Wright. Kushner received a best writing award and Mike Nichols won best director.
 &quot;As you know the fight against AIDS isn't over yet and we must do what we can for Africa. ... Let's see what we can do,&quot; Nichols said.
 &quot;Angels in America&quot; proved to be a record breaker. With the four Emmys won Sept. 12 at the creative arts awards and the seven it won Sunday, it exceeded the nine awards won by &quot;Roots&quot; in 1977 to become the most-honored miniseries. It matched the 11 awards won by &quot;Eleanor and Franklin&quot; in 1976, the most for any program in one season.
 &quot;The Sopranos&quot; finally collected the best drama Emmy in its fifth try.
 &quot;This is really great, and seeing those goodbye episodes before gave me some great ideas how to end the show,&quot; series creator David Chase said of &quot;The Sopranos,&quot; which has one more season ahead of it.
 Michael Imperioli and Drea de Matteo, who played a hard-luck mob couple whose relationship ended in betrayal on &quot;The Sopranos,&quot; won drama series supporting actor and actress Emmys.
 &quot;There are so many people that are responsible for this, that if I even try to thank any of them right now, I might puke, choke, cry or die. And you've already seen me do that,&quot; said de Matteo, whose character was bumped off last season. She's now on NBC's &quot;Friends&quot; spinoff &quot;Joey.&quot;
 Still, Tony and Carmela (James Gandolfini and Edie Falco) went home empty-handed. Allison Janney of NBC's &quot;The West Wing&quot; and James Spader of ABC's &quot;The Practice&quot; won best actor awards for drama.
 &quot;Arrested Development&quot; won after a critically acclaimed but low-rated freshman year.
 &quot;This is so huge for us. You know what, let's watch it,&quot; said series creator Mitchell Hurwitz.
 &quot;The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,&quot; which has spent election year skewering the candidates for tiny Comedy Central, won an award for best variety series for the second year in a row. His writing staff also won an Emmy.
 Mirroring the concern in Hollywood over the state of situation comedies, the four major comedy acting awards went for work in series that are now off the air. Kelsey Grammer won his fourth Emmy for best actor in a comedy for &quot;Frasier&quot; and Sarah Jessica Parker won best actress for &quot;Sex and the City.&quot;

TITLE: Storm Devastates Haiti, Kills 90
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GONAIVES, Haiti - Tropical Storm Jeanne brought raging floodwaters to Haiti, killing at least 90 people and leaving dozens of families huddled on rooftops as the storm pushed further out into the open seas on Sunday, officials said.
 
Floods tore through the northwestern coastal town of Gonaives and surrounding areas, covering crops and turning roads into rivers. U.S.-backed interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue and his interior minister toured the area in a UN truck Sunday, but were not able to reach many areas because of washed out roads.
 &quot;We don't know how many dead there are,&quot; Latortue said. &quot;2004 has been a terrible year.&quot;
 Workers with the Catholic humanitarian agency Caritas Internationalis picked up 62 bodies in pickup trucks and counted another 18 at a morgue in Gonaives alone, said Rev. Venel Suffrard, the organization's local director. Suffrard said he expected the toll to rise.
 The floods killed another 10 people in other parts of the country, mostly in the northwest, said Dieufort Deslorges, a spokesman for the interior ministry.
 A World Health Organization (news-web sites) worker said he had toured parts of downtown Gonaives and saw people pushing wooden carts filled with cadavers. &quot;There is no life left in the center of town,&quot; UN health worker Pierre Adam said.
 Jeanne didn't appear likely to hit the storm-battered southeastern United States. It was expected to turn south over the next two days and head back out into the Atlantic, away from Florida and other states that have been battered by three major storms already this season.

TITLE: Hu Becomes Undisputed Leader in China
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING - President Hu Jintao's new status as commander of China's military should strengthen efforts to fight corruption and control a surging economy, forcing resistant lower-level officials to recognize Hu as their undisputed leader, analysts said Monday.
 
Former President Jiang Zemin's decision to hand over his last post as military chief on Sunday, almost two years after Hu succeeded him as Communist Party leader, ended tensions over control that had let local officials resist pressure to cut spending and carry out painful reforms, the analysts said.
 &quot;This is a very significant event,&quot; said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington. &quot;Hu really has the future in his hands at this moment.&quot;
 The consolidation of China's top party and military posts in Hu's control is expected to give him and his premier, Wen Jiabao, a freer hand to act as they wrestle with huge challenges ranging from rural poverty to fighting rampant corruption that is undermining public acceptance of communist rule.
 It also could help a government austerity campaign aimed at cooling off an economy that is growing by more than 9 percent a year, threatening to ignite politically dangerous inflation and weaken China's fragile banking industry.
 Despite repeated orders from Beijing, local officials have balked at orders to cancel major construction and other big spending projects-austerity moves that could cost local jobs and reduce opportunities to line their pockets. Hu and Wen reportedly have been forced to visit Shanghai and other areas to compel obedience in person.
 &quot;As long as there was the impression that there was political in-fighting at the top, there was a reason for local officials who didn't like the changes to hold out in the hope of getting a different option,&quot; said Lieberthal. But now, he said, &quot;at lower levels it will be seen that the wave of the future is the Hu Jintao leadership, and that should tighten discipline.&quot;
 Hu, 61, was groomed for a decade to succeed the 78-year-old Jiang as part of an elaborately planned handover of power to a younger generation of leaders.
 Despite his new military status, Hu is the weakest Chinese leader of the communist era, surrounded by potential rivals in a consensus-based party leadership. He shares its ruling nine-member Standing Committee with at least five Jiang allies.
 But the end of uncertainty over the military post could help the methodical, diplomatic Hu to solidify his political alliances and push out Jiang's proteges, said Joseph Cheng, a political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong.
 &quot;In the next party congress,&quot; a meeting due in 2007 to decide the party's political plans and leadership, &quot;there could be a major shake-up,&quot; Cheng said.
 Hu's new authority also should help anti-graft efforts by discouraging lower-level officials from trying to protect corrupt colleagues and others, he said.
 &quot;There will be less resistance,&quot; Cheng said.
 Several times, Hu has been rumored to be preparing major speeches on political reform, only to deliver bland restatements of party policy-a suggestion that he didn't feel his position was strong enough to launch any bold initiatives.

TITLE: Iraqi Prime Minister Says Elections Will Proceed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi prime minister insisted Sunday that the raging insurgency - which has claimed 300 lives in the last week alone and resulted in a wave of kidnappings-will not delay January elections, promising the vote will strike a &quot;major blow&quot; against the violent opposition.
 
Meanwhile, a grisly videotape posted on a web site showed the beheading of three hostages believed to be Iraqi Kurds accused by militants of cooperating with U.S. forces. A separate group also claimed to have captured 18 Iraqi soldiers and threatened to kill them unless a detained aide of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was freed, according to the Arab news station Al-Jazeera.
 But Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who is heading to the United Nations for this week's General Assembly session in New York, said his interim government was determined &quot;to stick to the timetable of the elections,&quot; which are due by Jan. 31.
 &quot;January next, I think, is going to be a major blow to terrorists and insurgents,&quot; said Allawi, who spoke with reporters after a meeting with British leader Tony Blair in London. &quot;We are adamant that democracy is going to prevail, is going to win in Iraq.&quot;
 Allawi, a Shiite Muslim, has been insistent about holding elections on time.


TITLE: Safin Takes 1st Title in Two Years After Beating Youzhny
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING - Marat Safin won his first title in two years, beating Mikhail Youzhny 7-6 (4), 7-5 in an all-Russian final at the China Open on Sunday. 
 
&quot;It's not the last one, hopefully,&quot; he said. 
 Safin, a former U.S. Open champion who has been struggling since an injury-plagued 2003, advanced to No. 8 in the world and increased his chances of qualifying for the Masters Cup. 
 Safin had been without a title since the 2002 Paris Indoors. But the No. 5 seed sailed through this tournament without losing a set despite playing five matches in four days because of rain delays. 
 He dropped his first service game and initially seemed puzzled by his opponent's variety of shots. But after gaining a break point at 3-4, Safin capitalized and was in command in the tiebreaker with four aces and five consecutive points. 
 Safin fell behind in his first service of the second set but recovered to win the game. 
 Youzhny inexplicably crumbled at 5-5, losing serve with a double-fault. Safin served out the match, acing the final point. 
 &quot;The way he was returning, I had to serve very well,&quot; Safin said. &quot;He had nothing to lose and he's been playing incredible tennis.&quot;
 Youzhny, not seeded, defeated Rainer Schuettler and Paradorn Srichaphan on the way to the final. 
 &quot;This week I played pretty well,&quot; he said. &quot;I know now what I can do to improve my game.&quot; 
 But he said &quot;stupid mistakes&quot; cost him victory against Safin. 
 &quot;If I start to play more matches at this level and play in more finals, maybe I won't make these mistakes,&quot; he said. 
 Safin earned $69,200 and Youzhny $40,700. 
 Justin Gimelstob and Graydon Oliver won the doubles title, defeating fellow Americans Alex Bogomolov Jr. and Taylor Dent 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (6).