SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1007 (74), Tuesday, September 28, 2004
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TITLE: 'King of Shadows' Poisoned
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A prominent St. Petersburg businessman and former bodyguard to President Vladimir Putin, died in suspicious circumstances in the city's Sverdlov Hospital on Friday.
Roman Tsepov, 42, director of elite bodyguard agency Baltic-Escort, was admitted to the hospital a fortnight earlier with symptoms of severe food poisoning, which daily became worse.
Doctors were unable to prevent the poison from affecting bone marrow and producing symptoms of radiation sickness, which ultimately led to Tsepov's death. The businessman was due to be moved to a clinic in Germany for further treatment Saturday, but it was too late.
He was buried Monday in the city's Serafimovskoye cemetery.
What the poison was and how it was administered to Tsepov are unknown and have become the subjects of speculation.
Some media sources reported Tsepov was poisoned by a giant dose of a medical drug typically used to treat leukemia and some other forms of cancer - which the businessman didn't suffer from - while other publications suggest he was intoxicated by an experimental poison, containing huge quantities of heavy metals.
No official statements about he origin of the toxic agent have yet been available from the city prosecutor's office.
Yelena Ordynskaya, spokeswoman for the City Prosecutor's Office, said investigators are trying to identify the poison.
"Forensic experts are carrying out a series of tests to establish the origins of the poison," Ordynskaya said Monday. "The prosecutor's office is investigating the death as a case of premeditated murder, which is Article 105 (part one) of the Criminal Code."
The investigation is also trying to establish when Tsepov was infected with the poison. It has been suggested that the businessman could have ingested the poison in a powder or liquid form while eating a meal. Local Internet newspaper Fontanka.ru reported the investigators already have a full record of Tsepov's movements on Sept. 10 and 11.
Tsepov was born in St. Petersburg in 1962. After graduating from the Supreme Military Commander School of the Russian Interior Ministry, he served with the interior troops.
In the early 1990s, Tsepov launched his first security business. By the mid-1990s he was running a security firm that provided bodyguard services to then mayor Anatoly Sobchak and key members of his administration, including Putin, who was then a deputy to Sobchak.
Tsepov's bodyguards were frequently hired to protect Russian and foreign showbiz stars visiting St. Petersburg, including pop singer Alla Pugachyova and fashion designer Pierre Cardin.
Tsepov's agency provided security services to prime-time local TV news program "600 seconds" and its anchor Alexander Nevzorov, who was Tsepov's close friend.
"I can't believe that Tsepov could have died of natural, I mean, non-criminal causes," Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted Nevzorov as saying. "I know that he was surrounded not only by friends but by enemies. Tsepov was a recognized 'king of the shadows,' but he was not a criminal gang boss. He was on the side of justice."
"As for his murder ... if there is a desire to kill and enough money available, it is not very complicated to arrange," he said. St. Petersburg's Agency of Investigative Journalism said it wasn't unusual for Tsepov to guard criminal bosses.
"I would guard the devil himself, provided he is an honest devil," was one of Tsepov's most frequent sayings, the agency reported.
Such an attitude clearly brought him some problems. Tsepov survived three assassination attempts in 1993, 1995 and 1996.
"Paid articles intended to discredit Tsepov were regularly published," Fontanka.ru reported. "The most recent one appeared in a Moscow publication as recently as last week."
Andrei Konstantinov, head of the Agency for Journalistic Investigations, knew Tsepov and devoted one chapters of his blockbuster book "Banditsky Petersburg" to him.
The book was made into a highly acclaimed TV series and Tsepov appeared in one scene as a gangland boss.
Konstantinov described Tsepov as a powerful person with a strong personality. He had a lot of powerful friends but also many enemies who could be behind his death.
To give an idea of how dangerous Tsepov's work was, Fontanka.ru reported that in the 1990s his firm often provided private escorts to road convoys of freight and re-exported foreign cars along the route from Western Ukraine to Moscow and St. Petersburg. The latter route was branded "the road of death" because it was routinely raided by bandits.
In recent years, Tsepov tried his hand at film production. He was the producer of Vladimir Bortko's popular television mini-series "I have the honor of ..."
On Friday, "I have the honor of..." was awarded a TEFI, the highest television award in Russia, as best film.
TITLE: Moore Film Draws Thin Audience
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia got its first official chance to see Michael Moore's controversial documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" on Thursday, when the film about an unpopular war, terrorism and a president accused of failing to react instantly to an attack that stunned the nation, opened in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The opening of the international box office hit was a formality for many, however, since pirate copies have long been on sale and discussion has been raging on Kino.ru, a web site for cinephiles.
The premiere at Dom Kino in St. Petersburg showed to a half-empty theater while an early showing Thursday at one Moscow theater drew a feeble four people.
Russia's rich tradition of "agit-prop" cinema seems to have left today's filmgoers cold, with a film addressing contemporary political issues struggling to find an audience.
"Most of my friends go to the cinema for the same reasons they go to a party - to forget about all the dangers around us," said Marina, 31, a manager at a St. Petersburg printing company.
"If we start thinking about crime, terrorism, bloodshed and bribery all the time we'll end up in a mental ward. I am here because I want to see an American director doing justice to the American president," she said.
In a country where kompromat (comprimising material) and "black PR" (ongoing negative campaigning) are part of the daily vocabulary, the sight of Moore so openly mocking U.S. President George W. Bush was, for some viewers, like watching an old film.
Journalists have commented on the bluntness of Moore's methods, with the bi-monthly listings magazine Afisha translating them into an easily understandable analogy for Russian audiences.
"Crudely speaking, the creator of 'Bowling for Columbine' has turned from Parfyonov into Dorenko," wrote Afisha writer Stanislav Zelvensky, referring to Leonid Parfyonov, the respected documentarian and former host of the current affairs show "Namedni," and one-time ORT host Sergei Dorenko, whose muckraking shows helped bury Yevgeny Primakov and Mayor Yury Luzhkov's presidential ambitions.
"I fell asleep halfway through," a user named Slava wrote on Kino.ru. "It is ordinary 'black PR' for zombified people who can't think on their own."
Slava focused in particular on Moore's manipulation of footage showing the president receiving news of the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, while reading a book to a classroom of children. Instead of reacting immediately, Bush continued reading, and Moore zooms in on the president for added effect.
"What was he supposed to do, run around the room shouting, 'We are lost!' and scare all the children?" Slava wrote. "The film is useful to watch so you don't fall into the same kind of PR trap in your own country."
Other viewers proved as anti-Bush as Moore, pointing out parallels between U.S. and Russian policy and noting the unlikelihood of such a film being made here.
"I can't imagine anything similar done about Vladimir Putin hitting Russians screens these days," Marina at Dom Kino said. This was a depressing thought to many.
"We have no one. Some have been bought, some left, the bravest crashed in an airplane, or were poisoned," Storyteller posted on Kino.ru. "Look, if you change the names, events and dates - for example, Sept. 11 for Sept. 5 and 6, and New York for Beslan - the main point, reasons and results are the same."
"'Fahrenheit' is maybe the last chance to recognize why America can be considered a great nation," Storyteller added, expressing his or her satisfaction that that the film got made despite its criticism of Bush. "And we, cap in hand, are turning into sheep who allow ourselves to be blown up and killed."
The film, showing in Russia without the benefit of Moore's sarcastic delivery because it has been dubbed, for other filmgoers tapped a different vein - not anti-Bushism, but anti-Americanism.
"This confirms that the government there is full of bastards," said Sergei, 25, a doctor attending the second showing of "Fahrenheit" at the Baikal-Atlantis cinema in northern Moscow. "America is more of a terrorist than any other country."
St. Petersburg students Olga and Marina, who attended the screening in Dom Kino, said the film was a fair portrayal of Bush but suggested it couldn't have been made for an American audience.
"To really understand a film like that one has to have a brain and a heart," Olga said. "The Americans seem to have neither since they elected George Bush in the first place."
TITLE: American Tracks Trail of 1920s Hobo
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The note said that a John Adkins "left home at an early age and never returned home again." Home was the United States and he was last seen alive in a Soviet gulag in 1929.
That's just about all Edward Perdue knew about his second cousin in 1986. Eighteen years and 20 trips to Russia later, Perdue has become the family sleuth in a mystery that has spanned three-quarters of a century, two continents and hundreds of KGB and CIA documents.
"Nobody knew who he was or where he went to, so I figured let's give it a try and see what happens," Perdue said in a recent interview in St. Petersburg.
"I never realized so much information would come out of this," he said.
The note describing Adkins' early departure from Maryland, where he lived as a boy, was written by Perdue's mother in her memoirs on the family's history. In 1996, this clue inspired Perdue to begin the chase for a man whose actions baffled at least four governments, his family and seemingly all those who came in contact with him.
"He's what we called a hobo," Perdue said.
"He sort of lived that life even when he was a kid - he wanted to have the adventures of travel."
Adkins, aged in his early 20s, grew restless in the years just before World War I and began a cross-country trip that took him through seven states and about as many jobs. He then went on to Panama to work on the locomotives that towed ships through the locks of the Panama Canal. He later wound up in Alaska, via New Mexico, California and Montana.
Adkins' sojourn in the Soviet Union was at a time before Stalin's terror was at full pitch and when many Western intellectuals still viewed the "workers and peasants' paradise" as some kind of utopia. Nevertheless, all indications are that he reached a sticky end.
Perdue, a retired electrical engineer in his 60s can't say why Adkins went to post-revolutionary Russia in August of 1926. His researches have uncovered documents that show Adkins had a Russian friend, but it is unclear whether they met on the boat en route to Russia or in Alaska.
"[Adkin's] intentions were to go to Argentina and work in the mines there," Perdue said "Why he left Alaska, we don't know."
Adkins had initially planned to travel onto Japan, but somehow changed route to visit the Soviet Union, Perdue said.
The mysterious journey took Adkins across the Bering Strait in a trading vessel to Little Diomede Island. From there, he sailed in an Eskimo skin boat to East Cape, Siberia.
Adkins, who didn't speak Russian, traveled across Siberia to Moscow where he sought help finding a job through the "International Organization for Assistance to Militants of the Revolution."
He worked in Moscow as an unskilled laborer at the Technological Institute of the Mining Industry from January to July of 1927.
When work there ran out, he was sent to Tula and then to the Borinksy mines. Months later, he was sent back to Tula and imprisoned after his work permit expired. He spent July through November of 1927 imprisoned in Tula.
"He bit the guard," Perdue said. "That didn't help matters too much and they put him in isolation."
Adkins was then transferred to the secret police headquarters in the Lubyanka building in Moscow. Prisoners were granted an amnesty on the 10th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution and Adkins was released, Perdue said.
But in November the Soviet government decided to deport Adkins to Estonia, which was then not part of the Soviet Union.
In Estonia, he was visited by a U.S. official, but Adkins wanted nothing to do with America. He renounced his citizenship and refused to have a new passport issued in his name.
He hated the American government, the International Workers of the World Union and his family religion, which he described at the time as "hard-shelled" Baptist, Perdue said. The Estonians would not accept Perdue and forced him back to Russia a month later.
"They didn't want him running around their country - they didn't know what trouble he'd cause," Perdue said. "For the next three months [the Soviets] didn't know what to do with him."
In March 1928, Adkins was again deported, this time to Finland.
"Before I left to come here this time, I received 27 pages and three photographs [documenting Adkin's incarceration by the Finnish government]," Perdue said
Finland wanted nothing to do with Adkins either and he was deported back to Russia, where he was exiled to Vologda and spent two weeks in jail. He was sentenced to remain in the region and not travel for three years.
Not one to give any credence to the authorities, six months later Adkins took a train to Leningrad, where he hoped to escape across the border.
Adkins had no documents and would have been caught had he remained on the train while crossing the border, according to Svetlana Motovilovets, Perdue's research assistant.
"He hated Russia, he didn't like the the Soviet Union," she said "His idea was to go to Argentina."
Adkins never made it that far. He was arrested and detained at the border and sent to Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, and imprisoned for three months while the Soviets decided what to do with him.
"The order came down to send him to a concentration camp for three years," Perdue said. That was August of 1929. Adkins was declared a "socially harmful element" and shipped off to the notorious Solovetsky gulag.
"That's the last document that I have," Perdue said. "My search now extends to Moscow and the documents that they have that support the end of his life."
At least that is the answer Perdue is hoping to find. There is no evidence of Adkin's death, neither a death certificate or a marked grave.
"That winter, 30 percent of the people [in the concentration camp] died from typhus," Perdue said, suggesting one possible outcome.
Had Adkins died after 1930, there would have been a record of his death because of a law passed at the time, making death certificates mandatory. There is also no document that Adkins, who was officially rehabilitated in 2000, served his time and was released.
"I have a feeling that there's documentation in Moscow that could have the answer to the questions," Perdue said.
However, accessing that documentation is proving difficult. The KGB was not known for its open-door policy and prying the lid off records that have been sealed for more than 70 years behind the bureaucratic walls of the archives is quite a challenging feat.
But Perdue, who has self-published his saga in a book, has already spent an estimated $60,000-plus unraveling the enigma and he is not about to stop now.
Perdue has sent about 20 letters to Moscow asking for archive materials. He has received no replies.
"The work is ongoing and there may be methods of getting in there," Perdue said cryptically. He would not elaborate exactly how, only mentioning he knows a detective.
Even after his years of research, Perdue can't explain the reason for Adkins' strange behavior. "I've tried to understand some of it," he said. "I should get me a psychologist ... I think he's slightly mentally deranged."
But Perdue also has another explanation.
"When somebody's being pushed and pushed and pushed, they snap," he said. "Now did he snap? Who knows?"
The entire tale sounds like something that should be appearing at the local box office. Insert a torrid love affair, a pair of impossibly good-looking actors and a trusty side kick and the story is ready-made for Hollywood.
Perdue knows it and he expressed interest in talking to Nikita Mikhalkov, Russia's most prominent film director.
Perdue doesn't want money - he says he would give any earnings to charity - he wants the story told, which is why he is spending his own money to print the book. He is also looking for a publisher to help distribute it.
"I don't know that I really want to sell it, but it should get to the libraries, it should get to some professor's classroom," Perdue said.
But the book is not yet completed and the riddle surrounding Adkins' life and death remains unsolved. Perdue believes the answer lies somewhere in a KGB file in Moscow.
It seems there is no clear answer to that question either.
Yelena Tsvetkova, the director of BLITZ, an archival and library research generally dealing with pre-revolutionary times, said the FSB, the KGB's successor, denies having any information on Adkins in their Moscow files. BLITZ has been working on the Adkins' case for about six years.
"I think that some note should be there, but maybe not a file," she said.
"We tried. I wrote on Perdue's behalf, he wrote himself and the people from the FSB archives in St. Petersburg asked too. You see, what can I say?"
TITLE: Media Figures Protest Against TV Censorship
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prominent media figures have penned a protest over growing censorship on television, blaming the authorities for curtailing rights to information and freedom of speech by axing several political television shows over the past year.
But an attempt to have the letter read out at the Academy of Russian Television's 10th annual awards Friday night failed when a majority of the academy's members refused to sign it.
"Russian television today is not free. Instead of timely and objective information, they try to force us to report the official version; instead of free discussion, there is propaganda," the letter said.
Twenty-eight academy members signed the letter, which was written by the head of the National Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters, Eduard Sagalayev, and well-known television critic Irina Petrovskaya.
The letter, which was published in newspapers Friday, also said that self-censorship was growing among journalists afraid of having their shows closed down for irritating the authorities.
Academy president Vladimir Pozner, a prominent Channel One commentator, said that if a majority of academy members signed the letter, it could be read at the awards ceremony. But by Friday, the letter was signed by only 28 academy members, about one-quarter of the academy's membership.
The letter was circulated to 130 academy members, who include top media professionals and managers, on Sept. 17.
Although the letter was not read at the ceremony, three of the shows cut in recent months - NTV's "Svoboda Slova," "Krasnaya Strela" and "Namedni" - won the academy's TEFI awards.
Some winners commented bitterly about the authorities' treatment of the media over the past year.
Former "Namedni" host Leonid Parfyonov described his award as "a wreath at the tomb of 'Namedni'" and a "protest" by academy members, RIA-Novosti reported Friday, while "Krasnaya Strela" producer Vladimir Nekludov thanked academy members for "speaking well of the deceased."
TITLE: Putin Tells Reporters To Fight Terror
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin urged journalists to stop being simply observers and join the fight against terrorism, apparently by making sure that news coverage does not help terrorists achieve their goals.
"Terrorists cynically use the capabilities of mass media, and democracy on the whole, to multiply the psychological and informational impact in the course of hostage-taking or conducting other terrorist acts," Putin told more than 100 representatives of international news agencies at a conference Friday.
"The news community can create a model of work that could make the media an effective tool in the fight against terrorism and that could exclude any, even involuntary, form of assistance to terrorists," he said, according to a transcript of his speech posted on the Kremlin web site.
Putin spoke at the conference, organized by state news agency Itar-Tass, in the wake of the Sept. 1-3 hostage crisis at School No. 1 in Beslan, in which more than 330 people were killed.
"I am convinced that in the conditions of a global terrorist threat, when people die, the media cannot be simply observers," Putin said.
One element of the fallout from major acts of terrorism in recent years has been new pressure on the media, which have faced increasing restrictions since Putin came to office in 2000.
Following the hostage crisis at the Dubrovka theater in Moscow in 2002, the State Duma passed a bill that would have severely limited the media's ability to report on terrorism. Putin vetoed the bill, but media leaders then adopted a charter that repeated many of its provisions, including pledges not to publish or air comments from terrorists or to report on the actions of special forces.
In response to Beslan, the Duma plans to consider new counterterrorism legislation, which Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said will include new restrictions on how the media cover terrorist attacks.
Putin said the government should not curb the media or control news coverage even for the sake of fighting terrorism, but that the media themselves should make sure they don't assist terrorists. One goal of terrorists is to destroy a free press and democratic institutions, he said.
Putin told his immediate audience, the representatives of news agencies, that they had an even greater responsibility. "You transmit real-time information that is awaited by millions of people," he said.
Putin used his speech to respond to the considerable criticism, particularly from the West, about the restrictions on press freedoms. "The freedom of the press is one of the pillars of our democratic foundation," he said.
More than two dozen members of the Academy of Russian Television, however, signed an open letter published in newspapers Friday saying that Russian television is no longer free. "Instead of timely and objective information, they try to force us to report the official version; instead of free discussion, propaganda," it said.
Putin also defended his latest initiatives to change election practices drastically, after critics, including the European Union and the United States, said they could mean a retreat from democracy.
He said the planned reforms-an end to popular elections for governors and the elimination of single-mandate seats in the Duma-were meant to provide more stability without harming democracy.
TITLE: Communists, Yabloko File Suit Over Elections
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Communist and Yabloko parties filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court on Monday, claiming that last year's State Duma elections were distorted by biased campaign coverage, deception of voters and vote-rigging.
The two parties joined forces with Committee-Free Choice 2008, a group including former liberal presidential candidate Irina Khakamada and Moskovskiye Novosti editor Yevgeny Kiselyov, in an attempt to hold the Central Elections Commission responsible for the alleged violations.
Western observers have called the elections, held Dec. 7, 2003, unfair.
"If we win, it will no doubt be a colossal breakthrough in terms of legality and fairness in conducting elections," Communist Party lawyer Vadim Solovyov said by telephone Monday. "A victory would be a serious deterrent for the elections commission, mass media and government agencies that falsify elections."
Central Elections Commission chairman Alexander Veshnyakov has denied any major violations took place in the election campaign or vote count. Commission officials on Monday declined to comment on the lawsuit.
In a statement Monday, Yabloko said the Central Elections Commission had allowed state-controlled television channels to dedicate the lion's share of campaign coverage to the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.
United Russia received 860 minutes of state television airtime devoted to the election, or 40 percent of the total given to the 23 parties contesting the election, Yabloko said.
Solovyov said 97 percent of the coverage of United Russia was positive.
Although the Communist Party, the closest rival to United Russia in the elections, received 525 minutes, most of that coverage was negative, Yabloko said.
Such campaign reporting contradicted two federal laws - On the Main Guarantees of Electoral Rights, and On Elections of Deputies of the State Duma - Solovyov said.
"Information materials must not violate the equality of candidates and electoral blocs," he quoted the law on electoral rights as saying.
The lawsuit also said that United Russia deceived voters by including on its party list politicians such as Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who later refused to become deputies. That "runs counter to both the letter and the spirit" of elections legislation, Yabloko said.
The fact that the Duma seats Luzhkov and Shoigu refused weren't given to other parties was also a violation of election law, Yabloko said.
The lawsuit also blamed the Central Elections Commission for failing to organize a proper vote count. In a survey of 73 out of 225 district election commissions nationwide, Yabloko and the Communists said the commissions' records showed that 254,303 fewer ballots were cast for parties than for single-mandate candidates. Traditionally, more votes are cast for parties than for single-mandate candidates.
"It can be assumed that the difference was illegally used for the purpose of falsifying the election results," Yabloko said.
But Solovyov doubted the lawsuit would be successful. "I think that our chances for success are less than 1 percent."
If the complainants lose their case, they plan to file the lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, Solovyov said.
TITLE: Investigators Say Wahhabis Behind Attacks
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW- Federal investigators believe that a group of Wahhabi rebels from the North Caucasus republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia organized the bombings of two Russian airplanes and the Rizhskaya metro station last month.
Investigators believe that the group's leader, Achemez Gochiyayev, who is wanted by authorities on suspicion of organizing the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, is the mastermind behind the August attacks, Kommersant reported Monday.
Deputy Moscow Prosecutor Vladimir Yudin told Rossia television on Sunday that one of the nine people killed in the Aug. 31 Rizhskaya metro blast has been identified as ethnic Karachai Nikolai Kitkeyev.
Kitkeyev has been convicted twice and was on a Karachayevo-Cherkessia police wanted list in 2001 for belonging to an "illegal armed group." The group, purportedly called Karachai Jamaat and led by Gochiyayev, is alleged to have carried out the August 2004 and September 1999 bombings in Moscow. The group may have also have been behind the Moscow metro bombing in February that killed 40 people, the paper said.
Kitkeyev was carrying a fake passport identifying him as Nikolai Samygin, and was to have taken the female suicide bomber to a market near the Rizhskaya metro station and then escape after she blew herself up, Kommersant quoted detectives involved in the investigation as saying. But something went wrong and the bomb went off earlier than planned, killing Kitkeyev, the paper reported.
Kitkeyev's mobile phone was recovered at the scene of the blast and detectives traced calls made to the phone immediately after the blast from Georgia's Pankisi gorge, Nazran in Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. The call from the Nazran area was made by Gochiyayev, who was trying to check how the attack went, Kommersant quoted Federal Security Service officials as saying.
TITLE: Commission Back From Beslan
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - A parliamentary commission investigating the Beslan school hostage-taking has returned from its first trip to the scene of the tragedy and will present its findings to the State Duma in closed-doors hearing Thursday, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov said Monday.
The commission, comprised of 12 Federation Council senators and 10 Duma deputies, spent four days meeting with former hostages and local authorities in Beslan, and the number of questions that it will try to answer has mushroomed from an initial 50 to more than 500, said the commission's head, Alexander Torshin.
The commission has many more questions because local authorities, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service have all offered different accounts about the Sept. 1-3 tragedy, which killed more than 330 people, said Torshin, a deputy Federation Council speaker.
"I have taken an inventory to find out how many things we should consider, and the number is more than 500," he said on state-run Rossia television Sunday.
He did not elaborate.
The commission is planning to take more trips to North Ossetia, and possibly to neighboring Ingushetia and other regions in the North Caucasus as well, Torshin said.
The commission will complete its investigation in six months, Torshin said.
He and Mironov made no comment about what the commission learned during its first trip to Beslan, and it was unclear Monday which of its findings, if any, would be made public.
TITLE: City Journalist Slain in Irkutsk
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Yan Travinsky, a former St. Petersburg journalist, and Marina Murakhovskaya, head of the Irkutsk regional Rodina party headquarters, were killed Monday morning in the Siberian city, the local police reported.
Both were involved in campaigning for the Irkutsk Legislative Assembly election, which is scheduled to take place on Nov. 10.
"This looks like it was a contract killing because [in Travinsky's case] the shot was to the area around the heart," Rodina's press service quoted emergency doctor Yevgeny Bychkov as saying Monday. "As for the woman, she was shot in the left temple. They died immediately."
Rodina head Dmitry Rogozin said the murders appeared to be politically motivated contract killings, but he could not rule out that robbery was the killers' motive. The killer took a bag from the scene of the crime that belonged to Murakhovskaya and contained several thousand dollars in cash and also stole a laptop and documents that belonged to Travinsky from the taxi.
"I believe this assassination is directly linked to the elections," Interfax quoted Rogozin as saying. "There is a suspicion that our opponents have used members of a gang of robbers against us."
The killer struck in a residential building at 64, 4th Sovetskaya Ulitsa as Travinsky and Murakhovskaya were on the staircase leading to her apartment. At least five shots were fired, according to witnesses from another building, although investigators have found only three cartridge cases, according to the local police.
A white taxi was waiting for Travinsky to come back out from the building, one witness said. After the assassination the killer ran out from the doorway and shot at the taxi in an attempt to kill the driver, but after his gun failed to fire, he ran away, police said.
"When the lights went on I saw the license plate of the taxi, C 930 MA and when I opened the door [to the staircase] I saw a woman's head in a pool of blood," the witness said.
Before working for Rodina, Travinsky wrote for Izvestia, Smena and also covered crime for the St. Petersburgbased Agency for Journalistic Investigations. Travinsky's former colleagues said Irkutsk is a shady place for elections in general.
"When a colleague returned after this campaign to St. Petersburg with his head a bit out of place, I understood that Irkutsk is not the best place to go for work," the journalist, who declined to be named, said Monday in a telephone interview. "The guy had a slight persecution complex," he said. "Something had happened to him there."
TITLE: Calls to Boost Security of Radioactive Material
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia must develop responses on how to store the growing stocks of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive atomic waste at nuclear power stations, and how to defend the world from the increased threat of nuclear terrorism, a St. Petersburg conference was told Monday.
"Russia should be ready to deal with accumulated radioactive waste at its nuclear plants, and the possible threat of terrorists getting their hands on that waste," Valery Bezzubtsev, deputy head of the Federal Nuclear Supervision Service, said at the annual international conference on the safety of nuclear technologies.
The conference, which runs until Friday, is dedicated to finding solutions to legislative, social, scientific, technical, technological, ecological, economic, and safety problems in treating stored and new radioactive waste derived from nuclear energy production.
Alexander Agapov, head of the nuclear and radioactive safety department at the Federal Nuclear Power Agency, said the level of safety of nuclear technology in Russia is "very high."
"The level is that of one of the leading countries in the world," he said. "If nuclear enterprises fulfill the safety standards there won't be any emergencies."
However, Agapov said Russia does have a financial problem that has an impact on safety, unlike in Soviet times when funding was ample.
In the U.S.S.R, the state budget paid for guarding nuclear installations and the transportation of nuclear waste and construction of nuclear storage facilities, he said.
However, after 1991 the state budget was restricted and some nuclear power stations became commercial enterprises and are able to take care of some safety expenses themselves.
"The state budget is not obliged to participate in the commercial activities of private [nuclear] enterprises," he said.
Nevertheless, in such cases some monitoring of safety is needed so that safety is not the responsibility of not only the enterprise, but also of the state, which can require the enterprise to fulfill its safety obligations, Agapov said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Swastika Vandalism
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Unknown vandals desecrated a statue of Catherine the Great on the weekend, Interfax reported Monday, quoting the city police.
On Sunday night the criminals painted a swastika on the pedestal of the statue located in the garden in front of the Alexander Theater. A criminal case of vandalism has been opened, the police said.
Checks for Gene Food
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Greenpeace plans to test food from one of the city's big supermarkets this week to check if there are products on sale that contain genetically modified ingredients, Interfax reported Friday, quoting the environmental group.
Greenpeace has already checked a range of products from supermarkets in Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ivanovo, Ryazan, Volgograd and Voronezh. As a result of the examinations, the environmentalists are planning to make a list of products that are contaminated by genetically modified food and those that are free of such matter, as well as reveal names of big companies in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region that use and do not use such ingredients in their products.
In January, Greenpeace conducted a similar series of tests in Moscow that showed from 30 percent to 50 percent of the food sold in the supermarkets in the capital contains genetically modified material.
Committee Head Quits
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Vladimir Derbin, head of City Hall's social affairs committee, has filed a letter of resignation for unspecified reasons, Interfax reported Monday, quoting Derbin.
"I have worked in City Hall for 8 years and, of course, I have questions about my employment," he said. "After the letter is signed [by the governor] I will give further comments on the situation."
Derbin said he was leaving City Hall of his own will for a better paid job. However, local media said that he was one of the last remaining officials in the government affiliated to former governor Vladimir Yakovlev and that he may have been pressured to go.
New Stadium Planned
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City Hall plans to build a new big stadium in St. Petersburg, details of which will be announced next month, Interfax reported Saturday quoting Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
"In October we will make a final decision on building an international-standard soccer stadium," Interfax quoted Matviyenko as saying.
The governor said St. Petersburg needs a modern stadium that can seat at least 50,000 people to be able to host UEFA championship games.
Two big city stadiums are used for soccer - the Petrovsky Stadium, which seats 22,000 and the Kirov Stadium, which is able to host only the championships of the domestic league.
New Holland Readied
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Military warehouses located in the New Holland complex on Ploshchad Truda will be relocated by the end of this year, Fontanka.ru reported Monday, quoting Vladimir Kudryavtsev, head of the Leningrad Navy Base.
"We have drafted a timetable to relocate the property," the news agency cited Kudryavtsev as saying during a visit on Friday by Vladimir Kuroyedov, head of the Russian navy. "There are TV sets, printing equipment and paper."
But Gennady Fedosikhin, director of the New Holland joint venture, which plans to convert the complex into a residential and business center, doubts the military will manage to move out so soon.
"They might relocate everything by the spring of 2005, but I doubt it," he said. "They would need places to store their things, a curtain number of soldiers and cars, and they don't have them."
TITLE: Economy Hotels Good for Biznes
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Otel Biznes City Ltd. controlled by Moscow-based Metalloinvest-Market, has bought the share packages of two city hotels for a total of $6.6 million at the auction held by the city administration last week.
The city auctioned off its 75 percent stake in Turist and 60 percent stake in Yuzhnaya Hotels as part of the 11 city-owned hotel packages targeted for sale. With the starting price of 53 million rubles ($ 1.78 million) each, Biznes City bought Yuzhnaya Hotel for 70 million rubles and paid 122 million rubles for Turist.
"Biznes Citi plans to develop a chain of hotels in St. Petersburg and Moscow, " said the company co-founder and general director of Metalloinvest-Market, Konstantin Vachevskikh in a news interview. "Besides these two hotels, the chain will include five more hotels - two in St. Petersburg and three in Moscow," he said.
Vashevskikh said his company plans to remodel the purchased buildings into two-star hotels, but did not reveal the amount of money the company plans to spend on the remodeling works. Vashevskikh said the company plans to finance the investments from Metalloinvest-Market profits and its bank credit.
The regional manager of developing company Caspian, Roman Lvov, said the remodeling will cost at least $6 million to $8 million for each hotel. "It's necessary to replace the amenities, the utilities and redesign the flooring", he said to business daily Vedomosti last week. Such expenditure is comparable to building new economy-class hotels from scratch, he said.
Besides Turist and Yuzhnaya Hotels, the chain will have a 40-room mini-hotel located on Vladimirsky Prospekt, where it has already obtained a building, and another location on Ivashentzeva Street, next to Staronevsky Prospekt.
Until now, Biznis City Ltd. did not have any hotels under its management, and industry consultants have been skeptical about the company's ambitions. "Metalloinvest-Market has not shown itself to be a serious investor yet. They have several land plots in Moscow, but they are at a very early construction stage," said the general director of Hotel Consulting and Development group, Alexander Lesnik, to Vedomosti.
TITLE: City Banks Attempt to Educate on Investment
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: City banks and managing companies increased their efforts to introduce capital investment mechanisms to St. Petersburg residents this fall, hoping to draw their money and attention.
Local residents have been hesitant about investing, with many this summer choosing to withdraw instead due to the collapse of several private banks, or to keep savings in the state spin-off Sberbank, considering it the safest alternative. Tempting people to invest has become especially pressing, however, given the low returns achieved by the national pension plan, which was discussed by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov at a Cabinet meeting last week. The new pension plan provided citizens with a choice in the way their investment is managed by favoring one managing company over another, but many have been slow to exercise their new freedom.
It is the lack of education in successful investment mechanisms that has the Russians keeping money at home or in some form of real-estate investments, said Troika Dialog's Moscow-based portfolio manager, Oleg Larichev. Troika Dialog, along with the city's Bureau of Economic analysis, tackled the problem at a "Managing Investments" conference last week.
Investing money is a science that demands understanding on the part of the consumer, Larichev said. "Even depositing money in a bank should come as a result of an informed choice process," he said. Despite recent guarantees on deposits by the government through an insurance program set up to make bank depositing safer, choosing a bank does demand a thorough analysis. Uninformed decisions were to blame for many of the money losses in "bubble" financial institutions of the early 90s.
What's most important for mutual funds is "the right choice of industry to be invested in [such as the newly-emerged real-estate funds, stock funds or bond funds] and the right choice of risk to return ratio," Larichev said.
There are about 10,000 to 12,000 mutual fund investors at Troika Dialog, a funds managing company, with an average account standing at $9,000. The fund returns vary from 13.73 percent returns on state, sub-federal and corporate bond funds, to 26.9 percent on stock funds or 21.9 percent on mixed stock-bond funds, cited the company's site.
"There have been no bankruptcies of mutual funds", said Larichev. "There is a certain amount of risk involved in them, but the investor can make an informed choice about the level of risk with the help of the broker", Larichev said.
Although this summer's turbulence did raise some caution flags among investors, the amount of people looking to invest knowledgeably is growing three-fold. The only thing: it is starting from a very small base, and that is why we have not seen tremendous increases as yet, Larichev said.
The entrance of major industry players to the city market such as a branch of Citibank this summer and a branch of Societe Generale about to open this week, shows investors are keeping an optimistic outlook in regards to the city.
If in the West mutual funds make up to 60 percent of a country's bank deposits, in Russia the figures are much lower, which leaves much room for education and growth, Larichev said.
In its attempt to attract some of the city's wealthy potential investors, Citibank presented its CitiGold Wealth Management program on Saturday at Kurort district's Dyuny golf club. Out of about 150 golf-lovers gathered for the Citibank Cup golf tournament, the banking program presentation, a BMW car show and wine tasting, "some came purely to find out about the program," said the consumer business area director at Citibank St. Petersburg branch, Sergei Korotkov.
The program targets the part of the population with investment potential of $50,000 and over and offers customized management and investment services, he said.
The service program is said to be the cream of the crop, though the Japanese Financial Agency has revoked Citibank's license for operations at its Japanese banch. The Wall Street Journal reported last week several legal problems, including allegations of unchecked money laundering, in Japanese Citibank NA that works with wealthy clients.
TITLE: Oil Supply to China Still in Doubt
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia and China agreed to terms for Russia's membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) uring top-level talks in Moscow on Friday, but both sides left unanswered questions about whether Russia was ready to guarantee stable oil supplies and boost oil and gas deliveries in the future to its energy-hungry neighbor.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, in Moscow ahead of President Vladimir Putin's visit to Beijing next month, signed a communique with his counterpart, Mikhail Fradkov, pledging full-scale cooperation in the energy sector.
Beijing has been lobbying Moscow to build a $2.5 billion pipeline to ship Siberian oil to China. A competing proposal has been pushed by Japan, which considers a pipeline to Russia's Pacific port of Nakhodka more advantageous for its energy demands.
The communique said Russia would continue increasing railway deliveries to China and was considering building an oil pipeline to supply the Asian markets and a gas link from the BP-led giant Kovykta field.
But neither Fradkov nor Wen were able to say how Moscow would guarantee oil flowing by rail after Yukos, Russia's top oil exporter, said it planned to reduce supplies by two-thirds, saying it lacked the cash to fund basic operations.
"This is a question for companies, but the government will not stay uninvolved to guarantee the needed railway oil deliveries," Interfax quoted Fradkov as saying. He did not elaborate.
Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko was quoted as saying that Russia would not cover Yukos in case of interruptions to its supplies to China.
"Nobody ever said the government would guarantee specific volumes of Yukos' oil deliveries," Interfax quoted Khristenko as telling reporters.
"On this subject, the Russian government has talked about joint actions with the aim of supplying 6 million tons of oil to China in 2004, 10 million in 2005 and 15 million in 2006.
"The government is working toward that, but guaranteeing the risks of specific commercial firms is not the government's business," he said.
Russian Railways Co., or RZD, said last week the Chinese side was prepared to pay Yukos' rail shipping fees up front, but the issue was not publicly disclosed after talks. The Yukos-led plan to build a pipeline to China has stalled since Putin said he would prefer a pipeline to the Pacific coast, while the BP-led gas pipeline is not progressing amid a disagreement with state gas monopoly Gazprom on how to develop it.
Russian news agencies also quoted Wen as saying that Moscow had confirmed its pledge to build the oil pipeline to China as an additional stretch to its Pacific pipeline.
Wen told reporters after his meeting with Fradkov that agreeing to the terms of Russia's WTO membership was "the most important result of our meeting."
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Decent Pensions in 23 Years Says Chief
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Tens of millions of elderly Russians have no hope of a decent state pension for at least the next 23 years, the head of the State Pension Fund said Saturday.
"I am deeply convinced that pensions should exceed the official poverty line for elderly people," NTV television quoted pension fund chairman Gennady Batanov as saying.
RIA-Novosti quoted Batanov as saying that the basic monthly state pension, excluding bonuses, was now 660 rubles ($22.50), while the official poverty line for pensioners was drawn at 2,000 rubles.
The retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women. Only a few of Russia's 38 million pensioners get more than 2,000 rubles including bonuses.
"We will have a decent pension after 2027," Batanov said. "At the moment an average pension is 28 percent of an average monthly salary. We hope that by then the figure will grow to 40 percent to 60 percent."
He did not specify at what stage old-age pensions could exceed the poverty line. An average salary in Russia now is less than $150, but real incomes have been growing steadily since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.
State pensions remain the key source of income for elderly people in a country where the first few private pension funds have only a few years of history and lack public trust. Corporate pension plans are all but unknown.
The government's attempts to encourage contributions to private funds in the course of its ongoing pension reform have been largely fruitless because of a lack of tradition, low salaries and lack of legislative guarantees.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: More Billionaires Join Club
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - It looks like the U.S. billionaires' club isn't quite as exclusive as it once was.
There are now 313 billionaires in the country, the largest number ever and a huge jump over the 262 counted last year, according to Forbes magazine, which Thursday released its annual ranking of the 400 richest Americans.
The combined net worth of the 400 rose $45 billion and reached $1 trillion this year for the first time since 2000, before the dot-com bust wiped out billions of dollars in wealth.
The biggest billionaire of all was again Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose $48 billion in estimated wealth was up $2 billion from 2003. Gates was again followed by investor Warren Buffett with $41 billion, the list's biggest dollar gainer with a $5 billion increase, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who held the No. 3 spot although his net worth fell $2 billion to $20 billion.
Members of the Walton family, whose fortune comes from Wal-Mart, again swept spots four through eight, with each having estimated wealth of $18 billion.
The only tweak in the top 10 from last year came from Dell's Michael Dell and Oracle's Lawrence Ellison, now No. 9 and No. 10 respectively after swapping places from 2003.
Dell stock has weathered the tech slump relatively well over the past year, giving Michael Dell a net worth of $14.2 billion. Ellison, whose stock has suffered, had $13.7 billion in holdings, a drop from $18 billion last year.
There are 45 new names on the list, including Google's Russian Sergey Brin and Larry E. Page - also the youngest members of the 400 at 31. The two tied for No. 43 with $4 billion each after their company's stock went public in August.
Forbes senior editor Peter Newcomb attributed the overall gains in the list to the improving economy, as well as a good year in the financial sector and industries including food and wine.
Casino mogul Steve Wynn, who climbed to No. 215 from No. 377 last year, saw the largest percentage increase in wealth - a 100 percent jump to $1.3 billion from $650 million. Last year's biggest dollar gainer, Amazon's Jeff Bezos saw his net worth fall by $800 million.
Donald Trump's net worth edged up $100 million to $2.6 billion, despite the financial problems of his casino empire. But Trump slipped three spots on the list, falling to 74 from 71.
Returning to the list after a year's absence was Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Teresa Heinz Kerry's $750 million in wealth tied her for last place.
Fifty-four people dropped off the list from last year, including such notables as Disney's Michael Eisner, BET's Robert Johnson and Monster.com's Andrew McKelvey.
The 400 includes 51 women - up just one from last year, but the average net worth of the women is $2.8 billion, higher than the list's average of $2.5 billion.
Only 50 names remain of the original 400 from the list's debut in 1982. While some died or divvied up their assets, more than half were simply surpassed.
And while New York City still claims the most 400 list members per city with 38, the state of California, with 98 members, again outdistanced the state of New York, with 49.
"There's been a huge shift from east to west, and that trend is not slowing down at all," Newcomb said.
Forbes compiled its list by estimating the value of stock and other assets such as real estate held by the wealthiest Americans, Newcomb said. Forbes used the stock prices of publicly held companies as of Aug. 31; for privately held companies, the magazine estimated a fair market value based on the stocks of their publicly traded peers.
If the economy continues its upward trend, it's likely the 400 will grow even wealthier, Newcomb said, adding, "It won't be too long before our entire list consists of billionaires."
TITLE: State Firms Allowed To Buy Yukos Assets
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - State-controlled companies have every right to bid for Yukos ' assets if they are sold to pay off the firm's whopping tax debt, although the government is not seeking to nationalize the company, President Vladimir Putin said Friday.
"If it comes to a sell-off of ... assets ... [then] any company - including that with state capital in it - can certainly take part. But, I repeat, there was no, there is no and there will be no plan for [Yukos'] nationalization or the state assuming control of it," Putin told journalists in Moscow.
Yukos is facing a sell-off of its key production unit Yuganskneftegaz, which produces about two-thirds of the company's total output. The oil major has been grappling with an onslaught of multibillion-dollar tax claims for months.
"The state did not set before itself the task to nationalize this company or lay hands on it. And there is no such aim now," the president said.
Putin also issued reassurances that the recently announced merger of two state-owned energy companies, Gazprom and Rosneft, was not related to any pending sales of Yukos assets.
"As for Yukos and the announcement of the merger of Gazprom and Rosneft, these things are absolutely not related to each other. Yukos is a private company and the state suspects it of tax evasion," Putin said.
Putin said the Gazprom-Rosneft merger is going through in the name of "better meeting market economy standards and at the same time preserving government control" over Gazprom after foreign investors are allowed to buy local shares in the gas giant.
The Justice Ministry earmarked Yuganskneftegaz for sale in July as part of the state's pursuit of $3.4 billion it claims Yukos owes in unpaid taxes and penalties for 2000. The company also faces a similar bill for 2001.
The valuation of Yuganskneftegaz by Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein is expected to be announced by the end of the month.
"Tax services already have made respective claims against it, Yukos appealed against these claims in courts of law and has lost practically all those cases. The state has the right to secure its interests and, moreover, must do it," Putin said. "We shall do this in strict accordance with the law. I want to stress it - in strict accordance with the law."
If Yuganskneftegaz is indeed auctioned off, the list of possible buyers remains a mystery. Vedomosti reported last week that the value has already been set at $15 billion to $17 billion. Energy analysts agree no Russian energy company, including Gazprom, would be in a position to come up with such a sum without the involvement of foreign partners or a lowering of the price.
The Natural Resources Ministry will decide this week on whether to revoke Yuganskneftegaz's license, a ministry spokesman said Friday. A revocation could lower the unit's value dramatically. On Friday, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said that the natural gas monopoly has no interest in purchasing Yukos' assets.
"Gazprom ... does not have any plans to buy Yukos assets. We are interested in this company being stable," Miller said at a news conference in Helsinki, Interfax reported.
"Any negative news about Yukos negatively affects the market and [Gazprom's] own capitalization," Miller said.
In August, Miller told Putin that Gazprom is planning to expand its oil production, and earlier this month the merger of Gazprom and Rosneft was announced.
TITLE: Awakening of Fish Village That Smells of Success
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Project Financing Company (PFC) has filed a project to build a modern replica of Fish Village in Kaliningrad city center that was wiped off the face of the earth during World War II bombing raids.
The $100 million Fish Village, scheduled to be completed by 2008, would consist of 3 districts with 14 different sites including offices, cafes, restaurants, hotels and clubs.
The technical projects on buildings and infrastructure are almost complete now, and the construction plans aim to start operation in December this year, said Alexander Paskar, the company's deputy director responsible for the Fish Village project.
"We are in a process of signing [investment] agreements," Paskar said in a telephone interview from Kaliningrad Friday.
After a recent investment presentation the project has received the attention of businesses from St. Petersburg, Moscow and abroad, Paskar said, but notified that potential investors tend to be interested in financing selected parts of the project, while PFC would like to see it run it as a whole complex.
According to PFC investment plans, the main part of Fish Village is going to be sold to new owners after building work is completed, and a part of it will be rented out. By 2008 the company hopes to achieve $155 million in sales from the investment project.
"There are, of course, parts that will bring more profit, such as hotels or office spaces, but we wouldn't like to tear it apart," Paskar said.
The city government has fully supported the project, handing out 186 million rubles ($6.36 million) for construction of a new small bridge and embankment that surrounds Oktyabrsky Island where the village is planned to be build.
Among the most attractive sites for investors could be a block with Caroline Yard.
That will include 2,500 square meters of office space, four star hotel Suvorov with 250 rooms and another hotel of 3,600 square meters at site No. 1, 'Tower of Albrecht'.
The project, supported by the regional TACIS department, was initiated by the former Vice-Governor Pavel Fyodorov, said Alla Ivanova, head of Kaliningrad TASIC department.
"This is one of the projects that was filed with the support of TASIC. It is currently ready down to the details and is on sale for investors," Ivanova said in a telephone interview from Kaliningrad Monday.
TITLE: Trader Passes On Secrets of Japanese Business Savvy
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The secrets of building strong, modern companies are being passed on to Russian citizens attending the Japan Center in St. Petersburg, says its director Hiroshi Yamamoto. The teaching and advice the center offers, alongside information about modern and historical Japan could be just the boost any ambitious, forward-thinking Russian company needs.
"Some secrets must exist, but since Japan rose like a phoenix from the flames of defeat at the end of World War II, the accumulated know-how may be useful [to Russians] in some way," said Yamamoto. "Let's pass it on to them... The Japan Center operates according to this founding principle."
Since opening in 2001, the center has offered 8 to 10 free business courses annually on important company practices such as quality control, management of medium and small-sized businesses, public relations, and human resources to Russians holding mid-level or senior company positions.
As Russia transfers from a socialist to a free market economy, the main purpose of the non-profit organization is to pass on some of the educational assistance and advice that Japan itself acquired in the post-war years to now rate as the world's second largest economy.
Before being appointed director in 2004, Yamamoto worked for a Japanese trading company for 37 years and served as its business representative in Russia for more than 20 years. Taking on the role of the director proved to be ideal, he said, because work at the center allowed him to use his language skills and previous work experiences. However initially, after decades at a private company, he said he felt the need to adjust to public work, since it can involve repetitive and demanding amounts of paperwork.
The first Japan Center in Russia was opened in Moscow in 1994 and then expanded its operation by establishing six branches in other Russian cities, including St. Petersburg. All the centers are fully funded by Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and each center's director has private sector experience.
Passing on the wealth of knowledge Japan has in business seems like a logical progression: current Japanese management styles themselves were born from Western business practices as Japan rebuilt after 1945, said Yamamoto.
Most of the center's lectures demonstrate exactly how Japan absorbed and adapted foreign practices to hone its own particular, and now highly-respected business methods. The classes also encourage course participants, without imposing Japanese practices on them, to see the merits of Japanese management and to use the acquired practical knowledge in reference to their own work.
"There is a concept called 'Japanese quality,'" Yamamoto said, meaning that the world regards Japanese products as reliable and of high-quality.
"We invite professionals... [who] pass on to Russians how Japanese quality was established... in the form of various experiences and know-how such as quality improvement and quality control," Yamamoto said.
Each business course consists of lectures and discussions and is taught by professionals from Japan. The lectures are given in Russian and/or Japanese. Due to a limited number of student spaces, the center selects participants based on such criteria as the candidate's motivation and company position.
During discussion classes, the lecturers listen to course participants talking about their company's challenges, explain how Japanese companies would deal with similar situations, let the students discuss Japanese examples, and encourage the students to find their own solutions to the problems.
Upon graduation, the center sends some of the top participants to Japan for about 3 weeks, so that they can see how the theories they picked up are applied in real business situations. So far, thousands of interns have benefitted, and the center hopes that the interns will take the knowledge they have acquired to their own companies. In the long-term it should contribute to better Japan-Russia understanding and business relations.
"The internship can be a turning point, a time that changes the interns' life", said Yamamoto. "[The interns] come back with their changed worldview and a new perspective on Japan", he said. Some interns went as far as changing their workplace after the internship, saying that their former workplace was out-of-date and they wanted to live in a different world.
The Japan Centers also offer Japanese language classes. Yamamoto hopes that the relationship between St. Petersburg and Japan will become closer.
"St. Petersburg has such history and such scale, and it is the second city in Russia. But, [the city] is too far from Japan," he said, adding that most Japanese companies maintain their head-office in Moscow which has direct flights to Japan.
One way to make relations closer would be to attract Japanese investment to St. Petersburg and create an environment in which Japanese companies can run their business in the city. Maintaining clear and honest business interaction is also necessary for better relations, he added.
Japan and Russia, as neighbors, need to know more about each other, he said. Despite the availability of Internet, newspapers, and TV resources, information about the realities within the two countries is scarce, transmitted incorrectly, or received with prejudice.
According to Yamamoto, many Russians, while generally ignorant of Japan, tend to see it in a positive light, respecting Japan's post-war effort to build up a country devasted by two atomic bombs.
Russians also tend to imagine their country won the Japanese-Russo War of 1904-1905, Yamamoto said, since there was a famous statue erected of a Russian soldier trampling on a dragon embodying Japan.
In addition, Russians in general are not so conscious of the Kurile Islands dispute, regarding the territorial problem as something far away from them, said Yamamoto.
Yamamoto also found it refreshing not to have encountered conversations with Russians about their fathers being killed by Japanese soldiers, something that occurs in many Asian countries invaded by the former Japanese imperial military.
In contrast, Yamamoto said many Japanese people tended to have negative and obscure images of Russia due to limited information and historical problems arising from northern territorial disputes. The image of Russia changes, said Yamamoto, when Japanese visitors arrive in Russia, especially when visiting such historical cities as St. Petersburg.
There is a generation gap between older and younger Japanese business people. The former group remembers good times during the Soviet era when they could sell their products on a large scale to the Soviet state. The latter tends to have negative views on Russia, knowing only difficult times since the break-up of the former Soviet Union, said Yamamoto.
The Soviet collapse shocked Japanese business people who had trusted the Soviet state and had delivered their goods before receiving payments, said Yamamoto, leaving money uncollected and busness opportunities virtually closed.
After years immersed in a Russian way of living, Yamamoto finds it difficult to name anew major differences between Japanese and Russian cultures. He said Japan may even look strange when he returns. Instead, he focuses on the similarities between the two cultures, saying that both have become westernized and had humane elements.
Yamamoto wants the Japan Center to foster Japan-Russia relations at the local level: "I hope that the Japan Centers... contribute to Japan-Russia mutual understanding as a diplomatic branch different from the embassy."
The Japan Center in St. Petersburg:
Office 414-B, 4th Floor,
25 Nevsky Prospekt. Tel: 326-2555.
Links: www.jpcenter.spb.ru
TITLE: St. Petersburg Credit Healthy
PUBLISHER: Interfax
TEXT: MOSCOW - Moody's Interfax Rating Agency has confirmed its long-term credit rating for St Petersburg on the national scale at Aa2 (rus) scale - a very high level of creditworthiness - and the short-term rating at RUS-1 - that signifies an exceptionally high level of creditworthiness.
The rating was based on the strong diversification of the city economy and budget revenue, the small debt and its effective management, the stable growth of the local economy and the city's independence from federal subsidies.
The flexibility in managing spending and the conservative budget policy are important factors in the city's creditworthiness.
The risk of changes in budget revenue due to federal tax reform and unsteady development of the machine-building complex, in which several enterprises are large tax payers, and the risk associated with the reform of local self government and reform of social benefits create some uncertainty in the long term.
St Petersburg budget revenue grew 18.4 percent in the first half from the same period last year. Tax revenue grew 21.9 percent, with profit tax growing the fastest (64.9 percent).
The increase in profit tax revenue, a key tax for the city, was due to large payments by LMZ and several other machine building enterprises that have completed large export contracts.
Income tax revenue grew 28.6 percent. Grants from the federal budget dropped by 37% since the Finance Ministry is not providing St Petersburg subsidies to compensate for lost revenue this year.
The increase in city budget revenue was accompanied by a significant drop in debt, which dropped 25.4 percent to 9.8 billion rubles. The city's foreign debt dropped the most, by 45 percent, due to repayment of a loan to Deutsche Bank. This changed the structure of debt so that foreign loans account for just 16.7 percent of total debt, down from 24.1 percent at the close of 2003.
Moody's Interfax Rating Agency said St Petersburg could experience a rapid increase in current spending in 2005 due to the reform of local self government and social benefit programs. The reform of social benefits, in which benefits for certain categories will be transferred to the regional level, could increase budget spending. The redistribution of spending among various levels of budgets in municipal reforms could also result in an increase in current spending to support new municipalities.
TITLE: Interbank Currency Exchange Best in 3 Years
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The country's stocks rose Friday, lifting the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange Index to its longest weekly advance in at least three years.
The MICEX Index added 0.4 percent to 589.72 with 11 shares rising and seven falling. The dollar-denominated Russian Trading System Index increased 0.535 to 624.41.
The MICEX advanced 1.7 percent in five days, its seventh weekly increase and longest stretch of gains since at least 2001. The RTS rose for the fifth week in a row.
Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas producer, gained after President Vladimir Putin said its merger with state-owned Rosneft will improve transparency.
The Moscow-based company, which isn't part of either index, added 2.4 percent to 75 rubles. The takeover of Rosneft will improve Gazprom's transparency and help the nation's stock market, Putin told reporters Friday.
The plan allows the government to gain a controlling stake in Gazprom, enabling an end to some restrictions on foreign ownership of the stock, the government has said.
The market was also buoyed by Putin's comments that the government does not plan to "nationalize" oil giant Yukos, which is facing a potentially bankrupting $7.5 billion bill for back taxes.
Yukos' shares ended up 0.7 percent on the day, even though authorities are preparing to sell Yuganskneftegaz, the biggest Yukos unit, to recover tax debts.
The Economic Development and Trade Ministry said Friday that while the ongoing legal assault on Yukos had damaged investment in all sectors of the economy in the first half of the year, particularly the energy sector, the slowdown should be short lived. It added that signs of recovery were already apparent.
(Reuters, Bloomberg, SPT)
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Russia's Reserves Grow
MOSCOW (Interfax) - Russia's gold and foreign-exchange reserves are expected to top $100 million this year, Alexei Ulyukayev, the CB's first deputy chairman, told the Brunswick UBS investment conference.
The reserves have grown $16.8 billion since the start of the year, Ulyukayev said. He said 7 percent of the reserves were monetary gold, around 70 percent U.S. dollars, just under 25 percent euros and 5 percent other currencies.
"We will very carefully increase the share of euros, leaving gold as it is and lowering the amount of dollars, but we will not be taking on any obligations," Ulyukayev said.
Amtel Considers Shares
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Amtel Holdings Holland, a Russian tire-maker, will seek to raise $34.2 million in a private placement starting Sept. 27, helping to pave the way for an initial public offering of shares planned for next year.
Amtel will sell 450,000 shares, or 10 percent of the company, at $76 each, said Troika Dialog, the sole brokerage managing the sale.
The shares will be sold as depositary receipts to mainly foreign-based funds. Some U.S. and European money managers are not allowed to hold Russian-traded shares in their portfolio.
The sale would value Amtel, which has 28 percent of the Russian tire production market including 35 percent of the car and light-truck tire market, at $342 million.
Amtel Holdings Holland has three factories in Russia.
State Lets Aeroflot Fly
MOSCOW (AP, Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin will soon sign a decree allowing for the privatization of Aeroflot and Svyazinvest in 2005, Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov said Thursday.
The presidential decree will remove them from the list of so-called "strategically important companies" that cannot be sold. "The presidential decree is currently being prepared and should be signed in the near future," Sharonov said.
The privatization of Svyazinvest will allow the state to retain direct control of the firm, Information Technologies and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman was quoted as saying Thursday. "The design [of the privatization] will let the state, irrespective of its role as a shareholder, remain involved in decision-making and keep a veto over issues that are strategic for the state and for consumers, whose rights should be staunchly defended," Reiman told Vedomosti.
Sibur to Pay Its Debts
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Sibur, the biggest petrochemical unit of Gazprom, said that it paid its $75.2 million debt to its "most aggressive creditor,'' Alfa Bank, the country's biggest privately owned lender. "Alfa Bank was the largest and most aggressive creditor, which refused to sign the amicable settlement,'' said Gennady Fedotov, a spokesman at Sibur.
He said Sibur debt now stands at about 60 billion rubles ($2.1 billion), with 41 billion rubles held by Gazprom and its subsidiaries.
In September 2002, Sibur will look to repay 28 billion rubles over seven years.
TITLE: Two Tragic Septembers
TEXT: The series of terrorist acts culminating in the gruesome massacre of hundreds of innocent children, parents and teachers in Beslan proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Russia today is the weakest link in the war on radical Islamic-inspired terrorism. President Vladimir Putin is correct in concluding that the goal of Shamil Basayev and his local and foreign friends is to incite a broader conflagration in the Northern Caucasus, the disintegration of the Russian Federation and the destruction of Russia's political regime. This is not only a danger for Russia but for the rest of the world, and especially the United States. Mass murderers who are prepared to shoot hundreds of children in the back would revel in being able to pull off a truly catastrophic terrorist act of nuclear proportions.
Granted that the threat facing Russia today is primarily of its own making. Putin's leadership is responsible for nearly five years of disastrous policy that has devastated the local economy in Chechnya and has alienated much of the population with brutality and scores of human rights violations by federal military and security forces. Unreformed and unaccountable military, security and intelligence forces have left the Russian people more vulnerable to terrorism than when Putin assumed power.
Putin is also responsible for transforming the country's weak quasi-democratic polity into a semi-authoritarian state. The continual recentralization of state power, including further authoritarian measures announced by Putin on Sept. 13, appears very counterproductive in mobilizing Russian society to combat terrorism effectively. The record will show five years of expanding authoritarianism coinciding with a growing terrorist threat to Russia.
But in international affairs, ideal partners do not exist. Josef Stalin's Soviet Union was hardly a paragon of democratic virtue, but without the brave efforts of Soviet soldiers, the Third Reich may have been far longer-lived and millions more lives might have been lost.
Similarly, in the Cold War, the United States was allied with regimes like Turkey and South Korea that at times were notorious for human rights violations and authoritarian rule. Whether the United States likes it or not, Russia is an essential partner in any international coalition efforts to defeat al-Qaida.
In fact, alarm bells should be ringing now in U.S. policy circles about the dangers of Russia failing, and we should be mobilizing as much support for Russia as possible. The United States has been mightily distracted with Iraq for more than two years. From the standpoint of U.S. policy, the superficial and rhetorical character of the supposed U.S.-Russian strategic partnership stems principally from benign rather than malign neglect.
But many Russians today attribute malign intent on the part of Washington toward Russia. Putin implicitly alluded to this in his address to the nation on Sept. 4, when he referred to dark and mysterious forces that seek to weaken Russia and that fear its nuclear weapons.
These comments have ignited a torrent of anti-Western and especially anti-U.S. commentary in the Russian written and electronic media. There is a strong dose of scapegoating non-existent enemies to distract from massive policy failures in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, as well as the failures of Russian security and intelligence forces to address terrorist threats. Suffice it to say that there is a great deal of ambivalence and distrust on the parts of both Washington and Moscow in the bilateral relationship.
Russia's war on terror, of course, must be principally fought by Russians and the Russian government. Since governance in Russia increasingly depends on one man, Putin will shoulder the principal responsibility to mobilize his government and people.
Although the goals of Basayev and Co. have grown much larger than Chechen independence or removal of federal troops, enhancing the security of the Russian nation will have to begin in Chechnya. This will entail a more open and participatory political process, massive aid for reconstruction, punishment for human rights violations, and, of course, capturing and/or killing those responsible for the planning and implementation of terrorist acts in Russia.
Simply eliminating Basayev will go a long way toward reducing the threat. That he is still running free 10 years after the beginning of the first war in Chechnya speaks volumes about Russian capabilities. Major adjustments to policy in Chechnya and increasing the effectiveness of federal security forces will require tremendous political will and acumen on the part of Putin that to date has been lacking.
The United States and its allies and partners can and should make greater efforts to support Putin in the following areas: 1) much fuller sharing of intelligence information; 2) material and technical support to better secure Russian borders, airports, other transportation infrastructure and nuclear power stations as well as nuclear and chemical weapons and materials; 3) more assistance to close off sources of financing from abroad for terrorist groups on Russian territory; and 4) training and possibly direct operational assistance in the search and capture of terrorists. Even modest success at U.S.-Russian cooperation to address threats to Russian security can go a long way in helping to break down the barriers of distrust.
There is no doubt in our minds that some of the threats to Russia are threats to U.S. interests as well.
Russians and Americans are joined in grief from the experience of recent Septembers. After Sept. 11, 2001, Putin defied his chief foreign policy advisers and joined the United States wholeheartedly in defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan.
He did not do this because of his special relationship with U.S. President George W. Bush or any abiding love of the United States. He did this because defeating the Taliban and the terrorists they harbored was directly in Russia's national interest.
Similarly, after Russia's most gruesome September, the United States cannot afford to let its justified reservations about Putin's authoritarian inclinations prevent it from making every effort to help him defeat terrorism. The stakes are too high.
Andrew C. Kuchins is director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, and Dmitry Trenin is senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
They contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Setting Right City Service Fees Is a Question of Justice
TEXT: The St. Petersburg city government is starting the latest in a series of economic reforms. This time the reform is of the system of fees for all possible services. This covers monopolies - electricity, water, heating - and payments for kindergartens, for bathhouse services, for burial services, property registration services and so on. In other words, all the prices that are regulated by the city government.
The city government has been talking about the flaws in the fee system for seven years, ever since, they openly admit, a big gap opened between the fees scale and the collapsing engineering infrastructure of the city. And also since heat and light began to be turned off that made it necessary to address the monopolies who were overwhelmed by debts of city consumers. Order was not introduced during the administration of Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and therefore those debts still exist, even though our payments come in regularly and on time.
Vladimir Blank, head of the economic committee that has developed the latest reform, said changes are being made to tackle all the flaws in the existing system of setting fees. To achieve this it has been decided to centralize regulation of all fees that are in the city government's jurisdiction. The economics committee will answer to the city government for the relations between the fees, and for conducting an independent economic analysis on which the final fees will be based.
There will be a precise system of fee set up. All fees will be established each year before the city budget is approved. After that there will be only one ground for changing them before the period for which they were set expires - changes in the contributing factors. These could include changes to the price of fuel, pipes and, in some cases, the raising of other fees that will push the price of the services beyond limits specified by the government. If the rise in prices does not need to happen despite the minor extra costs, they can be covered by a higher fee for the following year.
Apart from that, a clearly defined system of payments for connecting new buildings to infrastructure has been set. Blank says the necessary regulations to allow this will be inspected by the city government in the near future, and that all fees for next year will be confirmed by City Hall by the beginning of October.
From the point of view of raising the effectiveness of budget expenditures, reform of the fees was a logical step after reform of the city's state orders. The reform of state orders has already spread the practice of running tenders, and closed loopholes for firms that used to indulge themselves through these orders. The fees policy of bringing order to the payment system should recognize that to stop runaway prices, competitive tenders could also be used here.
In so much as this reform affects the commercial interests of many structures (both businesses and the administration) who have got fat on state orders, so, for the reform to be fulfilled, the political backing of Governor Valentina Matviyenko will be required. By the way, the reform is, as yet, no done deal - first of all the city government will have to confirm a wide selection of regulatory documents. At this stage the outcome of the battle is too early to say, and there is yet another specific moment that has to be dealt with.
On the one hand the price of services provided by monopolists cannot be calculated, and neither are they determined by a competitive market. On the other hand, they bear the interests of the entire community - everybody uses the monopolies' services. To deal with the uncertainties in cost-measuring procedures, the Americans use a notion of "just fees" - since the product is subject to a social contract.
This approach should be recognized as rational in the economics committee's concept, and it should be recognized that parallel to the problem with fees there are some sensitive matters relating to the cost of connecting to the network, especially the heating network. Before opting for a particular method of determining fees, it would be sensible to present the options to the public so that interests could be declared in public discussion. Citizens could then declare their own interests, and such interests could at least be contested and discussed. In addition, it would bring us closer to a civil society, which would be a good thing. We should not pass up the opportunity.
Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. This comment was broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday.
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: The Deceivers
How many times must the truth be told before it conquers the lies? Again and again, the brutal realities behind the rape of Iraq - that it was planned years ago, that the aggressors knew full well that their justifications for war were false and that their invasion would lead to chaos, ruin and unbridled terror - have been exposed by the very words and documents of the invaders themselves. Yet the reign of the lie goes on, rolling toward its final entrenchment in November.
Mid-month, as hundreds of Iraqi civilians were being slaughtered by insurgents and invaders, as more pipelines exploded, more hostages were seized, more families sank into poverty and filth, the cynical machinations of the oh-so-Christian Coalition of Bush and Blair were revealed yet again.
This time it was a tranche of leaked documents from March 2002, a full year before the war: reports to Tony Blair from his top advisers plainly stating that the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was unsubstantiated, that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaida, that there was no legal justification for invading the country, and that any such invasion would lead to years of chaotic occupation, The Daily Telegraph (an arch-conservative, pro-war paper) reports.
Even more remarkably, Blair was told that the likely end result of the invasion would be the rise of yet another Saddam-like tyrant, who would then try to acquire the very weapons of mass destruction that the Coalition attack was ostensibly designed to destroy. In fact, Blair was told, with Iraq hedged in by a powerful Iran to the east and a nuclear-armed Israel to the west, any Iraqi leader, even a democratic one, will eventually seek WMD to defend the country.
All of this echoed similar warnings given to George W. Bush by the State Department, the CIA, top military brass - even his own father. Most of these alarms were reported - obscurely at times - in the press before the invasion. The Coalition's maniacal drive to war without evidence or provocation was later confirmed - again, often obliquely - by Congressional probes, the 9/11 commission, the Hutton report, the Butler report, Bush's official WMD investigators and a raft of revelations by top insiders on both sides of the Atlantic, such as Robin Cook, Richard Clarke, Bob Graham, John O'Neill and others.
The public record, available to anyone who wants the truth, is undeniable: The war was waged on false pretenses - and the war leaders knew it.
They knew it would bring unimaginable death and suffering to multitudes of innocent people in Iraq - and to thousands of their own soldiers and civilians as well. They knew it would lead to more terrorism, more chaos, more insecurity in the world. Yet they plunged ahead anyway, deliberately deceiving their own people with a poison cloud of lies, exaggeration and bluster. Why? Because for the warmongers, the game was worth the candle: The loot, the power, the "dominance" to be won was an irresistible temptation.
The Telegraph expose centered on papers prepared for Blair's March 2002 summit with the true ruler of the United States: Dick Cheney. As often noted here, Cheney was a key figure in the corporate/militarist faction Project for the New American Century, along with Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other bloodthirsty elites.
In September 2000 - before Bush was installed as the faction's White House frontman - PNAC issued the final version of a plan, years in the making, to ensure American geopolitical and economic "dominance" through military control of key oil regions and strategic pipeline routes, either directly or via client states. This would be accompanied by a "revolutionary" transformation of American society into a more warlike state: a transformation that PNAC said could only be accomplished if the American people were "galvanized" by "a catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
The conquest of Iraq was a vital cog in this long-range plan, and the depredations of the Baath Regime - the worst of which occurred with the full support of PNAC's top players during the Reagan-Bush years - had nothing to do with it.
The Cheney-Rumsfeld group put it plainly in 2000: The need to establish a military presence in Iraq "transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Likewise, 9/11 and "the new threats in a changed world" - evoked so often as a justification by the warmongers - were equally irrelevant to an invasion planned years before the CIA's ex-ally, Osama bin Laden, obligingly provided that longed-for "new Pearl Harbor."
What's more, the warmakers knew that Saddam's WMD arsenal and weapons development programs had been dismantled at his order in 1991.
This was confirmed in 1995 by crateloads of documentary evidence supplied by top defector Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and WMD chieftain - as Time magazine reported years ago.
It was confirmed again by UN inspectors, who independently verified the elimination of 95 percent of Iraq's WMD arsenal - before they were summarily pulled out of the country ahead of a U.S.-British punitive strike in 1998.
Bush, Blair, Cheney and the rest knew all of this when they made the decision to launch what the Nuremberg Tribunal called "the supreme international crime" - aggressive war. Now they are openly planning a new blitzkrieg to crush all resistance to their profit-seeking conquest: an assault - conveniently set after Bush's re-installation as frontman - which they know will churn through countless innocent bodies like a meat grinder.
When they stand before the world to justify the coming outrage, remember this, and hold to it: everything they say about their war is a lie. And it has been from the beginning.
For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Switzerland Retains Citizenship Restrictions
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GENEVA - Voters in Switzerland - where one in five residents is foreign-born - rejected liberalizing tough rules on granting citizenship Sunday.
Reflecting the divide between French-speaking areas and the more conservative German region, two government-backed citizenship proposals failed to win support in a majority of the 26 cantons, official results showed by early afternoon.
To pass, referendum questions must be approved by a majority of cantons as well as win a majority of the popular vote.
In other issues, a government plan to pay for 14 weeks of maternity leave appeared headed for passage, while voters rejected a proposal to halt the government's cost-cutting program to close smaller post offices.
With the count completed in most cantons, 13 cantons opposed the citizenship proposals, while six backed them.
Projections by public broadcaster SRG-SSR based on a partial count showed 56 percent of voters against a plan to give citizenship to Swiss-born grandchildren of migrants and a narrower 51 percent "no" vote on easing rules for foreigners raised and schooled here.
"This is a sad day for Switzerland," said Claudio Micheloni, head of a migrants' integration association.
Referendums are the cornerstone of Switzerland's system of direct democracy, and citizens cast ballots several times a year on a wide variety of questions. Turnout among the nation's 4.7 million voters rarely exceeds 50 percent, but 52 percent voted Sunday after a bitter debate over the citizenship proposals.
Opposition centered among German-speaking Swiss, who account for two-thirds of the population and whose areas tend to be more conservative than the rest of the country.
About 20 percent of the 7.2 million people living in Switzerland are foreigners - one of the highest proportions in Europe, partly because Swiss law makes citizenship relatively hard to obtain.
Foreigners have to wait at least 12 years, and Swiss-born children and even grandchildren of immigrants do not qualify automatically.
One government proposal would have automatically given citizenship to the grandchildren of immigrants, and the other would have made children born in Switzerland - or at least raised here from an early age - quickly eligible.
Right-wing opponents claimed the changes would undermine what it means to be Swiss. They faced widespread criticism for their referendum campaign, which featured Osama bin Laden's photo on a Swiss ID card and advertisements claiming Switzerland could be taken over by Muslims.
"We don't want Switzerland to be a doorway for all and sundry," Maria Angela Guyot, an official of the right-wing Swiss People's Party, said Sunday. "The current rules are fine."
The proposal for a national maternity leave plan was supported by 55 percent of voters, initial results showed, but the count by individual cantons was not final.
Switzerland hasn't had a national maternity insurance system, with federal authorities leaving it to the cantons and to companies, leading to wide differences.
On the post office question, some 51 percent of voters rejected the effort to block the government's closures. The proposal also failed to secure a majority of cantons.
The government-owned post office, one of the most cherished emblems of Swiss life, has closed 668 offices over the past three years, many in small communities.
TITLE: Turkey Lets Adultery Stay Legal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey - A special session of parliament approved legal reforms Sunday aimed at opening the way for Turkey to begin membership talks with the European Union after the governing party dropped a proposal to criminalize adultery, a plan that had upset EU leaders.
The vote came before an Oct. 6 EU report that is expected to recommend the bloc start negotiations with Turkey.
But the dispute over criminalizing adultery, a measure that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had supported, left concerns about his Islamic-rooted governing party and overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey's commitment to European values.
"Unfortunately, the debate over adultery has created serious doubts in Europe about Turkey's determination to preserve its secularity," Onur Oymen, a lawmaker from the main opposition party, told parliament before the vote. "Even if this is solved, you've created a confidence problem."
The reform package, the first overhaul of the penal code in 78 years, revamps Turkey's criminal laws and includes tougher measures against rape, pedophilia and torture and improves human rights standards.
Erdogan has made Turkey's entry into the EU his top priority.
Conservative legislators and many grass-roots supporters of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party had demanded that the penal code package include the anti-adultery provision, which led to tensions with the EU and claims that the measure was closer to Islamic law than EU law.
Opposition leaders and women's groups also strongly opposed the provision, and Justice Party legislators abruptly withdrew the entire reform package Sept. 16.
Erdogan apparently agreed to drop the adultery provision after meeting Thursday in Brussels, Belgium, with EU leaders, who said afterward that once the penal code was approved there would be no more obstacles to the EU report.
But while signaling that the report was likely to recommend membership talks, EU officials also have indicated it would be years before Turkey could become a full member.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Jeanne Wreaks Havoc
HUTCHINSON ISLAND, Florida - Jeanne, Florida's fourth hurricane in six weeks, piled on destruction in already ravaged areas Sunday, slicing across the state with howling wind that rocketed debris from earlier storms and torrents of rain that turned streets into rivers.
The storm peeled the roofs off buildings, toppled lamp posts, destroyed a deserted community center in Jensen Beach and flooded some bridges from the mainland to the Atlantic coast's barrier islands. Utilities estimated more than 2.5 million homes and businesses were without power late Sunday.
Thin Hopes for Bigley
LONDON (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against "raising false hopes" for an engineer held hostage in Iraq.
Kenneth Bigley, 62, was abducted in the Iraqi capital Baghdad 11 days ago. Bigley appealed directly to Blair to intervene last week.
In an interview with BBC television, Blair said "there is no point in raising false hopes because of the nature of the people we're dealing with."
"We're doing everything we properly and legitimately can," he added. The government has ruled out negotiating with the kidnappers.
Sagan Mourned
HONFLEUR, France (AFP) - France is mourning the death of writer Francoise Sagan, who shot to literary fame with her first novel "Bonjour Tristesse", and prepared for her funeral this week.
With her death, said French actor Laurent Terzieff, went "the color, the humor of an era", while photographer Jean-Marie Perier described her as a "Rolling Stone before the term was even invented."
Sagan, who had been ill for several years, died Friday aged 69.
Iraqi Rebel Caught
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A senior Iraqi commander has been arrested for alleged ties to the former Iraqi regime, the U.S. military announced Sunday as fighting raged in the troubled country.
Brigadier General Talib al-Lahibi, who previously served as an infantry officer in Saddam Hussein's army, was detained Thursday in the province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement.
The military declined to provide details on the general's suspected ties to militants waging a 17-month campaign to topple the interim Iraqi authorities and oust coalition forces from the country.
Pinochet Questioned
SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - An investigative judge questioned former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for half an hour on Saturday to decide whether to indict him in one of hundreds of human rights cases stemming from his 1973-1990 rule.
Pinochet, 88, told the judge he had no knowledge of the 19 leftist dead and disappeared in the "Operation Condor" case that is being investigated, a judicial system source said, on condition of anonymity.
The source quoted Pinochet as saying that Operation Condor, a coordinated plan by South American military regimes to track down and eliminate dissidents, was handled by mid-level officers in the military chain of command.
It was only the second time Pinochet has been questioned in a human rights case by an investigating judge - who acts as a prosecutor in Chile.
TITLE: Pakistan Kills Pearl Slaying Suspect
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KARACHI, Pakistan - Paramilitary police killed a suspected top al-Qaida operative, wanted for alleged involvement in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, during a four-hour shootout Sunday at a southern Pakistan house, the information minister said. At least two other men were arrested.
Amjad Hussain Farooqi was wanted for his alleged role in the kidnapping and beheading of Pearl in 2002 and two assassination attempts against President General Pervez Musharraf in December 2003.
"I, as chief spokesman for the government of Pakistan, confirm that our forces have killed Amjad Hussain Farooqi," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said by phone from Amsterdam, where he has gone on an official trip with Musharraf.
Ahmed said "two or three other people were also arrested during a big gunfight." He declined to identify them but said they were still being questioned by authorities and were "very important."
"This is the work of our security agencies, and they have done a great job," Ahmed said.
An intelligence official in Karachi identified the arrested men as Abdul Rehman and Yaqoob Farooqi. It was not clear what relation, if any, Yaqoob Farooqi had to Amjad Hussain Farooqi. Other officials could not immediately confirm that information.
However, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said three associates of Farooqi, all Pakistanis, were arrested.
Pakistan is a key ally of the United States in its war against terrorism and has arrested more than 600 al-Qaida suspects, including several senior figures in the terror network. Many of them have been handed over to U.S. authorities.
Since mid-July, Pakistan says it has arrested at least 70 terrorist suspects, including Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged al-Qaida computer expert, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian suspect in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa that killed more than 200 people.
Earlier Sunday, intelligence officials said authorities launched a raid on the house in Nawabshah, a town about 200 kilometers northeast of the main southern city of Karachi, after police received a tip that Farooqi was hiding there.
Two men who tried to flee - one of whom was injured in the gunbattle - were arrested, said local police official Ismail Jamali, adding that intelligence officials led them away in blindfolds.
A paramilitary official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the siege lasted four hours. The official said the suspect who was killed - presumably Amjad Hussain Farooqi - had shouted in Urdu, the main language in Pakistan, that he'd prefer death to capture. The suspect also pointed to the sky and shouted: "I fulfilled my promise to Allah," he said.
One woman and two children were also taken from the house. Firefighters were called to put out a blaze in one room that broke out during the gunbattle.
After a search, officials left the house carrying three boxes. It was not immediately clear what they contained.
Farooqi was believed to have been an associate of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the reputed al-Qaida No. 3 captured in Pakistan last year.
Farooqi had been missing since Pearl was abducted in Karachi in January 2002.
Pearl's captors beheaded the journalist and released a videotape of the killing. Four Islamic militants have been convicted of his kidnapping but seven other suspects - including those who allegedly slit his throat - remain at large.
Farooqi, thought to be 32, was born in a village in eastern Punjab province. His family says he was radicalized by a visit to Kashmir, where he trained with Islamic militants fighting against Indian security forces. He later visited Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
"We pray to God Almighty to accept my brother's sacrifice," Mohammed Javed, Farooqi's elder brother, said by phone from the village.
TITLE: Israel Says It Killed Hamas Boss
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DAMASCUS, Syria - In a hit claimed by Israeli security officials, a senior Hamas operative was killed in a car bombing Sunday outside his house in Damascus, the first such killing of a leader of the Islamic militant group in Syria.
Izz Eldine Subhi Sheik Khalil, 42, died instantly in the explosion, which wounded three bystanders. Witnesses said he was speaking on his mobile phone as he put his white Mitsubishi SUV in reverse before it exploded about 10 yards from his home.
Analysts said the killing appeared designed as much to warn the Syrians as to keep Hamas off balance.
Syria called the killing "cowardly" and top Hamas leaders, already taking extraordinary security precautions, went deeper underground. The killing threatened to take the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to new levels, with conflicting remarks from Hamas on whether it too would begin targeting Israeli interests abroad.
Security officials in Jerusalem, speaking anonymously, acknowledged involvement, though the Israeli government issued no statement. It had been warning for weeks that members of the group would not be safe in Syria.
Israel's ability to infiltrate the Hamas leadership in Damascus will likely to further rattle the group after Israel killed Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and his successor as Gaza leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, in missile strikes this year.
The Syrian Interior Ministry said in a terse statement carried by the official news agency, SANA, that Khalil had not engaged in any militant activity inside Syrian territory, and that authorities were investigating the explosion.
TITLE: No Bomb on Greek Flight
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - A police search concluded there was no threat to a Greek airliner forced to make an emergency landing in Britain after a bomb alert, officers said Monday.
Police searched the Airbus A340 airliner and the luggage of some 300 passengers for six hours after the Olympic Airlines plane landed with a fighter jet escort at Stansted airport north of London on Sunday.
But police found no evidence of a bomb, and the airliner was to continue its journey from Athens to New York.
"The plane has now been thoroughly searched and police are satisfied there is no threat to safety," said a police spokeswoman. "The aircraft will be refueled and prepared for its onward flight."
Police said "well rehearsed procedures" were followed after an anonymous call to a Greek newspaper said there was a bomb on board Olympic Airlines flight 411 from Athens to New York's JFK Airport.
Greek authorities immediately notified the pilot of the call, and he asked for a military escort. Passengers and crew were evacuated within 20 minutes of the flight landing in Stansted. They spent the night at an airport hotel.
TITLE: Williams Fights Back to Winning Ways
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING - Serena Williams erased a match point in the second set and came all the way back to beat U.S. Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova 4-6, 7-5, 6-4 Sunday at the China Open for her first title in six months.
"I just never gave up. I really didn't want to lose today," the top-seeded Williams said. "I haven't won a title since March, which really isn't like me."
Williams ended Kuznetsova's 14-match winning streak. The second-seeded St. Petersburg native had won her previous two events: the U.S. Open and a tournament in Bali last week.
"I think next time I'm going to be more fit playing against Serena," the Russian said. "In the third set, I couldn't serve well because I couldn't push myself, I couldn't push with my legs on my serve."
Williams saved a match point while down 4-5 in the second set. She went on to win the next three games to take the second set. She raced ahead 4-0 in the third before Kuznetsova could reply.
"I just played [like] crazy," Williams said. "It's kind of encouraging that I was able to win when I wasn't playing my best today."
Kuznetsova broke Williams twice late in the third set. But Williams needed just one match point, serving big while up 5-4, and Kuznetsova's shot hit the net on the final point.
Both players appeared rattled by the boisterous crowd, several times playing after a point was complete because they couldn't hear the call. Professional tennis is new to China, and spectators clapped and cheered during points and between serves. Cell phones rang repeatedly.
When the chair umpire tried to silence the crowd with a sharply spoken "thank you," the crowd cheered loudly as if to say "you're welcome."
Williams is working her way back up the WTA rankings after missing part of this year because of injury. She will remain at No. 10 despite the victory, while Kuznetsova will stay at No. 5.
Williams, a former No. 1 and owner of six Grand Slam titles, was out eight months after left knee surgery on Aug. 1, 2003. She won her first tournament back, at Key Biscayne, Florida, in March, but then hadn't won another title until Sunday, missing more time because of pain in that knee.
She did reach the Wimbledon final, but this is the first season since 1998 that neither Serena nor older sister Venus won at least one major title.
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CHARLESTON, South Carolina - A trip to Spain for the Davis Cup final assured, the United States padded its margin in the semifinals against Belarus on Sunday with Andy Roddick beating Alexander Skrypko 6-4, 6-2 as the Americans won the competition 4-0.
The last match, between Mardy Fish and Andrei Karatchenia of Belarus, was called off because of rain spun onto the coast by Hurricane Jeanne hundreds of miles away in Florida. Fish was up 3-0 in the first set when heavy rain sent more than 9,000 fans scurrying from the Family Circle Tennis Center.
Sunday's singles were reduced to best-of-three sets because the Americans took an insurmountable 3-0 lead Saturday. The Americans lost only one set during the in the best-of-five series.
Roddick said Spain will be favored on what probably will be clay courts for the Dec. 3-5 final.
"If you look at clay-court results, we're probably the underdog," he said. "But, you know, I'm definitely going to work hard and try to get in really good shape and be ready."
The United States has won the Davis Cup a record 31 times. But the Americans last made the finals in 1997 and last won in 1995. Not since going from 1926-37 without a title has the United States gone this long without winning the Davis Cup.
Before this year, Belarus never had reached the Davis Cup semifinals.
Roddick said it has always been a goal to win a Davis Cup. "To know we're nine sets from doing that feels pretty good," he said. "We have a little bit of time and I'm sure we'll be very anxious and ready to go when we get there."
Skrypko said the match with Roddick was the biggest of his career.
"He's a very good player, and I was very excited and I was a little bit nervous," Skrypko said.
U.S. captain Patrick McEnroe is looking forward to the trip to Spain.
"I'd love to have a Davis Cup final at home, don't get me wrong," he said. "But to me, when I saw the draw early on and I saw what the potential was, I was excited about going to Spain for the final."
Spain won a berth in the finals with a 4-1 semifinal victory over France. Spain led 2-1 after Saturday, and it clinched the victory when Rafael Nadal beat Arnaud Clement 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 in Sunday's first match.
Spain will play for the title for the third time in five years. McEnroe was gratified to return to the final.
"[It] feels right,'' he said. "I've said a number of times, you know, my goal was to get us into the mix... Every year we have a group of guys that you can count on and who are committed and want to play."
Beating the Spanish, he said, "would be an amazing experience for us. It wouldn't be [an amazing] upset, but it would be an amazing thrill for the team."
In the World Group playoffs, Austria defeated Britain 3-2, Slovakia beat Germany 3-2 and Romania topped Canada 4-1. Australia, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Russia all clinched victories on Saturday.
TITLE: Vijay Singh Overtakes Tiger Again
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FARMINGTON, Pennsylvania - Vijay Singh is running out of firsts to take away from Tiger Woods.
Singh broke the PGA Tour single-season money record Woods set while winning three majors in 2000, holding off Stewart Cink to win the 84 Lumber Classic by one shot Sunday for his third consecutive victory.
Singh's eighth championship this year pushed his money total to $9,455,566 in 26 events, surpassing Woods' $9,188,321 while he was winning nine times in 20 events in 2000. With Singh expecting to play four more times, he could become the first to win $10 million in one year.
"I'm going to try," Singh said.
Singh led from start to finish for his fifth victory in six tournaments, the best such streak since Woods won six in a row to end 1999 and start 2000. Singh has won seven of his last 16 events.
In only three weeks, Singh has ended Woods' five years-plus run as the world's No. 1-ranked golfer and taken away one of Woods' lines in the PGA Tour record book. Maybe that's why Woods pulled out of the 84 Lumber after unexpectedly committing last week - he didn't want to see Singh knock him out of yet another lead.
"It's ridiculous the way he's playing right now," said Chris DiMarco, who tied for third with Pat Perez and Zach Johnson.
Singh had a 3-under 69 Sunday, his third round in the 60s in four days, to finish at 15-under 273. Cink, five off the lead when the day started, had five straight birdies from No. 7 through No. 11 to make a move, but a bogey on the par-4 14th dropped him three back. Singh then held on despite a bogey on the par-4 18th.
"I want to win, I want to play well and it's a good habit [to get into]," Singh said. "I had my driver working, my irons working and I made the putts I needed to make."
Again, Singh's exceptional fairway play allowed him to excel on a long course. Of the eight longest courses on the PGA Tour this year, Singh won on four.
The mountaintop Mystic Rock course where the 84 Lumber is played was lengthened by about 400 yards to 7,471 yards after J.L. Lewis won last year at 22-under.
Singh is only 146th in driving accuracy despite being 11th in length, but is the best on the Tour in greens hit in regulation. No matter where his drives go - and only about half the time do they land in the fairway - he's still putting for birdie or par.
And while Woods started winning barely weeks after joining the Tour in 1996, the 41-year-old Singh's career keeps getting better the older he gets. Never a winner on the PGA Tour until he was 30, he now has 23 career victories, all in his 30s and 40s - 12 since last year. Sunday's championship was his 45th worldwide, starting 20 years ago with the 1984 Malaysian PGA Championship.
Singh was coming off victories in the Deutsche Bank Championship and the Canadian Open before sitting out the Ryder Cup - as a native of Fiji, he was not eligible.
TITLE: Disabled Athletes Complete Marathon on Historic Route
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATHENS - Japanese runner Yuichi Takahashi won the Paralympic marathon Sunday but unsure of his victory until well after he finished his race along the ancient course.
Takahashi, running with a guide, was timed in 2 hours, 44 minutes, 24 seconds in an event featuring athletes from five disabled categories. He beat world-record holder Carlos Ferreira of Portugal, who finished in 2:45:07. Andrea Cionna of Italy was third in 2:49:59.
"I thought I'd come second," Takahashi, blinded by illness as a teenager, said laughing, with sighted guide Takashi Nakata standing beside him. "Twenty minutes later, they told me I was the champion."
"For the blind it is the ultimate opportunity to demonstrate that ability to overcome our disability, our frailty of body, mind and spirit," said Brian Scobie, of the International Blind Sports Federation. "And to do so in the place that symbolizes that triumph, it is the stuff of dreams."
The race was inspired by the legend of a messenger who brought ancient Athens news of victory in the 490 B.C. Battle of Marathon against Persia.
It was first run as a race in 1896 when the ancient Olympics were revived in Athens. Sunday's athletes finished at the Panathenian stadium.
Ildar Pomykalov of Russia scored an easy victory in the partially sighted runners' race. He finished in 2:38:45, ahead of silver medalist Daniell Roy of Australia and bronze medalist Linas Balsys of Lithuania.
Australian Kurt Fearnley clocked the fastest time of three wheelchair categories - 1:25:37. Wheelchair racer Kazu Hatanaka of Japan - in the only woman's race Sunday - won in 1:49:26, beating Wakako Tsuchida of Japan and Cheri Blauwet of the United States.
The 11-day Paralympic Games end on Tuesday.