SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1010 (77), Friday, October 8, 2004
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TITLE: Russia 'Aided Hussein'
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian government officials, political leaders and companies helped Saddam Hussein secretly amass $11 billion between 1996 and 2003 and pocketed an estimated $130 million violating intricate UN sanctions on Iraq in the run-up to the U.S. invasion, a CIA report says.
Starting in 2000 at the latest, more than two dozen Russian officials and companies began funneling money to Hussein-controlled bank accounts in exchange for lucrative vouchers to sell Iraqi oil, which were then sold to traders approved to operate within the United Nations oil-for-food program, according to a 1,000-page report posted on the CIA's web site late Wednesday.
According to "secret lists" kept by Iraq's Oil Ministry and Hussein's vice president, the Russian individuals who participated in the scheme included former Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, former Federation Council Speaker Yegor Stroyev, former Fuel and Energy Minister Yury Shafranik, Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov, LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the mercurial leader of the southern Buddhist republic of Kalmykia.
Other major benefactors included the Foreign Ministry, the Emergency Situations Ministry, the pro-Putin Unity Party, Kremlin-controlled energy firms Gazprom, Zarubezhneft and Rosneft, state-owned trading company Machinoimport, private oil company TNK, and Alfa Eko, a subsidiary of the powerful Alfa financial-industrial group.
Under the oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, Iraq was allowed to sell a limited amount oil to UN-approved traders and use the proceeds to buy humanitarian goods. But the Hussein regime abused the program by awarding vouchers for the right to purchase tens of millions of barrels of Iraqi oil at knockdown prices, and Iraq often got a cut of the difference when the vouchers were sold at market rates, the report says.
Under UN sanctions in place at the time, giving financial aid to the government of Iraq was illegal.
"Saddam personally approved and removed all names of voucher recipients," the report says. "[These vouchers] provided Saddam with a useful method of rewarding countries, organizations and individuals willing to cooperate with Iraq to subvert UN sanctions."
Most of the report, written by Charles Duelfer, a special advisor to the U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, focused on the Duelfer-led Iraq Survey Group's 16-month quest to find weapons of mass destruction, which it did not. (See story, page 9)
Duelfer's report says Iraq generated an estimated $2 billion from illicit oil sales and other kickbacks from companies and individuals from numerous countries, mainly from UN Security Council permanent member countries Russia, France and China - in that order. Russia received 32 percent all the oil-for-food contracts, twice as much as the next country, France.
During the seven-year oil-for-food program, Russian entities traded tens of billions of dollars' worth of Iraqi crude - the majority of which appears to be legal. In September 2000, however, Iraq instituted a mandatory 10-cent per barrel surcharge for oil allocations - money that would go to Hussein-controlled bank accounts in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, or delivered in cash to Iraq embassies, the most popular of which was in Moscow, the report says.
Being named on the list does not necessarily indicate illegal activity, according to the report. But financially supporting the Hussein government was illegal, according to a senior Western diplomat.
"UN Resolution 661 states very clearly that member states and their nationals were prohibited from making any financial or economic resources available to the government of Iraq," the diplomat told The Moscow Times, The St. Petersburg Times' sister paper, said Wednesday. "The key thing is actually proving they were complicit in making funds available."
In all, after the 10-cents-a-barrel charge was instituted, Russian entities pocketed about $130 million, according to Moscow Times' calculations based on the report. The biggest recipients in this period, according to CIA estimates, were state-owned companies Zarubezhneft ($22.5 million) and Machinoimport ($17.3 million), and the pro-Putin Unity Party ($14.9 million).
Those figures could be higher or lower, however, since the report gives only an average profit estimate.
According to the CIA, between December 2000 and the end of the program, Voloshin, the presidential administration, the Emergency Situations Ministry and the Foreign Ministry between them pocketed at least $39.1 from trading 79.3 million barrels of Iraqi crude, for which they paid Hussein $6.7 million.
In total, after December 2000, 27 Russian entities earned an estimated $129.8 million and paid the Hussein regime $29.4 million, the report shows.
The list of companies the CIA says were involved in the voucher scheme includes Rosneft, Slavneft, Tatneft, Alfa Eko, Gazprom and Transneft.
But how alleged sanctions violators might ultimately be punished, and by whom, is not clear. The report explicitly "does not intend to analyze or assess the legal implications for non-Iraqis."
A U.S. embassy spokesman said governments should enforce the rules for their own citizens and companies.
With one notable exception, each of the dozen or so government bodies, companies and individuals contacted by The Moscow Times on Thursday denied any wrongdoing.
"All oil majors were involved in this," an official from one of the oil companies listed in the report said. "The state played a large role," said an official at one of the oil company's identified in the report.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant leader of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, who the report says personally pocketed an about $5.9 million after December 2000, adamantly denied profiting from the oil-for-food program.
Much of the oil Zhirinovsky was allegedly granted was passed on to Machinoimport, a foreign economic association within the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.
Another company identified by the CIA, Rosnefteimpex, earned $1.3 million after September 2000, the report says.
According to the Center for Political Information, state-owned Rosneft owned 56.7 percent of Rosnefteimpex's voting shares in 2003, but Rosneft spokesman Dmitry Panteleev would only say Rosnefteimpex is not a Rosneft subsidiary.
"We have no relation to any bribes, we did not give any," he said.
The Presidential Administration declined to comment.
Voloshin, the former Kremlin chief of staff who is now the board chairman of electricity monopoly Unified Energy Systems, could not be reached for comment. A spokesman said he was travelling.
"Russia, like all countries, is interested in the results of this investigation being objective," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said, Interfax reported.
"The investigation that is being conducted should result in an objective picture of possible irregularities that could have been committed under the oil-for-food program."
A spokesman for Ilyumzhinov, the controversial president of Kalmykia who the CIA says earned $300,000 from illicit Iraqi oil sales, also denied any impropriety.
TITLE: Paper Publishes Purported Interrogation of Pumane
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A copy of the interrogation protocol of a man police say is Alexander Pumane, a man from the area around St. Petersburg who was allegedly planning a terrorist attack in Moscow last month and who died after being in Moscow police custody, was published by Komsomolskaya Pravda on Thursday.
"I was preparing a terrorist attack in Moscow," the protocol cited Pumane as writing in a line asking the "reasons for detention."
"I had not been convicted before [and] had never been detained by the police. In 1998, probably in May, I met a man of a Caucasian appearance, probably a Chechen, whose name was Alim, wh[o] ... ," a note said to be in Pumane's handwriting says. The sentence is incomplete.
The Moscow Prosecutor's Office would neither confirm nor deny on Thursday if the published protocol is genuine.
"I just spoke to an investigator and he refused to say anything, referring to the fact that this is about materials of the case, which is a secret of the investigation," said duty prosecutor Viktor Glushchenko, in a telephone interview.
Glushchenko said there are still questions about the identification of the body that the prosecutor's office says is Pumane, despite his former wife Natalya, who has seen it, saying it is not him.
"I don't know which corpse they have identified because the dental work on the body they showed me does not match his dental records," Interfax cited Natalya Pumane as saying Thursday.
The man police say is Pumane died about 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 16 at Moscow's Sklifosovsky Hospital after being taken there by ambulance about 4 a.m. He was arrested while driving a Lada about 1 a.m. near Patriarch's Ponds. Police said they found two landmines in the Lada and 200 grams of TNT under a seat.
Another bomb was found hidden in the car's engine with wires attached, Interfax reported Wednesday quoting anonymous sources at the FSB investigation group. The source said all the explosives in the car lacked detonators.
No sightings of Pumane, a lawyer's assistant and former submariner, have been reported since Sept. 16. His parents have refused to talk to The St. Petersburg Times and other family members have not been able to be reached for comment.
Law enforcement officials initially said that Pumane had died of a heart attack but later the Moscow prosecutors said an investigation revealed the suspect had been severely beaten.
Pumane's wife said she could not say beyond all doubt that the body she saw was not that of her former husband.
"[Pumane's] corpse might have been concealed from me and I was shown a body of a different person to identify," she said.
Pumane's close friends were more definite in their opinions saying that the body that was shown to them does not belong to the person they knew, according to reports in the media.
The Moscow Prosecutor's Office said the investigators are still working on identifying the body.
"All I heard so far is that there was a check of matches with dental records," Glushchenko said. "A genetic evaluation [DNA comparison] is to be conducted after relatives' blood samples arrive [in Moscow],"
Meanwhile Vyacheslav Dushchenko, the Moscow police 5th operative department deputy head, who allegedly inflicted the fatal blows to Pumane is still at large with a federal warrant for his arrest, Glushchenko said.
Dushchenko was already facing serious problems with the prosecution after allegedly planting explosives in the car of a Chechen businessman Mustafa Durgayev in October 2003, who was charged with cooperating with terrorists after the detention and spent two months in prison, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported Thursday.
Durgayev was released after the police showed in court a videotape of the detention, which they considered to be proof of the charges against the businessman, but, in fact, suggested Dushchenko planted the evidence, the report said.
"It was unbelievable, but the whole process was videotaped," the paper cited Alexander Kuznetsov, a lawyer as saying. "They stop the car ... Dushchenko sits at the steering wheel without any witnesses during an official search and drives off in the car."
"He sits in there for some time, keeps leaning down. Then he gets out, ... and declares 'Where are the witnesses?!' A young policeman starts searching the car under Dushchenko's supervision. He looks under the front passenger's seat and takes out a package. Then he goes to the back door, but Dushchenko stops him by screaming, 'Stop! You didn't get it all yet!'" Kuznetsov said.
Durgayev was released from custody shortly after the tape was played.
The prosecutor's office initiated a criminal case against Dushchenko, but the case was later dropped with no further consequences for the policeman because he did attend an interrogation, the report said. Moscow police would not comment on that case on Thursday.
TITLE: Report Says Renovation of Chernobyl-Type Reactor Rushed
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A series of mishaps has occurred during the renovation of reactor No.1 at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, or LAES, in Sosnovy Bor outside St. Petersburg because basic safety regulations were ignored, according to a new report.
Reactor No. 1 is the oldest of four reactors at the plant and its official working life has expired, but the Federal Nuclear Power Agency is seeking to extend it. It is an RBMK-1000 reactor, the same type that caused the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and LAES management plan to restart it this fall.
Sergei Kharitonov, a former employee of the plant and now an environmental campaigner, wrote in the report that the safety systems for the reactors were installed in a rush, in some cases by unqualified workers, breaching standards on how the work should be done, the report said.
As a result, two workers died in the spring, including a 32-year-old construction worker who fell from the wall of bloc No.1 in April and a 42-year-old fitter was crushed while working on bloc No.2 in May.
"[The management] paid most of its attention to [staff] training for the launch of bloc No.1," Kharitonov quoted LAES management as saying in a statement on July 16. "The lectures were poorly attended ... Two lectures remain to be conducted. Such a situation is unacceptable, when the bloc [No.1] is about to launched, but employees are not ready for it."
Forty-nine staff got only one week's training in March. Another 39 failed to be approved as having appropriate skills to work on the renovation project, the report said.
LAES spokesman Sergei Averyanov said that LAES management received permission from the Federal Nuclear Supervision Service on Sept. 30 to launch reactor No.1. Although no specific date for the launch of the bloc has been determined yet, it will happen sometime this month, he said Wednesday in a telephone interview.
Kharitonov worked at the plant for 27 years and battled LAES management in court when they fired him after he publicized some of the plants failings. He last worked there in 1999.
He said that rushed renovations seemed to be frequent and that LAES had used fast work on other plants as examples to be followed.
"An outstanding level of training to renovate bloc No.1 of Volgodonskaya Nuclear Power Plant and detailed organization of the work allowed the project to be completed in 55 days, while the standard period for a renovation should be 90 days," Kharitonov quoted a LAES statement as saying.
In an article "The Most Effective Will Survive" in an official LAES document in December 2002, the plant management urged employees to work faster by writing "earn more and get more benefits."
The document gave the example of the Kaliningrad Nuclear Power Plant, which raised its energy output and wages were raised shortly afterward using the proceeds from selling electricity.
The fire service at LAES is also in a worrying condition, according to Mayak, the weekly Sosnovy Bor newspaper, which in November last year reported that "the 72 firefighters providing safety at the nuclear plant commit from 1,700 to 1,800 violations annually," according to Kharitonov's report.
"How does he know what's going on at the plant if he hasn't been working there for such a long time?" LAES' Averyanov said.
"If he is citing materials from [LAES's official documents] that discuss all the spectrum of internal problems of the LAES staff, it would be wrong to make judgments based on such articles," he said.
Kharitonov said encouraging renovations to be done quickly could in the long run lead to dangerous developments comparable in their scale to the Chernobyl disaster.
"An ongoing and dangerous experiment is being carried out at LAES," Kharitonov said.
"They are always working in a rush. There is always some sort of defect that is being fixed on the way."
Important parts of the new equipment to maintain the safety of bloc No.1 are being stolen, including the switches on a security system that can in emergency bring the reactor to a halt, Kharitonov said.
"Even crucial things like that are fixed in a rush," Kharitonov said.
One of the latest minor accidents mentioned in Kharitonov's report was an emergency shutdown of a reactor's operations last month after rainwater fell through the roof onto a 20-kilowatt cable causing a short circuit.
"As a result of the event, head engineer O. G. Chernikov directed most of the [management's] attention to the necessity of renovating and maintaining the roofs of buildings and to boost measures to protect premises and equipment from rain," Kharitonov quoted a management statement as saying Sept. 3.
By mid year there had been five emergency shutdowns of different reactors at the plant.
Management said that "this way LAES has the biggest number of such shutdowns among all [nuclear power] plants," according to a statement on July 2.
TITLE: FSB Officer Arrested In Kidnapping Probe
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Federal Security Service officer has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in a kidnapping case that police have linked to the murder of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov.
FSB Major Roman Slivkin was arrested in an investigation into the kidnapping of Dagestani businessman Akhmed-Pasha Aliyev, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office said Thursday.
The spokesman would not give further details, but Interfax cited a security service source as saying that Slivkin was arrested by agents from the FSB's internal affairs department and was currently being held at the Lefortovo jail. The source also said Slivkin was suspected of maintaining contacts with Chechen criminal groups.
Aliyev said he had been abducted on the orders of Slivkin and FSB counter-intelligence officers Oleg Sachkov and Dmitry Frolov over a $300,000 debt from a stalled business deal, Kommersant reported this week.
Police freed Aliyev in a raid on an apartment in western Moscow on Sept. 29. Two Chechen natives, Aslan Sagayev and Kazbek Elmurzayev, were arrested in the raid, which was prompted by a tip that they were holding Aliyev hostage.
Aliyev told Kommersant that the Chechens agreed to pay the FSB officers a third of his debt and keep him captive until he came up with the rest of the money.
The whereabouts of Sachkov and Frolov were unclear Thursday, and the Prosecutor General's Office spokesman would not say whether they were being sought by police.
Slivkin's lawyers told Kommersant that Aliyev did owe money to their client, but that Slivkin was not involved in his abduction.
Hours after the arrest of Sagayev and Elmurzayev, city police chief Vladimir Pronin said investigators believed that one of three pistols found in the apartment was used in Klebnikov's killing. Several days later Pronin denied having made such a statement.
Ballistics tests on the three guns show that they were not those used in Klebnikov's slaying, Gazeta reported this week.
Klebnikov, the editor of Russian Forbes and an investigative reporter, was shot outside his office July 9.
TITLE: Mould Plagues City's Historical Center
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Eighty percent of buildings in St. Petersburg's historical center are plagued by mould and toxic microorganisms, says a report by city doctors.
Dangerous to both people and the buildings, mould is destroying the city from within, they say.
Experts from the city's State Sanitary and Epidemic Control Board started surveying buildings in 2000-2001, when doctors began getting increased numbers of complaints and the number of illnesses recorded rose.
The most common illnesses associated with mould in apartments are chronic rheumatism, asthma, bronchitis, skin allergies, immune deficiency and even tuberculosis. High concentrations of toxic microorganisms in the air get into the lungs as people breathe causing severe health problems.
According to the city branch of the State Sanitary and Epidemic Control Board, one St. Petersburger dies of tuberculosis every 20 hours.
The weather is not to blame; the mould is city officials' fault, St. Petersburg doctors say.
"Paris has about as much rain as St. Petersburg does," said Professor Vitaly Antonov, leading researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of Mycology, where fungi, including mould, are studied.
"The only difference is that there they repair the roofs on regular basis, whereas our roofs are covered with rusty holes," he said. "The same is true for basements. If there is mould in a house - either inside or outside - it is the result of the irresponsible and poorly supervised work of the communal service staff, and in no way an inevitable attribute of humid climate."
Corroding walls and ceilings, mould and fungi lead to the disintegration and collapse of roofs, ceilings and shelters over entrances, he said.
"The city's drainage systems aren't functioning," Antonov said. "When it rains, the water - along with all possible microorganisms - gets absorbed into the walls. Through a chemical reaction, concrete turns into plaster."
The city's refined architectural ensembles and monuments suffer as well.
Vladimir Timofeyev, director of the Museum of City Sculpture, said almost every monument in town is affected by mould or corrosion to some extent.
"Marble sculptures probably suffer the most," Timofeyev said. "Rotting microorganisms calcify the surface of marble." But City Hall says the local climate is too tough to fight.
As Olga Taratynova, deputy head of the committee for the preservation of historical monuments, said even a completely restored monument requires cosmetic touch-ups in as little as a year after repairs because of the high humidity and frequent temperature fluctuations.
It is impossible to repair every building every year, as no budget can possibly afford it, she said.
Both doctors and restorers offer the same cures. The list of recommendations include a mass program to drain basements and repair roofs around town, a much earlier start to the communal heating program in autumn and a thorough upgrade of protection systems that stop rising damp.
Timofeyev criticized the quality of modern builders' workmanship.
"Yes, the city was built on a swamp but our ancestors took much more effective measures," he said. "For instance, I saw the remains of centuries-old drainage facilities on Sennaya Ploshchad and was stunned to see that they still serve as a watertight barrier to in places where the entire system is still intact."
TITLE: Inspections of Studios Finished
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The City Property Committee this week finished a series of inspections of city-owned artistic studios performed to check whether the tenants are using them properly.
Before the raids started in August the officials estimated that every third studio - out of 2,000 rented out at discounted rents to local artists - is not used as required under rules set by the city.
However, only 10 percent were found to be being used in violation of the rules, NTV reported. The officials weren't able to enter about a third of the studios, so the inspections will continue.
According to Internet newspaper Fontanka.ru, serious misuse was found in 15 studios, whose tenants will be evicted and the right to allocate them will be taken away from the St. Petersburg's Union of Artists.
In June, the property committee ordered all studios be privatized but Governor Valentina Matviyenko canceled the decision within days after a mass protest meeting of the city's artistic community outside the Legislative Assembly.
City officials say many artists sublet their studios, use them infrequently, use them as residences, don't maintain them and don't pay rent on time. Matviyenko ordered all contracts revised and checks made that all studios were being used properly.
"The time has come to put things in order," Matviyenko said in June. "If we see any violations of rules, we'll terminate the tenancy."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Investigation Complete
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A preliminary investigation of the Perm criminal gang headed by Alexander Tkachenko, who is charged with organizing a number of high-profile crimes is complete, Interfax reported Tuesday, quoting the police.
Tkachenko is accused of planning several assassinations and organizing blasts at gas stations in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, the report said.
In May 2002 the suspect reportedly had a member of the gang killed and was allegedly behind an attempt to assassinate an employee of local security company Baltic-Escort in April that year, the report said. In autumn 2001 Tkachenko is alleged to have organized three explosions at a Slavneft gas station located at the 84th kilometer of highway No. 18 in November. Another bomb with 1.4 kilograms of TNT was found at the same gas station, but was defused.
Chief Doctor Detained
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Sergei Tikhomirov, head of St. Petersburg Anti-Drug Treatment Clinic, was detained Monday evening on charges that he allegedly organized the assassination of his deputy, Larisa Artykhovskaya, at the end of August, Interfax reported Tuesday, quoting the City Prosecutor's Office.
Several other suspects had been detained the same day in relation to the assassination, the report said.
An explosive device, which was found in August outside Tikhomirov's apartment was put there to confuse the investigation, the prosecutor's office said.
Governor's 1st Year
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Governor Valentina Matviyenko celebrated one year since she was elected to head City Hall on Tuesday, Interfax reported.
"We have made a confident, but just a first step," Interfax cited Matviyenko as saying at the city government Tuesday. "A year ago St. Petersburg residents elected not only a governor, but a whole team. The citizens believed in us and we have to do everything to justify their trust."
Afghan Found Dead
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City law enforcement bodies have launched an investigation into the death of an Afghan citizen found dead Monday evening at a bus stop in the Kalininsky district near the Spartak sports complex, Interfax reported quoting the city prosecutor's office.
The same day the victim had been detained for a document check and was delivered to the 62nd police station because he was not registered, Interfax cited the prosecutor's office as saying.
"The autopsy has showed that he did not die a natural death," the prosecutor's office said.
Murder Suspect Held
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A man has been detained in connection with the murders of four people in an apartment on July 3, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The police press service said a 29-year-old citizen of Tajikistan had been held.
He has been accused of of using a meat cleaver to kill the head of the household, his wife, 16-year-old daughter and a 32-year old visitor, the report said.
Investigators say the suspect had used force to have sex with the daughter and had attempted to conceal the crime by killing the family and their guest.
TITLE: Matviyenko Begs Duma for Cash
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city is trying to pull its most important infrastructure and transport development project, the Ring Road, out of the gutter.
Governor Valenitna Matviyenko asked Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov for his support in helping the city obtain the necessary federal funds to continue the road construction started in 1994.
"I asked [Duma Speaker] Gryzlov to supervise the passing of our request of 13.6 billion rubles for the Ring Road construction," said Matviyenko after meeting with Gryzlov during his Wednesday visit to the city.
The financing of the multi-billion dollar Ring Road construction has come from a European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) $80 million loan and from the federal budget. The city, however, still awaits its full federal share, despite the hope of many that the election of Kremlin-backed Matviyenko would ease the process.
The federal budget for next year, adopted last week, provides for only 600 million rubles of the 1.5 billion needed by the city for the Ring Road construction. "That is why I asked for the possible increase in the financing," Interfax cited Matviyenko as saying.
Leningrad Oblast officials agree that the project's current stalling has been due to the delay in promised funding. Nonetheless, the head of Oblast transport committee, Vasily Sokolov said the Oblast is planning to complete the construction of junctions to the Western diameter of the road by the end of 2005.
"We have not received the 300 million rubles allocated to us in last year's federal budget. Because of that the we have stopped the works that were in progress," said Sokolov.
Last year President Putin signed a decree placing a 2005 deadline on the eastern half of the Ring Road. At that time the city transport ministry expressed its confidence in meeting the deadline. The 10-year old, 154-kilometer road, besides relieving city traffic, has been much talked about as the project that would propel city business development.
"The city's businesses are eagerly awaiting the completion of the road," said the head of Troika Dialog St. Petersburg, Anton Mamayev. The city is an important transit point from Russia to Europe, and thus much of its business depends on its transportation facilities, he said.
Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the Yabloko political faction, said it is quite possible that Moscow will listen to Matviyenko's appeal. "Valentina Ivanovna {Matviyenko] may not get the entire 1.5 billion she asked for, but there is a saying: 'ask for more to get anything,' so I hope the budget provision will be upped from 600 million," he said. The city will not be able to complete the road by itself, said Vishnevsky.
Meanwhile the federal transportation ministry said the cost of another transportation project - the new speed highway between St. Petersburg and Moscow - will near 150 million rubles. "The investment will pay off in about 15 years," said transport minister Igor Levitin on Thursday.
In another vow for transportation infrastructure development, the natural resources minister Yury Trutnev said Thursday that doubling of the GDP, outlined by President Putin as the goal for the country's economy in the next 5 to 6 years, would be impossible to reach without improving the country's roads. "And federal funding is essential in solving the infrastructure problems," he said.
TITLE: Fines for City Tenants Without Registration
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Those renting apartments in the city will pay up to 2,500 rubles ($810) in fees if found without registration during the massive registration checks scheduled to be conducted by district police departments.
In State Duma amendments to the Administrative Sanctions bill (KoAP) passed during the third reading, those found living in a rented apartment without registration will be fined between 1,500 and 2,500 rubles. In addition, the owners of the apartments will pay an equal amount in fines, reported business daily Delovoi Peterburg.
The legislation was changed in an attempt to contain the number of illegal immigrant construction workers flooding the country, said the head of Duma's Constitutional Committee, Vladimir Plagin.
Experts say, however, that the legislative changes will have a direct effect on Russian citizens and will hike up rental prices, since leasee registration, even for a short-term tenancy, will raise apartment maintenance payments. Although the sanctions to contain illegal immigration have been in the works as part of the national anti-terrorism campaign since the beginning of September, the fines only appeared in amendments during the legislature's second and third reading, reported Delovoi Peterburg.
Increased attention to apartment rentals may have come from the government's effort to bring the population's incomes 'out of the shadow.'
Speaking at a recent economic forum, Governor Matviyenko said one of the biggest stops holding back expansion of St. Petersburg's economy has been that much of the population's income currently goes undeclared.
"Most of the city population's income is in the shadow," she said.
Matviyenko said St. Petersburgers' expenditure indicates that they have incomes two to three times higher than what they officially declare. The incomes, such as those received from renting out apartments, are undeclared in order to avoid paying tax, she said.
TITLE: VimpelCom Scores Best Numbers in September
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg mobile phone market saw massive growth during September, largely due to Russia's second-largest service operator, VimpelCom, receiving new numbers, according to AC&M consultancy.
VimpelCom surpassed rivals MTS and MegaFon in the city last month with more than 75,000 new subscribers.
"MTS continues to have the largest market share in Russia, though VimpelCom is aggressively catching up," AC&M said to Reuters on Wednesday. "VimpelCom leads the net additions race in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the rest of the country."
Overall, the Russian mobile phone market acquired 3.4 million new clients in September, marking a record number of subscribers for a third straight month and bring the total of mobile phone users to 59 million, according to AC&M consultancy.
This means a 20 percent rise on last year in market penetration, from 21 percent in Septermber 2003 to 41 last month. The only fall has been in net additions.
"We believe one of the reasons for the decline is that more and more families buy cellphones for their children in August, before the start of the school year, thus accelerating August sales to more than the usual level," AC&M said to Reuters.
TITLE: BP Strike It Lucky in Sakhalin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - BP has struck "significant volumes of oil and gas" on the first exploration well of its Sakhalin-5 project, the oil major said in a statement Wednesday.
Exploration drilling is being conducted on the Kaigansky-Vasukansky block of Sakhalin-5 as part of an alliance between state-owned Rosneft and BP.
The block contains about 600 million tons of oil reserves and 500 billion cubic meters of natural gas, according to Rosneft estimates.
"[The discovery] is obviously good news," said Valery Nesterov, oil and gas analyst with Troika Dialog.
Striking reserves at the first drilling attempt is a relatively lucky find, he said, given the industry's average of one out of six or seven exploration drillings being successful.
Nevertheless, it is too early to provide estimates for reserves, BP officials said Wednesday.
Exploration drilling started on July 19 on the Kaigansky-Vasukansky block, located 49 kilometers from the coast in an area where the sea is 114 meters deep.
BP plans to drill an additional four exploration wells and one testing well by 2007 but will not continue work until next spring, as freezing, stormy conditions permit neither exploration nor production during the winter months.
Sakhalin-5 is one of half a dozen projects off the island in various stages of development. BP and Rosneft officials said Wednesday that it was still too early to speculate on when Sakhalin-5 might deliver commercial oil, or how much it would cost to develop.
The exploration is being conducted jointly by BP and Rosneft under a July agreement, which gives Rosneft 51 percent control over the project and BP 49 percent.
BP spent some $70 million on exploration and social projects in coastal areas before drilling even began, BP said. No figures were available on the cost of drilling or future exploration work.
Nesterov said the positive drilling results are likely to be welcome news for Rosneft, which is probably eager to raise its profile before undergoing a merger with Gazprom in the coming months.
But once the merger is completed, the appearance of Gazprom in the region as a parent company of Rosneft is likely to speed up the development of the vast and barely tapped reserves on the Sakhalin shelf.
Sakhalin-5 is lagging Royal Dutch/Shell-led Sakhalin-2, which has been producing oil since 1999. ExxonMobil-led Sakhalin-1 is due to start up next year. Sakhalin-5 is to be developed under a standard domestic tax regime, as opposed to the terms of a production-sharing agreement enjoyed by both Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2.
The license to explore potentially huge reserves in the Sakhalin-6 project is held by TNK, now part of TNK-BP. The drilling of two exploration wells on that project is scheduled for next year.
Parts of Sakhalin-4, which is also controlled by Rosneft, are being redistributed between Sakhalin-5 and Sakhalin-3 due to the geological structure of the reservoirs.
The exploration license for Sakhalin-3 is to be auctioned in 2005 after it was withdrawn from ExxonMobil earlier this year. Given current oil prices ($53 per barrel Thursday), the bidding should set record figures.
TITLE: Kremlin Names Its Flagman In Vodka-Producing Waters
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Flagman Vodka became the first and only vodka brand to receive the title of "Official Purveyor to the Moscow Kremlin" on Wednesday.
Russian Wine & Spirits, which produces Flagman, was awarded the honor by the Guild of Purveyors to the Kremlin, an organization that bestows titles to an exclusive pool of producers.
In descending order of exclusivity, companies will be allowed to refer to themselves as "Official Purveyor to the Moscow Kremlin," "Purveyor to the Moscow Kremlin" and "Member of the Guild of Purveyors to the Kremlin."
Only one company producing a certain type of product can be declared an "Official Purveyor," and this title is reviewed on a yearly basis, guild spokesman Igor Pototsky said.
A guild's certificate allows a manufacturer to claim that its product is "used in the official residence of the president of the Russian Federation" and affix a special emblem with state symbols.
Companies that have received guild certificates include the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory and drinks giant Pernod Ricard, and DaimlerChrysler is close to obtaining one, Pototsky said.
Besides Flagman, no other vodka has been awarded a certificate yet, although several large producers are currently vying for the titles of "Purveyor" and "Member," Pototsky said.
TITLE: Moody's Rating a Positive Surprise
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Global ratings agency Moody's Investors Service surprised bond markets by assigning a positive outlook on Russia's foreign and local currency debt ratings, because of high oil prices and the country's resulting strong macroeconomic fundamentals.
Moody has improved its estimate of Russia from the highest junk grade, which it still holds according to Standard & Poor and Fitch Ratings, to the lowest investment grade category of Baa3. The next change in the ratings is likely to be positive, the Financial Times forecasted Wednesday.
"This outlook change follows several years during which the Russian Federation has experienced exceptionally strong macroeconomic fundamentals alongside prudent fiscal and monetary policies and outstanding growth of both official foreign currency reserves and foreign currency reserves in a new stabilization fund," Moody's said in a statement.
The positive rating from Moody's has been met with some surprise by those who claim the macroeconomic factors are still being stalled as the Kremlin has not yet carried out any major economic reforms.
In an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday, president Vladimir Putin's economic advisor, Andrei Illiarionov spoke of his concerns about lack of progress on the issue:
"The quality of economic policy has got worse. In 1999 and 2000 economic policy made a positive contribution to economic growth... Since 2001, it has made a negative contribution to GDP growth".
At the same time, more worries abound about the outcome of the Yukos case, which has affected Russia's oil distribution to China and asked questions about the nature of the oil companies' relations with the government.
The optimism of Moody's could be said to base itself on the rich oil stabilization fund set up by the Bank of Russia. The value of the fund is expected to top $20.5 billion dollars by the end of the year, according to figures obtained by the Financial Times.
"With oil above $50 a barrel, it's hard to argue with Moody's." said Robin Evans, head of emerging market debt trading at Commerzbank, to the Financial Times.
Yet, Moody's insist the rise in the ratings largely depends on how well Russia is able to pay back the government debt, a $40 billion domestic bond default, acquired in the 1998 financial crisis. Moody expects the debt to drop to 25 percent of GDP this year.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Metropol Space Plans
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The owner of a 19th century mansion that hosted the now-closed restaurant Metropol will not change, said Alexander Afonichev, the head of the board of directors at Nord, a company that owns the building.
Questions were raised when mobile salon Ultra and a clothing store BGN appeared in the same building occupied by Metropol, the historic restaurant that is said to have offered its Russian and European cuisine creations to Grigory Rasputin and the Silver age poets.
The restaurant's Friday closure was due to "general technical problems," such as the lack of proper electricity and power resources, said Afonichev.
A group of designers working with the space is supposed to determine the profile of business activities that best fits the building.
"It is hard to say how long the mansion will be closed, and what it will become, once opened," said Afonichev.
Kyoto Sent to Duma
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MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin sent the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to the State Duma Thursday for ratification, the Kremlin said.
The Kremlin has expressed hope that lawmakers will consider this month the 1997 protocol, which aims to stem global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Cabinet approved the protocol last week, and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed it Wednesday, paving the way for it to be sent to the Duma.
Fradkov had earlier warned that the pact would likely face tough debate in the State Duma. But Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov said this week that a majority of the deputies support ratification.
The pact needs to be ratified by Russia to come into force. It requires the support of 55 industrialized nations accounting for at least 55 percent of global emissions in 1990, and has been rejected by the United States.
TITLE: Forget About the Constitution
TEXT: On Sept. 27, President Vladimir Putin began to implement the political reforms he had announced two weeks before. He introduced a bill in the State Duma that would cancel direct gubernatorial elections and introduce instead de facto appointment of regional leaders by the president.
On Sept. 29, the Duma Council promptly forwarded the bill to the regions, as required by law. The regions have one month to deliver their assessment of the president's plan. Regardless of their reaction, however, a first reading of the bill in the Duma will take place Oct. 29.
The bill's fate in the Duma is not in doubt. United Russia, which enjoys a constitutional majority in the lower house, came out in favor of the bill before it was even drafted. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats will back the bill as well; the party has been calling for the appointment of governors for a decade. Most of Dmitry Rogozin's supporters are also big fans of the "power vertical," Putin's executive chain of command.
The only dissent will come from the Communists and independent deputies, about 60 votes in all. Some 370 to 390 deputies will vote for the bill, and the Duma may decide to hold all three readings of the bill in a single session. Approval of the bill by the Federation Council will inevitably follow. By the time the 87th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution rolls around, the Russian people may well have been stripped of one of their most important democratic rights-the right to elect their regional leaders.
Deputies will have no chance to amend the legislation. Conceptually, the law is so simple, even primitive, that the slightest change would alter its substance. The substance of the bill is this: The president can install anyone he likes as a regional leader. He can also remove those leaders at will. Regional legislatures must confirm the president's nominees, but in practice this will amount to nothing more than a rubber stamp.
The process works like this: The president nominates a Russian citizen at least 35 years of age for approval by a regional legislature. A majority vote is required for confirmation. If a majority is not obtained, the president has one week to nominate a new candidate or to send the same name back to the legislature. If deputies again refuse to play ball, the president appoints an acting governor and has the option to dissolve the legislature. He can also leave well enough alone; the acting governor, you see, can serve for up to five years. In any case, the president's man runs the region, not someone elected by the people or the legislature.
The procedure for firing governors is equally simple. If the president loses faith in his appointee, or feels that he isn't up to par, he simply pulls the plug. Regional legislators have no say in the matter. The president merely informs them of his decision and submits a new candidate for their approval. Regional lawmakers cannot fire the governor. They can hold a vote of no confidence, but the president is entirely within his rights to ignore the result.
The problem is that Putin's plan violates the Constitution-specifically articles 1, 3, 5, 10, 11, 32, 71, 72, 73 and 77-and weakens the state. It also runs counter to a number of Constitutional Court rulings, most specifically the Jan. 18, 1996, ruling in which the court held that only the direct election of regional leaders can be considered to satisfy the requirements of the Constitution.
The new political system created by Putin's plan will have no legal foundation in the Constitution, and this will have disastrous consequences for the country. Nor will Kremlin-appointed governors enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Poll after poll has shown that a majority of Russians either don't understand Putin's proposals or don't approve of them. Most voters want to carry on electing their leaders because they understand that elected officials care more for the interests of their constituents than appointed ones do. The Beslan tragedy made clear that the Kremlin-appointed leaders in Chechnya and Ingushetia have no connection with the people, and are therefore utterly impotent.
The examples of Chechnya and Ingushetia offer little hope for the future. Soon Russia's vast expanses will be controlled by 89 Kremlin emissaries, each guided by the sentiments of a senior official under Emperor Nicholas I: "I know only the tsar, and I have no use for Russia!" Some will be functionaries, outsiders in their regions. Others will be aging bosses whose political lives have been extended by the Kremlin. But Putin will not be able to extend the people's faith in them. Neither functionaries loyal only to Moscow, nor regional "khans" who have long worn out their welcome, will lend the new political system the authority and legitimacy necessary for Russia to become a stronger, more cohesive state.
Putin's call for an active civil society will die on his lips. For how can society lift itself up when the president has denied it any role in running the country?
The new governors will be granted additional control over the regional offices of the so-called federal power ministries. But this will lead only to greater excesses and greater corruption.
What's next? In November, a number of regional leaders such as Tatar President Mintimer Shaimiyev and Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev, who are confident in their power and sure of the Kremlin's backing, will resign before their current terms are out. The Kremlin will appoint them in short order, and the grateful emissaries will announce their intention to strengthen the presidential chain of command. Other regional leaders will have little choice but to follow suit, enabling the Kremlin to purge unsuitable candidates. The Kremlin will not wait until 2009.
Next on the agenda: including local government in the chain of command. The Constitution will be forgotten, and the Constitutional Court will once more remain silent. The bureaucracy will gain complete control of the country, while the people are removed from the loop. Things will be just as they were before 1917, and before 1991.
I'm afraid the end result will be exactly the same.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent State Duma deputy, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Shift to a Better Life Starts In People's Heads
TEXT: Academics in St. Petersburg State University's department of international affairs want Russia to get closer to Europe, but not all of it at once. They are thinking only of regions bordering the European Union that could be used as stepping stones for the further development of relations between Russia and the EU, scholars said at an international conference held at the university last week.
One of the places mentioned was Ivangorod, located on the border with Estonia, whose citizens have a mentality that is quite different from that inherent in the rest of Russians, according to the department's staff.
I found this quite amusing because I have traveled through Ivangorod on numerous occasions on my way to Estonia. I can say a thing or two that suggest that the academics are wrong.
1. The police patrols located at the entrance roads to Ivangorod take bribes from drivers traveling to the border checkpoint.
2. A large number of alcoholics can be seen throughout Ivangorod at any time of the day.
3. Badly dressed people who look poor hang around on the Russian side of the border.
4. The customs officials, most of whom live in Ivangorod, are rude and unwelcoming.
For this reason I can't rid myself of the impression that the mentality of the citizens of Ivangorod is not much different from that of people who live in other Russian cities of a similar size.
One thing that is different, however, is the presence of the customs post, which is a reliable source of income for residents of the border town.
In October 1999, I wrote a story comparing Ivangorod and Narva, the first Estonian town on the other side of the border across the Narva River. It became clear to me then just what a big gap there is between the mentalities of the Russians living in Narva and their neighbors in Ivangorod.
The river, which changed from being an internal border of the Soviet Union to become an international border at the beginning of the 1990s, these days also divides two approaches to life - a Russian one and one that is approaching a European style of thinking.
"The fish stinks from the head," Viktor, then 24, a Russian student with Estonian citizenship, told me just after he had stepped off the border bridge on his way to Ivangorod. "Estonia is a civilized country and there is only chaos [in Russia] - nobody cares about anything in Russia. Everyone cares only about themselves." It sounded right then, five years ago, and it sounds right now.
But it would be wrong to say that all Ivangorod residents are so Soviet-minded that there is no hope of this place improving.
Five years ago, some 500 residents signed a petition to the Kremlin asking for Ivangorod to be given back to Estonia. On the one hand, that sounds unpatriotic. But on the other hand, this is a clear sign that there are people who really want to enjoy a European standard of living, and spurn alcoholism, poverty and lawlessness. It is not only people close to the borders who yearn for a better life. Such people can be found all over Russia, but the problem is they are in the minority.
I remember quite an interesting Russian joke about this. It reflects a certain approach to the problem: "St. Petersburg declares war on Finland and capitulates after a minute." For me this joke is not about an intention to surrender part of Russia to a foreign state, but a hidden wish to make the place more civilized.
For this reason, I have to disagree with the academics and say that rather than just looking at border regions increasing cooperation with the EU, this should be done by addressing the progressively minded people throughout the country.
TITLE: Rolling Back Democracy
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin is rolling back democracy in Russia. Last week, Putin's close aide Vladislav Surkov made clear that regional legislatures that fail to endorse the Kremlin's gubernatorial nominations will be dissolved. He also declared that the president's political opponents constitute a "fifth column" aimed at ensuring Russia's defeat in the war against terror.
The judiciary is also being placed under full Kremlin control. Freedom of the press has been erased by censorship. Many observers describe this process as neo-Stalinism, but the Kremlin, while expanding its control over the economy, continues to pursue market reforms and has no plans for complete nationalization. Putin obviously regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he is also in essence an anti-communist.
Rather than rebuilding the past, Russia is evolving into a fascist state along the lines of Benito Mussolini's Italy. As was the practice in Mussolini's fascist corporate state, Putin on the one hand is dismantling representative democracy, while on the other he has announced the creation of an unelected "public chamber" that would oversee the government bureaucracy.
Russia's transformation to fascism is superficially connected with the Beslan tragedy and the need to close ranks in the fight against terrorism.
But the idea of creating a permanent national unity in addition to the pro-Kremlin United Russia party arose long ago. Putin has called for the unification of Russia to build a strong, modern state. It is now clear that Putin's conception of unity does not include political pluralism or representative democracy.
The Kremlin has offered the fifth column within Russia a choice: Shut up and join us or face the consequences. Western governments face a much more complex dilemma. They must balance the threat of a fascist Russia against that of international Islamist terrorism. U.S. President George W. Bush expressed this Western ambivalence during last week's presidential debate.
After 9/11, Putin phoned Bush to offer his condolences and tacitly agreed not to oppose the U.S. operation in Afghanistan. Putin has since claimed the war in Chechnya is Russia's main contribution to the anti-terror alliance. Direct links between Chechen rebels and al-Qaida have not been confirmed. Chechen terrorism is fueled mostly by internal causes.
In fact, the Kremlin's version of the anti-terrorist coalition and "eliminating double standards" amounts to a modification of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: The West supports Russian policy in the Caucasus and recognizes the former Soviet Union (excluding the Baltics) as within Russia's sphere of interest.
There has been much discussion of the conflict between pro-Western "liberals" and the chekists within the Kremlin in recent years. Surkov, considered a leading liberal, has now revealed himself to be the main intellectual driving force behind the fascist transformation of Russia. The various Kremlin factions turn out to be very much of a piece. The liberals seem to think that a fascist state can be built with Western consent, while the siloviki do not trust the old enemy. We will soon find out which group is right.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.
TITLE: Out With the Old
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It may be just three years old, but it bites, fights, bullies, sins, occasionally engages in an active search for God and sometimes discovers its own place on the planet.
It is the New Drama festival, an upstart enterprise that, since its inauguration in 2002, has gone from nowhere at all to being about as omnipresent as a small theater showcase can be. For 10 mild, late September days in St. Petersburg, where it was held this year, New Drama was the hottest ticket and the generator of the most contentious conversations in the city's theater world.
It began as Mikhail Ugarov, the playwright, director and one of the founders of the festival, stepped up to a microphone at a morning discussion, looked around, took a slight breath and proclaimed that the state of new dramatic writing in St. Petersburg was "a catastrophe." He never had to be so provocative again, although he frequently was; the lighted match had been put to the fuse. And yet, while conservatives, traditionalists and skeptics grumbled, cursed and scratched their heads, audiences gathered in hordes to squeeze into overfilled auditoriums. In fact, almost all tickets had been sold out by the second day of the festival, which featured 25 productions, most performed in small spaces seating around 200 spectators. There were also over a dozen new play readings, two days of experimental films, numerous book and project presentations and daily seminar discussions in the morning. Aside from a graying journalist here and there, the lion's share of spectators pushing their way into shows appeared to be in their teens or early 20s.
The accusation that St. Petersburg is lagging behind the rest of the country in its development of innovative drama and theater is hard to refute. Arguably, the first major steps to revealing a new generation of writers in Russia took place in Yekaterinburg a decade ago. It was there that popular writer Nikolai Kolyada began teaching courses in playwriting in 1993, thus providing a springboard for numerous future stars. Kolyada's many former students include Oleg Bogayev and Vasily Sigarev, whose plays are now produced everywhere from Siberia to Chicago.
Moscow, where theaters and directors seemed to have no idea that anyone was creating new plays throughout the 1990s, has become a hotbed for new writing in the last half decade. The creation of two theaters specializing in new work - the Playwright and Director Center in 1998 and Teatr.doc in 2002 - has had an enormous impact on the process in Russia's capital, where other programs, festivals and colloquia dedicated to the topic of contemporary drama have also become commonplace. Parallel to developments in Yekaterinburg and Moscow, a group of enthusiasts headed by the Durnenkov brothers, Vyacheslav and Mikhail, has created a dynamic environment for young writers in the city of Tolyatti.
Vasily Senin, a young director from St. Petersburg who was educated in Moscow and began his career there, told of his difficulties since returning to his hometown. "We have no place where young writers, directors and actors can go to try out new works," he said. "I don't understand why St. Petersburg can't do it if it can be done in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Tolyatti, Novosibirsk and other cities." Senin called for the creation of a space where artists could develop new plays, "even if no one likes them."
Judging by the response to the majority of New Drama entries, there is little chance of that happening.
At the performance of "The Cultural Layer," a play by the Durnenkov brothers produced by the Golosova-20 Theater Center in Tolyatti, a packed house pitched and rolled with every punch and pun in this funny and sad look at the state of contemporary Russian society and psychology. Three loosely connected segments offered witty and insightful glimpses into the relationships between a grandfather and grandson; a thuggish real estate agent and his underling; and a newlywed couple that falls victim to a crazy neighbor and the killing smog that chokes their city.
In "Shocked Tatyana," a collection of six miniplays staged by Ugarov for the New Drama festival, audiences were delighted and provoked by Georgian playwright Lasha Bugadze's wildly quirky parables of people eating their relatives, giving birth to their parents, and succumbing to mad envy when the neighbor becomes a hero by dying in the war.
"The Fight of the Moldovans for a Cardboard Box," written by Alexander Rodionov for Teatr.doc, was a quasi-naturalistic expose of homeless refugees fighting a losing battle for dignity against the police and sadistic drifters. The play's free-flowing obscenities and scenes of casual sex evoked healthy laughter from many viewers, as did the tirades of an actress planted in the audience who twice played the role of the outraged spectator by entering into shouting matches with actors onstage.
In "Playing the Victim," a comical though merciless fantasy by Vladimir and Oleg Presnyakov produced by the Realny Teatr festival of Yekaterinburg, a young man works for the police by playing the role of crime victims during live, on-site investigations. Ultimately, this indifferent youth, who appears to lack anything resembling a conscience, poisons all of the people closest to him. In discussions surrounding the festival, this play and these authors were frequently named as central to the new drama movement as it currently stands.
Topicality and the striving to slash through the surface of modern political and sociological myths dominated the organized discussions as well as the plays themselves. Echoing what many were saying, Andrei Kuznetsov, the managing director of the Perm Novaya Drama Theater, declared that neither politicians nor those in the media will allow anyone to speak the truth anymore, leaving theater stages as the only forums where real issues can be aired. Eduard Boyakov, a founder of the New Drama festival, suggested that the problem is even more insidious, for, he said, it is not a matter of forced censorship, but rather the willing complicity of people choosing to say publicly only that which is expected of them.
Standing apart from the skirmishes of antiheroes drawn from newspaper headlines was the DAKh Center of Contemporary Art from Kiev, which showed Vladislav Troitsky's production of Klim's "Fallen Angel." Klim, a director by profession, has in recent years begun having success as a writer, often in distinctive and creative adaptations of classic literary works. His "Fallen Angel" is one of five dramas that he has based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot," all of which have been staged by Troitsky in Kiev. This one-woman show observes the character Nastasya Filippovna, as performed by Tatyana Vasilenko, in the moments surrounding her murder by her lover Rogozhin, and captures her as she ponders the possibility of her soul being redeemed and resurrected after death. As she admits ironically, "In Russia a man has no time to prepare for the hereafter." Klim's text refines Dostoevsky's characteristically gothic excess into a modern, lucid monologue that is both accessible and capable of carrying all of the philosophical and emotional weight of the original.
For the most part, however, the New Drama festival was not about subtlety or sophistication.
It was, instead, a forum for kicking around new ideas and kicking over old habits.
It may not have made everyone happy - two women angrily stomped out of one show featuring violent homosexual encounters in prison shouting "Shame on you!" - but no one was indifferent to what they heard or saw.
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: Giant Robot, Finland's electrofunk/hip-hop/dub band that performed in the city last week, returns to take part in the second Tusovka Festival of Finnish and Russian Alternative Music at Stary Dom on Saturday.
Also to feature is RinneRadio, a band acclaimed as the first to blend techno with jazz in Finland.
Tommy Lindgren, the vocalist of the Don Johnson Big Band, will join the local hard-edge electronica band Deadushki to perform a joint set. The first such joint performance took place at Tusovkarock festival in Helsinki in March.
Other local bands to take part include Tequilajazzz, Ronin and Soundscript 33".
The festival is promoted by Tusovka, a Helsinki-based cultural organization, which tries to make Russian rock and pop culture more known in Finland, and vice versa. The biggest annual event organized by Tusovka is Tusovkarock, a three-day festival in Helsinki. In the few past years at the festival saw such Russian bands as DDT, Auktsyon, Tequilajazzz, Deadushki and Babslei performing.
The first Tusovka festival in St. Petersburg brought Finnish bands the Don Johnson Big Band, Cleaning Women and Candy Darling to perform at Red Club in Sept. 2003.
"They are a bunch of Finnish people who really love Russia and Russian culture," said Zhenya Fyodorov, whose band Tequilajazzz has played a few times at Tusovka events in Helsinki.
"They are real Finns, and they promote concerts for the Finnish public, rather than for Russian immigrants, although Russians also come to their Russian concerts in Helsinki. Now they are bringing two popular Finnish bands to St. Petersburg."
Platforma, the much-talked about art club launched early last month by a group of Moscow promoters, abrubtly closed last week. The "official" reason was given as an "electricity supply problem." However, according to an insider, the venue, which is located in a residential area, is experiencing problems with the local authorities, rather than electricity.
"In Moscow they first open the place and then sort it out with the authorities; it doesn't work like this in St. Petersburg," he said.
As the result, all concerts including what had been scheduled as the local live debut of Romanian folk-punk band Spitalul de Urgenta on Oct. 7 have been cancelled.
The club is planning to reopen on Monday, it will not host any live concerts for the time being.
Meanwhile, a new concert venue without a name yet will open under the temporary moniker the New Concert Hall at Bolshaya Morskaya 18 on Oct. 15. The first act to perform will be Alexei Aigui and 4'33."
Other potentially interesting concerts this week include Karelian folk-rock band Myllarit at JFC Jazz Club on Sunday, Quodia, the multi-media project formed by King Crimson bassist Trey Gunn, at Estrada Theater on Monday (see article, page iii) and a psychobilly/surf show by Bombers and Propellers at Moloko on Thursday.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Gunn and 'The Arrow'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Trey Gunn, a U.S. musician extraordinaire, has visited Russia frequently in the last 18 months. First he came with King Crimson, the veteran U.K. prog-rock band that he has played with since 1994, and then, earlier this year, he returned with TU, a duo with King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto.
On Monday, Gunn, who plays a unique "Warr" guitar (a 10-string touch guitar with the range of a piano), will showcase Quodia, a duo formed with composer/musician Joe Mendelson.
Mendelson has been working with Gunn since 2000 when he joined The Trey Gunn Band. The duo developed an innovative method of seamlessly integrating video into a performance and controlling it from the stage.
Quodia, the multi-media project that Gunn and Mendelson have been working on for the past two years, is a combination of text, visuals and music.
"Combining sophisticated, high technology with the power of an ancient mythology, Quodia aim to pass on the energy of imagination," reads the band's manifesto available on its official web site.
"It's kind of grown out of the other things I was working on for maybe five or 10 years," Gunn said, speaking by phone from his home in Seattle last week. "I got very serious about integrating video and film as an art form in the last four or five years."
"Generally the way the music and visuals work together is people compose music and then they create visuals around music, so we have this medium called 'music video,'" Gunn continued. "Then, on the other hand, film is written and shot and edited and put together, and then they score music to it after it, after it's done.
"That's one way, so what I got interested in was actually making the whole thing at the same time. With this project, my partner Joe and I started with a story. I've originally written a story and we started adding visuals and audio simultaneously and trying to build a form, an art form with both of the mediums inside."
For Gunn, a musician with a long and rich history, the work made the idea of a rock band seem obsolete.
"This project is so exciting to me that the idea of being in a rock band just seems archaic and primeval to me," he said.
"After I started working on this, it has been so satisfying. There are so many elements to all of this. There's text, there's very interesting visuals and really intriguing music, and it's how they interrelate [that makes it interesting].
"When I hear a rock band, it sounds like a bunch of thugs throwing hub caps, you know, dropping metal on the ground. I realise that's very biased, but that's kind of where I am right now."
In St. Petersburg, Quodia will perform its first piece, "The Arrow," while two other works remain as yet incomplete. According to Gunn, the piece is in a constant state of change, with some last-minute changes to be added when he arrives in St. Petersburg.
Gunn is ambiguous about the origins of his band's name.
"Well, I can't really explain that exactly, it kind of came from the same place where the story came from, of which I'm not entirely sure," he said.
"I sat down and actually I speak the stories originally. I don't write, I speak them into a tape-recorder. Lots of them were done up in a mountain in the north of New Mexico, on the high desert. And then during one of these sessions the name appeared."
Gunn is planning to make Russian translations of the story of "The Arrow" available for the audience, but probably after the show so that they are not distracted during it.
Gunn's visits of the past two years have made him a fan of Russian culture.
"I'm not very aware of modern Russian music, but the soundtrack to my life for the last two years has been Shostakovich's string quartets. I can't even comprehend how wonderful they are," he said.
"I have a particular calling to read Nabokov and Bulgakov as well. Just yesterday I was watching Tarkovsky on my video wall as I was putting my gear together. These guys are great! When I listen to rock music, it just makes me feel sad after I see these incredible artists doing incredible things. I want to be involved in something as amazing as that. This is Quodia, the anwer to that."
Quodia also perform at the Central House of Artists in Moscow on Tuesday.
Quodia performs "The Arrow"
at Estrada Theater, 27 Bolshaya Konyushennaya, Tel. 314-6661,
at 7 p.m. on Monday.
www.quodia.net,
www.treygunn.com,
www.king-crimson.com
TITLE: Decline and fall
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It's a tough old game, civilization. No sooner does one empire set itself up, than another one comes along, knocks it off its perch and sets up shop in the ruins. The same ruthlessness seems to operate in the world of dining out. If you had ventured behind the ornately carved doors of the recently-opened Armenian restaurant about the same time last year, you would have found yourself in a recently-opened African restaurant. Like most conquerors, these ones haven't bothered to do much with the décor. You have to assume that the new management were either working within a limited budget or thought the African theme, with pots half submerged in the walls and wattle roofing over the cloakroom area, too good to waste.
We took a table by the large street windows and listened to the acceptably pitched ballroom synth-pop. We asked for an English menu, but they didn't have one, and, happily, each dish has a photograph alongside sit on the Russian-language menu they do have.
There is a good choice of soups, fish, prawns and so on in the 60 to 150-ruble ($2 to $3.44) range. For starters I ordered a vegetable dish called "Adjab Sandal" (80 rubles, $2.75). My companion chose an 'assortment of fish' (100 rubles, $3.44). The Adjab Sandal was a disappointment. Roughly the same size as the photo in the menu, it tasted just like cold pizza topping (which isn't necessarily a bad thing in other circumstances). The assorted fish was no better and, staring at the bits of fish lying flaccidly on the plate, one can only conclude that not much thought was given to its preparation.
Choosing a main course was tricky. Everything looked extraordinarily, some might say suspiciously, appetizing. There is a page of fish and a page of meat, a range of kebabs, some things called tavas and some tempting looking pizzas at the back.
Most items are priced between 150 and 250 rubles. My companion ordered duck breast (220 rubles, $7.60). It looked great. Succulent slices of duck breast were temptingly nestled on a bed of fried potatoes with a row of ripe raspberries lying alongside like a discarded item of clothing. On the other side of the plate, a limp green salad looked jealously on. It was tasty, and the raspberry actually worked. We demolished it in seconds. My main course came with a weight of expectations upon it. I had ordered the biblical sounding Tava "Ararat" (220 rubles, $7.60), a tomato-based stew filled with peppers and beans and mushrooms and promisingly large chunks of lamb. Regrettably, upon closer examination, the meat was mostly fat or bone, so we were left with what was essentially a vegetable casserole.
The place was starting to fill up with underdressed girls. The barman was working so frenetically that I thought the president had arrived while I wasn't looking. I asked if the barman could make a Singapore Sling. After two minutes agonizing with his conscience, he decided that he could.
At that point we were joined by an unexpected visitor: the bill. A bit premature, perhaps? Our efficient waitress, Nadezhda, informed us that it was "the system." You can't fight the system. But could one order dessert? She went for the menu. Let's see: ice cream, "night and day cake," banana split, all priced between 40 and 100 rubles ($1.30 and $3.40). What should we have? Maybe it was already written on the bill. No, the bill had vanished again. My expensive, inevitably ghastly cocktail (240 rubles, $8.20) arrived. I decided to go for the banana split (90 rubles, $3.10), because I was still hungry. It wasn't bad and at least had plenty of ice cream.
The bill came back for an encore. By now the music was loud and it seems there is a Latin disco here on Saturday nights. Behind our table at the entrance, there was now a cash register - people were paying to get in! We paid and got out. It wasn't that good and it wasn't that cheap. I wondered how much it would cost to bankroll an African revolution.
Armenia, 3 Ulitsa Lomonosova. Tel 310 2230, All major credit cards accepted. Menu in Russian only.
Dinner for two with wine: 1,340 rubles ($46.20).
TITLE: Tradition in a pie
TEXT: Born in 1968, Vasily Kovalenko, the head chef at Demidov Restaurant, started his career more than 16 years ago. Having previously worked in different cafes and restaurants in St. Petersburg, he was recruited by Demidov two years ago.
Demidov, which specializes in classic Russian cuisine, consists of two rooms and an alcove, and accommodates up to 80 people. As head chef, Kovalenko manages 15 people working in two shifts.
After graduating from high school, Kovalenko received his training at culinary school. But he says cooking was not his childhood dream.
"I just didn't have any choice," he laughs. "When my parents went to work, they said that dinner should be ready by the time they came back."
Now, Kovalenko doesn't often cook at home. "My family likes it when I cook, but they don't like to wash the dishes after," he complains. "When I cook I don't want to think about anything else besides cooking. I don't pay attention to how many forks or plates are being used. And sometimes I am in danger of having no clean dishes left... Anyway, when I am in the mood or on holiday I cook something for my family and friends."
For Kovalenko, cooking at home and cooking at the restaurant are two completely different activities. When with his friends at home, the quality of the food is not so important. He can cook a plain meal, like cold boiled pork, and simply enjoy his friends' company. At the restaurant, however, the food should be exquisite and meet Demidov's high standards.
Having previously worked in a nightclub, Kovalenko says that people come to nightclubs just to have quick snack before going out, while clients come to restaurants for a good dinner. At Demidov, with its old-Russian cuisine, antique interiors and gypsy music, sterlet and roast bear's meat are the most popular choices.
Kovalenko found it difficult to name the cuisines he most prefers.
"Every cuisine is a mixture of different cuisines that have deeply influenced one another for centuries," he said. "That's why, besides Russian and Italian cuisine, I like fusion as well."
But for now, Kovalenko is happy to make food in the old-fashioned Russian way.
TITLE: Trophy trail
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The last known clue as to the whereabouts of a Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece from Berlin or the area around it has emerged, the German art magazine "art" reports in its October issue, placing the painting which disappeared during World War II in the State Hermitage Museum in late 1945.
The Flemish master's 170 centimeter by 193 centimeter 1615-20 work "Mars Takes Leave of Venus," was listed by a clerk as being in the Hermitage on Oct. 21 1945, the report said.
The painting has been identified by the code 228 (4), which was assigned to it in an inventory of the combined catalog of the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens in Berlin-Brandenburg. Most of the handwritten catalog went missing in World War II and for a long time the foundation was not certain which of its works were missing. Large numbers of its treasures were removed by Soviet trophy brigades or simply stolen in 1945, the report said.
However, since 1968 the catalog has been painstakingly reconstructed by Potsdam curator Gerd Bartoschek. Together with colleagues, he has just printed a book documenting the more than 3,000 paintings that have been missing since the end of the war. He suspects about a third of these are believed to be in Russia, the report said.
Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky confirmed that the St. Petersburg museum has many paintings from the area around Berlin.
However, "art" magazine quoted him saying he knew nothing of the fate of "Mars Takes Leave of Venus."
"This painting does not appear on our latest list of trophy art," he said, but conceded that he does not know the entire collection of the Hermitage and that further works might yet be discovered.
This clue about the fate of "Mars Takes Leave of Venus" comes to light as another Rubens painting taken from Germany undergoes restoration at the Hermitage. "Tarquin and Lucretia," painted about 1608, was delivered to the St. Petersburg museum on Sept. 14 by Moscow art collector Vladimir Logvinenko.
The Flemish masterpiece was originally brought to Potsdam by Frederick the Great and hung in his Sanssouci palace. It remained there until 1942, when it was moved to a castle in Rheinsberg before ending up in the country mansion of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. A Soviet officer took the painting with him back to the Soviet Union. The officer's daughter sold the painting, which has been estimated to be worth $80 million for $800 and it passed through several hands before Logvinenko bought it, Logvinenko has said. Meanwhile the large painting was badly damaged by being folded. Its restoration is due for completion in mid-February, after which it is expected to be put on display.
Once that happens there is little chance it will ever return to the Sanssouci Palace, "art" magazine commented.
The painting was seized in Moscow at the request of German prosecutors last year after Logvinenko attempted to sell it to the foundation.
German prosecutors brought charges against him and there were high level talks about the painting being returned to Germany. Russian prosecutors have since declared him the rightful owner on the grounds that he purchased it legally. On Tuesday, a Potsdam court called the seizure of the painting illegal.
German prosecutors immediately said they would appeal.
It was reported by "art" magazine that the German federal culture ministry has abandoned attempts to recover the Rubens from Russia, but the German Press Agency reported that it is still seeking its return.
The ministry made no response to a request for comment.
TITLE: Baltic songs
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The 14th International "Baltiisky Dom" Theater Festival winds up on Sunday true to its international spirit with a performance in Lithuanian of William Shakespeare's tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" by the Oskaras Korsunovas Theater.
The 11-day festival gave theatergoers in St. Petersburg the chance to see world-famous, front-line drama theaters from the Baltic States, Norway, Ukraine, Bulgaria and also Russia performing well-known and new works. The festival kicked off with a premiere of Eimuntas Nekrosius's "Song of Songs," based on the Old Testament book the Song of Solomon. The show has not even been seen in Lithuania, where Nekrosius's theater company Meno Fortas is based.
As with most performances directed by Nekrosius, "Song of Songs," despite being a striking spectacle, proved quite challenging for the ordinary viewer.
Using only the original Biblical text in Lithuanian, the director sets the action in a Lithuanian village at the turn of the last century, where the main characters sing, weave, saw, build and demolish, love and kill, swim and die, to the extent that the plot has little to do with the original text. In this way "Song of Songs" leaves a space in which the audience's fantasies can develop.
Coincidentally, quite a few of contemporary Russia's most beloved theater directors come originally from the Baltic States. Many of them have already staged some of their works in Moscow theaters while others work in Europe. This year's "Baltiisky Dom" festival welcomed Lithuanians Nekrosius and Oskaras Korsunovas, and Kama Ginkas, orignially from Latvia, as well as a number of forward-thinking Russian directors such as Anatoly Praudin, Andrei Moguchy, and Klim. Theater companies from Norway, Bulgaria and Ukraine also performed.
The Baltic directors brought quite a few Shakespeare plays including "Macbeth," "Hamlet" and "Othello," or at least what was left of them after they were radically reconstructed. In some cases less than a quarter of the original play remained.
On Friday and Saturday the Bulgarian experimental theater company "Sfumato" will give two performances - "Alyosha" and "Ivan" - based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov." Also on Saturday the St. Petersburg-based theater company Potudan, which combines live actors and puppets on stage, will perform a version of Alexander Pushkin's play "Feast During the Time of Plague."
Finally, on Sunday, Korsunovas presents "Romeo and Juliet" in a version where the feuding families are the owners of competing bakeries. The characters, covered in flour, fight for dough, tearing it into pieces and leaving material proof of the tragic story.
14th International "Baltiisky Dom" Theater Festival at Baltiisky Dom Festival Theater, 4 Alexandrovsky Park. www.baltichouse.spb.ru
TITLE: Holiday on ice
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: REYKJAVIK, Iceland - What is Iceland? A "land of fire and ice." The most northern and distant land in Europe. An extensive island in the North Atlantic, situated two and a half hours from Oslo, five hours from North America and just below the Arctic Circle.
Perhaps a more original way of looking at Iceland, however, is to compare it with another extraordinary European island, but one in the south - Venice.
Thinking about what motivates people, lots of them, to visit either place, we can imagine the whole of Europe balancing between two poles: culture tourism - Venice - and nature tourism - Iceland.
Where Venice is a totally human and complete project, Iceland is a product of nature which, moreover, is still not finished... Manmade Venice is a comfortable place, densely-packed with human culture, but in Iceland, wild and expansive nature exists on its own, often inhuman scale.
YOUNG AND INNOCENT
Iceland is a very new country in both geological and political terms. Indeed, according to a geological reference from a tourist official, "much of Iceland is still taking shape before your very eyes." That's thanks to regular volcanic eruptions - on average, one every five years.
And because over 90 percent of the island's houses are heated by natural geothermal energy (one of the cleanest forms in existence), Iceland has the luxury of being a highly developed country which also has virgin natural areas.
Iceland's history is short, despite the fact that Norwegian Vikings established the first settlements here at the end of the 9th century (incredibly Icelanders still speak a form of the Viking language). It only became a sovereign nation after it gained independence from Denmark on June 17, 1944.
The country hasn't been involved in any serious wars and doesn't even have army. (It is curious, then, as Michael Moore pointed out in "Fahrenheit 9/11," that Iceland is officially at war with Iraq, a matter of public debate and satirical humor here now.) This peaceable, amicable Iceland corresponds excitingly with a local natural feature: you see rainbows - an international symbol of peace and tolerance - almost everywhere every day. In addition to real rainbows, you are welcomed on the way from the airport by a rainbow sculpture by prominent local artist Ruri, who represented Iceland at the last Venice Biennale international art festival.
SMOKY BAY
After a couple hours of flying over the Atlantic Ocean and enjoying mountains in the ocean, you will land at Keflavik, Iceland's international airport, which is 50 minutes by bus from the capital.
Iceland covers an area little bigger than Ireland, but with a population of only about 280,000 people, it is sparsely populated. The overwhelming majority of people live on the coast, whereas the wide central highland part of the island, called "The Interior," is not inhabited at all. Reykjavik, which in Icelandic means "Smoky Bay," is located on the southwest coast and is populated by more than half of the total population of the island.
Reykjavik is not a tall city and spreads along the coast among low mountains and the ocean. Laugavegur, which is for Reykjavik what Nevsky Prospekt is for St. Petersburg, is the main shopping street. This very cozy, narrow and green street is also full of tourist information points, souvenir shops, officials institutions, restaurants, cafes, and nightlife hot spots such as pubs and discos; this street also leads to the city center. Its zip code, 101, provided the name for Baltasar Kormakur's popular film comedy "101 Reykjavik"(2000).
Omitting the standard tourist entertainment features found in the average European city, Reykjavik's most distinctive attraction is its thermal swimming pools. As every tourist guide puts it, thermal swimming pools are to Iceland what pubs are to Ireland or what coffee shops are to the Netherlands. Swimming is a national pastime in Iceland, and outdoor swimming complexes supplied with steaming geothermal water all year appeal to tourists too.
CULTURE IN NATURE
It is hard to find an analogy to the famous singer Björk, who put Iceland on the world music map, in the field of Icelandic visual art. At the same time, despite its small population, it seems as if the proportion of artists (the majority of which work in Reykjavik) in Iceland is higher than in any other European country.
One of the main state art museums is the Reykjavik Art Museum, occupying three buildings spread around the city. There, along with different temporary international exhibitions, permanent displays from the collections from well-established local artists (including Iceland's pride and joy, the painter Erro) are shown. Temporary exhibitions from a younger generation of artists are also on display.
Another highly recommended place for those interested in contemporary art is the Klink & Bank factory, which gives studios to more than 80 local artists. The organization is very similar to St Petersburg's "Pushkinskaya 10" art center. Temporary exhibitions of current artists also run in numerous art galleries, the most interesting of which are I8 and 101.
Possibly the most interesting place in Reykjavik, both for international and local art, is SAFN, a first-class private collection of international and local artists, now open to visitors.
GEOLOGICAL DISNEYLAND
The main problem with exploring Iceland beyond Reykjavik is that its geological attractions are not concentrated in one place, but spread many dozens of kilometers from each other. What is in between? Up to 70 percent of Iceland is a rocky wilderness resembling a lunar landscape. U.S. astronauts rehearsed walking on the moon here, but this wasteland is punctuated with mountains, rivers and lakes. About 11 percent of the total area of Iceland is covered with glaciers, with the largest in the south and central highlands. The rest is covered with low, green forests and grassland occupied by sheep and horses.
Moreover, much of Iceland's natural wonders are seasonal, that is, every part of the year has its own features and charm. For instance, such interesting natural phenomena as the Northern Lights or the Aurora Borealis can only be enjoyed during late fall and winter.
Meanwhile, such attractions as the midnight sun and activities such as bird watching (including the star attraction for most visitors to Iceland: the puffin colonies), and whale and dolphin watching are available in late spring and summer. All this makes Iceland a country to visit again and again. What you can see and do depends on how long you go for and at which time of the year.
If you are interested in exploring the whole of Iceland, you will need at least three or four weeks. The best way in terms of time and money is to rent a car (to traverse "The Interior" area you will require a jeep). Alternatively, if you don't drive you can use regular bus routes which cover the coast and a few routes across "The Interior."
The main problem with the regular bus, apart from the fact that it is quite expensive, is that it is available only during the peak of summer. Another possibility which could be even cheaper, is to take advantage of the domestic airline.
If you don't have much time or the use of a car, a one-day Golden Circle bus tour (as well as other tours, like whale or bird watching) comes highly recommended. The Golden Circle tour covers Iceland's most exciting natural sights: Gullfoss, which means "Golden Falls," the most famous waterfall in Iceland; and Geysir, the world-famous geothermal area from which the word geyser is derived.
Another not-to-be-missed place for both long- and short-term tourists is one of Iceland's most unique and popular attractions, the Blue Lagoon. It is a sort of oasis in an arctic desert, a geothermal spa set in vast lava fields. This curious half-natural, half-artificial surreal landscape, with its big white plants, milky-blue mineral-rich geothermal water, and clouds of evaporation, is reminiscent of the environment in Andrei Tarkovsky's classic Soviet science fiction film "Stalker" (1979). But unlike the film it is a perfect place to relax whatever the season. Because the Blue Lagoon is located 15 minutes by bus from the airport it is better to visit it on the way to or from the airport in Keflavik. Practically all tourist firms offer the opportunity to visit the Blue Lagoon as a part of their packages, and it is a good way to spend two or three hours.
TITLE: Iraq's WMD Progams Non-Existent Before Invasion
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs had deteriorated into only hopes and dreams by the time of the U.S.-led invasion last year, a decline wrought by the first Gulf War and years of international sanctions, the chief U.S. weapons hunter found.
And what ambitions Saddam harbored for such weapons were secondary to his goal of evading those sanctions, and he wanted them primarily not to attack the United States or to provide them to terrorists, but to oppose his older enemies, Iran and Israel.
The report of weapons hunter Charles Duelfer was presented Wednesday to senators and the public in the midst of a fierce presidential election campaign in which Iraq and the war on terror have become the overriding issues.
The report chronicles the decay of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs after its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.
By the late 1990s, only its long-range missile efforts continued in defiance of the United Nations; even then, Iraq's ballistic and cruise missile designs had not proceeded far past the drawing board. Saddam's other plans would have to wait until he was free of the sanctions and free of international attention.
President George W. Bush's spokesman said the report justified the decision to go to war. Campaigning in Pennsylvania, Bush defended the decision to invade.
"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," the president said in a speech in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. "In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."
A spokesman for his opponent, Democrat John Kerry, said the report "underscores the incompetence of George Bush's Iraq policy."
"George Bush refuses to come clean about the ways he misled our country into war," Kerry spokesman David Wade added.
"In short, we invaded a country, thousands of people have died, and Iraq never posed a grave or growing danger," said Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller.
Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group drew on interviews with senior Iraqi officials, 40 million pages of documents and classified intelligence to conclude that Iraq destroyed its undeclared chemical and biological stockpiles under pressure of UN sanctions by 1992 and never resumed production.
The U.S.-led invasion pushed one of Iraq's leaders into seeking chemical weapons to defend the country. But it doesn't appear that Saddam's son Uday located any. Iraq ultimately abandoned its biological weapons programs in 1995, largely out of fear they would be discovered and tougher enforcement imposed.
"Indeed, from the mid-1990s, despite evidence of continuing interest in nuclear and chemical weapons, there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the presidential level," according to a summary of Duelfer's 1,000-page report.
And Iraq also abandoned its nuclear program after the war, and there was no evidence it tried to reconstitute it.
Saddam's plan to restart a weapons programs was not formalized. "The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions," the summary says.
Duelfer's findings contradict most of the assertions by the Bush administration and the U.S. intelligence community about Iraq's threat in 2002 and early 2003.
The White House had argued that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and production lines and had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.
The United States led an invasion into Iraq in March 2003, taking the capital, Baghdad, within weeks. Since then, the United States and its allies have fought a dangerous insurgency of Iraqis as well as Islamic extremists who have come to Iraq to kill Americans.
Some 1,196 coalition personnel have been killed since the start of the war. Of those, 1,060 are American, 67 British and 69 are from other coalition countries. Unknown numbers of Iraqis have also died on both sides of the conflict.
TITLE: Boeing-Airbus Spat Over Subsidies Escalates
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - A decades-long struggle between the world's two largest aircraft makers escalated into a new trade war between the United States and Europe, just as France-based Airbus stepped up plans to challenge Boeing for lucrative U.S. defense contracts.
U.S. trade officials filed a complaint Wednesday with the World Trade Organization, contesting what they say are unfair subsidies to Airbus by European governments.
The European Union retaliated, filing its own complaint with the WTO challenging U.S. tax breaks for Boeing.
Europeans dismissed the U.S. complaint as election-year politics from President George W. Bush, who is facing criticism from Democratic challenger John Kerry over the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Kerry called the timing of the U.S. action-less than a month before Election Day-suspicious.
Administration officials denied politics played a role and noted that lawmakers in both parties supported the complaint. "Since its creation 35 years ago, some Europeans have justified subsidies to Airbus as necessary to support an 'infant' industry," said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.
U.S. officials argue that Airbus has grown into the market leader and no longer deserves government help.
But Europeans decry an estimated $3.2 billion in aerospace tax incentives by Washington state to help secure final assembly of Boeing's planned 7E7 Dreamliner in Everett, Washington.
TITLE: EU Recommends Eventually Admitting Turkey
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - In a historic move that could extend Europe's borders to the edge of the volatile Middle East, the European Union recommended Wednesday setting mostly Muslim Turkey on a course for full membership in the prosperous 25-nation bloc.
Reflecting widespread misgivings, however, the 30-member EU executive commission set tough conditions to prevent Turkey from backtracking on sweeping democratic and human rights reforms.
"This is a qualified yes," said European Commission President Romano Prodi. "Our position is a positive one, but also a prudent, cautious one."
French President Jacques Chirac said talks with Turkey could last 10 to 15 years "at a minimum."
Such caution reflected unease throughout a prosperous and mostly Christian continent about union with a poorer Muslim nation that could be a source of unwelcome migrants.
It is now up to the EU's 25 leaders to approve the recommendation at a summit in December, paving the way for the start of entry talks as early as next year.
If that happens, as Ankara hopes, Turkey would not actually join the union until around 2015.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Sihanouk Abdicates
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk abdicated Thursday because of poor health and asked the people of Cambodia to begin a search for a successor, the head of the National Assembly said.
The king, 81, made the announcement in a letter from Beijing.
Nobel Prize Winners
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STOCKHOLM - Austrian feminist writer Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Academy said Thursday, citing her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays."
The decision to award the prize to a woman, and a poet, was the first since 1996, and the ninth all together.
On Tuesday, Americans David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek won the physics prize. The chemistry prize was awarded Wednesday to Israelis Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko and American Irwin Rose. The winner of the coveted peace prize will be announced Friday in Oslo.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Zenit UEFA Draw
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ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Zenit St. Petersburg will play against AEK Athens, Lille, Sevilla and Alemannia Aachen after Tuesday's draw for the first ever group stage of the UEFA Cup. The first round of matches will be played on Oct. 21, when Zenit will face AEK Athens.
Inspired by the commercial success of the money-spinning Champions League, this season's UEFA Cup format sees 40 clubs drawn into eight groups of five teams.
In other groups, Italian hopefuls Lazio will take on Villarreal, Newcastle United face Sporting Lisbon, and two former winners will meet when Schalke 04 play Feyenoord.
Lazio should have little difficulty emerging from Group E, which also features Middlesbrough on their first foray into Europe, Partizan Belgrade and Egaleo of Greece.
Newcastle and Sporting are joined in Group D by Sochaux, Greek side Panionios and Georgia's Dinamo Tbilisi.
Each side will play two home and two away games, with the top three clubs in each group going into a knockout round where they will be joined by eight teams dropped from the Champions League.
Arsenal Poach Emirates
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LONDON (Reuters) - Arsenal's new ground at Ashburton Grove will be called the Emirates Stadium after the Premier League champions signed a sponsorship deal with Emirates Airlines worth Pound100 million ($178 million).
The Dubai-based airline will have naming rights for the next 15 years at the stadium, which is near Arsenal's current Highbury home and is due to open in 2006 at a cost of 357 million pounds.
Tuesday's sponsorship deal, which the club described as the biggest in English football history, also includes a "Fly Emirates" shirt deal that will run for eight years from the 2006-2007 season.
Nighttime Men's Final
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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - The centenary Australian Open will feature the first night men's final in a Grand Slam event, organizers confirmed at the launch of the 2005 tournament.
Tennis Australia president Geoff Pollard said the men's final, scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, Jan. 30, will attract a broader international audience because it will be screened in prime time in Australia, during the afternoon in Asian time zones and Sunday morning in Europe.
Williams Wants Back In
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MIAMI (AP) - Maybe Ricky Williams is tired of traveling. Maybe he has run out of books to read. Or maybe he doesn't want to pay the $8.6 million he owes the Miami Dolphins for breach of contract.
Whatever the reason, Williams wants to rejoin the Dolphins and has asked the NFL how soon he can return, his agent said Tuesday.
It's unclear whether the 2002 NFL rushing champion must serve a suspension for the rest of this season due to repeated violations of the league drug program. He has asked the league for a hearing to clarify his status, but no date has been set.
Titans Receiver Out
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) - Tennessee receiver Tyrone Calico will miss at least two to three weeks with torn cartilage in his left knee - another big loss for the Titans' receiving corps.
Calico missed the first three games after tearing cartilage in the same knee in the preseason. He played in Sunday's 38-17 loss at San Diego, but was hurt again when he tried to make a cut.
TITLE: Sharapova Reaches Japan Quarterfinals
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO - Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova advanced to the Japan Open quarterfinals Wednesday after overcoming a shaky second set to defeat Australian Samantha Stosur 6-4, 1-6, 6-3.
Defending champion Sharapova, the tournament's top seeded player, next faces France's Youlia Fedossova, who posted a 6-3, 7-6 (7-2) win over Japan's Akiko Morigami at Ariake Colosseum.
"It was a very tough match," said Sharapova.
"I came here to win and didn't want to lose early, so I'm relieved to have that first win."
It was also a big relief for organizers. The first two days of the tournament were hampered by rain and an early exit by Sharapova would have been a disaster.
In men's play, No. 1 seed Lleyton Hewitt rallied to a 6-0, 3-6, 6-1 win over Japan's Gouichi Motomura in their second round match.
After dropping the second set, Hewitt dominated the deciding third to eliminate wild card Motomura.
"I was in total command in the first set," said Hewitt. "He made a few points in the second set and got some momentum but I still felt like I was in control."
Hewitt, the 2001 Japan Open champion, was playing in his first match in more than a week and said his game will need some fine tuning.
"I didn't serve well at all," the Australian said. "When you haven't played in over a week it's a bit hard to come out and play your best tennis, but I expect to get stronger as the week goes on."
Hewitt, ranked No. 3 in the world, will face Japan's Takao Suzuki in the third round. Suzuki was a 7-6 (7-4), 3-6, 7-5 winner over 15th seed Jan Hernych of the Czech Republic.
In other men's matches, No. 7 American Taylor Dent downed Tomas Zib of the Czech Republic 6-3, 6-4, while 8th seed Thomas Johansson of Sweden defeated Justin Gimelstob of the United States 6-4, 6-4. Gilles Muller of Luxembourg beat America's Alex Bogomolov Jr., 6-3, 6-1.
In women's play, Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic upset 2nd seed Tatiana Golovin of France 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, while Mashona Washington of the United States cruised to a 6-2, 6-2 win over fourth-seeded Kristina Brandi of Puerto Rico. Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand beat Jill Craybas of the United States, 6-3, 7-6 (7-2).
TITLE: Aquamania As Phelps Swims On
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana - Michael Phelps is attempting a racing schedule nearly as ambitious as what he did at the Olympics. But this time he won't be swimming as far.
Six weeks after winning six gold medals and two bronzes in Athens, the teenager will swim six events in a 25-meter pool at the World Short Course Championships that begin Thursday.
The whole world knew Phelps was chasing Mark Spitz' record of seven gold medals at the Olympics. He just missed, but still left Greece as the biggest star of the games.
"He really put himself out there. He made a statement and took a risk," Australian coach Leigh Nugent said. "He put himself under enormous pressure. For someone to do that and come up with the goods shows what they're really made of."
This week, Phelps isn't sure what he can accomplish.
"I'm just going to have fun," he said Wednesday. "Just having an opportunity to swim in front of our home crowd is the most important thing. There's going to be a lot of good, screaming fans."
Phelps met plenty of shrieking teenage girls during his post-Olympic "Swim With the Stars" tour, which took him around the country with fellow Olympians Ian Crocker and Lenny Krayzelburg.
"Every single town we went to there's a standing ovation, tons of screaming fans, smiles on kids' faces. It's all been incredible," he said. "Lenny said, 'It's kind of like aqua Beatles.'"
Simply walking around became a different experience.
"Sometimes people would give me looks or come up to me and ask, 'Are you Michael?'" he said. "They'd stop at that and I liked to joke, 'My name is Michael, what are you asking?'"
This week, the local newspaper is urging readers to call in and report any sightings of Phelps away from Conseco Fieldhouse, where temporary competition and warmup pools were built over the floor used by the NBA's Indiana Pacers.
The 19-year-old from Baltimore smiled at the prospect of being gossip column fodder.
"I'm here to swim," he said. "They can see me walking from my hotel and back to the hotel. That's about the only two things they'll see me doing."
Teammate Amanda Beard, whose provocative layouts in men's magazines have caused a stir, noted Phelps is turning up in celebrity magazines.
"I see this boy inside, his hot bod," she said, jabbing a blushing Phelps in the arm. "It doesn't happen in swimming very often. I hope it's not an every four years' thing."
Coming so soon after the Olympics, Phelps acknowledged he's competing in the five-day meet mostly to support its first staging in the United States and plug the sport.
"People think of swimming as a once every four years' sport," he said. "We swim every single day and we compete in major meets every year and the rest of the public needs to see that."
Phelps has limited experience in short course meets, having competed in his first one in 1999. "He did absolutely terribly," coach Bob Bowman said.
But he was 6-for-6 at last year's short course World Cup in Melbourne, Australia, and just missed setting two world records.
Phelps is entered in the 200-meter freestyle, 200 butterfly, 100, 200 and 400 individual medleys and 800 free relay. The pool is half the length of a regular pool, giving Phelps less space to maneuver his slender 6-foot-4 frame into the turns.
"There are more turns, which aren't really my forte. I'm going to stay open-minded," he said.
Speed is more critical in a shorter pool, where conditioning isn't as important as it would be at 50 meters. Phelps' height - usually an advantage coming into and going off the walls - will be somewhat negated because he doesn't rotate as fast as shorter swimmers.
"He has a very long body and it's hard for him to change directions quickly. The smaller you ball up your body, the quicker you rotate," Bowman said. "For him, it's very hard to get into a tight ball quickly. He kind of eases his way into it."
Nugent expects Phelps to do well, but noticed the American isn't making any predictions.
"I suspect with the way he swims, the loping sort of strokes he uses in his fly and freestyle probably isn't as suited to short course swimming," he said.
And what if the shorter pool exposes Phelps as a mere mortal?
"That's perfectly fine," Bowman said. "That will just give him more incentive to get back into training. He's clearly proven himself and what happens at this meet is not going to change people's perception of that."