SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1036 (2), Tuesday, January 18, 2005
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TITLE: People <br> Reclaim
 Streets
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Thousands of people blocked the traffic on St. Petersburg's main thoroughfares on Saturday and Sunday to protest against a federal law that replaces entitlements to free or discounted services with cash.
 
Although the government said last year that no one would lose out, the protesters, most of them pensioners, say the cash provided falls far short of covering what they lost.
 City authorities promised to restore some benefits after some 10,000 people jammed the center of the country's second-largest city on Saturday for six hours. Demonstrators returned Sunday to rally on Nevsky Prospekt to again snarl traffic for six hours.
 &quot;Stop the genocide of pensioners,&quot; and &quot;Shame on the government, Federation Council and the president&quot; declared banners held aloft by protesters Sunday. Others waved red flags, beat spoons against saucepans and chanted slogans calling for Putin to step down. 
 &quot;We are here to demand the right to live,&quot; protester Zhanna Filonova, 61, said Sunday.
 Since the new program took effect on Jan. 1, protests have spread across the country. Retirees were on the streets of Volga River-city Samara for the fifth day on Sunday, and a rally in the southern city of Stavropol drew up to 5,000 people. Many of the elderly complain they are treated like second-class citizens whose miserable pensions, which average $80 per month, turn their life into a struggle for survival.
 &quot;My pension is so low that I don't have money to get new teeth,&quot; said Natalya Nechayeva, 61. &quot;Look at us, many of us are missing teeth and can't afford to get new ones.&quot;
 On Monday, President Vladimir Putin criticized the government and leaders of the country's regions over the program, saying they had failed to fulfill their duty to implement it.
 &quot;The government and regions' task ... was not to make the situation of those who are in need of the state's help worse,&quot; Putin said at a Cabinet meeting.
 Pensions should be raised by at least 200 rubles per month from March 1, instead of raising them by only 100 rubles from April 1 as had been planned, he said.
 Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov later said pensions would go up by 240 rubles per month on March 1, Interfax reported.
 Meanwhile, many of St. Petersburg's protesting pensioners said in order to afford a more or less decent life they would need a pension of from at least 7,000 to 10,000 rubles per month.
 On Saturday night after a meeting with representatives of the protesters, Governor Valentina Matviyenko addressed pensioners on city-government-controlled television station Channel Five, saying the administration had decided to provide them with discounted transport passes that would let them travel on all surface and underground municipal transportation for 230 rubles a month. 
 However, on Sunday the protesters said that concession was not enough for them, and again demanded the return of all their former entitlements. 
 On Monday afternoon, about 250 pensioners gathered on Nevsky Prospekt near Gostiny Dvor to continue the rally, and listen to the news from negotiators - mainly representatives of the city's Communist Party, Yabloko, Social Democrats and National Bolsheviks - who had passed the protesters' demands to Matviyenko. About 50 policemen cordoned off the area where the meeting took place to prevent people blocking traffic. 
 The demands included making the law invalid on the territory of St. Petersburg; to prepare a legislative initiative on canceling the law; to restore entitlements to city and suburban transportation and discounted telephone services.
 The petitioners demanded a hike in the basic pension from 650 rubles per month to 3,000 rubles and asked that their representatives be allowed to put their case on radio and television.
 &quot;We came here because they turned us into nobodies,&quot; said pensioner Lyudmila Ivanova, 67. &quot;They stole our entitlements and our old age.&quot; 
 Matviyenko said she understands the uproar in St. Petersburg, but that &quot;there is no necessity to suspend the program,&quot; Interfax reported.
 &quot;We are doing everything possible not to make the lives of our pensioners worse,&quot; she added. &quot;On the contrary, we are trying to improve their standard of living.&quot; 
 From next Monday, city pensioners will be able to buy a discounted public transport card for 230 rubles and also receive additional 85 rubles to cover 50 percent of their monthly telephone payment. Matviyenko said all that money is covered in the 350-ruble &quot;compensation&quot; the city is paying out.
 She also said St. Petersburg will maintain the entitlement to travel on suburban trains and buses for free.
 Matviyenko said that during a meeting Sunday with Zurabov, the federal government also announced that invalids and World War II veterans would be allowed to travel free to any city in the country once a year.
 The city authorities would not use force against protesters, but would not tolerate uncontrolled actions that paralyze the normal life of the city, she said.
 Boris Vishnevsky, an analyst with the Yabloko faction in St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, said the government's program had been a failure from the very beginning.
 The new law could &quot;dramatically change the political situation in the country&quot; and seriously discredit the Kremlin-loyal United Russia party and the Putin's reputation, he said Monday in a telephone interview.
 &quot;It was clear from the start that the cash assigned as compensation for the loss of entitlements, both at the federal and regional levels, was adequate,&quot; Vishnevsky said.
 &quot;The government intended to take something away from the people and by doing so to make a profit,&quot; he said.
 The entitlements of World War II veterans, those who were wounded in the war and survivors of the Siege of Leningrad were meant to receive federal compensation ranging up to 1,500 rubles, but their losses totaled no less than 3,500 rubles.
 &quot;If we take into account the entitlement of some beneficiaries to travel once a year for free to any point in the country, this figure would be even higher. For instance, a round-trip plane ticket to the Far East could cost up to $1,000,&quot; he said.
 The compensation for other categories of beneficiaries including veterans of labor, those who worked in military production during the war and repressed people are supposed to be compensated from regional rather than federal authorities. In St. Petersburg, these people get only 350 to 500 rubles, far less than the value of the entitlements they lost, he said.
 &quot;If the government wants the new law to work, they should have offered compensations equal to the entitlements,&quot; Vishnevsky said.
 Meanwhile, many St. Petersburg pensioners said they will keep campaigning for the law to be changed.

TITLE: Pensioner Power Pressures Putin's Home City
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg lived up to its name as the &quot;cradle of revolutions&quot; at the weekend as huge protests blocked city streets with unauthorized meetings while President Vladimir Putin was visiting his hometown.
 
The city might have been expected to have a stronger reaction to the government's program to replace pensioners' entitlements to free or discounted services with cash than other places in Russia.
 Partly as a result of the World War II Siege of Leningrad, nearly a quarter of its citizens are over 60 years old; the siege killed many men and the health of many female survivors was so badly damaged that they were infertile.
 In addition, many other people, including customs officers, the military and students had been entitled to free travel on public services until the program came into force on Jan.1. According to City Hall's press office, more than 2.2 million St. Petersburgers from a total of 4.5 million residents had the right to in-kind benefits.
 A hundred years after 1905's Bloody Sunday when Father Gapon petitioned Tsar Nicholas I there was an echo of his words that said; &quot;old, helpless parents have come ...we are impoverished and oppressed ... we are despised and not recognized as human beings. ... we have suffered terrible things, but we are pressed ever deeper into the abyss of poverty, ignorance and lack of rights.&quot; 
 In 1905, thousands of protesters were shot. On Saturday three people were hurt. One of them, Alexander Aiol, 80, died.
 With the elderly the most active church-goers, church collection plates are reportedly less full since the New Year. NTV television showed a report with city clergy complaining the amount of offerings has fallen by over 90 percent compared to a year ago.
 The St. Petersburg City Court on Friday received the first suit aiming to prove the new law was illegal and must be annulled. 
 The suit was filed by Kim Burkov, <br> a professor at St. Petersburg State University. 
 His representative in court, political analyst and Yabloko politician Boris Vishnevsky, said the city's pensioners were granted the right to free public transportation in May 1993 by the Leningrad City Council, the predecessor of the Legislative Assembly. 
 &quot;Now, the city authorities have to either honor the 1993 decision or at least provide compensation equal to the cost of monthly travel ticket.&quot;
 City pensioners have received a modest 230 rubles compensation as a replacement of their right to use public transport for free, while a monthly pass would normally cost 600 rubles.
 Vishnevsky said the new law deprives pensioners of free travel and is therefore limiting their ability to freely get around the city.
 &quot;The legal ground for the suit is very strong,&quot; Vishnevsky said. &quot;The existing federal law specifies that conditions of benefits in the regions cannot be worsened. But the local authorities offer the pensioners a compensation which is worth of 40 percent of the cost of monthly travel ticket. So, according to the law, the replacement, limiting people's liberties, can't be valid.&quot;
 Conductors at the city's buses and trams have been facing a moral dilemma. Some of them say they haven't received a printed copy of the document prolonging the free rides and demand that the pensioners pay, but others let them travel free of charge.
 &quot;I am getting pennies from the state, so I have decided I am not going to pay, and I got on the tram taking chances,&quot; pensioner Larisa Nikitina, 78, who lives on Petrograd Side, said Friday. 
 &quot;The conductor was a very kind and understanding young man. He said he feels sorry for us, and that he will try and manage to do without my fee,&quot; she added.
 Only two groups of pensioners -blind people and severely disabled people - had been allowed to continue to use public transport for free.
 City Hall specified that on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad, and on May 8 and 9, the anniversary of Germany's capitulation, all siege survivors and war veterans will travel for free, including commercial buses and marshrutkas, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said.

TITLE: Opposition Group, Walking Without Putin, Formed in City
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg students, including former members of the pro-Kremlin student organization, Idushchiye Vmeste, or Walking Together, have established a new movement called Idushchiye Bez Putina, or Walking Without Putin.
 
The group says it has about a hundred supporters who got together to oppose the government's plans to make students serve in the army, fare hikes for public transportation, the loss of discounts for World War II veterans, the war in Chechnya and the cancellation of gubernatorial elections.
 &quot;We don't need a revolution,&quot; the students said in a statement issued Thursday. &quot;We don't need a different Russia. We are just fed up with the president, who many of us supported in the elections, and who treats us as if we don't matter.&quot;
 Idushchiye Bez Putina intends to cooperate with other city political organizations that are in opposition to the Kremlin, the statement said.
 &quot;We are against a personality cult, whoever it is for - for [President Vladimir] Putin or [former Yukos head Mikhail] Khodorkovsky,&quot; Mikhail Obozov, head of Walking Without Putin, said Friday in a telephone interview.
 &quot;We have united to protest against the arbitrariness of the Kremlin - people of our age are becoming cannon fodder for Chechnya, human rights are under threat everywhere and the state steals from its citizens.&quot;
 At the weekend the movement started facing problems. Its website www.idushiespb.narod.ru fell victim to a hacker's attack, but was functioning again Monday. The web site www.livejournal.com, where the students first got together, was also blocked, but resumed functioning Monday morning.
 &quot;Many media outlets have said that this was initiated by the Kremlin, but I don't know who could be behind it,&quot; Obozov said.
 The students also accused Idushchiye Vmeste, which often gathers thousands of young people dressed in T-shirts bearing the image of a smiling Putin, of having betrayed the aims for which it was set up several years ago.
 It is thought that Idushchiye Vmeste is generously funded by the Kremlin or its supporters and that the marchers a paid or given goods for their demonstrations. Its leaders have denied this.
 Russian media reported that the first signs that Idushchiye Vmeste was coming apart occurred last summer when its associate Maxim Kondrashev was expelled for allegedly distributing pornographic videotapes. The same sources say Idushchiye Vmeste has started facing financial problems that forced its management to drop plans to organize a march on Jan. 9, the 100th anniversary of Bloody Sunday when tsarist troops shot more than 1,000 demonstrators in St. Petersburg.
 Vasily Yakomenko, head of Idushchiye Vmeste could not be reached for comment on Monday. 
 In an interview printed in business daily Kommersant on Friday he denied Idushchiye Bez Putina's accusations, saying that people regularly leave the movement and branded the new movement a collection of traitors.
 &quot;About 3,000 supporters leave us every year,&quot; Yakomenko was quoted as saying. &quot;These are mainly those who don't like to read and don't love their motherland. Each year we gain about 6,000 new members, so we don't suffer.&quot;
 He denied that any of Idushchiye Vmeste's former members have joined Idushchiye Bez Putina.
 &quot;It is necessary to make short work of traitors,&quot; he said. &quot;I know all these movements, which are being financed by funds from George Soros.&quot;
 Soros is a U.S. financier who has financed the development of civil society in former communist countries, including funding non-governmental organizations. Idushchiye Vmeste spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said Monday his movement is considering filing a lawsuit against the new movement's Obozov.
 &quot;I had a conversation with Mr. Obozov yesterday and demanded that he apologize for his comments that the movement is falling apart and about its financial position,&quot; Interfax quoted Kuznetsov as saying Monday. &quot;Our reputation is important to us and we are ready to defend it in court.&quot;
 St. Petersburg political analysts were skeptical about the appearance of Idushchiye Bez Putina.
 &quot;With fewer and fewer political alternatives to the Kremlin, it may be that this group has been set up to demonstrate that democracy exists in the regions,&quot; said Igor Leshukov, a political analyst at the St. Petersburg Institute for International Relations.
 &quot;For this reason, I suspect the project was set up with higher approval,&quot; he said Friday in a telephone interview.
 If Idushchiye Bez Putina does not have official approval then it is likely to come under significant pressure from the authorities, Leshukov said.
 Unlike in Ukraine - where the so-called Orange Revolution in which mass public movements led to the reversal of a fraudulent election result - populist movements are unlikely to gather support, Leshukov said.
 &quot;In Russia, there is no competition of political forces,&quot; he said. &quot;This turning point has already been passed. We have to wait for another twist of history.&quot;
 Obozov denied his group was sponsored, especially not by the Kremlin, and pointed to the recent problems his movement had with the Internet.
 &quot;It is silly to say such things,&quot; he said. &quot;However, you could say the Kremlin has helped us by uniting us for a single purpose - to assist students.&quot; 
 &quot;The only party that supports us is Yabloko, which has agreed to distribute our leaflets,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Putin Says Trophy-Art 
 Return Is Negotiable
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin on Friday showed some readiness to negotiate Germany's pursuit of the return of cultural objects removed by the Soviets at the end of World War II.
 
Speaking after a meeting with German president Horst Koehler in St. Petersburg to mark the end of a two-year German-Russian cultural exchange, Putin described the so-called tropy art as a sensitive issue.
 &quot;We would like to resolve it in a way that does not harm relations, but makes them better,&quot; he said, adding that Hitler's armies had destroyed or stolen many works of art in Russia.
 Putin said that an exhibition in Russia of art that has been returned to Germany, including Raphael's Sistine Madonna from Dresden's State Art Collection, as has been proposed by Lidia Ievleva, director of the Tretyakov Gallery, could be held.
 Such an exhibition would create an atmosphere that could allow further progress on the matter of trophy art. All events related to the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany should be symbols of European-wide reconciliation, Putin said.
 The Dresden collections are well known to Russians. They were removed after the war, restored and exhibited before being returned to Dresden, then part of East Germany, in 1955.
 The German Press Agency reported German Culture Minister Christina Weiss as saying after Friday's talks that the silver collection of the Anhalt family will be returned soon. The move would be made as a goodwill gesture, she said.
 &quot;There are good grounds to believe that this will take place before or during the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war,&quot; she was quoted saying. Moscow is to celebrate the anniversary on Victory Day on the May 9 in the presence of international leaders.
 No comment was available from the Russian Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency.
 Art experts consider the 18-piece collection, mainly of mugs and dinner plates, assembled since the 17th century as very valuable. Stored in the Dessau castle, it was removed to Russia after the war and is kept in St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum, the report said.
 The collection had, unlike most of the art claimed by Germany, been private property before its removal and therefore is not subject to State Duma approval for its return. This should ease the handing over, the report said.
 Putin and Koehler, who hailed the cultural exchange as a success, attended the inaugaration of a restored German-built Walcker organ at St. Petersburg's Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall. The restoration was Germany's gift to St. Petersburg for the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city in 2003.
 &quot;Relations with Russia have never been as good as they are today,&quot; Koehler said.
 The German president said he had met Putin, who speaks fluent German, many times in Moscow. It was his first visit to St. Petersburg and he was impressed. 
 Koehler, the director general of the International Monetary Fund from 2000 to 2004, said Russia had been making significant economic progress. 


TITLE: Chernobyl Workers Extend
 Hunger Strike Despite Illness
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Workers who took part in the cleanup of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and who resumed a hunger strike last week have started experiencing serious health problems.
 
&quot;The authorities try to make us quarrel with old people and our colleagues whose interests we are defending,&quot; Sergei Kulish, head of the group, said Monday in a telephone interview. &quot;All these old women who at first supported us before have started arguing with us after the media started saying that we are simply pursuing our personal interests.&quot;
 At the weekend the group became involved in strong arguments with Sestroretsk district authorities who visited them on Saturday and the authorities refused to cooperate with the group, Kulish said.
 &quot;After reading all this dirt [about the visit in local media] I had a heart attack this morning,&quot; Kulish said.
 An ambulance visited the hunger strikers three times during the weekend, and those who suffered health complications were given injections, but none of the 10 Chernobyl workers agreed to go to the hospital, Kulish said.
 &quot;We didn't agree to go to the clinic because of the approach the authorities took to us,&quot; he said.
 The group started their original hunger strike on Dec. 1, but ended it a few days later after the national human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin visited them and promised that the Supreme Court would examine their demands on Jan. 18 (Tuesday).
 On Jan. 12, the group resumed the hunger strike after they said both federal and local authorities failed to fulfill their promises and also that they were not confident that they would have a chance to participate in the Supreme Court hearing. 
 Their main claims relate to higher compensation to help them deal with their health, which has suffered from their exposure to radiation, and that their payments at least keep pace with inflation.
 Nine of the hunger strikers are from St. Petersburg and one came from Pyatigorsk, in southern Russia, to join the group.

TITLE: Hall May Still Host Nord-Ost
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The new managers of St. Petersburg's Music Hall are negotiating for the musical Nord-Ost to be peformed on its stage after the musical was rejected in scandalous circumstances last year.
 
If negotiations are successful the musical's directors will drop a 10-million ruble ($358,000) law suit against the hall for breaching an agreement to stage Nord-Ost in the hall in September and October, Interfax quoted the theater director Alexander Platunov as saying Thursday.
 The reason given for refusing the musical at the time was that the Music Hall was in such dilapidated condition that it could not cope with the musical's elaborate sets.
 The musical's directors denied that this was the case and the hall has continued to operate without any repairs.
 Platunov said the agreement drawn up by the hall's previous director Angela Khachaturyan had been unfavorable to the hall and the city's property committee is applying to the St. Petersburg arbitration court to have it declared invalid.

TITLE: Terror Suspects Exterminated
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MAKHACHKALA, Southern Russia - A fierce gun battle with a group of terror suspects in Dagestan ended when a tank razed the house where they were holed up, and security officials declared all the militants dead. 
 
Two officers of the elite Alfa anti-terror commando unit were wounded in the battle, and one of them later died in a hospital. 
 A search through the debris after the Saturday gun battle did not immediately turn up the bodies of the five militants suspected of plotting an attack like September's Beslan school seizure, authorities said. 
 The clash began early Saturday when police tracked down a group of five terror suspects, who hid in the house on the outskirts of the regional capital, Makhachkala. 
 Hundreds of police and other security forces backed by armored vehicles and a helicopter gunship tried to storm the house for more than 15 hours, but the militants fended off all attacks from the building's concrete basement. The federal authorities finally sent a tank to destroy what remained of the house and declared the battle over and all the militants dead. 
 Nikolai Gryaznov, head of the Federal Security Service's branch in Dagestan, told reporters that the militants had prepared a large-scale terror attack like in Beslan, which killed 330 people. 
 In a separate clash Saturday, police stormed another house in Dagestan's port of Kaspiisk to arrest another group of militants. 
 The gunmen shot and killed three police officers, and in the ensuing gun battle, one suspect was killed, another was captured, and a third managed to escape. 
 Officials said both groups of militants operated under the same leader, Rasul Makasharipov, who took part in a 1999 raid on Dagestan by Chechnya-based militants. 
 The invasion triggered the second war in Chechnya, which has gone into its sixth year. 
 Dagestani Interior Minister Adylgirei Magomedtagirov said Maka-sharipov's group was responsible for a series of killings of police officers in Dagestan.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: African Student Beaten
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A student from Cameroon was severely beaten at the weekend and was taken to the Mariinskaya hospital for treatment, Interfax reported Monday.
 Mori Dasaraden Maurikia, a 21-year-old student of the St. Petersburg Institute for Architecture and Construction, was attacked by several strangers around 8 p.m. Saturday. The assailants fled the scene.
 Doctors at the Mariinskaya hospital diagnosed the patient as suffering from concussion, moderate bruises and abrasions. His condition was described as stable on Monday.
 
 
<b>Bent Cops Sentenced
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg city court has sentenced two serving police officers convicted of extortion, swindling and abuse of their professional duties to three years in jail, Interfax reported Monday.
 Lieutenant Yevgeny Barabanov and Captain Viktor Nekrasov were sentenced to exile in a prison colony. Vladislav Babak, a third man convicted in the same case, who has since left the police force was sentenced to 3.5 years in a colony.
 The investigation showed that in December 2003 Nekrasov and Babak bought a computer mouse at the Yunona market, and subsequently extorted money from the retailer by threatening to use their status as police officers to prosecute him for allegedly selling goods without a license. 
 A similar scheme was used again in April 2004, when all three convicted men extorted money from the owner of Zenit computer club.
 
 
<b>Journalist Awarded
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Local human rights organzations have awarded Nikolai Donskov, a journalist at the St. Petersburg branch of Novaya Gazeta, a prize "For Faithfulness to Freedom of the Media and High Professionalism" last week.
 The prize was initiated by local human rights organization Citizen's Watch and by the Regional Press Institute and is intended to recognize journalists whose work has demonstrated their belief in the principles of the democratic development of society and freedom of speech.
 Eight journalists contested the prize, with 64 samples of their work presented to a jury made up of representatives of human rights organizations.

TITLE: New Consumer Law Ends Y.E. Prices
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Businesses operating in Russia that are used to setting prices for their goods and services in hard currency - &quot;y.e.&quot; according to the Russian acronym for conditional units - will from this week no longer be able to do so after a new law on protecting consumer rights came into force.
 
Apart from insisting that prices be set in rubles, the law requires businesses to provide information on the origin of imported goods that will allow customers to identify the importer so that they can complain to them if the goods are faulty.
 The amendments were originally introduced by the Russian Union of Customers, backed by Pyotr Shelishch, a United Russia deputy in the State Duma and a former member of Yabloko. He has said his aim was to protect consumers from disappointments.
 When people come to a store they often find that they do not quite have enough money to buy what they wanted because the conditional units in the store are calculated based on the euro, while customers may have thought them to be dollars, the authors of the amendments said.
 &quot;It won't be hard to replace prices shown in so-called <i>uslovniye udinitsy </i>into prices in rubles,&quot; said Yevgeny Myasin, co-chairman of the Russian Union of Customers, one of the authors of the amendments, in a telephone interview from Moscow. &quot;Quite often businesses delude their customers when they put prices in these units because people think it's a dollar rate, while in shops they count in euros or in some rate that doesn't correlate with the official Central Bank rate for the dollar.&quot;
 &quot;We haven't tried to ban businesses from showing prices in conditional units,&quot; Myasin said. &quot;They just have to state prices in rubles at the same time to avoid deluding customers.&quot;
 One major business sector that deals in prices set in U.S. dollars, the domestic cellular communication market, expects no harm from the changes.
 &quot;This won't be a problem for us,&quot; a representative of Northwest Megafon's press service said Monday in a telephone interview. &quot;In some regions, we already provide services and use tariffs to pay for them in rubles.&quot; 
 But Refat Samigulin, another co-chairman of the union, said it will be hard to make businesses comply with the law.
 &quot;They've been trying to get the best possible rates, so for this reason it will be hard to make them change the way they set prices,&quot; Samigulin said Monday in a telephone interview from Moscow.
 Besides cellular communication companies, businesses displaying prices for goods in dollars include car dealers, restaurants and retail stores for household electronics.
 The amendments also aim to put in order sales over the Internet, introducing a regulation that goods purchased on the web can be returned in the week after they were received. 
 Also, in cases where there is no written information on the terms of returning items in good condition, which, for instance, do not fit by size, clients can demand their money back within three months after delivery. 
 In this case an Internet retailer is obliged to return the full amount paid for a purchase except for postage costs and within 10 days of a claim being received.

TITLE: City Hall Ends 2004
 With Budget Surplus
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg budget for 2004 showed a 1 billion ruble ($35 million) surplus, according to end-of-year results presented by City Hall officials on Friday. Capital expenditures and development projects financing, however, ran low. 
 
City revenue amounted to 93.25 billion rubles - 1.2 percent growth on last year, which accounted for the surplus - said Vice Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky at a press meeting late last week. Expenses amounted to 92.07 billion rubles and the federal debt went down by 2.3 billion rubles to 11 billion rubles.
 &quot;The surplus was achieved thanks to the government's tough financial policy,&quot; said Oseyevsky. &quot;It came from the funds spent by investors on the city infrastructure development and the growth of tax revenue [attributed to] improved performance of city businesses.&quot;
 Investment activity, however, came in second to city property sales and leases, which accounted for 12 percent of last year's budget revenue, according to the Federal Property Committee (FPC) figures. 
 The committee made a total of 10.1 billion rubles on property deals in 2004, up from about 5 billion rubles the previous year, said Igor Metelsky, head of the committee, at a Friday news conference. Of the total amount, 8.6 billion rubles came from rent and 1.5 billion rubles from the privatization of city property, which included land plot auctions and the sale of five hotels in the peripheral districts of the city. 
 Speaking about the budget forecast for 2005, Metelsky said the committee would once again head the revenue-makers list as it targets to add 16. 7 billion rubles to city coffers. &quot;We will focus on... state property privatization for the next year's profits,&quot; Interfax quoted Metelsky as saying.
 Some of the most lucrative possibilities for the committee this year are the upcoming sales of the city's share packages in the Pribaltiskaya and Astoria hotels, valued by Deloitte's at 520 million rubles and 488 million rubles respectively.
 The administration's focus on property sales as a moneymaking tool for the budget leaves some observers wondering about the state of local development projects.
 &quot;At the end of last year two international rating agencies, Fitch and Moody's once again increased the city's investment attractiveness marks, which lowered its interest rates on loans. However, the city is yet to use this to its advantage,&quot; business daily Kommersant wrote, citing the city's federal debt level - 10 percent of the annual expenses - as too low for any serious project developments.
 &quot;The city simply has no serious investment projects that would demand the attraction of such financial means,&quot; the paper said. 
 In response to that statement, Maxim Kalinin, St. Petersburg-based partner at Baker &amp; McKenzie, noted the issue was not that simple. &quot;Large investment projects demand thorough preparation, in terms of their legal and financial structure, and the fact that their financing is not included in this year's budget does not mean they do not exist,&quot; Kalinin said. As examples, he cited the long-standing city ring road project and planned work to improve the Vodokanal water systems. 
 In any case, Friday's results show the amount of total capital expenditures in the city as still far behind Moscow, as are the dynamics of St. Petersburg's development. St. Petersburg's total volume of capital expenditure (money spent on improving infrastructure and invested into overall growth) was 15 percent of the budget. In Moscow the figure was 40 percent, according to RBC news agency.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Kempinski Buys Hotel
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The city sold its Pulkovskaya hotel shares to the hotel managing company Kempinski Group for 511.3 billion rubles ($18 million) on Sunday, Interfax reported.
 Kempinski used its minority shareholder's privilege right of purchase to buy the shares before the package would be auctioned off by the city's property committee.
 Valeria Raitz, Pulkovskaya's commercial director, confirmed the information about Kempinski's purchase of the 74.9-percent share package.
 
 
<b>No Sale of Port Stake
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The ale of a 20 percent share package of St. Petersburg sea port has been cancelled amid speculation that the authorities want a larger stake in the port to be auctioned, reported Izvestiya on Monday.
 The 20.2 percent package, that was to be offered at a Jan. 18 auction, may be raised to 49 percent if the Federal Agency for Managing State Property (FAMSP) can convince the city property fund this will attract more lucrative buyers.
 At the moment, with 50 percent plus one share in the hands of Danish company Jysk Staalindustri, a 20.2-percent package would not allow buyers to influence the financial direction of the port in any way, Izvestia reported.

TITLE: Cabinet Mulls Slashing Rate of VAT
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov is backing a plan to cut value added tax to 13 percent from 18 percent as the government seeks to lift fading economic growth, Vedomosti reported Friday.
 
The government hopes the cut will boost gross domestic product by as much as 2 percent per year, the paper said, citing copies of documents discussed at a meeting headed by Fradkov last month. VAT was cut to 18 percent from 20 percent last year, to little effect. 
 Lowering VAT to 13 percent would save companies an estimated 278 billion rubles ($10 billion) this year and 322 billion rubles in 2006. The budget shortfall created by the cut would come from the stabilization fund under the plan backed by Fradkov, a move likely to be opposed by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, the paper said.
 Russia's six-year economic boom - one of the key achievements of Vladimir Putin's presidency - has been driven by soaring prices for commodity exports, a massive turnaround in state finances and greater confidence that the Kremlin was serious about liberalizing the economy and helping businesses develop.
 However, despite some of the best external conditions in decades, the economy is slowing. After growing 7.3 percent in 2003 and 6.8 percent last year, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry forecasts growth as low as 4.5 percent this year.
 The fading fortunes have created divisions in the Cabinet, with Kudrin and Gref - who want swifter and more far-reaching reforms - clashing with the more statist Fradkov. 
 Part of that conflict has centered on the stabilization fund, a rainy-day pot of windfall oil revenues set up in 2003 to insure the country against a fall in oil prices and to help reduce the inflationary effects of billions of dollars of extra revenue from lucrative oil exports.
 Kudrin, who created the fund, has had to fight off a number of ministers anxious to spend the cash on a variety of sometime exotic projects.
 Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov told Vedomosti that using the fund to finance budget shortfalls could remove a key fiscal defense mechanism should oil prices fall. And a senior official from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry called the idea &quot;very incautious.&quot;
 Kudrin has argued that the fund, now at about $19 billion, would be best used to cut borrowing costs by paying off debt early, for example to the Paris Club. That, he argues, would help the country ensure there would be no repeat of the 1998 crisis, when Russia became the bad boy of global finance by defaulting on domestic debt, sending a shock wave of volatility through world markets.

TITLE: BBC Probes Roman Abramovich's Money
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The EBRD is preparing to file a lawsuit in a Swiss court that accuses Roman Abramovich's Runicom SA of forging documents and splurging on luxury yachts and beauty treatments for Abramovich's wife while refusing to pay back a debt to the bank, according to an investigative documentary that will air on the BBC later this week.
 
The years-long legal battle between Swiss-based Runicom SA, which once handled oil trade for Sibneft, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is back in the spotlight after BBC Two television announced that it would examine the affair on &quot;Sweeney Investigates&quot; on Thursday.
 The lawsuit and allegations of forgery are among new issues that will be raised in the broadcast, the BBC said. 
 The program could spell an end to Abramovich's honeymoon with the British media, which have portrayed the reclusive billionaire as a boy in a candy store ever since he bought the Chelsea soccer club and moved to London in 2003.
 &quot;We have as much money as he does, and we'll see this through. We will pursue him anywhere he goes,&quot; a London-based EBRD source told the BBC. 
 &quot;We can last as long as he can. He may think he can get away with this in Russia, but he can't in Switzerland. He needs to learn that he can't,&quot; the source said.
 EBRD officials contacted Sunday declined to comment on the lawsuit.
 John Sweeney, the host of &quot;Sweeney Investigates,&quot; said that court documents prepared by the EBRD suggest that Runicom SA's expenses when Abramovich was its chief included the purchase of two yachts from a boatyard in Cannes, France, and a Pound12,000 ($22,000) beauty treatment for Abramovich's wife, Irina, the BBC reported on its web site.
 &quot;Sibneft was a de facto or 'shadow' director of Runicom. Sibneft as well as Mr. Abramovich and Mr. [Yevgeny] Shvidler, as former Runicom directors, caused Runicom to transfer its assets to third persons for no or inadequate consideration,&quot; according to an EBRD memo dated last fall and obtained by Sweeney. 
 For example, money from Runicom SA was transferred to Gibraltar-registered Runicom Ltd., which the EBRD believes was also controlled by Abramovich, according to EBRD findings cited by Sweeney.
 The allegations of forgery are connected to the EBRD's quest to receive repayment for a loan it issued to the now-defunct SBS-Agro bank. The EBRD opened a multimillion-dollar credit line to SBS-Agro to fund a small-business development program. But SBS-Agro went bankrupt after the August 1998 crisis and said it could not repay $14 million owed to the EBRD. It instead offered the EBRD a $14 million principal it was owed by Runicom SA.
 The EBRD has never managed to recover the debt from Runicom SA, which has claimed that the debt was repaid in an offset to a third bank.
 After a series of lawsuits in Russia, the EBRD finally won an appeal in the Supreme Court in 2002. Runicom SA, however, declared itself bankrupt shortly after the ruling.
 The EBRD suggested to &quot;Sweeney Investigates&quot; that Runicom SA had used fake documents in Russian courts in 2000 claiming that it had repaid the $14 million loan to the third bank.
 &quot;We discovered that the documents produced by Runicom contained numerous inconsistencies,&quot; senior EBRD official Elizabeth Wallace is quoted as saying in an EBRD dossier obtained by the BBC.
 &quot;For example, the addresses on the seals were wrong and did not coincide with the current address of the organization,&quot; she wrote. &quot;The loan repayment term and amounts were wrong.&quot;
 Contacted Sunday, Wallace declined to comment, citing the bank's strict policy regarding contacts with the media. 
 Abramovich's spokespeople were unavailable for comment Sunday. In the past, Runicom SA representatives fiercely denied any wrongdoing in the EBRD case.

TITLE: State Firms Stimulate City Property Market
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The transferal of the offices of several state businesses to a St. Petersburg address, development of industrial zones and the decentralization of business districts - the market trends which developed in 2004 - have realtors predicting that real-estate will continue to be the most dynamically growing sector of the local economy.
 

 <strong>
OFFICE SPACE
 </strong>There was increased activity on the city office space market last year. Four business centers were completed, and two further centers are expected to open in March, bringing the total amount of new office space to 60,000 square meters, according to realtor estimates.
 
Demand for spacious quality business facilities, however, remained high, partially due to the transferal from Moscow of many, large state and international companies, something that the city government had been soliciting for much of 2004.
 &quot;Of course the locomotives of this move - oil companies, state banks and large insurance companies prefer building their own premises or they look for buildings in the historic center suitable for reconstruction,&quot; said Andrei Tetysh, head of the board of directors at Becar agency group, in a recent roundtable address to the Guild of Real-Estate Developers.
 &quot;Nonetheless, based on our experience, supply of such sites and land plots in the center is limited to a few dozen objects and the search can span a couple of months.&quot;
 Smaller companies are more likely potential tenants for new quality business centers, Tetysh said. Among realtors, smaller businesses are expected to generate a more than healthy demand for business centers that is already high at present.
 Colliers International predicted a &quot;relocation of new business center construction from the historical center to the major city arterial roads,&quot; the company said in an e-mail Thursday.
 In the coming year developers eye the creation of full &quot;business cities&quot; in the peripheral districts of St. Petersburg, preferably those with good infrastructure and transport systems, repeating a process that has already taken place in Moscow, as well as in many other European cities.
 
 <strong>
RESIDENTIAL
 </strong>While the housing market suffered from general stagnation during the second half of 2004, growth of city business activity ensured that elite housing continued to develop as a high-potential segment.
 
Despite the market's overall malaise, prices for newly-constructed (primary) housing grew by a considerable 30 percent in 2004, from $800 per square meter to about $1100, said Nikolai Pashkov, market specialist at Petersburg Real Estate, adding however that the major part of the growth took place before April.
 In April prices hit a plateau, due to a sharp increase in supply. &quot;There was a lot of land plots allocated for housing projects at the end of 2003, when it became known that the system of land allocation will be replaced by land auctions,&quot; Pashkov said in a telephone interview.
 &quot;Naturally, developers wanted to reduce their risks. As a result, there is over 6 million square meters of residential apartments under construction. The demand has not gone down, but with such an amount of supply prices cannot rise,&quot; Pashkov said.
 If at the beginning of 2004 a one-bedroom flat could not be found for cheaper than $40,000, now it was possible to find the same for $35,000-$38,000, he said.
 The fall in prices could be further explained by the formation of a more mature price-quality relationship on the residential housing market, according to Sergei Drozdov, general director of Petersburg Real Estate.
 &quot;The prices of poor quality apartments in the so-called <i>khrushchyovki,</i> or old panel buildings, have dropped and the prices of medium-quality housing has also decreased by one or two percent. Meanwhile, elite housing prices grew. It's a tendency that should continue in 2005,&quot; Drozdov said in an e-mail interview.
 Elite housing prices grew by an average of 2 percent monthly, ranging from $2,000 to $6,000 per square meter, said Viktoria Kulibanova, development manager at Astera estate agency. &quot;The market for elite apartments in St. Petersburg consists of about 3,000 households according to our estimates,&quot; Astera said.
 Should the move of major Moscow-based companies continue to the city, the knock-on effect will be a positive reflection on the elite housing market, an expert with one of the major international consulting firms said, citing involvement in several on-going construction projects.
 
 <strong>
RETAIL
 </strong>Four mega shopping complexes with a total area of over 142,000 square meters opened in the city in 2004, according to real-estate agency statistics.
 
The flood of retail space on the market has not only lead to a slowing in rental rate rises, but also to the undermining of profitability of those new centers that have little or no customer strategy concept, said Helena Tabala, director of Knight Frank real-estate agency.
 &quot;Further growth in the retail sector may lead to market saturation, since growth in this segment depends directly on the growth in population's income,&quot; she said in a previous comment to the St. Petersburg Times, in November last year.
 In 2005, four more large complexes are expected to open, the largest project of those being the Grand Canyon center at 82,000 square meters. Unlike the already opened centers, the new projects under construction are all located on the periphery of the city.
 The increase in available retail areas has also lead to a change in the relations between developers and anchor tenants (larger retailers who draw the most customers and are often followed by smaller businesses to rent mall space.) &quot;Anchor tenants are finding themselves in a better bargaining position for the premises at the moment,&quot; Astera's Kulibanova said.
 Aside from supermarkets and chain retailers, traditionally considered as anchor tenants, realtors see recreational and entertainment facilities gaining in value at mega retail centers. 
 &quot;Multiplex cinemas and bowling centers are becoming key anchor tenants. There are two cinema theater chains present in the city retail centers: Kronverk Cinema and Mirage Cinema. Soon there will be more, as Cinema-Park, InvestKinoProyekt and Roskinoproyekt enter the city market,&quot; Kulibanova said.
 Tabala goes as far as to say that &quot;mixed recreation and shopping complexes are replacing shopping malls,&quot; while Colliers International said that they envisage the recreational sector as developing into a separate business sector altogether.
 Among other news, realtors noted that on the city's retail scene was the rapid expansion of St. Petersburg furniture center chain Mebel City, Macromir shopping centers, and Lenta hypermarkets, as well as the entrance of new and ambitious foreign operators such as Ramenka.
 Kulibanova predicted that retail centers would prove the most profitable in terms of real-estate investment in the next two to three years.
 
 <strong>
WAREHOUSE AND STORAGE
 </strong>The industrial and warehouse sector gained prominence in 2004. With almost no modern logistics center in St. Petersburg, realtors viewed warehouses as highly likely to yield profits.
 
&quot;The amount of investments needed for industrial facilities' reconstruction is relatively low, while the demand on that market by far exceeds the supply,&quot; Kulibanova said. &quot;If the location is picked well, there is usually a hundred-percent occupancy rate.&quot;
 In agreement, Tabala added the growth in warehouse rental rates also made this segment increasingly attractive for investors. 
 &quot;The high levels of potential demand decrease investors' risks. That explains the increase of logistics center projects, which promise a 20 percent profit,&quot; she said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: City Preys On School 
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (Vedomosti) - Lack of sites for construction in the city led to authorities last week suggesting the site of a local school for the new offices of Transneft.
 The state oil company has been looking to set up a branch in the city to regulate its Baltic pipe systems, but has been stumped to find suitable office space, said Sergei Grigoriyev, vice president of Transneft.
 Most buildings in St. Petersburg are counted as architectural monuments, which cannot be knocked down or remodeled, and many others are already private property, Grigoriyev said.
 The setback has been a big worry for the city authorities too, which estimated Transneft's addition to the tax revenues at $30 million to $50 million a year. As one alternative, the authorities suggested the site of school No. 142 on Arsenalnaya Naberezhnaya to the oil firm.
 The city's property committee added that there were plans to close down the school and transfer children elsewhere.
 In protest, pupils and parents came out on the streets last Wednesday, proclaiming possible closure an infringement of federal Rights of Children law.
 So far, Transneft has assured that it is not considering the site of the school for its offices.
 
 
<b>Three Local Ikeas?
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Ikea said it will pursue plans to open three mega-centers in St. Petersburg. 
 The largest center will be constructed around the Ikea outlet in Kudrovo, with Ikea soliciting international retail chains such as Stockmann to be the anchor tenants, said Ikea's project development manager. "Ikea wants tenants whose store layout and concept could compliment its specific style," she said.
 The Kudrovo store was built by Turkish developer Amka. However, it is not yet determined whether it will stay on as the developer for the upcoming project.
 The two smaller centers will be built on the periphery of the city in the north and southwest. "Right now we are in negotiations over land plots with both the city and the Leningrad Oblast, so it remains to be seen where the centers will be located," the project manager said.
 The decisions regarding store locations may be made by April, she said.

TITLE: A WEEK IN THE MARKET
TEXT: <style text>MONDAY
 Monday's markets kept at the same lethargic pace that pretty much dominated the previous week, with the volume of trading on RTS showing just a mild rise, according to AK&amp;M agency. 
 
<style text>RTS Index rose by 0.31 percent to 612.62 points, held up mainly by positive dynamic in the trading of Norilsk Nickel and LUKoil (rising by 1.51 percent to $53.8 and 0.5 percent to $30.15 a share respectively). The main losers Monday were Sberbank, dropping 1.2 percent to $495, and UES, down by 0.55 percent to $0.272, AK&amp;M reported.
 
 
<style text>LAST WEEK
 After a slight overall rise in the RTS index by the end of 2004, the markets were slow to start equity trading post the long New Year holiday season. UFG cited last Wednesday's under-$200 million turnover as "thin," blaming "a transfer to new account procedures in MICEX," on the bank's website Wednesday.
 
<style text>The initial lethargy carried over into Thursday with traders claiming what Interfax called on Wednesday "a lack of fresh ideas" and concern over negative dynamics in the ADR sector.
 The movement of Russian liquid shares remained unclear amid a low volume of sales. The RTS index was virtually unchanged in comparison with its closure on Wednesday, having dropped by 6 p.m. Moscow time merely 0.04 percent to 605.21 points, while the turnover stood at $4.126 million, RIA Novosti reported Thursday.
 As reason for damped fluctuations of prices, RIA Novosti cited experts as believing "the apprehension of accelerated growth rates in the U.S. had caused Western investors to withdraw funds from potentially risky markets."
 Negativity lifted Friday after it was learned that Surgutneftegaz's group of minority shareholders appealed to the Supreme Arbitration Court to redeem the company's treasury shares on the books of its subsidiaries. Surgut stocks rose by almost 3 percent. 
 
 
<style text>YUKOS
 Yukos has once again taken its share of the headlines, first with jailed former company CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky selling his 59.5 percent share of Group Menatep to Leonid Nevzlin, and then with the dollar-dominated RTS taking Yukos off its list of traded shares. As Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, pledged in a statement to devote his life towards building a civil society, his former company's shares closed at 65 cents on the RTS bourse on Friday - a 95 percent drop from their October 2003 price (the time of the oil tycoon's arrest,) the Associated Press reported Friday.
 
<style text>For any desperadoes still eager for shares in the harangued oil major, "over-the-counter deals [for Yukos shares] will remain possible," Natalia Frolova, RTS spokeswoman, told the AP. Moscow's other, ruble-dominated MICEX stock exchange still allows trading in the company's ruble shares.
 
 
<style text>FUNDS
 PromStroiBank's fund operating company announced that the value of investment in its funds topped 400 million rubles on December 27 last year. 
 The amount of money invested in AVK Dvortsovaya Ploshchad's funds rose by 66.8 percent to 453.8 million rubles, Interfax reported Monday. 



TITLE: New Laws Have Plenty For Developers to Heed
TEXT: The last 10 days of 2004 saw the adoption of more than 10 federal laws impacting on real estate development.
 
The Russian Federation Town-Planning Code, that came into effect on Dec. 30, 2004, is of key importance for real estate projects throughout the country, almost entirely supplanting preceding legislation of 1998, bar an odd a few articles that will remain in force until July 1, 2006.
 A related law regulates how investors will carry out construction on state/municipally- owned or private land plots.
 
 <strong>
TOWN PLANNING
 </strong>The 2004 Town-Planning Code, among other innovations, makes the process of planning and commissioning real estate projects easier for investors in four ways:
 
Firstly, the holders of rights to land plots and property now have the right to mount a court challenge against approved town-planning documents such as the General Plan for Settlements and the Rules for Land Use and Development, among others. Cities like St. Petersburg, where urban renewal and new development is stymied by outdated rules such as the existing General Plan, will benefit from increased flexibility, and investors will have more leverage to negotiate new projects with local authorities. 
 Secondly, in addition to the Cadastral Map, each land plot will now have its own Town-Planning Map. Among other things, the map specifies what the facility located on the land plot is, its intended use and dimensions, plus technical conditions for utilities connections.
 The map, approved and issued free of charge by the local authorities, is a prerequisite for obtaining a Construction Permit and a Permit to Commission the Facility into Operation (see below). 
 The format of the Town-Planning Map has yet to be approved by the government, so current and planned construction will follow previously existing rules until the new format emerges.
 A third innovation of the 2004 Town-Planning Code is that the onus is now on the local authorities to collect information on the conditions of public utilities and connection fees for construction projects on state or municipally-owned land plots. This is good news for investors, many of whom already know how difficult it is to deal with the utility companies.
 Also, a Permit to Commission the Facility into Operation has replaced the Act of Acceptance of the Completed Construction into Operation (to be issued by the same authorities as the Construction Permit). A total of nine documents must be submitted to obtain the permit. 
 Input of third parties has been limited to approval by: (i) public utilities, (ii) state construction supervisory bodies, (iii) state fire inspection bodies. The government reserves the right to require approval from other organizations, but it is hoped that the Permit will make the commissioning stage of the project more clear-cut and efficient.
 
 <strong>
ACQUIRING LAND
 </strong>The Introductory Law to the 2004 Town-Planning Code amended provisions of the RF Land Code on the granting of state or municipally- owned land plots for housing construction.
 
Starting Oct. 1, 2005, land plots will be granted for housing construction without the preliminary siting procedure. 
 That means that when an investor files an application for lease of a land plot, the executive authorities must adopt one of three decisions: (i) hold a tender to sell the land plot, (ii) hold a tender to sell the right to lease the land plot, (iii) publish a notice on acceptance of the application and granting of the land plot for lease.
 The authorities may grant the land plot to the investor without tender (directly) only if no other bidders file applications within 30 days of publication of the notice. Eliminating the preliminary siting procedure, which in St. Petersburg could take up to 11 months, makes it quicker for investors to acquire land plots and start construction. It just depends on how attractive the land is to other bidders.
 As of Dec. 30, 2004, land plots intended for multipurpose development that includes housing construction are only granted at tender. 
 Multipurpose development entails drafting of documentation for general planning, making improvements to the building utilities infrastructure, housing and other facilities based on the permitted use.
 The lessee of a land plot has the exclusive right to purchase the land plot (in full or in part) once the planning and utilities infrastructure documentation has been approved and the different parts of the land plot have been registered in the state land cadastre (as in, prior to the start of construction.) This makes it much easier to obtain loans to finance construction.
 For large and complex projects involving investment of billions of dollars the tender requirement may not be an obstacle, since there are fewer competitors on the market for such mega-projects. Investors already in negotiations with the city for multipurpose development of specific neighborhoods should seek legal guarantees of their rights to land promised without tender.
 
 <i>Karina Chichkanova heads the real estate department and Glenn Kolleeny is managing partner of Salans St Petersburg. They contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Khodorkovsky, The Dubious Martyr
TEXT: It is difficult not to feel sympathy for a man confined to Russia's grim prison system, yet the letter by Mikhail Khodorkovsky printed by Vedomosit and The Moscow Times in December was neither a plea for leniency nor an acknowledgement of past errors. Instead, Khodorkovsky's letter constitutes a broad-brush condemnation of the political direction of Russia, by implication justifying the disastrous abuses of and by the Russian state during the late Yeltsin years when Khodorkovsky and his ilk held absolute power. Memories can be short, and a reply is called for.
 
Khodorkovsky rails against the rapacious bureaucracy, predicting that the angry mob will soon be baying for its promised bread and circus. Well, perhaps, but wouldn't it be odd if a nation that quietly suffered the indignities of 1998 - left hungry, cold and utterly destitute following the collapse of the pyramid erected by the oligarchs - should rise up in protest now? 
 To use his own analogy, at present the people enjoy both bread and circuses. During the Boris Yeltsin regime they lacked not for circuses - loans-for-shares was my personal favorite - but the bread was cruelly missing. The bureaucracy may well be rapacious, but the state budget apparently benefits, too. Wages and pensions are now paid, in cash, in full and on time.
 Similarly, a second redistribution of Soviet property would indeed be a dangerous undertaking, yet does this constitute a moral justification for the criminal carve-ups of the 1990s? Does it justify the original purchase of Yukos for some $300 million - never actually paid - in a rigged auction or the bloody takeover of Apatit? Does some notion of abstract justice require that Group Menatep now be allowed to sell half its plunder to Exxon for some $30 billion, a 200-fold profit? Though pragmatism mandates that past misdeeds be amnestied, new rules apply: Taxes will be paid, the Duma is not for rent, and money no longer buys absolute power.
 A serious injustice has indeed been done. Not to the robber barons who treated Russia as their personal property but to the Yukos minority shareholders caught in a fierce political battle they were ill-equipped to understand. They have a very legitimate grievance, yet the blame lies at least as much with Menatep management as with the Russian state.
 Certainly, it would have behooved the administration to find a less destructive means of prying Yukos from Menatep's grip, but equally - from the beginning - Menatep policy has been one of scorched earth. Hundreds of millions of dollars were lavished on a fiercely anti-Russian PR campaign, corrupting eminent academics and foundations in Moscow and abroad. Yukos' skillful spin management and press-agentry - compounded by the Russian government's almost comical inability to communicate effectively - have succeeded in trashing Russia's international reputation. Nevertheless, the benefits of this campaign for the Yukos minority shareholders are not intuitively obvious. Had it not been for the supreme arrogance of Menatep, had they instead relinquished their stake and sued for peace, the unfortunate shareholders would have doubtlessly been spared.
 Khodorkovsky rightfully affirms that Russian history is characterized by an irrational worship of the state and the personalization of power. Yes, such power is potentially dangerous, yet with Russia still recovering from major surgery - the breakup of the Soviet Union, the bankruptcy of the communist system, the Soviet Union's collapse as a global superpower - isn't there a pressing need for the common man to have something to believe in? Is it somehow contrary to the natural order of things that Ivan Ivanovich should have a president he admires? Does Khodorkovsky still imagine himself the rightful successor to the throne?
 Mikhail, the oligarchic model has been tried already. It was not a resounding success. Perhaps it was unavoidable, yet it was a road that led past ruin, default and penury, through the plunder of Russia and the impoverishment of Russians. Where was your concern for justice and the sanctity of property rights when Menatep Bank defaulted, or when cash flows were diverted offshore and multibillion dollar assets redistributed among a handful of cronies? Why such virtuous indignation only now? Isn't it a question of whose ox is being gored?
 Let's not be disingenuous, Mikhail. The game is nearly over. This was no more about a tax bill than it was about you tossing a few rubles to the comically ineffectual Grigory Yavlinsky. It was about power. It was about who rules Russia, the oligarchs or the Kremlin. It was about the taxation of oil revenues and about the control of Transneft and Gazprom. It was about the basic definition of Russia's oil policy, the only useful tool remaining in Russia's diplomatic arsenal.
 Though hubris is not defined in the Criminal Code, its consequences can be devastating. Impotent observers of a totally unequal battle, we wondered how could anyone of such obvious intelligence have overplayed their hand so catastrophically. We added up the forces on the chessboard, assuming you could too. There were precedents: Berezovsky and Gusinsky.
 Did you imagine that the Russian people would storm the Kremlin walls for you? Or was it your American friends whose openly avowed neo-imperialism blinded them to the Russian political realities? Mikhail, you are Russian, and you should have known that President Vladimir Putin, as a child of the Cold War, would no more countenance American interference in Russian domestic affairs than Washington would allow the Kremlin to oversee the Federal Reserve. Did you really believe that, come Judgment Day, such dubious saints could intercede for you?
 Mikhail, your conception of patriotism is quite singular. Yes, others before you have fought the state tooth and nail, but they at least refrained from couching their self-interest in terms of patriotism. Your courage is striking, and you have wreaked considerable havoc. Yet how has this advanced an open society in Russia? You have savaged your own cause, and the victories you won have pushed Russia to look inward, alienating her from newfound friends in the West. Your robust challenge to the state has served only to strengthen the conservative <i>siloviki</i> faction. In attaining your desired martyrdom, you have done Russia no favors.
 
 <i>Eric Kraus is chief strategist for Sovlink Securities. He submitted this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Don't Blame Welfare Bungle on the West
TEXT: By the end of 2004, all the major polling firms in Russia observed a significant increase in pessimism in the public mood. The Levada Center reported that the percentage of Russians who regard the country as &quot;headed in the right direction&quot; declined from 50 percent in January 2004 to 38 percent in November 2004. According to the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation, the number of Russians who claim that &quot;this year was better than the last&quot; declined from 35 percent in December 2003 to 22 percent in December 2004.
 
In part, the mood swing in Russia can be attributed to the Kremlin's mid-2004 decision to monetize social benefits, a measure that was quickly endorsed by the obedient State Duma. The reforms directly affect over 30 million Russians and will have indirect ramifications for the entire nation. They introduce cash payments in place of benefits such as free electricity, transportation, telephone service and medicine - benefits that Russians have been receiving for more than 50 years. In the near future, the Kremlin also plans to rescind some government housing aid.
 Two-thirds of Russia's welfare recipients are against the reforms and have little confidence in the government's contention that they will improve their quality of life. Even high-level officials such as Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov have noted the public's lack of trust.
 Many recipients suppose that even when they actually receive the cash payments, the funds will rapidly be wiped out by inflation. Many are also concerned that the reform shifts part of the responsibility for the needy to regional authorities, which do not have sufficient funds to cover these benefits, or so believe many Russian experts. The reform has roused anger among diverse individuals and groups, from police officers and administrators to students and scholars. At the same time, there is a minority of Russians who support the reforms, particularly those who live in rural areas and are less likely to have access to the old system's in-kind benefits.
 Having praised its welfare system only a few years ago, the Kremlin began criticizing the system in mid-2004 as a means of promoting its new approach. As suggested by Deputy Duma Speaker and United Russia member Oleg Morozov, &quot;the existing system of benefits is socially unjust, corrupt and ineffective.&quot; Another official argument maintains that by replacing Soviet-era benefits with cash payments, the Russian economy will become more &quot;normal, transparent and strong,&quot; as well as closer to a full-fledged market economy. Proponents see the reforms as an extension of people's freedom of choice, allowing them to use the money as they see fit. This freedom of choice, in turn, is often associated with the West.
 Both the advocates and the adversaries of reform agree with this assumption. Director of the Center for Fiscal Politics Galina Kurlyandsky promoted the reforms not only as an economically beneficial measure, but also as a way to keep up with the West. &quot;There is nothing like Russia's in-kind benefits system in the West. Westerners are compensated only in cash payments,&quot; she claimed. Another supporter of the reforms and head of the Politika think tank, Vyacheslav Nikonov, seconded this view and claimed &quot;giving up the socialist economy is an important part of the [state's] agenda.&quot;
 Leading Moscow journalist Yulia Kalinina, while denouncing the reform, begged the country's leadership &quot;not to copy the Western welfare system,&quot; which she believes is ill suited to life in Russia. Even Alla Latynina, a prominent liberal journalist and reputed expert on Western economies, treated the reform as yet another move toward a liberal economy.
 Western journalists and analysts have embraced this justification as well. They perceive the benefits overhaul as an effort to wean the citizenry from their Soviet-era privileges and continue Russia's transition to a market economy. Most reports in the U.S. media have characterized Russia's old system not as a social safety net, the likes of which exist in all Western nations, but as benefits that &quot;date from Soviet times.&quot; Arguments in favor of the reform can also be found in the statements of high-level Western officials. Thomas Dawson, the director of external relations at the International Monetary Fund, said in a recent press briefing: &quot;the proposal to monetize the in-kind benefits is a good idea and it's to be welcomed.&quot;
 The debate over Russia's benefits reform has revealed how an oversimplified view of the West can be applied incorrectly by those who support Western models, as well as by those who reject them. In fact, as Russia sheds its &quot;Soviet-era benefits,&quot; this same type of in-kind allocation system has grown in importance in the United States. There are more than 80 benefit programs in the United States that provide both cash and noncash aid to the needy. The overwhelming majority of this aid is distributed in noncash benefits, such as free or reduced-price medicine, food stamps, housing and education benefits, and energy aid. Over the last three decades the U.S. welfare system has moved increasingly to distributing benefits in kind rather than in cash.
 It would seem that many journalists and politicians in Russia, and perhaps also in the West, are not familiar with this trend. The U.S. welfare system in effect limits the &quot;freedom of choice&quot; of welfare recipients. The system's extensive use of noncash aid implies the need to guarantee that welfare benefits are used to improve the health and well being of the individual, and not for purchasing drugs and alcohol or even for noble causes such as giving money to friends.
 Considering Russia's troubling social issues, its high crime rate and serious problem with alcoholism, the move to cash aid is a dangerous development, and one that has been mostly ignored by the Russian ruling elites, social scientists and public opinion. Proponents of the reform seem to have forgotten that hundreds of thousands of Russians in the 1990s sold their privatization vouchers for a few bottles of vodka. They do not recall that alcoholics were known to sell their privatized apartments to crooks at minimal prices in order to quickly acquire liquor.
 Russia's Communists are among the few politicians who have voiced their concern about the way Russian welfare recipients may spend their cash payments. Opposing the reform, the Communist former State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov wrote, &quot;The money will not be used for healthcare or for medicine, but for binges and the further destruction of the people's health.&quot;
 The image of the West has once again fallen victim to Russian reformers with sketchy agendas. During the period of privatization, similar reformers justified their corrupt and criminal actions by emphasizing the need to achieve Western economic standards. The same strategy is being used today. In a tired twist of irony, the proponents of the reform have moved the country toward a Western standard that does not exist. In the near future, as many Russian experts contend, the reforms will lead to a deterioration in the quality of life for millions of people and renew their urge to blame not only the Russian government, but also the Western way of life.
 <i>
 Vladimir Shlapentokh is a professor of sociology and Joshua Woods is a graduate student at Michigan State University. They contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Dubious Moves Plague Ice Palace to This Day
TEXT: Right at the end of last year when most people's attention was on the huge scandal surrounding Yuganskneftegaz, another scandal - about St. Petersburg's Ice Palace, passed almost unnoticed.
 
The Ice Palace was tainted by scandal from the very beginning. It is enough to say that the intention to build it, or more exactly the chosen method of financing it, as the venue for the 2000 World Ice Hockey Championships, led to an open conflict between then head of the financial committee Igor Artemyev and then governor Vladimir Yakovlev in 1998. As a result, Artemyev resigned from the city administration. 
 One can understand Artemyev, who today heads the Federal Anti-Monopoly Commission. The plans for the palace were based on a clear swindle, which was obvious to any expert. Yakovlev presented the project as a purely commercial project, funded by private investors. However, in reality it depended on state funding right from the start. There were no investors. City Hall was behind the joint-stock company Sport Palace, which had foundation capital of 200,000 rubles for the construction of the palace, the fitting of all necessary equipment and its operation as a sport and concert venue. About a quarter of what was spent on construction came from the federal budget and the remainder taken out as loans from different lenders.
 The directors of the company declared that the palace would be a profitable business and would have not problem paying off the loans. They even spoke of plans to sell name rights to the palace for the huge sum of $8 to 10 million dollars and had designs of the palace attracting regular visits from international and Russian pop stars, whose concerts would be all be sell outs. Experts insisted that none of this would come about. And they have been vindicated. 
 The revenues from concerts have not always been enough to even maintain the building and pay for utilities; as a result the city's heat and energy supplier is one of the palace's creditors. It seems from all this that City Hall perfectly understood that there would be no profit from the project and that it would have to be financed from the city budget. Because of this a large number of the creditors, but not all, were given city guarantees and when the time came for the loans to be paid off, without a murmur, they were paid for from the city budget, in other words from our pockets. 
 In addition, to save the palace from the danger of bankruptcy that loomed for the joint-stock company, only 30 percent of the palace was assigned as the property of the company - 42 percent was assigned to the city and 26 percent as federal property. That way it was not possible for the creditors to seize on the palace to collect debts, because it did not belong to the company. Since the city failed to repay all the company's debts, the creditors demanded the return of the outstanding cash - about $22 million. City Hall could have resolved this problem, for instance, by providing a subsidy to the enterprise that could have been directed at making it solvent. That is what the city had done when the company had to pay its debts back to City Hall; then the budget paid out the guaranteed part of the debt on the company's behalf. But City Hall did not want to do this for the outstanding debts to private corporations. Instead Governor Valentina Matviyenko's administration extended the repayment period to 15 years, without any interest or fines. 
 Meanwhile, it has long been an open secret that the project has no commercial future. The whole scandal occurred only because the city wanted a modern sports area. 
 The goal was quite reasonable - there was no other way for the city to host the 2000 World Ice Hockey Championships. And such competitions are needed by any large city that worries about its image and attractiveness to tourists. But why such deliberately devious methods were chosen to achieve the goal is beyond comprehension. In 1998, Yakovlev appears to have worried that declaring that he wanted to spend $95 million of city funds on a stadium just after the financial crisis would not go down well with citizens. But what has Matviyenko to fear today? Wouldn't it be simpler to explain everything honestly? And to end the scandal reasonably?
 
 <i>Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. His comment was first broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday. </i>

TITLE: 'Aviator,' 'Ray' Win Awards
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEVERLY HILLS, California - The Howard Hughes epic &quot;The Aviator&quot; and the road-trip romp &quot;Sideways&quot; earned best-picture Golden Globes on Sunday, boosting their status as front-runners for the upcoming Academy Awards. 
 
Jamie Foxx of the Ray Charles film biography &quot;Ray,&quot; Hilary Swank of the boxing saga &quot;Million Dollar Baby,&quot; Annette Bening of the showbiz comedy &quot;Being Julia&quot; and Leonardo DiCaprio of &quot;The Aviator&quot; also boosted their Oscar odds by winning the top acting Globes. 
 Natalie Portman and Clive Owen won supporting-actor honors for the sex drama &quot;Closer,&quot; their wins coming as something of a surprise. 
 &quot;The Aviator&quot; earned composer Howard Shore the Globe for film score, while Mick Jagger and Dave Stewart won the song honor for &quot;Old Habits Die Hard&quot; from &quot;Alfie.&quot;
 Spain's &quot;The Sea Inside&quot; - starring Javier Bardem in the real-life story of Ramon Sampedro, a paralyzed man who fought a decades-long battle for his right to die - was picked as best foreign-language film. 
 Robin Williams, a five-time Globe winner for such films as &quot;The Fisher King&quot; and &quot;Good Morning, Vietnam,&quot; received the Cecil B. DeMille award for career achievement.
 The Globes serve as the most prominent awards ceremony in Hollywood leading up to the Academy Awards on Feb. 27. The awards are presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, whose small membership of about 90 people pales compared to the nearly 6,000 film professionals eligible to vote for the Oscars.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Report Reveals Nazi Plot 
 </b>

ROME, Italy (AP) - The Nazi commander in Rome warned Pope Pius XII in 1944 of a plan by Adolf Hitler to abduct the pontiff, a newspaper reported Saturday. 
 Avvenire, an Italian Catholic daily, cited a written statement by General Karl Wolff, the head of the SS in German-occupied Rome, saying that Hitler considered Pius a "friend of the Jews." 
 Avvenire said Wolff warned the pope "to be on guard because, even if in no case he would have carried out the order, the situation was in any case confused and bristling with risks."
 
 
<b>Grand Duchess Buried 
 </b>

LUXEMBOURG (AP) - Mourners tossed white rose petals as the funeral cortege of Grand Duchess Josephine-Charlotte, the mother of Luxembourg's reigning monarch, threaded its way Saturday through the city's historic center. 
 The Grand Duchess - her full name was Josephine-Charlotte Ingeborg Elisabeth Marie Jose Marguerite Astrid - was born Oct. 11, 1927, at the royal palace in Brussels. 
 The daughter of Belgian King Leopold III and Swedish-born Queen Astrid, she married Prince Jean of Luxembourg, then heir to the grand ducal throne on April 9, 1953. 
 
 
<b>U.K. to Fight Poverty 
 </b>

LONDON (AFP) - Former South African president Nelson Mandela has agreed to visit London in February to help jumpstart London's proposal for a "new Marshall Plan" to help ease African nations' chronic poverty, the British media reported. 
 Mandela agreed to make the visit during a meeting on Saturday with Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown, reports said. 
 Last October British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that Africa would be one of the main issues addressed in 2005 by the Group of Eight (G8) countries - the G7 and Russia - and the European Union in 2005, when Britain will preside the two organizations. 
 
 
<b>Soldiers Face Trial
 </b>

OSNABRUECK, Germany (AFP) - Three British soldiers accused of mistreating Iraqi prisoners were due to face a court martial hearing at an army base in Osnabrueck, western Germany.
 Corporal Daniel Kenyon, and Lance Corporals Darren Larkin and Mark Cooley, are accused of abusing Iraqis in their custody at a food storage warehouse, nicknamed the "Bread Basket," in Basra, southern Iraq, in May 2003. 
 The three members of the Royal Fusiliers regiment will go before a judge and a seven-member jury panel. 
 
 
<b>Journalists Beaten Up
 </b>

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Assailants robbed and severely beat two reporters for Haiti's largest newspaper while the journalists were covering a cleanup effort by UN peacekeepers in a slum, their newspaper reported Saturday. 
 UN troops have been conducting cleanup operations in slums, removing burnt vehicles and other debris used by gangs as roadblocks. 
 Reporters Claude Bernard Serant and Jonel Juste had covered one such operation and were leaving Bel Air, a shantytown in the capital of Port-au-Prince, on Friday when several men attacked them, Le Nouvelliste newspaper reported.

TITLE: Omsk Wins European Champions Cup
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Avangard Omsk won the inaugural IIHF European Champions Cup when Jaromir Jagr scored in overtime lifting the Siberian club to a 2-1 come-from-behind victory over Finnish champion Karpat Oulu at Ice Palace in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
 
At 14:38 in the 4-on-4 sudden death overtime period, tournament MVP and St. Petersburg native Maxim Sushinsky threaded a sweet cross to the Czech NHL superstar, who one-timed it past Karpat goaltender Niklas Backstrom. The Russian-dominated crowd of over 10,000 spectators erupted in jubilation.
 Backstrom had an impressive game but the Siberian powerhouse knocked in two goals that were his grasp.
 Avandgard's Alexei Kalyuzhny knotted the game up at one goal each with an equalizer at 11:00 in the third period. He blasted the puck from the middle of the circle into the near upper-corner, and Backstrom had no chance of stopping it. Jagr fed him the from behind the net. Jagr, who finished the tournament with a lackluster 2 goals and 2 assists, stepped up when needed.
 Ilkka Mikkola gave Karpat an early lead at 12:16 in a very tense first period. Mikkola took a slapshot from just inside the blueline which eluded Avangard's Canadian netminder Norm Maracle, who was screened during the play. Maracle, named the tournament's best goaltender, conceded two goals in three games and recorded the only shut out of the tournament Saturday when Avangard crushed Swedish champion HV 71 Jonkoping 9-0. He came up with a huge save in overtime when Karpat's Eero Somervuori had a chance to win the game with a shot from three meters out at 11:20 in the extra period. 
 Maracle performed brilliantly in the first period when Karpat had plenty of scoring opportunities. A glass panel was shattered behind his goal at 18:31 and the teams went to the locker rooms for an early intermission. 
 In the second frame Karpat effectively broke down Avangard's attacking game with precise poke-checks and great man to man coverage, forcing the Russians to dump and chase, nearly pulling off an upset. But it is Avangard that gets the honor of calling itself the 2005 European Champion. 
 Two skilled teams playing in a high stakes match provided a level of hockey that St. Petersburg hasn't seen since the 2000 IIHF World Hockey Championship were held at the Ice Palace.
 Coaches and organizers agree that returning to this type of tournament is much better and easier on teams than the former European Hockey League was. 
 &quot;We had EHL games every week. There were long road trips and this was very taxing on the players. It was a huge challenge for us to maintain ourselves in our national league with this burden. This tournament only requires one trip and is over in a long weekend. It's much better,&quot; said Karpat head coach Kari Jalonen. 
 The tournament was not without it faults. With only two groups of three teams, each team only played two qualifying games. Karpat went into its second game against the Frankfurt Lions knowing that they would advance to the finals even with a loss, as long as they lost by less than three goals. Frankfurt was losing 3-1 during the second period of that qualifying game and began to get chippy, perhaps because didn't have much left to play for. The German club, with nearly half of its roster filled with North Americans, began playing a rough but crowd-thrilling game filled with fights. Things cooled in the third period and the Finns won the game 6-3.
 &quot;I am just glad that no one my team was injured,&quot; Jalonen said. He wasn't bothered by the limited qualifying round adding, &quot;When each game counts for so much you really have to it everything you have for the entire game.&quot; 
 The International Ice Hockey Federation will expand next year's tournament to include the championship team from the top eight European countries according to the IIHF world ranking. This will include The Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland. 
 The St. Petersburg City Government has agreed with the IIHF to host next year's European Champions Cup, and although yet to be finalized, there are plans to move the tournament to early January to coincide with Russia's long New Year's holidays. 
 Meanwhile, Avangard will continue to celebrate their victory in St. Petersburg as they prepare to face local hockey team SKA Tuesday night at the Ice Palace in a regular season game.

TITLE: PremiershipTitle Nears For Chelsea
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - With the Premier League title all but conceded to Chelsea, the race for the next five spots has become the focus in Englsih top-flight soccer as Everton salvaged a 1-1 tie at Middlesbrough on Sunday and moved within three points of third-place Manchester United. 
 
Boudewijn Zenden's first goal in two months gave Middlesbrough a 1-0 after 26 minutes, but Tim Cahill evened the score in the 76th. 
 &quot;There's a long way to go and, of course, Chelsea's in a fantastic position,&quot; Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger acknowledged. &quot;They can only lose it now.&quot; 
 Chelsea padded its first-place lead to 10 points on Saturday with a 2-0 win at Tottenham. Arsenal, following a 1-0 loss at Bolton, has 48 points, followed by Manchester United (47), Everton (44), Liverpool (37) and Middlesbrough (36). 
 In Sunday's only other game, Fulham beat last-place West Bromwich Albion 1-0 on an injury-time goal by Papa Bouba Diop. 
 In Spain, defending champion Valencia played its Spanish league game despite the death of a player's infant daughter, and leader FC Barcelona needed a late goal from Samuel Eto'o to edge Real Sociedad 1-0. 
 The Spanish soccer federation considered postponing the game at Osasuna, but the referee decided to play after an eight-minute delay at the start. 
 It was not immediately clear what caused the death of the 8-month-old daughter of Valencia defender Marco Caneira. 
 Caneira did not play in the game, which ended in a 0-0 tie. 
 Eto'o atoned for a missed penalty kick in the third minute by heading in the winning goal in the 80th minute. The Cameroon star scored on a header off a corner kick, keeping his team in first place with 45 points. Valencia has 36 points. 
 Sociedad played with 10 men after midfielder Xabier Prieto was ejected in the 62nd minute for his second yellow card. 
 Second-place Real Madrid stayed seven points behind the leaders after beating Zaragoza 3-1. 
 Raul Gonzalez, Ronaldo and Michael Owen each scored for Madrid, which won for the third straight time under coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo. 
 In Italy, defending champion AC Milan beat third-place Udinese 3-1 in the Italian league on goals by star forwards Andriy Shevchenko and Kaka, closing within two points of first-place Juventus. 
 Antonio Di Natale of Udinese scored in the ninth minute, but Shevchenko tied it in the 31st before home fans with his 13th goal this season. Marek Jankulovski conceded an own-goal to give Milan a 2-1 lead in the 53rd. Kaka of Brazil then powered in a low drive in the 89th. 
 Juventus was held to a 1-1 tie as Gianfranco Zola scored the tying goal in the 89th minute for Cagliari. Emerson scored for Juventus.