SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1050 (16), Tuesday, March 8, 2005
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Chechen
 Rebel
 Leader
 Killed
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - FSB special forces officers killed Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov in a special operation in the Chechen village Tolstoy-Yurt, Federal Security Service director Nikolai Patrushev told President Vladimir Putin in televised remarks Tuesday night.
 
Moscow-backed Deputy Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov called Maskhadov's death a gift for all Chechen women on the Women's Day holiday Tuesday, while Maskhadov envoy Akhmed Zakayev and fierce Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky warned that Moscow might have lost its only chance to bring peace to Chechnya.
 The federal military headquarters for the North Caucasus confirmed that Maskhadov was dead, but the circumstances surrounding his death were unclear.
 Patrushev offered few details of the FSB operation in the televised portion of his meeting with Putin, saying only that Maskhadov had died after a standoff in Tolstoy-Yurt, which is located just 15 minutes by car from Grozny and is in an area usually under tight control by federal forces.
 Putin praised the work of the FSB, which placed a $10 million bounty on Maskhadov after the Beslan school attack in September. "We must augment the effort aimed at the defense of the citizens of the republic," Putin said.
 He told Patrushev to conduct an extra check to make sure that the body had been identified correctly.
 As of Tuesday night, there was no independent confirmation that Maskhadov was dead.
 NTV television showed footage of the half-naked body of a gray-bearded man who resembled Maskhadov lying sprawled in a pool of blood. Both of his eyes looked bruised and beaten in. The footage showed the body surrounded by a pile of weapons, including guns and hand grenades. A masked soldier was shown unfolding a green, red and white Chechen flag.
 Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for federal forces in the North Caucasus, said the body was found in a bunker and that three Maskhadov aides, including a nephew, were detained, Interfax reported. Earlier Tuesday, authorities said three rebels who were planning a large terrorist attack in Tolstoy-Yurt had been detained. 
 Shabalkin told Channel One television that the raid started at 8 a.m. Tuesday during a sweep for rebels. He said special forces received information from various sources, including local residents, that Maskhadov was in the village. He said Maskhadov was hiding in a bunker and that he was killed after they blew it up in an attempt to get him out.
 Kadyrov, however, said the plan was to take Maskhadov alive but he was killed when a bodyguard next to him "carelessly handled his gun," Interfax reported.
 "The task before them was to detain Maskhadov. Nobody intended to physically kill him," he was quoted as saying.
 "We intended to take him alive and after questioning [we intended] to appoint him as commander of a platoon or a company in the security services," he said.
 He did not say whether he was referring to the 5,000-member Chechen security force that he heads and is accused by human rights groups of arbitrarily detaining and torturing Chechens.
 Kadyrov's remarks appeared to be an attempt to avoid a possible eruption of violence in retribution for Maskhadov's killing.
 Chechnya's interior minister, Ruslan Alkhanov, confirmed that the operation was carried out by the FSB. "This was a unique operation, and we can only regret that Maskhadov was not killed by Interior Ministry staff," he said, referring to the Chechen police force, Interfax reported.
 He said Chechens were already welcoming Maskhadov's death.
 Zakayev, who has been granted asylum in Britain, warned that Maskhadov's death, if confirmed, would lead to an outburst of terrorism across Russia.
 "If this is confirmed, it is yet another political assassination conducted under the orders of Russia's highest leadership," Zakayev said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
 "But I am absolutely sure that this could further complicate the situation, since Maskhadov was the factor limiting the conflict from spreading even further."
 Zakayev also said Maskhadov's death would confirm the views of those who say it is impossible to negotiate with the Kremlin.
 He added that if Maskhadov was dead, his power would be transferred to a person elected by the rebels' so-called defense committee. He said warlord Shamil Basayev, who has claimed responsibility for the Beslan school tragedy and a series of other terrorist attacks, was not a member of the committee and therefore could not become its chairman.
 Valentina Melnikova, the head of the Union of Soldiers' Mothers Committees human rights group, which in recent months has been seeking to kick-start peace talks between Moscow and Maskhadov and met last month with Zakayev in London, said by telephone that she was worried about what would happen next in Chechnya.
 "It is too early to try to predict how the situation will develop," she said. "It could well be that all of the groups of fighters will scatter and dissolve or that somebody like Shamil [Basayev] will get full control."
 Melnikova said she believed that Maskhadov had control of up to 90 percent of the rebels.
 Berezovsky said "nothing could be worse" than Maskhadov's death.
 "This will lead to the destruction of Russia," he said from London, where he has been granted asylum.
 "I consider that they have killed the main figure within the Chechen separatists who wanted to make peace, not war," he said. "Now there will be more extreme radical forces in Chechnya. Now there will be more terror in Chechnya, in the North Caucasus, and in Russia as a whole."
 Putin's Kremlin had steadfastly refused to negotiate with Maskhadov, whom it referred to as a terrorist. It blamed Maskhadov for numerous terrorist attacks but also maintained that he had little control over rebel groups.
 Born in Kazakhstan, Maskhadov 53, was a career officer in the Soviet Army until the Soviet collapse in 1991. By 1994, he had risen to the rank of chief of staff of the Chechen armed forces under then-Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev. When Moscow sent troops and tanks to Chechnya in December 1994, Maskhadov was in charge of the presidential palace defense in Grozny. He became a field commander the next year.
 Maskhadov was the main broker of the 1996 peace deal with Moscow that put off a decision on Chechnya's independence until 2001. The so-called Khasavyurt Accords also cleared the path for the Chechen presidential election in 1997 that Maskhadov won.
 In fall 1999, however, Moscow sent troops back into Chechnya after Chechnya-based militants invaded Dagestan and several apartment building bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities.
 Maskhadov went into hiding.
 A senior United Russia deputy, Security Committee deputy head Mikhail Grishankov, said rebels would now lose a lot of their foreign financing.
 Kadyrov vowed that Basayev would be next. "A similar fate is now awaiting Shamil Basayev. We will put him on exhibit in the center of Grozny for all to see," he said.
 The FSB has also placed a $10 million bounty on Basayev's head.
 It was unclear who would collect the $10 million reward offered for Maskhadov's capture.
 Kadyrov said Maskhadov's body would be given to his relatives, while Shabalkin said the law forbade the handing over of bodies of terrorists.


TITLE: Working Moms Find Joy in Careers, Children
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Having a career and being a mother is hard work but the rewards are greater than the drawbacks, say Russian women who celebrated International Women's Day on Tuesday, 
 
Larisa Galushko, 33, a sales manager for Vedomosti newspaper and mother of three, has to get up at 6:30 a.m.
 She feeds her family breakfast, prepares food for her elder children, who go to school, makes herself look beautiful, takes the children to school, and hits the office door by 9:15.
 Despite the demands they make on her, Galushko is convinced that "children are not an obstacle to a woman's professional development" but "engines of her progress."
 "I want to develop my career not only because of my ambitions, but precisely because of my children," Galushko said. "I want to be an example to them and want to earn the money it takes to give them opportunities for a good life and education."
 Although some Russian employers driven by old stereotypes still feel unwilling to hire women who have children, more and more Russian women prove that successful career and mothers' duties can go hand in hand.
 Natalya Zavyalova, 32, head of recruitment department at the city's Kelly Services employment agency, said women with children often have higher motivation to work and achieve success.
 "Unfortunately, it is still true that some employers prefer to hire men rather than women with children, fearing that children will get sick, and that women's thoughts are often occupied with children's problems," she said.
 "However, if a woman has made a firm decision to work and move forward, she is the best worker. The modern nanny services are very helpful," added Zavyalova, who returned to work a year after giving birth to a son.
 Maria Bogdanova, 26, a lawyer at a leading city law firm, said having Vasily, seven, had never hindered her career, but rather had helped her advance.
 "I love my work, and my profession is very important for me," Bogdanova said in an interview. "And my son never stopped my adrenaline pumping when I speak in the courtroom." 
 She thinks about the arguments she wants to introduce in court "when falling asleep," and even "sees the court cases that she deals with in her dreams." 
 But she still does everything she can to give her son a good upbringing.
 "I obviously have not that much time in the evening to communicate with my son but I'm convinced that if during that short time our communication is intensive, it's much better than when children and parents are around each other all the time but don't talk or do anything together," Bogdanova said.
 Galushko began her career as Vedomosti's subscription consultant when her youngest son Leon was six months old, daughter Katya was three, and elder son Yemelya was five.
 The specifics of the job allowed her to work from home for a while. She made 40 to 50 phone calls a day to find new clients.
 She tried to make all her calls when Leon was asleep or playing alone in another room. However, sometimes in the middle of important conversations he would wake up and start crying.
 "If that happened I closed the door to his room and continued my conversation," she said. "When my conversation was over I would rush into his room to hug him and ask for forgiveness."
 An engineer and economist by education, Galushko said she went to work not so much because her family needed extra money but mainly because she "felt tired of the housewife routine."
 "I enjoy my work, professional development, and communication with clients. I think my work, which obliges me to look good when dealing with my clients, is a good stimuli for me as a woman," she said.
 Because of her dedication to her work, Galushko, whose children are now aged 10, nine and five, has received several promotions and become a successful sales manager.
 However, Galushko and Bogdanova confess that combining work and children still requires a lot of energy and may lead to remorse that they do not spend enough time with their children.
 Asked how she relaxes, Galushko said that she does it "when she spends time with her children, walks with them or cooks."
 "Sometimes I get terribly tired after work and feel guilty for having no strength to communicate with children enough," she said.
 Zavyalova said that when a child is young it's important to spend time with his mother, but when he gets older it becomes more important for him to know that his mother achieved certain results in life and career.
 "For instance, I can say that my grandmother, who was a top performer in her work, always was an example I wanted to follow, and that influenced my desire to achieve professional success," she said.
 Galushko and Bogdanova said that on the weekends they make up for their lack of communication with their children during the working week.
 Bogdanova said she and Vasily go alpine skiing or skating together and play board games. Galushko and her husband take their children for walks, cook cakes and attend English classes.
 "It was all thanks to my son that I learned to play chess, ski downhill, and had a chance to see many good children's theater performances," Bogdanova said.
 Galushko said her children's education is very important for her. That is why her elder son goes to art school, her daughter studies at an English-language school, and all children attend conversational English courses.
 At the same time, Kelly Service's Zavyalova said that traditionally in Russia women "have to work harder than men" to prove that they can do their work well, and "not only do housework," which in Russia is still seen as a women's role.
 Rachel Shackleton, general director of training, development and consultancy firm Concept, said that not only do women have to work more persistently than men to succeed in Russia, they have to do so everywhere to demonstrate that they are capable of doing a particular job. 
 "The first role for women, viewed in most societies is in taking care of the home and what is inside the home," she said.
 Galushko said even though combining work and mothering three children is not that easy, she never regretted having them.
 "Our younger son has already promised that when he grows up he'll have a good job and will buy a jeep for his father and a dacha for me. So we have good prospects," she said with a smile.

TITLE: Abortion Routine Ordeal for Russian Women
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The morning she had the appointment she felt a bit worried - but no more than before seeing her dentist. She got up as usual and took the bus to the clinic. She was met by her doctor who immediately started the procedure. There was no time to reconsider her decision. Six hours later she was on her way back home, feeling a bit dizzy but also relieved to have solved her "problem."
 
When Sasha had her first abortion she was 18 and not ready to have her own child. "At that time, I did not have any income of my own and was not in a stable relationship" she said. "Actually, I felt like a child myself and could not imagine being a mom." 
 She met the father of her unborn child at a resort. She was attracted to the young man, who was some years older than her. "Basically, I knew nothing about contraception" Sasha recalled. "And this boyfriend knew equally. My mother is a physician and immediately noticed that I was pregnant. She encouraged me to have the baby, but I decided against completing the pregnancy."
 Sasha's story is not unusual in post-communist Russia. Even as the country pledged its love and support for women on Tuesday, Russian women still suffer far less control over their reproductive health than do their western sisters.
 Although the widespread availability of contraceptives has led to a steady decline in the country's abortion rate it is still one of the highest in the world. 
 "About 13 abortions are performed for every 10 live births in Russia," said Olyga Kochatkova, head of the Caritas project Life Protection. "In comparison to other European countries, this figure is still very high". 
 In St. Petersburg, for example, 49,958 women underwent abortions in 1999, while three years later the number of abortions dived 16 percent to 42,035, according to the city health committee. These figures, however, do not include all abortions, as commercial clinics are not obliged to report the number of abortions they perform to the committee. 
 The roots of the high abortion rate lie in the Soviet health system that for decades considered abortion as the primary form of birth control. The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to legalize abortion in 1920. 
 Women could terminate an unwanted pregnancy in any state clinic, free of charge. This policy was maintained until 1936 when Stalin, in an effort to raise the birthrate to create more workers and soldiers, again outlawed abortion. As a result, illegal abortions began to flourish and the birthrate remained low. When the practice was legalized again in 1968, the number of abortions skyrocketed due to a desire for smaller families. 
 "It was like an assembly line," a 73-year-old pensioner said, recalling her experiences in a state clinic. "The day I had my operation I started to count the number of women having abortions. Thirty-three women left the clinic on that day alone." 
 When asked about her feelings towards abortions, she shrugged her shoulders. "Nearly every woman has them," she said. 
 In an attempt to lower the high abortion rate and avert the often serious health consequences for women, Soviet health planners made contraceptives more available, but little attention was paid to quality or distribution. 
 "Soviet condoms were of thick and dark latex," said Andrei, a 43-year-old English teacher. "They tended to slip off at the most inconvenient moment."
 Birth-control pills were unpopular because of the high doses of hormones they contained and the fear of harmful side-effects. In 1971, because of their alleged carcinogenic effects, the pill was permitted only for "medical uses." Not surprisingly, this resulted in many Soviet women having negative attitudes towards the pill.
 In rural areas, almost no contraceptives were available. Women developed their own methods of terminating unwanted pregnancies. In her book "Soviet Women" Francine du Plessix Gray stated that popular contraceptive formulas included douching with the juice of a lemon after intercourse and jumping off an icebox when a period was late by three days. Sometimes, women put their feet into boiling hot water, enriched with salt or mustard - a practice that was often fatal. 
 Soviet views on sexual education and contraception remain in people's minds well into the beginning of the 21st century. "Many young women decline to take hormonal birth-control pills because their mothers discouraged them," said Tatyana Kozhuharova, chief doctor at the youth gynecological center Yuventa. "Most young people prefer using condoms to the pill. This has also to do with the high number of HIV-infected people here." 
 Sasha, now aged 24, agreed. "Almost all my friends say that they do not take hormonal pills because they are afraid of putting on weight and of possible side-effects. They think, 'I am lucky, I won't get pregnant,' and run the risk of having to have an abortion rather than swallowing these pills."
 Ignorance about contraception is blamed for the high abortion rate in post-Soviet Russia. "Many young women get pregnant because they know little about contraceptive methods and either do not use these devices correctly or don't use them at all," Kozhuharova said. 
 Even 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union Russians seem not to have shed their reticence to talk openly about sex. "Most young people discuss this topic with their friends" Kozhuharova said in reference to a survey conducted by Yuventa. "Only 5 percent say that they had been given sexual education at school."
 The Caritas project Life Protection aims to provide better information about sexuality. "Our project organizes education for teachers at schools as most of them do not know how to discuss this topic with teenagers," Kochatkova said. "They feel uneasy and insecure themselves and thus avoid talking about it." 
 Another reason why young women often decide against giving birth is the meager state support for mothers. "Considering the size of the social benefits for children, one has to think that our government does not really care about children," Kochatkova said. "Young women especially often do not have the financial means for bringing up a child. With no income, no flat and almost no state support, apart from having an abortion they see no way out."
 Young families get a one-off payment of 8,713.60 rubles ($314) for the birth of a child, provided the mother registers at the maternity clinic 20 weeks before the birth. If the family income is below the average 2,919.40 rubles a month, a monthly benefit of 1,2404.80 rubles is paid in the first year. From the second year this amount is lowered to 248.80 rubles per month. 
 "Young mothers are legally entitled to a three-year maternity leave," said Yekaterina Maiboroda, spokeswoman for the city's social affairs committee. 
 "In practice, however, many women are not officially on the books of the company they work for, which means they can be given notice any time. Besides, this regulation applies only to governmental institutions."
 Meanwhile, things are looking up for Sasha. Six years after her first abortion, she is pregnant again, but this time looking forward to the birth of her child. "I am now in a serious relationship and feel ready to take the responsibility for a child," she said.
 Although, unlike many other women, she was lucky not to suffer any complications after her abortion, it has left a bitter aftertaste. "After my abortion, I regretted my decision for a long time and I felt guilty towards the unborn child. If I had had known about abortions and contraception at that time, I would probably have made a different decision."

TITLE: Baltic Leaders Shun
 Victory Day Meeting
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Estonian president Arnold Ruutel and Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus have turned down the Kremlin's invitation to visit Moscow on May 9 for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
 
This leaves Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga as the only Baltic head of state to have accepted the Kremlin's invitation.
 Adamkus on Monday handed an official letter to Boris Tsepov, the Russian ambassador to Lithuania, with his reply to the invitation.
 "I decided to stay with the people in Lithuania on May 9," Adamkus said at a briefing in Vilnius on Monday.
 "[We] will remember all of these who died in a proper way by bowing our heads. I frankly believe that Russian citizens will understand my decision and we will create the future of a peaceful and open Europe together," the Lithuanian president said.
 Adamkus said he agreed that the victory over Hitler was very costly for the Russian people as it was for Belarussians, Ukrainians, Jews and other Europeans, including Lithuanians, but he emphasized that for his country the war did not finish on May 9, 1945.
 "World War II left particularly deep wounds in Lithuania, including the [Soviet and Nazi] occupations, exiles, imprisonment, the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust, concentration camps and forced migration. This was the most painful blow of totalitarianism on Lithuania," Adamkus said.
 The president said up to 350,000 Lithuanian citizens had been imprisoned, sent to concentration camps or killed in Lithuania during the war and up until 1990 when the country was part of the Soviet Union. "For 50 years, the name of Lithuania was wiped off the map of Europe," Adamkus said.
 Russian politicians largely reject the Baltic States' view that the Soviet Union invaded the Baltic States in 1940 under a secret pact with Hitler. They also deny that their incorporation in the Soviet Union at the end of the war amounts to an occupation.
 Moscow is constantly criticizing the Baltic states for their treatment of ethnic Russian citizens, while the states deny any maltreatment of these minorities.
 Estonia expressed concern that the refusal of its president might hinder the signing of a border agreement between Russia and Estonia, which had been expected to be signed this spring.
 "The conclusion of the treaty could now be delayed because of a reaction by Russia," Interfax cited Estonian Foreign Minister Rein Lang as saying Monday.
 To placate the Kremlin, rather than not send anyone at all, Lang is to represent Estonia in Moscow on May 9.
 "Estonia wants to be represented in Moscow in any case," Lang said.
 "Now the foreign ministry is trying to figure out if Russia will accept Estonia being represented by the foreign minister. We have already sent our request to Moscow on this matter," he said.
 Reaction in Russia was difficult to gauge. Showing that political tensions exist between the countries regardless of the presidents' decision, two bottles of red paint were thrown at the building of the Latvian consulate in St. Petersburg on Vasilyevsky Island on Saturday night, Fontanka.ru reported. One of the bottles hit the front wall of the building leaving a red mark about 40 centimeters in diameter, the report said.
 Another response was to say that by turning down the invitation Lithuania and Estonia have missed a chance to solve disagreements with Russia.
 "Our countries had an opportunity to put a final end to a long and difficult period of our mutual history," Mikhail Margelov, head of the Federation Council's committee for international relations, said in an interview on Ekho Moskvy. "I think May 9 offered a chance to say that one page of our history is closing and we can look at our relations in a new way.
 "I hope that the absence of the leaders of these states in Moscow will not hamper work on border treaties with these countries," he said.
 Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the State Duma's committee for international relations, said Estonia and Lithuania's stance could lead to their international isolation.
 "I want to underline that it was not Russia that took the choice to raise the tensions between Russia and the Baltic States," Interfax quoted Kosachyov as saying Monday.
 "[The fact that the Baltic states] do not understand or pretend they don't understand the historical significance of May 9 is likely to lead to international isolation because of their interpretation of history," he said.

TITLE: Women's Boxing Match Packs a Punch
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Fourteen women's boxing teams from around the world are putting on their boxing gloves in St. Petersburg this week to participate in the first international women's boxing tournament hosted in Russia. 
 
"The best of the best are coming to St. Petersburg," said Natalya Karpovich, tournament organizer and president of the Organization for the Advancement of Women's Boxing. 
 Teams representing Israel, Finland, Italy, Greece, France, Taiwan, Sweden, India, Latvia, Ukraine, Mongolia, Poland, Russia, and the Northwest Federal District will be fighting during the five-day event held at The St. Petersburg Sport and Concert Complex, SKK.
 "This event has attracted a number of national champions and former European and world champions and promises to showcase the best of women's boxing," Karpovich said.
 Women's boxing will be a demonstration sport at the 2008 Olympic Games in China, and will most likely be an official event in 2012. 
 Internationally, the profile of women's boxing is likely to rise this year after "Million Dollar Baby," the tale of a determined female fighter last month won Oscars for best picture, best director, best actress and best supporting actor. 
 Karpovich described the event in St. Petersburg as "huge."
 "Russia has the strongest team, but has never hosted an event so we haven't been able to find the financial support," she said. "It is important for us to compete at home to help develop the sport, and break down stereotypes about women boxers." 
 Karpovich said Russian culture emphasizes gender roles more than in the West, and Russian society expects women to be softer. 
 "Women need to be feminine, but that doesn't mean we can't box. It is possible to be strong and feminine, and most Russian women are," she said. 
 "The sport itself isn't aggressive; any boxer who loses their cool, in turn loses their focus. The sport is more about determination and strength," she added. 
 "Gender roles in Turkey are similar to Russia, however they have a lot of state support and funding for women's boxing and they have developed a good following. Russia is slowly experiencing a sexual revolution, and we are part of a movement that are setting an example for the empowerment of women."
 It has become a tradition for the organization to hold women's boxing events during the International Women's Day holidays. 
 They have come a long way since 2002 when they held an exhibition match of Russian boxers. 
 In 2003 and 2004 St. Petersburg hosted exhibition matches between Russia and American, and Russia and Sweden. 
 The organization failed to get the support of city, regional, or national boxing federations and arranged the event mostly through barter deals and last-minute support from the Fatherland Sport Society of Combat. 
 "This organization has some links to President [Vladimir] Putin and saved us at the most critical moment," Karpovich said. 
 "We unfortunately will still have some debts following the event, and we will continue to look for sponsors and partners." 
 The St. Petersburg and Northwest Regional Boxing Federations were unavailable for comment. 
 Looking ahead to the future, Karpovich feels there is a lot of potential to host another international event in Khanty-Mansiisk, a rich oil city that has one of Russia's strongest women's boxing teams.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Green Lane on Border
 </b>

KALININGRAD (SPT) - A green lane for buses has been opened on the Bezledy checkpoint on the Polish-Russian border, Interfax reported Friday quoting the Polish consulate in Kaliningrad.
 "To continue simplifying the regime to cross the Russian-Polish border at the Bezledy checkpoint, the Polish side on March 8 will open a green lane for border and customs control for all passenger buses, regardless of which state they originate from or where they are registered," Interfax cited the consulate as saying.
 The main condition for buses going through the green lane is that they carry no goods that have to be declared, the consulate said.
 
 
<b>Channel 5 in Lawsuit
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg branch of the Yabloko party has filed a lawsuit against Channel 5 in the city court demanding that the City Hall-controlled television station correct information broadcast about the party in an analytical program in January, Interfax reported Friday.
 "In the program, 'The main thing. With Igor Fesunenko,' broadcast on Jan. 30, 2005 residents of our city were misinformed about the position of Yabloko in relation to the [government's] reform to abolish in-kind benefits. It was also said that Yabloko plans protest actions together with skinheads," Interfax cited Yabloko member Boris Vishnevsky as saying Friday.
 Yabloko demanded from Channel 5 management provide the party with broadcast time to answer the accusations, but was refused on the basis that "there are no legal grounds for this," Vishnevsky said.
 "We will defend our reputation in court," he said.
 
 
<b>Campaign Faulted
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The election commission of the 21st district has found violations in the campaign for a candidate supported by the National Bolshevik party, Interfax reported Saturday.
 "There is no information on leaflets that describes which organizations ordered and printed campaign materials, nor is there any date of when the copies were published," Intefax cited a representative of the commission as saying.
 The report on violations has been sent to the city prosecutor's office.
 The elections for two additional lawmakers to the Legislative Assembly are scheduled to take place Sunday.
 
 
<b>Human Rights 'Stable'
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - The number of complaints about human rights received by the federal ombudsman Vladimir Lukin rose 30 percent in 2004, Interfax reported Saturday.
 Lukin received more than 30,000 complaints. "Human rights issues in Russia did not get better and did not get worse," he said.
 
 
<b>Policeman Extradited
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - An employee of the St. Petersburg traffic police, who has been charged with committing crimes while on duty, was extradited to the city from Spain last week, Interfax reported Saturday quoting the city police.
 The employee of the Kalininsky district traffic police was charged in 2003 with abusing his powers, extortion and forgery committed while on duty.

TITLE: Beslan Link
 To Suspects
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia - Twelve militants who served as a backup for the group that seized a school in southern Russia in September have been detained in Chechnya, the Chechen interior ministry said Monday. 
 
The militants were detained in the Achkhoi-Martan district of Chechnya on Sunday night, said Ruslan Atsayev, the ministry spokesman. 
 Their leader was killed as they were being taken into custody, he said. 
 Six of the militants told their interrogators that they had been in the southern town of Beslan to back up the group that seized a school on Sept. 1, said Atsayev, who was present at the questioning. 
 When they learned the hostage-taking had been carried off, they left town, Atsayev said they told investigators. 
 The six who have already given testimony have been charged, he said, but he did not describe the charges. 
 Interfax quoted Chechen interior minister Ruslan Alkhanov as saying that the group had been ordered to carry out a diversionary action during the Beslan school seizure, but that the order was later withdrawn. 
 Another Chechen police official, Vyacheslav Kulikov, was quoted as saying that the group was to have stayed close to the border with Chechnya to prevent federal troops from being deployed to Beslan. 
 Law-enforcement officials have been at pains to show progress in the Beslan investigation six months after the raid. 
 Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel said last week that authorities had arrested four people and killed five others suspected of helping stage the Beslan raid. 


TITLE: 18 Teenagers Eagerly Join Pro-Putin Club
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BALASHIKHA, Moscow Region - To the strains of the national anthem, a group of students at Balashikha's School No. 1 joined the ranks of United Russia's youth group Thursday with promises of new friends, better careers and summer work.
 
The 18 smartly dressed students swore their allegiance to Young Unity - whose sole ideology, like United Russia, is to support President Vladimir Putin - in a school assembly hall decorated with national flags and United Russia banners.
 &quot;I swear to respect the rules of Young Unity,&quot; the 10th and 11th grade students solemnly repeated after the local Youth Unity leader. &quot;I swear to respect the discipline of Young Unity. I swear to take part in the activities of Young Unity.&quot;
 Young Unity is one of three pro-Putin youth groups trying to fill a gap left by the collapse of Soviet youth organizations like the Pioneers and Komsomol. Challenging them are organizations such as the liberal Young Yabloko and Moving Without Putin.
 Thursday's ceremony in Balashikha, a town 5 kilometers east of Moscow, started with a rock song. &quot;We, the new generation of the country, are the new Russia, oh yeah!&quot; blared the song over a loudspeaker.
 Local Young Unity leader Yevgeny Barishevsky stood up at the front of the room and asked the students to stand near him to better hear what he had to say.
 &quot;We should stop counting on adults only. It is about time to show what we can do. ... This is what our president wants,&quot; Barishevsky said.
 He said Young Unity expected great things from its new members. For a start, he said, they would plant trees, clean streets and help repair schools in their town during the summer vacation. Students will receive 2,000 to 4,000 rubles for their work, he said. 
 Komsomol members undertook similar activities during the summer months.
 Barishevsky told the students that Young Unity will give them an opportunity to develop their careers, meet &quot;new friends all over Russia,&quot; and take part in sporting competitions. The organization, he said, had 60,000 members nationwide and about 70 members in Balashikha.
 Andrei Anikin, an assistant to United Russia Duma Deputy Dmitry Sablin, told the students that their decision to join Young Unity was &quot;an important step&quot; in their lives. &quot;You will help your city and your country and, who knows, one day you might become Duma deputies or Federation Council senators,&quot; he told the applauding students.
 Smiling students were given blue T-shirts with United Russia's bear symbol and a book about Balashikha's history.
 Vasily Lobintsev, 17, said afterward that he joined to get a good job when he graduates. &quot;I was told that I can improve my career, and this is why I'm joining the youth organization,&quot; he said. &quot;I'm an assistant disk jockey, and I hope to become a real disk jockey one day.&quot; 
 Olga Grishina, 17, said she wanted to make friends. &quot;I know that our president is a good man and does a lot for our country, but this is not why I'm joining Young Unity,&quot; she said. &quot;I just want to meet new and interesting people.&quot;
 Grishina said she was not interested in politics and had heard of United Russia for the first time only several weeks ago when a teacher asked whether she wanted to join Young Unity.
 The school's director, Larisa Lebed, who is a member of United Russia, said she was proud to bring Young Unity to her school. &quot;We had youth organizations like the Pioneers and Komsomol in the Soviet Union. They disappeared after the fall of the Soviet Union, and young people miss them,&quot; she said.
 &quot;United Russia gives them the opportunity to restore this old tradition,&quot; she said, adding, &quot;It is better for them to join United Russia than to hang out on the streets and drink or use drugs.&quot;
 Barishevsky agreed. &quot;People were guided in their lives. Children would join the Pioneers, and upper-grade students would join Komsomol. They were shown where to go,&quot; he said.
 He said Young Unity will organize a local rally titled &quot;Putin and United Russia, five years together&quot; on March 13 to commemorate Putin's fifth year in office. 
 Asked whether there was any rivalry between Young Unity and the other pro-Putin youth organizations, Moving Together and newly formed Nashi, or Us, he shook his head. &quot;Every one has its own field,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Canadian
 Helps To
 Bust False
 Bride Scam
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Canadian man in love with an imaginary Russian woman has helped Yekaterinburg police arrest a couple behind an Internet scam that cheated love-struck foreigners out of thousands of dollars.
 
The Canadian citizen became worried about the bride-to-be he had met through the web site after she wrote to say that all the money he had sent her had been stolen by the Russian mafia, Yekaterinburg police said.
 In fact, the bride was nothing but the criminal imagination of a local couple, police spokesman Valery Gorelikh said by telephone Thursday. The couple, which he refused to identify, ran a web site called Russian Girls that had consisted entirely of photos of nonexistent would-be brides.
 The gullible would-be fiancees were scammed out of money through letters asking for money from the fake women, as well as by a section on the web site where the men could buy imaginary gifts for the imaginary women.
 On hearing the news about the voracious mafia, the Canadian, whom Gorelikh also refused to identify, flew out to Russia to help his would-be bride. He contacted the British consulate in Yekaterinburg, who immediately sent him to the police. The police traced the couple when they continued to write letters to the Canadian.
 Gorelikh said the couple would be charged with fraud under Article 159 of the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail.
 Complaints about fraudulent Russian bride web sites are common. The U.S. Embassy said last year that it was getting up to 10 calls per day from men who had been duped.
 The embassy directs the men to www.womenrussia.com, a web site that explains the various scams.
 Another web site, www.russianwomenblacklist.com, has a list 15 pages long of women suspected of having scammed foreign men, and offers a paid service for men to check out the person they think they are communicating with.
 Despite the rise in cases, there have been very few convictions.
 One woman, Yelena Berkova, whom the blacklist web site has accused of scamming foreigners, even went on to enjoy minor celebrity status after starring in the THT reality show &quot;Dom 2.&quot;
 But one con artist, who swindled thousands of foreign men, was last year convicted after an Australian man complained to President Vladimir Putin.
 English translator Yury Lazerev, 34, was given a suspended one-year sentence in November in Chelyabinsk after being found guilty of conning nine foreigners by pretending to be a shy English teacher named Alfiya Matveyeva.
 Lazarev is thought to have made $300,000 from the scam, and police discovered an Aladdin's cave of lovers' gifts - perfumes, jewelry, and various foreign monies - when they searched his apartment.
 Australian Terry McCarthy wrote to Putin in 2001 to complain after he was conned out of $700 by Matveyeva. His letter was passed on to the Interior Ministry, a Kremlin spokeswoman said. Police traced the payments to accomplices of Lazarev in Chelyabinsk, and he was arrested.

TITLE: Luzhkov Criticizes United Russia Boss
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Discontent within United Russia about its control over local elections spilled over into the public domain when Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov accused the party's leadership of changing its charter to require regional leaders to get the party head office's approval for all local candidates.
 
In a letter to United Russia leader and State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, Luzhkov, who is a co-chairman of the party's supreme council, demanded the removal of a clause that would effectively bar United Russia-affiliated governors from independently nominating their own candidate lists for regional legislature elections.
 The Feb. 28 letter angrily noted that that the party conference in November voted to remove this clause from its charter, but it still ended up in the final version officially registered by the Justice Ministry in December. Luzhkov also demanded that the party investigate what he called a case of &quot;forgery of party documents&quot; and expel those responsible, Interfax reported.
 Gryzlov made no public response to Luzhkov's letter, but other party leaders tried to downplay its importance.
 Deputy Duma Speaker Lyubov Sliska, also a member of the party's supreme council, said that the change was &quot;an upsetting mistake&quot; and that it would be investigated thoroughly.
 &quot;This is an internal party matter and we will look into it. However, in any case we need to find out how the mistake was made and who made it,&quot; Sliska said, Interfax reported.
 United Russia officials in the State Duma could not immediately be reached for comment.
 Experts said that by opposing the clause Luzhkov was pursuing his own interests, which include preparing for December elections to the Moscow City Duma. They said that Luzhkov had timed his letter to try and limit the influence of the party's top brass on United Russia's candidates to the City Duma.
 &quot;Otherwise, he will have to include on the list candidates United Russia bosses would like to see in the City Duma, but who may not be so loyal to him personally,&quot; said Alexei Titkov, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
 Titkov said that Luzhkov would want to ensure the next City Duma remains loyal to him, as it will be up to this legislature to decide whether to endorse his candidacy if he decides to seek another term in office when his current term expires in 2007. Under a law that came into effect Jan. 1, popular elections of regional leaders were replaced by a system in which the president nominates candidates for regional legislatures' approval.
 The past few weeks have seen Luzhkov make a number of critical comments about United Russia-approved government initiatives. Last month he criticized the Cabinet over its implementation of the law on monetization of benefits, which the United Russia-controlled Duma passed last summer. 
 On Wednesday, Luzhkov also blasted the Duma for passing a law introducing compulsory car insurance.
 But Titkov said that Luzhkov's sniping was unlikely to infuriate the Kremlin, as so far his criticisms are shared by others in United Russia's &quot;so-called socially oriented&quot; wing.
 Titkov said that a number of other regional leaders have publicly criticized Cabinet policy, mainly the social reform, but their criticism was less noticeable.
 Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with the Indem think tank, said that Luzhkov is starting to regain some of his lost influence within United Russia, after having settled for a largely ceremonial role in recent years.
 &quot;His position seems to be stronger than before, now that the federal authorities and United Russia's leadership have weakened themselves by their handling of unpopular reforms, and he has not.&quot;

TITLE: Bolshoi Shows
 'Porn' Opera
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Moscow - Despite the presence of Mozart, Verdi and Tchaikovsky, the State Duma has ordered its cultural committee to examine an experimental new opera by the Bolshoi Theater after one deputy slammed it as pornographic.
 
United Russia Deputy Sergei Neverov complained after seeing a television report on the opera, &quot;The Children of Rosenthal,&quot; a witty tale of cloned classical composers who have hit hard times. &quot;It is not decent for the stage of the Bolshoi Theater,&quot; Neverov said by telephone Friday.
 The opera's libretto was penned by controversial writer Vladimir Sorokin. It tells the story of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Wagner, Verdi and Mozart, cloned by a scientist in the Soviet Union, who are thrown into poverty after the Soviet breakup and resort to busking on Komsomolskaya Ploshchad.
 When asked what was so bad about the opera, which is due to premiere March 23, Neverov cited a scene where the pimp of Mozart's girlfriend, a prostitute who works by Kazansky Station, starts ranting.
 &quot;Any theater decides what to put on by itself,&quot; Bolshoi general director Anatoly Iksanov said by telephone Thursday, adding that he would not give Neverov, a miner by profession, advice on how to dig coal.
 Sorokin was unsuccessfully prosecuted for pornography two years ago. The prosecution was brought after a complaint from the pro-Putin youth group Moving Together.


TITLE: Saving Young Lives, One Heart at a Time
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - When 14-year-old Ksenia Lukina was born with a congenital heart defect, the doctors told her mother, Irina, that she would be better off abandoning her daughter. Ignoring this advice, Irina kept her child. 
 
At the age of 3, Ksenia underwent her first heart operation. But as she grew, her health deteriorated and at 12, she underwent a second operation. 
 The family atmosphere only aggravated the situation. After her father, who was with St. Petersburg OMON police commandos, came back from a tour of duty in Chechnya, he took to the bottle and neglected the family. After her divorce, Irina had to work several jobs as a janitor to support sickly Ksenia, who has to be homeschooled, and her brother. 
 When doctors said Ksenia needed a third operation, at a cost of 175,000 rubles ($6,300) her mother thought she would have to sell their 23-square-meter room in a communal apartment in the city until their doctor mentioned the Children's Hearts foundation.
 &quot;You are our last hope,&quot; Lukina wrote in a letter to the charity in February.
 Children's Hearts, a foundation set up in 2002 by four Russians to help children born with heart defects, receives pleas for help from all over Russia, including remote villages and Chechnya. 
 Heart defects are among the top killers of babies under one year old in Russia, where 276,000 children are currently diagnosed with congenital heart defects. About 30,000 children are in need of immediate assistance, according to the foundation. 
 Only 30 percent of these 30,000 have their operations funded by the state, while in another 5 percent the families pay themselves, the foundation said. Parents of the other 65 percent of children have to seek alternative means to afford a heart operation, which can typically cost between $5,000 and $10,000.
 At first - skeptical of the philanthropic opportunities in Russia - the organizers set up the foundation in Britain. &quot;We were certain that philanthropy in Russia wasn't possible,&quot; said Mikhail Bermant, the foundation's president. 
 Bermant, a director of Bosti Group, which sells medical equipment, had been looking for a person to get the foundation going in Britain when he came across Amy Cruse. Cruse, who was then working for the United Nations environment committee, was one of the first British children to undergo a successful heart operation in 1977 at the age of 3.
 &quot;I got involved with the fund as I knew that if I'd been born in Russia, I would not be alive today. My parents would not have been able to afford to pay for surgery,&quot; Cruse wrote in an e-mail from London. &quot;I was shocked that children in Russia were still dying from conditions that would be treated straight away [for free in Britain] on the National Health Service.&quot;
 After the foundation was registered as a British charity in 2000, Cruse worked as its sole employee as a fundraiser. The money raised paid for Russian children to have operations and bought medical equipment. The donations also helped bring Russian surgeons for training to London's world-famous Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, and to Southampton University Hospital. 
 In 2002, Cruse left the foundation to take up a job with the British Red Cross. Her departure led the foundation's organizers to transfer its core activities to Russia. With only two staffers and a few volunteers, the foundation is now focused on becoming a fully-fledged Russian charity.
 Katya Bermant, the foundation's director and Mikhail Bermant's daughter, said donations came from businesses - and also from individuals, with some pensioners sending the foundation 100 rubles ($3.60) each month. 
 According to Bermant, the charity has so far raised 5 million rubles ($180,000) in Russia, which has helped finance operations for 47 children across the country. To lend the foundation credibility, Bermant secured the support of prominent Russians, including figure skater Irina Rodnina and leading heart surgeon Leo Bokeria, who joined the charity as trustees. 
 &quot;Good deeds will help re-establish the reputation of philanthropy,&quot; Rodnina said at a Children's Hearts fundraiser last month in Moscow. The event was the foundation's second, after a charity concert given by U.S. guitarist Omar Torres last summer. 
 Independent Media, the parent company of The St. Petersburg Times, supported Children's Hearts by inserting information in the February issues of its magazines Top Sante and Seasons. Many readers of the journals responded by making donations and a major sponsor found out about the charity from them and donated. 
 Guests at the fundraiser said Russians have taken time to embrace the true meaning of philanthropy, as it was compromised in the 1990s, when businesses established charity foundations for the sole purpose of money laundering and tax evasion. 
 Singer Alexei Lebedinsky said at the fundraiser that he had not believed in Russian charity efforts before. &quot;Our ossified and befuddled consciousness means we can't escape the conclusion that we are being cheated,&quot; he said. 
 After the government last year called on businesses to give more back to the community, companies started actively promoting their philanthropic activities. Some companies, however, donate selectively, organizers said. 
 Katya Bermant's husband, Alexander Sorin - who volunteers for the charity - said that companies would rather give money to a child who will be looked after by his or her parents after surgery, than an orphan or a child with Down's Syndrome with an unclear chance of recovery. Businesses are keen on getting positive results for their money, he said. 
 Even Russian Aluminum, which Katya Bermant described at the fundraiser as their &quot;favorite sponsor,&quot; has at the same time been choosing its recipients carefully, she said by telephone last week. &quot;They're quite cautious about getting involved with difficult cases.&quot;
 The February event raised a total of $3,650 through an auction of paintings donated by artist Katya Belkina, a lottery and direct donations. The money raised has been sent to St. Petersburg's hospital No. 1 to help cover Lukina's surgery, Katya Bermant said. 
 After the operation Ksenia, who spends most of her time at home with her pets - three rats, a guinea pig, two turtles and a cat - will be able to go back to a traditional school, her mother said. &quot;The girls supported us very much,&quot; she said, referring to the foundation's employees. &quot;I don't have words to express my gratitude.&quot;
 
 <i>To learn more about Children's Hearts, visit its web sites at www.childrenshearts.ru or www.childrenshearts.org.uk</i>


TITLE: Court Rules Against MT in Eural Trans Gas Lawsuit
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Moscow Times has lost a defamation suit filed against it by Hungarian-based gas trader Eural Trans Gas over two articles published in November 2003 and June 2004 that questioned the company's possible ties with Ukrainian-born crime lord Semyon Mogilevich, who is wanted by the FBI.
 
The Moscow Times is the sister paper of The St. Petersburg Times. The November 2003 article was printed by The St. Petersburg Times on Dec. 2 2003.
 Moscow's Golovinsky Court ruled in favor of Eural Trans Gas and its managing director, Andras Knopp, after hearings on Oct. 12, 2004. It ordered a retraction and fined The Moscow Times 100,000 rubles and the author of the articles, Staff Writer Catherine Belton, 10,000 rubles.
 Eural Trans Gas and Knopp had demanded 10 million rubles ($300,000) in damages jointly from the newspaper and Belton, as well as payment of their legal fees. The court declined to satisfy those demands.
 The articles cited concerns raised by investors and analysts over why state-controlled Gazprom had granted the trader the rights to handle sales of billions of dollars worth of gas from Turkmenistan to Ukraine, as well as over its ownership structure. The November 2003 article cited a report published in Jane's Intelligence Digest that claimed it had found links between the company and Mogilevich, as well as a letter that appeared to have been written by a major-general in the Interior Ministry, A.P. Mordovets, to Interpol alleging ties between Knopp and Mogilevich. It also cited concerns raised in a public speech in Kiev, on May 29, 2003, by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual over reported links between ETG and Mogilevich.
 Eural Trans Gas filed the suit on July 27, 2004, just two days before Gazprom announced that it was ending its transit contract with ETG as of Jan. 1, 2005, and creating a new company, RosUkrEnergo, with Raiffeisen Bank to handle all sales between Turkmenistan and Ukraine.
 During the Oct. 12 hearings, the court declined to grant The Moscow Times' request for it to apply to German prosecutors in Stade, who may have been able to provide further information on the letter that appeared to have been written by Mordovets.
 The counsel for ETG later produced an affidavit signed by Mordovets saying he had not written the letter to Interpol that was cited by The Moscow Times.
 The Moscow City Court on Dec. 14, 2004, declined The Moscow Times' appeal. 
 ETG has also sought retractions from other media organizations that have raised similar questions. 0n Oct. 18, 2004, Radio Free Europe published a retraction over the Mordovets letter, and this February, Jane's Intelligence Digest published a retraction of its original Jan. 31, 2003, report.

TITLE: Two Deserters
 Kill 3 Civilians
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Two armed border guards deserted their unit in the northwestern Pskov region on Thursday and seized a car and fatally shot three passengers before they were halted by police and security forces.
 
One of the men was killed in an exchange of gunfire with forces and the other was detained, a Federal Security Service official said. 
 The two men, both privates, attacked a sergeant, seized three automatic rifles and ammunition and left their unit in the Pskov region, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
 They fired on a passing vehicle, killing three passengers, then seized the car and drove off, the official said. 
 About two hours later, border guards and police forces surrounded the deserters outside the nearby village of Botvino, east of the Latvian border, and demanded their surrender. They responded by opening fire, and one was killed in the ensuing shootout, the official said. The other was detained. 
 The FSB official said the privates were draftees who had been serving for a year and a half.

TITLE: Poles
 Mark
 Katyn
 Massacre
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW, Poland - Poles on Saturday attended a Mass, sang patriotic songs and laid flowers on a monument to more than 21,000 military officers and intellectuals massacred by Soviet agents in Katyn Forest, marking the day 65 years ago that dictator Josef Stalin ordered the killings.
 
Along with the homage at Warsaw's St. Ann's Church, the Katyn Committee, an organization of relatives of those killed in Katyn Forest in western Russia and at other sites in 1940, demanded more Russian attention to the massacre.
 A recent Russian investigation failed to produce any new names of surviving perpetrators among the secret police force that carried out the killing, largely by shots to the back of the head, over several nights.
 &quot;We are calling on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reveal the names of those who were responsible for the genocide in the spring of 1940,'' said Stefan Melak, the head of the group. &quot;We are calling on Russian authorities to accept this crime as genocide.'' 
 &quot;Katyn will always remain a symbol of a death sentence passed on Poland,'' he said.
 Krystyna Balcer, a 62-year-old retiree whose uncle was killed in Katyn, remained angry about the massacre and the Soviet invasion of Poland prior to World War II, carried out under a secret agreement between Stalin and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
 &quot;They betrayed us - they stuck a knife in our backs,'' she said of the Soviets invading Poland from the east in 1939, 17 days after Germans entered from the west. The massacre &quot;was unimaginable cruelty, it was genocide.''
 The March 5, 1940, order for the massacre was signed by Stalin among others. Soviet agents shot 21,768 Polish military officers, intellectuals and priests who had been taken prisoner during the invasion.
 Historians in Poland believe Stalin was seeking to liquidate Poland's elite to prevent the rebirth of a sovereign Polish state.
 The massacre is still an irritant to relations between Poland and Russia. Polish war crimes prosecutors opened their own investigation into the massacre in December.
 Until the fall of communism in 1989, any mention of the massacre was forbidden in Poland. The following year, the Soviet government accepted responsibility for the murders, but refused to refer to them as a genocide attempt, calling it a war crime on which the statute of limitations has passed.
 The slaughter became known to the world when 4,100 bodies were discovered by German forces in 1943 after they overran the area near the Russian city of Smolensk, and the event was widely broadcast by the Nazi propaganda machine.

TITLE: Corruption Named As Top Investor Obstacle
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A survey of 158 foreign companies found that corruption remains the biggest obstacle for investment into Russia, the government said Friday.
 
A total of 71 percent of the companies polled named corruption as the top barrier to investment, according to the survey, which was conducted by PBN Company for the government's Consultative Council on Foreign Investment.
 The companies, about two-thirds of which are already working in Russia, were asked to name five top problems that obstruct foreign investment.
 &quot;We all know that corruption is a problem, but the number of people who put corruption at the top of the list came as a surprise,&quot; Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov said Friday after a meeting of the Consultative Council on Foreign Investment.
 Sharonov reiterated the government's goal to cut corruption by reducing the number of situations where a bureaucrat can make a subjective decision - a key goal of the yet-to-be completed administrative reform.
 The other four obstacles named were administrative barriers (66 percent), selective application of the law (56 percent), conflicting laws and laws that poorly reflect reality (51 percent), and conflicts between the state and business (29 percent).
 Surveyed companies put reduction of corruption at the top of their list of suggestions on what the government must do to attract foreign investment.
 Interestingly, the survey indicated that foreign businesses working in Russia consider the investment climate to be in a better shape than those that are looking at Russia from abroad. A total 66 percent of investors said noninvestors see the situation worse than it really is. 
 Almost half of investors, or 47 percent, said the investment climate is better than what is often reported in foreign media, while only 30 percent of noninvestors felt the same way.
 While 49 percent of noninvestors expressed concern about their personal safety if they were to work in Russia, only 10 percent of investors shared their fears. 
 In addition, 70 percent of investors said they had access to enough information to make investment decisions, while only 41 percent of potential investors agreed. At the same time, 35 percent of investors and noninvestors said that information from state officials was not trustworthy. The most trusted source of information proved to be other foreign investors working in Russia.
 The survey suggested that the investment climate appears to be improving on many counts but some problems remain the same as they were a decade ago, including bureaucracy, regulations and a weak judicial system.

TITLE: Women in IT Connect to Russia
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Russian chapter of World Women in IT network, recently launched in St. Petersburg, promises to be the first organization that will unite Russian-speaking business women all over the world, its executive directors say. 
 
Women in IT (WIT) is an online network for career-driven women that was originally founded in 1999 by Liz Ryan, the first female vice president of U.S. Robotics, a major technology company.
 In just over five years the organization has grown to encompass more than 35,000 women globally, all of whom can keep in contact via moderated, local e-mail discussion groups. There are over 70 WIT branches worldwide, and RusWIT is the organization's ninth European chapter. 
 &quot;WIT members submit their questions and business tips, share work experiences and useful contacts,&quot; said Jane Kurts, RusWIT executive director.
 A St. Petersburg native, Kurts received a degree from New York University in the U.S. at the age of 25 and returned to the city to become a communications vice president at DataArt, a local software outsourcing company.
 Along with her friend and colleague Yulia Zavilevskaya, who will co-direct the chapter, Kurts hopes the St. Petersburg-based online community will give Russian working women worldwide &quot;a valuable tool for business and social communications.&quot;
 &quot;Russian-speaking women live in different countries and cultures. They have many interesting experiences to share and to learn from each other,&quot; Kurts said. As an example, she adds that women working in Asia, which is experiencing an economic boom, could connect to those who work in Arab countries, where the role of women in business is starting to change. 
 Choosing St. Petersburg as the base for the Russian chapter of WIT is not simply a hark back to the organizer's roots, says the founder and CEO of WIT, Liz Ryan. It reflects the city's growing fame as the IT capital of Russia.
 &quot;St. Petersburg represents Russia's business and technology hub, overflowing with women who make a difference to the country's prosperity,&quot; Ryan said in a statement. &quot;[RusWIT] will unite friendly, accomplished and resourceful women in Russia to share their experiences and help one another advance their careers.&quot;
 The mail-out to RusWIT's members will be written in both Cyrillic and English. The organization is also planning to hold 'in-person' events, at least for those of its members living in St. Petersburg.
 The first event will be a round-table discussion held via a videoconference with other WIT members worldwide.
 Although the network's launch was originally announced at the beginning of February, the hold-up, rather ironically, came in the form of a computer glitch. RusWIT's mail-outs hit a problem with decoding Russian letters - a common issue faced by those working with different Cyrillic fonts over the Internet. Nonetheless, Kurt promises that RusWIT will hold its first round-table as soon as the fonts issue is resolved.
 Membership of RusWIT is free and can be completed at the network's main web page. Though member names are not disclosed - Kurts says she doesn't know who the local members are - more than 40 women have already registered in the Russian chapter. &quot;Not bad given the country's business environment,&quot; Kurts says. 
 For now, Russia's most affluent women are still those who have become so through marriage not career, but the situation is changing.
 According to a Finans magazine survey published last week, Russia's richest woman is Yelena Baturina, wife of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, but its most successful female is the general director of Basoviye Elementy (Basic Elements,) Gulzhan Moldazhanova, a self-made woman who started as a secretary at the company. 
 RusWIT sees its prospective members as active women with business savvy who live both locally and abroad. The idea of joining sounds appealing to Tatyana Gavrilova, an IT analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York, who left Russia over fifteen years ago.
 &quot;I would be very interested to &quot;connect&quot; with Russian women working in other countries and find out about the different business environments,&quot; Gavrilova said in a phone interview from New York.
 &quot;It would be good to read first-hand news from fellow professionals in St. Petersburg and find out about the differences or the similarities in various work-related issues,&quot; she said. 
 Kurts and Zavilevskaya decided to launch the Russian chapter of the WIT network after being long-time members of the network's New York branch.
 &quot;WIT is really for all women in business, not just for women in IT. However, since IT is a heavily male-dominated field, [the network] is an especially important tool for women working in that sphere,&quot; Kurts said.
 Yet, the network does not set to exclude men.
 &quot;Actually, [after the launch] the first request to join RusWIT received was from a male journalist,&quot; Kurts said.
 
 <i>
Women (or men) interested in joining RusWIT can register by visiting the WorldWIT website at www.worldwit.org </i>

TITLE: Swedbank Eyes Russian Bank
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: One of Sweden's largest banks, Swedbank, is considering an acquisition of a Russian bank, its chairman told the Dow Jones news wire on Tuesday.
 
Chairman Carl Eric Staalberg, the head of Foereningssparbanken AB, internationally known as Swedbank, said that the bank may seek growth through &quot;an additional acquisition in Russia.&quot;
 Foereningssparbanken is already involved in a takeover bid for Estonia's largest bank AS Hansabank and has eyed a number of acquisitions in the Baltic States, Dow Jones reported.
 The logical geographical progression would then take the Swedish bank further into Russia's northwest region, although Staalberg made no definite claims about which banks in Russia interest the company.
 Swedbank focuses primarily on savings, loans and payment services to private individuals. The bank cooperates with about 90 independent savings banks and partly owned banks.

TITLE: M&amp;A Market Grows 70% in '04
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The country's mergers and acquisitions market grew by 70 percent last year to a record $30 billion, according to a report released by Ernst &amp; Young on Thursday. 
 
The bulk of that growth came from the $9.35 billion state auction of Yuganskneftegaz, as well as increased activity abroad by Russian companies. 
 Russian firms spent $3.5 billion on foreign assets last year, more than four times their 2003 outlay.
 &quot;Leading [Russian] industrial companies have got their war chests from eurobonds or IPOs,&quot; said Mark Jarvis, managing partner for client service and accounts at Ernst &amp; Young. &quot;Now they've solidified their positions enough to go out into the international market and make acquisitions.&quot; 
 But the report pointed out that total M&amp;A spending by foreign companies in Russia decreased from $9 billion in 2003 to $6.5 billion in 2004. 
 Despite the apparent downward trend in spending by foreign firms in Russia, the report, titled &quot;Mergers and Acquisitions in the CIS,&quot; argued that interest in Russian assets is still strong. 
 Excluding 2003's biggest deal - BP's record-breaking tie-up with TNK, worth $6.75 billion - the figures reveal an upward trend from about $2.25 billion to $6.5 billion, the report said. As a result, &quot;it seems that the impact of the Yukos affair on the plans of foreign strategic investors was limited,&quot; the report said. 
 Peter Westin, chief economist at Aton brokerage, said the argument appeared to hold water. 
 &quot;You could argue that, if not for the Yukos affair, the M&amp;A number would also be higher,&quot; he said. &quot;But foreign investors tend to have very short memories. Yukos won't be a ghost haunting Russia for long.&quot;
 Not all observers have predicted heightened interest in Russian assets, however. Speakers at an M&amp;A conference in London last week predicted that domestic companies would dominate the Russian market over the next 12 to 18 months. &quot;The investment climate is in our view weakening, and the role of the state is stronger than it was a couple of years ago,&quot; said Peter Reiniger, director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's energy group, Reuters reported. 
 &quot;We feel there is a loss of momentum in the reform process. The Yukos issue is still unresolved and it sends not too positive signals to the market, particularly the very non-transparent auction process of Yugansk,&quot; he said. 
 The Ernst &amp; Young report shows an increasing number of Russian companies are scooping up assets abroad. 
 Besides spending more, Russian companies also ventured beyond the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 2004 to make acquisitions in developed Western markets. As a result, &quot;more and more Russian companies are aiming to become global players in their sector,&quot; the report said. 
 &quot;Clearly, Russian companies are becoming multinationals,&quot; Westin said. &quot;But at the same time, when you are talking fairly low numbers, you only need a few big deals to change the picture.&quot; 
 According to the report, even excluding Yugansk, the fastest growing sector for M&amp;A in Russia was oil and gas, followed by metals and mining, food and beverages, and financial services.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Latvia May Bar Nafta
 </b>

VILNIUS (Bloomberg) - Latvia's stock exchange said it may halt the trading of Ventspils Nafta, which runs an oil terminal on the Baltic Sea, unless the company clarifies an announced plan to possibly leave the bourse and list elsewhere.
 The Riga Stock Exchange said in an e-mailed statement that it had given Ventspils Nafta until March 11 to specify when its shareholders would consider the change of listing, which the company announced in a statement to the bourse earlier today. It must also say on what exchange it was considering listing and prove that it has applied to be listed there.
 "Information on a change of a regulated marketplace is crucial for the investor," the bourse said in the statement. "If the management really cares about the company value, it would refrain from disseminating inconsiderate statements about listing on a foreign market."
 A market value of $345 million makes Ventspils Nafta the Baltic nation's second-biggest traded company, after the natural gas utility Latvijas Gaze.
 
 
<b>Inflation Forecasts Down
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia's Finance Ministry raised its inflation rate forecast for this year to 10 percent from 8.5 percent, Interfax reported today, citing a copy of a ministry report on tax policies.
 The government set the forecast at 8.5 percent for this year after failing to keep the rate within last year's target of 10 percent.
 Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin at the end of February said his ministry was not ready to review the 8.5 percent forecast, the Moscow-based news service reported.
 
<b>Budget Surplus Triples
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia's federal budget surplus more than tripled to 4.4 percent of gross domestic product last year as rising prices for fuel and metals boosted revenue by a third.
 The surplus rose to 730.7 billion rubles ($26.4 billion) from 227.6 billion rubles in the previous year, the Federal Statistics Service said today in an e-mailed statement, citing the Finance Ministry. Revenue rose 32 percent to 3.43 trillion rubles. Spending was up 14 percent to 2.7 trillion rubles.
 Russia last year increased oil extraction 8.9 percent and exported more than half of it.
 Urals, Russia's main export blend of oil, advanced 24 percent in 2004 and has gained 34 percent so far this year.
 Federal budget's revenue from taxes, fees and other obligatory payments rose 16.7 percent to 1.53 trillion rubles last year, according to the service.
 
 
<b>Rosneft May Sue Yukos
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company that bought a confiscated unit of Yukos in December, may sue Yukos for $3.8 billion to collect debts owed to the unit, according to U.S. court papers.
 Yukos says that most of the money the company owes Yuganskneftegaz, the unit that was seized and sold to collect back taxes, was paid to the government to meet tax obligations. Rosneft, a state-owned company, is asking for the money again, Yukos said in documents filed yesterday to a Houston court.
 Rosneft spokesman Vladimir Voye-voda could not be reached for comment.
 Yukos received a letter from Rosneft asking for the money Feb. 25, giving the company until Feb. 28 to pay or face being sued in a Russian court, according to the court papers.

TITLE: Russia's Richest Men Show Their Metal
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: To be rich in St. Petersburg is no big deal, according to Russia's Top 500 Rich List, published last month by economic monthly Finance.
 
Finans figures show that the country's second city does not have a single dollar billionaire, its first entry on the list coming in as low as 71 with banker Vladimir Kogan.
 In addition, the list, much altered from last year's, shows that contrary to media attention on &quot;black gold,&quot; it is metallurgy and the retail sector which have gained the most in the last year.
 Three of the top five places on the Finans list went to aluminum, steel and precious metals producers, the knock-on effect of a 50 percent increase in world metal prices in 2004 being a strong factor.
 Both sole-owner of Basoviye Elementy (Basic Elements) Oleg Deripaska and head of investment group Renova Victor Vekselberg owe much of their wealth to prominent aluminum sales, while Vladimir Lisin's top five spot has been secured through iron and steel production.
 The former partner of Roman Abramovich, Russia's richest business tycoon, Oleg Deripaska takes a comfortable second in the Finans list with $8.3 billion worth of assets. Deripaska's Basoviye Elementy is a consortium in charge of Russian Aluminum or Rusal, the third largest aluminum corporation in the world.
 Siberian based Rusal manufactures 10 percent of aluminum on the global market and forms the core of Deripaska's industrial empire. Through Basoviye Elementy he also owns the VAZ car manufacturing plant, plus other assets in the automobile and machine-building industries.
 Fourth richest with a fortune of $6.6 billion, Lisin controls Novilipetsk Iron and Steel Plant, a vertically integrated structure that is considered to be the most modern and profitable company of its kind in Russia. It is also the biggest maker of electrical cable and technological steel in Europe. 
 The other great metallurgy magnate and the fifth wealthiest entrepreneur in the country, worth $6.3 billion, is Vekselberg who founded the joint Russian-American investment group Renova.
 Besides chairing its board of directors, he acts as the Chief Operating Officer of the conglomerate's key affiliate, the Tyumen oil company.
 In 1996 Vekselberg added another valuable asset to his holding, the Siberian Urals Aluminum Corporation (SUAL). Presently the company is the tenth largest aluminum producer in the world.
 
 <strong>
THE ST. PETERSBURG PACK 
 </strong>In comparison to such giant holdings in oil and metals, the St. Petersburg business scene that is reflected in the Top 500 Rich list is dominated by service oriented industries.
 
It is banking, retail, manufacturing and construction that seem to be the most profitable ventures in the regional economy, Finans magazine reports. Such industries, however, do not score highly, with most St. Petersburg entries ranked in the lower quarter of the Top 100.
 The leader among the city's wealthiest businessmen, Vladimir Kogan ranks at 71 in the Finans list. Along with David Traktovenko he is the owner of Banking House St. Petersburg, a parent company of the city's biggest financial institution, PromStroiBank.
 In 1999, under Kogan's leadership, PromStroiBank bought the Bank of St Petersburg and became the country's ninth largest bank. The assets of both Kogan and Traktovenko are estimated at $360 million and $350 million respectively. 
 The man behind Russia's most extensive supermarket chain Petyorochka, Andrei Rogachyov, follows the two bankers with a fortune worth $300 million. Started in 1999 with only 17 stores in St. Petersburg, the chain now numbers over 200 outlets throughout Russia.
 Petyorochka's rapid expansion is attributed to its part ownership by European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, although the company has remained in the control of Rogachyov and Moscow-based company Agrotorg. 
 An exception to the rule in St. Petersburg is gold baron Alexander Nesis, one of the few local entrepreneurs to derive his wealth exclusively from the export of natural resources.
 Nesis is the owner of IST Group, a consortium controlling Magadan's precious metals company Polimetal. The most profitable operations of Polimetal are in gold mining.
 Along with Polimetal, Nesis owns the Ducat gold mine, which contains the richest gold deposits in the world. Finans estimates Nesis' fortune at $280 million. 
 Closing the top 100 in the Finans list are the three owners of the St. Petersburg-based Ilim Pulp, the largest integrated forestry corporation in Russia. Co-owners brothers Mikhail and Boris Zvingarevich, and Zakhar Smushkin rank at 97, 98 and 99 on the list with a $250 million fortune each.
 The company's paper mills at Ust Ilimsk and Kontlass produce 77 percent of the nation's cardboard and 61 percent of its pulp. Ilim Pulp's forest reserves are the greatest in Europe.

TITLE: Income Gap Reaches a Dangerous Level
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The gap between rich and poor has widened over the past year, crossing a threshold beyond which social discontent could reach dangerous levels.
 
In 2004, the richest 10 percent of Russians earned 14.8 times more than the poorest 10 percent, according to data published by the State Statistics Service earlier this week. 
 The real disparity may be a differential of up to 40 times because people don't declare fully their incomes, sociologist Vyacheslav Lokosov said. 
 &quot;We have a polarized country - one [part] lives according to Western standards, the other is just trying to survive,&quot; said Lokosov, deputy director of the Institute for Social and Political Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
 In Western European countries, a disparity in income greater than 10 times is considered the acceptable limit before social discontent bubbles over, he said.
 Even according to official statistics, the gap is growing. In 2001, the richest tenth of the population earned 10 times more than the poorest tenth. In 2002 the factor rose to 13 times and in 2003 to 14.3 times, according to the statistics service.
 Lokosov said the real gap ranges between a factor of 30 to 40. 
 This year, the situation is likely to get worse, Lokosov said, with the monetization of welfare benefits affecting some 40 million people.
 The controversial reform, backed by President Vladimir Putin, took effect Jan. 1 and replaced benefits such as free public transportation and medicine with meager cash payments.
 &quot;After the reform I won't be surprised to see the gap widening to 16 times - according to official data, of course,&quot; Lokosov said.
 The income gap could reach grave proportions in a country that lacks the social structures able to support the weakest segments of society, said Alexei Novikov, analytical director of ratings agency Standard &amp; Poor's.
 &quot;In countries with a good social infrastructure, such a gap would not be as serious as in Russia,&quot; he said.
 In 2003, the richest 10 percent accounted for 29.8 percent of the country's total personal income, while the bottom 10 percent accounted for 2 percent, according to the statistics service.
 Despite a rise in incomes, inflation caused Russians' purchasing power to drop 9.6 percent in January year-on-year, the statistics service said.
 Utilities and other housing costs have risen 23.5 percent this year, the price of pork has gone up 40 percent and the price of diesel has jumped 56 percent, Noviye Izvestia reported this week.
 Not surprisingly, an opinion poll published this week showed that more Russians want a return to communism than the government's current reform plan.
 Only 17 percent of respondents backed the reform program while 21 percent favored a &quot;return to socialism,&quot; ROMIR Monitoring found in a survey of 1,500 Russians. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that reform should be more socially targeted. 
 The last time more Russians wanted communism than a reform was in May 2001, ROMIR said.

TITLE: Ambassador, Novotel to Expand 4-Star Hotel Market
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The end of spring will finally see a major expansion on the St. Petersburg four-star hotel market as the opening of at least three new hotels will nearly double the segment's size in the city.
 
Worldwide hotel chain Accor will unveil its Novotel brand on the Nevsky Prospekt on May 20, while Russian managed The Ambassador also plans a May starting date, as does the Kempinski Group's Moika 22 hotel, which although classified as four-star, will aim at a more elite clientele.
 Experts predict the four-star market in St. Petersburg to be favorable, but a tough challenge for new players, especially those with Russian management companies.
 
 <strong>
POTENTIAL
 </strong>At the start of 2005 there were only seven hotels listed at four-star level in St. Petersburg, among them the Pribaltiiskaya, Pulkovskaya and Neptune, while the four star Angleterre was marked as an elite-grade hotel, according to a Bekar real estate report. Three of the seven were built in the last three years.
 
&quot;The four-star market is not as dominated as the top end of St. Petersburg hotels which is firmly held by Orient Express [Grand Hotel Europe] and Rocco Forte [The Astoria] groups,&quot; Scott Antel, an analyst at Ernst &amp; Young , said from Moscow.
 Dmitry Machikhin, commercial director of The Ambassador, said the sector has less demand than three-star accommodation, but the returns can be greater, making it a good choice for the newcomers to the hotelier business.
 Hotels Petersburg, The Ambassador's management company that is backed by &quot;a group of about 20 Russian investors,&quot; has invested 28 million euros ($36.9 million) into the building of the 256-room hotel on Rimsky-Korsakov Ulitsa. It is planned as a &quot;serious long-term investment,&quot; Machikhin said.
 &quot;With the luxury hotel market quite tightly packed, we see that in St. Petersburg the [four-star] sector has large potential,&quot; he said. &quot;I think all the hotels [in that sector] will be in demand; there is enough business. It's actually a positive thing, the new openings; the city rather lacks hotel space in the high season.&quot;
 
 <strong>
CLIENTELE
 </strong>The Ambassador positions itself as a hotel catering for a broad market, splitting its attention evenly between corporate clientele from the U.S., Britain and Finland, and tour groups from Germany and Italy.
 
&quot;We don't want to focus strongly on either tourists or business people. Naturally, the seasonal culture of St. Petersburg does not allow for that,&quot; Machikhin said.
 The hotel will prices its rooms from $200 to $2,000-plus for a presidential suit during the high season. Among other services, Hotels Petersburg are looking to develop special tourist packages that will combine a visit to a museum, restaurant and theater as an exclusive day-trip deal that can be purchased only through the hotel.
 &quot;We are in the process of working closely with the [State] Russian Museum. [Such cooperation] will combine a stay at the hotel with a visit to the museum and an evening event there or, say, at the Mariinsky Theater,&quot; Machikhin said.
 A market segment that The Ambassador, being a Russian-owned company, can especially tap into is the large market of domestic tourists - a market that has not been specifically addressed as yet, even though &quot;there are many wealthy Russians who demand good quality accommodation,&quot; Machikhin said.
 Ernst &amp; Young's Antel said promotion will be important if The Ambassador is to attract this type of client: a key factor for the average customer is familiarity of hotel brand.
 &quot;Brand familiarity is a safety net for the average customer. A non-branded hotel is a chance experience,&quot; Antel said.
 Accor, the hotel chain entering the market in competition with Petersburg Hotels, certainly has that recognition. Accor currently manages 4,700 hotels in 90 countries, some of which it also owns.
 Edgar Pauly, general manager of the new Novotel in St. Petersburg that will open on Nevsky Prospekt, said his hotel is only the start of Accor's expansion into the city. The chain plans two four-star Novotels, three three-star Ibis brands, and a five-star Solitel to be opened in St. Petersburg within two years.
 &quot;This is nothing big for us,&quot; Pauly said, pointing to Accor's experience in Moscow as especially useful for starting out in the northern capital.
 The policy of the St. Petersburg Novotel will be to build a base of corporate customers, for whom regular year-round pricing and brand familiarity is important, Pauly said. 
 &quot;The hotel will keep a more even price policy than the usual on- and off-season imbalance, although in high season there is a big tourist demand, so you have to combine,&quot; Pauly said, although he did not reveal exact prices figures.
 &quot;I am not looking, unlike my competitors, to get as much as I can in high season and afterwards be begging [for clients] in winter,&quot; Pauly said. &quot;Novotel is about value for money.&quot;
 Accor's local partner, Russian Hotels, is very confident the chain can offer a product that gives Western standards at local prices.
 &quot;In St. Petersburg we count on taking a large amount of clients from large hotels that do not have Western management. We will offer better quality at the same price as hotels run by Russian firms,&quot; Vladimir Ilichyov, director of Russian Hotels, said from Moscow.
 An extra advantage to keeping high occupancy rates will be the relatively small size of the Novotel - just 232 rooms in contrast to the current behemoths of the Soviet era that number 800 rooms or more, Ilichyov said.
 
 <strong>
BRAND SECURITY
 </strong>Ernst &amp; Young's Antel said the strength of a chain and a network of clients and partners are things that international companies manage much better than Russian firms and they give them a competitive advantage.
 
&quot;[Brand hotels] have networks and the ability to get into the international travel market to ensure foreign bookings well in advance. I am not sure that an independent management company can do that,&quot; Antel said.
 Nikita Savoyarov, head of tourism consultancy ET Consult, said the experience of Russian-managed hotels has not always been successful.
 Savoyarov cites the case of the city's three-star Dostoevsky Hotel, which has changed management four times in recent years.
 &quot;A lot of people just don't realize what running a hotel requires. They think it looks easy, so it must be easy,&quot; Savoyarov said.
 Both analysts agreed that to form serious competition, The Ambassador will have to work hard on establishing the hotel on the international scene and not be afraid to innovate.
 &quot;Too often Russian-managed hotels have copied a Western product but could not move onto the next step. If something out of the ordinary happened they couldn't respond to it,&quot; Antel said.
 
 <strong>
HOME ADVANTAGE
 </strong>A factor that experts say could play to the Novotel's disadvantage is its modern appearance, a potential drawback for hotels in St. Petersburg, which is a city essentially renowned for its history.
 
&quot;When I'm in Petersburg, just because it is a classic city, I want to stay in a place that looks that way, rather than something very modern, unless it's really very exotic,&quot; Antel said.
 That could give The Ambassador a competitive edge, he added, if its promised fusion of old and new St. Petersburg blends into the cityscape.
 Novotel's Pauly was quick to refute the potential disadvantage. &quot;Not everything has to be an antique,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Skyscraper Projects Given the Green Light by City
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In a city built on low-lying marshes, skyscrapers would resemble castles in the sky. Yet now that St Petersburg's architects, engineers, and administrators are moving forward with specific proposals for high-rise construction within city limits, the technical challenges present only part of the dilemma.
 
The larger question is whether or not the planned high-rises irrevocably change the city's famed skyline and compromise the delicate urban and natural environment. 
 Just last week the city's legislative council voted in favor of a regulation that raises the maximal height of buildings on the Krestovsky and Kamenny islands from 12 meters to 28 meters.
 The debate over a precise upper limit stalled the legislative proposal for more than a year, Interfax reported.
 Though slowly, high-rise construction projects are starting to be approved by the city. Last year, the city's urban policy and architecture committee approved a project for two forty-story residential towers in the Moskovsky district, behind the building of the Russian National Library. 
 Meanwhile, developer Torgovy Dom (Trade House) is laying out a plan for a 42- to 46-story tower on the western part of the Vasilyevsky island. The complex, designed by St. Petersburg architect Timofei Sadovsky, will also include a nearby 15-story building connected to the tower by means of a multi-tiered ground platform.
 Billed as St Petersburg's first true skyscraper, the project is estimated to cost around $100 million and will entail four and half years of construction work. 
 In part, high-rise construction projects are emerging as a response to the consistently steep real estate prices, note industry analysts. Building higher is a sensible way to conserve space in a dense urban context.
 Vladimir Frolov, an architectural critic and editor-in-chief of Pod Klyuch, a design and architecture monthly, envisions a limited place for skyscrapers in the city's future development.
 &quot;It would be extremely inappropriate to build high-rise housing in the historical center, but it could function properly and effectively on the periphery,&quot; Frolov said.
 Moreover, expanding into the parkland and recreational areas on the Krestovsky and Kammeny islands - only a stone's throw away from the city center - could be an especially sensitive task.
 Aleksander Karpov, an expert on ecology and a professor at the Nevsky Institute of Language and Culture, said that &quot;development in these areas not only risks altering the visual environment but also undermines the natural setting.
 &quot;High-rises, after all, require infrastructure and space for vehicles. That would only drive out more people and limit the land's recreational use,&quot; Karpov said, adding that the inevitable rise in traffic caused by high rise building would eliminate the city's few remaining green spaces.
 Attempts at high-rise construction in St Petersburg date back to the mid-70s, when multi-storied residential complexes went up in the outlying areas of the city. Prior to that, the Construction Codex of 1844 prescribed a limit of 23.5 meters across the city, equal to the height of the Winter Palace.
 The more ambitious projects did not emerge until the 1990s. These included a botched attempt to erect the so-called &quot;Peter the Great Tower&quot; on the Vasilyevsky island early in the 1990s.
 A 25-story residential building next to the Prospekt Bolshevikov metro station, recently completed by building firm Petrotrest, is the city's only high-rise structure to date.
 In 2004 the city administration adopted new building regulations which in effect partitioned St Petersburg into six zones. The limit on the upper range of construction was still pegged to 23.5 meters in the center, but the curb decreased toward the city's periphery, reaching an absence of any cutoff mark in the suburbs. 
 In addition to the aesthetic and environmental considerations, there remains the challenge of building on the city's highly unstable drained marshland. Despite the proven modern methods of construction, Aleksandr Karpov doubts these techniques will be fully implemented.
 &quot;At least in our context, there is a disparity between the theoretical aspects of construction and its practical execution,&quot; he said. According to Vladimir Frolov, the decision to proceed with high-rises in St Petersburg becomes a question of almost historical proportions.
 &quot;The silhouette of the city is unique and inviolable. Urban planners and decision makers should keep in mind how history will treat them in this regard,&quot; he said.

TITLE: New Law Sets to Protect Residential Housing Investors
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The government has passed a new law to protect the interests of people who invest in ongoing residential construction.
 
To satisfy the multiple claims of investors against what they see as the unrestricted behaviour of construction companies, the State Duma ratified the law &quot;On interest-holder rights in residential construction,&quot; to come into force on April 1.
 Effectively, the law sets out to regulate the relation between those who invest in new apartment blocks before they are built (the <i>dolshchiki</i>)<i> </i>and the builders, but industry insiders say the actual result could be a stifling of the construction market. 
 &quot;The law is very complex,&quot; Alexander Vakhmistrov, St. Petersburg's deputy governor, said Monday to Nevastroika news agency.
 &quot;As an idea I am glad that such a law has appeared as an instrument to protect the rights of investors. However, it is so one-sided - exclusively on the side of the <i>dolshchiki </i>investors,&quot; Vakhmistrov said.
 He added that before the law was passed, investors had virtually no rights and were running a tremendous risk by investing in property to be built by - as has sometimes been the case - rogue construction companies.
 &quot;However, now the builders lose their rights,&quot; Vakhmistrov said.
 At present, one of the most widespread ways to buy an apartment in a residential block that is under construction is to sign an investment contract.
 Investors pay part of the price of an apartment (about 20 percent to 30 percent of the total cost) before the construction work begins. The rest of the money for the apartment is paid on a monthly or quarterly basis during the construction period.
 Under such terms the price of an apartment is lower than after the residential block is completed, as well as allowing future flat owners to invest into their property gradually instead of paying one lump sum.
 Although it is essentially the investors' money that makes construction possible, their legal position has been dependent on the construction company, sharing all the risks from natural disasters to local authority certification.
 The law nominates the major risks related to construction overwhelmingsly as the responsibility of the construction firms.
 
 <strong>
INVESTOR PROBLEMS
 </strong>The story of <i>dolshchiki </i>investors has been chartered with numerous cases of rogue dealings on the part of construction firms.
 
Several callers to The St. Petersburg Times, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, described situations where building firms asked investors for extra, unplanned payments totalling as much as 100,000 rubles ($3,610) for an extra escalator or a redesign of flower beds.
 In other incidents, investors described that despite full or partial payment they moved into an apartment where another person was already claiming ownership; construction was stopped due to lack of funds; or rogue firms made off with the money before an apartment block was completed.
 Furthermore, investors named situations in which certain construction companies demanded for them to wave the right to protection under the Law on Consumer Rights in the investor contract.
 &quot;In the end you sort of hope that everything turns out okay, although you are in a bit of a limbo,&quot; one woman who would only be identified as Victoria told The St. Petersburg Times.
 
 <strong>
FIRMER RIGHTS
 </strong>While many construction firms agree that the new law will offer stronger protection for investors into ongoing residential construction, they see it as the legislation's only positive aspect.
 
Director of Stroimontage, Viktor Lebedev points out that the option for building firms to raise capital are now drastically reduced.
 &quot;Many construction companies do not have the necessary assets to get big loans from the banks,&quot; Lebedev said.
 Turning the tables on investor arguments, Lebedev says that in protecting investors the law will also cover those who cannot meet their side of the agreement with the investors.
 &quot;Construction companies, if the investor is financially insolvent, will now have to go to courts as the only way of solving the problem. And the Russian courts are known to be proverbially slow,&quot; he said.
 Making the investor have the so-called upper hand is bound to lead to higher construction costs, argues Aleksei Begunov, director of Bekar real estate agency.
 &quot;With adoption of the new law the construction costs will rise up to 30 percent. Construction companies will need to rely on a larger scale on their own funds, as well as bank loans, at the early stages,&quot; Begunov said.
 He also sees an increase in the risk on behalf of the building companies, a factor that will add to rising costs and possibly rule out smaller companies from the market. The new law, however, is less likely to affect those companies, such as RBI or Skanska, that have developed stable relationships with their banks.
 As a result it will be mainly the larger companies that remain on the market because they can finance their future projects much easier, Stroimontage's Lebedev concluded.
 <strong>
RISE IN FLAT PRICES?
 </strong>Just because construction company costs grow, there is no reason to fear a rise in residential housing prices, says Konstantin Aprelev, vice-president of the Russian Guild of Realtors.
 
&quot;If a builder increases the price, he just will not find any clients. Very likely the construction companies will have to lower the prices [pre-paid residential apartments] to remain competitive with the prices of completed housing and mortgages. Thanks to the law, [the latter options] will become less expensive,&quot; Aprelev said.
 In general, the slowdown in the price boom has been a long-coming tendency on the housing market, Aprelev says. 
 From a 45 percent rise in prices for housing in Moscow, the tempo is expected to lower to just 15 percent by this year, he said.
 Many in the real estate sector welcome the expected stability, a platform on which a mortgage loan culture could become more popular, as it is in Europe or the U.S.
 The view is not altogether supported by members of the construction industry. 
 Stroimontage's Lebedev did not believe the new law could provide for a mortgage environment given the country's current economic conditions.
 &quot;While full one-time payment in the future will play a bigger role, I am not so optimistic about mortgage deals,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Investors of the World, Here's the Word on Putin Inc.
TEXT: In recent weeks, President Vladimir Putin's politics have generated most of the worry in the West. He has been cutting welfare benefits for veterans and pensioners, clamping down on free media and meddling in the Ukrainian election. Even President Bush, who badly needs the Kremlin's cooperation in combating terrorism, the spread of nuclear weapons and narcotics trafficking, gently chided Mr. Putin about maintaining democratic standards when the two met in Bratislava last week.
 
But the president's concerns about democratic principles may miss the larger point. The real threat to Russia's future could lie in the economy. For now, its gross domestic product is booming, it boasts a budget surplus and a windfall from record high oil prices. But it is pursuing a model of corrupt, state-managed capitalism, economists and political analysts say, that is inimical to democracy and could condemn its economy to perpetual third world status.
 Many here believe the turning point was reached last December, when Russia renationalized one of its largest private oil fields in a deal that Andrei Illarionov, an outspoken Kremlin aide, acidly called &quot;the swindle of the year.&quot;
 The transaction was an offshoot of the Yukos affair, the Russian government's campaign to dismember what was once Russia's largest private oil company and jail its billionaire founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Having staggered the company with a questionable $28 billion tax bill, the Kremlin seized the oil fields and auctioned them for about half their worth.
 The winner, a state-owned business named Rosneft, overnight joined the ranks of Russia's top oil companies.
 Big oil fields changing hands at a cut-rate price recalls the rigged privatizations of Russia's robber baron era in the 1990's. But instead, it was the Kremlin cutting this deal, a parallel that for some here crystallized thinking on Mr. Putin's course for the country.
 &quot;Today, by our own decisions, we have done what is now, regrettably, clear to the outside world - we opted for the third world,&quot; Mr. Illarionov said after the auction. &quot;We used to see street hustlers do this kind of thing,&quot; snapped Mr. Illarionov, who until recently was among Mr. Putin's most fervent supporters. &quot;Now officials are doing it.&quot;
 A few days later, he was relieved of his duties as Russia's Group of 8 representative; he still has an office in the Kremlin.
 Exactly what Mr. Illarionov meant by third world is unclear. He would seem to be pointing to the developing world of the 1960's and 70's, with state-directed investment and rampant cronyism, rather than the more free market approach that became popular in the 1980's and 90's.
 But the point was made. Instead of embracing free-market capitalism, Russia has veered away: renationalizing oil assets, weakening property rights and signaling to foreign investors that their millions - and their presence - are not entirely welcome.
 &quot;Illarionov was being colorful,&quot; said John Litwack, head of the Moscow office of the World Bank. &quot;But if that is the new model - to destroy assets, expropriate the company and put the industrialist in jail - and if it's repeated, that's different than just renationalization. That's an environment more like the third world.&quot;
 Even a former prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, who was dumped by Mr. Putin in 2003 and has talked about challenging him in 2008, told the Interfax news agency last week that the country &quot;has taken the wrong turn, which harms the country's economic and social development.&quot;
 Economists say it is uncertainty that is most damaging. Building blocks of a free market system - the courts, the tax agencies and law enforcement - have been corrupted during Mr. Putin's second term and by the Yukos case in particular, undermining investor confidence.
 Russia's tax authorities, used by the Kremlin to undermine Yukos, have gone on a rampage. VimpelCom, the country's No. 3 cellphone company, was served with a tax bill of $158 million late last year, linked by some Russian media reports to a vendetta by the telecommunications minister (who reportedly has investments in a competing company). Vimpelcom whittled that bill down to $17 million, but only after the intervention of the Norwegian government, whose state phone company Telenor is an investor.
 After a privately run airport here, Domodedovo, showed remarkable profit growth in a recent regulatory filing, its long-term lease was canceled by the government, which then asked to renegotiate at more favorable terms.
 Russia's business community now seems to worry that the government will muscle in on any profits, a tactic labeled &quot;tax terrorism,&quot; by Yevgeny Yasin, former minister of economics under Boris Yeltsin, and currently the director of Russia's Higher School of Economics.
 So if not Western-style, free-market capitalism, exactly what economic model is Russia embracing?
 Pre-Yukos, some analysts said, Mr. Putin seemed to be following the path of Chile, Singapore and China - a strong central government, a credible partnership with the business elite, a pruning of the influence of state-sponsored monopolies and crony capitalism.
 Post-Yukos, Russia's path is unknown. Some believe it may end up mimicking 20th-century Mexico, where the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, used its control of the national oil and gas company, Pemex, to maintain power for decades. &quot;Pemex could be the model for Gazprom and Mr. Putin's party, United Russia,&quot; said Michael J. Economides, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Houston and co-author of &quot;The Color of Oil.&quot;
 Still others say that Russia is finding its own way. &quot;Russia's model is not Asian, not European and not Latin American,&quot; said Alasdair Breach, chief strategist at Brunswick UBS investment bank. &quot;It doesn't quite fit any of those categories. Hunting for a model is useful, but to find a direct comparison is impossible.&quot;
 In any case, the Kremlin is re-evaluating the welcome sign once hung out for foreign investors, partly by taking control of some of the commanding heights.
 &quot;Given that the Kremlin has succeeded in concentrating power, the worry is they're enjoying it for its own sake,&quot; said Mr. Litwack of the World Bank. &quot;There's no proof you have to be an open democracy or free market to attract investment. But you have to create conditions for investors.&quot;
 And, many here believe, for democracy.
 
 <i>
Erin E. Arvedlund is a staff writer at The New York Times, where this article first appeared. </i>

TITLE: Protesting Drivers for Hire
TEXT: The Kremlin finally heeded the demands of a very special group of protesters last month. 
 
No, they weren't pensioners. The demonstrations protesting the end of social benefits resulted in arrests and the general indifference of the government, which mumbled something to the effect that next time, &quot;we'll keep it in mind.&quot;
 At another recent protest, Beslan residents demanded the resignation of the president of North Ossetia, Alexander Dzasokhov. The authorities sicced the police on them. State Duma deputies declared that the demonstrators in Beslan had become the tools of political forces hostile to the regime.
 And don't even get me started about what happened in Karachayevo-Cherkessia. What deal did presidential envoy Dmitry Kozak make with those who occupied the main government building in Cherkessk? He agreed not to prosecute them. What were they accusing the president of Karachayevo-Cherkessia of doing? Merely dividing up some property with a little help from his son-in-law who apparently shot seven people. What were his enemies and the other protesters accused of? They were guilty of the unforgivable: They rose up against the regime's basic instincts.
 To make a long story short, wherever protests were spontaneous and whenever they made sense, the Kremlin responded by punishing demonstrators.
 Things were very different last Thursday. All across Russia, transportation workers protested in perfect unison, demanding that fuel prices be regulated by the state. Various trade unions organized these demonstrations, unions that have been headed by the same leader since the Soviet era, Viktor Mokhnachev.
 And what do you know? Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov greeted the protesters and immediately agreed to their demands. What were these demands, you might ask? Well, naturally, the demonstrators insisted that the state form some kind of new agency that would regulate fuel prices. Unfortunately, the protesting drivers' math was a bit off. Fuel prices have not doubled in the last year, as they claimed, but in the last four years, rising slower than the average inflation rate.
 Russia's professional drivers, however, apparently yearn for a new state agency. They are not concerned about the traffic police, though the police, who have finally cast aside all pretense of honesty, are taking a big bite out of transportation companies' profits. Drivers are not worried about special lanes for state officials or the extremely bizarre law on mandatory liability insurance. No, the protesters were unfazed by all the hassles that generally frustrate Russian drivers. The highly disciplined trade unionists wanted one thing: for the state to set up a new agency.
 They are not the only ones making unusual demands. After the Beslan tragedy, carefully orchestrated demonstrations featured protesters with signs exclaiming, &quot;Central Bank! Get Russia's Gold Reserves out of U.S. Banks!&quot;
 But here's the most amusing aspect of the transportation workers' protests: They began in the Primorye region, where drivers cruised through Vladivostok with banners saying &quot;Oligarchs, Keep Your Hands Out of Drivers' Pockets!&quot; The caravan consisted mostly of tractor trailers. What do these trucks usually bring into Primorye? You guessed it: goods from China. And of course, these goods are often contraband. 
 Contraband is a great moneymaker. Back when Yevgeny Nazdratenko was still governor, private companies moving goods over the border raked in as much as a million dollars per day. Nowadays, the business elite in Primorye think of Governor Sergei Darkin as the big boss in this business. It's hard to believe that Darkin and company can't afford to pay for gas.
 I, of course, understand that the newly approved Darkin has likely had some extra expenses of late. It's no small thing to be appointed governor.
 
 <i>Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio. </i>

TITLE: The Shape of Strings to Come
TEXT: Along with the replacement of in-kind benefits with cash payments that sparked nationwide protests, several other reforms began to bear fruit recently, including the transition to appointed, as opposed to popularly elected, governors. In late January and in February, President Vladimir Putin recommended nine candidates for governor. Some of them, such as Sergei Darkin in Primorye, Sergei Sobyanin in Tyumen, Nikolai Vinogradov in Vladimir and Leonid Korotkov in the Amur region have already successfully received their rubber-stamp approval from local legislatures, while others still have this minor formality ahead of them. There is actually little doubt that regional deputies will approve the president's anointed candidates, at the very least out of a desire for self-preservation, even if they have little love for the candidate himself.
 
With one exception - the governor of Saratov region - the president has offered regional legislatures only incumbents so far. This only goes to show how on the mark many predictions about the reforms have proven. The issue is clearly not one of getting the right people, but one of establishing the right relationships and strict subordination to the center. Thus, the Kremlin's stated justifications for the reform - that general elections resulted in too many mistakes and that there are too many corrupt and shady characters among the governors - simply do not hold water. Either that, or the authorities are placing their bets on folks who have compromised their reputations in some way, as they will be more dependent on the Kremlin and the siloviki. It's also interesting that the Kremlin seems to see nothing at all idiosyncratic about supporting previously red governors like Vinogradov and Kursk's Alexander Mikhailov and then nominating people with past ties to Yukos such as Khanty-Mansiisk's Alexander Filipenko and Evenkia's Boris Zolotaryov.
 One can't help but wonder to what extent current Saratov Governor Dmitry Ayatskov's failure to be nominated by the president will set a precedent for the selection of gubernatorial appointees. This wouldn't be the first time Saratov has served as a precedent, by the way. In 1996, it was the first region to hold general elections for governor. On one hand, the two candidates proposed by presidential envoy Sergei Kiriyenko - Pavel Ipatov, director of the local nuclear power plant, and Yury Zelensky, head of the regional Central Bank branch - are members neither of the ruling elite nor of the oppositional elite. They are both high-ranking managers in the highly centralized pyramids of Rosenergoatom and the Central Bank. Perhaps this reflects nothing more than Kiriyenko's personal predilections. 
 On the other hand, Saratov is a large and well-known region that is well represented in Moscow: Two deputy chairs in the State Duma defend its interests. One of them, former Vice Governor Vyacheslav Volodin, was thought to be the leading contender for the post. Bearing this in mind, it would seem that candidate selection has less to do with the presidential envoy and more to do with the Kremlin. If this is indeed the case, then, apparently, old public figures who came into their own under former President Boris Yeltsin are being cleared from the political playing field. Instead, the Kremlin is going for bureaucratic managers, and not for public politicians. 
 The mechanism behind gubernatorial nominations has evolved in an interesting way. The presidential envoy selects two candidates, one of whom is clearly the understudy. Both candidacies are announced publicly. In the only case when the powers that be decided to change the governor, the envoy consulted various people in the region for hours on end before announcing his picks. In contrast to what many observers noted initially, few governors are particularly inclined to step down before the end of their terms and ask to be reappointed by the president. More exactly, the only governors who seemed unable to wait out the last few months were in Primorye and Kursk. In Tyumen, the Jewish autonomous region and Amur region, though they did indeed ask the president for his seal of approval, the incumbent governors did so at the very end of their terms. 
 Perhaps this is merely due to the novelty of the procedure, but Putin continues to meet personally with reappointed governors a week or so before he officially presents them as candidates to the regional legislatures. There were only two exceptions to this trend, namely Tyumen's Sobyanin and Evenkia's Zolotaryov, who had already met with the president late last year to discuss merging regions. And then there's Vinogradov from Vladimir, whom Putin met with the day after Vinogradov was nominated. But then again, Vinogradov was putting together a report on administrative reform for the next State Council meeting.
 So what's next? By the end of the year, 14 more governors will have to seek reappointment, with the majority of the leaders' terms ending at the very end of the year. Among the most notable of this year's crop are Samara's Konstantin Titov, Tula's Vasily Starodubtsev and Nizhnigorodsk's Gennady Khodyrev, whose terms will end this spring or summer. All three governors seem poised to lose their posts. The first appointments in autonomous ethnic republics will come in December 2005 and January 2006, when the leaders of Komi, South Ossetia, Chuvashia and Sakha will come under Putin's stern gaze. And soon it will be Tatarstan and Dagestan's turns as well. This is precisely when the system of appointed governors will face its first real test and be able to demonstrate its effectiveness. Since the reforms began, the Kremlin has been lucky in a very important way. By starting off with the regions that are easier to manage, it has a chance to prepare with utmost care for the tougher cases that lie ahead. 
 The system will undergo yet another, more important test that will prove the effectiveness not of appointing governors, but of the governors themselves. This will come before the presidential election in 2008. Then we will see whether the appointed governors will stay put after the election or be replaced by others. Something of this sort regularly happens in Ukraine.
 
 <i>Nikolai Petrov is a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Self-Serving Business Won't Benefit Society at Large
TEXT: Recently democratic opponents of the Kremlin's policies have initiated a discussion about how they should behave. The discussion is in many ways reminiscent of the one that took place in the late 1980s during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika. Just as then, democratic people are revisiting a range of questions that we could call &quot;The Intelligentsia and the Revolution,&quot; &quot;Is it acceptable for decent people to work in the government,&quot; &quot;How should one behave in the enemy camp? Should one tirelessly criticize the government's decisions, aiming to reach a revolutionary fever or call on the state to reform, which means to praise the good moves and criticize the bad?&quot; The themes are so broad that I will have time to address only one aspect.
 
Last week I discussed the conflict of the governors of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast with national power grid Unified Energy Systems over Lenenergo's investment plan. The governors were not happy with UES's plan to halve to amount the utility would spend on repairs and new infrastructure in the city and the oblast in 2005. Such cuts would at worst put an end to the economic development of the administrative regions, or at least seriously slow them down. Currently the state that Lenenergo is in hampers regional development in that the local authorities have to put up land for sale which does not have engineering infrastructure. Lenenergo does not manage to set up the electricity in time. It barely manages to keep up with connecting new constructions, and the volume of power is far beyond what the electric substations can handle anyway. Thus the cuts in the investment program of Lenenergo are capable of leading to a crisis in residential and commercial construction.
 And why are they proposing such cuts? In order to increase the profit of shareholders (among whom is the Russian state). That is to say that a natural monopoly is being managed as if it is a normal commercial company and must make a profit at any price. And this is despite the fact that it is quite clear that such a monopoly cannot possibly be directed at returning a profit. City governor Valentina Matviyenko is quite right to accuse the UES directors of unstatesmanlike behavior.
 It should be said that Andrei Likhachyov, the general director of Lenenergo, understands the situation and has prepared an investment program that matches the needs of the city and oblast. But he has been contradicted by his bosses, specifically the chairman of Lenenergo's board of directors, Mikhail Abyzov. Abyzov's policy has been confirmed by the management of UES, which is headed by Anatoly Chubais, one of the most famous liberals in the government.
 Chubais wants to raise the efficiency of UES's regional subsidiaries. The effect has been that instead of cutting down expenses, the directors have reduced levels of investment. And it is clear that this causes little concern to Chubais. As a result a conflict has arisen between Chubais and Likhachyov, who, by the way, is also a famous liberal. In the recent past he was a leader of the city's Union of Right Forces. 
 By now it is obvious that no reforms from above are capable of modernizing Russia. The country can become more like the developed world only through grassroot reforms - the appearance of self-managed housing services that give control to the communities in the manner that Gleb Tyurin has applied in the Arkhangelsk region. Small and medium-sized business must develop. For that to occur, it is not the political parties that need financing - their efforts are quite puny. Instead developments should be directed to favorable economic conditions which will help the infrastructure of regions to grow. Plus there needs to be direct cooperation with progressive governors, including Matviyenko and the oblast governor Valery Serdyukov, who are after all working on the behalf of business.
 Likhachyov understands all this and does work with the governors. Chubais, in contrast, interferes and bars the way. And who is least happy with this situation? It's not the governors, but private businesses: builders, developers, commercial investors, retail chains, private companies providing communal housing services etc. It is they who are putting pressure on the governors to develop infrastructure. It is they who have taken up the challenge to make Russia a modern, developed country. And Chubais blocks the way for all of them. So what is his goal then? What is the purpose of his involvement in government?
 Chubais has been in a similar position before. It was in 1997 when he was the first deputy prime minister. Together with Alexei Kudrin he created the 1998 financial crisis based on the pyramid of GKOs (when the then president Boris Yeltsin demanded that money for pensions and state beneficiaries be found at any price.) Now the situation is repeating itself - in the name of some unspecified goal (probably apparent only to himself) Chubais is sacrificing the interests of society. So who are you Mr Chubais? Judging by your recent history a man no better or worse than Roman Abramovich or Oleg Deripaska.
 
 <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: Global Eye
TEXT: Sex, sex, sex - how it haunts the damp and fervid dreams of the Bushist Party faithful. And nowhere more so than in the depths of Dixie, where stout Christian soldiers were singing hosannas last week after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their righteous warfare against the foulest form of evil in the modern world:
 
Genital stimulators.
 After prayerful consideration, the Supremes refused to hear challenges to an Alabama law that forbids the sale or distribution of &quot;any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs,&quot; Reuters reports. The law was aimed not only at public vendors of sexual enhancement but also at the growing number of private &quot;Tupperware-style parties,&quot; where suburbanites gather to peruse the latest marriage-goosing gadgets.
 But let's be fair. In their compassionate conservatism, the Bama Bushists did provide some exceptions to their iron grip on the state's genitals. For example, the law generously allows the sale of sexual devices &quot;for a bona fide ... legislative, judicial or law enforcement purpose.&quot; Here the mind reels (and the stomach turns): What on God's earth could possibly constitute, say, a bona fide &quot;legislative&quot; use of the &quot;vibrators, dildos, anal beads&quot; and other stimulators covered by the law?
 On second thought, don't ask. Instead, let's just rejoice in the knowledge that, thanks to the Supreme Court, Alabama politicians, judges and sheriffs can diddle themselves to their heart's content with all manner of manipulators, while your ordinary desperate housewife will have to do without them.
 Yet as we all know - and as the state of Alabama itself acknowledged when confronted with statistics from the law's challengers - the vast majority of the now-banned Bama buzzers were sold to good ol' gals, most of them in down-home, red-meat, church-blessed heterosexual marriages. The salt of the earth, in other words - the only kind of people worthy of full citizenship in Bushist philosophy. So why were these exemplary matrons targeted by the mullahs in Montgomery? That question leads us to another curious lacuna in the law - a gap mirrored in similar sex-toy restrictions in Georgia and George W. Bush's home state of Texas.
 As the challengers pointed out - and the Supremes ignored - the state's crusade against artificial exciters somehow failed to include Viagra, Levitra and other chemical erector sets designed to address male shortcomings in the pleasure department. 
 Now, it would be uncharitable to conclude from this that the Bushists have, shall we say, special needs in this regard. Although it's true they exhibit a strange fascination for big missiles, military uniforms and naked Arab men in chains, we don't mean to suggest that they need outside help to achieve a more normative sexual response to a woman. 
 No, the real reason why girl toys are banned while boy boosters get greenlighted is simple: The laws in Bush's Texas and like-minded states aren't actually designed to restrict sexual aids as such. They are meant to clamp down on the sexual pleasure of women in particular. They are part of Bush's worldwide war against women, which we have often detailed here - a war in which the Bushists are allied with their putative enemies, the radical Islamists. These two groups share an overwhelming fear of the freedom and inviolability of a woman's body, her ability to control her own sexuality and fertility. This freedom threatens social, cultural, political, economic and even psychological structures that in some cases go back thousands of years. It is this idea, that of woman's autonomy, which is the true crux of modernity; it is the real dividing line - not technology, ideology or the much-vaunted &quot;clash of civilizations.&quot;
 This profound upheaval has provoked fierce, panicky and often violent resistance. To his shame, Bush has aligned America time and again with misogynist bastions like Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Libya in opposing international efforts to guarantee the rights of women. Even as we speak, Bush operatives are trying to blow up the landmark 1995 international agreement on the status of women, when the nations of the world pledged themselves to establishing women's equality in all areas of life, including health, education, employment and political participation. It also declared that women should be able to &quot;decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality ... free of coercion, discrimination and violence.&quot;
 But the Bushists clearly don't want women's sexuality to be free of coercion, discrimination and violence. That's why they are sandbagging the 10-year review of the 1995 declaration, now underway at an international conference in Beijing, The Associated Press reports. Bush is refusing to reaffirm the declaration unless draconian language is added to ensure that the agreement &quot;does not create any new international human rights,&quot; as the Bushists put it. In other words, a little fancy talk about equality is fine - as long as it doesn't actually change anything, as long as the coercion and violence can go on.
 This is all of a piece with Bush's savage elimination of U.S. funding for women's health clinics in the poorest regions on earth. For want of this indispensable American aid - mere pittances that wouldn't fund a single hour of Bush's rape of Iraq - clinic after clinic has been forced to close, destroying the only source of medical treatment and reproductive health care for the most vulnerable women in the world. It has been a literal death sentence for thousands of women - and their infants - in the past four years: a silent holocaust created at the stroke of Bush's pen.
 The bedroom farce in Alabama - sweaty-palmed pols in a tizzy over vibrators - may be an amusing bit of provincial comedy. But it masks a sinister tragedy of global proportions.
 
 <i>
For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: Chinese Law Raises Tension With Taiwan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING - China unveiled a law Tuesday authorizing an attack if Taiwan moves toward formal independence, increasing pressure on the self-ruled island while warning other countries not to interfere. Taiwan denounced the legislation as a &quot;blank check to invade&quot; and announced war games aimed at repelling an attack.
 
The proposed anti-secession law, read out for the first time before the ceremonial National People's Congress, doesn't say what specific actions might invite a Chinese attack.
 &quot;If possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ nonpeaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity,&quot; Wang Zhaoguo, deputy chairman of the NPC's Standing Committee, told the nearly 3,000 legislators gathered in the Great Hall of the People.
 Beijing claims Taiwan, split from China since 1949, as part of its territory. The communist mainland repeatedly has threatened to invade if Taiwan tries to make its independence permanent, and the new law doesn't impose any new conditions or make new threats. But it lays out for the first time legal requirements for military action.
 Taiwan's leaders warned that the move could backfire by angering the island's voting public.
 Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, which handles the island's China policy, said the law gives China's military &quot;a blank check to invade Taiwan&quot; and &quot;exposed the Chinese communists' attempt to use force to annex Taiwan and to be a regional power.&quot;
 &quot;Our government lodges strong protest against the vicious attempt and brutal means... to block Taiwanese from making their free choice,&quot; the council said in a statement.
 Taiwanese Defense Ministry spokesman Liu Chih-chien said large-scale military exercises would be held from mid-April to August to build confidence in the island's military preparedness. Troops will practice knocking down Chinese missiles and fighting communist commandos.
 Mainland lawmakers immediately expressed support for the measure, which is sure to be approved when they vote March 14. The NPC routinely approves all legislation already decided by Communist Party leaders.
 &quot;We must join hands and absolutely not allow Taiwan to separate from China,&quot; said Chang Houchun, a businessman and NPC member from southern China's Guangdong province. Chinese officials say the law was prompted in part by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's plans for a referendum on a new constitution for the island that Beijing worries might include a declaration of independence.
 Chen says the vote would be aimed at building a better political system, not at formalizing Taiwan's de facto independence.
 The proposed law says Beijing regards Taiwan's future as an internal Chinese matter, rejecting &quot;any interference by outside forces.&quot;
 &quot;Every sovereign state has the right to use necessary means to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,&quot; said Wang.
 The law says China's Cabinet and the government's Central Military Commission &quot;are authorized to decide on and execute nonpeaceful means and nonpeaceful measures.&quot;
 The United States has appealed to both sides to settle Taiwan's status peacefully, with no unilateral changes by either side. Washington is Taiwan's main arms supplier and could be drawn into any conflict.
 In Taipei, Chen Chin-jun, a legislative leader of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, said the island wants peace and trade with China.
 However, he said, &quot;We will not accept any resolution to allow the Chinese Communists to unilaterally decide Taiwan's future, and it will only antagonize the Taiwanese.&quot;
 China and Taiwan have no official ties and most direct travel and shipping between the two sides is banned. But Taiwanese companies have invested more than $100 billion in the mainland and the two sides carry on thriving indirect trade.
 Until recently, China's military was thought to be incapable of carrying out an invasion across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait. But Beijing has spent billions of dollars buying Russian-made submarines, destroyers and other high-tech weapons to extend the reach of the 2.5 million-member People's Liberation Army.
 Chinese leaders have appealed in recent months for Taiwan to return to talks on unification. But they insist that Taiwanese leaders first declare that the two sides are &quot;one China&quot; - a condition that Chen has rejected.
 In an apparent attempt to calm Taiwanese public anxiety, Wang said the law promises that Chinese military forces would try to avoid harming Taiwanese civilians. He said the rights of Taiwanese on China's mainland also would be protected.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Men Can Take Heart
 </b>

BOSTON (Reuters) - Taking a baby aspirin may prevent heart attacks in men, but it does little to ward off a first heart attack in women aged 45 to 64, researchers reported on Monday.
 However, the low-dose aspirin therapy widely recommended for both men and women may reduce the risk of stroke caused by a blocked blood vessel in the brain, according to the findings.
 The results do not apply to people who are taking aspirin because they have already survived a heart attack.
 
 
<b>Jackson Accused
 </b>

SANTA MARIA, California (Reuters) - A 14-year-old boy told jurors in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial on Monday that he twice saw the pop star masturbating himself and groping his sleeping brother, the first testimony in the case that directly implicates Jackson of sex abuse.
 The boy, whose now 15-year-old brother made the accusations at the heart of the case against Jackson, said he witnessed the disturbing scene on two nights in February or March of 2003, while climbing stairs to the superstar's Neverland Valley Ranch bedroom.
 
<b>Pope Delegates
 </b>

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope John Paul, who is in hospital recovering from surgery, has for the first time in his papacy delegated senior cardinals to preside at nearly all the Easter season ceremonies which he normally leads.
 A program issued by the Vatican Tuesday showed that the frail 84-year-old Pope was only scheduled to deliver his traditional blessing on Easter Sunday.
 But the Easter Sunday Mass itself will be presided over by cardinals.
 
 
<b>Prison Fire
 </b>

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Reuters) - A fight between rival gangs led to a fire that swept through an overcrowded Dominican Republic prison on Monday, killing 133 inmates in the deadliest prison incident in the Caribbean country's history, officials said. The disaster cast a grim spotlight on inmates' conditions in the Dominican Republic, where prisons are chronically overcrowded.
 
 
<b>Fischer in Check
 </b>

TOKYO (Reuters) - Lawyers for chess grand master Bobby Fischer are holding a newly issued Icelandic passport for him, but officials said on Tuesday his release from an immigration detention centre northeast of Tokyo is no closer.
 The former world chess champion is fighting deportation from Japan to the United States, where he is wanted for violating sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing a chess match there in 1992. He has been in custody in Japan since being arrested last July for travelling on an invalid U.S. passport.
 
 
<b>Anti-Smoking Drug
 </b>

GROTON, Connecticut (AP) - Researchers are racing to develop a potentially lucrative drug that would make smoking as treatable as erectile dysfunction.
 Major pharmaceutical companies and small startups see the potential for billions of dollars in sales for a vaccine that could end addiction at the chemical level for America's 50 million smokers.
 "It's the biggest addiction market there is," said Dr. Herbert D. Kleber, a psychiatry professor and addiction researcher at Columbia University. "Is it realistic to be able to help addicts stop smoking and remain off with a pill? I think the answer is yes and we're working on a number of them."

TITLE: Scan Reveals King Tut Was Not Murdered
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAIRO, Egypt - The results of a CT scan done on King Tut's mummy indicate the boy king was not murdered, but may have suffered a badly broken leg shortly before his death at age 19 - a wound that could have become infected, Egypt's top archaeologist said Tuesday.
 
Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the results of the CT scan about two months after it was performed on Tut's mummy.
 Hawass said the remains of Tutankhamun, who ruled about 3,300 years ago, showed no signs that he had been murdered - dispelling a mystery that has long surrounded the pharaoh's death.
 &quot;In answer to theories that Tutankhamun was murdered, the team found no evidence for a blow to the back of the head, and no other indication of foul play,&quot; according to a statement released Tuesday by Egyptian authorities.
 &quot;They also found it extremely unlikely that he suffered an accident in which he crushed his chest.&quot;
 Hawass said some members of the Egyptian-led research team, which included two Italian experts and one from Switzerland, interpreted a fracture to Tut's left thighbone as evidence that the king may have broken his leg badly just before he died.
 &quot;Although the break itself would not have been life-threatening, infection might have set in,&quot; the statement said. &quot;However, this part of the team believes it also possible, although less likely, that this fracture was caused by the embalmers.&quot;
 &quot;I believe these results will close the case of Tutankhamun, and the king will not need to be examined again,&quot; Hawass said. &quot;We should now leave him at rest. I am proud that this work was done, and done well.&quot;
 Tutankhamun's short life has fascinated people since his tomb was discovered in 1922 in the fabled Valley of the Kings in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor by a British archaeologist, Howard Carter. The find revealed a trove of fabulous treasures in gold and precious stones that showed the wealth and craftsmanship of the Pharaonic court.
 Hawass had long refused to allow DNA testing on Tut's remains and only agreed to perform a noninvasive CT scan on the mummy, which has since been returned to its tomb. The CT machine was brought from Germany and donated by Siemens and National Geographic.
 The study, which was the first CT scan on a member of Egypt's ancient royalty, showed that Tut was of a slight build, well-fed and healthy and suffered no major childhood malnutrition or infectious diseases.
 The boy king also had a slight cleft palate, which was not however associated with an external expression, like a hair-lip, or other facial deformities.
 He also had large incisor teeth and the typical overbite characteristic of other kings from his family. 
 His lower teeth were also slightly misaligned.

TITLE: Pro-Syrian Lobby Gathers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT, Lebanon - Tens of thousands of pro-Syrian protesters gathered in a central Beirut on Tuesday, answering a nationwide call by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group for a demonstration to counter weeks of massive rallies demanding Syrian forces leave Lebanon.
 Loudspeakers blared songs of resistance and organizers handed out Lebanese flags and directed the men and women to separate sections of the square. Black-clad Hezbollah guards handled security, lining the perimeter of the square and taking position on rooftops. Trained dogs sniffed for bombs.
 Large cranes hoisted two giant white and red flags bearing Lebanon's cedar tree. On one, the words &quot;Thank you Syria&quot; were written in English; on the other, &quot;No to foreign interference.&quot; At least 50,000 demonstrators had gathered and more were expected to arrive.
 The square was just a few blocks from another downtown square where opposition protesters have been staging protests for days, demanding that Syria withdraw the 14,000 troops it maintains in Lebanon.
 A day after the Syrian and Lebanese leaders announced that the forces would redeploy to eastern Lebanon, most of the troops were still in position, with Associated Press reporters in the mountains overlooking Beirut seeing only scattered movement of military trucks heading toward the Bekaa Valley.
 Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group, has been mobilizing its followers from across the country for the protest, also meant to denounce a U.N. resolution that, in addition to its demand for Syrian withdrawal, called for dismantling militias - a point Hezbollah sees as aimed at its well-armed military wing.
 In the outlying heavily Shiite regions of the Bekaa and the south, loudspeakers urged followers to travel to Beirut for the protest. A newspaper reported that convoys of Syrians were being brought across the border in buses to take part but that could not be confirmed.
 Opposition leaders, who have been courting Hezbollah's support in their effort to oust Syrian troops, accused Lebanese intelligence agents of exercising pressure on municipalities, public schools and institutions to drive the numbers up.
 Hezbollah officials denied the charges, saying it is part of a campaign to make the demonstration seem &quot;imposed and involuntary.&quot;
 Hezbollah, founded by Iran and backed in part by Syria, has emerged as a key player during the latest political instability, capable of tilting the balance either in favor of the pro-Syrian government or the anti-Syrian opposition.
 On Monday, in the biggest demonstration yet of anti-Syrian furor, more than 70,000 Lebanese shouting &quot;Freedom! Sovereignty! Independence!&quot; thronged central Beirut. The demonstrators waved Lebanon's cedar-tree flag and thundered, &quot;Syria out!&quot;
 The demonstrators marched to the site of the Feb. 14 bombing that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and touched off the angry but peaceful street protests that drove Lebanon's pro-Syrian government to resign a week ago. Many Lebanese accuse the Syrian government and their government of responsibility for Hariri's death; both deny any involvement.

TITLE: Niklaus Unlikely to Play After Tragedy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JUPITER, Florida - Jack Nicklaus had planned to squeeze in a few trips to Augusta National this month, making sure his 65-year-old body was fit and his game was good enough to compete in the Masters. 
 
Now, the Masters is the last thing on his mind. 
 &quot;I think with what's happened to us in our family, my time is going to be spent in much different ways,&quot; Nicklaus said Monday, his first public comments since his 17-month-old grandson drowned in a hot tub. &quot;That's the most important thing right now. And I think it will be the most important thing for a long time.&quot; 
 Nicklaus said his chances of playing the Masters are &quot;between slim and none,&quot; although he plans to be at Augusta National for the Champions Dinner, maybe even the Par 3 Tournament. 
 He still would like to play the British Open at St. Andrews in July since this is his last year of eligibility and because his son, Steve, wants to caddie for him. 
 It was Steve Nicklaus' son, Jake, who drowned Tuesday night last week. 
 Nicklaus sat before a small gathering Monday morning at The Loxahatchee Club, not as the steely-eyed winner of 18 major championships, but as a teary-eyed grandfather who had lost one of his 17 grandchildren. 
 He declined to cancel the appearance, saying it was the right thing to do. 
 &quot;Life has got to move on. Life is for the living,&quot; Nicklaus said. &quot;It hurts, but you go on. You make commitments, and you've got to do them.&quot;
 But he remains so shaken that he left a statement on each chair that expressed his grief and appreciation about the love and support, hopeful it would limit the questions during a one-hour interview. 
 His voice cracked only once, when he mentioned that Steve's wife, Krista, is 3 1/2 months pregnant and probably will have the baby just after the British Open. 


TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Rude Rooney Probe
 </b>

LONDON (AFP) - Sir Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney are reportedly being investigated by the Football Association for their behaviour during Manchester United's goalless draw at Crystal Palace.
 FA officials are studying footage of the Selhurst Park game when Ferguson clashed with referee Mark Clattenburg and fourth official Andy D'Urso and Rooney was booked for foul and abusive language, the Daily Mail reported.
 
 
<b>Jockey Claim Blocked
 </b>

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) - The Jockeys' Guild said a lawsuit filed last week by Churchill Downs, Inc. seeking to block future boycotts in protest of health insurance is an "attack on all jockeys." 
 The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court on Friday, alleges that the Guild violated antitrust laws by ordering its jockeys to walk off the job at Churchill Downs on Nov. 7, 2004 and at Hoosier Park in Anderson, Ind., on Nov. 12, 2004. 
 The jockeys have sought an increase to the $100,000 in coverage that tracks provide for them. 
 
 
<b>Jose 'Unsporting'
 </b>

LONDON (Reuters) - Jose Mourinho hit out at UEFA again on Monday after the ruling body said it was unhappy with the Chelsea boss for suggesting Pierluigi Collina should referee Champions League game against Barcelona which was due to be held Tuesday. 
 William Gaillard, UEFA's director of communications, told Sky Sports on Monday it was not Mourinho's job to suggest match officials, adding that the Portuguese coach was being unsporting. 
 
 
<b>Pitcher Denied Visa
 </b>

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida (AP) - Baltimore Orioles pitcher Sidney Ponson was scratched from his first spring training appearance Monday because of visa problems associated with his court case in Aruba, a Dutch colony in the Carribean. 
 Ponson was slated to start against the Florida Marlins, but the right-hander learned Monday morning that he could not pitch in a game in which admission is charged, under rules set in place by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. 
 
 
<b>Surfing Record Set
 </b>

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - More than 40 surfers cruised into the record books Saturday when they successfully rode a giant surfboard off an Australian beach, breaking the previous world record set by an English team of 14 people in 2003. 
 More than 5,000 people gathered Saturday to watch riders conquer the 40-foot-long, 10-foot-wide board, newspapers reported. The board, created by board shaper Nev Hyman, arrived by semitrailer. More than 20 people carried it to the surf.

TITLE: Iron Ljubicic Ends U.S.'s Davis Cup Hopes
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CARSON, California - Even Andre Agassi couldn't lead the U.S. team to Davis Cup success. 
 
The Americans sent out an impressive group against Croatia, with Agassi back after five years to join Andy Roddick and doubles specialists Bob and Mike Bryan. 
 Ivan Ljubicic proved too much for all of them, almost single-handedly leading his country to a 3-2 opening-round victory Sunday. 
 The 25-year-old Ljubicic ran his record against the United States to 6-0 with two singles wins to bookend a doubles victory. He also won three times two years ago when Croatia knocked the Americans out in the first round. 
 U.S. captain Patrick McEnroe obviously was disappointed with the loss - and very impressed by Ljubicic's performance. 
 &quot;To play that well, to beat Agassi, the Bryans and Roddick back-to-back, it's an impressive performance,&quot; McEnroe said. 
 Ljubicic finished off his iron man stint with a marathon victory over Roddick, propelling Croatia into the quarterfinals against Romania. 
 On a roll that has carried him to four tour finals this year, Ljubicic was proud to win for his country. 
 &quot;I think all around the world, this is going to be big news because to beat Andre, Bryans and Roddick in three days, I think it's a great effort,&quot; he said. 
 &quot;I was thinking if I could just win one singles, just to keep up the momentum and just keep the confidence up. But I did it all the way, so it is just amazing.&quot;
 The United States has won the Cup 31 times, but not for a decade. The drought is the Americans' longest in 68 years. 
 Ljubicic outlasted Roddick 4-6 6-3 7-6 (11) 6-7 (7) 6-2 in a match that featured a highlight reel's worth of spectacular shots by both players and lasted 3 hours, 58 minutes. 
 &quot;There's no worse feeling than losing a match in Davis Cup in our sport, especially when your teammates are counting on you,&quot; Roddick said. &quot;There are so many people that you're playing for and that you feel like you've let down.&quot;
 Since Croatia clinched the round with one singles remaining, Bob Bryan filled in for Agassi and took a 6-2 3-6 6-1 victory over Roko Karanusic, who replaced Mario Ancic. 
 Roddick had beaten Ancic in four sets in their opening-day match. 
 Ljubicic began the round with a straight-set win over Agassi, then teamed with Ancic to hand Bob Bryan and his twin brother, Mike, their first Davis Cup loss in six matches. 
 Both Roddick and Ljubicic played extremely well in their match, with Roddick rocketing one serve that hit 152 mph. But Ljubicic was able to punch back some of the powerful first serves, and he pounced on Roddick's 73 second serves to win 41 points. 
 After winning the fourth-set tiebreaker, Roddick immediately lost his serve to start the fifth set. Ljubicic broke through again in the fifth game to take clear control. 
 The Croatian, no slouch himself serving, matched Roddick's total of 19 aces. 
 Croatia seemed to have almost as many fans as the home team in the lively, drum-banging and somewhat rowdy crowd of 6,584. Southern California is home to a large number of Croatians. When Ljubicic finished Roddick off with a service winner, the Croatian team locked arms and gleefully broke into a jig on the court.
 
 <strong>Russia 4, Chile 1
 </strong>At Moscow, Australian Open champion Marat Safin beat Fernando Gonzalez of Chile 7-6 (4) 7-6 (5) 1-6, 6-7 (3) 6-4 to send Russia into the quarterfinals. Nikolay Davydenko also beat Paul Capdeville 6-2, 6-1. 
 Russia will play France in July.
 Safin and Gonzalez served hard in the first two sets. Gonzalez had eight aces and served 19 winners, while Safin had 11 aces and 23 winners. In two sets, Gonzalez managed to win only nine points on Safin's serve. Gonzalez, the Olympic bronze medalist, revitalized Chile's hopes when he broke Safin twice in the third set and prevailed in the fourth-set tiebreaker to even the match. But after almost three hours of play, Gonzalez appeared to lose steam and double faulted in the third game of the decisive set to give Safin two break points. 
 Gonzalez then netted an easy forehand to give Safin a 3-1 lead.
 
 <strong>France 3, Sweden 2
 </strong>At Strasbourg, France, Paul-Henri Mathieu blew three match points before finally outlasting gritty Thomas Johansson 6-1 6-4 6-7 (4) 6-4 of Sweden to clinch the victory for France. 
 Sweden tied the match earlier in the day when Joachim Johansson rallied from a set down to beat Sebastien Grosjean 3-6 6-1 6-4 6-1. France moves on to play Russia in the quarterfinals.
 
 <strong>Romania 3, Belarus 2
 </strong>At Brasov, Romania, Victor Hanescu beat Vladimir Voltchkov 7-6 (2) 6-4 7-6 (6) to put Romania into the quarterfinals. Earlier in the day, top Romanian player Andrei Pavel defeated Max Mirnyi 6-1 7-6 (0) 4-6 6-3.
 
 <strong>Argentina 5, Czech Republic 0
 </strong>At Buenos Aires, Argentina, Agustin Calleri and Guillermo Coria easily won to help Argentina sweep the Czech Republic. Calleri defeated Tomas Zib 6-2 6-4 and Coria beat Jan Hernych 6-3 6-0. Argentina will face Australia in Sydney in the quarterfinals July 15-17.
 
 <strong>Australia 5, Austria 0
 </strong>At Sydney, Australia, Todd Woodbridge and Chris Guccione both won singles matches to complete a sweep for the home team.
 
 <strong>Netherlands 3, Switzerland 2
 </strong>At Fribourg, Switzerland, Sjeng Schalken defeated Stanislas Wawrinka 1-6 6-2 6-4 2-6 9-7 to move the Netherlands into the quarterfinals. In the second singles match, Peter Wessels led Marco Chiudinelli 6-4 but withdrew with a back injury. The Dutch will meet Slovakia in the next round.