SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1051 (17), Friday, March 11, 2005
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TITLE: Rebels Name Cleric Successor to Maskhadov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Little-known Chechen cleric Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev will take over as interim rebel leader after Aslan Maskhadov's death earlier this week, rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev said Thursday.
Analysts said, however, that the announcement was probably an attempt by radical warlord Shamil Basayev to buy time as he figures out his next move.
The Federal Security Service announced Tuesday that Maskhadov had been killed that day in a bunker during an FSB sweep in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village near Grozny.
Zakayev, who served as Maskhadov's representative and who lives in exile in London, called on all rebels to line up behind Sadulayev, a Wahhabi born in Argun who heads the rebels' Supreme Shariah Court.
"Until the holding of free elections, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev will be leader of the military-political infrastructure of the Chechen Republic and the acting president," Zakayev said in a statement on the rebel web site Chechen Press.
"Our responsibility, and the responsibility of all Chechen citizens is to unite around our new leader to be reliable advisers and allies in the fight to liberate our motherland from Russian occupation," he said.
Basayev backed Sadulayev's candidacy in a statement posted Wednesday on another rebel web site, Kavkaz Center.
Andrei Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said there was simply no one to replace Maskhadov and his political experience, and that Sadulayev's rise to power was a stop-gap measure aimed at giving Basayev time to think.
"This move is essentially necessary for Basayev," Malashenko said. "It is a pause that will buy him time to figure out what he is going to do and how he is going to act. He is fully aware that he can hardly move from the battlefield to politics because no one will talk to him - not America, not Europe, no one."
Malashenko said Sadulayev is a "colorless personality" who would not be around very long.
"He may have some influence as a religious leader, but to think that he has any political clout or that anyone would line up to vote for him is simply delusional," he said.
Maskhadov's son Anzor, who lives in Baku, said Sadulayev was a worthy successor to his father, Interfax reported.
But Ruslan Yamadayev, a former rebel who is now a State Duma deputy, has suggested that Sadulayev does not exist. "This is some kind of bluff. I think there is no such person on Earth," Yamadayev said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
In a statement on the Kavkaz Center web site, Maskhadov's family appealed to world leaders to use their "weight" and "authority" to help secure the return of Maskhadov's body.
They accused Moscow of "trampling on general human norms" and treating Maskhadov's body in a "savage, barbaric manner," according to the statement attributed to his widow, Kusama, his daughter Fatima and Anzor Maskhadov.
"Because of this, more pain has been added to our loss," the statement said. "This is blasphemous and completely inexplicable in a modern, civilized world."
Deputy General Prosecutor Nikolai Shepel said Wednesday that the body is expected to be buried at an undisclosed location - in line with a federal law on terrorism. Maskhadov was charged with terrorism last year for allegedly ordering the Beslan school attack and charged in 2000 with carrying out an armed revolt in Chechnya.
Lawyer Igor Trunov, who represented the victims of the Dubrovka theater hostage crisis and apartment bombings in Volgodonsk and Moscow, said that according to the law, Maskhadov's body should not be given to his family because he was killed in an anti-terrorist operation.
He said, however, that the law violates the Constitution because it allows authorities to declare anyone killed in such operations guilty of terrorism. "Even if they were completely innocent, the family can't recover the body," Trunov said by telephone. "It's a clear violation of rights."
Maskhadov's body has been taken out of Chechnya for an autopsy, after which it will be buried, Shepel said Thursday. The autopsy is expected to last at least two weeks, he said.
Details remained sketchy as to exactly how Maskhadov was killed. Major General Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the federal forces in Chechnya, said by telephone that the preliminary version is that Maskhadov died in an explosion after FSB commandos tried to blast their way into the bunker where he was hiding.
Citing the ongoing autopsy, Shabalkin declined to comment on a statement attributed to him in The New York Times on Wednesday that Maskhadov was shell-shocked after the blast and was killed by commandos in an ensuing gun battle.
Pictures of Maskhadov's body released by the FSB show what appeared to be a small bullet wound under his left eye. Kommersant, citing forensics experts, said the images indicate that Maskhadov may have been shot in the back of the head and that the injury under his eye was the exit wound.
Ivan Buromsky, a professor at the Russian State Medical University's forensic medicine department, said exit wounds tend to be larger than entrance wounds. "But there are a lot of factors involved, including distance and the weapon used," Buromsky said by telephone. "In fact, sometimes exit and entrance wounds can look very similar."
Buromsky also said that blood that appeared to have trickled out of Maskhadov's left ear in the FSB images gives little insight into how he died. "Any time there is an internal head injury - be it from a blast, a gunshot or a blunt object - blood is going flow out of the ears," he said.
Moscow-backed Chechen First Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov backed off from his initial remarks that Maskhadov had been accidentally shot by a bodyguard. "I was just joking, you know, that a bodyguard's gun accidentally went off," Kadyrov told Interfax. "In reality, they threw a grenade in there, and Maskhadov died from that."
Kadyrov also denied a web site report that his security forces had killed Maskhadov on Sunday and that he had asked federal forces to take credit.
In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry angrily lashed out at Poland for criticizing Maskhadov's death. Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rotfeld called the killing "a crime" and "a political mistake because ... Maskhadov was the only partner with whom an agreement could be sought."
The Foreign Ministry said Poland does not understand the situation in Chechnya or the war against terrorism.
o
A military helicopter crashed in Chechnya on Thursday, killing at least 14 servicemen and seriously wounding two others, The Associated Press reported.
A preliminary report said the helicopter had not come under hostile fire and crashed after hitting a power line near Grozny, said a spokesman for the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
The spokesman said the helicopter belonged to the federal Interior Ministry and caught fire after slamming into the ground.
TITLE: Foreign
Students
Launch A
Web Site
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: International students studying in St. Petersburg have launched a new web site with the aim of setting up an International Student Association (ISA) to defend their rights. The web site fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/isaspb in English or isaspb.narod.ru in Russian offers students who came to St. Petersburg from abroad a forum for exchanging ideas and opinions about their life in the city.
"We want to set up place where students can share their experiences," one of the authors of the project, a student from a developing country who asked not to be identified, said Thursday in a telephone interview.
"There are many accounts of people being verbally abused or beaten up or killed or of somebody's rights being broken, but often we don't have enough reliable information. We want to change this," the student said.
In his presentation of the web site the student wrote that he regretted that foreign students in St. Petersburg, many of whom are from Africa or Asia, do not have the resources - including some basic things such as library books - that they would get if they studied in other countries.
"We foreign students do not get those facilities from the Russian government," he said, "We are happy to be in St. Petersburg, but there are some cases of foreigners being treated unjustly. Our goal should be to point out our rights and to lead our lives in the same way that students elsewhere do."
Students would like to avoid harassment by the police, constant document checks and enjoy basic living standards, such as affordable telephone and Internet connections and cheaper, comfortable hostels, the site says.
In February, City Hall set up a council to oversee matters concerning foreign students, saying that there are more than 10,000 foreign citizens studying in St. Petersburg. They contribute about $90 million to the city's economy annually.
The council is supposed to resolve social, economic and organizational problems for foreign students, as well as advertise the city's educational institutions abroad, according to goals announced by City Hall.
"The political leadership in a range of countries consists of graduates of Soviet and Russian universities," Governor Valentina Matviyenko said when the council was created in February.
"This is very important that people that are studying here get not only a good education, but also are better recognized by our country and leave with a friendly attitude toward [Russia]," she said.
But according to human rights advocates, the plight of foreign students in the city is dire.
"I have the impression that foreign students who don't look Slavic are always at risk of being beaten up by skinheads, robbed by hooligans, or insulted by the police," said Yury Vdovin, co-chairman of the local branch of human rights organization Citizen's Watch. "In other words, they live in a state that is intolerant to other nationalities.
"The students whose outward appearance is Slavic are lucky," Vdovin said.
In the last few months, foreign students have continued to express their concerns about their study environment, where they are in constant danger of attacks from skinheads in the city center.
"We have some problems and we need to do something to solve them," one student wrote to the web site.
"I think it is better to take action rather than sitting in our rooms. Right now, we do not have a Voice. If we do not have Unity, we are nobody. But if we can stand up through this ISA, it will bring us something.
"In St. Petersburg, foreign students are not united. And Russians are performing experiments at will. We are not Russians and we will not accept this situation," the student said, "Russians can tolerate anything; they had to to survive the last 80 to 90 years. But we are not like them."
The co-author of the web site said he did not want his name released because he is afraid of actions against him that could come from any direction.
"This is my last year of study," he said.
One section of the web site invites visitors to participate in a public poll by answering one main question: "As a foreign student in Russia, would you advise your friends or relatives to come to study in Russia?"
TITLE: Finnish Group Eyes Return of Lost Territory
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An independent Finnish non-governmental organization ProKarelia, which is promoting the idea that Russia should give back territories ceded to the Soviet Union during World War II, last week released a book detailing how this could be done.
The book, called "Returning Karelia," is in Finnish and will be followed by editions in Russian and English before summer, Veikko Saksi, the author of the book, said in e-mailed answers to questions last Friday.
"The aggressions of Stalin and the Soviet Union were so hard for the Finnish people that it is better that we first discuss this matter in Finland," Saksi said last Friday in a telephone interview.
"After political and citizens' discussions, Finland should decide first what is the best way to proceed. After that it would be time to start peaceful negotiations between Finland and Russia on a win-win basis."
The foreign ministries of both Finland and Russia were abrupt in dismissing ProKarelia's initiative.
"I have no opinion on that book, I haven't read it," Olli Perheentupa, head of the Russian unit at the Finnish foreign ministry, said Thursday in a telephone interview .
"But I have an opinion on the question of the Russian part of Karelia. This is part of Russia and we are sticking to this policy. There will be no [official] questions opened on this topic," he added.
"Forget it," said Mikhail Troyansky, spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Finnish officials have no interest in pursuing this topic and have reiterated that fact this month, he said Thursday in a telephone interview.
"[Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov has already expressed his point of view on this matter. There are no grounds for discussions," Troyansky said.
The governor of Karelia, Sergei Katanandov described the plan to return Finland's lost territories as "an artificial idea."
"There is no problem and it's not worth trying to rewrite history," Interfax quoted him saying Thursday during an Internet conference in response to journalists' questions. "Officially, Helsinki does not support those who want a redivision of territory."
In a survey conducted for the Finnish News Agency (STT) by Gallup Finland last summer, some 57 per cent of respondents said returning Karelia is not desirable. About 38 per cent thought it would be either very or fairly desirable.
The question presented to sample the opinions of 1,001 Finns between June 15 and 23 was as follows: "From time to time, the question of returning Karelia, ceded to the Soviet Union during the war, to Finland re-emerges in public discussions. How desirable would it be for Russia to return Karelia to Finland?"
The oldest and youngest respondents supported the return of Karelia to Finland most strongly, while men were somewhat more in favor than women, the STT reported.
In his book Saksi stated the return of the lands would benefit Russia and the people who live there.
"All the ceded areas made up about 0.22 percent of the area of the Soviet Union. It has no strategic importance. For St. Petersburg a flourishing Karelia would be a big advantage. It would be a part of 'the service circle' around the metropolis," Saksi said.
However, raising the living standards in Karelia to those of Finland, a member of the European Union, would require vast amounts of money.
Saksi said the money to achieve the goal could be found. He estimated it would cost 8 billion euros of government investments and about 20 billion euros using private financial resources.
"It's sad to say that Karelia is in a bad condition. According to the latest information about 366,000 people live there compared to 425,000 in 2001. There were 1, 284 active villages in Karelia in 1939. Now about 1,000 are empty," he said.
"The famous Finnish medieval city of Vyborg and its stone castle are falling into ruins. Karelia has been one of the most important cradles of Finnish culture and now much of it is in ruins," Saksi said. "Only Koivisto [Primorsk], Uuras [Vysotsk] and the oil ports that are being built are under real development. We all should be extremely worried of the future of the Baltic Sea and how to save environment."
"I would think it very important to emphasize that all ProKarelia operations are aimed to get a better and very flourishing future with our big neighbor, Russia. The return of Karelia and other ceded territories is the greatest positive activity between these countries from the viewpoint of having a good neighborhood, economy, humanity and political life," he said.
However, a Russian political analyst said that although it is understandable that the topic of annexed lands being returned surfaces sometimes in public discussions, it is extremely unlikely that the return of Karelia would ever be taken up officially.
"Talk of returning Karelia to Finland has been going on for many years. This was intensified by the collapse of the Soviet Union when public societies of different kinds started promoting this point of view in Finland," Yevgeny Volk, a political analyst at Moscow-based Heritage foundation said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
"But the Finnish government is distancing from opinions of this kind operating within frames of a 1975 treaty signed in Helsinki on the inviolability of European borders, which is the basis [for relations]," Volk said.
"On the other hand, the question of borders in Europe has become more eroded with the appearance of new states on the map in the 1990s. This has created the grounds for revanchist opinions such as that the Kaliningrad region should be given back," Volk said, "But in Finland, the return of Karelia will not go any further than discussions. In contrast to the Japanese position on the islands in the Pacific Ocean, the behavior of the Finnish government in relation to Karelia is different. This question will not be put on the official agenda of the European Union in the near future."
TITLE: Alleged Archive Thief
Fights His Extradition
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday authorized the extradition to Russia of Ze'ev (Vladimir) Feinberg, who is wanted for stealing national treasures from St. Petersburg's historical archives, including letters handwritten by Catherine the Great.
Feinberg has denied the charges.
However, Feinberg's family and supporters oppose the extradition, saying that "a Jew has no chance of obtaining a fair trial in Russia", and that "Feinberg's health and even life would be in danger in a Russian jail," Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Tuesday.
A final decision on Feinberg's extradition will now be made by Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni.
The press service of the Russian General Prosecutor's Office on Wednesday refused to comment, saying that "it was too early to give any comments."
However, it said "the case has to go to court in Russia because the crime was committed on the territory of Russia."
Boris Pustyntsev, co-chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the human rights organization Citizen's Watch, said Feinberg's family's argument that the Russian courts are prejudiced against Jews is far-fetched.
"I wouldn't say the Russian police or courts have prejudice against Jews today. It mainly concerns people from the Caucuses," Pustynstsev said in a telephone interview.
Whether Feinberg's life or health would be in danger in a Russian prison would depend on which prison he was sent to, he added.
"For instance, if it's an FSB prison, the conditions there are quite normal, while if it's a regular prison the conditions there are much worse," Pustyntsev said.
According to Russian authorities, Feinberg, who owned a small antique store in St. Petersburg, was the leader of a gang that in 1994 broke into the archives and stole more than 7,000 documents, the value of which was in the tens of millions of dollars.
Some of the documents were edicts and letters of appointment signed by the tsars, and of lesser value; others are very valuable handwritten letters, with the highest price put on a personal letter written by Catherine the Great.
It is alleged that the thefts were committed with the help of Feinberg's business partner and a former archive guard.
Feinberg says he bought the documents from the guard, who told him he found them in an attic near St. Petersburg.
The fact that the documents were missing came to light only after Feinberg put them up for sale at the renowned JA Stargardt auction house in Berlin. The auction house's owner wanted to verify their authenticity with the archives in St. Petersburg. The documents were found to be authentic - but stolen.
All those involved in the affair were arrested, and Feinberg was dubbed "the Jewish brain of the gang." After spending 10 months in detention, Feinberg was released on bail of 50 million rubles and continued to report for questioning. He also returned all the documents in his possession. In late 1996, after fleeing Russia via Poland, Feinberg arrived in Israel on a tourist visa. Three months later, he became a citizen and opened a small antique store.
In June 2003, at the request of Russia, Israeli police detained Feinberg at his apartment in Tel-Aviv.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Gorbachev Anniversary
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Mikhail Gorbachev was selected as Soviet leader 20 years ago Friday, ushering in a period of historic changes which led to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. six years later.
Following the death of Konstantin Chernenko at the age of 73 on March 10, 1985, after just 13 months in the post, Gorbachev was chosen to be the new General Secretary of the Communist Party and de facto head-of-state by Politburo colleagues the following day.
"The question of a new leader for the Soviet Communist Party was resolved with lightning speed," Artyom Krechetnikov writes on a BBC news web site. "Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko proposed Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary and all 17 other members supported him."
Then 54 years old, Gorbachev was the youngest leader of the Soviet Union and its first and last president.
Baltic Invite Withdrawn
MOSCOW (AP) - The Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Estonia and Lithuania were no longer welcome at Victory Day ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II after the leaders of the two Baltic states declined to attend.
"The invitations are of a personal nature," the Foreign Ministry said in a curt, one-line statement.
Dutch Man Detained
ST. PETERSBURG (AP) - St. Petersburg police on Wednesday detained a Dutch citizen wanted in the Netherlands on suspicion of human trafficking.
Anton Gililov, 33, who was born in St. Petersburg but has Dutch citizenship, was detained by police Sunday at the parking lot of Pulkovo Airport, said Dmitry Yemelyanov, deputy head of St. Petersburg's branch of Interpol. The Netherlands has been searching for Gililov since 2001, he said.
Katyn Probe Completed
MOSCOW (SPT) - Russian prosecutors have completed their investigation of the Katyn massacre of Polish officers in 1940, General Prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov said in the State Duma on Wednesday.
Ustinov said that the report on the massacre "as a whole holds no secrets," and that parts of the investigation that are secret are accessible to deputies who have the right to see them.
More than 21,000 Polish military officers and intellectuals were massacred by Soviet agents. Russia has admitted the Soviets are to blame but has shown reluctance to fulfill Poland's demand that those responsible be named and punished.
Consulate Seeks Safety
RIGA (SPT) - Latvia has asked Russia to boost the security of its consulate in St. Petersburg.
Latvia made the request after two teenagers threw bottles of red paint at the consulate building on Saturday night, Interfax reported Wednesday.
One of the bottles struck the wall between the first and the second floor of the consulate and left a patch of paint 40 centimeters in diameter. The second bottle did not hit the target.
The consulate asked Russia to catch those responsible, clean up the building's facade, and improve the security of the consulate at night.
Hardijs Baumanis, Latvia's Consul-General to St. Petersburg, said that during the day the consulate is guarded by the special military unit that is in charge of guarding all the city's consulates.
However, at night the consulate is guarded by a local police unit, the service of which, Baumanis said, "has never satisfied the consulate."
Eternal Flame to Burn
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The eternal flame at the city's Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery, which has been turned off for the first time while it is under repair, will be relit before May 9, the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The flame, which was extinguished last Saturday, should be burning again by May 1, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Visas to France, Italy
MOSCOW (SPT) - President Vladimir Putin has signed laws that will ease the issuing of visas to Italy and France, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said that Russia is holding negotiations with the European Commission "to expand such a regime to all countries of the European Union as the first step to a visa-free regime with Europe."
Lavrov said the eased visa procedure will be for businessmen, members of scientific and educational institutions and athletes.
Mobile Phone Robbers
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg's criminal police have caught robbers who stole mobile phones in 30 attacks on owners, NTV reported Thursday.
Police said a group of teenagers in the city's Krasnogvardeisky district specialized in stealing mobile phones.
They followed their victims from a metro station to the entrance hall of their apartment blocks at night when there were few people around.
One teenager would take the mobile phone from its owner while the other secured him.
Yabloko Car Fired At
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - People fired at the car of the chairman of the city's Yabloko youth union Pavel Drugov on Wednesday, Interfax reported Thursday.
The attackers fired at Drugov's Zhiguli car parked on Furshtadtskaya Ulitsa.
Police said two bullet holes were found in the car's windows. An insulting note was left.
Drugov told Interfax he had been receiving threats on his life and health for the last few months.
Finnish Train Robbed
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Unknown people stole a radio transmitter and navigation equipment from a Finnish train at Ladozhsky railway station on Wednesday.
A Finnish conductor of the Helsinki-St. Petersburg train appealed to the police after he found that during the lunch break someone had stolen the items, which are part of the train's equipment, from a luggage compartment.
TITLE: State Considers Special Zones
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia plans to introduce special economic zones with simplified tax and customs policies as early as next year in an effort to diversify its economy from raw materials and sustain economic growth.
The government today approved a bill to set up zones within which companies that invest in manufacturing and technology projects will be provided with tax breaks.
Economy Minister German Gref said that the bill is to be submitted to Russia's lower house of parliament in a week to 10 days and could be adopted by June.
"Already at least 10 Russian and foreign firms are waiting for this draft law and are ready to invest in 2006," ITAR-Tass reported him as saying.
While visiting Moscow in early February, World Bank President James Wolfensohn encouraged officials and businessmen to follow the examples of countries like India, Ireland and Singapore to develop Russia's high-tech industries, harnessing the nation's brain power to move away from a traditional reliance on raw materials.
While acknowledging the importance of the new zones, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov warned that they should not be exploited as tax havens, as has happened with such initiatives in Russia in the past.
Attempts to set up special zones in the 1990s led to widespread tax evasion as companies mostly registered trading companies there.
"The provision of tax benefits presupposes the responsibility both of business and authorities and in particular I emphasize the responsibility of regional authorities," he said in televised remarks.
"It is important that this instrument of developing free economic zones doesn't turn into a banal tax hole," Fradkov said.
The government plans to limit new special zones to companies producing goods or conducting industrial research, the government said in a statement on its web site before the meeting. Raw materials extraction, scrap processing, metal smelting and liquor and tobacco production are activities that won't be allowed in the special zones, it said.
Gref said the projects would be developed as greenfield projects on unused territory. Infrastructure work would begin in 2006, while the companies themselves would arrive from 2007.
The zones will be open to companies with charter capital of more than 10 million euros ($13.4 million.) They will be banned from opening branches elsewhere in Russia.
The zones will be open for imports without duties and quotas, and state inspections of companies registered there will be limited, the government said.
"We will observe how it works for between two to three years and then, if the stimulating role of the tax privileges is insufficient, those will be revised to encourage more investments," Gref said after the government's meeting.
(Bloomberg, AP)
TITLE: Ministry Planning Rival to Stabilization Fund
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Economic Development and Trade Ministry is drawing up plans to divert some of the oil revenue flowing into the so-called stabilization fund and invest it in infrastructure projects, a ministry source said earlier this week.
Although the investment priorities are still unclear, the high-tech industry and military-industrial complex would likely benefit, Kommersant reported Wednesday.
The plans for the new investment fund were expected to be discussed by the Cabinet last week, the ministry source said, but were temporarily shelved because not all ministries had signed off on them.
Government ministers have long been eyeing the stabilization fund, which has swelled to more than $23 billion on the back of record oil prices as a source of extra cash.
The Cabinet is split on what to do.
Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has advocated using the fund to help offset lost revenue due to tax cuts.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who opposes the temptation to dip into the fund to supplement the budget, wants to use the cash to pay off Russia's foreign debt.
Discussion on the investment fund appears to have been postponed by at least another week, as it was not included on the agenda of Thursday's Cabinet meeting.
Analysts greeted the proposal with skepticism.
Peter Westin, chief economist at Aton brokerage, said the creation of such a fund would mean that the state, which already has a preponderant role in the economy, would be making additional investment decisions.
Even if distribution of the fund's cash were to be conducted through tenders, Westin said, the state - and not the market - would determine the winners.
"Even if private companies are to participate in the bidding, there is the question over how fair the process is going to be [and] over the system of checks and balances," Westin said.
Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist and managing director at Troika Dialog investment bank, said the entire approach to investing in infrastructure has been "turned on its head."
"If there were concrete projects with concrete business plans, then it would be logical to think of sources of funding," he said.
"But as long as the stabilization fund is so big and the oil prices so high, there will always be attempts to find ways to spend this money."
TITLE: LUKoil Win to Dominate City
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city's gas station market is set to be overwhelmingly dominated by LUKoil as the company won the auction for 30 new gas station sites in St. Petersburg and also purchased 37 gas stations from Balt Trade Co on Thursday.
The vast expansion came as LUKoil bought the largest lot of land plots for gas station development at Thursday's auction, paying just over $10.279 million for the 30 sites.
After weeks of speculation as to whether anyone but LUKoil would even consider bidding for such a large number of gas station sites in one lot, there turned out to be just one other bidder - Tatneft-Baltika.
Tatneft-Baltika, a subsidiary of the country's sixth largest oil company Tatneft, raised the city's designated starting price of $10.078 million by just $200,000, but did satisfy the auction's requirement of having at least two bidders.
The 30-site lot is the largest to be bought by one company in the city since the beginning of land plot auctions in the summer of 2004.
In the weeks preceding the auction the St. Petersburg Oil Club spoke out strongly against the auction regulations, maintaining that the size and starting price of the lot would permit only the largest companies to bid, and possibly only LUKoil.
The club's petition to break up the 30 sites into smaller lots was not backed by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service.
In an answer sent shortly before the Thursday auction the service said that neither the auction nor LUKoil's purchase of Balt Trade's stations would raise the oil major's presence on the market above a third - the maximum stake that is allowed by federal regulations.
In compliance with the auction procedures, LUKoil will have to contribute no less than 2 billion rubles ($72.8 million) to the city's budget in taxes during 2005. Over 100 million rubles ($3.6 million) in taxes will have to come from the company's retail gas sales in the city.
LUKoil will spend an average of $800,000 for the construction of each gas station, Vladimir Kaluzhenov, general director of LUKoil's Northwest branch, said Thursday at a news meeting held after the auction, Interfax reported.
"The construction of the first gas stations will start in the last quarter of this year, while all 30 gas stations will be completed within two years," he said.
According to Kaluzhenov's estimates, the average sales volume at the newly constructed gas stations will be about 10 tons per day. Considering that the average price of gas in the city is about 15 rubles ($0.45) per liter, Thursday's investment seems like a lucrative one for the company.
Meanwhile, in a separate deal, oil major LUKoil announced Thursday the completion of a deal to purchase 37 gas stations from Balt Trade.
A total of nine gas stations have already been transferred onto LUKoil's books, and the rest of the former Balt Trade stations will be registered with LUKoil before the end of the year, Kaluzhenov said, Interfax reported.
Kaluzhenov pointed out that the acquisition of Balt Trade's gas stations will LUKoil to double its share of the city's oil market from 9 percent to 18 percent.
The average price of gas stations in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast is $600,000, Kaluzhenov said.
At an earlier auction, held Wednesday, two smaller lots of five gas station sites each were bought by Sevzapneft and Sibneft St. Petersburg for $1.6 million and $1.7million respectively.
TITLE: Alcohol Manufacturers To Fight Ban on Ads
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Top alcohol manufacturers in St. Petersburg said they will lobby the government to limit the advertising ban imposed on all liquor ads in printed and television media.
"We think the new law went a bit over the top and we will dispute it within the constitutional limits," said Igor Popov, head of Albi, an association representing major alcohol market operators in the Northwest region.
Speaking at a news conference Thursday, Popov said an example of the association's lobbying requests would be to allow the advertising of spirits in certain publications such as men's lifestyle magazines.
The association, however, has not yet finalized the specifics of its lobbying campaign, Popov said.
The ban on alcohol advertisements, which is currently being propagated by the State Duma, threatens to impede the growth of alcohol sales.
With alcohol manufacturers being some of the city's biggest budget contributors this year, City Hall has stated it is keen to develop a mutual dialogue and help the industry on a legislative basis.
"Top alcohol manufacturing companies in the city have proven their dependability and trustworthiness," said Vladimir Blank, the head of St. Petersburg's economic development committee.
In January the city collected 219.4 million rubles ($7.8 million) in excise taxes on the manufacture and sale of alcohol products alone - a 147 percent growth on the same period last year, according to city statistics.
The top 20 domestic manufacturing companies - among them major players such as Veda, Liviz, and Igristiye Vina - have been responsible for over 94 percent of all tax payments to the budget, Blank said.
Although the advertising ban is a matter outside of the city's jurisdiction, Blank said the authorities will seek to assist local companies that plan expansions to other regions.
About 54 percent of all alcohol products sold in St. Petersburg are produced in the area, while the rest are imported. Other regions are much more protective of their local markets and allow limited exposure to non-regional manufacturers, Blank said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Citizens to Appeal
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A citizens' group of 22 city residents that object to the construction of the Baltic Pearl development in the Krasnoselsky district said Thursday it will demand that City Hall hold a second referendum.
The work for the Baltic Pearl development is due to be carried out by a Chinese state-owned company, a fact that has led the local media to label the project "China Town." In the last few months a citizens' group has formed to oppose the development, in part citing a fear of a large immigration of Chinese people to the city.
Last week St. Petersburg's legislative assembly declined to run a citywide referendum on the matter, saying it would violate the constitutional rights of the investors and citing an error made in the name of the construction company -Shanghai Investment and Industrial Corporation- as it appeared on the request.
This time the request will not specify the company's name, said the initiative group's speaker Alexander Teterdinko, as reported by Interfax. The group will question the city's right to allocate land plots to any investor without conducting a tender auction first, he said.
"The official wording of the request will now say 'allocate to anybody' without mentioning the Chinese company specifically," Teterdinko said.
He said that if the referendum request, which the group plans to file Friday, is denied a second time, the group will file a complaint in court.
Less Foreign Investment
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Total investments in the Leningrad Oblast amounted to 67 billion rubles or $2.4 billion in 2004, the Oblast press service announced Thursday, Interfax reported.
The figure represented a 20 percent jump in investment from the 2003 level. However, the amount of foreign investments in the area dropped by 32 percent to $160.9 million in 2004.
The largest investing countries were the U.S., with a 30 percent share of the total amount, and Finland, with a 15.7 percent share. The U.S. also led in the direct investments category with 30.4 percent, followed by the Netherlands with 17.7 percent.
"Last year marked a tendency of investments from domestic companies dominating over foreign investments," the press office said.
Service to Rise by $43M
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Grand Service Express will invest 1.2 billion rubles ($43.6 million) into the organization of passenger rail services between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
The Moscow-based company plans to run a higher-class train with two luxury-class wagons from May this year.
"Counting the leasing fees ... the amount of our investment into the project totals $1.2 billion rubles," the head of the company's board of directors told Interfax.
TITLE: The Decisive Day After Women's Day
TEXT: Russians geared up for March 8 by buying candies and champagne, luxuriant bouquets and modest snowdrops. In upscale offices and universities, in factories and market pavilions, in kindergartens and temporary holding cells, men congratulated their female colleagues and gave flowers to grandmas, wives, girlfriends, bosses and random acquaintances. In short, they demonstrated all the infamous generosity and mystery of the Russian soul, only to forget the chivalry by March 9 and return to the daily grind that would come to a standstill if it weren't for women.
Women's Day has survived the revolutionary Klara Tsetkin, years of Stalinist repression and war, and even perestroika. It has escaped many attacks on its legitimacy and its right to remain on the calendar. It remains a popular national holiday that everyone seems to celebrate in their own way. Some recall its original meaning as a day of solidarity of toiling women, once spearheaded by U.S. female workers and taken up by the Amazons of the Socialist International. Some simply celebrate it as the beginning of spring and a holiday of love. Some bemoan the socialist relic and pray for the return of monarchist values, yet they celebrate the day nonetheless.
I have noticed over the years that Russian women themselves seem to have the most critical attitude toward the holiday, as well as the most exacting standards for gifts and greetings. Some women demanded once upon a time to throw Tsetkin overboard and set up Scarlett O'Hara in her place as the model Real Woman, untroubled by feminist emancipation. Some can't seem to believe that in other countries, Women's Day, though not an official holiday, is still celebrated in all sincerity, as are women's accomplishments.
Attitudes about March 8 in Russia reflect how Russians view the issue of women's status far better than the ton of paper used to produce the laws and government acts to help working moms, victims of domestic violence, or entrepreneurs in skirts. In recent years, this mountain of paper shrank before our very eyes. While back in the Yeltsin era, beginning in 1993, half a dozen special decrees and declarations appeared that were dedicated to promoting women in the civil service and creating institutional mechanisms to better women's social status and improve reproductive health services, nowadays the authorities aren't bothering to do much of anything. In fact, in the course of administrative reforms, the only commission on women's status was eliminated, as was the post of deputy prime minister for women's affairs. The round table of women's NGOs that existed for many years under the aegis of the Labor Ministry disappeared when the ministry ceased to exist. This round table succeeded in addressing complicated social issues related to family life and the problems of the poor, the disabled and chronically ill children. The special commission for women's affairs, family issues and demographics under the presidential administration was done away with long before.
As the leaders of several women's NGOs noted at a recent meeting of the Zhurnalistka Club at the Moscow Central House of Journalists, if a woman suffers from discrimination or needs support, she basically has nowhere to turn. Human rights officials don't mess with gender issues. In other words, the activists concluded, Russia has not met the obligations it took on in 1995 when it adopted the Beijing Platform for Action to improve women's lives. This has moved feminists from 200 organizations to send an open letter to President Vladimir Putin requesting the creation of a national committee on gender equality that would have both power and funding. The last point is worth noting: Though Russia has followed the Soviet tradition of supporting the UN's humanitarian initiatives and has ratified the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination and various resolutions from conferences in Beijing, Cairo and the like, the federal budget has yet to dedicate even a tiny line item to gender equality or improving women's status. In other words, the old Soviet policy of approving everything and funding nothing continues to apply. This is the state's approach to all problems related to civil society, and this is why civil society is barely limping along in Russia.
This is also why women's organizations, which exist across Russia and number in the thousands, are not included in the discussion of vital questions and have no influence on state decision making. The authorities are in no hurry to give them a platform and resources for social experimentation. No, it's sufficient to wish them a happy Women's Day, hand them some flowers and exclaim with adoration that the country has women to thank for its existence. And amazingly, women don't object to this grandstanding and keep quiet about the fact that they were robbed blind during privatization and left to fill the ranks of the poor. Women aren't screaming that they were kept out of the division of Soviet property, that they earn only 60 percent of men's average wages nationally, that they have lost access to health care, and that they have no chance at gaining power as they are not included in the political games of various financial and political cliques.
Why aren't women upset and outraged? Why aren't they taking to the streets in protest?
I asked these very questions of a variety of women from the CIS, Europe and Asia who gathered last week in New York at a meeting of the UN Special Commission on the Status of Women. The discussion was devoted to the decade after the Beijing Platform. As a participant and journalist who wrote about both the Beijing Conference and the UN initiatives that followed, I couldn't help but notice that the atmosphere had changed radically. There were no colorful demonstrations in Manhattan and no women's marches on Washington. Instead, the mood was somber. In the age of the war on terror, many see human rights issues as low priority. This made all the more relevant General Secretary Kofi Annan's statement that the equality and prosperity of women is a necessary condition for developing collective security. This is particularly obvious in Russia, if only because the majority of female suicide bombers here are generally not religious fanatics. They are often terrified, confused, uneducated girls hailing from mountain villages and sold into terrorist camps, who have no hope and no idea where to go for help.
The Russian women participating in the discussion were both part of the official delegation - the smallest in years, a clear indicator of what today's government thinks about women's issues - and representatives of various social movements. They talked about how it was time to take a new look at gender issues and keep after the government with statistics, research and numbers, while cultivating ties to activists in other countries facing similar challenges. It seems that in the last decade, these ties have indeed begun to emerge.
Yet a basic question remains: Do Russian women support the activists in their struggle? Are they willing to shake off the glitter and mimosa petals and make their needs known once March 8 is over?
The biggest threat facing Russian women is their own modesty and shyness. They work unbelievably hard. They uncover diamonds and discover stars. They sacrifice everything for their loved ones. Yet they can't seem to respect themselves and demand that others do so, too. A recent survey demonstrated that even the notion of a decent wage differs radically between men and women.
Women seem more than happy to accept only half as much.
Nadezhda Azhgikhina is a secretary of the Russian Journalists' Union. She contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Stuck in Past, Elite Won't Apologize for Stalin's Crimes
TEXT: For the last couple of months I have been wondering what is wrong with the Russian political elite, which is behaving like an obstinate donkey, doing everything it can to stop moving toward reconciliation with the Baltic States.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have one simple request - to recognize that Josef Stalin committed crimes against their citizens. In other words, they are asking the Kremlin to do exactly what Germany did decades ago in relation to Adolf Hitler.
I am surprised at the reluctance to do this because a significant part of Russia's political elite, including President Vladimir Putin, were born in the 1950s or even 1960s, which means that years of their youth were deeply affected by a period of stagnation. Every more or less educated person understood that the way the Soviet rulers chose to run the country was very wrong.
In the 1970s, Soviet citizens started getting the point that their state was going nowhere. Sitting in their kitchens on weekday nights they told jokes about Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Young people who were lucky enough to live in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, were heading to Tallinn for weekends to see a city that they described as "sort of" the West.
Even then, it was obvious to many, visually and rationally, that Estonia and the other Baltic States,did not belong to the Soviet Union in spirit, not to mention their culture, which, unlike Soviet culture, is clearly influenced by European traditions.
I guess it was also clear for Putin, who would have traveled the same route several times when he was young. He wouldn't have become so excited about Germany if he hadn't.
For this reason I believe that the Kremlin's inhabitants should have understood the Baltic States' request, but this week I suddenly received the answer as to why they will not fulfill it - the political elite has not learned the lesson.
The answer came in the form of the results of a survey conducted this month by VTsIOM, the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, which asked Russian residents if they think that their country needs are ruler similar to Stalin.
Almost half of all respondents, 42 percent, said yes. In the age group that most of the political elite belongs to, 45 to 59 years, 52 percent favored Stalin-style leadership. But most worrying was that 45 percent of young Russians - aged from 18 to 24 years - were also positive about the tyrant.
These figures fill me with despair. It is impossible for me to imagine that in a club or a bar in a European city I would have the slightest chance of discovering that every second person had positive thoughts about Hitler.
But the equivalent of such a nightmare is likely to happen in a place of entertainment in any Russian city, according to the results of the survey: every second person will have positive thoughts about a ruler who killed tens of millions of people in his own country, and who executed or sent to concentration camps millions of foreign citizens. His admirers praise Stalin and are supported by the older generation, who seem to have missed the point in the 1970s and later when the truth about the crimes committed by the Soviet regime was released at the end of the 1980s.
With attitudes like this, the Baltic States should not expect any apologies or recognition from the Kremlin - the national political elite is stuck in a time warp and, what's more worrying, is dragging the young generation behind it.
In the light of this I fully support the decisions made by the leaders of Estonia and Lithuania not to come to Moscow on May 9. Their refusal has at least initiated a wide discussion in Russia with heated debate on both sides about the crimes committed by the Soviet regime. Maybe if people in Russia talk about it more often, the percent of Stalin supporters will fall year by year.
Only after hearing the arguments would many realize what terrible things were done by the Soviet Union and its leaders for 70 years of its history.
TITLE: Tug of war
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany approaches and the world tries to wrap up everything connected with it while the last of those who took part are alive, vexing questions remain.
Germany has become Russia's leading economic partner and the frequent meetings between President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder are accompanied by warm declarations of friendship.
But one point of contention seems far from being solved. This is the so-called trophy art that Soviet troops took from Germany's museums and archives after the guns fell silent. Much of it had no connection to the Nazi era but is part of Germany's national heritage. The German government's case is based on three Hague conventions that the Soviet Union and Russia are party to that say an army of occupation may only confiscate property that may be used for military operations.
However, many Russians consider the art and historical documents legitimate reparations for the destruction wreaked by Hitler's armies on the Soviet Union.
Former president Boris Yeltsin agreed with Germany in 1992 that the art could return. The State Duma disagreed with Yeltsin and passed a bill that made trophy art the property of Russia. Putin approved the law in May 2000.
Some of the art is of great value and has reputedly found its way onto the walls of oligarchs' homes.
Germany's hopes are concentrating on a few items, brought to Russia by private soldiers rather than by order of the Soviet military authorities, which the Duma law does not affect.
One of those is the Baldin collection, named after Soviet officer Viktor Baldin who found the graphic art collection of the Bremen arts center in Karnzow castle in Brandenburg in 1945. Baldin died in 1997.
The collection was in the cellar after being evacuated from Bremen to protect it from Allied bombing raids. After the hiding place of the artworks was revealed, German neighbors and Soviet soldiers both plundered them.
The Bremen arts center says it lost 28 of 50 paintings, more than 1,600 of 1,715 drawings and more than 2,900 of 3,000 sheets of prints. Only Berlin and Dresden lost more art in World War II.
Since 1991, the collection has been held in St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum, where it has been exhibited.
The most recent news on the fate of the collection came on March 4 when the Speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov said the collection could be returned before the end of the year.
However, a flurry of declarations immediately before that from leading cultural officials, Culture and Press Minister Alexander Sokolov, Mikhail Shvydkoi, head of the Federal Culture and Cinematography Agency, and Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage, questioned whether the collection should return to Bremen.
"I want to talk about this is precise language," Piotrovsky said in an interview published in newspaper Vremya Novostei on March 1. "We don't have to give back anyone anything. We can transfer something. By the way, almost everything was transferred in Soviet times. What remains can be transferred if Russia has an interest in doing so.
"I believe that Russia should undoubtedly maintain normal friendly relations with Germany and to achieve that we can share part of what remained with us from the post-war period. I emphasize that talk of transferring displaced treasures on the 60th anniversary of victory is inappropriate, it is provocative, and especially if it is publicly initiated by Russian officials. In any case, everything should be resolved on the basis of the law and not on someone's private initiative. Otherwise this theme could aggravate a fraught situation rather than strengthen friendship," Piotrovsky said.
However, despite her own suffering at the hands of the Germans during World War II, Baldin's widow Yulia Sivakova-Baldin said in an interview with Germany's Die Welt newspaper that the collection should be returned.
Sivakova-Baldin also told Die Welt's Manfred Quiring that her late husband would have agreed. "It is his last wish."
Do you still believe that one day the collection will return to Bremen?
This is a difficult, delicate problem - to return the collection to the Germans who destroyed so much. Maybe Vladimir Putin will decide to return the drawings, I hope very much that he will. But that will not happen before the 60th anniversary of Victory Day on May 9.
Would you like the graphic art to be returned?
Yes. I was in German captivity behind barbed wire and in the most awful conditions for three years, but I would like the artworks to be returned. The Germans shot my cousins, but one cannot live if all one does is hate.
How did your husband find the drawings?
My husband found the drawings in the cellar of Karnzow castle near Kyritz where the headquarters of the 38th army was accommodated.
Viktor Ivanovich Baldin was an architect, how did he come to be a Soviet officer at the castle?
He graduated from the Moscow Architecture Institute in 1941, when he was 21 years old. When the war broke out, Viktor Ivanovich was trained in a quick course to command a construction battalion. He was involved in the liberation of Riga, Warsaw and Berlin, after which his battalion was moved to Kyritz.
What did your husband tell you about how he found the collection?
I learned about it only after we were married in 1967. After our wedding Baldin invited me one Sunday to the Moscow Architecture Museum, which he was in charge of. He opened the safe, took out a briefcase and showed me the contents. We looked for two, three hours at the sheets. We didn't say a word. It was like another world. And then...
He told you the story?
Yes. His battalion was to move out of Karnzow on May 29, 1945. On the day before the departure an officer reported to him that some drawings had been found in the cellar. Baldin went to look at them and was shocked: the mountain of drawings contained works by [Albrecht] Durer, Rembrandt, [Peter-Paul] Rubens, [Edgar] Degas and [Francisco] Goya. All bore the stamp of the Bremen arts center. This made no difference to the soldiers; they simply set the artworks on fire to illuminate the cellar. Baldin chased them all out and put a guard on the door.
And did he then simply take the graphic art?
First, he asked the chief of staff for a vehicle to transport the art - they were packed in 40 suitcases - to save them from vandalism by the troops. However, the chief of staff needed the vehicles to transport furniture, musical instruments and carpets from the castle. "Do whatever you want," he said to Baldin. By candlelight he removed the drawings from their frames in the night before the departure and took only the light sheets with him. If he had left them there, they would have been irretrievably lost.
He is said to have found several drawings in the soldiers' possession when he was on the way home.
Yes, almost everybody had a picture hanging over his bed, mostly drawings of naked women. Baldin offered to exchange them for watches and belts. For Durer's "Head of Christ" he gave an officer his chrome leather boots. Indeed, he had no watches and no boots left, but he did have 362 graphic artworks of incalculable value from the Bremen arts center.
How did Baldin reach the Soviet Union with his valuable suitcase?
His battalion had an order to escort a unit of the Vlasov army, which had fought with the Germans, to Rostov-on-Don. In December 1945 Viktor Ivanovich was back in Zagorsk. Alexei Shchusev, the famous architect, urged him to create an art school there. He received a small office in the monastery. Using boards the boys made him a desk and a bed, under which he put the suitcase.
Did he know at that time exactly what was in the suitcase?
In the beginning he had only a rough idea. For two years he collected every scrap of information he could find about the works. Every artwork was described. He gathered biographical data about the artists. Baldin made no secret of what he had to those around him.
Wasn't this dangerous?
After a while collectors began to show up. They had heard about his mysterious suitcase and offered Baldin an apartment, a car or a dacha if he was prepared to part with some of the items. He turned them all down. In the end, what was involved was a collection that did not even belong to him, he told the collectors. But he started to consider what he should do with them.
Returning them to Germany was not possible at that time?
That was out of the question. It was during the Cold War and who knows how the leadership would have taken it. He could have sold them. Of course, this was absolutely possible in 1946 or 1947.
However, instead of selling the collection on the quiet, Viktor Baldin handed them over to a museum.
Yes, he handed them over to Shchusev, the director of the Moscow Architecture Museum. At first he did not believe what Baldin told him. Only after my husband spread the sheets out in front of him and when the whole advisory board breathless with surprise confirmed the authenticity of the artworks was he persuaded. For the collection, Baldin received nothing more than a letter of thanks.
When did he begin thinking of a return to the Bremen arts center?
In the '70s when [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev announced his policy of detente, he wrote a letter to the head of state and party leader. There was no reply. Then he wrote to [Pyotr] Demichev, the Politburo member and culture minister. Demichev wanted to return the collection, but only to East Germany and not right away. Later he sent letters to [Mikhail] Gorbachev without getting a reply.
How did it come about that the collection also became known in the West?
The Construction Ministry, of which the architecture museum was a part, forbade Viktor Ivanovich to talk about it. But not me. He agreed that I should tell a friend in Duesseldorf about it in 1989. She then informed the arts center.
At the beginning of the '90s the collection nearly came to Germany after Boris Yeltsin agreed?
Yes, he wrote "approved" on a letter Viktor Ivanovich wrote again asking for the collection to be returned. However, at the last minute then Culture Minister [Nikolai] Gubenko prevented the handing over. Another attempt failed in 2003. Again Gubenko, now a Duma deputy, was against it. He brought the matter to the attention of the Prosecutor's General's Office .
However, did your husband want the graphic art, the return of which is not forbidden by the Russian trophy art law, to return to Bremen?
Of course he wanted it. This collection belongs not only to Germany but to all of humanity. But it was in the Bremen arts center, and it must be brought back there, this was Viktor Ivanovich's last wish. I am amazed how suddenly everyone here has become religious and runs to the church, but they are not ready to respect a person's last wish.
With thanks to Die Welt. Manfred Quiring's original German version of this interview can be found at: www.welt.de/data/2005/02/22/528986.html?search=Baldin&searchHILI=1
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: The Griboyedov bunker club was packed when Moscow's hip-hop/punk trio Krovostok played its first full-length concert earlier this week. Although the band's music is not played on the radio and not available in shops, the concert was a hit. See article, page xii.
Since Iva Nova vocalist Vera Ogaryova left to have her second baby, the local all-girl folk-punk band has borrowed a singer from the Pskov-based girl-fronted rock band Baobaby, after an unhappy experience with a certain pop singer. Nastya Postnikova, the vocalist and songwriter for Baobaby, will replace Ogaryova for the time being. Iva Nova will play at GEZ-21 on Saturday.
Concerts by the Vermicelli Orchestra (Platforma, Saturday), Wine (Moloko, Sunday), and Skazy Lesa (Platforma, Sunday) might also be worth catching this weekend.
It's really strange how many "Irish" folk bands exist in St. Petersburg. St. Patrick's Day will be celebrated with two big concerts with a couple of dozen Irish-folk-tinged local acts at Red Club and PORT on Wednesday and Thursday.
Meanwhile, Brian Eno returns to St. Petersburg for the first time since he spent a six-month sabbatical here in 1997.
This time the British artist will be in a backing band for Rachid Taha. Eno, now an enthusiastic supporter of the Algerian-born, Paris-based rocker's music, contributed to Taha's acclaimed 2004 album "Tekitoi?" The recording is also noted for "Rock el Casbah," a passionate reworking of The Clash's classic, which features the British art-rock legend Steve Hillage.
The concert in St. Petersburg will be the world premiere of their collaboration. Rachid Taha featuring Brian Eno is scheduled to perform at Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa on May 24.
Meanwhile, an appearance by Sigur Ros, the Icelandic band that was supposed to headline the new festival Nordbeat dedicated to contemporary pop music from northern European countries in May, has been cancelled. However, promoters said the festival would go along with Sweden's Goran Kajfes and Headspin, Norway's Ralph Myerz and Jack Herren Band, Finland's Accu, Denmark's Filur and Iceland's Mum, all of which are confirmed. Nordbeat will take place at several local venues, including PORT, Platforma and the Jazz Philharmonic Hall, from May 13 to 15.
The SKIF festival, conceived as a tribute to the late local musician Sergei Kuryokhin, first held in New York in 1997 and moved to St. Petersburg the following year and which took place, alternately, at LDM and Baltiisky Dom, will move to an entirely new location this year - a former movie theater on Vasilyevsky Ostrov, which has recently been turned into a Center for Contemporary Art. The ninth SKIF will feature the Balanescu Quartet, Dutch band The Ex, and Finland's best-known folk ensemble Varttina, as well as dozens of other bands and artists. The festival will take place from April 22 to 24.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Orientalish
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: If you have lived in Southeast Asia for a while, it is difficult not to play the part of the "old Asia hand" and bore your friends on the subject of how badly the local version of the food measures up to the real thing when you dine at an Oriental restaurant in the West.
In cold northern countries like Russia, however, where footlong papayas and prawns the size of croissants don't grace the average supermarket shelf, it is unrealistic to expect miracles without paying a small fortune.
In Lapsha, where the menu includes dishes from Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, which don't cost a small fortune, it is worth leaving preconceptions at the door: remember where you are,and appreciate the effort.
There are three good reasons to dine at Lapsha apart from the food.
Firstly, it's not very expensive. Most of the main dishes are under 200 rubles ($6.89), though it is worth factoring in the garnish (you'll probably need one).
Secondly, the interior makes you feel right at home. Someone has obviously spent a lot of money doing the place up, and it is stylish without being garish. There are two rooms, both quite small. The first room has a bar, and behind that, a glass window revealing the sparkling clean and hi-tech kitchen. The atmosphere is pleasant and relaxing and the music played quietly.
The third reason to go to Lapsha is the staff, which is excellent. A waiter or waitress is always ready to spring to life with a menu in hand or whip away a still-warm bowl out from under your chopsticks. Ethnic tokenism, however, may put some people off. Our efficient waiter, who spoke very good English, told us he was from Calcutta. All the other table staff also seemed to be Asian. But why? A glance through the glass into the kitchen shows that white Russians are in charge of the cooking. Does food pick up Oriental flavor or an air of authenticity if delivered by someone from an eastern country?
Of course not. The Asian staff at Lapsha have been selected as decorative elements, nothing more. Lapsha isn't the only restaurant in the city with this policy, or the worst offender. I am also reluctant to complain about it, since, without foreign restaurants, there would probably be no jobs open to foreign students in the city at all, and they tend to be more polite than those brought up in the Soviet service culture.
As for the food, it isn't bad. It could have been worse - a lot worse - but it could also have been better. How strange that when a new place opens and so much care has been lavished on the jaw dropping interiors and a snazzy launch party (less than a month ago), we discover that the food is just an afterthought. Yet it is so often the case. I'd like someone to open a small, unfashionable bar, or even a tiny kiosk, but with the best food in town at a great price. I'd eat there every day.
Lapsha is quite slow with the cooking - strange for such a small place. Perhaps they will improve with practice. The tom-yam prawn soup (160 rubles, $5.50) is brimming with citrus flavor. It could have been spicier, but Russian friends seemed to abhor the idea of spicy food. Lemon grass is better removed after cooking since it is chewy and almost inedible; here it was shredded and added as a garnish to the detriment of the dish. The prawns were large and juicy, but unshelled. There is no reason one should have to go diving into one's soup for prawns before wrestling their heads off. Why can't they do it in the kitchen? I was highly sceptical of a salad (80 rubles, $2.70) when it arrived because it seemed to consist of only two ingredients - beansprouts and mange-tout. But the vegetables were so fresh and the dressing so complementary that to add anything else would have been superfluous.
The portions aren't enormous at Lapsha, and for a proper meal, it is probably worth ordering at least two dishes. For my next course I had perch with ginger sauce (140 rubles, $4.80) with a side order of rice (40 rubles, $1.37), which was a little small, but is otherwise recommended.
For drinks, I recommend the Heineken beer (80 rubles, $2.75), which is well kept, or a freshly-squeezed carrot and celery juice (100 rubles, $3.44).
The restaurant sadly lets itself down on the deserts. There aren't many to choose from and those aren't very good. Don't try: sweet sushi (130 rubles, $4.48), which is cloying and actually comes accompanied by rice. Don't try: the fruit parcels (120 rubles, $4.13), which had so much curry powder they tasted like vegetable curry samosas. They might have made a reasonable starter. My advice to Lapsha is to scrap their desert menu and buy a few tubs of ice cream. In the meantime, it would be wiser to skip desert and head straight to Molly's Bar, a few doors down, for a post-noodles pint.
TITLE: Writing off Stalin
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Reading Moshe Lewin's "The Soviet Century" is very similar to struggling through the theological and philosophical writings of the emigre thinker Vladimir Lossky: Every few pages, one is forced to pause and ponder what just passed. Fortunately, many of the book's chapters are short (10 pages or fewer), allowing for frequent rest stops along the way.
So this weighty tome is not the right choice for those hoping for a quick, easy read while heading out to the dacha for the weekend. Nor should the title mislead those interested in a pop-history of the Soviet Union that starts with the storming of the Winter Palace and ends with the lowering of the red banner over the Kremlin. This is not a linear history, but, rather, a collection of themes, skipping from Josef Stalin's plans to acquire supreme power to discussions of Gorbachev rival Yegor Ligachyov and Brezhnev contemporaries Alexei Kosygin and Yury Andropov - all before arriving at Vladimir Lenin more than halfway through the book.
"The Soviet Century" begins with a reminder, critical to Russians (and to citizens of the other post-Soviet republics, for that matter), that dismissing the Soviet experience as an anomalous interlude in Russian history is "utterly absurd." After all, Lewin writes, "Soviet Russia remains a weighty component of Russia's cultural and political tradition, which continues to influence the country to this day... Can this be ignored by anyone who is interested in their country's destiny and reflects on it?"
Certainly not. Without a full appreciation - and, Lewin adds, a full understanding - of the Soviet system, one can hardly make sense of Russia's present. The Soviet Union was not a temporary blip, an unwelcome interruption between a pre-Revolutionary past and post-Soviet future, but a juggernaut that rolled over everything in its path. Nothing was left unaffected, from political culture to economic infrastructure, language, religion and social habits. This book is a direct challenge to those who believe that the impact of the Soviet period can be minimized or exorcised and that either an utterly new path can be paved from its wreckage or a pre-Soviet path picked up again, like a lovingly restored chapel dwarfed by massive apartment blocks, after 70 years.
In coming to grips with the Soviet system, Lewin, a distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of Pennsylvania, has taken advantage of the opening of the archives as well as the work of Russian scholars over the last decade to re-evaluate his own analysis and conclusions from the time when he saw "as through a glass, darkly."
Lewin does not attempt to link post-Soviet developments with their Soviet antecedents; the name Vladimir Putin doesn't appear even once in the book. But the reader cannot help but be struck by how much of what Lewin describes still resonates today: the political divide between those who wanted a strong state at any cost versus those who wanted the state, however weak, to benefit the greatest number of its citizens; the emergence of the security services as a major player in the economic life of the country; the use of compromising materials to dislodge rivals from power; and the question of reforming the bureaucracy.
No doubt, readers will be most drawn to Lewin's richly detailed depiction of the Stalinist system and of how Stalin concentrated all power in his hands, adopted a revolutionary alibi to legitimize his rule, and recast practical limitations as enemies who could be persecuted and scapegoated.
More interesting, however, are two later discussions of how subsequent leaders attempted to change the rules of the game and push the Soviet system in a new direction. In the first, Lewin describes how the post-Stalin regime attempted to deal with dissent, not via extermination but via prophylaxis - by isolating and containing it. The same could be said for the semi-liberal, semi-authoritarian regimes of Eurasia, Asia and the Middle East today, which demarcate specific social spaces for freedom of expression while designating other venues off-limits.
Also illuminating is Lewin's discussion of the avalanche of urbanization that fundamentally transformed Russia in the years after Stalin's rule. Gone today are the idealized village scenes and picturesque 19th-century towns that crowded the pages of the pre-Soviet readers used at the after-school Russian classes I attended as a child growing up in California. Urbanization, Lewin points out, "engendered new conceptions of existence... light-years away from the rural rhythms of traditional Russia." And it is because of urbanization that the Soviet legacy cannot be undone or reverted to the pastoral ideal.
While Lewin's book is serious and well researched, it will no doubt face tremendous criticism. Anti-Soviet circles in Russia and abroad will object to its lack of moral indignation at the excesses of the Soviet regime - it is Lewin's opinion that "anti-communism is not historical scholarship" - although I think that his bare-bones presentation of the facts allows readers to draw their own normative conclusions. One cannot read the NKVD's Order No. 00447, from July 1937, with its painstaking breakdown of exactly how many tens and hundreds of thousands of people should be shot and sent to labor camps, without a shudder.
But the real debate will come over Lewin's assertion that Stalinism is not the sum total of the Soviet experience and that the Soviet legacy should not be blackened as a whole by the brush of Stalin's brutality. As he notes, in the later Soviet period, political dissenters were more likely to receive a jail term than get killed. Even if this was still an injustice from the dissenter's point of view, it was a massive improvement from the perspective of history.
Lewin's research raises the critical question of whether the Soviet system, given time, could have evolved into something better. But it also stops short of full-blown nostalgia, pointing out that the Soviet Union failed to solve the critical issues that had plagued Russia since tsarist times and, instead, created a blocked political system "impeding any economic and social progress."
Whether or not one agrees with Lewin's analysis or conclusions, his central argument is inescapable: Russia cannot afford to quaff the waters of the river Lethe and search for peace and prosperity through historical amnesia. What replaces the Soviet system will still have to cope with Russia's burdens - and Russia will be better off the sooner is comes to an honest reckoning of what the Soviet Union really was.
Nikolas K. Gvosdev is executive editor of The National Interest and a senior fellow for strategic studies at The Nixon Center.
TITLE: The twilight zone
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: German prisoners-of-war are at this very moment building a radio tower in the Leningrad Oblast. They are freezing in the fierce wind and traversing the swamps and gloomy woods in barely adequate clothing. Russians living nearby are giving them a predictably tough welcome.
World War II has been over for 60 years but these scenes are being recreated with punishing accuracy by film director Artyom Antonov, a recent graduate of Igor Maslennikov's course at the St. Petersburg University Of Film and Television, for the film Polumgla (Half-light). Antonov's directorial style demands realism from his actors, and Polumgla will take movie-goers on a journey into the the atmosphere of the cold winter of 1944 as the Soviet Union waged its ultimately victorious struggle against Nazi Germany.
The movie, now being shot on a specially-constructed set representing an ancient Russian village, stars Russian and German actors and traces the dilemmas faced by a young lieutenant overseeing the radio-tower project.
After being invalided from the front with honors, the officer is sent to the Arkhangelsk region to supervise the construction of the strategic military object.
Moments before he departs for the north, the hero finds out that the beacon will be built by German POWs.
The film investigates the lieutenant's inner conflict and his difficulties in learning to perceive the German soldiers as human beings, not a faceless enemy to be destroyed.
He has just a couple of days - the length of the train journey to his destination - to overcome his hatred and contempt for the POWs.
When he arrives in the village, the local people - mainly women whose fathers, husbands and sons have gone to war - are hostile to the Germans and the officer faces the challenging task of becoming a fair and unbiased arbiter between the two sides.
Antonov's 2004 thesis project, the short film Stolichny Skory (Capital City Fast Train), made a sensational debut, gaining critical acclaim at several international film festivals, including the Cannes International Film Festival.
Polumgla is his first feature film.
The director and producers from Nikola Film Studio, which most recently produced Alexander Sokurov's The Sun, traveled extensively around northern Russia in search of an appropriate location to make the movie.
They chose a location near to the settlement of Sosnovo in the Leningrad Oblast, not far from the picturesque Karelian Isthmus, for its beautiful environment, in which the atmosphere of traditional northern Russian countryside has been preserved, said the project's spokeswoman Inna Karpushina.
The location was suggested to the filmmakers by a curator from the Russian Ethnography Museum.
The script for the film was written jointly by Russian playwrights Igor Bolgarin and Viktor Smirnov, who often work together, and were awarded a grant for the work from the Culture Ministry in 2003.
TITLE: Archaic charm
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The new production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Tale Of Tsar Saltan,,which premiered at the Mariinsky Theater on Tuesday, is like a happy child's dream: placid, multi-colored, entertaining - and it has a happy ending.
Three fair maidens late one night, sat and spun by candle-light, reads a line from Alexander Pushkin's 1832 poem upon which the opera is based. It tells the story of a beautiful girl, Militrisa, who marries Tsar Saltan and gives birth to a son. But her two envious and less fortunate sisters, ill-advised by an old woman named Barbarikha, deceive the Tsar, telling him that his wife has delivered a monster. The Tsar orders the mother and the baby to be put in a cask and thrown to the sea.
The pair survive the ordeal and float to a magic island. The boy grows up and saves a Swan Princess, whom he rescues from enchantement and subsequently marries. Tsar Saltan visits the island and is reunited with his family.
The new staging is highly captivating viewing - and the younger the audience, the better. The production will keep youngsters intrigued but not for a minute frightened. The wood where Militrisa and her son spend their first night on the island is friendly and hospitable rather than scary. Stones, serving as pillows for the exiled heroes, are painted in warm sandy colours and look almost as appetizing as freshly baked buns.
Director Alexander Petrov, the artistic director from the local Zazerkalye Theater - the city's only venue dedicated entirely to children's musical productions - is known for his innovative and daring approach to classical opera.
Petrov has moved Donizetti's Elisir d'amore, originally set in a Tuscan village in the early 19th century, to Italy just before the start of World War II. Nemorino sings his famous aria while riding a shabby bike round a neoclassical-looking courtyard, and the audience hold their breath so tightly that one can distinctly hear the sounds of pedals whirling the bicycle chain.
On this occasion, however, the director refrained from time or character twists and offered a delicately tailored children's performance. From a visual point of view, it is the reconstructed sets by Ivan Bilibin (initially made for a 1937 rendition of the opera) that dictate, or at least inspire, the actors' moves.
Bilibin, a member of the Mir Iskusstva artistic movement, was one of Russia's greatest illustrators of tales. Inspired by Russian folk themes, he developed his own distinct and much-admired style that juxtaposed elements of fantasy, folklore, and historical and geographical authenticity. One of his signature ideas was the incorporation of Russian folk designs, ornaments and motifs into every scene, be it a forest, a house or mountains. Bilibin's ability to bring a chillingly convincing sense of reality to a world of ghosts and glowing skulls makes him close to the pre-Raphaelites.
Petrov clearly feels very close to the mystical side of the story. The scenes of the Swan Princess's divinations are contrasted with the black magic of Barbarikha.
The Mariinsky showcased an impressive cast at the premiere: Mikhail Kit proved a mighty, grand Tsar Saltan, while Yekaterina Solovyova brought a very Russian combination of tenderness, innoncence, adamant will and strong stamina to her Tsaritsa Militrisa. Nadezhda Vasilieva created a compelling image of the evil-spirited, emotionally corrupt Barbarikha; Olga Trifonova was oozing magic as the Swan Princess with her silvery pure soprano accentuated by the silver stripes of her dress. Daniil Shtoda appeared as a perfect Tsarevich Gvidon, both forceful and lyrical.
The Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra gave an outstanding performance under the baton of 28-year-old Tugan Sokhiev, who this year became the company's guest conductor. The orchestra thrived in the mesmerizing glimmers of a starlit night, the lyrical languor of love themes and the festive bravado of the Tsar's Feast. Sokhiev's rapport with the musicians was complete and admirable, with their overall sound being remarkably mild, flowing and smooth.
Despite his young age, the conductor, who became a sensational discovery of the 2000 International Prokofiev Competition in St. Petersburg, already has the experience of being the artistic director of the Welsh National Opera under his belt, as well as having had engagements with the Strasbourg Philharmonic, Orchestre della Toscana, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw, the Houston Grand Opera, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Oslo Philharmonic.
To stay true to Bilibin's special fairy-tale atmosphere of Old Russia, the staging has been made in a very conventional, if not archaic way. But the archaic is very charming and appealing. The forest, terems, landscapes, boats, everything, is flat. Several rows of blue waves shaped from wood or fabric move exactly as they would have some 150 years ago. But, interestingly, animated fairy-tale images projected on the stage during symphonic intermissions fit beautifully with this intentionally old-fashioned show.
The Tale Of Tsar Saltan is showing at the Mariinsky on Saturday.
TITLE: Blood groove
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The local bunker club Griboyedov was packed on Monday night with fans of Moscow hip-hop/punk act Krovostok. They came to see the band's first proper local concert.
Many seemed to know the band's harsh, foul-language lyrics by heart and sang along, despite the fact that the band has never had any radio play - and nor is it likely to have any - and its first album is only available as MP3 audio files on its web site.
"At first, it was just a few friends having fun. We were not quite happy about what was happening on the local rap scene and wanted to do an extremely radical project that would be comparable to the most radical American acts," said the band's frontman Shilo ("The Awl"), also known as Anton Chernyak, relaxing backstage after the show.
Krovostok also includes MC Feldman, also known as Dmitry Fain, who co-writes the lyrics, and DJ/musician Polutrup ("Half-Corpse"), also known as Sergei Krylov, responsible for the band's music.
"We were planning to distribute it among our friends. We first thought that it would attract a narrow circle of people that we know because of its radicalism, but suddenly it turned out that many more people liked it."
Making the debut album, "Reka Krovi" ("River of Blood"), available via Internet turned out to be a clever move which brought the band to the public's attention, even if Krovostok's web site warns that "This disc contains explicit language, pornography and scenes of violence. Not recommended for people under 18."
"Life tastes and looks like shit, and it won't get any sweeter," chants Shilo in "Bely Yaguar" ("White Jaguar"), and the album's tracks are indeed permeated by graphic violence, chopped-off heads, noses beaten into brains, weird sex, bad language and Russian gangster slang.
But the band's members are clearly not gangsters. Fain is a musician, while Chernyak and Krylov are painters, both of whom took part in the art project Fenso. Chernyak was also a member of the interdisciplinary group PG that produced music, art and a magazine.
In a way, Krovostok is an art project somewhat similar to the 1980s Moscow underground art legends Mukhomory, or Fly Agarics.
"We are not so conceited as to compare ourselves to good cult bands such as Mukhomory, but we would be pleased if they liked what we do," said Chernyak.
He added that Krovostok's members are friends of Korabl, another Moscow band of artists turned musicians.
"The fact that it's sung from the first person doesn't mean that it's me," said Chernyak.
"It's a persona, Shilo. My name is Anton Chernyak, and this is Shilo. The language used is scary, but it's because we're just listening attentively. It stems from different sources - gangster TV series, personal experience, school friends, a good memory, a sharp ear."
Krovostok's best known song is probably "Biografiya" ("Biography"), a narrative that follows a person from his birth in the outskirts of Moscow in 1970, to becoming a gangster in the 1990s to his death under a hail of a corrupt policeman's bullets.
"It's liked by the most people, it's universal," said Chernyak. "Everybody can understand it, it's kind of cinematic."
The band took its name from the Russian word for the groove in a combat knife thought to help blood drain freely from a wound.
According to Chernyak, the band is not scared to deal with harsh subjects. "Tarantino is not scared to shoot his films, is he? It's the same with us," he said.
"But it's not all gangsters' rumbles; there's a lot of different things in our songs - unconventional sex, for instance," he added.
Krovostok's songs could not be less radio-friendly. "It's deliberate," said Chernyak.
"From the very start, strategically, we didn't want to position ourselves as a kind of [popular rapper] Seryoga and be in heavy rotation, but rather to be an underground product."
Although the band performs hip-hop, the style is not that relevant, according to Chernyak.
"It's not really hip-hop, it's kind of something different wrapped in hip-hop form, for us it's a kind of punk," he said.
"We just wanted to do it in the hip-hop form because we like the music and culture. We might record a death metal album in the future, I don't know. I would be glad to growl a bit."
Even if Krovostok was originally intended for friends, the band's audience has grown much wider.
"I am learning from different sources that all kinds of very different people listen to us, from blue-collar workers to artists. They say that career criminals like what we do a lot," said Chernyak.
"But we do not take this seriously. For us it's a kind of humor."
"River of Blood" can be downloaded from Krovostok's official web site. Links: www.krovostok.narod.ru.
TITLE: Syria Retains Grip on Lebanon as PM is Reinstated
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's president reappointed staunchly pro-Syrian Premier Omar Karami to his post Thursday and asked him to form the next government, 10 days after he stepped down under popular and international pressure.
Karami's return to power followed Tuesday's massive pro-Syria demonstration in Beirut that clearly emboldened Lebanon's Damascus-backed leaders after weeks of protests demanding Syria leave its smaller neighbor.
Karami immediately invited the opposition to join him in a national unity government. He said he will begin consulting with lawmakers to form a Cabinet early next week.
"The difficulties we all know cannot be confronted without a government of national unity and salvation," he said. "We will extend our hand and wait for the other side."
He said he will try to form a Cabinet that includes all factions and warned of "unforeseen dangerous results" to Lebanon's economy ifthe political vacuum and street protests persist.
"Therefore, I call on every one of all national forces to take part in a national dialogue on the table of the Cabinet and I am not putting any conditions."
Bringing Karami back ensures Damascus' continued dominance. Syria is keen to keep its hold on Lebanese decision-making as it pulls its forces back to the Bekaa Valley and negotiates with the government in Beirut on the troops' full removal at a later date.
The opposition criticized Karami's reappointment even before it became formal, warning that a national unity government would be a trap to bring opposition members into the Cabinet without giving them a say in policymaking.
The decision by the pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud came after legislators, ignoring weeks of anti-government protests, advised the president to rename Karami. The United States, France and the United Nations have also called on Syria to leave Lebanon.
Karami was virtually assured nomination after 71 of 78 legislators put forward his name, more than half of the votes required in the 128-member legislature. Under the constitution, the president is obliged to comply with the choice of the majority of legislators.
Karami rejected suggestions that his reappointment was inspired by Syria, saying his supporters had the majority in the parliament and with the people, a reference to Tuesday's Hezbollah-organized rally in which hundreds of thousands of pro-Syrian supporters participated.
"It was a massive demonstration that asserted our legitimacy in the Lebanese street," he said.
Opposition member Samir Franjieh on Wednesday described a reappointment of Karami as a government escalation aimed at scuttling any attempts at dialogue.
"It is a step that greatly challenges the opposition and the people's feelings," Franjieh said.
On Wednesday, long convoys of Syrian trucks and buses headed east on mountain roads and soldiers evacuated the northern port of Tripoli, witnesses reported. In some cases, Lebanese soldiers quickly took over the Syrian bases. In north Lebanon's Batroun district, local residents cheered and waved Lebanese flags as the Syrians departed.
U.S. President George W. Bush kept up the intense campaign against Damascus, saying that Syria's troop withdrawal plans are just "a half measure" and that Syrian intelligence services exercise "heavy handed" influence in Lebanon's government.
Lebanese parliamentary elections are scheduled for April and May. The opposition wants a government free of Syrian domination that could prepare for parliamentary elections and impartially investigate the Feb. 14 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in a Beirut bombing. They also want a complete withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence officials and the resignation of Lebanese security officials they consider negligent.
Hariri's assassination, was the catalyst for anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon and international uproar against Syria.
TITLE: Hong Kong
Leader Quits
As China
Looks On
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HONG KONG - Hong Kong's leader said he tendered his resignation Thursday because of failing health and repeatedly denied speculation China pushed him out in a bid to tighten its grip on the former British colony and halt a movement toward greater democracy.
After ignoring 10 days of rumors that he was quitting, Tung Chee-hwa called a news conference and announced he wanted to step down with two years left in his term. He said his health problems began late last year.
"If I continue as chief executive, I won't be able to handle it," he said.
Tung said he tendered his resignation with China's leadership an hour before his announcement and that he hoped China would accept it "as soon as possible."
He denied wide speculation that China pushed him out. China has "repeatedly affirmed the work that I and my colleagues and the government has done. That [a forced resignation] is not the case at all," he said.
Tung's exit triggers Hong Kong's first leadership change since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula, designed to give the territory a wide degree of autonomy.
Many have speculated that the real reason for Tung's early departure was that his bosses in Beijing lost faith in his ability to run the global financial capital, which has become increasingly politicized. The last two years of Tung's rule have seen the largest-ever street protests for greater democracy and lessChinese control - displays that alarmed China. "Beijing has been tightening political freedoms to make sure Hong Kong is not in troubled waters," said James Sung, a political analyst at City University who believes Beijing dumped Tung. "But with Tung's political skills and judgment, he is clearly not up for the job."
The 67-year-old Tung has struggled to raise his public approval ratings. Many believe that his administration bungled two major crises: the 1997 Asian financial meltdown and the 2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. His critics say he's too close to big business and insensitive to the hardships of the common people.
TITLE: Jackson
Faces Accuser
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SANTA MARIA, California - Michael Jackson's young accuser came face-to-face with the singer for the first time since leaving the Neverland Ranch two years ago and described watching sexually explicit images with the singer in his bedroom.
The 15-year-old was not asked about the molestation allegations before court ended Wednesday, but testified about seeing adult Internet sites with Jackson and others after the singer suggested he and his brother sleep in his room on their first visit to Neverland in 2000.
With an expression that appeared to verge on a sneer, the young cancer survivor said yes when District Attorney Tom Sneddon asked him if he recognized the defendant.
The accuser was following his 14-year-old brother to the stand.
The brother testified he saw Jackson fondle his older sibling in late February or early March 2003.
Jackson arrived more than an hour late to the trial Thursday, but the judge who had threatened to arrest him resumed the case without taking any action against the singer in open court.
TITLE: Stoudemire Ends Suns' Loss Streak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHOENIX, Arizona - Despite getting a coveted win that kept the San Antonio Spurs from sweeping them this season, the Phoenix Suns aren't likely to get overconfident if the teams meet in the playoffs.
Amare Stoudemire scored 44 points to lead the Suns to a 107-101 victory against the Spurs, who were playing without injured All-Stars Tim Duncan (ankle) and Manu Ginobili (groin).
"I wanted them to play at full strength, to be honest with you," Stoudemire said.
However, it was still satisfying to the Suns, who snapped their longest current losing streak to one team.
Since beating Phoenix in a playoff game on April 27, 2003, the Spurs had won six consecutive regular-season games and two playoff contests against the Suns.
"It takes a little momentum out of you when they are not playing," Phoenix's Shawn Marion said. "But at the same time we went out and got the win, and that's all that matters."
Suns coach Mike D'Antoni said not to read too much into the ragged, tight game.
"They are an NBA team, and it is hard to play those teams," he said. "They played a small lineup the whole time, and they had nothing to lose."
The coveted victory wasn't locked up until Stoudemire, who had 13 points in the fourth quarter, dunked for a 105-98 lead with 1:19 to go on a play that began with Steve Nash missing a short jumper. Marion deflected the rebound to Joe Johnson, who shoveled it to Stoudemire underneath.
Just before that play, Tony Massenberg and Tony Parker missed layups that would have lifted the Spurs within three points.
"We definitely ran out of gas in the fourth quarter," said Parker, who had a season-high 30 points despite going scoreless in fourth. "It just got harder and harder to make stops and get rebounds."
Marion had 18 points and 17 rebounds and Nash had 11 points and 15 assists. Leandro Barbosa scored 15 points off the bench and Johnson finished with 12.
The Suns earned their fourth straight win and snapped San Antonio's five-game winning streak.
Duncan, who turned his right ankle Sunday, played 30 minutes Tuesday against New Jersey but decided to rest it on the second half of a back-to-back. Ginobili, who scored a career-high 48 points in San Antonio's come-from-behind 128-123 overtime win in Phoenix on Jan. 21, also wasn't in uniform.
"I don't think anybody wants them to rest too long," the Spurs' Brent Barry said. "But I know [coach Gregg Popovich] is certainly looking toward the future."
The Suns blew a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter during the Spurs' comeback win, but barely had a lead to protect this time after Parker's buzzer-beating jumper cut their lead to 83-80.
Barbosa made a 3-pointer and Stoudemire had a three-point play in the first minute of the fourth, but Stoudemire also picked up his fifth foul with 9:34 left and sat out more than 4 minutes.
The Spurs crept within 91-90 on a driving layup by Mike Wilks with 7:08 remaining.
But Marion dunked and made a layup, and Steven Hunter dunked on a give-and-go with Marion in the next 1:08 to open a 97-92 lead. Stoudemire, who had 13 points in the final period, scored the Suns' last 10 points on three dunks and four free throws.
The Spurs, down 54-44 at halftime, roared back behind Parker, who had 10 points halfway through the third quarter. Bruce Bowen capped a 22-12 run with a free throw that tied it at 66 with 5:16 left.
Stoudemire had two quick baskets and Barbosa scored in transition as the Suns went ahead 74-66, but San Antonio battled back.
"It's an opportunity for other guys to get a good number of minutes against a very good basketball team," Popovich said. "You know, not just compete but get the feel out there on the court."
Stoudemire took advantage of Duncan's absence in the paint, scoring 11 of Phoenix's first 15 points on three backboard-rocking dunks, a layup and three foul shots.
But, after the Suns went up 40-26 on a runner by Nash early in the second, the Spurs went on a 14-6 run in the next 7:14.
Marion took over late in the first half, scoring on an alley-oop, stealing a pass and dunking again for a 52-42 lead with 1:25 to go.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Armstrong Picks Paris
THIERS, France (AP) - Lance Armstrong is picking his country to finish second in the race for the 2012 Olympics.
The Texan endorsed Paris instead of New York when asked Wednesday which city should win the highly competitive bid for the Summer Games.
"To be fair, I think that Paris deserves the Olympics," the six-time Tour de France champion said. "I think they were arguably the best candidate in 2008."
Albanian Fan Ban
TIRANA, Albania (Reuters) - Albania will appeal against FIFA's decision to ban their fans from two home World Cup qualifiers.
Albania were also fined 40,000 Swiss francs ($34,500) after ugly scenes at their last qualifier against group leaders Ukraine in Tirana on Feb. 9. Ukraine won 2-0.
The fans were reported by the referee and the match commissioner to have thrown bottles of water, lighters, coins and flagpoles on to the pitch.
Steroid Subpoenas Sent
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Major League Baseball players were unhappy with the decision to issue subpoenas to seven current or former players and four executives in a steroid probe, calling the move "chemical McCarthyism."
Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi, Jose Canseco, Curt Schilling, Frank Thomas and Rafael Palmeiro were ordered to speak to a House of Representatives Government Reform Committee hearing on March 17.
"It's chemical McCarthyism," said Philadelphia Phillies pitcher and union representative Randy Wolf, invoking the 1950s-era Communist witch hunts by U.S. Congressmen Joseph McCarthy and George Orwell's novel "1984."
Kickboxing Tyson?
BANGKOK (AFP) - Thai kickboxing officials want former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson to come to Thailand and learn the national sport, the Nation newspaper reported.
The World Boxing Council-Muaythai, recently formed to promote the sport and to hold title fights around the world, has been speaking to Tyson's representatives and will travel to Las Vegas next Thursday to meet with Tyson, the paper said.
"He likes muaythai, and he's being encouraged to make the switch," a senior official involved in the talks with Tyson told the Nation.
Clijsters Comeback
INDIAN WELLS, California - Kim Clijsters moved into the second round of the Pacific Life Open with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Nicole Pratt on Wednesday.
Clijsters, a former world No. 1, played her fourth match in nine months since returning from two wrist surgeries.
TITLE: Russian
League
Kicks Off
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Snow still blankets the stadiums, the temperature is stuck below zero and the only green visible in Moscow will be on St. Patrick's Day in a week's time. In other words, the Russian soccer season is about to begin.
Five out of the eight Premier League games this weekend will take place in Moscow and although stadiums are unlikely to be full, the season promises to be one of the most exciting and open in recent years, with champion Lokomotiv, CSKA, St. Petersburg's Zenit and Krylia Sovetov all contenders and Spartak and Dynamo possible dark horses after splurging on a series of signings.
An added incentive is that the top two teams in this championship qualify for the European Champions League, so that teams can dream of earning some of the money they have spent this year.
Lokomotiv and CSKA, which came first and second respectively last season, will play the newly promoted sides, Tomsk and Terek.
Tomsk, the first Siberian team to play in the league since the early 1990s, will travel close to 3,000 kilometers to take on Lokomotiv.
Many eyes will be on last year's first division champion, Terek, the team from Grozny that will play its home games in Kislovodsk. Terek's first match will be away Sunday against CSKA, the team most famous for its connections to the Army.
CSKA, who played Partizan late Thursday in its UEFA Cup quarterfinal, looks favorite to take charge at the start of the season after its impressive recent form.
Terek, who lost 1-0 to Lokomotiv last Sunday, has spent heavily on experienced players, including possible top goalscorer Andrei Fedkov, and could be a dark horse bet for a top five place.
Terek's Russian Cup Final win last year came just a few weeks after the assassination of its club president, Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov.
The most intriguing team is Dynamo, which after narrowly escaping relegation last year has gone on a spending spree funded by Monaco-based businessman Alexei Fedorychev. The new signings include seven players from the Portuguese national team, and could be joined this summer by Euro 2004 stars Maniche and Costinha, also from Portugal.
How the Portuguese will cope with the weather and the terrible early-season pitches remains to be seen. Spartak's former coach, Oleg Romantsev, will try to restore his reputation at Dynamo, whilst Latvian Alexander Starkov needs to impress this year at Spartak. Dynamo will play in St. Petersburg against Zenit, while Spartak plays Moskva on Saturday.