SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1059 (25), Friday, April 8, 2005
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TITLE: Party List
To Elect
Deputies
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Candidates in the next elections for the Legislative Assembly in 2007 will be selected from party lists, according to a new local election law passed in its first reading by the city parliament Wednesday.
Voters will no longer be able to choose a candidate according to single-mandate districts, as has been the case to date.
The number of deputies will be the same as it is now, but candidates for the 50 seats in the assembly will have to be affiliated to parties registered in the elections, a bill submitted by the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction says.
An attempt to amend the election law so that 50 deputies would be elected from party lists and another 50 lawmakers come from single-mandate districts did not get enough votes Wednesday and was blocked by the United Russia majority.
"If the Legislative Assembly is elected on the principle of 50 plus 50, the work of the parliament would be destabilized," Vadim Tyulpanov, the Legislative Assembly speaker and head of the United Russia faction, said Wednesday at a briefing. "Deputies in districts would start working against each other. If the State Duma passes a decision to conduct all elections purely according to party lists, I will give it my full support it."
Public organizations overseeing political activity in the city condemned the bill saying that the Legislative Assembly is following policies of the federal government that are moving away from basic principles of democracy.
"This contradicts the interests of voters that feel a point in electing deputies on single mandate districts," Tatyana Dorutina, head of the St. Petersburg League of Voters, said Thursday in a telephone interview.
"Deputies elected from party lists won't feel responsibility to their voters and will care only about how they look in the eyes of the top leadership of their parties," she said.
"These changes are in line with the process that has recently been taking place [in the national political system] such as the introduction of the [federal] legislation to appoint regional governors."
Some lawmakers in opposition to the pro-Kremlin majority said that the new legislation will deprive 99.5 percent of city residents of the right to take part in elections because they are not affiliated with any party. Even within the United Russia faction there are certain doubts about the bill.
"By implementing this law we can say goodbye to the system of single-mandate districts and I myself, kind of feel sorry about it," Vladimir Yeryomenko, a United Russia lawmaker, said Thursday in a telephone interview.
"The system of single-mandate districts made the elections popular among the population," he said. "The new conditions could result in a drop in turnout because most people do not interpret the role of parties as significant enough."
Having widespread control over the political system, the United Russia party has had to reform itself to gain popularity among the public, the deputy said.
"It is not enough for the United Russia party to declare that this is a party that supports a strong government [to win the elections]," Yeryomenko said. "The problem is that the party, which was created as the result of a merger of the Unity and Fatherland factions at the national level, has no ideology.
"It has to position itself as a centrist party and to do so it has to start promoting free speech and stop forcing all the television channels to work together with the government," Yeryomenko said.
Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the political council of the Yabloko faction, said it is clear that United Russia is promoting the bill on party-list elections so that it will gain a majority in the next Legislative Assembly. However, the matter was not sewn up and it could face big problems trying to elect its representatives in off party lists, he added.
"In 2007 they will end up in a hole that they are digging for others at the moment," Vishnevsky said Thursday in a telephone interview.
"The way the legislation is written does not provide enough representation in the Legislative Assembly," he added. "There is a very real threat that at least half of districts would end up with no deputies elected. In a situation in which none of the economic problems in the country have been solved by the government and the living standards of the population get worse, I'm quite sure about that."
TITLE: Cash-Strapped Tourism Service Aims to Help
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While St. Petersburg's foreign tourists grumble about a lack of security, the metro and street signs being written in Cyrillic and dodgy airport shuttle buses, those trying to serve them say they don't have enough money.
Viktor Gavrilov, head of the City Tourist Information Center, launched by the city administration in 2000, acknowledged that security is a big worry.
"Security remains one of the major concerns of foreign tourists in St. Petersburg," he said Tuesday in an interview. "We came up with an extra service to help foreigners take their problems to the police.."
It is bad enough that tourists are robbed or assaulted, but afterward they often do not know how to contact the police, he said. They need to file reports with the police to confirm that they were in trouble to claim insurance payments.
When a foreign tourist is robbed, their first task is to find the police station that serves the district where the incident occurred.
Blake Anderson, co-chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce's tourism committee and executive assistant manager of the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, said the police are unwilling to deal with cases outside their beat.
The committee is working closely with the information center.
For instance, the area around the Anichkov Bridge on Nevsky Prospekt is served by several police stations, and different ones deal with crimes depending on which side of the bridge the incident occurred.
"If a foreign tourist appeals to the wrong police station he may be sent back and forth," he said.
Gavrilov said the second problem that troubles foreign tourists who want to file an official report on what happened to them so they can claim their insurance is encountering police who don't speak their language. It usually takes several hours for interpreters invited by the police to arrive, which is very inconvenient.
"The problem is that the city policemen normally do not speak English and foreign tourists have difficulties finding them and explaining their problem," Gavrilov said.
To ease this predicament, the information center offers a free service that arranges for all dealings with the police to proceed quickly. To use the service, tourists should come to the center's main office at 14/52 Ulitsa Sadovaya.
The center's employees, who speak English, will direct tourists to the right police station and fill in a complaint form on behalf of the tourist in Russian to give to the police.
The information center decided to offer the service in order "to improve the tourism atmosphere in the city," Gavrilov said.
"Crimes against tourists happen in any big city in the world be it Paris, Rome or New York, but we need to ease the situation of people who get into such trouble," he said.
At the same time, tourists can take steps to avoid finding themselves in a difficult situation, he added.
For instance, they should know that the city metro, and central sights in Palace Square, the Church on the Spilt Blood or St. Isaac's Square attract pickpockets who are on the lookout for tourists.
"Tourists are an easy target for pickpockets because they are more relaxed and distracted by the new sights, and can behave carelessly," Gavrilov said.
Anderson said that in St. Petersburg policemen sometimes rob foreigners.
Helsinki newspaper Helsingin Sanomat wrote this week about "increasing reports in recent months of Russian police, robbing Finnish tourists on the streets of St. Petersburg."
Pekka Sailio, St. Petersburg liaison officer for Finland's National Bureau of Investigation, told the newspaper that dozens of Finns have been robbed by rogue police.
The last increase of such cases was registered in the fall of 2003, but after several consulates complained about it the situation improved somewhat to get worse this season.
Anderson said tourists who have been drinking alcohol and go for a walk at night are susceptible to being robbed by the police.
"The hardest thing is that foreign tourists don't expect to come to harm from the police," he said.
Gavrilov said tourists' lot won't get better while the city continues to underfund the sector. This year the city budget allocated only 6 million rubles ($218,000), which is several times less than it was last year.
According to Gavrilov, for the first three months of this year 17 percent fewer foreign tourists used the information center compared to last year.
Gavrilov said low financing of tourism was to blame.
"If in recent years the city's tourism experts participated in dozens of marketing tourism exhibitions in other countries to advertise St. Petersburg, last year for financial reasons they could take part only in a few of them," he said.
Anderson said the city's tourists are also in great need of special taxis or shuttle buses to drive them to and from the Pulkovo airports for a reasonable price. He said the situation when taxi drivers charge tourists unfairly high prices to ride from the airport is abusive.
The city "should figure out how tourism is important for the city from both commercial and promotional point of view," he said.
TITLE: Finns Fear Cross-Border Human Trafficking
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Finnish Foreign Ministry has set up a working group on human trafficking across its land border with Russia that has produced a draft action plan.
"In the assessment of the working group, each year Finland is a country of transit and a target country for hundreds of victims of human trafficking," the ministry says in a report posted on its web site last week.
"Most human trafficking victims coming to or passing through Finland are adults, but the possibility that some victims are underage cannot be ruled out. Victims are often subjected to sexual exploitation but also to other exploitation, such as exploitation on the labor market."
Finland is used as a transit route for the trafficking of humans bound for Germany, France, Spain, the United States and Canada, with those involved usually due to work as prostitutes or slave labor, the working group found.
"We have gradually realized that Finland, like the rest of Europe, is affected by the problem of human trafficking," Johanna Suurpaa, head of the unit for human rights policy at the Finnish Finnish Foreign Ministry and a working group member, said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Helsinki.
"Nobody really knows, of course, the exact number of people involved," he said. "Hundreds of cases are being mentioned by organizations involved in the work on the problem, but this could be just the tip of the iceberg."
He added that one of the most visible cases concerned illegal Chinese immigrants, who are used as a cheap labor in Finland.
Many people involved in human trafficking are coming to Finland across the Nordic nation's land border with Russia, Finnish officials said.
"This is mostly about the Russian-Baltic area," Suurpaa said.
Finnish and Russian officials are cooperating to deal with the problem.
Suurpaa said cooperation is going well and includes training and monitoring of staff in diplomatic offices in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
As an example of the mutual cooperation between officials of the two countries Suurpaa mentioned a meeting between Finnish Interior Minister Kari Rajamaki and his Russian colleague Rashid Nurgaliyev in Petrozavodsk on March 31.
The two countries agreed to share information that would prevent human trafficking, illegal immigration, the illegal wood trade and other types of crimes committed in the border zone.
Yevgeny Volk, director of the Moscow-based Heritage Foundation, said the Kremlin had had a chance to assist solving the problem if in the early 1990s it had followed a federal government policy to develop business and cultural cooperation in the area close to the border.
"One of the questions here is about development of the pre-border trade and cooperation between societies living in one area on both sides of the border," Volk said Wednesday in a telephone interview from Moscow. "The Russian government has said it wants to follow this policy, but now relations are becoming more and more centralized. However, this trend is occurring not only in Russia.
"The situation is also determined by there not being enough control of Russia's southern borders," he said. "That stimulates illegal immigration from countries in Asia, the Caucasus and to some degree from Moldava and Ukraine."
"But if the relations of pre-border communities were properly developed it would be quite hard for illegal immigrants to operate there because in such communities everybody knows each other and anyone who is out from outside cannot help but be noticed," Volk said.
The Finnish Foreign Ministry statement about the working group on human trafficking was issued shortly after Finland border officials detained and extradited 48 Georgian women who tried to enter Finland by bus and were suspected of attempting to go to the European Union to work illegally.
The English-language web site edition of the Helsingin Sanomat said the issuing of this statement at this time was a coincidence.
"It was right to take action, because there had been information of human trafficking in Georgia," the newspaper quoted Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja as saying.
"I have no knowledge that any wrongdoing had occurred. On the other hand, this is not my field," he added.
The Finnish Frontier Guard has asked Parliamentary Ombudsman Riitta-Leena Paumio to investigate the incident with the Georgian women after the local media asked: Are Finnish frontier guards racists who regard all East European women as prostitutes?
Border guard lieutenants Ilkka Tuimikko from Imatra and Vesa Petman from Lappeenranta denied that guards are racist and said no decisions are made on the basis of a citizen's country of origin.
Two years ago an employee of the Finnish Embassy in Moscow broke the law and was fired on suspicion of accepting bribes for issuing visas, the daily reported last week, quoting the Finnish Foreign Ministry.
TITLE: Plea to Down Hijacked Planes
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A top air defense official on Thursday called for the passage of laws that would enable the military to shoot down hijacked passenger planes - part of efforts to toughen the response to the terrorist threat in Russia.
Colonel General Yury Solovyov, the chief of the military's Special Purpose Command tasked with protecting Moscow's air space, said that the current legislation made it impossible for him to carry out his job.
"I have become a hostage in this situation. My duty is to not allow air strikes upon Moscow in peacetime or wartime," the Interfax-Military News Agency quoted Solovyov saying.
"But the law bans the interception of aircraft carrying passengers," he added.
Russia recently adopted legislation aimed at strengthening aviation security following recent terrorist attacks, including a measure to allow armed air marshals to be deployed on flights.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Bear Skulls Seized
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - FSB representatives have confiscated 11 cave bear skulls that were about to be smuggled out of Russia, Interfax reported Tuesday quoting local law enforcement officers.
Originally the skulls had been taken to Germany in 2003, but this year the archeological treasures were brought back for restoration, FSB said.
"In Russia they were restored and supplied with fake documents with the goal of transporting them abroad. The average value of the skulls is about 500,000 rubles ($17,900)," Interfax quoted the FSB press service as saying.
The skulls will be handed over to a St. Petersburg museum.
Monastery Handover
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Leningrad Oblast government will return a building in Lodeinoye Polye region that belonged to the Alexander-Svirsky monastery of the Orthodox Church before 1917, Interfax reported Monday, quoting the regional government officials.
The building, originally constructed in 15th century, is used by the Svirskaya Mental Institution.
A new building for the mental asylum will be erected next to an old people's home. The sewage system and all utilities are already in place, officials said.
The construction of the new building would cost the regional government about 150 million rubles ($5.3 million), the report said.
Simpler Visa Deal
MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia will initiate a significant simplification of its visa regime with EU countries for a whole category of citizens, Interfax reported Monday quoting the Foreign Ministry.
"One of our proposals is to simplify the visa regime significantly for a whole category of citizens, including journalists," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a meeting with Xavier Solana, the EU commissioner for external relations.
Lavrov said Russia and the EU would have to enter new and deeper levels of mutual cooperation by 2007 "when the term of the treaty for cooperation and partnership between Russia and the EU will expired."
Too Little Fruit & Veg
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Residents of St. Petersburg eat half the amount of vegetables and fruits prescribed federal norms, which is 400 grams a day, Interfax reported Thrusday, citing Vladimir Dotsenko, head dietician of Russia's Northwest.
St. Petersburg residents eat too many sweets and cakes, Dotsenko said quoted by Interfax. They eat 100 grams of sweet products on average daily.
TITLE: City Residents Write
Tributes to Pontiff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dozens of St. Petersburg residents and guests visited the Polish Consulate General this week to leave their notes of sympathy in a condolence book for Pope John Paul II.
"The death of this great man has become a very hard event for me," said Yadviga Petrovskaya, 52, a teacher of Polish descent who lives in St. Petersburg.
"John Paul II was a great Pole who was not only famous in his homeland, but also became a man of international standing," Petrovskaya, who came to write a sympathy note, said with tears in her eyes.
Tatyana Krylova, vice-president of the city's Businesswomen's Club and an Orthodox Christian, said she came to leave a note to "a tremendous man."
"This man deserves the highest respect in general and in particular for being the first to enter an Orthodox church and a synagogue, and he also asked believers of those faiths for forgiveness. "
The people who wrote in the condolence book were of different nationalities and religions, but all expressed their deepest pity over the death of the pontiff.
Azerbaijan's Consul General to St. Petersburg, Gudsi Osmanov, wrote that "John Paul II will forever live in the hearts of the people for his faith in God and sympathy for the people.
"Multinational Azerbajan will always remember his visit to Baku," Osmanov wrote.
Ivan Maslennikov wrote in his message that he wanted to "express the deepest condolences from himself and his family to the people of Poland.
"To my mind the main aim of the Pope's life was to oppose evil in all its shapes, to fight totalitarianism, and the results of his work were great," Maslennikov wrote.
Edmund Kapturkewich, 55, a Polish Catholic priest who teaches at St. Petersburg's Catholic Theological College, said he knew John Paul II personally when the future pontiff still served as Catholic cardinal in Poland.
"He was a very open and free man. And he played big role in my life. Therefore I came here today to answer a call from my heart," Kapturkewich said.
Final services before the Pope's funeral on Friday were held in the city's Catholic churches on Thursday evening. One attended by the city's diplomatic corps was held in St. Stanislav's in Ulitsa Soyuz Pechatnikov.
A plaque dedicated to Pope John Paul II was unveiled at the church.
TITLE: Photos Depict Results of Attacks on Roma
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Smashed tent frames and rusty cups lying on the ground in the dark evening light - that was what was left of a destroyed Roma community camp last year.
It is unclear who was responsible, but the violence visited on the camp came in a city that pretends to "European" relationships between the many nationalities who live here.
The desolate scene is portrayed in an exhibition of photographs of three attacks on Romani settlements in Arkhangelsk and St. Petersburg that opened in the German-Russian Exchange office at 87 Ligovsky Prospekt on Monday.
The exhibition, organized by the Northwest Center for Social and Legal Protection of Roma, which is part of the Memorial human rights organization, shows how city authorities deal with national minorities, the organizers said.
"In all the time that has passed since then, nothing has changed in the way local authorities approach the Romani population," said Stefania Kulayeva, head of the center, said in an interview Monday .
"The attack on one of the camps was initiated by city authorities," she said. "All these years we have tried to have a meeting with them, but they never answer and ignore [the issue]."
One assault on a camp took place as part of a police operation called Tabor, or Gypsy Camp, in June 2004. The operation was intended to protect tourists from being robbed in the city center.
"Drunken policemen shot machine guns to scare off the inhabitants of the camp and they beat up women," a report filed by the center said. "They threatened that they were going to clean up the camp ... [Later] 20 policemen came to inform the 50 families living in the camp that they had to leave. They were given time to collect their belongings, take them away and hide. The next day the policemen came back and burned the campsites."
About 20,000 Roma live in the Leningrad Oblast, most in extreme poverty.
In many cases this is because employers, influenced by the negative image of the community, refuse to give them jobs, according to the center.
TITLE: Intruders Try to Evict Mitki
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Muscle-bound men broke into the studio of nonconformist artists Mitki on Ulitsa Pravdy on Wednesday in an effort to force them out.
"They threatened to kill us if we didn't leave," said Dmitry Shagin, the leader of the artists who are known for their blue-and-white striped sailor shirts.
"About 10 people burst into the studio without submitting any documents and began to throw away the pictures around noon," he added. "They also cut through two of our doors and locked some artists in another section of the studio."
The intruders appeared to have been hired by a security firm to evict Mitki, he said.
The artists are fighting to remain in the city-owned studio they have had the right to use since 1996. Recently, part of the space was privatized and Wednesday's was the second intrusion by people apparently trying to get them out.
Within a few hours, city prosecutors arrived at the studio, identified the intruders, who claimed they were workers and security officers, restrained them and made them put the doors back up. Representatives of the district administration and the City Property Committee also arrived.
"The actions taken by the intruders were outrageous and deserve serious investigation," Shagin said.
On Monday, Mitki will appear in the city's Kuibysehvsky district court to try to prove their right to use the attic, which they have rented since 1996 when former St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak assigned it to them.
TITLE: Prosecutors: Sailors Beaten
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Leningrad Military District prosecutors said Thursday that the bodies of 12 conscript sailors who deserted their unit on Tuesday night showed signs of beatings.
"Medical experts found traces of beating on the bodies of seven sailors, which confirm the sailors' complaints," Grigory Kuleshov, deputy chief military prosecutor, said in a telephone interview.
Military prosecutor Igor Lebed on Thursday said he had to refute an earlier statement by Baltic Fleet representatives that the sailors left their unit because they didn't want to serve on ships, Interfax reported.
Lebed said the prosecutors were investigating the role of officers and officials in incidents at the Leningrad region's navy base.
Kuleshov said that though only seven of the 12 conscripts bore signs of being beaten, the other five said they left because "they were afraid of possible beatings."
Those who had been beaten were given medical examinations and returned to the navy, but were staying in different units, he added.
Prosecutors were trying to identify the offenders, who were not officers but older navy conscripts, he said.
On Thursday, two older sailors were detained in connection with the beatings.
The sailors who fled had arrived to start their military service in the unit recently. They said the older sailors extorted money, possessions and even safety razors from them, NTV reported Wednesday.
The sailors, whose unit is located in the St. Petersburg suburb of Lomonosov, spent half a day in a forest, and then turned to the city's office of human rights organization Soldiers' Mothers. That organization contacted the military prosecutors.
TITLE: Gongadze's Killers 'Confessed'
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV - Two former police officers have confessed to killing investigative journalist Heorhiy Gongadze five years ago, prosecutors said Monday.
Vyacheslav Astapov, spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office, said the two officers had "admitted charges" that they were cooperative and that they had "helped investigators with the details."
He refused to elaborate on what exact role they played in the killing of Gongadze, who was abducted in central Kiev in September 2000. His beheaded body was later found outside the capital.
In an interview published Monday on Ukrainska Pravda, a web site once run by Gongadze, President Viktor Yushchenko said the two officers "confessed, so the first stage of the probe in the case is over." The two have also helped investigators to reconstruct the killing and "led them to locations where it all happened," he said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Estonia Compensation
TALLINN (SPT) - Estonia says a compromise is possible on the issue of compensation for what it calls its occupation by the Soviets, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Asked about Estonia's claims against Russia for cash compensation if Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, recognizes the occupation and offers an apology, Estonian Foreign Minister Rein Lang, said "this is a matter for interstate negotiations."
"We cannot agree with Russia's position that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the Soviet Union voluntarily," he said. "But if Russia is prepared to recognize historical truth, we do not rule out the search for a compromise solution on the compensation issue."
Plea to Probe Katyn
MOSCOW (SPT) - Russian human rights activists have called for a continuation of the inquiry investigating the murder of Polish officers and civilians at Katyn by the Soviet Union in 1940, Interfax reported.
"We think that ending the investigation is unacceptable," the Memorial human rights center said Tuesday in a statement.
"The crime must be qualified from a legal standpoint, the victims of the crime must be identified, while the names of all the culprits and perpetrators must be disclosed," the news agency reported the statement as saying. "All the investigation materials must be made available for the global public."
TITLE: Analysts Blast Government's Inflation Policy
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The country's financial authorities faced a chorus of criticism this week after insisting their inflation targets could be met, even as the numbers appeared to suggest otherwise.
Analysts said the Central Bank was pursuing precisely the same policy that helped stoke inflation last year: selling rubles to slow down the appreciation of the national currency.
The consumer price index, which measures the cost of an average basket of goods and services, rose beyond even the most pessimistic expectations in March. The index was buoyed by higher food prices, the monetization of benefits and hikes in pensions and household utility bills. Retail prices have now risen by 5.3 percent since the start of the year.
Eroding the value of money is a problem because beyond raising the cost of living, it increases uncertainty about the future and makes long-term planning more difficult.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Central Bank chairman Sergei Ignatyev both said Tuesday that keeping inflation within this year's target of 8.5 percent would prove difficult, but Ignatyev insisted it could still be done.
At this point, analysts said, this is quite unlikely considering further planned hikes in pensions, strong natural resource revenues and the government's plan to limit "sterilization" of inflows by raising the price at which oil revenues go into the stabilization fund.
"The Central Bank is in denial," said Alexei Moisseyev of Renaissance Capital.
Sticking to targets may be admirable, but "targets have to be credible," he said. "If I tell you I'll lose 20 kilos in two weeks and I keep leading the same lifestyle, you're not going to believe me."
Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank, said the lack of a credible target "merely heightens uncertainty."
The authorities have failed to come up with any serious proposals to rein in soaring inflation, economists said.
Several analysts have argued that the Central Bank should abandon its policy of trying to slow down the appreciation of the ruble. A stronger currency would make life tough for many industries, whose labor and other costs are in rubles, but that would strengthen the Russian economy in the long run by filtering out weaker companies.
Other analysts, however, have said that Russian industry is still too weak to be exposed to market forces.
Hikes in interest rates, on the other hand, "would be self-defeating, as they would only attract more foreign inflows" into the country at a time when Western investors are still searching for higher yields, Moisseyev said.
Another possibility is for the Central Bank or the government to issue bonds at attractive coupon rates - in effect, paying for lower inflation - said Yevgeny Nadorshin, an economist at Trust investment bank.
The Finance Ministry, whose official mandate includes budgetary control, might be loath to bail out the Central Bank and take on more debt at a time of fiscal surplus, said Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist at United Financial Group. As for Central Bank bonds, the markets might demand usurious rates because of their low liquidity, plus the risk that any returns might be eaten up by inflation, he said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Baltika Buys Pikra Stake
ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) - Russia's largest brewer Baltika bought a 16.38 percent stake in the East-Siberian Pikra brewery, Baltika said Thursday in a statement, news agency Itar-Tass reported.
Baltika would not name who it had purchased the stake from or how much it had paid in the deal, the agency said. The St. Petersburg-based brewer did not hold any shares in Pikra previous to the purchase.
Pikra is Siberia's largest producer of beer and non-alcoholic beverages. The company's annual capacity totals 180 million liters of beer and 50 million liters of non-alcohol ic drinks.
Baltika's owner, Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH), held a 59 percent stake in Pikra in late March, Itar-Tass said.
Gref Backs Siemens
MOSCOW (SPT) - Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref gave his thumbs up for Siemens' acquisition of a majority stake in Vladimir Potanin's Siloviye Mashiny as he offered assurances to jittery foreign business leaders at a conference Wednesday.
"We believe that everything can be resolved," Gref, speaking on behalf of his ministry, told reporters after the meeting.
German technology giant Siemens disclosed its plan to buy more than 70 percent of Siloviye Mashiny, or Power Machines, from Interros last year. But the deal - which was approved beforehand by President Vladimir Putin - has stalled, and a number of government officials have publicly denounced it as a threat to national security.
Gref said the deal could go forward and acknowledged that it was strategically important for the industry.
Business Tycoon Plans
MOSCOW - Russian business tycoon Boris Ivanishvili wants to use $2.5 billion he raised from selling iron assets months ago to invest in oil, agriculture and real estate projects, a newspaper on Thursday quoted him as saying.
Media reported in January that Ivanishvili had sold his stakes in domestic iron ore enrichment assets to a group of investors that included metals magnate Alisher Usmanov.
"Half the money I raised from the transaction involving the Mikhailovsky ore enrichment plant I intend to use in my existing projects," he told Vedomosti business daily in an interview.
"My priority is agriculture," added Ivanishvili, who took control of Mikhailovsky in the 1990s.
He said he was also considering the purchase of a controlling stake in East-Siberian Oil Company, which owns a number of unexplored oil fields in the region and is now controlled by oil firm Yukos.
A company linked to Ivanishvili already owns 28.5 percent of East-Siberian Oil Company.
Ivanishvili also controls around 1 percent of Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, oil firm LUKoil and in other energy and telecoms companies.
In real estate, he said he wanted to reconstruct a number of hotels he owns in Moscow, among other projects.
TITLE: City Deserves Top Rating Says Moody's
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Lenders and investors interested in St. Petersburg were given one more reassurance this week as credit ratings agency Moody's Interfax confirmed the city's top Aaa (rus) rating.
In addition, confidence in the city's short-term credit rating was also given a boost with an equally high RUS-1 rank. Both ratings mark the highest level of creditworthiness on the agency's national scale.
Market players saw Moody's confirmation of its earlier rating given to the city last December as undoubtedly positive, in line with the current business climate. They cautioned, however, that the rating has to be supported by an increase in investment activity - both into and by the city - to provide any real gains.
The city owes its top ratings to a diversified economy and high budget revenues, low debt levels and an effective debt management strategy, as well as a relatively stable development of the local economy, Moody's Interfax said in a statement.
However, the high rating level does not mean that there are no risks associated with investment in the city, the agency said.
"The [ratings] level definitely reflects the real situation, as the city is a very trustworthy borrower.
"Nonetheless, there are also risks investors have to be aware of," said Alexander Proklov, Moody's analyst in Moscow.
Among vulnerable areas, the agency pointed to the city budget's heavy dependence on tax revenues from industrial production, especially in areas of defense manufacturing and export goods. St. Petersburg should also look to boost its capital expenditures, the agency said.
As things to monitor for the future, Moody's Interfax made note of the way the city will adapt to new federal tax reforms, which Smolny estimated will result in something like a 5 billion ruble ($179 million) budget loss for this year, and the replacement of in-kind benefits with cash.
Aside from St. Petersburg, in Russia only Moscow has the same investment ratings level from the agency. For Moscow, the rating plays a more important role in attracting investors since the capital borrows much more than St. Petersburg.
"Everyone knows St. Petersburg is a trustworthy borrower, but the way [City Hall] manages the annual budget it has not faced the need to borrow money in order to cover budget deficit. The city does not engage in projects expensive enough to merit [large-scale borrowing]," Anton Mamayev, head of investment brokers Troika Dialogue in St. Petersburg, said Thursday.
Last year St. Petersburg borrowed a total of about 4 million rubles ($143,000) through bond emissions. Meanwhile, a single bond emission in Moscow can collect up to 8 billion rubles ($287 million) and there can be ten such emissions per year, Mamayev said.
An urgent issue both Moody's Interfax and Fitch rating agencies focused on was the city's need to increase spending, especially in order to improve St. Petersburg's outdated and run down infrastructure and utilities.
Moody's Proklov said he believed the city authorities have made a start in addressing the issue.
"City Hall understands the need for investment projects in [the infrastructure] sphere, and we know they have been developing an investment strategy in the field," Proklov said.
Andrei Piskunov, an analyst for Fitch in Moscow, added that infrastructure reforms are particularly important for the city.
"The city is well-respected as one of the most dependable borrowers among the regions," he said in an e-mail.
"Yet such concerns as ... capital expenditures and social benefits reform have much greater weight for St. Petersburg then they do for Moscow," he said.
TITLE: Skills Gap Leads to Labor Shortage
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg has more vacancies than unemployed people because the wages for the vacant jobs are too low to attract applicants, officials say.
Official unemployment in the city is about 3 percent, and below the national average of 7.8 percent. The numbers of jobless will grow as modern technologies that need smaller numbers of workers are introduced, a report by the city's economic development committee says.
The city has 22,000 registered unemployed while there are 50,000 vacancies, the report says.
Most vacancies are in the low- and medium-skill categories and often involve physical work or health risks. Such jobs include street sweepers, porters, tram drivers, welders, contract soldiers and nurses.
The wages for this kind of work range from 1,000 to 15,000 rubles ($40 and $540) a month.
Most vacant jobs offer wages between 1,000 and 5,000 rubles.
Many of the local registered unemployed are highly qualified workers and engineers.
"It is not easy to switch from working as an engineer to a street sweeper," said Alexander, who declined to give his last name. "Such a change looks demeaning. Plus the wages are low."
In the early '90s his plant was turned into a share-holding company. The wages were delayed for several months and shrunk to a fraction of what he had been paid previously. He started doing side jobs but retained his position with the factory. Now with the factory situation back on track, he has returned and is working as an engineer.
The unemployed in St. Petersburg receive a small state support, which varies, and in January was 1675 rubles ($57).
Vladimir Blank, head of the economic development committee, has suggested that migrant workers, who are willing to do the jobs that city residents do not want, could fill the vacancies.
But the bureaucracy involved in employing 50,000 migrant workers would be enormous.
The visas, work permits and registrations that migrants need is a significant barrier to foreigners wanting to work legally in the city. Furnishing them with papers or preying on those who don't have them is a lucrative business for corrupt police and bureaucrats.
"There are quotas for foreign workers and they are calculated on the basis of different local enterprises' demands," said Sergei Zimin, deputy head of the economic development committee.
The annual quota is 7,000 workers. Each employer is obliged to pay 4,000 rubles for every migrant they employ.
Blank has just created a new committee that will vet the quotas.
"The committee examines the issue, talking to employers to find out realistic figures for quotas of migrant workers," Zimin said.
The number of migrant workers, most of them from CIS countries, who live in the city or Leningrad Oblast and work is considerable.
"In the whole of Russia there are 4 million to 5 million illegal immigrants, 90 percent of whom are from the former Soviet republics," said Anna Rubtsova, deputy head of the Moscow-based office of the International Labor Organization. "This compares with 400,000 legal immigrants."
A poll of illegal migrants in Moscow conducted by the ILO showed that 70 percent would like to be legalized and would pay taxes, she said.
They would take steps to do so if the process was made simple and transparent. Their illegal status leaves them open to exploitation by their employers and extortion from law-enforcement agencies, she added.
Federal ombudsman Vladimir Lukin is in favor of forming a special committee made up of representatives of different ministries to facilitate the assimilation of migrants.
The Federal Migration Service, which is a division of the Interior Ministry, tends to control and stop migrants rather than ease their path to being useful contributors to society, Interfax quoted him saying Tuesday.
"Today it is impossible to locate the areas where migration is most needed, said Lidiya Grafova, chairman of the Forum of Migrants Organization. "There are no population distribution maps available."
In St. Petersburg, initiatives are being developed to curb unemployment and cut the average seven months that unemployed people spend looking for work.
Dmitry Cherneiko, head of the city branch of the Federal Employment Service, said there should be more funds allocated to retraining people who have lost or are about to lose their jobs.
In the past, students could get practical training in workplaces and were paid half the standard wage for their work.
"Seventy percent of students stayed in those workplaces after getting their diplomas," Cherneiko added.
The authorities decided that such training breaks the rules of free competition and thus stopped the program, he said.
Among job seekers, 4.5 percent look for jobs through recruiting agencies, 17 percent use state employment agencies and the remaining 78.5 percent turn to newspapers, the Internet or their friends to find a job.
TITLE: City Gives Awards to 'Best' Taxpaying Firms
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Smolny held an awards ceremony to recognize the city's "best" taxpayers last week, news agency Fontanka.ru reported.
City Hall awarded 20 companies that it said proved to be conscientious tax payers with honorary diplomas and even souvenirs.
Speaking at the ceremony held last Thursday, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said that there is a direct relationship between strictly following the tax rules and business success. Those companies that operate transparently and pay their taxes in full are the ones that succeed in business, she said.
"It is thanks to you that the city now has a record-high budget, which grew by 30 billion rubles ($1.07 billion) in one year," she said speaking to the winners.
"No other region was able to achieve a similar improvement," she said.
After carrying out this week's pilot ceremony, City Hall officials said that they hoped that the awards could turn into an annual event.
TITLE: Chelsea, AC Milan Dominate First-Legs of Quarterfinals
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Frank Lampard scored a pair of second-half goals to lead Chelsea over Bayern Munich 4-2 Wednesday night in the first leg of the European Champions League quarterfinals.
In the night's other game, goals by Jaap Stam and Andriy Shevchenko gave AC Milan a 2-0 victory over crosstown rival Internazionale.
Chelsea went ahead on Joe Cole's goal in the fourth minute but second-half substitute Bastian Schweinsteiger tied the score in the 52nd. Lampard scored in the 60th and 70th minutes for a 3-1 lead, and Didier Drogba added a goal in the 81st. Michael Ballack scored a penalty in injury time for Bayern Munich, which is home next week in the second leg of the total-goal series.
"To get two and give us a two-goal cushion was great," Lampard said. "We're a little disappointed. In the last minute we switched off and they scored."
In Milan, Stam scored in first-half injury time and Shevchencko, in his first game since fracturing a cheekbone 6 1/2 weeks earlier, got a goal in the 74th. Both came on headers off passes from Andrea Pirlo.
"It was a difficult match for me after a long absence," said Shevchenko, the 2004 European player of the year. "It's a good result but we must not feel safe."
Before the goals, AC Milan goalkeeper Dida made saves on a curling free kick by Inter's Sinisa Mihajlovic and a diagonal shot by Julio Ricardo Cruz.
AC Milan eliminated Inter from the semifinals in 2003 and went on to win its sixth Champions Cup title.
A 52-year-old Inter fan died at San Siro stadium during the first half of the quarterfinal match. The Italian news agency ANSA reported that the man apparently suffered a stroke.
On Tuesday, Liverpool beat visiting Juventus of Turin 2-1 and PSV Eindhoven gained a 1-1 tie at Lyon.
TITLE: A Political Fire Brigade in the Regions
TEXT: You can't help but get the impression that the Kremlin is losing its political momentum when it comes to appointing governors. It is increasingly acting like a political fire brigade. In certain cases, it can't seem to make an appointment before the deadline, while in others, it is being forced to respond the best it can to expanding local initiatives and protests.
A major shift is underway in post-Soviet politics. Events in Georgia, Adzharia, Ukraine and, most recently, Kyrgyzstan have encouraged the Russian public to see any opposition demonstration, even inside Russia at the regional level, as the first sign of an impending revolution. The second the masses start marching, people start debating what color they will pick for the next revolution and discussing where dissent will flare up next.
Last week's events in Bashkortostan, Ingushetia and the Altai region made some experts talk of a possible breakup of the Russian Federation and made others demand that the authorities crack down - and crack down hard. Yet it was not that long ago that riots and demonstrations in places such as Kalmykia and Karachayevo-Cherkessia were perceived as purely local problems for the regions to solve.
Since that time, however, the Russian authorities have shown their weakness in the face of the widespread protests sparked by their inept decisions, and the Kyrgyz authorities have demonstrated what happens to the weak, even when the opposition is poorly organized and there is no noticeable foreign influence.
Yet the recent unrest in the regions bears little resemblance to what happened in Tbilisi, Kiev or even Bishkek. It would make more sense to compare them to the velvet revolutions that hit the Russian regions in the early 1990s, when Moscow showed that it was willing to get rid of regional party secretaries the public was sick of. In many ways, the recent protests were provoked by the Kremlin itself. By shutting down all the normal political methods for getting rid of unpopular regional leaders at the polls, the Kremlin now has to bear the brunt of local discontent. Furthermore, the only option left for someone trying to claw their way to the top is to prove that the current leader is incompetent.
The situations in Bashkortostan and in Ingushetia are dangerous and doomed to fan the flames of ethnic conflict between the Bashkirs and Tatars and between the Ingush and Ossetians.
In Bashkortostan, the long and painful process of a change in ruling elites, which began when the Kremlin gave Murtaza Rakhimov a helping hand in getting re-elected in 2003, is underway. Tensions among the various political elites in the republic are increasing and tearing not only through the government but also through Rakhimov's own family. Blagoveshchensk, a small town in the republic where police beat and arrested dozens of innocent people, is a ticking time bomb of a scandal. It would be truly surprising if the republic's Interior Minister Rafael Didayev, who had overstayed his welcome anyway, were to be the only official to suffer as a result.
From the sidelines, the Bashkir authorities' incompetent and cynical responses to the region's political problems resemble something from the theater of the absurd. When the people wanted a referendum to determine whether mayors should be elected, they ended up with a completely different kind of referendum that makes direct municipal elections impossible. When they wanted an investigation into police officers and other Interior Ministry officials who violated human rights in Blagoveshchensk, they wound up with a deputy interior minister in charge of human rights issues. This makes one think that those who say Rakhimov has already finagled a re-appointment from the Kremlin may just be right.
Ingushetia, for its part, is still afflicted by an old and grave illness stemming from two sets of recent reforms in the republic. First, there are the federal reforms, particularly the new law governing municipal administration, which were carried out in a particularly clumsy way. They exacerbated the long-standing problem related to the republic's borders: The Ingush believe that the border with North Ossetia was drawn incorrectly and they continue to suffer from a complete lack of a proper border with troubled Chechnya. Second, Murat Zyazikov, the republic's current president, was equally clumsy in his attempts to update Ingushetia's government. This has spurred widespread local discontent and calls for his resignation. Even though the Kremlin knows full well that Zyazikov is not cut out for his current line of work, it is hardly in a position to replace him at the moment. The guerrilla war in Chechnya is dragging on, and numerous other regional leaders need to be replaced in neighboring North Caucasus republics. Thus, the Kremlin will do everything in its power to keep the peace in Ingushetia.
In the Altai region, one would think that matters were more obvious. Mikhail Yevdokimov, former stand-up comedian and current Altai region governor, became the most frequently cited example of why the Kremlin was right in doing away with general gubernatorial elections. Yet here, the Kremlin seems stuck between a rock and a hard place. It has little desire to set a precedent of buckling under pressure from people unhappy with their regional leader. This makes sense: While today the political elite and the general public in the regions are expressing their anger at a legally elected governor, tomorrow they will be protesting the politicians appointed by the Kremlin.
The recent post-Soviet revolutions that rocked Russia's neighbors had a strong psychological impact both on the authorities governing the countries that have not caught revolution fever and on the citizens of these countries. For many people, watching the revolutions unfold on their television screens broke down an important psychological barrier. They saw a deceptively simple way to solve all their problems at once. We appear to be witnessing the return of the chaotic demonstrations and marches of the early 1990s, and the Russian authorities seem just as ill-prepared for them as their predecessors were more than a decade ago.
Today's politicians and officials need to understand that you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot straddle the fence between democracy and autocracy forever; sooner or later, you fall to one side. The color revolutions did not break out in the most democratic countries. They happened where regimes were neither fish nor fowl: not quite democracies, but not really dictatorships either. This means that we should expect to see the remaining post-Soviet countries drift toward one pole or the other. Some countries will move toward greater authoritarianism, while others will turn toward democracy. We can only hope that Russia will be among the latter.
Nikolai Petrov is scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Free Spirit of 1990 Council Is Stifled Today
TEXT: Time goes by as fast as an arrow and leaves behind many good and bad things. Some of them stick in our memory and are tinged with a sense of regret. This was my feeling while standing and listening to the St. Petersburg anthem being performed by several hundred former deputies of the first democratically elected city council that this week celebrated its 15th anniversary.
Before its election in 1990, the Communist Party de facto nominated the members of Lensovet in sham elections.
Many of the people around me were plugging political and economic reform in 1990 as the Soviet Union was engulfed in chaos. When the system fell apart in 1991, the legislators advanced new democratic ideas, many of which were later adopted at the federal level, including in the Constitution. Many parts of the constitution were born in St. Petersburg.
To my right, I noticed Alexander Shchelkanov, the first speaker of the city council in 1990-1991.
"How are you these days," I asked him after the music to the anthem written by Reinhold Glier finished. "What are you doing?"
"I just live," he replied. "I live in a village enjoying my life."
During all of the years of his work as a lawmaker Shchelkanov was known as one of the most decent folks in the Legislative Assembly. His repeated refusal to spend city budget funds on a mobile phone, which every deputy had at his or her disposal, contributed greatly to respect for him.
He still doesn't have a mobile phone to this day.
"When I came here I saw my family and it appeared that my family is a lot bigger than I even expected," Shchelkanov said. "I just look around and feel so glad."
But looking back, many members of the family can only have a sense of regret when they look at their successors in the current Legislative Assembly. In 15 years, the deputies who gather in the Mariinsky Palace have gone from being a purely democratic body to a structure fully controlled by the Kremlin because the majority is subordinated to the United Russia faction.
Alexander Belyayev, who took the speaker's chair in 1991, said he faced censorship when he participated in a program about the anniversary that was shot by a city television channel.
"We had been trying to undertake steps to put privatization process under the control of the parliament, aiming to prevent officials or other interested parties, including criminal ones, from influencing the process of redistributing property in the city [in the 1990s]," he said to his colleagues from the floor of the Legislative Assembly this week.
"We failed. All of these questions became the responsibility of City Hall. This was not included in the television program, which proves that the media is censored today."
Unfortunately, his was not the only unpleasant experience the former deputies had while preparing to celebrate the anniversary. As I found out in a conversation with one of them a few days before the meeting, the organizing committee was pressured by a pro-Kremlin lobby linked to the city administration to change a resolution that the former lawmakers were planning to pass at the end of the honorary session on Monday.
The former deputies wanted to express their view that the Legislative Assembly has drifted extremely far away from what it was in the early 1990s. The free spirit of the legislature has almost totally disappeared.
I remember this free spirit myself when in August 1991 during the August coup I stood outside the Mariinsky Palace with my school friends listening to deputies calling for citizens to defend democracy. They were honest and open to the public, giving people reason to believe in their future. People kept coming to St. Isaac's Square ready to stand up for it.
Another scene, which took place early in the morning when it was clear that the hard-line coup attempt had collapsed, has stuck in my memory. It is of seeing the Russian tricolor flag rise over the Legislative Assembly. The red Soviet flag had just become history.
I remember asking myself at that moment what this country would be like in 10 or 15 years time; I had so many hopes and expectations and I'm sure thousands of others felt the same walking home from the square tired but happy.
Now it looks as though the arrow of time has landed in a deep forest and stuck there for a quite a while. There are not that many people left at the Legislative Assembly now who can make things go in the right direction.
TITLE: Know thine enemy
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: And cut! Fifteen-minute break for everybody. Hot tea and coffee are available in the trailer!"
These were the welcome words of a curly-haired production assistant, shouted through a loudhailer during the filming of a new World War II drama "Polumga" ("Half-Light") near St. Petersburg last month.
Actors who had remained in the same position for the last half hour were relieved and quickly slipped into valenki, Russian felt shoes, to warm up their frozen toes.
"Valenki are definitely of use here if you do not want to risk getting your feet frostbitten," said Irina Karpushina, spokeswoman for Nikola Film Studio, the company behind the film, during location filming. "When we started shooting 'Polumgla' it was twenty degrees below zero - that was really challenging for all of us."
Sosnovo, where most parts of "Polumgla" was filmed, is a two-hour ride north of St. Petersburg and, without a doubt, a better environment for a movie set in a in a God-forsaken village somewhere in the north of Russia during World War II would have been hard to find.
"We were looking for a place where the atmosphere of a traditional Russian village had been preserved and were happy when a curator from the Russian Ethnography Museum recommended this location to us," Karpushina said.
Soon after the place was found, the film crew constructed a fake village there. Four complete wooden houses were erected; and a further six hinted at with poles which act as guides for special effects artists who will later filled in the houses with computer graphics.
"Polumgla" takes viewers back to the frosty winter of 1944, when the Red Army was fighting their decisive battles against Nazi Germany. German POWs are brought to a Russian village and ordered to build a radio tower. At first, relations with the inhabitants of the village are difficult, but circumstances force the soldiers and the villagers to find a common language. The inhabitants of the village start to perceive the German soldiers as human beings and vice versa; they become individuals with a face, and the concept of the enemy breaks down.
"When I read the script by Igor Bolgarin and Victor Smirnov, I particularly liked the poetic and symbolic character of the story," said Artyom Antonov, the director of the movie. "This story enables a beautiful and kind film to be made despite the time it is set in. It is a film about the interrelations between enemies and the changes in their relationship; it is about ideological conflicts and human feelings."
War serves as background to a "fairytale with a sad ending," as Antonov describes the movie. But although the plot may be fictional, the 26-year-old director set great store on having the context of the movie as real as possible.
The film cast includes a number of native German speakers, some of whom visited Russia for the first time to shoot "Polumgla."
"The fact that I work with actors who have a different mentality is very interesting to me," Antonov said. "It is reflected in the way they behave and act."
The language barrier was insurmountable though.
"Most understanding is via gestures or eye contact. Artyom gives excellent directions and our interpreter does a first-rate job," said Martin Jackowski, who plays the role of the German officer Peter in the film. "Besides, after some time you understand each other even without speaking the same language."
From time to time, the film crew also had to handle unexpected technical problems.
"Once, the script said that dogs should drag some sledges. As it turned out the sledges were too heavy for our dogs and we had to think of a solution of how to deal with that," Antonov recalled.
The shoot demanded a lot from the actors because a number of scenes take place outside in winter.
"One of the most difficult scenes so far has been one in the swamps," said Johannes Rapp, who plays the role of a German Oberst. "It was wet and freezing cold and everybody was happy to get back inside the warm trailer."
Christian Sengewald, who plays a character named Hans, also got an idea of what the situation was like 60 years ago when his nose and ears were nearly frostbitten on the very first day of the shoot.
"It was the scene where Hans is at the top of the radio tower," Nataliya Burmistrova, who plays one of the village women, recalled. "On that day it was not just minus 20 degrees Celsius - a very hard wind was also blowing. When he got off the tower we had to treat his nose and ears with some [alcoholic] spirit."
These harsh conditions helped the actors to understand the situation in 1944 better.
"Of course, we all prepared for the film by talking to Artyom and studying our characters," Sengewald said. "But none of us knows what the soldiers at that time had to go through physically as well as psychologically. I personally cannot imagine how people fought in these circumstances 60 years ago. I would not have moved two steps in this cold."
Each scene was prepared in detail, sometimes taking hours to get everything right.
"Every gesture, every eye contact has to be as Artyom wants it to be. When we shot the scene in the hut, we spent an entire day on it. Like a still life he constructs every scene, paying attention to every single detail," Sengewald said.
In contrast to many war movies currently shown in Russia, the actors' costumes were also authentic.
"My biggest hobby is the history of the World War II, and I am interested in all the details," crewmember Oleg Sokolov said. "Therefore, I am responsible for selecting the correct uniforms of that time, although my suggestions sometimes lead to conflicts with the director."
For the three German actors, making the film in Russia also provided insight into a culture previously unknown to them.
"It is fascinating how similar we are despite the linguistic barrier. In fact, we all have a lot in common here," Jackowski said. "In geographic terms, the distance between Paris and Berlin is much larger than between Berlin and St. Petersburg. But in my mind, Russia always seemed to be far away."
One reason for perceiving Russia as a remote country is the language barrier. But after he had picked up some Russian words and phrases and learned the alphabet, the country moved much closer to him, Jackowski said.
"For example, some days ago I read the word cafe on a sign and thought, 'Hey that's the same in German'. And there are quite a few words that have the same roots as some German words. And all of a sudden, the language and culture lose their exoticism."
In some respects, their experience is similar to that of the characters they play in "Polumgla." And now it seems incomprehensible how it was possible to create such a strong concept of "the enemy" in the 1940s.
"I guess that is a human feature. It is always easier to take a step back than toward a person you do not know," Sengewald said. "However, it is hard to say whether we would have reacted differently than our grandfathers at that time. We should not condemn anyone." But the actor also believes it's time to move on.
"We are a new generation and should look forwards. A lot has been said about this time and it is time to close that chapter of history for good," Jackowski said.
TITLE: CHERNOV'S CHOICE
TEXT: A no-show from The Prodigy became second in a line of big cancellations this year (after R.E.M.'s concert famously fell apart), with an testy exchange of statements between local promoters and the band's European tour management sure to follow.
Last Friday, the day before The Prodigy's planned concert, the band released a statement that said it had been "forced" to cancel its dates in Russia and Lithuania.
"One of the band members has been taken ill and is under strict doctors' orders not to fly. The band are deeply sorry to have to disappoint their fans."
This week, an update was issued. "Keith Flint was taken suddenly ill with a virus and was hospitalized for tests - he is expected to make a full recovery. As it will be 14 days before the complete results are in, the band are unable to confirm whether they will be able to reschedule the Russian and Lithuanian dates in the near future or not.
"Everyone who bought tickets for the above shows can get a full refund or wait ... until April 15 for further information. This will not affect any other shows after April 20."
Much-hyped international events this week include a concert by Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame, who will perform at the Ice Palace on Wednesday, and Smokie, the best-forgotten British pop rockers who have recently found a second 15 minutes of fame as "President Putin's favorite band" after playing at a notorious New Year party at the Kremlin. Smokie play at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Thursday.
However, Mus, the indie pop duo from Spain, who will perform at Platforma on Saturday, could be something more refreshing.
Two interesting local premieres also come this week, both at Platforma. The Optymistica Orchestra, a supergroup fronted by Tequilajazzz's Yevgeny Fyodorov and featuring ex-Akvarium cellist Seva Gakkel, as well as members of Leningrad, Spitfire and Markscheider Kunst, will launch its debut album with a concert on Friday. It is called "Polubogi vina," or "Demigods of Wine."
Meanwhile, La Minor will showcase its third studio album, "Smert Yuvelira" (Death of a Jeweler) on Tuesday. See article, page xii.
The Fuzz Awards Concert, promoted by the local rock magazine Fuzz, habitually gathers all the boring Russian mainstream rockers, making the event utterly unoriginal, similar to any other stadium rock concert. Leningrad will be playing, but, according to Leningrad drummer Denis Kuptsov, the band will perform only a very brief set, as it did last year. The inclusion of punk band P.T.V.P. in the lineup sounds interesting but will be lost in a venue filled with teenage fans of such bands as Nochniye Snaipery.
Alternatively, the S.P.A.M. Awards Concert, or St. Petersburg Alternative Music Awards, will be held at PORT on Friday.
Auktsyon will perform at PORT on Saturday, Poimanniye Muravyedy can be seen at Moloko on the same night, while Billy's Band will appear at the Estrada Theater on Sunday.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: The joint is jumpin'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Jimi Hendrix Blues Club is one of the city's premier jazz joints and if you want to spend a lively Saturday night there it's necessary to book a table. Its helpful but slightly formal staff expedite this process efficiently and will help you select one of the 15 tables on offer in the compact basement bar ahead of time. With live blues, jazz or R&B acts performing each night at 8.30 p.m., the focus at Jimi Hendrix is clearly on music, but the food on offer is also worth the trip.
Last Saturday, the young guitarist and singer Ilya Lushtak and his quartet New York-SPb showcased mainstream mellow jazz while the mixed-age crowd chowed down on classic Russian dishes such as Beef Stroganoff (190 rubles, $6.80) and steamed salmon (180 rubles, $6.40).
Lushtak, who looks like Johnny Depp and sounds like Jamie Cullum, was a little grumpy that his band was a bit late and the sound engineer was off sick, but started the evening with a rendition of "The Very Thought of You."
It was a sweet curtain-raiser, matched by starters of , (90 rubles $3.20), a Georgian salad of beans, and mussels in cream sauce (110 rubles, $3.90). Like the band, the dishes didn't arrive simultaneously, and, like the music, the food was improvised but satisfying. Traditionally, lobio has nuts - this one didn't - and the mussels were from a jar, but the dishes were filling.
Lushtak and band swung through Cole Porter and Gershwin classics, with veteran saxophonist Mikhail Kashtyukin providing a lush and gutsy soundtrack to the meal.
The entrees are served on very big plates that make the portions appear smaller than they are. For example the serving of Beef Stroganoff, which was a little dry, seemed stranded on the plate, while the salmon fillet, served in aluminum foil, appeared less than generous. But it was an illusion. With garnishes such as spinach in cream sauce, potatoes and garlic, and broccoli (45 rubles, $1.60 each) on offer, the main courses are hearty and good value for money. Unless you are starving, starters are not necessary, and a good pile of lavash, the Georgian flat bread, is a good supplement to the meal for 30 rubles ($1).
Drinks are also affordable, with Nevskoye Classic at 46 rubles ($1.60) among 12 beers available, house white wine for 100 rubles ($3.60 for 200 milliliters) and 40 rubles ($1.40) for tea.
From the mechanical bric-a-brac cluttering the window sills to the bare brick walls to its low ceiling and eccentric toilet door, Jimi Hendrix is a hangout with a lived-in feel. There is even a cat in residence who, as cats do, took in the jazz, the smoke and the chatter with a laid-back yawn.
TITLE: The running man
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Despite an abundance of material that could create wonderful film scripts, the new generation of Russian movie directors seem to be happy with re-writing and adapting familiar plots. Why struggle with developing new and complex storylines if the audience is happy with simple-to-follow "good-guys, bad-guys" narratives? And if you then set the film in Russia at the beginning of the 21st century among Moscow's upper class, there is actually little that can go wrong.
"I love blockbusters," movie director Yegor Konchalovsky said after the premier of his latest film "Pobeg" ("Escape") last week. "And I would even name my child 'Blockbuster,'" he jokingly remarked.
The director, who became popular with his films "Antikiller" (2000) and "Antikiller 2" (2003), seems to have judged the taste of the audience again with "Pobeg," although this time he limited the number of violent scenes and instead tried to concentrate more on characters.
"It is the story of a physician who is not a particularly nice person at the beginning," said Konchalovsky.
"He is self-centered and egotistical, pursuing first of all his own interests. But when he loses his wife, Irina, and his job, he is forced to reconsider his life. It is also an escape from himself."
The film's hero is Yevgeny Vetrov (played by Yevgeny Mironov), who works as a physician at a private Moscow clinic. From the moment he finds the corpse of his beloved wife in their apartment, a chase begins. Despite being innocent of his wife's murder, Yevgeny is tried, convicted, and sentenced. On the train ride that takes him to the Siberian camp where he will spend the rest of his days, he is accompanied by three other prisoners.
When they stage an escape attempt, the three prisoners as well as the soldiers guarding the train are killed in the battle. Yevgeny, the only survivor, is free and uses the chance to flee across the Siberian Taiga, with two pursuers always close on his heels. One is a detective, obsessed with catching the fugitive alive, while the other is his opponent who wants to destroy Yevgeny for good. The story ends where it began - in Moscow - and there the hero is finally reconciled with his past and starts a new life.
The story may sound familiar to fans of "The Fugitive" starring Harrison Ford, and Konchalovsky also seems to have been inspired by the 1993 blockbuster.
But despite the obvious parallels, the movie director denied any similarities with Ford's thriller.
"The only similarity lies in the fact that both heroes work as physicians," he said.
"'Pobeg' is definitely not a remake of 'The Fugitive.'"
Well, for fans of light-hearted, action-loaded entertaining movies, the question of whether the film is a remake or not will certainly not be of any significance - especially when you consider that "The Fugitive" itself is loosely based on a 1960s television series where the hero, Dr. Richard Kimble, was on the run week after week (itself based on a true story of a wrongly convicted Chicago surgeon). Forty-five years after the TV series, the hero is spared a weekly marathon and the chase is reduced to a mere two hours.
The title "Pobeg" hints to the viewer that there will be a number of scenes that keep them on the edge of their seats. Now and then, the hero is given a few minutes to relax and reconsider the mistakes of his past, but then the chase starts anew. Nobody would accuse "Pobeg" of having a masterful insight into human nature, yet there are some moments when the film allows us to get closer to the characters' souls, despite the fact that the characters are developed only well enough to keep the audience interested in the chase.
Konchalovsky's foolproof recipe for success also seems to involve setting his film in the world of the rich and beautiful.
All the characters (even one of the clinic's nurses) seem to belong to Moscow's elite and indulge in the comforts of a decadent lifestyle: big cars, stunning apartments, robot dogs - even in Siberia, the cab drivers sit behind the wheels of black BMWs.
Maybe these details are little reminders that, after all, we are dealing with a film, and the most important task of the Russian movie industry seems to be entertaining people.
"Pobeg" cannot boast a novel idea, but it certainly gets top marks as entertainment.
TITLE: Reformed gangsters
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The black sheep in a flock of urban folk bands, La Minor adds sophisticated arrangements to carefully chosen, authentic Russian gangster songs, throws in some ska and rock and roll and doesn't hesitate to perform the occasional Adriano Celentano cover.
But La Minor's upcoming album, which it will launch at a concert in Platforma this week, will contain less straightforward gangster songs than usual, according to lead singer Slava Shalygin.
"We don't have openly gangster songs anymore, probably just a couple of them, mostly we have fun, cheerful songs now," he said, sitting on the street outside the trendy underground bar Datscha this week.
"I think it's the best album we have ever recorded."
"Smert Yuvelira" (Death of a Jeweler) is La Minor's third studio album and contains 12 songs, including "Prosti-Proshchai Odessa-Mama" (Forgive and Farewell, Odessa Mama) from the repertoire of the late Soviet singer and band leader Leonid Utyosov.
The title track is a folk song that Shalygin first heard covered by the recently deceased poet and artist Alexei Khvostenko. The album also features Khvostenko's original "Lyot Dozhdyom Iyul" (July Pours With Rain). "Storia d'amore," the Celentano cover that the band frequently performs live, is also included.
The band has performed only a few concerts since it exchanged its double bass for a tuba and added a balalaika to its lineup. The new instruments premiered in January.
"I like it a lot now," said Shalygin.
"Tuba sounds stronger than double bass, it gives more bass and more drive, while balalaika can sound like a guitar and sometimes like a banjo, so it sounds more interesting now."
La Minor will embark on its next Western Europe tour, including France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and Germany, in July.
As the St. Petersburg band has learned on its frequent trips abroad, foreign audiences bring their own life experiences to the music.
"We are normally promoted as 'Soviet folk' or 'ska gangsta folk' in Europe," said Shalygin. More than once, he said, the band-members were mistaken for Romanians performing gypsy music.
In reality, La Minor draws its material from old-time gangster songs, or blatnyak, a word which was the title of the band's debut album in late 2001. Dva Samaliota's Anton Belyankin who co-runs Datshcha has dubbed the band's Klezmer-influenced style "Odessa beat," a reference to the rich criminal traditions of the Black Sea city.
But La Minor is known for its careful choice of material and for ignoring the standards in favor of obscure gems of folk poetry.
Shalygin, 33, was first exposed to gangster songs as a child, but started out as a singer in 1994 with the short-lived psychobilly band Navigators, which split after four concerts at St. Petersburg's pioneering, now-defunct punk club, TaMtAm. In the wake of the break-up, he drifted between college and odd jobs before forming La Minor in 2000.
A self-taught vocalist, he was joined by St. Petersburg Conservatory graduate Alexander Yezhov on the bayan, or button accordion, and drummer Pyotr Ketlinsky, who previously played with the local garage-rock band Kacheli. More recent additions include Igor Boitsov on saxophone and Mikhail Tugarev on balalaika.
From the outset, Shalyagin set out to emulate urban folk guru Arkady Zvezdin, more commonly known as Arkady Severny, who died in St. Petersburg in 1980. It was Severny's gangster songs that Shalyagin first heard in his parents' collection of clandestinely circulated recordings as a child.
"I've listened to a lot of Arkady Severny and wanted to create something with the same sound," he recalled. "To perform all the street hits he used to sing."
Severny's genre, now euphemistically known as Russian chanson, surfaced from the underground after the Soviet Union's fall, and has since become widely available on the radio, at cafes and in taxis in popularized renditions.
But La Minor returns to the music's roots, with sophisticated arrangements and restrained delivery.
As for new Russian music, Shalygin said he enjoyed Moscow's Krovostok when the foul-mouthed underground hip-hop band, which often sings about gangsters and violence, made its local debut at Griboyedov last month.
"I liked their lyrics, they tell whole stories in their songs, funny stories. Well, actually not funny at all," he said.
La Minor performs at 9 p.m. on Tuesday at Platforma. "Smert Yuvelira" (Death of a Jeweler) is due on Kap-Kan label. www.la-minor.narod.ru
TITLE: Rossini revival
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Rossini's long-lost, magnificent "party piece," originally created for an army of bel canto singers, "Il Viaggio a Reims," is being revived at the Mariinsky Theater, where it premieres on Wednesday with a further performance on April 16. The French actor and director Alain Maratrat is responsible for the staging, while his compatriot Pierre Alain Bertola created the sets. With their show, the French team promises an explosive fusion of Rossini's subtle comedy and raving Russian madness.
The composer's last Italian opera, "Il Viaggio a Reims" - or "The Journey to Rheims" - was initially commissioned for the coronation of the French king Charles X in Rheims Cathedral, and was first performed in 1825. Rossini conceived the opera for a one-off performance a fact that explains the tremendous vocal resources involved and the absence of a direct narrative in the work.
Most importantly, the composer himself withdrew the opera from further use shortly after the premiere, and "Il Viaggio a Reims" disappeared from public view until the 1970s when the score was scrupulously reconstructed from remaining fragments. Remarkably enough, Rossini reused some of the music in his 1828 "Le Comte Ory."
There is no real dramatic evolution in the opera. An assembly of international bigwigs - the Roman poetess Corinna, the scholar and collector Don Profondo, the English colonel Lord Sydney, the flamboyant stylish widow Contessa di Foleville and her young admirer, the French officer Cavalier Belfiore - are traveling to the coronation. An array of lively conversations, chats and incidents in and around this motley crew frame the action which takes place as the guests wait for their carriages at a little resort near Rheims in the Golden Lily hotel.
In the new production, the Mariinsky symphony orchestra will be making its own short journey: the musicians will have to leave the orchestra pit and be seated on stage, forcing the singers to mingle with members of the audience.
Things get even more unsettling with Bertola's sets, which feature suitcases, symbolizing the theme of travel, and an enormous umbrella.
Maratrat says he uses the entire theater as potential performing space. "[In our production] the stage isn't separated from the audience," he explains. "We will install several platforms amidst the rows of seats, thus connecting the singers and the spectators, turning the viewers into the show's participants. All Rossini's music is rooted in dialogue, the performers are always addressing each other and the audiences."
At the opera's finale all the characters participate in a gala to honor the French Royal Family, and each makes a reference to their backgrounds - the English colonel sings "God save the King," while the aria of Spain's Don Alvaro has a flamenco rhythm.
Born in Paris in 1950, Maratrat studied at the Institute National des Arts et du Spectacle in Brussels. In 1974 he joined Peter Brook's theater company, where he performed several roles to high acclaim.
Maratrat's operatic experience includes Prokofiev's "L'Amour des Trois Oranges" in Lyon Opera in 1981 (collaboration with Louis Erlo) and Offenbach's "Des Brigands" in Saint-Etienne in 1987.
The director admits it has been a challenge to work on the rendition of "Journey."
"This is a very specific work, which was created for a special occasion, and the singing is illustrating a particular idea, so everything that takes place on stage is hardly believable," Maratrat said. "But we have to make it convincing."
Maratrat, who began working with the singers with a special series of exercises meant to liberate both body and soul, said cerebral Europeans normally find it difficult to express their feelings through non-verbal means.
"When they want to tell someone they are happy they just say it but don't show it in a plain, unambiguous way. We must crash all boundaries and emancipate the avalanche of poetic Russian madness."
The Russian note is important for the director, who speaks about "Russianness" in superlative terms. "Only Russians make toasts that make you cry," Maratrat said. "They survived socialism, wars and mass killings. No other city fought like Stalingrad. No other nation worships their heroes like Russians do."
Mariinsky's new guest conductor Tugan Sokhiev will lead the orchestra during the premiere. The company's younger talent of the likes of tenor Daniil Shtoda, soprano Larisa Yudina, bass Eduard Zanga, tenor Dmitry Voropayev, sopranos Anna Kiknadze and Irma Gigolashvili, and other soloists of the Mariinsky's Academy For Young Singers will perform the roles.
The cast is already well rehearsed for the opera as it has performed it in concert version a number of times over the past three years.
TITLE: Crowds Flock to Vatican to Pay Respects to John Paul II
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY - After electronic highway signs and cell phone text messages failed to stanch the flow of pilgrims, police stepped in Wednesday to turn back mourners hoping to join the 24-hour line to view the body of Pope John Paul II, on a day that brought almost 1 million people to the Vatican.
The crowd control problems developed hours after the College of Cardinals set April 18 as the start of its conclave in the Sistine Chapel to choose a successor to John Paul, a papal election with new rules and new technological challenges.
Using a special entrance for VIPs, President Bush viewed the body with his wife, Laura, along with his father, former President Clinton and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, shortly after the U.S. delegation reached Rome. They knelt in a pew in front of the remains, bowing their heads in prayer, joining a million pilgrims who had filed solemnly through St. Peter's Basilica.
Seeking to clear the basilica by Thursday evening so the Vatican could prepare for John Paul's funeral the following day, police announced they were closing the line at 10 p.m. Text messages were sent over Italian cellular phone lines. Those at the back would wait 24 hours before entering the basilica.
"We're just hoping the order can be reversed," said Federica Bruni, a 20-year-old student who came from northern Italy and was one of the first to be told to go away Wednesday night.
It took more than an hour after the deadline to set up the barricades and establish the cutoff point.
"You tell these people!" said one Civil Defense officer in frustration as the time passed for the line to end. "How can we close?"
"It's possible there are 1 million people out there," said Luca Spoletini of the Civil Defense Department. "They are all concentrated outside St. Peter's. ... We are all working to ensure maximum tranquility."
At the United Nation, General Assembly members stood in silent tribute to the pope on Wednesday and diplomats offered condolences to his native Poland and the Holy See, which has observer status at the UN.
The Vatican is a keeper of secrets without parallel, but there were questions Wednesday about whether the deliberations in the conclave - and the name of the new pope - could be kept within the frescoed walls in an era of cell phones and now that the cardinals will be allowed to roam freely around the Vatican.
"They've assured us there are ways to block all communications and conversations," Chicago Cardinal Francis George said. "They're taking precautions to prevent outside interference. ... No cell phones, no laptops, nothing."
The severest of punishments - including excommunication and "grave penalties" meted out by the pope himself - await anyone who breaks the sacred oaths of secrecy.
John Paul set out the penalties in a 1996 document, giving cardinals who will choose his successor a set of detailed guidelines to ensure the centuries-old process of electing a pope is safe in the modern age.
In it, he called for a clean sweep by "trustworthy" technicians of the Sistine Chapel and adjoining rooms to prevent bugs and other audiovisual equipment from being installed. He banned telephones.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the cardinals would celebrate a morning Mass on April 18, then be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel in the early afternoon for their first ballot.
In past conclaves, cardinals were sequestered in the Apostolic Palace, crammed into tiny makeshift cubicles with limited toilet facilities and no running water.
In 1996, however, John Paul said the cardinals would instead be housed in a hotel he had built within the Vatican walls. Each cardinal now has a private room and bath.
It was originally believed they would move between the hotel and the Sistine Chapel under escort, but Archbishop Piero Marini, the papal master-of-ceremonies, disclosed Tuesday they were free to go about the Vatican between voting sessions.
According to church law, prelates are expected to hold at least one ballot on the first day of a conclave. Under revisions by John Paul, if no one gets the required two-thirds majority after about 12 days, cardinals may change the procedure and elect a pope by a simple majority.
The number of cardinal electors under age 80 and thus eligible to vote is 117, but only 116 will enter the conclave because Cardinal Jaime Sin of the Philippines is too ill to attend. Sin, now 76, had been one of only three cardinal electors who also took part in the 1978 conclave to elect John Paul.
John Paul's spiritual testament, read Wednesday, was a 15-page document written in his native Polish over the course of his pontificate starting in 1979, a year after he was elected. It did not name the mystery cardinal he created in 2003, Navarro-Valls said, ending speculation that a last-minute cardinal might join in the conclave.
Navarro-Valls ruled out that John Paul's body would be brought to St. John Lateran Basilica, across Rome, before Friday's burial, as was done for Pope Pius XII in 1958.
The spokesman said that with such crowds already converging on Rome, the Vatican could not meet requests for a viewing at what is Rome's cathedral. Instead, John Paul will be buried immediately in the grotto under St. Peter's Basilica, he said.
Giant television screens will be set up at St. John Lateran so that crowds who gather there will be able to view the funeral proceedings, he said.
The crush of pilgrims on the road leading to the Vatican will rise sharply when an expected 2 million Poles arrive in Rome for the funeral.
Italian Cardinal Pio Laghi told reporters the scene was like a cloud, "but it is a cloud that is luminous and full of life."
Italian authorities readied anti-aircraft rocket launchers among security measures to protect the scores of dignitaries converging on Rome for Friday's pomp-filled funeral in St. Peter's Square.
Italy was calling in extra police to the capital and planned to seal off much of the Eternal City on Friday to protect a VIP contingent that will also include French President Jacques Chirac and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan among other heads of state.
TITLE: Kashmir Bus Arrives After Sixty-Year Wait
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SRINAGAR, India - Buses departed Thursday from both the Indian and Pakistani sides of divided Kashmir with a few dozen passengers aboard, heading across one of the world's most heavily militarized frontiers in a symbolic step toward peace in a region riven by violence.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the buses as "a caravan of peace" before seeing off the passengers, some of whom hugged Singh before boarding.
The premier then waved a blue flag to mark the start of the bus service to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The bus service comes as one of the clearest positive steps in the two nations' often-stumbling peace process.
"The caravan of peace is now on its way. No one can stop it," Singh said, praising Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf for helping Kashmiris realize a dream of visiting members of their divided families.
"The new climate will help India and Pakistan to settle their disputes peacefully," he said.
At about the same time Thursday, the first bus set off from the capital of the Pakistani portion of Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, on the inaugural trip in the opposite direction.
Hundreds of people crowded rooftops and pressed close together along the road where the bus departed, but the official send-off was more subdued. Neither Musharraf nor Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz attended.
A total of about 50 passengers rode the buses, half from Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and half from the Indian portion. Most are from families that have been divided since Kashmir was split between the rival nations almost 60 years ago.
Passengers will travel on the buses to the bridge that spans the Line of Control-the de facto border that divides Kashmir-which they will cross on foot to board buses on the other side and drive to Muzaffarabad or Srinagar, the capitals of two Kashmirs.
The winding trans-Kashmir road, once the region's main highway, has been closed for nearly six decades, since India and Pakistan each took control of part of Kashmir in 1948.
The service went ahead in spite of an apparent separatist attack Wednesday on a building where passengers in Indian Kashmir were awaiting their departure while under police protection. Four militant groups warned that passengers "should not board this coffin to Muzaffarabad."
Six people were injured in the attack, but the passengers escaped unharmed. Two militants had made it through the gate of the heavily guarded tourism complex, opening fire in the courtyard. A gunbattle quickly broke out with guards and the main building in the complex caught fire, shooting flames more than 100 feet into the air and filling the air with black smoke.
Most of the region's militant groups oppose any steps forward in the peace process and see the bus service as a gimmick that gets them no closer to their separatist goals.
Passengers said they were excited and would not be intimidated.
"We are believers in Almighty Allah, and we hope none will harm us. We are ambassadors of peace," said Syed Shahid Bahar, 36, a lawyer whose father migrated from the Indian side of Kashmir in 1949. Bahar's cousins and uncles live in Indian Kashmir and he plans to stay there for 15 days.
Another passenger from Muzaffarabad, Mohammed Amjad Khan, said he was happy that he was going to Srinagar despite the threat of attack.
"Once in a life a man has to die, and that time is fixed so I don't worry about that," he said.
More than a dozen rebel groups, most of them Pakistan-based, have been fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan since 1989. At least 66,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict.
Kashmir, the only majority Muslim state in largely Hindu India, is claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan, and has been at the root of two of their three wars.
Associated Press reporter Matthew Pennington contributed to this report from Muzaffarabad, Pakistan.
TITLE: Blair Calls U.K. Elections on May 5
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday called a national election on May 5, triggering a four-week campaign that will test a volatile electorate's judgment of the Iraq war. Despite lingering anger over the U.S.-led invasion, Blair's governing Labour Party is widely expected to win a third term in office, bolstered by a strong economy.
"We are proud of what we have achieved in the last eight years," Blair said, after asking Queen Elizabeth II's permission to dissolve Parliament.
"It's a big choice and there's a lot at stake," he added, standing outside his Downing Street office. "The British people are the boss and they are the ones who will make it."
During the campaign, Blair is expected to focus on domestic issues, such as healthcare, education and crime, in an effort to reconnect with alienated voters. Pledges to continue investing in public services and promoting economic stability should feature in the Labour campaign.
The poll will be an important personal test for Blair. A charismatic and dynamic leader, he helped catapult Labour to power in 1997, with a promise to boost investment in Britain's ailing schools, hospitals and public transportation.
His government won a second landslide election victory in 2001, but the war, and the government's use of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be wrong, have severely dented his credibility. Blair's popularity has been further eroded by his close relationship with U.S. President George W. Bush and the perception that he slavishly follows Washington's foreign policy without exerting any real influence.
However, many analysts believe Blair has weathered the worst of the Iraq storm. His personal ratings have improved markedly from last year's slump, and his supporters view the elections in Iraq as providing some vindication for the war.
Several opinion polls published Tuesday showed Labour giving ground slightly to the Conservatives, although still with leads of between 2 and 5 percentage points. Given the margin of error, the parties were virtually neck and neck.
Analysts say, however, that the Conservatives would need a lead of several points to win the election, due to an uneven spread of constituencies across Britain's electoral map. Labour has a massive lead in the 659- seat House of Commons, with 410 law-makers - 161 more than all the other parties combined. Most believe that such a lead is insurmountable.
But Labour officials fear that a low turnout by core Labour supporters and a backlash over the war could substantially cut the government's majority.
TITLE: Saddam Hussein Looks On As Iraq's President is Elected
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two months after elections, Iraq's new government finally began to take shape Wednesday as lawmakers elected as president a Kurdish leader who promised to represent all ethnic and religious groups. Ousted dictator Saddam Hussein watched the session, broadcast across the country, from his prison cell.
A prominent Shiite Arab was expected to be named on Thursday as prime minister, the most powerful post in what will be Iraq's first democratically elected government in 50 years. That would open the way to picking a Cabinet.
Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was chosen for the largely ceremonial job of president, while Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite, and current interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, were elected vice presidents.
Talabani's selection and the expected choice of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister further consolidate the power shift in Iraq, where both the Shiite Arab majority and the Kurdish minority were oppressed, often brutally, under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime.
Talabani, 71, appealed to all sectors of the country, asking them to join fellow Iraqis working "to found a new Iraq, free of sectarian and ethnic persecution, free of hegemony and oppression."
He also urged Iraqi insurgents, who are believed to be mostly Sunni Arabs, to sit down and talk with the new government. President Bush called Wednesday's session a "momentous step forward in Iraq's transition to democracy."
"The Iraqi people have shown their commitment to democracy and we, in turn, are committed to Iraq," the president said in a statement. "We look forward to working with this new government, and we congratulate all Iraqis on this historic day."
Saddam and 11 of his top aides were given the choice of watching a tape of the National Assembly session in their prison and all chose to do so, said Bakhtiar Amin, human rights minister in the outgoing interim government.
Amin said Saddam watched by himself, while the others viewed it as a group at their undisclosed detention center, which is believed to be near Baghdad's airport.
Iraq's new presidential council, made up of the president and his two deputies, is to be sworn in Thursday. Lawmakers can then start to draft a permanent constitution, which is supposed to be finished by Aug. 15.
Among the touchiest issues that remain are whether the oil city of Kirkuk should be part of the autonomous Kurdish region, what role Islam should play in Iraq's governmental system and who will be named defense minister.
"Today Jalal Talabani made it to the seat of power, while Saddam Hussein is sitting in jail," said Mohammed Saleh, a 42-year-old Kurd in Kirkuk. "Who would have thought!"
TITLE: 'Big Five' Have All to Play For at Masters
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AUGUSTA, Georgia - Retief Goosen rarely gets worked up about anything. He's certainly not going to fret about being omitted from the Big Four.
Anyone with a pair of U.S. Open victories has enough game to stay with Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson.
The Big Four? Better make it at least five at the Masters.
"Inside, I'm confident," Goosen said. "I know I can do it and play well."
On Thursday - assuming the projected stormy weather stayed away - Goosen was set to begin his leisurely stroll through the Masters, relying on the laid-back demeanor that has worked so well for the South African at other big tournaments.
"I've learned a lot, how to cope with pressures around the course, and that's really been the improvement of my game," Goosen said. "You know you can do it under the pressure and you can play under the pressure, so definitely that helps this week."
He had a brilliant year in 2004, capturing his second Open title by making every putt in a duel with Mickelson at Shinnecock Hills, then knocking off Woods at the season-ending Tour Championship.
Goosen isn't quite as excited about his game these days. While many players dropped out of the weather-plagued BellSouth Classic last weekend, he hung around because he wanted to work on his game in tournament conditions.
Goosen needs to improve the consistency of his shots, and his club selection hasn't been so great, either.
"I felt like I needed the practice," he said. "I'm not playing as well as I would like to, but you never know. This week, hopefully, it all starts falling together."
It's not as though Goosen is that far off. He finished third at the Match Play Championship, eighth at Doral, fourth at Bay Hill and tied for 12th at The Players Championship.
Beyond the Big Four or Five, there's plenty of other guys who can win this week. How about Padraig Harrington? Or Sergio Garcia? Or all those Australians, eight strong?
"Harrington is in form," Adam Scott said. "He probably feels like it's time to win a major. He's one guy to keep an eye on."
And Scott, part of a record contingent from Down Under, likes his chances, too. Only 24, he's coming off an eighth-place showing in the Players and is hopeful of making a big splash at Augusta.
Scott even broke out a pair of green pants for Wednesday's practice round, mindful that he could have a green jacket to go with them should he win Sunday.
"I've got high hopes," he said. "If I can put myself up there and have a chance on the weekend, you never know what might happen. Maybe I can make a few putts on the weekend."
Scott should feel right at home, surrounded by all those fellow Aussies: Robert Allenby, Stuart Appleby, Mark Hensby, Peter Lonard, Nick O'Hern, Rodney Pampling and Craig Parry.
They're driven to finish the job started by Greg Norman, whose tantalizing quest for the green jacket was always undone by some improbable event. A 4-iron into the gallery on the 18th hole in 1986. Larry Mize's chip-in from 140 feet in a playoff the following year. And the cruelest blow of all: a final-round meltdown in 1996, when the Shark squandered a six-stroke lead over Nick Faldo.
"An Australian is going to win here soon," Scott vowed. "Robert and Stuart have been coming here a couple of years. There's no doubt they have the game to win majors. Even the first-timers [Hensby and Pampling] are experienced players who have a chance."
Of course, all eyes are on the guys who've won before - especially Woods.
When he knocked a ball into the woods at No. 11 during a practice round, a half-dozen grown men huddled around it, holding their cameras just inches away from the TIGER printed on top.
But the three-time winner is hardly the only attraction at Augusta.
Mickelson is the defending champion, finally shaking the label of best player never to win a major. Coming off a victory in the BellSouth Classic, he's eager to join Woods, Faldo and Jack Nicklaus as the only back-to-back Masters winners.
Last year, Lefty birdied five of the last seven holes to capture his first major. "Being able to come through when I needed to gives me a little of extra confidence," he said.
Singh is No. 1 in the world and seems to be around the top of the leaderboard no matter where he plays.
"Vijay is the one that is playing the best at the moment," Garcia said.
No one is more due at Augusta than Els. A year ago, he lost to Mickelson by a stroke despite shooting a final-round 67. Several other times, the Big Easy has been in contention on Sunday, only to be doomed by various misfortunes.
"You need to get lucky here and there," Els said, "and hopefully it will happen this year."
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: More Zenit at RFU?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Local media named former Russia manager Anatoly Byshovets, who coached FC Zenit St. Petersburg when new Russian Football Union (RFU) head Vitaly Mutko headed the premier league soccer club, as front-runner for the job of Russian national coach.
Current Zenit coach, Czech Vlastimil Petrzela, is also said to be under consideration for the job.
The previous national coach Georgy Yartsev quit Monday after Mutko hinted he would sack him when he became the new head of the RFU on April 2.
Cricketers Stoned
JAMSHEDPUR, India (Reuters) - Security has been tightened around the Pakistan cricket team after captain Inzamam-ul-Haq escaped injury in a stone-throwing incident, officials said on Thursday.
India and Pakista players were leaving the Ranchi airport in eastern India on Wednesday when a stone flung from a crowd of a few thousand fans waiting outside the airport broke a window in the Pakistan team bus.
Match Fixing Scandal
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Thijs Waterink of regional league side Paderborn SC has become the first player to be sanctioned in connection with Germany's match-fixing scandal with a ban from playing until July 31.
Dutchman Waterink, the Paderborn captain, admitted accepting 10,000 euros ($12,920) from an unidentified man before the side's Cup match against Hamburg SV earlier this season.
The match, won 4-2 by Paderborn, was later found to have been rigged by Robert Hoyzer, the Berlin-based referee who has admitted taking 67,000 euros ($86,560) to fix matches for a Croatian betting ring.
Rugger Star Stays Home
BIARRITZ, France (AFP) - The blindside flanker Serge Betsen has turned down a chance to join English Zurich Premiership side Leicester by signing a new three-year contract with Biarritz.
"I want to finish my career here," said the 31-year-old capped 48 times by France. Betsen also has a business interest in southwest France where he opened a spa resort in 2004.
Nadal Supreme on Clay
MADRID (AFP) - Spanish young bull Rafael Nadal handed out a claycourt lesson to Davis Cup-winning teammate Juan Carlos Ferrero, winning 6-2 6-1 to reach the second round of the ATP event in Valencia.
Former French Open champion Ferrero was bludgeoned off court by Nadal in just an hour, winning 91 percent of points on his first serve and firing down three aces to zero for his hapless rival.
Jackson to Sue
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) - Bo Jackson filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday against a California newspaper that quoted a dietary expert who said the former two-sport star used steroids.
The lawsuit was filed in Cook County against the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, MediaNews Group Inc., MediaNews Group Interactive, Inc., sports writer Jim Mohr and three other employees of the newspaper.