SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1062 (28), Tuesday, April 19, 2005
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Families
 Eye Return
 Of Palaces
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Buildings in the center of St. Petersburg that the Bolsheviks confiscated should be given to descendants of the original owners, a round table was told last week.
 
Representatives of the Russian Empire Union and the organization Our Heritage and Alexander Chuyev, a State Duma lawmaker, who has drafted a bill on restitution, took part.
 The round table, organized by Rosbalt, addressed the concerns of descendants of noble families for the fate of St. Petersburg's Palaces.
 "If privatization takes place in Russia without any discussion on restitution, this would be illegal and immoral," Chuyev, a Rodina deputy, said at the round table on Thursday.
 "The question of the privatization of cultural memorials should be approached in a way that respects the descendants of those who owned them," he said. "The nationalizations should be condemned and the descendants should be given the right to determine what happens to the properties. Apologies should be made to descendants of those people who were deprived of their property."
 While conceding that the time is not right for the buildings to be restored to the families of the former owners, participants at the round table said that in the future the government should revisit the issue and that descendants would lobby for more progress to be made on restitution.
 Many of the buildings that were once palaces belonging to noble families are today apartment blocks and some apartments have been privatized. Even those that are not residential and are entirely state-owned have been poorly maintained.
 While other former Socialist countries have addressed the issue of returning confiscated real estate, Russia has shown little initiative on the issue and many citizens are opposed to it. 
 "It would be a significant step if the leadership of the country rehabilitated its relations with compatriots, many of whom live abroad," Chuyev said. His bill, which urged that architectural y significant sites be handed to the descendants of their former owners, has been filed in the State Duma, but was rejected by the Duma's property committee.
 Meanwhile, representatives of the former owners admitted that the topic might be too sensitive to raise in the current circumstances.
 "We don't call for restitution, but we want to attract the attention of society to this problem," said Boris Turovsky, head of the Russian Empire Union.
 "The architectural sites have two kind of owners, a factual and historical. The historical successors can prove their rights in court," Turovsky said.
 However, he said that if a law on restitution is passed it could lead to social unrest.
 "We don't want a second revolution," he said.
 Chuyev said almost every building in the center of St. Petersburg could be subject to claims from the descendants of the former owners and could theoretically be returned if it was taken away against the will of the owners, according to the Civil Code.
 But, considering that the descendants have had little success to get the buildings in the past 12 years, this is a theoretical possibility only, he added.
 Since 1993, when talks on restitution started in earnest, almost the only former owner of seized sites to have succeeded in getting back even part of its former real estate is the Russian Orthodox Church. At the same time several groups representing the interests of former owners, such as the Moscow-based Union of Merchants, have failed to prove their ownership rights in court, according to reports in the local media.
 Princess Vera Obolenskaya, who grew up in France and has moved to St. Petersburg, said when she came back she found an estate that had belonged to her family in the Tverskaya region was in an awful condition.
 "There are only ruins left, but in the past we exported cheese to Holland from there," she said.
 "This is just a nightmare. There are only poor peasants left everywhere around," Obolenskaya said.
 "The question of restitution was not initiated by us, but by the St. Petersburg governor, when she said that if buildings that are considered as architectural monuments are put up for sale, descendants will have the first right to buy them," Interfax quoted Dmitry Shakhovsky, honorary chairman of Our Heritage, as saying Thursday.
 "I am more concerned about the legal and moral aspects of this question, but not the practical one," he said. "I am concerned about protecting the appearance of these buildings and about the future of the city."
 But the restitution seems to be far from a priority for Governor Valentina Matviyenko.
 "It is unlikely that there will be any developments on this matter in the near future," Natalya Kutabayeva, the governor's spokeswoman, said Friday in a telephone interview. "There hasn't been any information on it recently."
 
n
 Matviyenko and LUKoil president Vagit Alekperov in April last year signed an agreement that the oil company will invest up to $100 million in the local fuel market development until 2007, and spend another $30 million renovating the Stieglitz Palace at 68 Angliiskaya Naberezhnaya. But last week LUKoil backed out of its plans to renovate the palace.
 
"It was planned to renovate part of the palace to be used for the office of the company, but it was unsuitable," LUKoil's press service said Monday.

TITLE: Envoys
 Get Police
 Hotline
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Foreign diplomats working in St. Petersburg last week reached an agreement with city police to create a direct line of communication with local law enforcement management over improper police behavior and hate crimes that the police take no action on, representatives of foreign missions said.
 
"Sometimes the police behaves impolitely, not only in relation to foreign citizens, but also to representatives of diplomatic missions that are working here," Ruben Akopyan, dean of the city's diplomatic corps, said Monday in an interview. "It sometimes happens that the police do not know the rights of such people and how they should act toward them.
 "We have reached an agreement that if anything of this nature occurs, we will inform the head of the police or a person responsible [for this question]," he said.
 Akopyan said neither he nor any other staff of the Armenian Consulate in St. Petersburg had been ill treated by police, but indirectly suggested that unpleasant incidents have affected representatives of other diplomatic missions.
 "Nothing of the kind has happened to me or people who work with me. But if incidents of this or any other kind do happen, we solve them using the law," he said.
 The latest reported case when diplomats were allegedly maltreated by police officers happened at the end of January, when an unidentified man stopped an Audi car with a Polish license plate on Zvenigorodskaya Ulitsa and took the diplomat's ID card. The criminal demanded $200 for the card to be returned, local media reported.
 The city police could not be reached for comment Monday.
 The U.S. embassy in Moscow on Monday warned its citizens about racist attacks that could be initiated by skinheads on April 20, May 1 and May 9.
 "In previous years, extremist groups, particularly 'skinhead groups,' have marked these holidays by assaulting people of color, and in particular, by targeting foreigners. These groups are very dangerous and should be avoided. When out in town, do your best to avoid anyone resembling a skinhead," the embassy wrote on its web site.
 "They typically shave their heads and wear black leather clothing with Nazi swastikas. Tourist areas ... are frequently targeted by skinheads," the letter said, "The police have informed us of the potential for problems on the anniversary of Hitler's birthday [on Wednesday] and have assured us that they will take every precaution deemed appropriate to ensure public safety."
 Human rights advocates have expressed their hope that the police will do their job on Wednesday, but say what they do on other days is a big question.
 "I hope it will not be that dangerous for April 20 because the police is expected to act," Yury Vdovin, co-head of the St. Petersburg branch of human rights organization Citizen's Watch. "The problem is that we live between fascism and communism, and I won't be happy if either of these sides win." 
 "Foreigners, especially those who don't appear to be from the West, should unfortunately always beware in Russia," he said Monday in an interview.
 Russia has almost as many skinheads as the rest of the world put together, the Moscow bureau for human rights says.
 "There are about 50,000 skinheads in Russia. In comparison, in the rest of the world, except Russia, there are not more than 70,000," Interfax quoted Semyon Chyorny, an expert with the bureau, as saying Monday.
 St. Petersburg has the most skinheads - some 10,000 to 15,000, the expert said. 
 The northern capital is followed by Nizhny Novgorod with up to 2,500 skinheads, Rostov-on-Don with more than 1,500 and up to 1,000 in Kaliningrad, Pskov, Yekaterinburg and Krasnodar. There are several hundred skinheads in each of Voronezh, Samara, Saratov, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Omsk, Tomsk, Vladivostok, Ryazan and Petrozavodsk, he said.
 The groups are not united, operate independently and usually include up to several tens of members, the human rights advocate said.
 "If in the past the groups of skinheads existed only in major cities and the towns of the southern part of Russia where the interethnic relations are tense, today we can talk about this movement spreading to all the territories, to the regional and district centers," he said.
 Most of the 40 killings committed on the grounds of national hatred in 2004 in Russia were by skinheads, Chyorny said.

TITLE: Three Regions Vote to Merge in Referendum
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Three sparsely populated regions in Western Siberia have overwhelmingly agreed in a weekend referendum to merge to create Russia's second-largest region, according to preliminary poll results released Monday.
 
The proposed unification of Krasnoyarsk, Taimyr and the Evenkia Autonomous District is in line with a Kremlin drive to consolidate its grip on the country and reduce the number of regions from the current 89, political analysts said.
 More than 92 percent of voters in Krasnoyarsk approved the merger in the referendum Sunday, as did about 70 percent of voters in Taimyr and 79 percent in Evenkia, Interfax reported. 
 Authorities of all three regions took pains to get people out to vote amid worries that turnout might fall below the required minimum of 50 percent. Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Khloponin, Taimyr Governor Oleg Budargin and Evenkia Governor Boris Zolotaryov traveled extensively in their regions, often going from village to village, Kommersant reported.
 Izvestia said President Vladimir Putin courted voters by, among other things, signing a decree that promises Kremlin backing for 200 billion rubles in investment in the merged territory.
 Voter turnout in Krasnoyarsk and Taimyr was about 53 percent, while 73 percent of voters participated in Evenkia, Interfax reported.
 "The publicity drive was just excellent. People were promised a better life and new streets and hospitals," said Maxim Dianov, director of the Institute for Regional Problems, a think tank. "People are expecting a lot."
 Krasnoyarsk, which is home to Norilsk Nickel and a giant RusAl aluminum smelter, is a net contributor to the state budget, while the federal government spends 2 billion rubles per year in subsidies to support Taimyr and Evenkia.
 Krasnoyarsk has a population of 2.9 million, while Taimyr has 37,000 people and Evenkia has 18,000. 
 The three regions were part of the same region in Soviet times but were divided by the post-Soviet government to give autonomy to the native people of Taimyr and Evenkia.
 The merged region would be the largest after the Sakha republic.
 Sunday's referendum came after the Perm and Komi regions voted to merge in December 2003. That unification has yet to be completed.
 Political analysts said the latest referendum will pave the way for a series of similar initiatives intended to cut the number of regions. 
 State Duma Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska said in comments published in Izvestia on Monday that Russia should have no more than 35 to 40 regions.

TITLE: Trepashkin Gets Another Year
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Moscow regional court on Friday added another year to the prison term of former FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin after convicting him of an additional charge of illegal arms possession, his lawyer said.
 
In a case that human rights activists see as politically driven, Trepashkin was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to four years in prison on charges that included disclosing state secrets. 
 He has denied all the charges, insisting they were fabricated by the Federal Security Service to avenge his investigation into a series of apartment bombings in 1999. 
 On Friday, the Dmitrov City Court, outside Moscow, found Trepashkin guilty of illegal possession and transport of weapons for a gun that law enforcement officials say they found in his car in October 2003.
 Trepashkin contends the gun was planted. 
 Trepashkin and his lawyers say he is being prosecuted to put an end to his investigation into the suspected involvement of the FSB in the 1999 bombings. 
 Lipster said she will appeal.


TITLE: Starovoitova Motive 'Political'
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: State Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova was assassinated for political motives, the state prosecutor says.
 
Deputy city prosecutor Alexander Korsunov made this conclusion about the 1998 slaying of the liberal St. Petersburg deputy in a speech posted on his web site on Friday, Interfax reported.
 He did not suggest what the political motives might be. Friends and family of Starovoitova believe that the executors have been found and are on trial, but that whoever ordered the slaying has influence in political circles and prosecutors have not wanted to name them. 
 "Considering that Starovoitova had no other activities than her state and public ones, and that the obtaining of personal information about her and where she was can have nothing to do with the returning of any debts and the lack of any control over a commercial enterprise leaves a political motive as the only motive of the actions of the criminal group against her," Interfax quoted him saying. 
 Korsunov said that the assassins did not take either Starovoitova's money or her valuables.
 "In the black handbag found with Starovoitova we found a mobile telephone, 855 rubles in cash, credit cards in Starovoitova's name, some foreign currency including a 1,000 Deutschmark note and about 18 $100 notes," he said.
 According to Starovoitova's sister, Olga, the money had been earned during a visit to a U.S. university and was to be used to buy a television and to repair an apartment.
 "The sum of the evidence shows that her valuables were not taken by her attackers and it follows that the purpose of the assault was not to acquire property," Korsunov said. 
 On April 4, Korsunov asked for the suspects Yury Kolchin and Vitaly Akinshinas to be jailed for at least 10 years to prison, that Yury Ionov and Igor Krasnov, be sent to a hard-labor colony for 15 years, that Igor Lelyavin be jailed for 12 years and that Alexander Voronin, in the light of his cooperation with investigators be jailed for only 41/2 years.
 Voronin last week pleaded guilty to monitoring Starovoitova's telephone calls, but other suspects have not admitted their guilt.
 Ruslan Linkov, Starovoitova's assistant who was severly injured during the assassination said Lelyavin threatened Voronin in the courtroom.
 "Voronin might soon leave the jail, so I wish him long years ... no, long days of life and health," Lelyavin said according to the witness.
 "When asked if it was a threat he said, 'Yes,'" Linkov said.
 The defense had argued that the suspects were Christian and would not take a human life. he said.
 But a relative of one suspect had pointed at Linkov during a break in the trial and said told a child to take revenge when he grew up.
 "'Look, these are the people who put your father in jail, so when you grow up you should get busy with them,' the woman said. That shows very well their attitude to Christianity," Linkov said. 
 The trial has been running since the start of last year and is in its final stages. The next hearing is due on May 23. 
 Three suspects are still at large and another, Pavel Stekhnovsky, was extradited from Belgium in December.

TITLE: City Has 'Plenty of Eroticism'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sex is the main factor for human development, says German erotic-art collector Hans-Jurgen Dopp, who is in St. Petersburg to give a lecture on erotic art on Wednesday.
 
Dopp, 65, said he began his collection 40 years ago. Today it consists of about 5,000 erotic drawings, lithographs, and water colors by international artists, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Hans Bellmar.
 "I don't find my hobby unusual," he said Monday in an interview. "On the contrary, I am surprised that not all men collect such items because everyone is interested in the topic."
 Asked how erotic art differs from pornography, he said pornography is essentially a moral term while what interests him in erotic art is the portrayal of sexuality as an expression of freedom.
 "There's plenty of eroticism in the palaces of St. Petersburg," he said. "For instance, at Pavlovsk many artworks show naked women's breasts."
 Most artists have created erotic works at some time in their life, but erotic art is still rather rare because many of them have been destroyed at times when they were forbidden, he said.
 Cultural traditions and the Christian church, which emphasized the development of the spirit rather than the flesh, were mainly responsible for the curbing of erotic art, he said.
 Erotic art varies in line with the country it comes from.
 German erotic art often presents a dark variant of sexuality, and can even be anti-erotic because of its connection with violence. While French erotic artists have much lighter view, he said.
 Dopp said that there are thousands of forms of sexuality, which all have the right to exist, except those that involve sexual violence and children.
 Dopp's lecture will be given at St. Petersburg's Soitology Institute, which publishes erotic literature and aims to educate people about sex. He will talk about the history of erotic art starting from the Renaissance, and why this art was often forbidden.
 He will show about150 slides from his art collection at the lecture.
 Neonilla Samukhina, director of the Soitology Institute, said Dopp's will be the first public lecture at the institute, and is open to anyone older than 18.
 
 <i>Information about the lecture can be obtained at tel. 315-6491 or 571-7521.</i>


TITLE: Nashi to Fight Liberals, Bureaucrats </strong>
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - New youth movement Nashi, or Us, pledged to defend the policies of President Vladimir Putin against liberals, corrupt bureaucrats and fascists as it held its founding conference Friday. 
 
Nashi appears to be a Kremlin effort to help safeguard itself against a popular uprising.
 Nashi began to take shape late last year, and 30 regional branches sent 680 delegates to Friday's conference in the main building of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The delegates, mostly well-dressed college students aged 17 to 22, were greeted by Nashi flags, a white X-shaped cross on a red background, and posters of the first man in space, Yury Gagarin. Some posters read: &quot;Yury Gagarin. That's Where Nashi Is From!&quot;
 Delegates elected Nashi founder Vasily Yakemenko as their leader, and he said he would step down as leader of Moving Together, another pro-Putin youth movement, to accept the post.
 Reading from Nashi's manifesto, Yakemenko said Nashi would help Putin overcome resistance from domestic enemies such as corrupt bureaucrats and &quot;an unnatural union of liberals, fascists, pro-Western politicians and ultranationalists,&quot; Yakemenko said.
 He later told reporters that Nashi would start a campaign against Putin's enemies that would include the passing out of pamphlets. He identified Putin's enemies as liberal politicians Irina Khakamada, Vladimir Ryzhkov and Garry Kasparov, among others.
 Reading from the manifesto, he said Nashi also would fight foreign foes such as &quot;international foundations and international terrorists&quot; and seek to counter U.S. influence. He said the United States and terrorists want to weaken Russia to gain control over it.
 He said Nashi would support Putin to make Russia the world's leader and to dismantle &quot;oligarchic capitalism.&quot; 
 Nashi intends to become a main political force in the 2008 presidential election, Yakemenko told reporters. It now has 3,500 members, he said.
 In a sign of Kremlin support, Science and Education Minister Andrei Fursenko gave a speech in which he urged delegates to study, stay healthy and strive to help Russia create an economy based on intellect rather than oil. 
 He acknowledged that he had hastily drafted the speech en route to the conference and then said: &quot;There's a catastrophic lack of ambition in the country. Let's not be afraid of challenges. Let's take them on.&quot;
 Fursenko warned delegates not to demand higher stipends or employment guarantees. About 4,000 students rallied at the White House earlier in the week. Stanislav Belkovsky, a political analyst, said the well-dressed delegates at Friday's conference were a front. &quot;It was created to unite tough youth - such as soccer fans - who are fit for street fighting and who could face off against other youth gatherings in the street,&quot; he said.
 Belkovsky and political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky said the Kremlin fears an uprising such as Ukraine's Orange Revolution last year. &quot;This [Nashi] is an organization of young fighters, a preventive measure against a possible Orange Revolution in Russia,&quot; Piontkovsky said.
 He said a revolution was unlikely to happen but the authorities were scared and acting &quot;hysterically.&quot;
 Piontkovsky said the emergence of Nashi was an indication that Moving Together has failed to galvanize young people's support for Putin.
 Yakemenko said Friday that Nashi was being financed by the privately owned Moscow Management Institute but was hoping to get money from big businesses and the government.
 Delegates on Friday elected five &quot;commissars&quot; - including Yakemenko - to serve on Nashi's governing body, the federal council, and the commissars faced mocking questions at a news conference. &quot;Are your parents aware that you are here?&quot; one reporter said, prompting loud laughter.
 &quot;Of course my parents know,&quot; Mikhail Kulikov said, and his fellow commissars replied affirmatively.
 One delegate, Anastasia Raikova, an 18-year-old student at St. Petersburg's State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, said she learned about Nashi from a friend in November and later attended a meeting with Yakemenko. &quot;The more you listen to him, the more you understand that he is saying smart things,&quot; she said. &quot;This organization supports Putin's policies. It's appealing.&quot;
 During the conference, a National Bolshevik Party activist jumped onto the stage and pushed bottles of water off the speakers' table. Police were holding her pending charges, the party said.

TITLE: State Duma Gives Its
 Vote to Large Parties
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma on Friday gave its approval in the crucial second reading to legislation that would transform the lower house by ending the election of independent deputies and making it even more difficult for smaller parties to claim seats. The vote was 335 to 96.
 
The proposal to eliminate individual Duma races and offer voters a choice only of parties was originally pushed by Central Elections Commission chairman Alexander Veshnyakov, who said it would help Russia develop &quot;a real party system.&quot;
 It won President Vladimir Putin's support in the aftermath of the Beslan attack in September and became part of his broad plan, along with the scrapping of gubernatorial elections, for changing the political system. 
 The plan's opponents have said it would further increase the Kremlin's control over the Duma and ensure that it continued to operate as a rubber stamp.
 &quot;The Kremlin is just slashing the number of actors with which it would have to negotiate,&quot; said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies. &quot;It is one thing to strike a deal with two or three party leaders and another to reach accord with, say, 225 single-mandate lawmakers.&quot;
 Under the current system, half of the Duma's 450 members are elected by party list and half are elected in single-mandate races.
 After the Duma approved the bill in a first reading in late December, about 800 amendments were submitted. Some were submitted Thursday by Putin. 
 These amendments, which were approved Friday, would raise the bar for political parties to get into the Duma to 7 percent from 5 percent and would prevent small parties from forming coalitions to meet that threshold.
 This would effectively lock out the smaller liberal opposition parties, since they would be prevented from joining forces ahead of the 2007 Duma elections. 
 &quot;Even the small liberal factions in the Duma had easy access to the national media and, outspokenly critical, were like an irritating mosquito for the Kremlin,&quot; said Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst at Indem. &quot;Now the Kremlin is setting up a mosquito net against them.&quot;
 The Duma slapped down a main element of Veshnyakov's original plan, which would have punished parties for stacking their party lists with governors, business leaders and celebrities. Under Veshnyakov's plan, if someone on one party's list refused to take a Duma seat, that seat would go to another party. 
 The Communist and nationalist Rodina factions supported this initiative. Deputy Speaker Valentin Kuptsov, a Communist, said it was intended to prevent a repeat of the situation in 2003, when United Russia had 37 regional leaders on its party lists and not one accepted a Duma seat. Veshnyakov, who said such practices deceived the voters, refused to discuss other amendments after this one was defeated 234 to 137.
 The Duma refused to introduce a quota of 30 percent for women on party lists, a motion put forward by Yekaterina Lakhova, head of the Women and Family Affairs Committee. Women hold slightly more than 10 percent of Duma seats.
 The Duma made it easier to bar a party from participating in an election by reducing the percentage of citizens' signatures that could be found invalid to 5 percent from 25 percent. Barring opposition parties and candidates on the premise of forged signatures has been common practice over the past decade. 
 Deputies supported by 307 votes an amendment put forward by United Russia that would strip the ombudsman of the right to invite international observers to monitor parliamentary elections.
 The legislation would make it difficult for new political forces to emerge, despite a strong public demand for new faces, Makarkin said. &quot;Without new people and ideas, fatigue will quickly overwhelm the public, making it less susceptible to the Kremlin's calls,&quot; he said. &quot;Also, the authorities will be representing a smaller range of interest groups.&quot;
 The new legislation, including the ban on coalitions, would apply to regional as well as national parliamentary elections.
 Before becoming law, the legislation must be passed by the Duma in a third reading, approved by the Federation Council and signed by Putin.


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: No Word on 'Spy'
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian diplomat was forced to leave Germany in December after German counter-intelligence and the CIA caught him buying military secrets, a German news magazine reported. 
 No comment was available from the German government or the Russian embassy Monday on the Der Spiegel report. 
 The magazine said Alexander Kuzmin, Russian consul in Hamburg, was caught at a secret meeting in a restaurant last November with a member of the German armed forces who handed him documents about communications and weapons systems. 
 The report said Kuzmin was summoned back to Moscow on Dec. 5 . 


2 Jailed Over Bombs
 n MOSCOW (AP) - A court on Friday sentenced a former Sibir airline employee and a ticket scalper to 18 months in a penal colony for their role in the bombings of two passenger jets last summer that killed all 90 people aboard the planes. Armen Arutyunyan and Nikolai Korenkov were sentenced for aiding and abetting terrorism and for commercial bribery in the Aug. 24 bombings of a Volga-Avia-express Tu-134 and a Sibir Airlines Tu-154. 
 
Interfax reported that the court had taken mitigating personal circumstances into consideration when deciding the sentence. Arutyunyan has a child and pleaded guilty, while Korenkov has elderly parents. 
 
 
EU, Russia Eye Deal
 n CANACH, Luxembourg (AP) - European Union and Russian officials said Friday that they were still hopeful of clinching a deal on illegal immigration as part of a new EU-Russia cooperation pact meant to be signed on May 10.
 
The two sides sought to narrow differences at a meeting Friday, and Justice Minister Luc Frieden of Luxembourg said the EU and Russia were "very much on the same wavelength" on how to tackle illegal asylum seekers.
 
Balts and Annexation
 n RIGA, Latvia (AP) - Leaders of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia on Friday welcomed a proposed U.S. congressional resolution calling on Russia to admit the Soviet Union's annexation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia during World War II was illegal.
 
<style text>U.S. lawmakers Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, and John Shimkus, a Republican whose ancestors came from Lithuania, said they were cosponsoring a resolution demanding "a clear and unambiguous" admission by Russia that the Soviet Union's five decade-long occupation of the Baltic states was wrong. 
 
 
<style text>Foster Mom Guilty
 n ROLLING MEADOWS, Illinois (AP) - A jury convicted a Chicago woman of killing her 6-year-old son, who died weeks after she and her husband adopted the boy from Russia.
 
Irma Pavlis, 33, was found guilty Friday of involuntary manslaughter, prosecution spokesman Tom Stanton said.

TITLE: Report: Beslan HQ Was Run by Others
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Public anger over the handling of last year's Beslan hostage-taking crisis might have been directed at the wrong officials, according to an investigative report published by Novaya Gazeta on Thursday. 
 
The men officially responsible for the botched attempt to rescue hostages - North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov and the head of the republic's branch of the Federal Security Service, Valery Andreyev - were not really in charge, as there was an alternative headquarters set up by senior federal officials to run operations on the ground, the newspaper said.
 Citing what it said were official transcripts of investigators' interviews with Dzasokhov, the paper said that in reality it was senior FSB commanders and Kremlin officials who ran the anti-terrorist operation from a third-floor office in Beslan's town hall. 
 Even some members of the official headquarters - set up to handle the crisis and commanded by Andreyev -were denied access to this shadow task force's war room, the paper said. 
 Most of the more than 330 hostages who died in the attack on Beslan's School No. 1 died in the intense shootout and fire on the afternoon of Sept. 3, after the authorities said a bomb planted by terrorists had exploded.
 The paper published abridged versions of investigators' interviews with Andreyev and Dzasokhov along with the story Thursday, taken from what it said were official transcripts.
 Both officials were interviewed by investigators from the North Caucasus branch of the Prosecutor General's Office. Novaya Gazeta reporter Yelena Milashina, who has written extensively from Beslan, said Thursday that she had received copies of the interview protocols sent anonymously by regular mail. She said she believed the documents to be authentic.
 An official at the North Caucasus branch of the Prosecutor General's Office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the protocols published by the paper looked &quot;90 percent genuine.&quot; In his interview Dzasokhov - who assumed command of the rescue operation in the first hours of the hostage crisis on Sept. 1 - said that deputy FSB directors Vladimir Pronichev and Vladimir Anisimov were directing the anti-terrorist headquarters alongside him.
 At noon on the second day of the crisis, Sept. 2, Pronichev showed Dzasokhov a decree signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov appointing Andreyev head of the operation's headquarters, Dzasokhov said.
 But in his interview, Andreyev said that Pronichev had shown him Fradkov's decree putting him in charge only at 2:45 p.m. that day - nearly three hours after Dzasokhov said he had been shown the order. In his account of events, Andreyev named several officials present at the official headquarters, but not Pronichev or Anisimov.
 For weeks after the Beslan tragedy, it remained unclear who headed the headquarters set up to deal with the crisis.
 Several Russian newspapers reported that Andreyev had been in charge, but speculation persisted that he could have been a figurehead picked to shield the real decision-makers from public scrutiny, and anger if the rescue operation went awry.
 Later in September, the Gazeta daily was first to report that Pronichev - who had handled the Dubrovka theater siege in Moscow in October 2002 - was in charge in Beslan.
 Andreyev was removed from his post shortly after the Beslan tragedy, while Dzasokhov faced several days of angry public protests in the North Ossetian capital, Vladikavkaz.
 But in a possible sign that Andreyev's superiors were not unhappy with his performance, he was not fired by the FSB and reportedly remained on active service.
 One witness at the Beslan headquarters during the crisis, State Duma Deputy Mikhail Markelov, said by telephone Thursday that Andreyev had never been in charge there. He refused to say who the real operation chief was, citing an affidavit he had signed pledging not to disclose information about events in Beslan until the security forces' investigation was over.


TITLE: Oryol Appeals to Rehabilitate Stalin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Members of the Oryol city legislature have appealed to the country's leaders to rehabilitate Josef Stalin, put up monuments to the Soviet dictator and name city streets after him.
 
In their appeal to President Vladimir Putin, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, the signatories argued that it had never been proved that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions of people during his rule. 
 Local human rights advocates denounced the appeal as cynical and disrespectful to victims of repression. 
 The appeal called for a re-evaluation of Stalin's historical role, mainly over his part in the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
 It was signed by 33 of the city's 35 deputies, a spokeswoman for the city's legislature, Olga Patenkova, said. &quot;The idea of the appeal belongs to deputy Mikhail Vdovin, who said that veterans' groups had urged him to demand historical justice for Stalin and ask that people stop smearing his name,&quot; Patenkova said by telephone from Oryol.
 Vdovin could not be reached for comment Thursday.
 Vladimir Krayukhin, an Oryol-based human rights advocate, said that the same city legislature in 1993 passed a resolution commemorating Sept. 11 as a memorial day for local victims of political repression.
 &quot;On that day in 1943, some 150 political prisoners in a prison camp in the Oryol region were executed by firing squad. ... Stalin personally sanctioned the execution,&quot; Krayukhin said by telephone.
 But Krayukhin said that in the 12 years since the revolution, no regional or city officials and lawmakers had ever showed up at the monument on Sept. 11 to pay their respects.
 &quot;This appeal is a slap in the face to all these victims and their children and grandchildren,&quot; Krayukhin said.
 
 n Sculptor Zurab Tsereteli has found a home in Volgograd for his controversial new statue portraying Stalin, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the 1945 Yalta conference. 
 After the bronze 4-meter-tall monument was rejected by Moscow and Yalta, the sculptor presented it to Volgograd, which accepted the gift.
 In an effort to head off criticism, the city's authorities have decided to put the monument on display in the Battle of Stalingrad museum complex, Interfax reported museum director Boris Usik as saying.


TITLE: A Siberian Psychiatrist's Method for Beating Alcoholism
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Alexei says he was an irredeemable alcoholic until he met Marina. He gave up drinking after the Novosibirsk psychiatrist beat him on the buttocks with a flexible rod.
 
Alexei is among a handful of alcoholics and drug addicts who have received the unorthodox treatment, which literally attempts to beat their addictions out of them. The therapy was devised by Marina Chukhrova, a psychiatrist with 20 years' experience treating drug addicts and alcoholics, and Sergei Speransky, a senior researcher at a Novosibirsk medical institute.
 Patients are required to undergo at least one session of 300 blows to the buttocks per week during the first three weeks of treatment. After that, they receive beatings at their own request but no less than once per month.
 Chukhrova explained the treatment as such: Alcoholics and drug addicts, especially those addicted to opiate-based substances such as heroin, suffer from a lack of endorphins, otherwise known as happiness hormones. As a result, the sensitivity of the top layer of skin is reduced, making addicts &quot;uncomfortable in their own skins.&quot; The beatings - which Chukhrova sometimes administers but are usually carried out by male staff - make patients &quot;feel their own bodies&quot; again and reduce cravings for drugs and alcohol.
 Since she and Speransky began their studies in 2003, Chukhrova has admitted 10 patients for treatment. Four patients disappeared after a few beatings, but that was due to a relapse into their addictions rather than a desire to be spared the rod, Chukhrova said. The other six patients are in remission, she said. 
 She insisted that the beatings are not sadomasochistic. &quot;It's not that kind of rod. You can't hit too hard,&quot; she said.
 Patients bruise but do not bleed, she said. &quot;It is cheap and effective. It is serious, and the most important thing is that it helps. They are cured.&quot;
 Chukhrova and Speransky acknowledged that their scientific peers were skeptical of their work and therefore they preferred to keep a low profile.
 &quot;I don't want to publicize it,&quot; said Chukhrova, who works at Novosibirk's Institute of Hygiene. 
 Speransky, who asked that his institute not be identified, said he developed the treatment after testing it on himself. He said getting a beating every Sunday helped him recover from depression and two heart attacks. Speransky's previous experiments have included testing whether Orthodox icons have a healing effect on mice.
 A national search for cures for drug addiction and alcoholism has created a market for treatments that range from detoxification clinics - like those used in the West - to hypnotism, black magic and home remedies. The use of violence is not unheard of. In Yekaterinburg, a local nongovernmental organization - reportedly supported by the Uralmash organized crime group - has handcuffed drug addicts to beds to wean them off drugs. In Dagestan's mountainous districts of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, Islamic fundamentalists in the 1990s treated drug addicts by beating them with sticks and forcing them to carry out hard labor.
 When asked for his assessment of the unusual new method for curing drug addiction, the Health Ministry's chief substance abuse doctor, Nikolai Ivanets, blurted out, &quot;Not the one with boiling water!&quot;
 Told that the treatment involved beating patients' buttocks, he started laughing. &quot;It would be better if they beat berries. That's my commentary,&quot; he said, making a play on the Russian words yagoda, or berry, and yagoditsy, or buttocks.
 Skeptics aside, the important thing for Alexei, the patient in Novosibirsk, is that he is no longer drinking after a year in treatment. &quot;You feel like an idiot during it. Imagine being beaten on the ass,&quot; he said. &quot;You cry, scream, curse.&quot;
 Alexei, who asked that his last name and profession not be published, said he had tried various other treatments, from hypnosis to injections to the head, but he had always returned to drink. And he said he had loved to drink. &quot;I had done everything from spirit to eau de cologne,&quot; he said.
 Alexei said that he initially dismissed the beatings as nonsense but was impressed by Chukhrova's conviction, and that he checked himself in for treatment at the start of what otherwise would have been a long drinking bout.
 He said he woke up the day after the first beating with no wish for a pokhmelitsya, a drink of alcohol to cure a hangover.
 He said he had lost all desire to drink but did not publicize the kind of treatment he had undergone. The result was the important thing, he said, not how he had gotten there. Or as his common-law wife told him before he underwent the treatment: &quot;Do whatever you want, so long as we can live a normal life and you don't fall back on drink.&quot;


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: West Held to Blame 
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Mikhail Mar-gelov, a senior Russian lawmaker, accused the West on Thursday of being the driving force behind popular uprisings that have changed regimes in several former Soviet nations and warned that Russia's other allies in the region could face similar developments in the near future.
 While Margelov stopped short of directly accusing the United States and other Western nations of staging the uprisings that overthrew the governments in the ex-Soviet nations, he made it clear that in his view the West was a driving force behind the developments. 
 
 
<b>No Space Weapons 
 </b>

 MOSCOW (AP) - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday that Moscow strongly opposed U.S. plans to deploy weapons in space, news reports said.
 Ivanov said Russia was "categorically against the deployment of any weapons in space," according to remarks carried by Interfax and Itar-Tass.
 Ivanov was commenting on recent statements by U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Henry Obering, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, who was quoted as saying at a conference in Washington that emerging threats called for the development of a space-based defense system, Itar-Tass said.

TITLE: Cossacks To Be
 Recruited
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin has asked lawmakers to pass a bill that would institutionalize and broaden the de facto practice of recruiting Cossacks for service in Army and police units.
 
Under the bill, those Cossack organizations listed in the State Registry of Cossacks would be registered as noncommercial partnerships, from which authorities would be able to procure services. These services would include assistance in coping with emergency situations, including firefighting, patrolling the streets, fighting poaching and other peacetime activities.
 The organizations would be able to select and send their members to serve in designated Cossack units in the Defense Ministry, Interior Ministry and Federal Border Service, according to the bill, which Putin sent to the State Duma on Tuesday.
 Cossacks, warrior farmers who for centuries defended Russia's borders, were renowned for being fierce soldiers with unparalleled skill on horseback.
 Bills calling for the revival of the pre-revolutionary practice of Cossack units that could serve in the Army, border guards and police were proposed eight times in the past 12 years, but none was passed, Kommersant reported.
 This time, however, the Kremlin's bill should sail through the Duma, since it has already received the support of several leading United Russia deputies.
 Viktor Grishin, the chairman of the Duma's Regional Affairs Committee, told Kommersant on Monday that he was confident the bill would pass as it contained no reference to whether the Cossacks would be allowed to carry arms if in the State Registry but not serving in the armed forces. This clause was a contentious sticking point in previous bills.
 Cossack groups across Russia have been organizing vigilante patrols to help police and volunteering for military and police service for more than a decade; however, these activities have been on an ad-hoc basis.
 Currently, there are about 40 border guard posts where Cossack conscripts serve together. There are three Army regiments, several battalions and one brigade of Defense Ministry troops where rank-and-file positions are manned exclusively by Cossacks, said Alexander Semyonov, an aide to Putin's adviser on Cossack affairs, Gennady Troshev.
 There are 10 voiskoviye kazachiye obshchestva, or regional Cossack associations, and eight okruzhnye kazachiye obshchestva, or branches of these associations, listed in the State Registry, which have chieftains appointed by the president, Semyonov said by phone Wednesday.
 They have a total of about 620,000 card-carrying members, 230,000 of whom are adult members who are willing to enter state service, Semyonov said.

TITLE: Kostroma's Search for a Skull for the Tsar
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: KOSTROMA - The legend of Ivan Susanin, the peasant who gave his life to save the first Romanov tsar, may stand or fall on the analysis of a skull found near the ancient Volga River city of Kostroma, where archeologists are claiming to have unearthed the hero's remains in a 17th-century graveyard.
 
They hope to prove the skull is Susanin's and that he really did die a martyr's death to protect Mikhail Romanov from Polish invaders.
 They organized a scientific conference in the city ahead of a visit by President Vladimir Putin last month, intending to present their findings to the president in an effort to provide historical underpinning for a campaign to boost patriotism and national pride.
 But archeologists and anthropologists who attended the conference failed to agree on whether the skull, one of 700 dug up from a graveyard near the village of Isupovo, was Susanin's, citing the paucity of DNA and other evidence.
 Putin's visit to the city, which included a meeting of the State Council devoted to the preservation of cultural and historical monuments, passed without any reference to Susanin, leaving the mystery unsolved.
 For Sergei Alexeyev, the archeologist who led the yearlong search for Susanin's bones, the question has a political dimension. 
 &quot;Not every Russian region can boast having had a personality like Susanin,&quot; he said.
 Over the centuries, Susanin's story has been invoked as an example of the heroism of ordinary Russians and their devotion to the country's ruler.
 Mikhail Glinka's opera based on the Susanin legend, &quot;A Life for the Tsar,&quot; was presented to Tsar Nicholas I in the 19th century, as the country's Slavophile elite united around the slogan, &quot;Autocracy, Orthodoxy, National Roots.&quot; A century later, during the Soviet era, the opera was renamed &quot;Ivan Susanin,&quot; while the tsar was written out and replaced with a patriotic state official.
 Earlier this year, political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky predicted the emergence of a new conservative patriotic movement in the country, based around reviving the same tsarist-era slogan. 
 Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said the Kremlin could have planned to invoke the Susanin legend during Putin's visit to Kostroma as part of a campaign to drum up patriotism but then decided against it.
 &quot;Playing the anti-Polish card has come into fashion recently, but the Kremlin folks must have decided that it could turn counterproductive. Besides, Putin is a skeptical person and probably thought the idea was not that credible,&quot; Pribylovsky said.
 Alexeyev, sitting in his office in central Kostroma, where plastic bags with human bones could be seen in every corner, said he undertook the excavations to put an end to the speculation over whether Susanin actually existed. &quot;Our main motive for the research was the mythological nature of Susanin's story, which became the theme for Glinka's opera,&quot; Alexeyev said.
 Susanin's name is linked with the end of one of the most turbulent periods in Russian history, the Time of Troubles from 1598 to 1613, when the country lacked a single recognized ruler.
 After several years of foreign invasions and infighting among the boyars, in the winter of 1612-13 a Polish army marched on Moscow, hoping to put a Polish prince, Vladislav, on the Russian throne. In response, leading boyars called a Zemsky Sobor, or Land Assembly - a collection of boyars, clerics and freemen - in Moscow, which proposed offering the crown to 15-year-old Mikhail Romanov, the heir of a well-known noble family.
 On March 14, 1613, the entire assembly came to the Ipatyevsky monastery in Kostroma, where Mikhail Romanov was to come with his mother, a nun named Marfa, from their family estate in the nearby village of Domnino.
 A group of Polish soldiers looking for Romanov found Susanin, Marfa's steward, and ordered him to lead them to the Romanovs' estate. The legend goes that Susanin agreed but instead led the Poles into the depths of a dense forest. When they found that they had been tricked, the Poles killed him.
 Meanwhile, Mikhail and his mother escaped to the monastery, where Mikhail accepted the boyars' invitation to become the tsar. 
 The Susanin legend, as well as forming the basis for Glinka's opera, was also associated with the Romanov national anthem, &quot;God Save the Tsar,&quot; which was sung in the opera's final scene at its royal premiere at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater. Legend has it that Nicholas I himself renamed the opera, which had originally been called &quot;A Death for the Tsar.&quot;
 The anthem survived until the Bolshevik Revolution and briefly resurfaced, without any words, in the post-Soviet era.
 The main square in Kostroma was named after Susanin in the early 1990s, and one of the Kostroma region's districts was named after the local hero during Soviet times.
 More recently, a Russian Internet company unveiled a search engine called www.susanin.net.
 Susanin's act of heroism was first documented by 18th-century historian Nikolai Sumarokov, who headed the Kostroma gentry's assembly. Other historians treated the legend with a certain degree of skepticism, as they were more inclined to believe that a band of thieves - one of many that roamed the country during the lawless Time of Troubles - had murdered Susanin, and that there was nothing heroic in his death.
 According to Alexeyev, there exist at least two documents showing that Susanin did indeed give his life for Mikhail Romanov. Both are petitions to the tsar submitted by Susanin's descendants, in 1619 and 1730, describing his martyrdom and asking for a pension. Both petitions carried the tsar's signature approving the awards, Alexeyev said.
 After examining the graveyard and scouring historical archives, Alexeyev came to the opinion that Susanin did not actually lead the Poles into a dense forest so they would not find their way out, but rather led them along a roundabout route to the Romanovs' estate. Meanwhile, his son-in-law Bogdan ran to warn the future tsar of the danger, Alexeyev said.
 The exhumations in search of Susanin's remains were commissioned by the Kostroma regional administration in 2001. The next year, Alexeyev's group unearthed a 17th-century graveyard near Isupovo, outside Kostroma.
 Part of the funding for the identification of the remains came from a Moscow-based group, the Foundation for Aiding the Identification of Victims of Violence.
 The archeologists found the remains of 700 people, but only four of them appeared to have died violent deaths, as their skulls were smashed in, Alexeyev said. It took him more than two years to analyze the findings, consult historians and forensic experts, and wade through the archives. Eventually, he narrowed the search down to just one skull, taken from a grave the scientists numbered 13A.
 Having examined the skulls, Viktor Zvyagin, a scholar with the Moscow-based Forensic Studies Center, backed Alexeyev's theory.
 &quot;My conclusion was that there were no features&quot; contradicting the theory &quot;that the skull from grave 13A belonged to Ivan Susanin,&quot; Zvyagin said by telephone. He refused to give more details about his research, which has been criticized by some fellow scholars recently.
 But in an earlier interview to the Izvestia newspaper, Zvyagin said that he had compared the skull's size and shape with those of Susanin's living descendants and with remains from a graveyard in the village of Korobovo, where Susanin's relatives resettled some years after his death.
 Based on these comparisons, Zvyagin made a composite sketch of Susanin's face. The findings impressed one of Susanin's recorded descendants, a retired Air Force officer from Saratov named Viktor Belopakhov, who attended the conference in Kostroma with his son and grandson. &quot;Alexeyev called and congratulated us on being the real descendants of Susanin and promised to invite us to a reburial ceremony,&quot; Belopakhov told Komsomolskaya Pravda in February.
 Zvyagin told Izvestia that skull 13A was the only one in the graveyard that had been fractured four times on the left side and on the front, and that the person had been severely beaten and had probably died of head injures.
 Other tests showed that the skull belonged to a person in his or her 40s or 50s who suffered from a thyroid disorder and as a result was most likely quick-tempered, Zvyagin said. Both features matched the description of Susanin at the time of his death, he said.
 But Pavel Ivanov, another scholar with the Forensic Studies Center and one of the country's top DNA experts, said that making a final identification of the remains would be problematic, as scientists had failed to retrieve from the remains any DNA that could be matched with any of Susanin's descendants.
 &quot;Judging by what we had, there was evidence of severe DNA destruction,&quot; said Ivanov, who was one of the experts who identified the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and members of his family for a government commission in the late 1990s. The royal family's remains were reburied in St. Petersburg's SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1998.
 But despite the lack of DNA evidence, Alexeyev said he was undeterred in his quest to prove the remains were Susanin's and would look for more evidence to discover the route by which Susanin had led the Polish invaders. 
 For now, Alexeyev remains hopeful of a quick decision by the authorities on the skull's identity. 
 &quot;If the authorities need patriotic symbols such as Susanin, the decision will come soon,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Austria Opens Economic Chamber in City
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As a marker of the strengthening economic ties with Russia, Austrian officials and businessmen launched last week a St. Petersburg chapter of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber.
 
Opening the chamber's 100th office together with the Austrian finance minister Karl-Heinz Grasser, the Russian president of the chamber Dr Christoph Leitl said the choice of location came naturally.
 &quot;We have long thought where we should open the symbolic 100th trade office,&quot; Leitl said at the opening. &quot;But the choice was not difficult: we decided on St. Petersburg.&quot;
 The new chapter of the chamber, located at the embankment of the River Moika, will work in close cooperation with the Austrian Trade Office in Moscow.
 &quot;The main task of the marketing office in St. Petersburg is to support the development of Austrian business in the Northwest region,&quot; said Natalia Lebedeva, director of the St. Petersburg office.
 Aside from taking care of Austrian business interest in the Northwest region, the chamber will also regularly promote &quot;exhibitions, congresses and workshops where we support Austrian companies to participate,&quot; Lebedeva said.
 Russian-Austrian relations have grown considerably in recent years. Describing the economic development between the two countries, the finance minister quoted a 21.1 percent rise in the volume of Austria's exports to Russia in 2004, to reach 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion).
 In return, Grasser said it was encouraging that Russia enjoyed a 7.1 percent rise of its economy last year on the back of strong oil prices.
 &quot;Russia has become an attractive trading partner for Austrian companies, for services and goods as well as for investment,&quot; Leitl said. &quot;By strengthening our presence in the Russian Federation, we try to make this market more easily accessible to Austrian businesses.&quot;
 According to figures published by the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, more than one third of Austrian exports to Russia constitute machines and installations (40 percent), followed by chemical goods (20 percent) and end products (15 percent). Russia's first and foremost export to Austria is oil and gas (75 percent).
 The opening of the Austrian marketing office in St. Petersburg also indicates the increasing economic importance of the city and the Northwest region as a whole for Austrian business, the finance minister said.
 &quot;St. Petersburg is a wonderful city, which provides a number of possibilities for economic cooperation. We are convinced that several projects will develop [here] in the near future,&quot; Grasser said.
 About 15 Austrian companies are presently represented in the Northwest region and St. Petersburg, although the number will soon rise, according to the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber.
 VA Tech Elin EBG group, a leading multinational supplier of integrated electromechanical and electronic plants, systems and services for the industrial, building and public sector infrastructure, made its first steps into the Northwest market in 2001. The company provided the electric and mechanical equipment for the Phillip Morris cigarette factory in St. Petersburg.
 Since then, the company has completed several other projects and views its future in the Northwest positively.
 &quot;Due to the regional wage difference, the significance of St. Petersburg as an economic region is on the rise. People also seem to be more motivated here,&quot; said Walter Haslinger, vice president of VA Tech Elin EBG. Haslinger said he visits Russia on an almost weekly basis and sees St. Petersburg's potential as the best in the country.
 &quot;I personally think that the economic growth in St. Petersburg and Northwest region will soon be the largest of all Russian regions.&quot;
 The biggest progress Austrian firms could have will be the as yet underdeveloped environmental technology sector, an area Austria has made many advances in.
 A program for sustainable economic and ecological development called ECOPROFIT could be one of the first projects in the sector to arrive in St. Petersburg.
 Developed in Graz, by the city's environmental department in 1991, the program could be piloted in St. Petersburg - its twin city - before expanding into other places in Russia.
 The trade office in St. Petersburg has begun its work already.
 &quot;Several Austrian companies exhibited at the Interfood trade fair from 11 to 14 April,&quot; Lebedeva said. &quot;Other forthcoming events are the arrival of a group of IT representatives and a telecommunications congress.&quot;
 The marketing office in St. Petersburg is part of an international network of 70 field offices and 30 marketing offices worldwide, representing Austrian Trade abroad.
 &quot;With this network Austria has again become the European champion in export trade,&quot; Leitl said. In 2004, Austria's export increased by 13 percent, which alone created 85,000 jobs.

TITLE: Russia Grows A Bit Wealthier
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia grew slightly wealthier, beating Romania but just falling short of Brazil, according to the World Bank's new World Economic Indicators annual report.
 
Gross per capita income rose by $480 to $2,610 in 2003 propelling Russia into 97th place. Last year, the country ranked 99th among 208 countries and territories, according to the report.
 While per capita income rose $100 more in 2003 than it did over the previous year, the report showed that Russia still had a long way to go to catch the United States' $37,870 per capita income or even the Czech Republic's $7,150.
 Speaking at a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Washington at the weekend, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said he was confident that Russia could close the gap on its G8 partners.
 &quot;Within the next couple of decades Russia will outscore many countries in its GDP growth rates and will approach the G8's level,&quot; Kudrin said, Kommersant newspaper reported Monday.

TITLE: Governor Gives Green Light to Tunnel
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two major city projects, the construction of a toll tunnel under the River Neva and a new soccer stadium have won final approval, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said.
 
&quot;By mid-2006 construction work [on the tunnel] will begin. The city government has taken the decision to start the project and we will not step back,&quot; Matviyenko said Sunday before a soccer match in the city.
 A road tunnel between Orlovskaya Ulitsa and the Piskaryov Prospekt, called &quot;our project number one&quot; by Matviyenko, will connect the Central and the Krasnogvardeisky districts of the city.
 A 24-hour traffic connection across the Neva will aim to ease traffic congestion around the center and to allow more time to open the bridges for navigation. 
 &quot;The project includes construction of a set of two tunnels, each 1.6 kilometers long,&quot; said Oleg Kashchenko, deputy chairman of the committee on city improvement and road construction. &quot;The total traffic capacity will be 40,000 to 60,000 vehicles a day.&quot;
 The cost of the project will total about 11.2 billion rubles ($403 million), although the maintenance costs for the tunnel will exceed those for the bridges, Kashchenko said.
 The cost of one crossing will be between 10 rubles (36 cents) and 15 rubles (54 cents) per vehicle.
 Two tenders - one for a company to develop the design of the tunnel and the other for the construction firm - have now been ordered by the governor, Natalia Syomkina, spokeswoman for vice-governor Oleg Virolainen, said Monday in a telephone interview.
 &quot;The finance committee has been ordered to allocate 70 million rubles ($2.5 million) for the project,&quot; she said.
 Although the financing of the project remains unclear, a business plan with different investment options should be completed by June 1, Interfax reported.
 The Orlovsky toll tunnel is the first of several planned for the city, Syomkina said.
 The governor has given orders to develop, in the shortest possible time, a program of car tunnel construction in St. Petersburg for 2006-2010. At present six sites in the city area are under consideration, Syomkina said.
 The tunnel's goal of easing traffic jams has not been accepted by everyone in the city.
 &quot;Experience from all over the world shows that new roads and highways tend to increase the traffic,&quot; Jens Forsmark of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, said Monday. 
 &quot;Los Angeles has 70 percent of its center occupied by roads, tunnels and parking lots. Nevertheless traffic problems are huge there.&quot;
 Speaking before Sunday's match between locals Zenit and Moscow-based CSKA, Matviyenko also confirmed designs for a new international-standard soccer arena on Krestovsky island.
 The stadium will replace the current Kirov stadium and resemble in some ways the new Manchester City stadium the governor visited during her London trip last week.
 Alexei Miller, the head of state monopoly Gazprom that will act as the new stadium's main sponsor, backed the governor's statement.
 &quot;Gazprom and the city administration have decided to build a soccer arena for 50,000 spectators,&quot; Miller said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Shift to Ruble Bonds
 </b>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia plans to nearly double ruble bond issuance in the next three years and freeze Eurobond offerings, a Finance Ministry official said Monday.
 Analysts said while the move will starve international markets of supply, it may not lure new investors to its domestic debt market.
 Under a three-year Finance Ministry debt strategy submitted to cabinet, ruble bond issuance would nearly double to 230 billion rubles ($8.2 billion) in 2008 from an earlier planned 167 billion rubles.
 Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has ruled out issuing Eurobonds during that period, as he seeks to rebalance a debt portfolio which is heavily skewed towards foreign borrowing.
 
 
<b>Svyaz Falls in Profit
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Svyazinvest, Russia's national telephone company, said 2004 profit fell by a 10th as costs and capital investment rose faster than revenue, Interfax reported.
 The holding company's 2004 net income to Russian accounting standards was 17.5 billion rubles ($630 million), the news service said Monday, citing a company statement. Revenue rose 23 percent to 186 billion rubles and spending rose 26 percent to 141 billion rubles. Capital investment rose 28 percent to 59 billion rubles, Interfax said.
 Svyazinvest's assets include all seven of Russia's regional fixed-line telephone operators and the country's main long-distance provider, Rostelecom.
 
 
<b>Alfa Rises in Profit
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Alfa Bank, Russia's biggest non-state bank, said profit rose 44 percent in 2004 as it attracted more customers and raised lending.
 Net income rose to $153 million from $106 million in 2003 under international accounting standards, the bank said in an e-mailed statement. Alfa had $4.67 billion in outstanding loans last year, compared with $3.6 billion in 2003, it said.
 Alfa's owners were forced to inject as much as $1 billion of cash into the bank because of a net outflow of money between July 5 and July 19 totaling $583 million.
 The country's non-state banks faced a run on deposits after Sodbusinessbank was shut by the central bank amid money-laundering accusations, sparking a cash crunch as banks stopped lending to each other.
 Shareholders equity in Alfa Bank rose to $708 million last year, a 2.9 percent increase from the previous year, the bank said. The bank's assets rose 19 percent to $7.03 billion.
 
 
<b>Mechel Reduces Stake
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Mechel Steel Group, Russia's fifth-largest steelmaker, raised its stake in specialty unit Izhstal to 87 percent, as it upgrades production facilities at the plant to broaden its range of products.
 Mechel won an auction for 25 percent of Izhstal with a bid of $16 million, the company said in a PR Newswire statement, without saying who sold the stake.
 Last May, Mechel bought 27 percent of the plant from the regional government of Urdmurtia, about 1,300 kilometers east of Moscow. Mechel is "already implementing a number of projects to improve production at Izhstal,'' Mechel Chief Executive Vladimir Iorich said in the April 15 statement.
 Acquiring more shares "allows us to consolidate more of the anticipated results of our upgrade strategy." Izhstal makes long and flat products from special steels used in the tool, construction and engineering industries.

TITLE: Sibneft 'Negotiated' Tax Claim
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Sibneft reportedly has settled a $1 billion back-tax claim by paying just $300 million, news that industry watchers welcomed on Monday as promising for other oil companies and for all investors jumpy about the tax authorities.
 
No. 5 oil firm Sibneft, which is controlled by Chelsea soccer club owner and Chukotka Governor Roman Abramovich, has managed to negotiate a two-thirds cut to its tax debt for 2000 and 2001, and it paid the $300 million some time ago, Vedomosti reported Monday, citing a source close to the company.
 Sibneft refused to comment.
 Federal Tax Service spokeswoman Yelena Tolgskaya said by telephone that negotiations are a common practice with companies that have been audited for taxes, but she refused to comment further.
 Investors are jittery after tax authorities levied a multibillion-dollar tax bill on Yukos in 2003 and then went on to make back-tax claims against several other companies.
 President Vladimir Putin sought to assuage business leaders last month with a promise to clean up the tax regime.
 Yet, No. 2 oil company TNK-BP said last week that it was facing a $1 billion tax claim and No. 1 LUKoil said it was undergoing a tax check.
 &quot;We view the news as positive for Sibneft and indeed for TNK-BP as it shows that oil companies can negotiate down tax claims and that the government is perhaps unwilling to embroil itself in another Yukos-type saga,&quot; Troika Dialog said in a research note Monday.
 &quot;If accurate, the [Vedomosti] report should provide a strong boost to Sibneft and help firm market confidence overall,&quot; Alfa Bank said in a research note. &quot;Since the onset of the Yukos affair, Sibneft has been perceived by many (though not all) as the potential target for a punitive tax crackdown.&quot;
 Like Yukos, crippled with a back-tax claim of more than $27 billion, Sibneft in the past used tax optimization schemes that were completely legal and allowed it to pay the lowest income tax of all Russian oil majors, said Yelena Krasnitskaya, corporate governance analyst at Troika Dialog.
 In 2001 and 2002, Sibneft paid income taxes of 9.2 percent and 12.3 percent, respectively, Alfa Bank said. LUKoil paid 32.3 percent in 2002, while Yukos paid 12.9 percent. The industry average was 21.3 percent that year.
 Full information about any Sibneft tax repayment should appear on its 2004 audited accounts, which are expected in May or June.
 Christopher Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank, said Yukos was unable to strike a deal with tax authorities because Putin was determined to make an example out of its politically and economically ambitious founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
 &quot;By the time it was reported to have offered a deal, the Kremlin was already determined to take back control of a big chunk of the oil industry to help it further its geo-political ambitions as well as get control over a critical part of the domestic economy,&quot; Weafer said.
 Meanwhile, a senior Finance Ministry official said Monday that the Cabinet plans to consider legislation to streamline tax inspections on May 5, Interfax reported.
 The official, Mikhail Motorin, said the Cabinet had intended to discuss the amendments last Thursday but rescheduled to get feedback from the business community and the Federal Tax Service. &quot;We have to balance business interests with those of the state,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Banks Say: Happy To Begin Charity at Home
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although the total capitalization level of a Russian bank is often smaller than the capital of a sizeable international company, sponsorship and charity play an important role in their business activities, Northwest bank representatives said Monday.
 
&quot;Charity has historically been held in high esteem in Russia, with patronage of the arts and culture,&quot; Vladimir Dzhikovich, president of the Northwest Banks Association, said at a round table.
 &quot;Of course our levels are much lower than [levels of charity support] in the West, but since the crisis of '98 the charity actions of domestic banks has been growing,&quot; Dzhikovich said.
 It seems there may be plenty more growth yet, however, as only16 banks published the results of their 2004 charity activities in a booklet published by the association.
 &quot;We have 62 members but we cannot force everyone to supply the information,&quot; said Vladislav Shinkunas, the association's press officer.
 Among those banks that did participate, cultural activities and education seemed to be the charity and sponsorship directions of choice.
 &quot;St. Petersburg is the cultural capital of the country and we feel obliged to help its theaters and museums that apparently do not have many other ways of finding financing,&quot; said a representative of Sankt-Peterburg bank. The bank participates in supporting stipends for talented children from financially unstable families, helping them to complete their education. It also sponsors the annual city spring festival.
 Charity budgets for 2004 ranged from Promstroibank's $5 million and Sberbanks' $3 million to a few thousand dollars. Most of the 16 'charitable' banks, including Promstroibank, Sberbank, Alfa Bank and the National Reserves Bank, participated in a charity program called Dolg organized by the St. Petersburg's administration to mark the 60th war anniversary celebrations.
 The program included helping nursing homes for the aged and other veteran-related projects.
 As for allocating funds, banks said they follow their financing very carefully.
 &quot;If anyone has strict reporting it's the banks,&quot; said a representative of Sankt-Peterburg bank.
 Considerations for charity projects are made by the advisory board, which forwards its recommendations to the bank's top management. The management makes the decision, which is then presented to the shareholders. The public relations department usually monitors the activities and goes on-location to check how the funds are spent.
 &quot;We prefer not to work with funds, but with specific people and projects, where expenses are more transparent,&quot; said Svetlana Alexeyeva, press officer of Promstroibank, adding that it is often hard to convince shareholders &quot;to share.&quot;
 As for the financial incentives for participating in charity actions - so valued by companies overseas, since these involve considerable tax breaks - the bank representatives at the round table declined to comment. 
 &quot;I think charity serves to improve the bank's image rather than to benefit it financially,&quot; Alexeyeva said. Increased charity spending could even place the bank under &quot;increased attention from the tax services,&quot; she said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Dixons to Buy Eldorado
 </b>

LONDON (Reuters) - Dixons Group has signed an option to buy Russian and Ukrainian retailer Eldorado Group by 2011 for a fixed $1.9 billion, the high street retailer said Friday.
 Chief Executive John Clare said in a statement the deal with Eldorado, which sells consumer electronics and domestic appliances and has an estimated 22 percent market share in Russia, was consistent with Dixons's growth strategy.
 "Russia is a market with enormous potential. Eldorado Group has a clear leadership position in the market ... and profitable growth," Clare said.
 Eldorado trades from 610 stores throughout Russia and Ukraine, 320 of which are operated by franchisees. Its sales rose 83 percent in 2004 to $2.47 billion.
 Under the Eldorado deal, Dixons must acquire an initial 10 percent stake by the end of 2008 for $190 million. If it takes full control of Eldorado, an element of the payment will be deferred for two years.
 A spokesman said the deal was "risk free" for Dixons, which can walk away at no cost, and gave Dixons "the opportunity to get to understand the Eldorado business" before buying it.
 
 
<b>Banking Keeps Closed
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia's central bank said it won't follow a U.S. demand that it open up its banking industry more to foreign banks, one of the key conditions for entering the World Trade Organization, Izvestia reported.
 The central bank believes the demand is "excessive," said Andrei Kozlov, the first deputy governor of the bank, in an interview with the newspaper after meeting with Group of Seven officials in Washington, Izvestia reported.
 Foreign banks now are allowed to open subsidiaries, which are in turn fully controlled by the central bank, the paper said. Foreign banks provide about 40 percent of loans attracted by Russian companies, Kozlov said, the paper reported. 
 
<b>Russia May Forgive
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia is prepared to write off as much as $95 billion in debts that the world's poorest countries owe it, Kommersant daily reported, citing Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
 Kudrin told officials at the Group of Seven meeting in Washington that the country is prepared to join their initiative to write off debts owed by the poorest countries, the newspaper said.
 The nations haven't agreed which countries' debts should be written off, Kudrin said. Russia said in March that it agreed to write off $1.12 billion owed by Ethiopia.
 
 
<b>Bill Gates in Ukraine
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was invited by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to join the former Soviet republic's advisory council on foreign investment, Interfax reported.
 Gates is one of 13 foreigners invited.

TITLE: New AmCham Head Understands Both East and West
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Maria Chernobrovkina could be said to have played a Turkish gambit to reach her current position. Sacrificing an oriental languages degree as &quot;youthful indulgence in exotica,&quot; the new head of the St. Petersburg chapter of the American Chamber of Commerce switched course for the West early in life.
 
As a student, Chernobrovkina majored in Turkish, with some Arabic and Persian, at St. Petersburg State University. Despite specializing in English at a language-intensive high school, she sought a more adventurous subject for her university studies.
 &quot;At that point, Turkish was seen as really exotic,&quot; Chernobrovkina said. &quot;Few people traveled to Turkey at the start of the '90s and little was known in Russia about the country.&quot;
 &quot;I had to travel around the Turkish countryside, gathering national folklore in the villages for my dissertation, which I still hold as one of my biggest achievements,&quot; she said.
 A decade later, her research topic had become local businesses in Russia's Northwest, as Chernobrovkina came to work at the U.S. Commercial Service in St. Petersburg. Though she shrugs her shoulders as if to suggest that it just turned out that way, the switch from Eastern delight to Western commerce was no accident.
 &quot;After university [from 1991 to 1995], I worked as a tour guide and interpreter,&quot; she said. &quot;Most of the groups were English-speaking, and there were lots of opportunities for interpreting at business meetings that involved American companies.
 &quot;I did not really try to find employment with a Turkish company. Working with Eastern businesses is a very specific thing, and I am not sure I felt completely comfortable with it,&quot; Chernobrovkina said, citing her gender as one possible reason.
 Although stressing the need for balance, Chernobrovkina sees it as quite natural for Russia to have closer ties to Western, and particularly American, business. Trading with the Far East or the Middle East involves doing more thorough sociological homework, she said.
 &quot;You need to understand and respect the culture of Eastern countries first before doing business with their companies,&quot; she said. &quot;I think that Russians are very good at adapting, they can work with both the East and the West ... [but] the mentality of Americans and Europeans already stands much closer.&quot;
 While working as an interpreter at business meetings, Chernobrovkina felt an urge to contribute to the dialogues, &quot;to have an opportunity to say something.&quot;
 In 1995, she began working at the American Business Center at the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg. Three years later, she transferred to the U.S. Commercial Service, which provides support for American firms in the Russian market, conducts research and encourages more American companies to work in Russia.
 Chernobrovkina immediately took to her new line of work.
 &quot;At the U.S. Commercial Service there was a great balance between meeting new people and conducting analytical research on the domestic markets,&quot; she said. &quot;I met with a lot of Russian companies and the attitudes toward America and American business were open and enthusiastic.&quot;
 In answer to the infamous theory that the service's work can somehow be classified as commercial spying, Chernobrovkina nods patiently, as if listening to a joke that was not funny the first time.
 &quot;If a U.S. firm wants to enter the Russian market, it will need - for example - to look for a distributor, or some other business partners,&quot; she said. &quot;Naturally, the commercial service would research the distributors operating locally, and provide the U.S. firm with at least a range of four or five options. 
 &quot;It's not spying in any sense. It's business.&quot;
 Working at the service allowed Chernobrovkina to form close ties with a number of American and other foreign companies in the region, a process she recollects as warm, highly interactive and stimulating.
 One of the Russian companies then looking for U.S. partners was St. Petersburg-based Inform Services, formerly Inform Business Computer. The firm traveled as part of a Russian IT delegation led by Chernobrovkina to the Comdex technology fair in Las Vegas in 1998.
 &quot;Maria had a great combination of womanly qualities, an excellent mind and a honed business ability,&quot; said Gleb Shelomentsev, head of Inform Services. &quot;She adapted to things quickly. It was obvious that it felt natural for her to look for new areas, new boundaries all the time.&quot;
 So when a change arrived after almost a decade with the U.S. Consulate, it was like &quot;a harmonious transfer,&quot; Chernobrovkina said.
 &quot;For me, this was a logical progression. When I worked at the commercial service, I helped companies enter the Russian market and then handed them over to AmCham,&quot; she said. &quot;Now I'm on the other side of the same coin, working with AmCham to assist companies in adapting to this market.&quot;
 John Schwarz, the president of Baltic Cranberry, has known many heads of AmCham in St. Petersburg. He sees Chernobrovkina as a good choice to continue the chamber's traditions.
 &quot;She'll have a baptism of fire as on any new job,&quot; Schwarz said, &quot;but she's well-qualified. She'll do well.&quot;
 The view is supported by former AmCham president Alexei Kim, now the regulatory and fiscal affairs manager at Philip Morris sales and marketing in Moscow.
 &quot;Maria is bringing with her a wealth of experience working with both U.S. and Russian private and public sectors,&quot; he said via e-mail.
 Commerce is about dialogue and understanding. Chernobrovkina notes that a dialogue with authorities, especially with the customs and intellectual property rights committees, is key to resolving the anxieties American firms have about the Russian market.
 Companies sometimes do not even realize such a dialogue with officials is possible, she said. Making businesses aware of AmCham's ability to help establish contact is one goal Chernobrovkina has set for herself.
 &quot;Despite any worries foreign business has, Russia is just too big a market to miss out on,&quot; she said. &quot;Foreign companies know that they must come here.&quot;
 In addition, Chernobrovkina says Russia has an appeal that fascinates beyond the fianancial prospects.
 &quot;If you pass the challenges of the first year, it becomes hard to leave,&quot; she said.

TITLE: Hermitage Unveils Designs for Expansion
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Hermitage Museum has unveiled design proposals for a multi-million dollar development of a new east wing that will continue the museum's expansion into premium real estate of St. Petersburg.
 
Dmitry Amundts, a deputy culture minister, said the entire redevelopment project will cost $155 million, Izvestia reported.
 At a Moscow news conference last week, entitled &quot;The Hermitage. The New Large Enfilade,&quot; the director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, showcased two architectural proposals for the east wing of the General Staff Building, which the museum acquired in the late '80s.
 The first stage of the wing's development is estimated to cost $18 million, most of which will be financed by a World Bank loan. A further $8 million will come from the federal budget with research and predesign costs to be funded by the Hermitage-Guggenheim foundation.
 Vladimir Potanin's Interros holding will act as consultant and partner to the Hermitage in the development.
 &quot;This is a fine example of close partnership and a fine example of how to realize such projects,&quot; Amundts said at the conference.
 The General Staff Building amounts to about 38,200 square meters of property, 80 percent of which will be allocated specifically to the Hermitage. The space will house additional museum facilities and the Hermitage's collection of 19th and 20th century art.
 With the acquisition of the east wing of the General Staff Building, the museum now covers some of the most prominent real estate in St. Petersburg. The Hermitage has already established branch facilities around the city in such places as the Menshikov Palace and the Lomonosov porcelain factory.
 A transformation of the General Staff Building is a key element of Piotrovsky's strategic vision for the museum, which he called &quot;one stage of the design process and one stage of the 'Greater Hermitage' program.&quot;
 
 <strong>
THE GREATER DESIGN 
 </strong>Designed by Carlo Rossi in the 19th century, the General Staff Building frames one of the most striking entrances into the Palace Square. The east wing originally housed the ministries of finance and internal affairs, along with an array of agencies and even private apartments.
 
Rossi's creation is a sprawling complex with internal courtyards criss-crossed by transverse passages. This arrangement seems to be at odds with the traditional museum layout, which favors expansive and continuous spaces.
 The challenge of adapting the building to the needs of the Hermitage has fallen to Studio 44, a St. Petersburg firm, and Rotterdam-based OMA/AMO agency headed by Rem Koolhaas. Studio 44 won an international tender for the project while Rem Koolhaas was retained as a consultant.
 Redesign plans from Studio 44 concentrate on the &quot;baroque perspective&quot; of the General Staff Building and St. Petersburg's city plan as a whole.
 In Studio 44's scheme, the ground floor remains largely intact, but the upper levels will be remodeled.
 In contrast, OMA/AMO's design calls for leaving the existing complex largely untouched. The self-contained structure intended to accommodate the exhibits will be inserted in place of two internal courtyards.
 The design presentation at the Museum of Architecture featured one adamant cricit. Alexei Komech, the director of the State Institute of Art History in Moscow and a vocal preservationist, argued that the Rossi complex is inviolable and decried any need for a contemporary overhaul.
 Piotrovsky answered the cacophony of criticism that broke out after Komech's remarks by saying that it was part of &quot;the St. Petersburg tradition.
 &quot;St. Petersburg came about as a result of a collaboration between planners, architects, consultants, financiers and others. We continue this tradition in the way of organizing our development,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Mall to Show Wild West On the Edge
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A mammoth $40 million entertainment and shopping complex, called the Grand Canyon, will open at the city periphery by the end of the year. Promising a host of big name anchor tenants, including Moscow-based Cinema Park's first project on the St. Petersburg market, the complex as a whole will encompass more than 150,000 square meters of commercial space.
 
Although Grand Canyon's location, near Prospekt Prosveshcheniya metro station, may not appeal to all due to the considerable distance from the center, the general director of Solomon Mussa Ekzekov, the project's leading developer, said the complex could count on a wide audience.
 &quot;We expect that people will come not only to shop but also to rest and to be entertained,&quot; Ekzekov said. &quot;This is a place that will add a variety of highest quality services to the market.&quot;
 Boris Iushenkov, the general director of Colliers International in St. Petersburg, which holds the exclusive contract to lease commercial space at Grand Canyon, said the complex's position put 2 million people &quot;within a 30 minute proximity of it.&quot;
 The Grand Canyon, designed by American architectural firm Gensler, will occupy a section of the former Iskra factory. Its constructution is being managed by Turkish company Renaissance Construction, with December set as the completion deadline.
 Planners anticipate that a mix of distinct factors will add up to a profitable formula for the complex. Emergent nearby infrastructure and a growing residential area in the surrounding district could mean as many as 12 million customers annually, Iushenkov said.
 The complex combines diverse entertainment and shopping services. The final layout will also allocate a significant amount of space for sporting facilities and amenities for children.
 The parameters of Grand Canyon are striking. It will encompass 73,000 square meters of space, with 53,000 offered for lease. A gallery will link the future development to the nearby shopping center, which together will amount to more than 150,000 square meters of commercial space. In addition, a planned parking lot will accommodate more than 1,500 vehicles.
 A number of major national and foreign chains could come in as tenants, with half of the available commercial space already leased. Grand Canyon's anchor tenants include a Ramstore hypermarket, a Cinema Park multiplex, and M. Video, a store that specializes in electronics and technical goods.
 Kirill Ivanov, assistant general director of Cinema Park, noted that their facilities in Grand Canyon was the company's &quot;only project around the country not located in the city center.&quot; However, he added, a broader analysis convinced the company of the long-term viability of the project.
 The present investment in the entertainment complex totals $40 million, Ekzekov said. MDM Bank will finance $17 million with the rest provided by Solomon.
 Possible social improvements are among the more promising features the complex may spawn in the future. Ekzekov detailed a plan to transform a barren patch of land between the metro station and the complex into a covered tree-lined pedestrian path, surrounded by playgrounds and other facilities for children.
 &quot;It might give people second thoughts about going home in the rain and funnel traffic to Grand Canyon at the same time,&quot; Ekzekov said.

TITLE: Kingfisher to Dip Into Russia Via St. Petersburg </strong>
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With the opening of its first St. Petersburg store scheduled for late 2005, Kingfisher, Europe's largest home improvement retailer, is entering the Russian market it hopes to dominate in a few years' time.
 
&quot;Kingfisher wants to be a market leader for DIY goods in this country,&quot; said Peter Partma, the company's country manager for Russia.
 Kingfisher's first Russian store, to operate under its Castorama brand, will be between 12,000 and 13,000 square meters and will cost about $20 million to build, Partma said. It will be located on Dalnevostochny Prospekt, next to a new Lenta food hypermarket.
 With 599 stores in nine countries, Kingfisher - which also operates such chains as B&amp;Q, Brico Depot and Screwfix Direct - is the third-largest home improvement retailer in the world, after the United States' Home Depot and Lowe's. Last year it had sales of Pound7.7 billion ($14.6 billion). 
 Partma said Kingfisher would next like to open between 10 and 15 stores in Moscow. By the summer, the company is likely to gain approval for the construction of its first Castorama store in the capital.
 He would not say where the land sites under negotiation were located exactly, saying only that Kingfisher was considering &quot;several options&quot; both in Moscow proper and in the Moscow region.
 In addition to a strong Moscow presence, the company is also planning an ambitious regional expansion that should bring it to all of Russia's large cities.
 &quot;We are planning to open between three and five stores a year over a substantial period of time - no less than 10 years,&quot; Partma said. In financial terms, the plan suggests a total investment of up to $1 billion.
 In order to be successful in Russia, Castorama stores will be &quot;as localized as possible&quot; and will be &quot;adapted to Russian tastes,&quot; according to Partma.
 The stores will be selling quality locally made home improvement products, while imported goods will be present as well.
 &quot;Russians can make excellent tiles or flooring, but have you ever heard of a good Russian drill?&quot; Partma said.
 &quot;An average kitchen in Russia is only 6 square meters, whereas in Sweden it is probably 26 - this fact will be reflected in our range of goods,&quot; he added.
 Partma estimated Russia's home improvement market at $6 billion to $7 billion a year. But Viktor Tskhovrebov, retail and consumer goods analyst at Renaissance Capital, estimated that the market will reach $5.3 billion this year, compared to $4.1 billion in 2004.
 However, DIY stores so far account for only a small percentage of this booming market, as traditional open-air markets are retaining their popularity.
 &quot;We see open-air markets as our main competitors. They control the biggest market share, therefore we must have better prices, better service and better locations,&quot; Partma said. 
 Tskhovrebov estimated that &quot;civilized&quot; DIY trade accounted for no more than 10 percent of the market, although he noted that open-air markets' share has been gradually declining. 
 Germany's OBI became the first Western DIY chain to enter the Russia market with two stores in Moscow in November 2003. In 2004, OBI's lead was followed by France's Leroy Merlin, which also launched two stores. 
 Both home improvement chains have yet to set foot outside Moscow, although OBI is currently in negotiations to come in as an anchor tenant of Raduga, a sprawling shopping and entertainment complex that is under construction in St. Petersburg's Moscovsky district.
 &quot;Since their combined market share has nowhere to go but up, I don't expect any price wars between Western chains yet,&quot; Tskhovrebov said. 
 Maxim Gasiev, retail director at Colliers International, said that open-air markets are already finding it difficult to compete with large DIY stores. 
 &quot;Markets have a reputation as 'cheap,' but this is no longer the case. Large DIY stores are often cheaper,&quot; he said. &quot;While a kiosk can buy five taps at a regular price, a store like Castorama can buy 10,000 at a 30 percent discount.&quot;
 At the same time, no Russian DIY chain has yet emerged to challenge the expansion of Western home improvement stores, he added.
 The only large domestic home improvement chain is Starik Khottabych, which has 20 finishing materials stores in Moscow and 17 in the regions. 
 However, Starik Khottabych stores are much smaller - 1,500 to 2,000 square meters as opposed to 10,000 to 15,000 square meters for Western DIY chains - and offer a relatively limited assortment of house improvement items.
 &quot;We do not see DIY chains as our direct competitors. They offer a wide selection of gardening and home furnishing materials, none of which they center on, while we concentrate in specific types of goods - such as flooring or wallpaper,&quot; said Tatyana Kazakova, head of marketing at Starik Khottabych.

TITLE: Common Economic Misconceptions
TEXT: The latest opinion polls show that a new fear is emerging among the Russian population that, more than 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain, a new wall is appearing between Russia and Europe. 
 
Policymakers in the European Union accept that EU-Russia relations are close to a post-Soviet low. A package of four road maps - economy; external security; freedom, security and justice; and education, research and culture - has been designed to move forward the relationship, which is based on the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement of 1997, and set an ambitious agenda for partnership for the next several years. Representatives of both sides hope that the package will be adopted at the EU-Russia summit on May 10. 
 At a recent conference in Luxembourg on EU-Russia relations, which was organized by the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies and by the New Eurasia Foundation, almost all experts and policymakers agreed that most of the current problems result from lack of strategic vision and mutual understanding. 
 There are significant misconceptions about, for example, the proposed Common Economic Space, and one of the surprises at the EU-Russia summit will likely be the realization that this economic space is not about economics at all. 
 The EU is Russia's single largest trading partner, and its share in Russia's trade turnover has become dominant. It has increased from 37 percent in the mid-1990s to more than 50 percent today. Although much less significant, Russia's share in EU trade will soon double from 4 percent to 8 percent. 
 The economic links between Russia and the EU have been strengthening. Yet this increased economic integration has been driven by the expansion of the EU, economic growth and higher commodity prices, and not by reduction in trade barriers. Political ups and downs in EU-Russia relations have had very little effect on trade and financial flows.
 Russian policymakers see the main benefit of the Common Economic Space in facilitating trade and investment, which are dominated by energy and are dangerously dependent on world oil prices. They are interested in diversifying Russia's trade with the EU by getting the best deals for Russian companies in, for example, agriculture. They are fighting wholeheartedly over health and sanitation standards that could hurt Russian producers. Russia's World Trade Organization accession negotiations have been driven by a similar pragmatism. 
 In contrast, for the EU, the Common Economic Space is a political issue. An official EU paper on the Common Economic Space states that the EU's main interests are to foster political and economic stability in Russia, to contribute to the strengthening of the rule of law through the development of institutions and of legislative and judicial systems. The EU also hopes to support measures for a better investment climate in Russia, and to cooperate in combating &quot;soft security threats.&quot; These are the EU's official objectives, and the paper does not mention anything related to the topics important to Russia, such as trade or economic integration.
 The historical truth is that common economic spaces are rarely driven by economics. One of the first such spaces was COMECON, which from 1949 to 1991 linked the Soviet Union to Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and East Germany. Although more than 70 percent of an average member's trade was within COMECON, it was an ideological system, and not a market system based on the comparative advantages of different members. 
 Russia kept the system going by supplying other members with subsidized energy, and the system rapidly collapsed when this stopped. Russia and the East European members of the former COMECON have switched most of their trade from the CIS to the EU. Russia's interest in COMECON was political and ideological, not economic. Today's EU-Russia relations are the reverse situation. 
 The EU wants to have a market-oriented, democratic and well-governed neighbor, and not a bigger trading partner. The road maps and plans for legislative harmonization are designed accordingly. The Common Economic Space is not really intended to foster further economic integration, which is occurring anyway, but to make Russia accept certain rules and to force it into a certain framework. This is why the perceived retreat of Russia from the European norm of federal democracy is the cause of so many concerns. Many in the EU genuinely believe that they are creating this new framework for the benefit of both Russia and the EU. 
 Russia has huge mineral wealth, well-educated people and unexploited industrial potential. What it lacks is good governance, and it is rightly argued that the introduction of European norms could help Russia turn the corner in this crucial area. 
 When one side talks about the rules of behavior and the other thinks they are taking about trade, it is inevitable that misunderstandings and clashes will occur. There are very similar problems in other areas. 
 Mutual understanding is the most powerful driver in international relations, and it is absent in the relations between Russia and the EU. The EU should make clear what it wants from Russia and what it thinks the benefits to Russia and the EU will be. Russia should do the same. They have to agree on common interests and have to form a common vision about their partnership, and only then can they create common spaces to accommodate them. 
 
 <i>Pavel Erochkine is a research officer at the Center for Global Studies in London and the director of Transnational Insights. His book on the Russian oil industry, co-authored by Vladimir Erochkine, will be published in May. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Mixed Signals Deterring Investors
TEXT: The blocking of German electronics giant Siemens' intended purchase of Siloviye Mashiny, or Power Machines, highlights the prevalence of two trends in Russia: The country's leadership wants to keep tight control over key industries, and it is neither united nor fully behind President Vladimir Putin.
 
Neither of these trends is entirely new, but the mixed signals arising from the Siemens-Power Machines saga are likely to raise the concerns of major foreign investors - namely, that a lack of clarity about the government's intentions is undermining its ability to achieve its stated goals.
 Yet Wednesday's decision was not totally unexpected.
 &quot;I would have been really surprised if Putin had approved the Siemens deal,&quot; said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank. &quot;The decision ... is perfectly in line with the Kremlin's policy of controlled cooperation. I do not believe that this kind of a decision by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service could have been made without Putin's approval.&quot; 
 Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, said that within the American business community in Russia there had never been much confidence that the deal would go through. 
 &quot;This is a signal that purchases in the defense sector are going to be tough to pursue,&quot; he said.
 Put together with a range of moves to place restrictions on foreign investment, including a plan to bar foreigners from bidding for Russia's most prized natural resource assets, the goal of the state controlling the commanding pillars of the economy is becoming clear.
 The oil and gas, defense, aviation, metals, telecommunications and banking sectors are pretty much off limits for foreigners, unless they agree to be junior partners like ConocoPhillips, which last September became a minority shareholder in the country's top oil producer, LUKoil.
 In the pursuit of control, Putin appears to be following the model of China, the world's fastest-growing economy. Last fall, he praised Chinese leaders for their policy of keeping control over key industries while managing to harness the expertise and investment of leading multinationals as minority partners in Chinese enterprises.
 But if this is the policy, it remains unclear why at least one wing of the government, the liberals, has been so outspoken in supporting the Siemens deal.
 While the decision to block the deal came Wednesday, the saga started last July - shortly after German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, flanked by about 30 top German business leaders including those from Siemens, visited Putin in Moscow. 
 In the following months, statements by various key players in the Russian leadership indicated that the Siemens-Power Machines deal had received some kind of endorsement from the Kremlin.
 Among the most vocal supporters of the deal were Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and Unified Energy Systems CEO Anatoly Chubais.
 In an interview with Profil magazine published last month, Chubais said that the deal &quot;was approved by the most influential statesmen.&quot; Notably, Chubais did not name the statesmen who approved the deal and, according to Siemens, had invited the German corporation to make its bid.
 The deal-endorsing statements from such prominent figures as Gref and Chubais created the impression that the deal would likely go through. 
 But those signals also corresponded with the typical operating style of the leadership, and specifically of Putin throughout his rule, said Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. Under this modus operandi, an often delicate balancing act exists between the various elites - the liberals and the much less defined but powerful conservative elites who include, but are not limited to, various siloviki clans and those who tend to resort to heavily patriotic rhetoric, he said.
 &quot;And the frontal assault from those, let us call them patriotic forces, is on the rise. Putin has a hard time controlling them,&quot; he said. 
 Hence the contradictions among announcements, promises and deeds.
 Examples of the resulting controversies are legion. It was Putin who last year said that the country's leadership did not intend to bankrupt Yukos, only for the world to see the company being stripped of its core production asset, Yuganskneftegaz, in December. The rump of Russia's former No. 1 oil major was left struggling with a mountain of tax demands and criminal investigations that look set to ultimately drive it into bankruptcy. 
 The open fight between those Kremlin officials controlling gas behemoth Gazprom and those backing state-owned Rosneft has been the talk of the town for the last three months. 
 The plan was for Gazprom to merge with Rosneft so that the state could increase its stake in the newly formed oil and gas giant to more than 50 percent, which would then pave the way for the long-awaited liberalization of Gazprom shares. But the harsh public exchanges between the two companies clearly showed that some powerful players had very different ideas about the companies' future.
 &quot;So Putin doesn't have full control of everything. What's new about that?&quot; said Sergei Markov, one of the country's leading Kremlin-connected political analysts. &quot;The result will probably be that certain negative perceptions of Russia, like the one that within the Kremlin it is quite common for the right hand to have no idea what the left is up to, will strengthen.&quot; 
 Markov, however, said that he was certain that Putin had clearly explained the situation - at least to Schroeder - earlier this week, when the two leaders met at the Hannover Trade Fair. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service did not make its ruling until Putin was back in the Kremlin.
 &quot;It is those kinds of mixed signals and lack of clarity about goals that are the main reasons why foreign investors are reluctant and shy to invest into Russia, to commit to this country,&quot; Weafer said.
 &quot;It's a dangerous game,&quot; he said, adding that deals like the Siemens one were vital for Russia. 
 &quot;And now the ball is in Siemens' court.&quot;
 <i>
 Valeria Korchagina is a staff writer at The Moscow Times.</i>


TITLE: Tolerance of Nationalist Thugs Bodes Ill for Future
TEXT: Sixty years ago, on May 9, 1945, Russia rejoiced at the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. I was seven years old at the time. I remember how people came together on that day as they never would again. After the war, the world seemed to do everything possible to ensure that the horrors Nazi Germany had unleashed would not be repeated. In the name of their fascist ideology, the Nazis had systematically murdered 6 million Jews, whom they considered an inferior race. Another 54 million people died in the war. Unfortunately, mankind will always pay a hideously high price when any one nation attempts to assert its superiority over others based on race, religion or social status. This is the lesson of history. But have we learned that lesson?
 
On the face of it, there would seem to be no way for fascist ideology to take root in Russia. But in the 1970s, it was widely rumored that youth groups professing a fascist or quasi-fascist ideology had been rounded up by the authorities. Fascist literature and regalia had been confiscated along with weapons. According to the rumors - which have never been confirmed - the children of highly placed party functionaries and of top brass in the KGB and the Interior Ministry belonged to these underground fascist organizations. This was long before glasnost, of course. Hardly anyone had heard of the Council of Europe's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. You could be tossed in jail for having a copy of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The rumors nevertheless received a mixed response. On the one hand, people were pleased with the chekists for rounding up these groups. On the other hand, they found it difficult to believe that such groups could exist in a country that had suffered so terribly from fascism, a country that lost some 30 million lives during the war.
 Those rumors from the 1970s would have long been forgotten if not for the recent surge of xenophobia, racism, religious intolerance and nationalism that quickly spilled over into plain old Nazism. In the early 1990s, an organization called Pamyat, or Memory, responded to a natural desire to restore values lost during the Soviet era with an ideology of Russian superiority. Pamyat's ideologues didn't shy away from using terminology and regalia - black shirts and armbands - based on Nazi models. Pamyat eventually disappeared, but it gave rise to hundreds of as-yet-uncoordinated fascist, nationalist and xenophobic organizations across the country, all claiming to defend Russia against alien elements that are ostensibly turning Russians into drunks, swindling them in the marketplace and stealing their jobs. 
 The authorities traditionally regard such developments as the work of agents of influence and fifth columns, hinting that the Jews - or Chechens, Tajiks, Gypsies or Ossetians - are carrying out pogroms against themselves in order to blacken the name of Mother Russia. In fact, in times of social and economic instability, the regime has always sought to deflect popular discontent by blaming the current state of affairs on various enemies. The Soviet state had its kulaks, its &quot;specialists&quot; and, finally, the catch-all category &quot;enemies of the people.&quot;
 In recent years, Russia has been gripped by serious socioeconomic instability. When the Soviet system collapsed, it left a legacy of empty shelves and a socialist economy incapable of meeting the country's basic needs. The eternal deficit of food, the deficit of goods and services, and the terrible living conditions in dormitories and communal apartments all reached breaking point in the early 1990s. To get out of this mess, the country needed new leaders capable of implementing new ideas. Instead, the old party nomenklatura, who declared themselves &quot;democrats&quot; and &quot;reformers,&quot; retained control of the country's chief resources and went about reforming them insofar as their limited understanding of reform and democracy allowed. As a result, a chosen few thrived while most people endured grinding poverty. 
 This created an opportunity for Pamyat, the skinheads and faux-patriots to capitalize on this popular discontent, blaming people's atrocious living conditions not on the political leadership, but on the oligarchs (Jews), merchants (Tajiks and Gypsies) and so on. At the same time, Russia's &quot;traditional&quot; religions - which leave no room for Catholics, Protestants, atheists or the non-religious - began to assert themselves. But even this wasn't enough. Nationalists of all stripes, intentionally set loose by the authorities, have gone to war against anyone they consider &quot;alien.&quot; Hundreds of newspaper and websites advocate ridding the country of non-Russians. They have backed up their words by attacking and even murdering non-Russian university students, workers and even defenseless young girls. 
 Meanwhile, the courts &quot;uphold the law.&quot; The trials of neo-fascist groups drag on for years. Evidence is analyzed by expert after expert until one finally concludes that the obviously inflammatory texts involved do not incite ethnic hatred. Those convicted of promoting Nazism, fascism and racial intolerance have even been amnestied in connection with Russia's victory over the Nazis.
 In the short term, the regime clearly benefits from shifting the blame for the country's woes onto &quot;alien&quot; elements. But in the long term, the country as a whole suffers as people are made to believe that they are superior to others simply because they were born into the right ethnic group. This mindset is almost a guarantee of future tragedies.
 The late Nikolai Girenko, an expert in ethnic and racial issues who was murdered by extremists in June 2004, said that our diversity was a great blessing. When we interact with those who are different from us, we all become richer. 
 Investigators have made no progress in solving Girenko's murder. Are they even trying? Newspapers and websites sow hatred and anger, but the authorities helplessly throw up their hands. And we have learned nothing from history. To many, fascism seems like a good diversion. Some may secretly share this belief in the purity of the Russian people, although the Nazis included the Slavs among the inferior races. Our wars of imperialism only add fuel to the fire. It wasn't our incompetent and despicable leaders who killed and maimed Russian soldiers in Afghanistan and Chechnya, so the story goes, but the Islamists and the terrorists. They're to blame when mothers lose the sons they've worked so hard to raise, when wives lose their husbands and when tens of thousands of young men's lives are ruined. 
 The old nomenklatura who preside over our current monstrous prosperity ensure that extremists of all stripes go unpunished because they serve the regime's purpose: deflecting society's anger about the way they run the country.
 Is there room for fascism in a country that 60 years ago helped to crush fascism in Germany, providing all people with the hope of peaceful coexistence?
 Of course the president is ashamed of anti-Semitism in Russia. Then again, I remember how he defended freedom of speech, but nearly every independent media outlet in the country was silenced. I remember him saying that the regime had no intention of driving Yukos into bankruptcy, but where's Yukos now? He said that he was ashamed of anti-Semitism, but 32 percent of the listeners of Ekho Moskvy radio felt differently.
 
 <i>Yury Vdovin is co-chair of the St. Petersburg branch of the human rights organization Citizens' Watch. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
 </i>

TITLE: Give the Reformers the Authority to Do Their Job
TEXT: Governor Valentina Matviyenko formulated her credo in her annual address last month as &quot;only an innovative style of management of the city will allow us to take several steps ahead at once on the path to modernization,&quot; and that therefore &quot;our tactic is to make a breakthrough and not to idle along on a principle of step by step.&quot;
 
However, to make a breakthrough some concept of resources, above all of human resources, is needed. And what do we have? &quot; I don't see any spark in your eye. You are all dead. I'd better thrown some dynamite powder at you.&quot; Matviyenko made a tirade of that nature recently at a closed session at Smolny. And this is not wise. She is surrounded largely by people who lack initiative, and are on the whole ineffective. They are not interested in any transformation unless it is to their own advantage - that is the sole reason why they hold public jobs - they have found ways to profit from the existing rules of the game and have no wish for new ones. The status quo suits them just fine.
 This is not to say that there are no likeminded people to Matviyenko in the administration. They exist, but there are far less of them than the number needed to fulfill her ambitious reforms and many of the &quot;right&quot; occupy positions in the bureaucratic hierarchy that are too low to enable them to implement the tasks they have been assigned. For instance, the most well known reformer in Matviyenko's team is Vladimir Blank, the head of the committee on economic development, industrial policy and trade, who is a member of the government, but not even a vice-governor, even though his committee spearheads all the reforms in St. Petersburg. Because of this a problem recurs - Blank is accused of interfering in other committee's affairs to be &quot;dragging the blanket only to himself.&quot; But how can he do otherwise? It's not possible to activate the economic mechanisms of reform without affecting the interests of other committees. If no one was affected it would be like the transport reform, which was an abberation in place of a reform.
 But Blank's opponents have one thing right - he does exceed his authority. That happens because his official status is not the same as his actual one. The gap between official and actual status is even wider for another St. Petersburg reformer, Oleg Vikhtyuk. As the head of the administration of the housing committee he has no status. How can you be responsible for a reform that affects so many interests and yet have such a low rank? That is absurd. Vikhtyuk, explaining to journalists the purpose of reforms asked them to cite in their articles not him but his bosses Maria Shcherbakova, head of the housing committee, and Vice-Governor Oleg Virolainen. This even though he is the motor of reform. 
 And who is guilty of this inappropriate policy? Yes, of course it is Matviyenko. 
 From the point of view of management theory, a reform is a standard business problem. You can resolve it in two ways. One is military - to create a strict vertical of subordination. Only one thing is required from the people in the hierarchy: unlimited submission, and rapid and correct fulfillment of orders. That method works under one condition - that the top person is able to direct the entire process and understand all its fine points. It is possible only for &quot;small&quot; matters - when there are few people involved. For St. Petersburg's population of 5 million, with a mass of reforms needed, it is a method that clearly will not work. That leaves the second method - to delegate responsibility. Reforms are conducted by a team of like-minded people. Each team member is responsible for a certain part and is given sufficient authority, but everybody sticks to one principle. And the main thing - all key figures have &quot;sparks in their eyes,&quot; they have enthusiasm and drive - reform is not something you do for wages.
 It seems that Matviyenko is aware of this problem. In any case she has displayed this once when she took the reform of the communal housing sector away from Maria Shcherbakova and gave it to Yunis Lukmanov after it became clear that she had to interfere because her friend had been too passive. This example is worth extending to other reforms, above all to that of the transport sector. 
 If Matviyenko really wants to position herself as a great reformer then she will have to deal with her friends in the administration. Capable people can be put in their places to fulfill tasks set by the governor. Over the 18 months of the new administration all members of Matviyenko's team have had a chance to show their colors, who is competent and who is not. Now it is time to be fair: Blank and Vikhtyuk above all should be given authority in keeping with their programs. 
 Matviyenko wants things to be well planned, so let these people become the head of their relevant plans. Maybe it is not even necessary to make them formal vice-governors but their powers should be in line with the tasks they have to carry out. And generally it makes sense to separate the functioning of various sector committees from the reformers. It has long been known that no specific authority is capable of reforming itself - that task has to be given to an external structure. So let the committees stay as they are now and form working groups to undertake reforms. The main thing is that those leading the formers really have control and not some committee head or vice-governor as is the case now. And the head of each reform must have the formal right to get involved in everything that their task involves and to give corresponding orders to be carried out by other administrators regardless of their rank. For failing to carry out orders, bureaucrats should be punished and in some cases fired. Without such a scheme, there will be no reforms in St. Petersburg.
 
 <i>Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. His comment was first broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday.
 
 </i>
 
 
 
 


TITLE: Future Shock </strong><style auhtor>By Chris Floyd
TEXT: One thing we can all admire about U.S. President George W. Bush is his consistency. From the day he hornswoggled his way into office, Bush has relentlessly - if not robotically - followed a preset hard-right agenda of crankery and cruelty, empowering ignorance, greed, aggression, deceit, corruption and malice with every appointment and policy decision. In fact, his dogged adherence to this wicked creed is so predictable that you can practically write tomorrow's news stories today. So why wait? Let's bend an ear to some echoes from the future:
 

 
WASHINGTON, April 15, 2006 - President George W. Bush signed legislation today banning all federal funding for flu research, citing the &quot;rampant use of unsound science&quot; in current work on infectious diseases.
 &quot;Our investigations have shown that present research methods dealing with the causes and treatment of influenza are actually based on the theory of evolution - how the virus supposedly mutates and evolves into new, more virulent forms,&quot; Bush said. &quot;But as we all know, the jury is still out on this evolution thing. We cannot, we must not and we will not trust the precious health of our good citizens to an unproven theory. The American people deserve better than that.&quot;
 The ban is immediate, wiping out approximately $3 billion in flu funding to clinics, laboratories, universities and all federal research institutions. Bush said this &quot;swift, pre-emptive action&quot; is necessary to confront the growing menace of the bird flu epidemic that began its inexorable spread from Southeast Asia in late 2005 and has now claimed more than 5 million lives. The worldwide death toll could reach as high as 100 million or more if a vaccine is not found, experts say. 
 Bush said the $3 billion will now be given to a consortium of faith-based groups, coordinated by the Center for Human Intelligence and Moral Purpose (CHIMP), an anti-evolution think tank based in Seattle. CHIMP is a leading proponent of &quot;Intelligent Design&quot; - the idea that only the guiding, purposeful hand of a divine power could account for the creation and complexity of the universe. Since 2004, advocates of ID have been successful in getting several U.S. school systems to teach the doctrine in science classes alongside the theory of evolution.
 CHIMP spokesman Michael Behehehe said the center had &quot;72 scientists with real degrees and everything&quot; now combing the Bible - &quot;both the Old and New Testaments, and even those Catholic bits&quot; - for a cure. &quot;It only stands to reason,&quot; Behehehe said. &quot;Since God Almighty created this bird flu, the cure will not be found in test tubes or Darwinian tracts, but in the Lord's own science textbook. We're seeing some very promising results from the burnt offering of goats right now.&quot;
 
 FORT KENNEBUNKPORT, Iraq, April 15, 2007 - The war in Iran has finally &quot;turned the corner&quot; and victory is now in sight, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today during a lightning visit to the permanent headquarters of the United States' Middle East Security Service (MESS).
 Rumsfeld, who spent 15 minutes at the sprawling military base on his way to open the first annual Kabul International Arms Exposition, issued his upbeat assessment the day after a U.S. victory at Abadan. U.S. forces managed to advance their trench lines 50 feet toward the border town following a 19-day battle that saw more than 200,000 casualties on both sides.
 Rumsfeld denied persistent rumors that the United States plans to use nuclear weapons to break a nine-month stalemate along the 1,400-mile front. &quot;Goodness gracious granny me, there's no need for nukes,&quot; he told a cadre of MESS troops, most of them recently arrived draftees in transit to the battlefield. &quot;Saturation bombing will do the trick. Our destruction of Iran's civilian infrastructure is sharply degrading the enemy's ability and will to fight. They're gonna roll up like a Persian carpet any day now.&quot;
 
 CRAWFORD, Texas, April 15, 2008 - At a gala ceremony that mixed down-home barbeque and high affairs of state, President George W. Bush signed the controversial &quot;Tools for Yoking Resources to Address National Threats&quot; (TYRANT) Act at his ranch here today.
 The 500-page bill, passed by both houses of Congress last week after a vigorous three-minute debate, gives the president broad powers to &quot;override bureaucratic obstacles in carrying out his sacred duty to preserve the nation from all threats, foreign and domestic.&quot; The &quot;bureaucratic obstacles&quot; defined in the bill include &quot;all rules, regulations, procedures, processes, laws and judicial decisions&quot; at the &quot;federal, state and local levels.&quot;
 An obscure provision on page 417 of the act also lists &quot;elections&quot; as &quot;a potential threat to civic order and national stability in wartime.&quot; The measure allows the president to cancel any election and &quot;appoint officials of his own choosing to all legislative, judicial and administrative bodies.&quot; Congressional Democrats said they hadn't noticed the provision when they voted for the act, but they withdrew their objections after Bush promised to use the new power sparingly, &quot;only when somebody gets way out of line.&quot;
 Canceling the upcoming 2008 presidential election is &quot;out of the question,&quot; Bush assured reporters today. &quot;I have no desire to remain in office, and the people's right to choose their leader will never be infringed - as long as they choose wisely, of course.&quot;
 Administration officials later clarified the president's remarks, noting that while the November vote would not be canceled, it would be postponed due to America's ongoing military actions in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba and Nigeria. &quot;Once the president has seen us through to victory in these battles for freedom,&quot; an aide said, &quot;he'll gladly step aside for someone younger, like his brother, or maybe his nephew.&quot;
 
 <i>For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: Visitor Woes, Stalin's Legacy, and Freedoms
TEXT: Tourist Troubles In response to &quot;Cash-Strapped Tourism Service Aims to Help,&quot; an article by Irina Titova on April 8. Editor, I am a student in St. Petersburg. I speak Russian well. But I don't think that the police will help foreigners. They will say that Russians are also victims of thieves. 
 When foreigners are beaten up they say, &quot;they beat us too.&quot; 
 Every day I travel by metro and I change trains at Gostiny Dvor metro station. I see the same pickpockets daily. 
 They check all the passengers who get into the train last. If you stay on the platform, look around carefully. They push people into the train, but do not get in themselves. Then they go to the next door and do the same. 
 There are security cameras installed in the station. The police could catch the thieves. It's strange that they don't. 
 I see the same pickpockets in Gostiny Dvor between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. at least four times a week. So friends, be careful.
 <i>Anonymous
 </i>
 <i>
Editor, </i>
 
I have moved from St. Petersburg to the United States and I really miss my hometown. I plan to return to Russia after I graduate in psychology and to work there helping at the hospitals in the southern regions.
 A lot of St. Petersburg's money goes on entertaining, not tourism and security. I think that the development of new movie theaters and new coffee shop chains is not helping resolve economic problems as much as its helping individuals get more money. I can see the city where I was born aiming in the direction of casinos and clubs, instead of trying to repair old museums, schools, and parks.
 <i>Alisa Anderson
 California</i>
 
 <i>
Editor,</i>
 
I visited St. Petersburg in March and April. The taxi sharks are terrible. They only add to the reputation of St. Petersburg being a terrible place to be for a foreign tourist. One was asking 85 euros or $100 dollars just to get to the city center from Pulkovo.
 I only paid $25 in New York to get to a different airport, not to downtown.
 Moscow was the same, just to get from Sheremetyevo 1 to Sheremetyevo 2.
 Next time my traveling companion suggested we go somewhere else where the local community would view visitors as a welcome sight, not as victims against whom to perpetrate their next crimes.
 <i>Anonymous
 Beatrice, Nebraska
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>
Why go to St. Petersburg? Why go through all the trouble obtaining a visa and, worst, the registration. Why take the great risk being robbed. I have been there eight times and was robbed on the last visit. 
 I was invited to go there this week but said no. I probably will not return due the risk of being robbed by bandits or the police. And I am sure nothing will change for the better for the next 50 years. 
 They say Paris and New York are just as bad. I don't agree. I worked in Paris, I have been to New York and I have never seen anything like what I have seen in Petersburg.
 However I miss my very good Russian friends.
 <i>Anonymous
 Sweden
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,</i>
 
Coming from a western country, you would be inclined to think that adding Latin alphabet street signs and metro information isn't that hard to do. 
 Even for the trickier police problem, viable solutions have been put forth over time, e.g. slashing 90 percent of the police force and increasing the salary of the remaining best 10 percent of officers tenfold, which will in turn increase the quality of new applicants; those new officers would do an about 4,000 times better job for the common good. 
 While the solutions might need a few details worked out and would require time and effort, it certainly isn't rocket science.
 Then again, I have just fallen into the trap of Western thinking, that will drive you nuts in the long term in Russia. The political will for such changes is lacking and thus there is even tacit encouragement for unacceptable police behavior. Together with the unavailability of tourist visas issued for a reasonable fee upon entry into the country, Cyrillic-only street signs even in cities of maximum international importance and tourist interest such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, and a minute budget for improvements in the system read as one message to every visitor every day: You are neither welcome nor needed here. Take it or leave it.
 At an institutional level, a mockery is made of Russian hospitality.
 By the way, the system is not working much better for Russians and leads to emigration and the brain drain.
 On the other hand, maybe we pampered Westerners should just get a grip and face some of the facts of Russian life like the locals do? Maybe we take too many things for granted that in most places the world are not the rule. Maybe we keep dreaming the futile dream of a Russia that operates like a Western European country <br> or the U.S?
 <i>Andrej
 Nuremberg, Germany
 
 </i>
 <strong>
Cool Greetings</strong>
 

 <i>
In response to &quot;Citizens Cool On Outsiders,&quot; an article by Galina Stolyarova and Irina Titova on March 29.
 </i>

 <i>
Editor,
 </i>
I am disappointed from the news of racial attacks because I saw Russia as being more diverse and tolerant than us Canadians, who live in a country built around the idea of multiculturalism. And I honestly thought you were better than this.
 I am surprised to hear about these incidents because I did not experience anything like this. Personally I look like I am mix of a Tatar and a Kazakh, two ethnicities I was delighted to see in your lovely city. 
 Maybe what is needed is an education program promoting tolerance. When people outside of Russia hear this news their opinion of Russia and Russian decline. However, we do not go around beating up people with Slav looks. We are sophisticated enough to recognize that there is a small group of bad people and they should not have their sins put on the shoulders of the innocent. 
 What concerns me the most is the lack or response or the inability of the police and officials to properly respond to these actions. I was thinking about returning to your city to do business and for a vacation. But because of the response from the officials and police I am now reconsidering this. Nor shall I encourage my colleagues to visit. 
 <i>Wisam Hamdi
 Windsor, Ontario, Canada
 

 Editor,</i>
 
I'm a Vietnamese businessman and was educated in Russia. Russian was my major at university. In my heart, Russia is my second country even though I have not been back for a long time. I am always looking for the opportunity to make a trip back to Russia to visit my former teachers and friends. 
 But now, after I read the articles about the behavior of certain young and uneducated people attacking foreigners in Russia, I really hesitate to return. 
 This is, unfortunately, also the thinking of most parents in Vietnam who will stop sending their children to Russia to study. 
 Many Vietnamese who have been educated in Russia still remember the country as a very cold country because of the weather, but one with very kind, warm-hearted teachers and helpful people. 
 It would be so sad if after some years the number of foreigners coming to Russia to study drops dramatically and the people, we who love Russia with all our hearts, stop trying to come back to our &quot;second country&quot;. 
 <i>Vu Manh Quan
 Vietnam
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,</i>
 
Russia has so much great history and wonderful people. It was disheartening to know that your citizens are not tolerant of other races. This is a sad situation for a people that has historically suffered so much from tyranny. 
 Oh, how I love your country's history. For years, I've prayed for the Russian people to obtain a government that treated each of them fairly and protected and provided for them. I've even written at least once to your government in support of your people. The form of government doesn't really matter to me as long as it offers opportunity grow, safety, and stability of law and justice. As a student of your culture and military history, I have always desired to visit your country to meet and see how all of you live. <br> Today, I have the finances to visit any where in the world. Russia's always at the top of my list. I've been reluctant to travel to Russia since I am a black citizen from U.S. Is this a proper feeling? 
 Not truly knowing how safe your streets were to strangers prior to your recent stint with controlled democracy, I wonder were things safer when you had a communist government? Were there more jobs for all (which keep people preoccupied and less likely to do violent acts against your own citizens and foreigners)? 
 One day, I hope to make it to your wonderful country. Yet, since I usually travel alone, it may be awhile unless I pay for a bodyguard. I have never had to even think about paying for security in Europe or Asia.
 Anyhow, I'll still pray for your people, leaders, and economy. I only wish all of you good fortune.
 <i>Robert Johnson
 Chicago, Illinois
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,</i>
 
I am a Chinese-American living in Boston, a regular reader of both The St. Petersburg Times and The Moscow Times. I ventured into Russia many times and had my own experience of encountering skinheads in Moscow and even in smaller cities such as Yoshkar-Ola by mostly &quot;normally dressed&quot; youngsters. As a result, we ultimately abandoned our investment plan because of unsafe environment. 
 I understand people in isolated places tend to be cold on other <br> cultures, but St. Petersburg is not <br> a backwater. 
 My view and my feeling about the skinhead movement in Russia and Ukraine is that it is somewhat tolerated and even encouraged by local officials including police and mass media. In today's increasingly globalized world, such a mentality will only hurt Russian's chance of attracting quality business opportunities, and ultimately hurt her chance of standing <br> as a civilized and cultured society <br> in the world.
 <i>James Liu
 Boston, Massachusetts
 </i>
 
 <strong>Stalin's Crimes</strong>
 
 <i>
In response to &quot;Stuck in Past, Elite Won't Apologize for Stalin's Crimes,&quot; a comment by Vladimir Kovalev <br> on April 8. 
 </i>

 <i>
Editor,</i>
 
As an American who served in the U.S. military during and after the Cold War, I am amazed at how quickly communism folded up shop. That it's poisoned roots are still very deep and affecting European societies to this very day is saddening. One reads a lot about the clash of mindsets in post-Cold War reunited Germany<i>.</i>
 It appears the same thing is happening in Russia and its former satellites. I have a good many friends that have traveled and still do travel to Eastern Europe. They love the people there. Yet I am told how some of the old system's ways still pervade if in nothing else but in the mindsets of the populace with too frequently a sugar-coated aura and not the foul taste in the mouth one would expect.
 Some have debated that the seven-plus decades of repressive communism have created a socialist welfare mindset. To an extent I have seen and do agree with this view. I do feel though that the more liberal political and social conventions slowly trickling in and being assimilated by the former communist countries is eroding the pro-Stalinist policies, albeit not as quickly as one would like to be comfortable. 
 But such changes don't come quickly. Germany's changes after World War II came quickly because the country was militarily and utterly defeated, her territory was occupied, and it was force-fed the truths of that war. Communism in the east has not had that baptism of cleansing fire, <br> so I can see where it will take much more time for that mindset to burn itself out.
 The actions of the President Vladimir Putin reining in and solidifying his power is troublesome as it has the makings of another go at totalitarianism.
 <i>William Reed
 Paint Lick, Kentucky
 </i>
 
 <strong>Artists' Dispute
 </strong>
 <i>
In response to &quot;Mitki Artists Fighting Eviction From Studio,&quot; an article by Galina Stolyarova on April 5.
 </i>

 <i>
Editor,
 </i>
I am appaled that city real estate factions are trying to dislodge the Mitki. This is typically short-sighted. To deprive such a productive, hard-working group of their workspace in favor of a few more rubles in the coffer is nuts. 
 If they really cared about the city they would recognize how much joy and creativity the Mitki bring to us all. May the Mitki win this one!
 <i>Barbara Hazard, 
 Director of Friends <br> of the Foundation <br> &quot;Free Culture,&quot; <br> The Tides Foundation, 
 San Francisco, California
 </i>
 
 <strong>
Gay Freedom
 </strong>

 <i>
In response to &quot;A Happy New Year for Putin's Russia?&quot; a comment by Grigory Yavlinsky on Jan. 28.
 </i>

 <i>
Editor,</i>
 
Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the Yabloko party, which failed to overcome 5 percent limit vote during the last elections to enter the State Duma, is still trying to teach everyone how to live in the future. His absurd ambitions prevented the unification of the right-wing opposition and led him to a political catastrophe.
 As the president of the Krilija Gay Human Rights Center, which was officially registered in 1991, I want to stress that never before in Russian history has the gay community been able to celebrate such freedoms and well-being as today. 
 The homophobia of the population is still very high, but from the legal point of view the gays' position is one of the best in the world: only rape is persecuted, the penalty is the same for homo- and heterosexuals and the age of consent is 16 years old. 
 According to my personal experience the gay infrastructure in St. Petersburg is even more colorful, than in Amsterdam or San Francisco.
 Due to this I think that Yavlinsky should agree to accept the post of a highly positioned international official that the proposed to him instead of crying crocodile tears.
 <i>Alexander Kukharsky
 St. Petersburg
 </i>
 


TITLE: MG Rover
 Investigated
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - The British government has ordered an investigation into the accounts of MG Rover, amid contentions that directors had stripped money from the failed company.
 Rover's administrators announced on Friday that they planned to break up the company, Britain's only remaining large manufacturer of cars, after a deal with the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation fell through. More than 5,000 of Rover's 6,000 employees will lose their jobs.
 The trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt, said Saturday that the independent Financial Reporting Council would look into the accounts of the company and its owners, Phoenix Venture Holdings.
 Hewitt said she believed that the Phoenix chairman, John Towers, and other directors had taken too much money out of the business. &quot;I hope they will make a personal contribution toward supporting the work force,&quot; she said.
 &quot;Where entrepreneurs take a risk,&quot; she added, &quot;they should be entitled to big rewards for big success. But that is not what we are talking about here. They did not put up huge amounts of money, the company has not been a success, and it was virtually given to them by BMW.&quot;
 The company's collapse and related criticism are being played out amid a general election campaign in Britain; the voting is scheduled on May 5.

TITLE: Liberation of Nazi Camps Commemorated
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FUERSTENBERG, Germany - Hundreds of survivors of Nazi concentration camps on Sunday marked the liberation 60 years ago of three of the most notorious camps in the Third Reich's vast system: Ravensbrueck, Sachsenhausen and Bergen-Belsen. 
 Judith Sherman, 75, brought her two sons and grandchildren to Ravensbrueck so she could tell them the story of her struggle to survive. 
 &quot;I wanted to protect them, I didn't want them to feel sorry for me,&quot; said Sherman, of Cranbury, New Jersey. 
 But now, she said, &quot;I'm ready to do it because I'm old and the story should be told.&quot; 
 Though she kept her feelings inside for 60 years, the memories of climbing over bodies to use the bathrooms and struggling to keep from getting sick were never far from the surface, she said. 
 &quot;I think of Ravensbrueck every time I feel hungry. I think of Ravensbrueck every time I feel cold,&quot; she said. &quot;Every time my grandchildren cry, I think of Ravensbrueck.&quot; 
 Sherman was among 300 survivors from around the world who attended the ceremony at Ravensbrueck, some 60 miles north of Berlin near the town of Fuerstenberg, which gained infamy as the Nazis' camp for women prisoners, though some men also were held there. 
 Following speeches, people threw roses into a pond used by the Nazis to dump the ashes of the camp's cremated victims. 
 Tens of thousands of women were not as lucky and were marched north by the SS, with scores dying along the way. When the Russian soldiers liberated Ravensbrueck on April 30, 1945, they found 3,000 sickly prisoners who had been unable to make the march. 
 The Nazis built all of their death camps, like Auschwitz, in occupied Poland, but the slave labor camps in Germany also were places of death. 
 Between 1939 and 1945, some 132,000 women and children, 20,000 men and 1,000 female youths were deported to Ravensbrueck, and tens of thousands of them died from hunger, disease, exhaustion or medical experiments. A gas chamber built at the end of 1944 claimed some 6,000 victims as well. 
 Sachsenhausen, on the northern outskirts of Berlin, was liberated April 22, 1945, by the Soviet army. One of the first Nazi concentration camps, it was initially meant mainly for political prisoners, but inmates later included Jews, Poles, Soviets and other POWs. 
 Bergen-Belsen, near Hanover, initially was a special camp for &quot;privileged&quot; Jews and POWs, but by 1945 it became a holding pen for the weak and sick from other camps as the Allies advanced. 
 Teenage diarist Anne Frank was one of the camp's victims, dying of typhus a few weeks before it was liberated April 15, 1945. 
 When British soldiers arrived at Bergen-Belsen, they found thousands of corpses scattered haphazardly in heaps - images that eventually became iconic around the world as proof of Nazi evil. 
 About 40,000 people were liberated from the camp, although about 13,000 later died of illness. Overall, about 70,000 people died in Belsen.

TITLE: Cardinals Gather to Select Successor to John Paul II
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY - In a historic gathering steeped in intrigue, cardinals from six continents assembled Monday for their first conclave of the new millennium to elect a pope who will inherit John Paul II's mantle and guide the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics into a new era. 
 
Representing 52 countries, the 115 crimson-robed &quot;princes&quot; of a church stung by priest sex-abuse scandals and an exodus of the faithful were to celebrate a midmorning Mass at St. Peter's Basilica before sequestering themselves in the Sistine Chapel in the late afternoon. 
 There, seated atop a false floor hiding electronic jamming devices designed to thwart eavesdroppers, they were to take an oath of secrecy, hear a meditation from a senior cardinal and decide whether to take a first vote or wait until Tuesday. 
 &quot;The new pope has already been chosen by the Lord. We just have to pray to understand who he is,&quot; Florence Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, considered by some to be a dark-horse candidate, told believers who gathered for Sunday Mass at his titular church in Rome. 
 Thousands of pilgrims and tourists were expected to converge on St. Peter's Square to watch the chapel chimney for the white smoke that ultimately will tell the world that the church's 265th pontiff has been elected. The famous stove in the chapel also will bellow black smoke to signal any inconclusive round of voting. 
 Although the conclave could last for days, a pope could be chosen as early as the first day if the red-capped prelates opt to begin casting ballots after their solemn procession from the Vatican's Apostolic Palace to the chapel. 
 If they decide to hold off a day, they will hold four rounds of voting - two in the morning, two in the afternoon - on Tuesday and every day until a candidate gets two-thirds support: 77 votes. If they remain deadlocked late in the second week of voting, they can vote to change the rules so a winner can be elected with a simple majority: 58 votes. 
 Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said smoke from burned ballot papers enhanced by special chemicals likely could be seen at around noon and around 7 p.m. on each day of voting by the cardinal electors, all of whom are under age 80. At some point soon after the new pope is chosen, the Vatican also will ring bells. On Sunday, the cardinals moved into the super-secure Domus Sanctae Marthae, the $20 million hotel that John Paul had constructed inside Vatican City so the cardinals could rest in comfort in private rooms between voting sessions. Swiss Guards, their brightly colored uniforms covered by dark rain gear, saluted the prelates as they were whisked to the residence in limousines. 
 The daily La Stampa said cardinals gearing up for a stressful stretch of days had packed CD players and headphones in their bags along with prayer books and snacks to nibble on in their rooms. 
 Conspicuously missing from their quarters were cell phones, newspapers, radios, TVs and Internet connections - all banned in new rules laid down by John Paul II to minimize the chances of news influencing their secret deliberations and to prevent leaks to the outside world. The Vatican's security squad swept the chapel for listening devices, and cooks, maids, elevator operators and drivers were sworn to secrecy. Excommunication is a possible punishment for any indiscretions. 
 No conclave in the past century has lasted more than five days, and the election that made John Paul II pope in October 1978 took eight ballots over three days. He died April 2 at 84 after a pontificate that lasted more than 26 years, history's third-longest papacy. 
 Cardinals faced a choice that boiled down to two options: an older, skilled administrator who could serve as a &quot;transitional&quot; pope while the church absorbs John Paul's legacy, or a younger dynamic pastor and communicator - perhaps from Latin America or elsewhere in the developing world where the church is growing - who could build on the late pontiff's popularity over a quarter-century of globe-trotting. 
 The prelates agreed after John Paul's funeral not to talk publicly about the process, but the world's news media have been rife with speculation centering on about two dozen candidates considered &quot;papabile,&quot; Italian for &quot;pope material.&quot; 
 The name with the biggest buzz was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a powerful Vatican official from Germany who was to recite an opening prayer in Latin that the voters be guided &quot;in our hearts, in love and in patience.&quot; 
 Among the issues sure to figure prominently in the conclave: containing the priest sex-abuse scandals that have cost the church millions in settlements in the United States; coping with a chronic shortage of priests and nuns in the West; halting the stream of people leaving a church whose teachings they no longer find relevant; and improving dialogue with the Islamic world. 
 Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo, an Italian who at 86 is too old to vote, told Italian state radio Sunday he was confident the conclave would be guided to the right man. 
 &quot;Providence sends a pope for every era,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Too Little Support for Basque Autonomy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VITORIA, Spain - Ruling Basque nationalists pushing for more autonomy from Spain won a key regional election Sunday but fell short of a majority, losing seats as candidates backed by a banned pro-independence party drew unexpectedly high support, according to government figures. 
 
The wealthy three-province region in northern Spain has had broad self-rule for 25 years, and the incumbent president Juan Jose Ibarretxe was seeking enough voter support to pressure Madrid to negotiate on his plan for Basque autonomy bordering on independence. 
 But with 100 percent of the votes counted, his Basque Nationalist Party and a moderate ally won 29 seats in the 75-member Basque legislature, well short of the 38 needed for an outright majority and down from 33 in the outgoing parliament, the Basque Interior Ministry said. 
 An obscure pro-independence party endorsed by Batasuna, the party seen as the political wing of the armed Basque separatist group ETA, won nine seats. It outperformed even Batasuna, which had seven seats in the outgoing legislature before being banned for the first time in a Basque election. 
 ETA has been blamed for more than 800 deaths since the late 1960s in its campaign for an independent Basque homeland in land straddling northern Spain and southwest France. 
 Ibarretxe played up a win that appeared bittersweet at best. &quot;We won the confidence of Basque society, which thinks we have the key to advancing this country, for there to be negotiations so it can decide for itself,&quot; he told supporters. 
 The Basque branch of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialists unseated the conservative Popular Party as the second most-voted party in the region, rising from 13 seats to 18. The conservatives dropped from 19 to 15. 
 Both parties oppose Ibarretxe's plan, which calls for a separate court system, representation in international bodies such as the European Union, and the right to secede from Spain - which the Spanish constitution bars. 


TITLE: Haider Elected President of a New Party
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: SALZBURG, Austria - Austria's far-right firebrand Joerg Haider was elected president of a new political party as the group was formally launched Sunday, in a gamble that could put at risk the country's ruling coalition. 
 
Haider was elected unanimously bar one abstention by the 564 delegates present for the launch of the Alliance for Austria's Future (BZOe), born following a split in his Freedom Party (FPOe), the junior partner in Austria's government coalition since February 2000. &quot;Instead of turning to the past, we must choose, with a lot of idealism, a new way and anticipate the problems of the future,&quot; Haider told the congress during a two-hour speech. 
 So far Haider has made two objectives clear: to tighten Austria's restrictive asylum policy and to fight against globalization, the new enemy of the man who once fought against Europe. 
 He also told the new party members that they will fight against &quot;unemployment to create more jobs in Austria.&quot; 
 On April 4, Haider broke with the old party, which he swore he would never betray, announcing that he was taking FPOe members of government with him to form the BZOe because of internal bickering that was ruining the party's chances of success. 
 Nine of the FPOe members of parliament defected to BZOe, while seven stayed with the FPOe and two have yet to decide. 
 The formation of the BZOe is a return to national politics for Haider, who laid down the leadership of the FPOe and retreated to provincial politics when the European Union punished Austria for including the far-right party in the government coalition. 


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Education Warning
 </b>

WASHINGTON (AFP) - World Bank President James Wolfensohn warned Sunday that a key UN goal of providing primary education for all children by 2015 could be missed if rich countries fail to come up with more money by September. 
 "Today we see that the rich world is not even close to meeting its commitment to children in developing countries," Wolfensohn said here during a twice-yearly meeting of Bank policymakers. 
 He said he feared the target, part of the Millennium Development Goals endorsed by the United Nations on 2015, would be missed if additional funding is not approved at a Group of Eight summit in July or at a UN summit in September.
 
 
<b>Activist Dies in Iraq
 </b>

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A woman who led an effort to help those ravaged by violence in Iraq fell victim to the war herself when a car bomb killed her and two other people, officials said Sunday. 
 Marla Ruzicka, founder of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, died Saturday in the blast, which also killed an Iraqi and another foreigner, officials said. She had been in Iraq conducting door-to-door surveys trying to determine the number of civilian casualties in the country. 
 A skinny, ever-smiling woman with curly blond tresses, Ruzicka was untiring and undaunted as she went up against military and political bureaucracies in her effort to win help for Iraqi civilian victims of the war, and to make sure those who died were not forgotten. 
 "Everyone who met Marla was struck by her incredible effervescence and commitment," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. "She was courageous and relentless in pursuit of accurate information about civilians caught up in war." 
 
 
<b>Labour Leads in Poll
 </b>

LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party continued to lead the main opposition Conservatives in one opinion poll released Saturday but another poll put the two parties in a dead heat ahead of a May 5 general election. 
 An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper gave Labour 40 per cent of the vote, 10 points ahead of the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats would take 22 per cent of the vote, the poll indicated. 
 But a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times newspaper has Michael Howard's Conservatives just a single percentage point behind Labour, which was supported by 36 per cent of respondents. The Liberal Democrats had 23 per cent of the vote, the poll indicated.
 
 
<b>'Little Britain' Wins
 </b>

LONDON (Reuters) - Matt Lucas and David Walliams, the creators and stars of the BBC Three comedy series "Little Britain", walked off with top honors in two categories at the British Academy Television Awards on Sunday.
 The show, which began live on radio, was named Best Comedy Performance and Best Comedy Series at the annual BAFTA awards at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

TITLE: NHL Scouts Check Out Junior Talent
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Many of hockey's future stars are competing at the 31st annual Bolshoi Priz Sankt Peterburga, or St. Petersburg Grand Prix, which got underway last Saturday at the Yubileiny Sports Palace. 
 
The junior tournament runs through Thursday and features teams from the Czech Republic, Finland, Slovakia, Sweden, St. Petersburg and an all-Russia team excluding players from St. Petersburg. 
 Russia lead the round robin competition Sunday with 4 points, after a 2-1 win over Sweden and a 5-3 win over Finland on Saturday. 
 Originally conceived as a testing ground for national B teams of Europe's leading ice hockey powers, players who proved themselves at the Bolshoi Priz were often subsequently called up to the national A teams preparing for the World Championships, which usually start in late April.
 &quot;Many of us still have great memories of past tournaments,&quot; said Soviet hockey legend Boris Mayorov, now vice president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation. &quot;Hockey's greats like [Jaromir] Jagr, and [Vladimir] Konstantinov who proved themselves here in Petersburg then went on to the World Ice Hockey Championships and did very well.&quot; 
 This year, teams are comprised of players born in or after 1986. 
 &quot;It is exciting to showcase young developing players. Sure, most of these players have already been drafted, but we're watching the future of hockey,&quot; Mayorov said.
 The Bolshoi Priz attracted about 80 North American Hockey League scouts and employees including Florida Panthers general manager &quot;Iron Mike&quot; Keenan. 
 &quot;The [NHL] lockout has freed me up from some of my other responsibilities and given me ... extra time to travel ... around Europe and get a look at some of the players that we are interested in,&quot; Keenan said, mentioning no names. 
 &quot;Just because the [NHL] season and [2005] draft were cancelled doesn't mean that we haven't been working. ... I am confident that a resolution [to the labor dispute] will be found soon.&quot;
 Despite uncertainty over the future of the NHL, tournament organizers in St. Petersburg focused on the future. 
 Mayorov jubilantly announced that &quot;Team Canada applied to join the tournament next year and we are making arrangements to accommodate them.&quot; It is also possible that Switzerland might return to the competition. 
 Team St. Petersburg is also giving local fans a sneak peak at local hockey team SKA's new head coach Nikolai Solobyev. 
 Solobyev, whose contract with SKA doesn't start until May 1, is already working young athletes from SKA's farm clubs who have been assigned to St. Petersburg in the Bolshoi Priz. 
 Former SKA head coach Boris Mikhailov left the team to become an assistant coach with the Russian National Team ahead of the World Championships. 
 Solobyev spent the last three seasons with Metallurg Novokuznetsk where he succeeded in leading the Siberian team to the playoff all three seasons. 


TITLE: Radcliffe Spends a Penny, Wins London Marathon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Paula Radcliffe stopped running with about 6 miles to go in the London Marathon. She was sick and cramping, and intent on making sure there was no repeat of the Athens Olympics. 
 
This time, Radcliffe kept going, unlike last summer. Stomach pains struck the Englishwoman just more than halfway through this race. She stopped alongside a fence next to the course to go to the toilet behind an advertsising hoarding, taking 15 seconds to compose herself afterwards. 
 Then she carried on, winning by more than five minutes and finishing in 2 hours, 17 minutes, 42 seconds on Sunday for her third London Marathon title. 
 &quot;I must have eaten too much or something wrong beforehand to need to go during a race,&quot; Radcliffe said. &quot;Before I started, I was fine, halfway through I was fine. ... I didn't really want to have to resort to that in front of hundreds of thousands of people.&quot; 
 Martin Lel of Kenya had a far closer race in the men's division, although without the anguish. He recorded a personal best of 2:07:26 for the 26.2 miles. World champion Jaouad Gharib of Morocco was second, 23 seconds behind, and Hendrick Ramaala of South Africa was third in 2:08:32. Africans took seven of the top 10 spots. 
 Radcliffe not only won but did so in a women's-only record, beating her previous record of 2:18:56 and earning a $125,000 bonus. She used only female pacemakers on Sunday. In 2003, she used male pacemakers to set the world record of 2:15:25. 
 Romania's Constantina Tomescu-Dita was 5:08 behind and Kenya's Susan Chepkemei was third in 2:24:00 in a race in which the women started 45 minutes before the men. 
 Radcliffe dropped out of the Olympic marathon and the 10,000 last August in Athens because of cramps. 
 &quot;It was similar to Athens, but the rest of me felt good so there was no danger of me being defeated again,&quot; she said.