SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1064 (30), Tuesday, April 26, 2005
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Hydro
 Plan Irks
 Scientists
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Finnish and Karelian scientists are worried by the Karelian regional government's plans to resume construction of the Beloporozhskaya hydro-electric station, which would flood architectural monuments.
 
Construction of the power plant was frozen in the 1980s because of a lack of funding.
 Local media quoted Vyacheslav Orfinsky, a Karelian academic, as saying that the dam would mean the destruction of the Karelian people's culture, especially in relation to the ancient village of Panozero, which would disappear under water.
 "A unique cultural tendency that combines Karelian and Russian elements has been forming here over several centuries," news agency Regnum quoted him saying last week. "This is the only Northern Karelian village displaying historical planning of settlements. However, in a rush to get an unclear economic advantage, the government of Karelia is ready to flood or to relocate this world memorial to a different place, which is the same as if it was demolished." 
 Panozero is located near Kem River, which will be flooded if the power plant is built. It is included in a list of 100 international architectural monuments that are under threat of being destroyed, the academic said.
 "Following international agreements signed with a range of cultural foundations in Europe and the United States with the aim of protecting Panozero, money has been allocated to renovate the village; the plans of Karelian authorities to resume construction of the Beloporozhskaya power plant can only result in outrage and indignation," he said.
 In February, Karelia's Governor Sergei Katanandov said that Unified Energy Systems is ready to resume construction of the 120 megawatt hydro-electric station, which will require an investment of up to $100 million. The financing could come not only from UES, but also from well-known electricity consumers aluminium group SUAL holding and steelmaker Severstal.
 "UES is going to cooperate in order to finish construction of the Beloporozhskaya plant," Katanandov said. "There's also an interest for this project from our aluminum producers and the Kostomuksha aluminum production plant. So far we are in a process of negotiations."
 Neither Karelian government officials responsible for the project, nor UES, or Karelenergo, the regional power supplier could be reached for comment Monday.
 An expert group advised the Karelian branch of the Press and Culture Ministry on April 15 that the village should be saved, but officials have not taken any action on the recommendation.
 "The opinion of the experts was that the village should be protected," Vladimir Dybin, head of the branch that is responsible for the protection and use of monuments of history and culture, said Monday in a telephone interview.
 "The resolution was filed and sent to the Karelian government republic," he added. "I cannot guess what the next step will be.
 The plans have also called the same sharp reaction from Finnish ethnographers, who have warned Karelian authorities of negative consequences if the dam is built.
 "The flooding of Panozero [village] would result in an international scandal," Interfax quoted Markku Nieminen, ethnographer at the Finnish cultural foundation Yminkeko, as saying.
 "[If] Karelian authorities do not reconsider their plans for the Beloporozhskaya power plant, the European Union will review its plans to support Karelian culture because investments in renovation of the village have came from European structures, including Finnish ones, and even from U.S. cultural foundations," Nieminen said.
 The Karelian authorities' plans came as a big surprise for Finnish scientists because UES management had promised them that to protect the village there would be no construction in the area.
 "We have received a letter on this matter signed by [UES head Anatoly] Chubais. The death of Panozero would be a most powerful blow to the international image of Russia as a cultural country," Nieminen said.
 The local and international scientists said they would ask UNESCO to put Panozero on its World Heritage List.

TITLE: President's Address Contains Pro-Business Initiatives
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Monday urged tax authorities to stop interfering with businesses and demanded legislation that would set in stone which areas are open for foreign investment.
 
In a broadly pro-business state of the nation address, Putin even made some more specific proposals than he has in previous speeches, suggesting the abolition of the inheritance tax and an amnesty for undeclared income. 
 Putin acknowledged that in their zeal to fight economic crime, tax authorities and other bureaucrats "once in a while" get out of hand and "we observe serious violations of the businessman's rights and sometimes sheer racketeering on the part of government institutions. 
 "Tax authorities have no right to terrorize businesses by revisiting the same problems time and again," Putin said in a 47-minute speech to both houses of parliament in the Kremlin's Marble Hall.
 The address, which was broadcast live on state television channels, capped a year of investor jitters over a spreading number of back-tax investigations against companies. Back-tax collection shot up more than threefold in 2004 as opposed to 2003, according to the World Bank, and tax authorities recently made an appeal to the Constitutional Court to water down the statute of limitations for tax offenses. 
 Putin stressed that tax authorities must "pay the most attention to current audits" as opposed to back-tax investigations, and renounce "any sort of collection targets." Moreover, he said, a way must be found for firms to pay back taxes and fines "without destroying the economy or driving businesses into a corner." 
 The latest offer, however, will probably not save Yukos, which was presented with a $27.5 billion back-tax bill that it was told to pay up almost immediately. The oil major lost its main production unit when it failed to come up with the money. 
 Standard & Poor's, the ratings agency, said in a report Monday that tax risk has become a major potential concern for Russian companies, even though tax claims so far have had a limited impact on most firms' operations. 
 The business community was watching for the president to reiterate his commitment to limit reviews of old privatizations and specifically address some of the concerns faced by foreign investors. He did not disappoint. 
 "Russia is extremely interested in large-scale private - including foreign - investments," Putin said. 
 He called for an amnesty on previously undeclared personal income so that it could be invested in the economy. The money would be taxed the standard 13 percent rate as long as it is placed in Russian bank accounts. 
 Also, sectors that are closed to foreign investment must be spelled out in the law and not determined ad hoc, the president said, promising that such a list "would not be liable to expansion or to broadened interpretation." 
 In March, anti-trust authorities blocked a partial buyout of Power Machines, a large turbine maker, by Germany's Siemens because the Russian company supplies the military. Earlier this month, officials confirmed that they had canceled energy auctions because TNK-BP, a Russian-British venture, had planned to bid.
 "Investors are not looking for riddles or charades" but for stability and clear "rules of the game," Putin said. 
 The stock market did not react to the speech at all. Some investors, pointing to the president's poor record of following up on promises made in annual speeches, questioned whether they would ever again hear about Monday's proposals. 
 "We note ... that not once has a major campaign ever been flagged in a federal assembly address from Putin," Michael Heath, political strategist at Aton Capital, said in a note to clients.
 Heath said, however, that the investor-friendly tone of Monday's address "may spell the end of the campaign against big business. ... The fact that investment has begun to wane against a backdrop of $50 per barrel oil prices and record levels for other major global commodities is obviously causing concern in the Kremlin." 
 Putin urged the government and parliament to speed up legislation to cut the statute of limitations on reviews of privatizations deals from 10 to three years - a change he offered business leaders in a meeting on March 24. 
 "There's just a single word in a single article [of the law] that needs to be changed," Putin said.
 Making his first major tax proposal since a 24 percent flat tax rate on corporate profits was introduced in 2002, he said the inheritance tax should be abolished for the good of the ordinary Russian. "Billionaire fortunes are stored somewhere offshore, anyhow, and are not bequeathed here. But when it comes to some small dacha, a person has to pay such sums [to inherit it] that he often cannot afford it."
 Currently, an heir has to pay a tax of 5 percent to 40 percent of the value of the inheritance, depending on the type of the inheritance and his relationship to the deceased, said Olga Boltenko, a tax lawyer at LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae. 
 The tax has been used in many countries, notably Japan, as a policy tool to redistribute inherited wealth and promote economic equality. However, levying a fee on bequeathed property essentially amounts to double taxation, and the tax is facing mounting criticism as it starts to affect middle-class families both in the West and in Russia. 
 Significantly, Putin did not mention a previous promise to double the economy within a decade - about the only goal expressed in a previous state of the nation address that has found an echo within the halls of government. 
 He reiterated several statements made in previous speeches that have not yet been followed by reforms, including a call to raise the quality and accessibility of medical services.

TITLE: Putin Says Russian Democracy Must Develop
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW- President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Russia must develop as a free democratic nation, but in a subtle warning against popular uprisings, he vowed to crack down on any "illegal" unrest.
 
Putin, speaking in his annual state of the nation address, also issued a rebuke to Western leaders who have accused the Kremlin of stalling or backtracking on democratic reforms, saying the country itself will decide how quickly to usher in democracy and what form that democracy will take.
 "I consider the development of Russia as a free, democratic state to be the main political and ideological task," Putin told both houses of parliament in the Kremlin's Marble Hall. 
 The president told the lawmakers, who were joined by key government ministers and other policymakers, that they also should put their efforts into developing democracy as well as the state, civil society and the rule of law.
 While calling for Russia to "become a free society of free people," Putin insisted that it would go about democratic reforms its own way. "As a sovereign country, Russia is capable and will itself define the terms and conditions for progress along this way," he said.
 Putin sent a signal to the opposition to refrain from organizing large street protests in the wake of peaceful revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. 
 He said the state would response in a "legal but tough" way to "illegal methods of fighting for national, religious or other interests."
 Putin also made it clear that Moscow will continue to try to influence affairs in other former Soviet republics, despite the emergence of pro-Western regimes in Georgia and Ukraine and the re-orientation of Moldova toward the European Union.
 "The Russian nation should continue its mission of civilizing the Eurasian continent," Putin said, describing Russia as "chiefly a large European nation."
 While eloquent and specific in outlining economic policy in Monday's speech, Putin offered few new ideas on how he would like to tackle national problems. He called this year's address a continuation of last year's and said the two should be considered as a program of action for the next decade.
 As in his previous addresses, Putin on Monday meticulously listed the problems facing the country, including terrorism, poverty, alcoholism, depopulation and corruption. 
 He tried to put the problems into a historical perspective, often striking a philosophical note. He even cited two relatively little-known Russian intellectuals from the early 20th century to show that the country has faced the same problems before and to fault moral deficiencies for causing the problems.
 Putin sought to defend his record by pointing the finger of blame at events before his presidency. Among other things, Putin referred to the Soviet collapse in 1991 as the "largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century" that led to an "epidemia of disintegratations." 
 He lambasted a peace accord signed by then-Chechen leader Alsan Maskhadov and Security Council chief Alexander Lebed during the rule his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, in 1996. In perhaps his harshest criticism of Yeltsin yet, Putin described the peace deal as an "unconditional surrender" in the wake of a "terrorist intervention."
 In addition, Putin pointed out that "widespread poverty became the norm" under Yeltsin, while "the economy was in a dire recess and the social sphere was paralyzed."
 Putin made no mention of the clear need for an overhaul in the law enforcement community, which failed to prevent terrorist attacks such as the huge hostage-takings in Moscow in 2002 and Beslan last year.
 The president also failed to offer any solutions to fighting poverty and depopulation apart from calls to raise the salaries of public servants and to encourage legal migration.


TITLE: Liberals Mistrust Assertions as Empty Words
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Liberals offered a withering assessment of President Vladimir Putin's expressions of commitment to democracy Monday, calling them "empty words," and said his scrapping of direct gubernatorial elections was to blame for the "bureaucracy's excessive powers." 
 
But the economic proposals in Putin's state of the nation address, such as the proposed amnesty for undeclared income, won approval from a broad gamut of politicians and businessmen.
 Independent State Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov said he distrusted the sincerity of Putin's intentions to develop democracy. "To me, all these statements about democracy and freedom of speech are empty words. I don't believe a single word," Ryzhkov said, Interfax reported. "Putin is building an authoritarian regime and anything else is just a nice combination of words.
 "It's the president who is consistently destroying democracy in our country" by proposing or supporting reforms such as the scrapping of popular gubernatorial elections, he said.
 By reiterating his commitment to democracy, Putin wanted to portray himself in a good light ahead of the arrival of world leaders in Moscow next month for the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II, said Sergei Mitrokhin, Yabloko deputy chairman.
 "As in his previous addresses, Putin is again calling on his bureaucracy to be civilized, uncorrupted and serve citizens, not itself," Mitrokhin said in a statement. "In fact, it is his policy to destroy democratic institutions that is the main cause of the bureaucracy's excessive powers."
 Igor Yakovenko, general secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, was skeptical about Putin's proposal to use the Public Chamber - an institution that has yet to be created but is thought likely to comprise mostly Putin loyalists - as a tool to ensure freedom of speech on state television.
 "It would be like creating a dummy [version of free speech], just like the Public Chamber would be a dummy of civil society," Yakovenko said, Interfax reported. "Instead of creating public television that would really be objective and independent we are moving in the opposite direction." 
 Mikhail Seslavinsky, head of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, said the chamber could be "really effective" if it were made a media watchdog.
 Dmitry Rogozin, leader of the nationalist Rodina party, said Putin was promoting the right values but had failed to implement them. "I realized today that there are two Vladimir Vladimirovich Putins," he said. "One proclaims certain values, which everyone no doubt agrees with, and urges they be followed. ... The other one heads the government and for all these years has done nothing to implement his appeals."
 But Rogozin said he was in favor of Putin's proposals that parties with factions in the Duma have equal access to the media and that the Duma be allowed to launch its own investigations. He said that Putin had borrowed these ideas from Rodina.
 Despite his criticism of Putin's commitment to democracy, Ryzhkov praised the economic ideas in his speech and said they were aimed at remedying the failures of the past year, apparently referring to the Yukos case. But Ryzhkov said he doubted that the proposals would be implemented.
 Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin-connected spin-doctor who heads the Foundation for Effective Policy, said Putin had sent a message that the Yukos case was closed "politically."
 "Big business will in the future not come out as a political sponsor for projects ... to develop Russian democracy," he said.
 Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, said Putin's most important message was "reassurance to the business community that private property will be respected."
 Political analyst Igor Bunin said the address represented a victory for the liberals in Putin's retinue.


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Tick-Bite Season Starts
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Eighty tick-bite victims have been registered in St. Petersburg this month, Interfax reported Friday quoting medics from a local infection hospital.
 Alexei Yakovlev, head of Botkin hospital, said these were the first tick bite cases this year, but no cases of infection have been registered yet, because the incubation period is three weeks.
 In 2004, 6,133 people were registered as bitten, 67 of them became infected and two died.
 "The most effective prophylactic is to take an injection in advance, but now it is too late. The injections are usually done in autumn or winter. Now it is useful to use repellents," Yakovlev said.
 
 
<b>Riga Mission Targeted
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) -The pro-Kremlin Walking Together movement is planning to hang children's anti-fascist paintings on the walls of the Latvian consulate in St. Petersburg in protest against the "fascist mood" in the Baltic State, Interfax reported Friday, quoting members of the organization.
 "The fact that there are marches by SS members on the streets of Latvian cities is an attempt at revenge," Interfax cited Alexei Kuznetsov, deputy head of St. Petersburg branch of Walking Together, as saying.
 
 
<b>Putin Hails Passover
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Jewish community with the Passover, which began Saturday and runs until Sunday, Interfax reported.
 "The Passover symbolizes freedom, receiving the Ten Commandments, which even today determine high moral ideals of people [practising] different beliefs," Interfax cited Putin as saying, quoted by his press-service. 
 "I am convinced that only together we could strengthen civil peace and consent in the country, strictly withstand appearances of xenophobia and nationalism," said the president, who will visit the Middle East this week.
 
 
<b>3 Escapees Caught
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) -Three of five men who escaped from a pre-trial detention center in Vsevolozhsk in the Leningrad Oblast at the weekend had been caught by Monday afternoon, Fontanka.ru reported.
 On Monday the police detained the third suspect, Dmitros Popondopulo, 25, while he was on his way to an abandoned holiday house in Ozerki.
 Nazim Mirsaidov and Yevgeny Pylayev, 23, are still at large.
 The detainees fled about 10:20 p.m. on Saturday after beating a security guard, Alexei Ivanov, 30, to death with metal bars.

TITLE: Consulate
 Offers Tips
 On Safety 
 To Tourists
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The British Consulate-General in St. Petersburg has produced a pamphlet warning tourists about pickpockets and street gangs who prey on visitors and advising how to avoid them.
 
The consulate has printed a first run of 2,500 copies of the pamphlet, which can be obtained free from the consulate or from selected hotels.
 Mark Woodham, consul in charge of consular affairs, said the intention is to inform tourists and he hoped people of all nationalities would show an interest.
 &quot;We wish to try to ensure that British visitors have a pleasant stay,&quot; he said. &quot;But the more pople that know about the risks the better.&quot;
 &quot;We hope that by making visitors to the city aware of some of the safeguards they can employ that may make their stay pleasurable and trouble-free.&quot;
 The pocket-sized pamphlet has a map and includes warnings about large Roma gangs and pickpockets, where they are likely to be encountered, and dangerous behavior late at night. It also advises how to behave if people claiming to be from the police want to check documents or search for drugs or weapons.
 Woodham said Monday that with the summer tourist season beginning it is important to inform visitors. The consulate hoped that further editions of the pamphlet might be sponsored by the travel industry.
 Travel advice is already available on the British government's web site www.fco.gov.uk , but the consulate realized not everyone read this information, he said. The consulate received reports of 40 incidents last year, mainly from hotels, and wants to continue receiving these, he said.
 &quot;These reports aid us in our task of continuing to apply pressure to local authorities to address this problem,&quot; he said.

TITLE: New Agency, Fees For 
 U.S. Visa Applicants
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The procedure for obtaining a U.S. visa northwest Russia changed Monday with a new agent, different fees, and a requirement that passports, not photocopies, be submitted with the application.
 
The new agent is courier firm Pony Express, replacing DHL, which had accepted applications for the last two years. Pony Express has offices in St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Novgorod,Murmansk, Pskov, Petrozavodsk and Kaliningrad.
 Pony Express's fee per passport for St. Petersburg residents is 700 rubles while those outside the city will be charged 1,300 rubles per passport.
 &quot;Visa applicants will pay the standard $100 non-refundable application fee in rubles,&quot; the statement said. &quot;Each visa applicant will need to present a valid travel passport.&quot;
 &quot;At the Pony Express office visa applicants will then schedule an interview appointment date and time, on which they will appear at the U.S. consulate,&quot; the statement said.
 The interview can take place several weeks after the application, meaning that people cannot travel abroad while their U.S. application is being processed because the consulate will hold their passport.
 &quot;On the assigned interview appointment date, visa applicants will appear at the U.S. consulate at the appointed time with all supporting documents. If a visa is issued, the applicant may go home following the interview, and Pony Express will deliver the passport and visa directly to their home/office address,&quot; the statement said.
 The consulate's visa section does not take any visa-related calls, but inquiries are addressed at tel. (812) 346-6046 at a charge of $1.65 per minute. Inquiries about specific cases can be dealt with by sending an e-mail to visastpete@state.gov


TITLE: Bush Trip Cuts Finnjet Visits
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: U.S. President George W. Bush's entourage have booked out the ferry Finnjet for his visa to Riga early next month, delaying the start of the ferry's service to St. Petersburg, Kommersant reported Thursday
 
The ferry will resume its service to between St. Petersburg and Rostock in Germany via Tallinn on Saturday as planned, but instead of returning from Rostock will then go to Riga, the report said.
 The Latvian government has chartered the vessel from Finnish owner Silja Line from May 2 to 8. Bush is scheduled to visit Riga on May 6 an 7.
 Kommersant said the Americans had neglected to book enough hotel rooms in time for the visit and that there had been a tender to host the guests between shipping lines, which Silja Line won. 
 The Finnjet has had to strike to sailings to St. Petersburg and will make its first visit on May 9. Several hundred passengers who had booked to travel on the canceled sailings will get their money back while hotels have lost potential clients, the report said.


TITLE: Focus of Chubais Case Shifts to Rodina
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prosecutors are investigating the possible role of a Rodina aide in an attack last month on Unified Energy Systems chief Anatoly Chubais, news reports said Sunday.
 
In a new twist to a murky affair that some observers see as an attempt to discredit the increasingly strident nationalist opposition ahead of 2007 parliamentary and 2008 presidential elections, Ekho Moskvy radio said police were searching for Ivan Mironov, whom it identified as an aide to Rodina Deputy Yelena Mukhina.
 Mironov, 25, unsuccessfully ran for election to the State Duma in 2003 as a member of the nationalist Rodina party, Kommersant reported Saturday.
 Rodina leader Dmitry Rogozin denied that the party had any connection to the March 17 roadside ambush of Chubais, and he accused Chubais of trying to besmirch Rodina's reputation. &quot;I have no doubt that Chubais and his people will try to blame this idiotic attack on us. We reject terrorism as a method in our struggle with our political opponents,&quot; he said, Interfax reported.
 Interfax, citing a source close to the investigation, said Saturday that several Duma deputies and their aides were suspected of involvement in the attack. 
 Chubais' lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said Saturday that he supported investigators' main theory that a group of military veterans with extreme nationalist views had plotted to kill Chubais. 
 &quot;It is clear that this group had concrete goals, to eliminate the head of UES as one of the leading Russian reformers,&quot; Kucherena said, Interfax reported.
 So far, a retired military intelligence officer and veteran of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, and two former paratroopers have been detained for their alleged role in the attack, in which unknown assailants sprayed Chubais' car with automatic gunfire and detonated a roadside bomb as he was being driven to work outside Moscow.
 Chubais is a controversial figure due to his role as the architect of the 1990s privatizations. He co-founded the liberal Union of Right Forces party. 
 <i>(AP, MT) </i>

TITLE: GUUAM Heads Meet
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHISINAU, Moldova - Leaders of several former Soviet states urged Russia on Friday to pull its troops out of Moldova and Georgia and discussed separatist crises affecting several countries on former Soviet soil.
 
At a summit of the GUUAM group - comprising Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova - leaders also pledged to seek closer ties with the European Union and the United States. 
 The countries adopted a statement at the end of the summit calling on Russia to fulfill obligations it made at a 1999 summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and withdraw troops and weaponry from Moldova and Georgia. Also referring to Russia, the statement condemns separatism and the territorial disintegration of the states, and calls for the &quot;peaceful resolution in line with international law conflicts in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan.&quot;
 Romanian President Traian Basescu, who with Lithuania's president took part as an observer, said conflicts in the region could be resolved by granting limited autonomy to the separatist regions.
 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko presented a plan to help resolve the crisis with Moldova's self-declared Transdnestr republic, which borders Ukraine. The region receives strong support from Russia. 
 GUUAM, created in 1997 to expand cooperation outside the influence of Russia, is expected to get the status of an observer in the UN General Assembly by the end of the year.


TITLE: UN Body
 Silent On
 Rights In
 Chechnya
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GENEVA - The UN Human Rights Commission, widely accused of shielding some governments from criticism, concluded what might be its last annual meeting Friday with a top UN official calling its performance &quot;demonstrably deficient.''
 
During its six-week session, the 53-nation commission condemned human rights abuses in Belarus, Cuba, North Korea and Myanmar. But it did not consider potential abuses in Chechnya, China or Zimbabwe.
 Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, told the commission at its final session that its performance was &quot;demonstrably deficient.&quot;
 &quot;There is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which the question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world is answered only by reference to four states,&quot; said Arbour, a Canadian legal expert.
 Other critics say authorities in Russia, China and Zimbabwe - whose representatives are on the commission - have been shielded from condemnation. Under UN rules, members are picked by regional groups, which means that several states which have been criticized for abuses are on the panel. Countries criticized by the UN body face no penalties, even though most governments push hard to avoid such censure.
 &quot;Even though the commission took some positive steps, overall it was even more timid than in preceding years,&quot; said Joanna Weschler of Human Rights Watch.
 &quot;This only confirms the need to replace the commission with a body that would take more decisive action against human rights violations wherever they occur, respond to human rights crises and be ready to follow up on commitments made by violating countries,&quot; Weschler said.
 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed replacing the commission with a new, permanent human rights body with greater authority, possibly on a par with the powerful Security Council. 
 Annan has said he wants the world body's General Assembly to decide on possible reforms by September.
 &quot;We have reached a point at which the commission's declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole, and where piecemeal reforms will not be enough,&quot; Annan told delegates of the commission, adding that the watchdog is failing to do what is needed to protect against abuses - particularly in Darfur.
 The commission has been meeting, generally in just one annual session of several weeks, since 1948.

TITLE: Bill Ending Individual Races Passed by Duma
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma on Friday gave final approval to a bill ending the election of independent lawmakers, part of President Vladimir Putin's contentious plan to consolidate political power in the country following a wave of terrorist attacks last summer.
 
The bill envisages the election of Duma members solely by party lists and would apply to parliamentary elections scheduled for 2007.
 Opposition leaders have called it an attempt to marginalize them and give greater leverage to the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, which already has a two-thirds majority in the Duma.
 The Duma voted 339-84, with no abstentions, to pass the law in its third and final reading. It must also be passed by the Federation Council and signed by the president to enter law.
 The existing system has the Duma's 450 seats split equally between parties and winners of single-ballot district races. Parties must win 5 percent of votes to get into the parliament, so for some smaller factions, independent deputies were the only hope for representation.
 The bill approved Friday also increases the minimum amount of funds a party must have on hand in order to run in elections, and it stipulates that election observers may come only from registered parties.
 Putin has said all his planned political changes were needed to strengthen the state against the threat of terrorism.

TITLE: SPIBA Annual Meeting and Awards Ceremony 2004
TEXT: On April 14, 2005 St. Petersburg International Business Association for North-Western Russia (SPIBA) held its Annual Meeting and Awards <br> Ceremony 2004 in Ballroom &quot;Krysha&quot; Grand Hotel Europe.
 The Meeting gathered leaders of most SPIBA member companies, members of the Advisory Board for SPIBA, SPIBA friends and partners. Also, honorary guests of the SPIBA Annual Meeting were presented by high profile officials from the Government of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and Plenipotentiary representation of the President of Russia in the North West region. 
 Olga Litvinova, Chairperson of SPIBA Executive Committee in 2004, Office Managing Partner of Ernst &amp; Young and EY Law in St. Petersburg, addressed key achievements of the Association in 2004: &quot;It seems to me, that the year of 2004 became a milestone in development of the Association, which is proved by both the quality of SPIBA events and the quantity of new members&quot;. She also thanked members of the SPIBA Executive Committee and Natalia Kudryavtseva, Executive Director, for their cooperation and added: &quot;The most valuable feature of SPIBA for me is people who are always positively oriented and believe that everything will be good, but at the same time they still wish to do something for this purpose.&quot;
 Then Olga's successor Ludmila Murgulets Vice-President, Stockholm School of Economics in Russia, who was elected as the Chairperson of the Executive Committee in December 2004, took the floor: &quot;We are together, and we speak the same language. The Association exists for this purpose. I hope, that those traditions which have been developed here, that common language we have - everything will continue. The Association is created for making people happier, because we can meet, we can share experience, can acquire new knowledge and contacts. And I wish to express my gratitude to Olga for everything she has already done for the Association. And I hope that I will manage to keep these traditions.&quot; 
 Oleg Kolomiychenko, the Head of Federal Antimonopoly Agency for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, greeted SPIBA members. He wished SPIBA members that the authorities will help them build fair relations with each other, with natural monopolies and tax authorities. &quot;Let the city and the region not pass on any problems to &quot;business shoulders&quot;. I wish you effective work and effective exploration of new niches. And the city should applaud you and thank you for this!&quot;
 
 The meeting was featured by SPIBA Awards Ceremony.
 <strong>SPIBA Awards 2004 nominations and winners:
 1. Special Award of 2004:</strong>
 Analysing the changes in the business environment happened in St. Petersburg during the past year SPIBA Committees highlighted positive trends in the understanding of problems that companies face by the St. Petersburg Government, which resulted in the improvement of its policy and strategy to make the investment climate in the city more <br> favorable. In order to recognize this progress the Committees decided to present the award.
 <strong>FOR THE EFFECTIVE POLICY TARGETED AT THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE INVESTMENT CLIMATE IN ST. PETERSBURG</strong> to the St. Petersburg Government.
 Vladimir Blank, member of the Government of St. Petersburg, Chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade, received this award on behalf of the City Government.
 The Award was presented by <br> Eduard Tiktinskiy, member of the Advisory Board for SPIBA, General Director of RBI Group, and Irina Grave, <br> Co-Chairperson of the SPIBA Legislation &amp; Lobbying Committee, the Head of the representative office of Fortum Power and Heat OY in St. Petersburg.
 In his response Vladimir Blank mentioned: &quot;It is great, that thanks to our cooperation during the passed year, the civilized dialogue between the authorities and business have being built. Business watches the authorities carefully but our Governor also watches and recognizes the most efficient associations&quot;. Mr. Blank presented to Natalia Kudryavtseva, Executive Director of SPIBA, a letter of recognition on behalf of the Governor of <br> St. Petersburg Valentina Matvienko:
 &quot;Thank you for the active work targeted at the creating of favorable conditions for the development of the investment process in St. Petersburg. Thanks to your leadership, the St. Petersburg Business Association for North-Western Russia has managed not only to unite big Russian and foreign companies, but also to set up an effective dialogue between domestic and foreign businessmen and the authorities&quot;. 
 Natalia Kudryavtseva expressed her gratitude for the award and <br> mentioned that she considers it recognition of the efforts made by SPIBA members to improve the business environment in the city.
 <strong>2. THE MOST INTERESTING SPIBA GUEST-SPEAKER OF THE YEAR 2004</strong>
 <strong>Winner:</strong> Vladimir Blank, member of the Government of St. Petersburg, Chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade.
 The Award was presented by: Marian Kolodzejski, member of the Advisory Board for SPIBA, General Director, ZAO Kappa St. Petersburg, and Vera Serezhina, Director, Dun &amp; Bradstreet Nord.
 <strong>3. THE MOST ACTIVE SPIBA EVENTS SUPPORTER IN 2004</strong>
 <strong>Winner: </strong>Severnaya Stolitsa Branch of ZAO Raiffeisenbank Austria in <br> St. Petersburg.
 The Award was presented to: <br> Roger Delous, Head of the Severnaya Stolitsa Branch of ZAO Raiffeisenbank Austria in St. Petersburg.
 The Award was presented by: Patrik Str&ouml;m, Member of the SPIBA Executive Committee, Financial and Administrative Director, ZAO Kappa St. Petersburg
 <strong>4. THE MOST ACTIVE SPIBA <br> LEGISLATION AND LOBBYING <br> COMMITTEE MEMBER IN 2004
 </strong>The Committee is the major SPIBA lobbying force that actively work in order to improve the legal framework targeted at the creation of a favorable business environment in Northwest of Russia.
 <strong>Winner</strong>: Dmitri Babiner, Senior Manager at Ernst &amp; Young's legal arm - EY Law, Co-Chairperson Legislation and Lobbing Committee.
 The Award was presented by: Irina Grave, Head of the representative office of Fortum Power and Heat Oy in St. Petersburg (the winner of this award for 2003), and Vatanyar Yag'ya, Deputy of Legislative Assembly in charge of international relations.
 <strong>5. THE MOST ACTIVE SPIBA <br> PROMOTIONS COMMITTEE MEMBER IN 2004</strong>
 The mission of this Committee is to increase public awareness of SPIBA's activities and to promote the Association by creating, planning and implementing all sorts of events that are oriented toward that goal.
 <strong>Winner:</strong> Robin Munro, members of the SPIBA Executive Committee, Chairperson of the SPIBA <br> Promotions Committee, Chief editor, <br> The St. Petersburg Times.
 The Award was presented by: Mika Rainemaa, General Director, KESKO. 
 <strong>6. THE BEST SPIBA EVENT <br> MODERATOR OF THE YEAR 2004
 Winner:</strong> Natalia Scherbakova, <br> Senior Tax Department Manager, <br> PricewaterhouseCoopers, St. Petersburg
 The Award was presented by: Dmitri Cherneiko, Head of Department of Federal Employment Agency for <br> St. Petersburg, and Sebastian FitzLyon, SPIBA Executive Committee member, General Director, S.Zinovieff and Co., Honorary Consul of Australia in <br> St. Petersburg (winner of this award for 2003).
 <strong>7. FOR ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN SPIBA'S LIFE </strong>(a new nomination, established by the Executive Committee in 2005, to be presented to an individual or an organization that makes tremendous input to the development of SPIBA and the achievement of its goals)
 <strong>Winner:</strong> Alexander Matrosov, <br> Government Relations Manager, <br> JT International.
 The Award was presented by: Olga Litvinova, Chairperson of SPIBA Executive Committee in 2004, Office Managing Partner of Ernst &amp; Young and EY Law in St. Petersburg, and Vladimir Odintsov, General Director of AHLERS St. Petersburg.
 <strong>We congratulate the winners and wish them all success. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all SPIBA members, guests and partners for participation in and support of SPIBA activities throughout the passed year and look forward to further cooperation. </strong>

TITLE: Theatergoers Get No Peace From Maddening Mobiles
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: From the bow and arrow to nuclear technology, the world's greatest inventions have often been double-edged swords. Mobile phones are no exception. 
 
Whether a resident or a visitor, it is impossible not to notice the multitude of mobile phones in St. Petersburg. On buses and in cafes, in parks and in museums, noise from mobile phones clutters the air. To make matters worse, a general lack of voicemail messaging causes St. Petersburgers to answer their phones in circumstances that foreigners consider to be rude. 
 Few dare to answer their phone during a performance in a theater, but a large portion of the 65 percent of people in St. Petersburg with mobile phones, forget to turn them off. 
 They ring, bleep and vibrate resulting in frantic fumblings by owners that destroy the concentration of others in the audience to the finer points of what is going on on the stage. 
 &quot;We try to create an atmosphere, an aura, and the phones disturb that. It's as if someone started to beat a drum while you are making love,&quot; explained actress Svetlana Kruchkova, a red Nokia dangling from her neck next to the People's Artist medal she received from the state. &quot;I don't remember ever performing without hearing a mobile phone ring.&quot;
 Countless performances have been nearly ruined by mobile phones. 
 Last summer during a performance of Wagner's &quot;Die Walk&uuml;re&quot; in the Mariinsky Theater, a mobile phone rang during the &quot;Ride of the Valkyries&quot; scene, the opera's highlight. 
 By coincidence, the ring tone had the same melody, angering conductor Valery Gergiev but causing the audience to laugh.
 &quot;It [shows] a lack of culture [when] people don't turn off their phones,&quot; said Tatyana Troyanskaya, a music critic for radio station Ekho Moskvy. &quot;People need to turn their phones off out of respect for performers.&quot; 
 During a recent festival of modern drama an actor grew so annoyed at a ringing phone he broke out of character and told the audience member to answer it, Troyanskaya said. 
 Actors routinely complain of the difficulty of getting into character and remembering lines amid the din of mobile phone rings. 
 For an inexperienced actor the results can be disastrous. Audience members are not alone to blame, however. Conductor Pavel Aronovich insists that musicians' mobile phones have gone off during performances as well.
 Given its persistence, there have been many ideas to solve this problem.
 &quot;It would be great to ban mobile phones from the theater. People don't listen to the announcements,&quot; actress Lena Tirnovaya said. 
 Forcing people to leave the theater without a refund, she continued, would send a powerful message to members of the audience to switch off or leave their phones at home. 
 &quot;In the Mariinsky Theater there is already a lot of security. If they had metal detectors and forced people to put their phones in the coat room, that might work,&quot; said Aronovich, his mobile phone resting on a special stand in front of him as he spoke. 
 Others argued, however, this plan would be time consuming and overly complex.
 &quot;If people paid fines the problem would be solved,&quot; Kruchkova said. 
 She suggested a fine of twice the ticket price. After a phone rang on the other side of the theater during the interview with her she quickly revised the fine to three times the price. 
 Some plans have actually turned into solutions. At a festival of modern drama last spring in St. Petersburg at the Lensoviet Theater, a few actors appeared on stage and performed a rap reminding people to turn their phones off. Their plea resulted in success.
 Having a famous person personally address the audience can also be effective, Kruchkova said. 
 &quot;People listen to me because they know me. When there is personal contact, it's better than some voice over the public address system,&quot; she said. 
 Unfortunately, People's Artists such as Kruchkova are in short supply.
 Others sometimes resort to less polite solutions.
 Before &quot;Claustrophia,&quot; a recent play at the Maly Drama Theater, an actor appeared on stage to make a brief announcement. Suddenly his phone rang, and answering it, he told the caller he was in the middle of something important. 
 Hanging up, he told the audience, &quot;Now you know how annoying mobile phones are in the theater.&quot; 
 Only one idea is completely foolproof, however. 
 Net Guard, an Israel-based company manufactures increasingly popular mobile phone jammers. While most buyers are government agencies, their clientele is wide-ranging.
 &quot;We get a lot of weird inquiries: a father wants to make sure his kids do their homework, a boss wants to make sure his employees work, a guy has a noisy neighbor who shouts when using their phone,&quot; said Laid Haim-Cayzer, a Net Line spokesman.
 Their C-Guard LP model, capable of jamming a mid-range theater, costs around $1,000.
 A British-based company, Global Gadgets, offers a similar model with a range of 50 meters for about $2,000. Though their spokesman Michael Menage claims to have sold two units to Russia in the last three years, he was uncertain of the legality of the devices in Russia. 
 Indeed, most industrialized countries have laws against such devices. At least two detention centers in St. Petersburg have recently begun installing jamming equipment, though this offers little indication of their commercial legality. 
 Everyone spoken to agreed the devices would be a blessing, but footing the bill remains a problem. At least one theater does not have to worry. The Estrada Theater's walls are so thick mobile phones are impossible to use inside.
 Despite a reputation for pessimism, most Russians remain optimistic. 
 &quot;We need two years to solve this problem. People need to understand they come to the theater not to solve their problems but to watch a play,&quot; Tirnovaya said. 
 Camera users in theaters are often kicked out, and forcing out careless mobile phone users would not be going much further. Everyone agrees that more than anything, a change in people's behavior and attitude toward the nuisance of ringing phones is needed. But a solution may come in many forms. 
 &quot;The rings of mobile phones are improving, so maybe it won't be so much of a problem in the future,&quot; Troyanskaya said with a smile.

TITLE: Lukashenko Urges More Haste
 On Russia-Belarus Union
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko urged President Vladimir Putin on Friday to continue moving towards unifying their countries, stressing the need for military cooperation between the two former Soviet republics. 
 
Putin pledged that their meeting at the Kremlin would be constructive and would build on a wide range of issues related to the development of a union, such as military-technical cooperation. Earlier last week, military officials tentatively agreed to set up a joint military communications and control system. 
 &quot;We have to give further impetus to the development of the union,&quot; Lukashenko said. 
 The session came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for a leadership change in Belarus, which the United States has called an &quot;outpost of tyranny.&quot; 
 Rice met Thursday with a group of Belarusian opposition leaders in Lithuania, which borders on Belarus, and expressed admiration for their work to end what she has called &quot;the last dictatorship in the center of Europe.&quot; She later said that the 2006 presidential elections in Belarus offered &quot;an excellent opportunity&quot; for voters to express their will. 
 Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov interpreted Rice's call for change as a recommendation of outside intervention to oust Lukashenko and said, &quot;You cannot impose democracy from the outside.&quot; 
 Lukashenko did nothing to hide his displeasure at her remarks, sarcastically telling reporters upon his arrival in Moscow on Friday that they should be examined philosophically. 
 &quot;It's good that she knows that there is such a country as Belarus. There's a lot of positive things in that respect,&quot; Interfax quoted him as saying. &quot;She was recently flying above us, and she must have seen that there are no terrorists there.&quot; 
 In his decade in power, Lukashenko has stifled dissent, persecuted independent media and opposition parties and prolonged his power through rigged elections. He also has made no secret of his desire to reunite his country with Russia. 
 Lukashenko and then president Boris Yeltsin, signed a union treaty in 1996. 
 Ties between the two mostly Slavic nations have been more tense under Putin, who angered Lukashenko in 2002 by floating a plan under which Belarus would essentially be subsumed into Russia. But recent meetings have brought improvements. 


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Rollback of Drug Law
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Cabinet on Thursday agreed to roll back legislation passed last year that significantly softened penalties for minor drug offenses, Interfax reported.
 The change approved Thursday would remove the concept of an "average single dose" from the Criminal Code, because it is too difficult to define the amount of such a dose for different drugs, Justice Minister Yury Chaika said.
 A law that came into effect last May greatly increased the amount of drugs a person can possess without facing jail time. The change - sought by the Federal Drug Control Service - would require the State Duma to set new amounts.
 
 
<b>Nazarbayev Unafraid
 </b>

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) - Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Thursday that the leaders of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were toppled by popular uprisings because of economic hardships under their rule, and suggested he would not meet the same fate. 
 "We perfectly understand the underlying reasons behind those events," Nazarbayev told the international Eurasian Media Forum. "Poverty and unemployment due to the lack of a development strategy and concrete results of economic reforms are a good breeding ground for public discontent with authorities." 
 
 
<b>Sharon to Lobby Putin
 </b>

JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Russia's plan to sell anti-aircraft missiles to Syria is a danger to Israel and that he plans to bring it up with President Vladimir Putin this week - even though Russia says it is a done deal. 
 Putin, who will visit Israel this week, told Israel TV last Wednesday that the missile sale would not upset the balance of power in the region. 
 
 
<b>Koizumi Due May 9
 </b>

TOKYO (AP) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will visit Moscow from May 8 to 10 to attend celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, Japan's top government spokesman said Thursday.
 Koizumi also may meet with President Vladimir Putin, chief Cabinet secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said. He said details of the meeting were still being worked out.
 Japan was one of the Axis powers with Germany and Italy during the war, while Russia was among the <br> Allies with the United States and Britain. 
 
 
<b>German Faces 5 Years
 </b>

KAZAN (SPT) - Tatarstan prosecutors have asked a court to hand a five-year prison sentence to a German citizen accused of attempting to buy explosives to blow up his home in Berlin and collect the insurance money, Interfax reported.
 Uwe Krueger was arrested in Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan, in May 2003 on suspicion of trying to buy about 20 kilograms of explosives.
 Krueger's lawyer was to present his closing argument to the court Thursday, Interfax said.
 
 
<b>Ukrainian Official Held
 </b>

KIEV (AP) - Authorities have detained the head of a regional legislature in western Ukraine, police said, in the second high-profile arrest in less than a month of a figure apparently linked to the new government's political opponents. 
 Anatoly Zhukinsky, of the Ternopil regional council, has been charged with large-scale misappropriation of state-owned property, Interior Ministry spokeswoman Inna Kysel told reporters. 
 She offered no further details about the case, including when he was detained. 



TITLE: Finns, Russians Split
 Over WWII Views
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: HELSINKI - Finnish and Russian experts clashed at a seminar on World War II, especially over the view that both the Soviet Union and Germany share blame for the start of the war, the Helsingin Sanomat reported Friday.
 
Organized by the Finland-Russia Society and the Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki, the seminar led to Finnish historian Osmo Jussila saying that Russians' views on the wartime events have gone back to those which prevailed in the Soviet era.
 Alexei Sazonov, deputy director of Russia's Foreign Ministry, was critical of putting the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany on a par with one another, the report said.
 &quot;Rewriting history is not morally right,&quot; he was quoted as saying. &quot;Western historians demonize the Soviet Union and say that it started the war. 
 &quot;It is claimed that in World War II there were two totalitarian states, Germany and the Soviet Union,&quot; he added.
 But it was wrong to compare Soviet Bolshevism and German National Socialism, Sazonov said.
 &quot;The starting point for Bolshevism was that everyone should be happy, and that nations should not be separated from one another,&quot; he said. &quot;The National Socialists wanted one nation to prosper at the expense of others.&quot;
 The media in Poland and the Baltic States is particularly anti-Soviet, but he has seen similar interpretations in other European Union countries as well, he said.
 Jussila said Finns and Russians disagree about the armed conflicts between them in World War II 
 &quot;We have very great differences. The Finns emphasise the view of a separate war and feel that the Continuation War was a way of getting even for the Winter War. For the Russians, the Winter War was merely a preliminary conflict, and the actual war began in 1941, when Finland attacked alongside Hitler,&quot; Jussila said.
 &quot;Only Boris Yeltsin admitted that the Soviet Union attacked Finland in the Winter War. Now President Vladimir Putin has denied it again.&quot;
 Jussila said that Russia should implement a thorough accounting of the war, in the same way that Germany did after the war ended.
 &quot;As long as this does not happen, views will not change. Interpretations of history are linked with the political atmosphere.&quot;
 Sazonov rejects the idea as unnecessary. &quot;It is not right to judge the liberators and the liberated by the same criteria,&quot; he said.
 
 .


TITLE: Lingering Bitterness Over May 9
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW, Poland - The 81-year-old Pole still bears the scars from eight years in Josef Stalin's labor camps - a fingertip crushed in a Siberian coal mine, headaches from a mine explosion, and the anger that boils up each time he remembers.
 
&quot;I am an old man ... I feel it very strongly,&quot; Tadeusz Olizarowicz said. &quot;It all has a negative effect on my emotions and my health.&quot;
 As the world prepares to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II on May 9, the mood in Poland and other former communist republics is less than celebratory. Here, the feeling is that the end of the war simply replaced one horror - Hitler's - with another - Stalin's.
 Poland was forced into the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact, while the Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - were incorporated into the Soviet Union. They did not regain their freedom until the collapse of communism in eastern Europe 15 years ago.
 The lingering bitterness has led Presidents Arnold Ruutel of Estonia and Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania to refuse invitations to Moscow for the May 9 celebrations, though Presidents Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia and Aleksandar Kwasniewski of Poland will attend.
 That Olizarowicz had already been thrown into a Nazi camp didn't help him with the Soviets. Today, he remembers the Nazis and Soviets as &quot;equally bad.&quot;
 &quot;If you did something bad in the German camp, a guard would take out a gun and kill you immediately,&quot; he recalled. &quot;But in a Soviet camp, they would starve you to death so the death was longer and more painful and then they would shoot you and finish you off with a sickle.&quot;
 Olizarowicz's &quot;crime&quot; was serving in Poland's Home Army, the clandestine force that fought the Nazis, and which the Soviets feared would remain a rallying point for resistance. Convicted in 1947 of &quot;anti-Soviet activity,&quot; he was among nearly 800,000 Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians shipped to labor camps.
 During the train ride in cramped cattle cars, Soviet guards would count their prisoners by hitting them. They fed them only salty dried fish while denying them water on hot summer days. In a camp in Minsk, in Belarus, where he spent a year laying bricks before being taken to Siberia, Olizarowicz saw guards slashing the corpses of inmates to make sure they were dead.
 Today, resentment is stoked by the perceived unwillingness of Russian authorities today to acknowledge the suffering. 
 Kwasniewski, while saying he will go to Moscow to commemorate the downfall of Nazi Germany, has repeatedly called on Russia to give an &quot;honest assessment&quot; of Soviet actions in Poland.
 Russian celebrations treat the war as an untarnished triumph that began with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and which cost 27 million Soviet lives. Little mention is made of what came before - a Soviet-German pact that carved up Poland between the two powers. 
 The most contentious issue is the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers, priests and intellectuals in Katyn Forest in 1940. Stalin was bent on decapitating the Polish establishment while claiming the Nazis did it.
 In 1990, in one of the Soviet Union's last acts before it dissolved, the Kremlin accepted responsibility but insisted it was a war crime, not an act of genocide.
 Anti-Soviet sentiment simmers in other East European countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. But the issue of sending representatives to Moscow has provoked little controversy there.
 Polish and Lithuanian leaders helped mediate an end to Ukraine's presidential election crisis in December- talks that resulted in the defeat of the Moscow's preferred candidate. To Poles, the struggle mirrored their own efforts in the 1980s to throw off Soviet domination.
 Sixty years after what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War, it is still a highly sensitive issue, said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a foreign affairs magazine. It is &quot;considered a sacred page in our history,&quot; he said, and, &quot;every attempt to raise questions about the role of the Soviet Union in this war provokes emotional feelings.&quot;

TITLE: Putin Talks of WWII, Terror
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the lessons of World War II emphasized the need for closer cooperation in the global community in the struggle against international terrorism. 
 
&quot;Russia is conducting a continuous policy aimed at uniting the world community's efforts in that struggle,&quot; Putin said at a Kremlin ceremony to accept credentials from new ambassadors from seven countries. 
 &quot;Only by acting together can we create efficient mechanisms that should become the key factor in the progressive development and constructive cooperation among nations in the 21st century,&quot; he said.
 In the weeks leading up to May 9 celebrations of the Allies' victory over the Nazis in Europe, Putin has frequently invoked the Soviet sacrifice during World War II, when some 27 million people were killed, as inspiration today. Putin has invited dozens of foreign leaders to Moscow for the celebration. 
 The State Duma also recalled the war Wednesday, saying that the values that united countries against Adolf Hitler remain important now, Itar-Tass reported. 
 The Duma adopted a statement saying that such values &quot;should be a basis for the younger generation, in order to prevent the recurrence of the tragedy of World War II.&quot;
 The Duma also voted overwhelmingly to adopt a sweeping amnesty for prisoners who fought in World War II, freeing all jailed veterans regardless of the gravity of their crimes. 
 The vote on the amnesty was 435-0. It is effective immediately. 
 Some 200 people fall under the amnesty, which also included those held in Nazi concentration camps and home front workers as well as veterans.

TITLE: Lenin's 135th
 Birthday
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Hundreds of Russians gathered Friday outside the mausoleum on Red Square where Vladimir Lenin's body lies on display to mark the 135th birthday of the leader of the 1917 revolution. 
 
Carrying flags with the hammer and sickle of the former Soviet Union, about 600 people lined up in solemn procession, waiting for the chance to proceed through the monument. 
 Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov and other members of the party leadership laid a wreath, Interfax reported. 
 He bowed several times before Lenin's embalmed corpse before walking along the Kremlin wall to lay flowers near the graves of former Soviet leaders Josef Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, and Yury Andropov.

TITLE: United Russia Group Plugs Liberal Policies
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A group of influential United Russia politicians last Tuesday called for the party to adopt a more liberal platform in what appeared to be a move sanctioned by the Kremlin to form a liberal faction that could sideline existing liberal parties.
 
Vladimir Pligin, chairman of the State Duma's Constitutional and State Affairs Committee, said at a news conference that the party should adopt a clear liberal ideology based on &quot;democratic values, civil liberty and the sovereignty of the state.&quot; He predicted that United Russia would get more than 35 percent of the vote in the 2007 Duma elections with such a program.
 &quot;We want to widen the support for our party,&quot; he said, adding that the call for liberal policies would be further discussed at a party conference.
 Pligin was flanked at the news conference by a group of influential party members, including Duma deputies Andrei Makarov and Alexander Lebedev, the billionaire owner of the National Reserve Corporation, and Novgorod Governor Mikhail Prusak and Tver Governor Dmitry Zelenin.
 &quot;We think that the party lacks an ideology, but people believed in us and we cannot ignore this,&quot; Pligin said. &quot;We ask our party colleagues to start an open party discussion and to come up with an ideology to present to our voters.&quot;
 A senior Kremlin official said by telephone that there was an understanding in the presidential administration that liberal ideas should be present in the national political spectrum.
 &quot;And if these ideas are promoted by United Russia, they pose no potential danger for the Kremlin,&quot; he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing Kremlin rules on speaking to the press.
 Recent public protests over the monetization of benefits have largely been directed at United Russia, which dominates the Duma and last summer unanimously approved the controversial Kremlin-backed reform.
 Makarov said that if the party continued to lack an ideology, it would be doomed to end up like previous parties of power that lasted only a single Duma term. &quot;We don't want this to happen to United Russia,&quot; he said.
 United Russia was formed in February 2002 through the merger of two Duma factions, Unity and Fatherland-All Russia. The two were rivals in the 1999 Duma elections, with the Kremlin creating Unity just two months before the vote to counter Fatherland-All Russia. Unity's only ideology was to back then-President Boris Yeltsin.
 Lebedev said that having a discussion about ideology did not mean there was a split in the party. &quot;If we openly discuss serious projects the party will only be strengthened,&quot; he said.
 The politicians, who as United Russia members are usually outspoken in defense of President Vladimir Putin, criticized the government over policy but dodged questions on whether the party's liberal wing would support Putin.
 They said that United Russia's electoral success had been due to Putin's high ratings, and that United Russia's popularity was falling.
 Prusak, Zelenin and Lebedev called on the government not to hamper the development of the country's economy, which they said needed &quot;good&quot; reforms.
 Liberal parties, on whose political turf the group appeared to be moving in on, accused United Russia of seeking to dominate political discussion in the media.
 &quot;Showing the people a fake discussion between United Russia's different ideological factions, the party of power will present this as a real political competition between real political parties,&quot; said Sergei Mitrokhin, a senior member of the Yabloko party.
 He added that such a move would also help the Kremlin to deflect growing criticism over not allowing opposition voices in the national media.
 Boris Nadezhdin, a senior member of the Union of Right Forces, said that United Russia was trying to accommodate all interest groups in an effort to retain its influence in the next Duma.
 &quot;Today they turned to the liberals, tomorrow they plan to create a social democratic faction, the day after tomorrow they will add a Nazi one,&quot; he said.
 But were United Russia to make an ideological stand, it would have to begin answering unpleasant questions about its support for the Kremlin's authoritarian policies, Nadezhdin said.
 &quot;I cannot imagine what senior members of United Russia who claim to be liberals will say if asked why they voted to scrap popular elections for governors or kept mum during the Yukos onslaught,&quot; he said.
 Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center of Political Technologies, said that United Russia was trying to steal voters from liberal opposition parties by hijacking their rhetoric and to court popularity by discussing real political issues.
 &quot;They are trying to change their domination of the media - from an administrative monster into an ideological heavyweight,&quot; Makarkin said. &quot;But the ideological discussion will be very limited, so as not to threaten a split in the party.&quot;
 But the country's bureaucrats, the backbone of United Russia's power base, do not generally engage in policy discussions and the appearance of factions in the party could well disorient them, he said.
 Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst with the Indem think tank, said that the creation of a liberal grouping and a likely plan to create a social democratic wing in the party showed that the Kremlin had lost any appetite or ability to hold negotiations with opposition parties.
 &quot;In the 1990s, the Kremlin could strike a deal with anyone. Now, it wants to deal only with its own people,&quot; Korgunyuk said. &quot;For sure, it is easier just to dial a telephone number and bark an order rather than sweat it trying to persuade an opponent.&quot;

TITLE: Liberals Warn Of
 A 'Brown
 Revolution'
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin could well stay in power beyond 2008 or have a loyal figurehead succeed him if the opposition does not unite to challenge him, liberal leaders said at a conference on democracy Wednesday.
 
Putin could try to have a loyal follower elected in 2008 so that he could return to the Kremlin four years later, said Boris Nemtsov, a former leader of the Union of Right Forces party, or SPS. 
 &quot;This candidate would be very unpopular and the Kremlin would have to fix the elections to get him elected,&quot; he said.
 Nemtsov, who is an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, warned that in such a situation a revolt similar to Ukraine's Orange Revolution would probably take place.
 &quot;But in our country the color would be not orange but brown. Fascist ideas will take over and the crowd would likely turn its anger on people from the Caucasus,&quot; he told the conference, which was organized by the Indem think tank and the International Republican Institute.
 SPS and Yabloko speakers said they were worried that the Kremlin could change the Constitution to enable Putin to stay in power after 2008. Putin has repeatedly denied plans to run for a constitutionally barred third consecutive term, but has recently hinted that he could run again in 2012.
 Boris Nadezhdin, a deputy SPS leader, said the Kremlin could tacitly help a nationalist party win the 2007 State Duma elections and then try to keep Putin in power as the sole leader able to combat the threat of nationalism and xenophobia.
 &quot;This is one of the scenarios the Kremlin is mulling so that they can warn people of the danger such a party poses to the country, and then call on Putin to serve another term,&quot; Nadezhdin said.
 This scenario could be avoided only if liberal and left-wing opposition parties worked together in the next Duma elections to prevent nationalists from dominating parliament, he said. 
 Opposition parties should campaign on the slogan of &quot;keeping political competition in the country,&quot; he said.
 Senior Yabloko party member Sergei Mitrokhin urged the opposition to come up with a &quot;simple joint political program that people can easily understand.
 &quot;This is the only way to get our message across,&quot; he said.
 According to an April 17 nationwide poll by the respected Levada Center, none of Putin's top loyalists would enjoy strong support from voters in the 2008 presidential election.
 Some 44 percent of respondents would vote for none of Putin's allies, the poll found.
 Of the possible candidates, Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov received the support of 13 percent of respondents, while Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov received 7 percent each.


TITLE: United Russia Has Left-Leaning Wing Too
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two days after a group of United Russia politicians unveiled plans last Tuesday to form a liberal wing within the party, a group of the party's State Duma deputies said they were setting up a left wing in what appeared to be a Kremlin-inspired effort to dominate the whole political landscape.
 
Sixteen deputies - including Andrei Isayev, chairman of the Duma's Labor and Social Policy Committee; Gennady Kulik, chairman of the Agriculture Committee; Alexei Sigutkin, deputy chairman of the Defense Committee; and Igor Igoshin, deputy chairman of the Budget and Taxes Committee - said in a statement Thursday that the party should adopt an ideology based on &quot;social conservatism.&quot;
 &quot;We support the efforts of our party colleagues to defend civil and political freedom, but we do not agree with the appeal to make United Russia a right-wing liberal party,&quot; said Isayev, RosBusinessConsulting reported.
 Isayev, who is also a deputy chairman of the pro-Kremlin Federation of Independent Labor Unions, said United Russia should have a &quot;left wing&quot; that takes care of social issues and &quot;reinforces the social component to move toward a socially oriented market economy.&quot;
 The formation of a second wing within United Russia appeared to be in line with frustration expressed recently by some leading members that the party was losing its appeal. Earlier this month, Mayor Yury Luzhkov, a member of the party's high council, called United Russia &quot;a fat bird with only one wing.&quot; &quot;Such birds are unable to fly,&quot; he said.
 On Tuesday, another group of United Russia politicians called for the party to adopt a more liberal platform, which they said would help it win more than 35 percent of the vote in the 2007 Duma elections.
 Isayev said, however, that liberal ideas had not helped the Union of Right Forces party, or SPS, to get into the Duma last time around.
 &quot;In the past Duma elections, SPS got 3 percent of the vote, while United Russia received almost 40 percent. To swap our ideology now for that of SPS would be a mistake,&quot; he said.
 Another signatory of the statement, Duma Deputy Konstantin Zatulin, said that a discussion about ideology did not mean there was a split in the party. &quot;Different wings, programs and factions within United Russia do not threaten party unity,&quot; he said, Interfax reported.
 Isayev, a member of the presidium of the party's high council, said the party leadership should be reshuffled. &quot;It is necessary to think about changing cadres, including the leadership of our party. ... If at the beginning we had a strict vertical ... now it is necessary to try all ways to widen democracy inside the party,&quot; Isayev told Interfax.
 Political analysts said that the creation of two different wings within the party was an attempt to woo voters away from liberal and leftist opposition parties and to crack down on opposition that was not under strict Kremlin control.
 Worried about United Russia's falling popularity after the party's approval of controversial social reforms, the Kremlin is determined to maintain its grip on the Duma, said Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst with the Indem think tank.
 &quot;Kremlin officials understand that United Russia - the way it looks now - has lost all hope of repeating its good performance in the last Duma elections. They hope that by having two different wings, with different ideologies, they will be able to remedy the situation,&quot; Korgunyuk said.
 By having two different wings within the party, the Kremlin wants to kill two birds with one stone, said Nikolai Petrov, a regional politics specialist with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
 &quot;On the one hand they want to gather votes from the whole political spectrum and on the other they want to avoid any opposition voices growing up outside United Russia,&quot; he said.

TITLE: CEC Head
 Slams OSCE
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria - Russia's Central Elections Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov lashed out Thursday at the OSCE's election monitoring activities, accusing the group of applying double standards and politicizing reports. 
 
Veshnyakov, in Vienna to participate in an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting on election monitoring, also accused the group's observers of using poor methodology and meddling in countries' internal affairs. 
 International monitoring has ceased to be &quot;an instrument of assisting states in implementing the principles of democracy,&quot; Veshnyakov told reporters. 
 Instead, it has become &quot;an instrument of legitimizing political decisions which concern the state of international relations with a given country or several countries,&quot; he argued. 
 Russia, itself an OSCE member, has been critical of the organization following observers' critical reports of elections held in former Soviet republics. 
 In Ukraine and Georgia, votes won by pro-Western leaders were held following OSCE reports noting flaws. OSCE observers also criticized the March 13 runoff of Kyrgyzstan's parliamentary election. 


TITLE: Hutchinson to Secure Port Construction Deal
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hong Kong-based Hutchinson Port holding is expected this week to sign an investment agreement to build a $300 million commercial port in the town of Lomonosov.
 
The port, planned to ease the congestion of shipping containers at northwest cargo terminals, will handle 1 million teu (twenty foot container units) a year, reports news agency Nevastroika.ru.
 The deal with Hutchinson will be struck by St. Petersburg-based Yantar, a management company founded for the purpose of realizing the project. Hutchinson Port is a port division of Hutchinson Wampoa holding. The company counted $504 million in pre-tax profits in 2004.
 &quot;Talks with the Chinese company have been initiated by and conducted under guidance of St. Petersburg city administration,&quot; the director of Yantar, Yuri Tkatch, said last week to Nevastroika.ru.
 &quot;At present the construction work has not started, but we have made geological assessment and got all the necessary documents approved,&quot; he said.
 Tkatch added that top managers from Hutchinson's Rotterdam office have already met with the city governor and received approval for the deal.
 The project will require considerable investment. &quot;Up to $300 million will be needed to complete all three stages of the project,&quot; an analyst from sea and port construction institute LenmorNIIproyekt said to news agency tra.ru.
 &quot;The first stage will be completed in about a year and a half. The second and third stages - in three to four years,&quot; the analyst said.
 Preparatory work at the construction site could begin as early as this week, immediately following the signing of the agreement, Tkatch said.
 Jilles Francony, financial controller at P&amp;O Nedlloyd, an international shipping company operating in the northwest, said the port project would be welcome news for the transportation industry.
 &quot;The Lomonosov project will bring more competition [between ports] and competition on container shipment market is always good; it results in better service for clients,&quot; Francony said.
 The Lomonosov port project is part of general concept developed in 1998 by the Ministry of Transportation for the city.
 It was also one of three projects the Chinese government named last year as of major interest for investment in Russia, business daily Kommersant reported.

TITLE: Siemens Offers Firms 3G Trial
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Siemens will soon offer third-generation, or 3G, mobile telephone services to a limited business client base, the head of the company's telco arm in Russia said last week.
 
Despite the government's delay in allowing 3G mobile phone technology into Russia until mid-2006, a spokesperson from Siemens said Wednesday the services could be available by fall this year.
 Raymond Armes, president of Siemens' mobile telecoms and information department in Russia, was cited as saying that the manufacturer would provide 3G services to technology companies within three trial business zones, Interfax reported.
 Armes named special zones being built in St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and the Moscow region, as the locations for a trial that will be managed together with the country's largest mobile network Mobile TeleSystems, third-largest MegaFon, and Sweden's Tele2, the agency said.
 Although Armes did not name a date for the project's launch, a spokesperson from Siemens' PR department said by telephone from Moscow that it could start in &quot;late summer, but more probably fall.&quot;
 The news shocked industry players and analysts alike, leaving most puzzled as to how the German manufacturer was planning to introduce its 3G services.
 In a visit to St. Petersburg's Mobile Technology Fair last month, IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman reiterated the government's stance not to issue 3G licenses to mobile operators before 2006.
 Before network operators could upgrade the standard of their network to support 3G handsets, Reiman said operators needed to upgrade their regional infrastructure.
 The main advantage of 3G technology is that it offers mobile handsets a connection speeds of 2 megabytes a second and faster - almost 100 times faster than older networks.
 In the interim period, GSM mobile operators in Russia have invested in EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution), a technology that theoretically is capable of 384 kilobytes per second.
 It can also support Universal Mobile Telecommunication System technology - a 3G mobile system news and information provider for GSM phones.
 The mobile networks partnering Siemens, as named by Armes, were less forthcoming about the news.
 A spokeswoman at MegaFon Northwest said that although the company had a limited 3G zone set up, for internal company tests, the mobile operator had not had direct dialogue with the German phone manufacturer about running any projects.
 The marketing director for the Northwest branch of MTS, Ruslan Gurzhian, chose not to comment on the project, since he said he was not aware of it. Representatives of Tele2 could not be reached for comment Friday.
 All major mobile phone handset manufacturers have run tests of 3G technology in Russia since 2003 together with either MegaFon, MTS, or VimpelCom (brand name BeeLine).
 However, &quot;all the trials have been carried out purely for technical checks, with the manufacturer obliged to take all the equipment connected with 3G technology out of the country immediately after the tests,&quot; a spokesperson for a major handset manufacturer said last week.
 In terms of Siemens' plans, &quot;it sounds cloudy,&quot; the spokesperson added, leaving many possible interpretations.
 Representatives of Alcatel refused last week to speak on the subject, saying it was &quot;not in the company's interest.&quot; No reasons were given.
 Inga Churashova, director of Motorola mobile devices Russia &amp; CIS, pointed out that the testing of 3G is &quot;generally driven by operators, so it is up to them to decide on which regions ... and on which clients they would be testing the [mobile phone] units.&quot;
 Motorola will provide 10 handsets to support UMTS operations by the end of the year, Churashova said Friday, with four of those currently at the Ministry of Communications for approval.
 The phones will become available &quot;as supporting 3G services when UMTS networks are operational in Russia,&quot; Shurashova said.
 That time may not be for another three years, estimates Oksana Pankratova, leading analyst with iKS consulting. It was more likely that Siemens would offer phone services that utilized the less quick EDGE technology handsets to prepare the Russian market for things to come, she said.

TITLE: Toyota Set to Announce Final Plans for Factory
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Toyota is set to announce Tuesday the construction of an assembly plant in St. Petersburg, making it the first Japanese automaker to build a factory in Russia.
 
Tokuichi Uranishi, senior managing director with Toyota, is scheduled to make the announcement together with Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and City Governor Valentina Matviyenko, the ministry and automaker said.
 Toyota signed a memorandum of understanding last week with the ministry and the city, an official in the St. Petersburg administration said. The official also confirmed media reports that the initial production capacity for the plant would start at 25,000 cars per year, eventually reaching an annual output of 100,000 vehicles. The official said the St. Petersburg plant would assemble Camry and Corolla models.
 Earlier this month, Svetlana Ganeyeva, head of investment policy of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said Toyota was about to sign a memorandum with the ministry to build a plant in Shushary near St. Petersburg, RIA-Novosti reported.
 During last week's trip to Japan, Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko held talks with Toyota and Nissan.
 Foreign carmakers have shown renewed interest in building plants in Russia after the government slashed tariffs on major car components. Toyota is the first of several carmakers expected on the domestic market. DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen are also in talks to start assembling cars in Russia.
 In 2003, Toyota was the most popular foreign brand in Russia, selling 25,000 vehicles. Toyota boosted sales to 43,900 last year.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Fur Sale Raises $20M
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Sales at last week's Soyuzpushnina international pelt auction in St. Petersburg raised $20 million, 60 percent more than in the April auction last year, Soyuzpushnina said in a statement Friday.
 The most expensive lot of sable fur was bought by Moschos Furs of New York. On offer were 480,000 pelts from fur farms and from the wild. More than 260 visitors were registered for the auction, of whom 162 buyers from 16 countries took part. This compares with 219 visitors and 136 buyers from 13 countries last year, the statement said.
 The entire offer of farm-raised sable was sold with the average price being 40 percent above last year and 10 percent higher than prices at Soyuzpushnina's February auction. 
 Among wild pelts, 100 percent of polecat pelts and 88 percent of mink pelts were sold. Demand was lower for blue fox and raccoon, the statement said.
 The sale is in the top five fur auctions in the world. 
 
 
<b>Yukos Chanced at 1% 
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, has just a 1 percent chance of being acquitted on charges of fraud and tax evasion when a three-judge panel in Moscow delivers its verdict April 27, a former judge said Monday.
 "The result has been ordered, so the verdict will be a conviction," says Sergei Pashin, 42, a former judge who now lectures at the Moscow Institute of Economics, Politics and Law.
 Throughout Russia, 99 percent of criminal defendants were convicted last year, up from 98.9 percent in 2003, according to statistics from Russia's Supreme Court. 
 
 
<b>Troika's Fenkner Quits
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - James Fenkner, former head of research and chief strategist at Troika Dialog, quit the Moscow-based brokerage to set up a hedge fund with other previous Troika colleagues.
 Fenkner, who has worked at Troika for seven years, is joining start-up hedge fund Red Star Asset Management LP with Tim McCarthy and Tim Seymour, he said in letter.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Oil Firms Questioned
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's Federal Anti-Monopoly Service asked the country's major oil companies Monday for information on fuel price increases, demanding to know the reason for the rises. 
 The government agency said it had requested information from LUKoil, Sibneft, Surgutneftegaz, TNK-BP, Yukos, Rosneft, Tatneft, Alyans, Bashneft and Slavneft. 
 The oil companies were asked to provide data covering the period from December 2004 to April 2005. The monopoly service said it wanted to know the volume of raw materials extracted, the amount of oil and oil products exported, the price for and volume of oil sent to refineries, and retail prices at gas stations belonging to the companies. 
 "Information must be presented with evidence and the basis for the price change," the anti-monopoly agency said. 
 
 
<b>Mazeikiu Refining Up 
 </b>

VILNIUS (Reuters) - Lithuanian oil refiner Mazeikiu Nafta sees a greater-than-expected output this year, but a further slump in exports via its offshore terminal, the company said Monday.
 A company spokesman said the plant expects to refine 9.5 million tons of crude in 2005 - raising an earlier forecast by 0.5 million tons - to a 9.2 percent year-on-year increase. 
 Mazeikiu produced 8.66 million tons of crude products in 2004. 
 The company added, however, that exports through its Butinge offshore facility would fall 30.6 percent on the year to about 5 million tons, compared to 7.24 million tons in 2004 and 10.71 tons in 2003. 
 First quarter 2005 figures showed Butinge exports at just over one million tons, compared with almost 2.5 million in the same quarter last year.
 
 
<b>Retailer Seeks $846M
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Pyaterochka Holding's shareholders are seeking to raise as much as $846 million in an initial public offering of shares in the owner of Russia's largest supermarket chain that starts Monday.
 The company's founding shareholders plan to sell 46 million global depositary receipts, about 30 percent of the grocery chain, at a price of $13 to $16 apiece, the company said Monday in an e-mailed statement.
 Pyaterochka, which is registered in the Netherlands and has 442 stores in Russia, is valued at between $1.99 billion and $2.45 billion, the statement said. 
 The shares will be listed on the London Stock Exchange.
 Revenue last year rose 46 percent to $1.1 billion from $759.6 million, the company said earlier this month. Net income was $74.4 million.
 
 
<b>7% Inflation in 2006
 </b>

MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Russia will cut inflation to 7 percent in 2006, from as much as 10 percent in 2005, which would help to back economic growth by strengthening domestic demand, said Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
 "The major task is to cut inflation," Kudrin said in an interview Monday with state television broadcaster Rossiya. 
 "The banks would not be lending money amid inflation, at a loss, this is why inflation must be cut to at least 4 percent'' as soon as in 2008, he said.
 The government plans to cut inflation to between 4 percent and 5 percent in 2008.
 Economic growth will fall to 6 percent this year from 7.1 percent, the IMF said.

TITLE: Residents: Port to Cause Traffic Congestion
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Over 200 people representing interests of citizens of Vasilyevsky Island have publicly resisted the $500 million Sea Facade project aimed at developing the city's coastline. Part of the project included building a new passenger port, a complex of residential buildings on silted territories and a business area.
 
While creating better infrastructure for international tourism coming to St. Petersburg, the investment would bring only hassle to locals, tired of endless traffic jams on the island's roads, the residents said.
 &quot;There only two bridges connecting Vasilyevsky Island with the city center, the Shmidt and the Dvortsovy bridges, and it already takes quite a while to cross the river during rush hour: in the morning and in the evening when the city is sunk in traffic jams,&quot; Victor Novikov, spokesman for the protest group, said Friday in a telephone interview.
 &quot;They want to build a new residential complex for 50,000 people and another 27,000 are expected to work in the new port. How are all of them going to drive to and from the island? Especially taking into account the fact that the Shmidt bridge is planned to be closed for renovation soon,&quot; he said. 
 The project, fully supported by City Hall, is one of the most ambitious of recent times and is in line with such high profile actions as the construction of $1.5 billion &quot;Baltic Pearl&quot; residential area in the city's southwest, financed partly by Chinese investors.
 Sea Facade, seen by City Hall as a new territory of business and tourism infrastructure, would be located on 400 hectares of silted territories, including a new residential area of about 1 million square meters.
 The federal budget is expected to donate $90 million to finance the construction of the port's infrastructure. 
 The first stage of the passenger port is expected to be launched in 2007 and besides several harbors would include the hydro technical facilities, as well as a new sailing channel. Roskomport, responsible for construction of the infrastructure, has already announced at the end of March a tender for the contract to dig a new channel at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland. A deeper channel will allow passenger ships to navigate into the new port. 
 But such news does not bode well for Vasilyevsky Island residents. They are starting to collect signatures for a referendum, despite having been told by City Hall representatives that everything has been determined and confirmed on a city and a federal level, Novikov said. 
 &quot;It is expected that 10 large passenger ships will dock at the port daily with 250 buses driving to the city center in the morning and the same number on the way back in the evening. It is clear that they'll just end up being stuck in traffic jams and nobody will return here in the future as a result,&quot; he said.
 &quot;Then, when the flow of tourists will dry up, this port will be used as another cargo harbor with lots of cargo trucks driving through the island,&quot; he said.


TITLE: Cruising The Exotic Wave
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In contrast to its name, the city's No. 1 riverboat tour operator, Russian Cruises, has spiced up its ships with something of the exotic for the new season.
 
The operator has decked out five vessels and their crews in Oriental, Italian, Russian, African and high-tech styles to make river trips more exciting, the company said at a news conference last week.
 The navigation season, when St. Petersburg's drawbridges will open to let cargo ships pass early in the morning, and the tourist season will begin on Saturday, Russian Cruises head Olga Kargina said.
 The company owns 18 passenger vessels, including speedboats and hydrofoils. This year its new motorship Caesar, the only ship in St. Petersburg with a presidential suite, will begin operation.
 Travel agencies that participated in the news conference said that short river tours popular both with locals and foreigners. Longer trips that may take two or three days to visit the old towns of the Leningrad Oblast are mainly of interest to Russians, though foreigners' interest in river tours is growing.
 &quot;One-third of tourists use river routes to take a closer look at St. Petersburg,&quot; said Yelena Lvova, head of Baltic Travel's marketing department. &quot;Chinese people take the most interest in those tours.&quot; 
 New for this year is a diving tour to the Gulf of Finland. Among other tours of special interest are night trips and to the oldest fortresses of Oreshek and Kronstadt.
 Russian Cruises says that westerners prefer individual, tailored tours to those on bigger vessels and it organizes tours as small as for five passengers that can collect from any jetty in the city.

TITLE: Divizion Beats Euroset As 1st Dealer-Operator
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Divizion became the first mobile retail chain in Russia to enter into mobile telephony as a virtual operator, hoping to emulate the success of Virgin Mobile in the U.K. and Disney in the U.S.
 
Using the network of Sonic Duo - the Moscow arm of MegaFon - Divizion launched on April 15 the first pilot project for a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MNVO), ahead of rival retailer Euroset, which had hopes to do the same this year.
 A virtual operator is a company that offers mobile telephone connection without having its own network infrastructure. A virtual operator buys &quot;network time&quot; from established networks, such as MegaFon, VimpelCom's Beeline, or MTS, and then sells it at its own rates.
 Where a virtual operator can win out, is that it does not need to obtain a transmitting license, and can offer a tariff plan that targets specific niches, potential clients whose needs are not covered as closely by broader mobile network operators.
 With the recent launch, Modena, a member of the Divizion group, has simply offered a variation on the corporate fee plan of Megafon-Moskva under its own names - Divizion and Divizion City.
 However, the press service of the company says that the fee scale comprises its own work. &quot;The new tariff plan was developed by the marketing department of our company and represents the best solution for the overwhelming majority of people, who make much use of mobile connections and conduct lengthy telephone calls,&quot; the company's statement said.
 The decisive difference in Modena package is the fixed price of incoming calls at 13 cents (charged for the connection) irrespective of how long a conversation lasts. In addition, outgoing calls are charged at a fee per second starting from the second minute of the conversation.
 &quot;The introduction of our own fee plan is the first step to the development of a full-scale MVNO project under our brand,&quot; said Ochira Mandzhikova, head of Divizion's PR department. Divizion group declared that if the pilot project proves successful, it will be extended to the whole country.
 &quot;The idea of creating a virtual operator under our brand came up in 2004 in connection with our plans to diversify our business,&quot; said Pavel Karaulov, managing partner of Divizion.
 &quot;I think that the pilot project will be a success, and that in the future we plan to introduce a package of additional services for the subscribers to our plan. At the moment we are studying the experience of virtual operators abroad and evaluating the possibility of launching a full-scale project,&quot; Karaulov said.
 Rival retail chain Euroset stated its intentions to become a virtual operator last year. However, the company now says the service will not be available any time soon, with a lot of work yet to be done on building up a network test platform, said Tatyana Gulyayeva, spokeswoman for Euroset, reported by Cellnews.ru.
 &quot;In the next six months, with the permission of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, we will create a test platform, but it is too early to talk about a commercial launch,&quot; she said. &quot;At the moment we are busy creating the test platform.&quot;
 Gulyayeva declined to name which GSM operator Euroset is working with, in accordance with a confidentiality clause in its contract. However, SotaWeek.ru has learned that the company is Sonic Duo.
 In an earlier interview with The St. Petersburg Times, president of Russia's second largest mobile retail chain Svyaznoi, Maxim Nogotkov, said the company will try to launch a virtual operator service in 2006.
 
 <i>Additional reporting by staff writer Yuriy Humber.
 </i>

TITLE: Mobile Karaoke Rocks Russia
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Julie Andrews once sang that the hills are alive with the sound of music.
 
But with the advent of the mobile phone it is not only the hills, but also the streets, highways and byways that are filled with the ringtones and chattering of the connected masses.
 Soon, to add to the clamor, people may be singing to their mobile devices as the latest in the wacky line of cellphone features - mobile karaoke - arrives in Russia.
 Popular songs can already be downloaded to phones as ringtone melodies for between 70 cents and $1 per song.
 Mobile karaoke will enable budding singers to download a file that will display running lyrics on the phone screen in time to the music, yet for a cool $2.49, plus the WAP costs.
 Launched last week by one of the leaders on the content provider market, INFON, the service offers 20 karaoke song files that can be downloaded on all mobile networks.
 Industry analysts say the oddball factor will endear many in the big cities to try the service, but much of its success will depend on extensive advertising.
 The sing-along craze that originated in Japan moved into mobile telephony two years ago, based on java applications that Irish technology firm Alatto developed for the European market.
 Also in 2003, mobile network Vodaphone Japan launched a similar service that allowed subscribers to &quot;practise&quot; songs and, later, to plug their handset into a TV to watch the lyrics on the big screen, while singing into the phone mouthpiece.
 Since then, mobile karaoke has launched in the U.S., in most of Europe, and has been wildly popular in Asian countries, reports industry web site ringtonia.com.
 In Russia, INFON said it &quot;expects a high demand for the service,&quot; which will appeal to &quot;a different audience from the people who normally buy ringtones.&quot;
 &quot;Mobile karaoke will draw an older crowd, including those over 30,&quot; said Tatyana Timofeyeva, spokeswoman for INFON.
 Kirill Shramko, head of INFON's B2B division Agregator, said that the current mobile content market mainly appeals to people aged under 20. 
 The company hopes to tap into social categories such as businessmen and thirty-something women, who have &quot;high potential, but do not utilize new mobile handset functions now,&quot; he added. 
 So far, mobile karaoke has been made available on certain models of Motorola, SonyEricsson, Siemens, and Nokia telephones that support polyphony, java, and WAP/GPRS.
 A mobile phone subscriber sends the code for a particular melody by SMS to the number 5550 and receives a WAP address from which the selected karaoke file can be downloaded.
 Compared to the variety of karaoke hits available to Asian subscribers, the options for Russian consumers are as yet rather limited. 
 However, alongside pop hits by Glyukoza and Verka Serdyuchka, the content provider has also selected several traditional Russian folksongs, such as &quot;Oh frost, frost&quot; and &quot;Oh, kalina is blooming&quot; - a move the company said is no flashy gimmick.
 &quot;We have researched entertainment spots around large cities where there is karaoke, asking what melodies were popular. It seems that traditional Russian songs have wild success, that's why we have included them,&quot; Timofeyeva said.
 Yelena Sayapina, telecoms analysts at ACM consulting in Moscow, said the target audience of mobile karaoke in Russia will have to have a healthy interest in newbies and an equally healthy wallet. 
 Sayapina agrees with INFON in that the audience will have to be older. The service will simply not be affordable to youths who generally pay for one new ringtone only a month, she said.
 &quot;Sure, it sounds like a lot of fun, but it's hard to imagine who outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg will be prepared to pay this amount for one [karaoke] song,&quot; Sayapina said. It would make sense to price karaoke close to ringtones, she said.
 In comparison, First International Digital, a U.S. mobile content developer that launched the first karaoke service in America in June last year, set the initial price as $1.25 for one, or $3.49 for a three-song bundle.
 INFON did not reveal how much it would spend on advertising, saying only that the company would promote the service through the usual ad channels.

TITLE: Unhedged Optimism
TEXT: It's official: High oil prices are here to stay. Any doubts on this point were laid to rest when the government decided on April 7 to raise the cutoff oil price above which surplus revenues are channeled into the stabilization fund from $20 to $27 per barrel. In raising the cutoff price, the government is betting that average oil prices are going to remain well above long-term historical levels more or less indefinitely. 
 The government may be right. It is not difficult these days to find serious analysts who believe that we are entering a period of sustained high oil prices, in which historic averages are no guide to future trends. But the government may just as easily be wrong. It may seem that we have been living in a high oil-price world for a long time, but in fact, the annual average price of Urals crude was well below $27 per barrel until 2003, and as recently as 1998, it averaged just $11.80 for the year.
 Only time will tell, but the consequences for Russia would be far more serious if the government were later seen to have erred on the side of optimism rather than caution. The new stance is much riskier than the old one was. And if the risk is greater, so is the need for insurance against that risk. In short, the government needs to hedge its oil-price bet. 
 To understand how it might do this, we must first consider briefly how the stabilization fund works. The primary purpose of the fund is to shield the budget from the potential consequences of a drop in oil prices. By law, it accumulates automatically the surplus revenues from the natural resource extraction tax and the crude oil export duty that are generated if the price of Urals crude averages more than $20 a barrel. If the federal budget ends the year in surplus, most of the surplus may be also be transferred to it in the early months of the following year. The law stipulates that the first 500 billion rubles ($18 billion) accumulated in the fund can only be spent to cover the budget deficit arising when the Urals price falls below the cutoff price. Everything above that amount can be spent for other purposes, at the discretion of the authorities. 
 Of course, there is nothing to stop successive governments from holding more than 500 billion rubles in reserve, but international experience shows that it is very difficult for governments to keep their fingers out of the honey pot - especially if political will is the only thing preventing them from getting into it. Unless there are institutional rules to safeguard the stabilization fund, the sums accumulated above the target level enshrined in the law will almost certainly be spent - if not by this government then by one of its successors. No big deal, you may think. After all, 500 billion rubles is still a tidy sum.
 Or is it? If the stabilization fund is to fulfill its main purpose - fiscal stabilization - then it must be large enough to insure the budget against several years of low oil prices. On that criterion, 500 billion rubles - around 2.5 percent of projected gross domestic product for 2005 - is not enough, especially given that the higher the cutoff price, the greater the potential for dramatic revenue shortfalls. The Economic Expert Group estimates that an oil-price drop from $27 per barrel to $20 this year would reduce federal revenues by around 1.6 percent of GDP. In addition, there would also be significant further losses as a result of slower economic growth. In other words, 500 billion rubles would probably not be sufficient to offset the revenue losses to the federal budget for much more than a year. 
 Worse still, the 500 billion-ruble target figure is not indexed to inflation, or to the growth of either federal spending or real GDP - given current inflation and growth rates, it is falling relative to GDP by 15 to 20 percent per year.
 The straightforward solution would be to raise the 500 billion-ruble threshold very substantially. The new target level should also be set in relative terms - for example, as a percentage of GDP - rather than as an absolute sum. It could likewise make sense to adopt a cutoff price that is linked to a 10- or 15-year moving average of the Urals crude price. The government's ability to raise spending as oil prices rose would thus increase only gradually, but the impact of falling prices would also feed through only gradually, making fiscal adjustments less painful and abrupt. 
 The government's desire to raise the threshold price is understandable. Given current oil prices, the $20 cutoff price has probably become politically untenable. It is also very difficult to continue accumulating a fiscal reserve when there are so many calls on the public purse. However, if the government intends to loosen the purse strings by betting on higher oil prices, it should at least take care to hedge its bets. 
 
 <i>
Rudiger Ahrend and William Tompson are economist and senior economist for Russia and the NIS in the economics department of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. They contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times and Vedomosti. The views expressed in this article are their own and do not reflect those of the OECD or its member countries. </i>

TITLE: Protecting Intellectual Property Makes for a Wise Move
TEXT: Russians learn at an early age that the radio, television, the steam engine and the light bulb were invented in Russia. Whether or not these facts are historically true, one thing is acknowledged: these inventions were first patented in other countries.
 
The debate is interesting, not only from an historical perspective, but because it illustrates a couple of interesting points regarding the lack of confidence in the laws protecting intellectual property (IP). This lack of confidence in Russian IP laws may have deprived the country of technical and intellectual resources (not to mention historical recognition).
 The negative consequences have not gone unnoticed by the Russian government. Since Soviet times, Russia introduced new laws for Patent, Copyright and Trademark protection modeled after those in the west and has been fine tuning them through amendments ever since. Even the Criminal Code has been amended to include IP violations and the Customs Code to provide for trademark registration to assist in seizing unauthorized imports.
 Russia has also ratified many international treaties concerning IP protection (including the Paris Convention and the Madrid Agreement). Even manufacturing associations and government commissions have been established to effectively coordinate the system.
 First impressions, however, are always the most difficult to change and new laws on the books will only go so far in solving the problem. Stories about counterfeit products on the Russian market (from jeans to soaps and detergents, and everything else) are well known and indeed true. As are the consequences of having counterfeits sold in stores and kiosks: consumers suffer from the poor quality of the counterfeits, rights holders lose their reputation and profits, and the State loses tax revenue.
 The Russian government has much at stake on the IP issue. Intellectual property enforcement has been raised repeatedly during talks about Russia's entry to the World Trade Organization with industries from both the U.S. and Europe lobbying their governments to push for changes in Russia.
 In the Russian government, the body responsible for enforcing intellectual property rights is the Interior Ministry's Federal Service for Economic and Tax Crimes, which has a number of units around the country devoted exclusively to combating IP violations. Last year alone, it was reported that 500 underground factories were uncovered with a resulting 3,500 criminal cases.
 <strong>
A GOOD START, YET...
 </strong>Those who have worked in Russia will testify to the fact, that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself (or at least be involved in the process). Part of Russia's problem with IP rights enforcement stems not from the laws themselves, but the lack of confidence in those laws. Indeed, it is a common misnomer that the Russian legal system provides victims with little offensive options, but it is this feeling of helplessness that contributes to the problem. The holder of a Russian trademark needs to blow the whistle on the illegal operations, before anything much will be done.
 
Trademark owners typically find out about infringement through their distributors (these may be either dependent or independent agents, but in either case counterfeits are eating into their sales). To effectively combat counterfeit goods, accurate information is critical. Russia is the largest country in the world, and having people on the ground in far flung areas who share a vested interest in protecting the brand is probably their most valuable asset.
 To the Russian trademark owner, distributors become the key source of information not only in identifying the problem, but also in measuring the extent of the damage (size of market share). The decision to take the next step and bring legal action is usually based on this information and competent professional advice is critical at this stage.
 Russian legislation has procedures to shut down producers or distributors of counterfeit goods, yet, once again, it is the victims who are often not aware of such remedies or unwilling to use them, mistakenly believing the system to be too complicated or corrupt.
 The trademark owner is not completely alone in their fight; the Russian government is also under global pressure to combat illegal goods. Granted, this pressure does not automatically manifest itself on a local level. Very often, in fact, when the local divisions of the Ministry of Economic Crimes are contacted directly by those requesting quick action, they can become frustrated by what appears to be a never-ending series of bureaucratic hurtles. It is often here that Russia's poor reputation and lack of confidence in IP legislation gains credence.
 And yet, once a working relationship is developed and the procedures understood, the Russian government's own innate desire to combat illegal production works to the advantage of the trademark owner. Perseverance will get results. Russians are very brand conscious and the market is too big to ignore.
 Companies often spend millions to promote and market their brand and combating counterfeit goods should be viewed as part of this process. Success requires teamwork: distributors, marketers and directors all need to be involved. As a company's trademarks are its most valuable asset, however, safeguarding their intellectual property is an essential function of any company's long term viability.
 
 <i>Tom Stansmore is the head of Pepeliaev, Goltsblat &amp; Partners in St. Petersburg. He submitted the piece to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: The Nabokov Generation
TEXT: Vladimir Nabokov, American writer, born April 23, 1899, in St. Petersburg, Russia
 </i>
 
It was a matter of fierce pride for any Bolshevik: &quot;Russians read more than any other people on earth.&quot; Which in turn was a matter of bewilderment for any number of Western economists and management consultants who could not help noting that hypothetical and literary concepts have a far greater hold on people than practical ones. As a result, despite President Vladimir Putin's consistent assurances that Russia is doing just fine, capitalism and democracy here scarcely resemble any Western conception of those ideas. Russia's bookstores, however, are a bibliophile's dream.
 
My Russian heart warms to see that, despite Internet access, trendy restaurants, pubs and the multiple jobs people keep just to make ends meet in these busy post-socialist times, Russians still read books - constantly.
 My Americanized, rational mind, however, longs to find a practical way for Russia's reading passion, and its belief in the writer as prophet and teacher, to be made to benefit everyone. Here, after all, Solzhenitsyn and dissident writers were more important than Brezhnev and politicians.
 Full of messianic intentions, I took a semester off from my research on the Russian political and economic transition to venture a few months of teaching at Moscow State University, or MGU, where I would give a course on Vladimir Nabokov, &quot;Nabokov and Us.&quot; 
 Of course, I saw myself in many ways walking in Nabokov's footsteps. The many long years I've spent in Princeton and New York have turned a dreamy Russian intellectual into a practical Westerner. Please don't take this as a delusion of grandeur; I am saying only that my experiences in America have been akin to Nabokov's, not my writing. 
 So in returning to Moscow, I felt I had something to reveal to my fellow Russians: To become liberal and free, Russia must put its best traditions of reading to practical use. We should switch to reading Nabokov rather than trying to make sense of the IMF briefs - official documents have never been a Russian forte - for Nabokov has provided a better road map of the way forward than some uncertain successes in far-away Indonesia or Brazil. He was able to remain Russian, dreamily, greedily unambiguously, yet be a Westerner at the same time. 
 Like all missionaries, I was humbled to discover, with satisfaction rather than disappointment, that I am almost late with my &quot;good news.&quot; Nabokov, who stoically accepted (or at least claimed such) that he would have very few readers in his socialist homeland - indeed, he imagined his audience in Russia as a &quot;room filled with people, wearing his own mask&quot; - would have been extremely delighted at his reception in his homeland today: The whole country is wearing his mask. 
 The contemporary Russian reader reads Nabokov into everything. In response to a carved bust or a chocolate statue of Putin, some liberal-minded Russians quoted Nabokov: &quot;Portraits of the head of the government should not exceed a postage stamp in size.&quot; Those Russians who stubbornly disregard material comfort recall his phrase about the &quot;nuisance of ownership.&quot; Those who insist on individualistic values follow him in being &quot;an indivisible monist.&quot; Nabokov is translated, retranslated and republished. There is even a &quot;Nabokov Reader,&quot; a guidebook for schoolteachers on how and why to read Nabokov. 
 Expecting just a few fanatic students in my class at the university's School of Journalism, I walked into the room to find that with each session the number of people wearing Nabokov's &quot;masks&quot; doubled. They are deft and determined; they recite passages of &quot;Lolita&quot; and &quot;Speak, Memory&quot; by heart in both English and Russian; and they don't skip classes or make excuses as we did in my own time at MGU 15 years ago. Instead of pitifully crying over Akhmatova's &quot;Poem Without a Hero,&quot; or helplessly whispering about Solzhenitsyn's &quot;Gulag Archipelago&quot; in some kitchen, these level-headed kids of the post-post-communist new century put literature to practical use. They told me they find 19th-century writers too dramatic and too pathetic, and those of the 20th century too critical, unhappy, and dissident. Post-communist literature is too trashy. But Nabokov is just right! 
 &quot;Pushkin has been everything for you; Nabokov is our Pushkin&quot; - and I detect a tinge of disdain for the old-fashioned traditions of the past. &quot;He managed,&quot; their faces brighten with admiration, &quot;to remain 'high' literature and nonetheless be pragmatic, no-nonsense - a great stylist with cool themes and a brave, strong and victorious individual as hero. &quot;My favorite creatures, my resplendent characters - in 'The Gift,' in 'Invitation to a Beheading,' in 'Ada,' in 'Glory,' et cetera - are victors in the long run,&quot; they passionately quote. &quot;We,&quot; they say with pride in themselves, &quot;are that 'et cetera'. Nabokov is a literary manual for our everyday life on the road from unapplied Russian intellectual to efficient, pragmatic, Western individual.&quot; &quot;Something like 'Pnin,' but better,&quot; one girl added resolutely.
 I was puzzled. &quot;Why do you need me then, why do you come to this class?&quot; I asked the now 30 students in the room. 
 They said they needed somebody who had already gone the way Nabokov and his characters had - to make sure it's doable, to verbalize the experience through his books. 
 Despite rising concerns as to what Putin's &quot;power vertical&quot; may mean for the future, we can be certain that Russia's liberal transition has not been in vain after all.
 
 <i>Nina Khrushcheva teaches international affairs at New School University in New York. Her book &quot;Visiting Nabokov&quot; is forthcoming from Yale University Press. She contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Television Is No Longer Enough to Win Over the Disgruntled
TEXT: Not long before entrepreneurs last week protested outside City Hall against the reform of city transport and the elimination of kiosks at transport stops, there was a small fire at Moscow's television tower at Ostankino. The reaction of the media to the blaze was to criticize officials for ineffectiveness even though it was a minor affair. They treated it as if it gave serious cause for alarm. And it was really over the top that President Vladimir Putin himself, having just flown in from Hanover, went straight from the airport to the scene of the fire.
 
Of course, the fuss can be easily explained - Ostankino is currently the main technological instrument for maintaining stability in the country. Among the media which is struggling to show a sign of life, the national television channels have been a means of brainwashing the population. In as much as the government is unable to battle for the trust of citizens through concrete actions, television has become the ultima ratio, the last means of avoiding rapid growth of public discontent. The key television channels are broadcast from Ostankino and therefore any accident at the center is perceived by the government as a threat to public order.
 But using television to brainwash works only when it is directed at people who have only a weak awareness of their own interests, those who link their personal wellbeing to the paternalistic care of the state. During Soviet times that has held true for the overwhelming majority of the population. But in recent times there has been a positive transformation among the population. The growth areas have been the professional public bodies. For instance, the Moscow lawyers'association has not been afraid to defend its members actively and publicly when lawyers who have defended Yukos have come under fire. Disregarding the powerful influence of the state in the form of the Prosecutor General's Office, the Justice Ministry and the Moscow city courts, the association's council has time and again refused to deregister the Yukos lawyers and each time has publicly announced illegal actions by the government's representatives. 
 The public in St. Petersburg is also changing. The process started several years ago, but this year, thanks to the heavy-handed actions of the Kremlin and City Hall it has accelerated. The catalyst were pensioners, who to many people's surprise launched massive street protests against the clumsy replacement of in-kind benefits with cash payments. In this case the pensioners, not political parties, took the initiative. The parties merely tagged along for self-interest. It is worth noting that the spark that ignited the protests was the removal of free transport for pensioners who work. This directly cut into their interests because their wages are low and transport fares are comparable to their wages.
 Emboldened by the pensioners' success, small business representatives felt a second wind in their battle against City Hall's move to eliminate kiosks at transport stops. At the same time the city's transport reform is flawed. As in the replacement of benefits, a correct policy has been turned by Smolny's bureaucrats into some wild, ineffective result, that did not resolve the issue and harmed another public group - the entrepreneurs who are involved in public transport. As in the pensioners case, events evolved unpredictably. The association of private passenger carriers joined forces to organize protests with the city's small and medium-sized business association.
 No such cooperation existed in the past; everyone fought their own battles. In addition, professional associations preferred to protest quietly without attracting public attention. The main group lobbying their interests in City Hall's corridors and the entrepreneurs feared being open about their concerns. For instance, several years ago, when freight firms were unhappy about unfair treatment by the Oktyabrsky railway in regard to platform space for their goods, the freight firms rejected journalists' advice to either go public or to file a complaint to prosecutors.
 Today many entrepreneurs have had enough of persuading bureaucrats or bribing them to get the decisions they need. It appears that they have more faith in the power of public opinion and are therefore more often conducting scandalous public protests. For instance, during a recent meeting on Ploshchad Proletarskou Ditktatury outside City Hall marshrutkas with coffins on their roofs on which were written &quot;small business&quot; and &quot;trading zones&quot; drove past. An effigy of a bureaucrat was burned at the end of the protest. Such actions turn protests into shows; they attract the curious and make the protest more effective. This is typical of the growing solidarity between professional groups. 
 If this trend does not die out it will continue to develop in the same spirit, leading to mass street protests by new public groups. If they do, then television will soon cease to fulfill its security-chattering functions. And then different times will have arrived - the form of television that has been with us since 1996 will go into the past and the authorities will have to conduct a real dialogue with a new generation of public movements, with people who do not protest for some abstract values, but who stand up for their interests.
 
 <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: Gut Check
TEXT: With fresh indictments this month, the UN oil-for-food scandal took an unexpected turn into the Labyrinth - the tangled skein of war profiteering and state terrorism that has seen the Bush Family's lust for blood money emerge in three of the darkest criminal episodes in modern American history: Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and the BCCI affair.
 
Texas oil baron David Chalmers of Bayoil and his partners were hit with criminal charges for allegedly cutting deals with Saddam Hussein in the notorious skim operation that outflanked UN sanctions and diverted funds intended for humanitarian relief. Prosecutors were shocked - shocked! - to find such collusion and corruption in the oil business.
 Of course, the fact that three U.S. presidents - the two George Bushes and their new best pal, Bill Clinton - actually brokered massive backroom oil deals for Saddam that dwarfed Bayoil's petty chiseling, plus the fact that Saddam's nation-strangling thievery has since been eclipsed by the epic rapine of Bush II's Babylonian Conquest, in no way mitigates the seriousness of the Chalmers indictment. But somehow we doubt you'll be seeing those august statesmen sharing leg irons with old Davy anytime soon.
 Chalmers is a longtime denizen of the Labyrinth. In the mid-1980s, he joined up with Chilean gun-runner Carlos Cardoen, the Financial Times reported. Cardoen was a CIA frontman used by presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush I to funnel cluster bombs and other weapons secretly to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. At Reagan's direct order, Saddam received U.S. military intelligence, billions of dollars in credits and a steady supply of covert &quot;third-country&quot; arms to sustain his war effort, even though the White House was fully aware of Saddam's &quot;almost daily use&quot; of illegal chemical weapons, The Washington Post reported. Later, Bush I, as president, would also mandate the sale of WMD material to Saddam, including anthrax - long after Saddam notoriously &quot;gassed his own people&quot; at Halabja.
 As in the present UN scandal, Saddam paid for his covert cluster bombs with oil. Chalmers would move the actual black stuff and broker its sale for the CIA and Cardoen, taking a cut in the process. Since 1999, Chalmers has been doing the same thing on behalf of Italtech, owned by another crony in the old Cardoen gun-running scheme. The Texas baron must be aghast to find himself in hot water for an activity that was once blessed at the highest levels. Perhaps he neglected to cross the requisite Bushist palms with sufficient silver - or else, as with many a Bush minion, he's just been tossed overboard as chum for the sharks when he's no longer of any use.
 But let's be fair. Helping Saddam kill people with chemical gas was not the only reason why Reagan and Bush I aided their favorite dictator. They had bigger fish to fry - using the Constitution as kindling for the feast.
 In 1986, George Bush I visited the Middle East with a secret message to be passed to Saddam via Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: &quot;Drop more bombs on Iran's cities.&quot; How do we know this? From the sworn testimony of Howard Teicher, the National Security Council official who accompanied Bush and wrote the official &quot;talking points&quot; for the trip. Ostensibly, Bush urged this mass killing of civilians as a strategy to halt Iran's gains at the front. But as The New Yorker reported - 13 years ago - there was another layer to this covert plot.
 A fierce aerial offensive by Saddam would force Iran to seek more spare parts for its U.S.-made planes and anti-aircraft weapons, inherited from the ousted Shah. Bush was already waist-deep in the Iran-Contra scam, which involved selling Tehran U.S. military goods through back channels, then funneling the secret profits to the Contras, the gang of right-wing insurgents and CIA-trained terrorists in Nicaragua. Congress had forbidden U.S. aid to the Contras, so Reagan and Bush used the mullahs (and Central American drug lords) to run their illegal terrorist war. More innocent deaths in Iran meant more backdoor cash for the Contras. A win-win situation!
 When Bush I became president, he clasped Saddam even closer, sending him billions in U.S.-backed &quot;agricultural credits&quot; through BNL, an Italian bank tied up with BCCI - the international &quot;financial consortium&quot; that was actually &quot;one of the largest criminal enterprises in history,&quot; according to the U.S. Senate. BCCI laundered money and financed arms dealing, terrorism, smuggling and prostitution, while corrupting government officials worldwide with bribes and extortion.
 As Bush well knew, Saddam was using the BNL cash for arms, not food; indeed, that was the point of the exercise. When some honest U.S. officials threatened to unravel the BNL gun-running scam, Bush appointed Cardoen's own lawyer to a top Justice Department post - overseeing the investigation of his former boss. Under heavy White House pressure, the case was quickly whittled down to the usual &quot;bad apple&quot; underlings carrying out some minor fraud. 
 But perhaps Papa Bush was just being fatherly. Earlier, another BCCI offshoot bank had bailed out one of Bush Junior's many business failures with $25 million in cash. That deal had been brokered by mysterious Arkansas tycoon Jackson Stephens, one of the Bush family's biggest campaign contributors. Curiously enough, Stephens was also a top moneyman for another leading politician: Bill Clinton. When Clinton took office, he obligingly deep-sixed the continuing probes into BCCI, Iraqgate and Iran-Contra. 
 That's how the system really works. All the guff about law, democracy and morality is just cornball for the yokels back home - and for the cannon fodder sent off to die in the elite's commercial and dynastic wars. The Labyrinth - that knotted gut of blood and bile - has poisoned us all.
 
 <i>For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: New Pope Reassures Muslims
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY - A day after reaching out to other Christians and to Jews in his installation Mass, Pope Benedict XVI met with members of the Muslim community on Monday and assured them that the church wanted to continue &quot;building bridges of friendship.&quot;
 
Benedict made the comments in a meeting with religious leaders who attended his installation ceremony, saying he was particularly grateful that members of the Muslim community were present.
 &quot;I express my appreciation for the growth of dialogue between Muslims and Christians, both at the local and international level,&quot; he said.
 He noted that the world is currently marked by conflicts but said it longs for peace.
 &quot;Yet peace is also a duty to which all peoples must be committed, especially those who profess to belong to religious traditions,&quot; he said. &quot;Our efforts to come together and foster dialogue are a valuable contribution to building peace on solid foundations.&quot;
 The Vatican didn't say which Muslim leaders attended the private meeting.
 &quot;I assure you that the church wants to continue building bridges of friendship with the followers of all religions, in order to seek the true good of every person and of society as a whole,&quot; he said.


TITLE: North Korea Warned Against Nuclear Test
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea warned North Korea on Monday against conducting a nuclear test, saying one would further isolate the communist state and undermine its security. The United States called the North's resistance to international disarmament talks unacceptable.
 
Concerns that the isolated North is trying to develop a nuclear arsenal have escalated after it apparently shut down a nuclear reactor recently-a move that could allow it to harvest weapons-grade plutonium.
 South Korea's foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, said in a speech on Monday that North Korea &quot;cannot have its future guaranteed&quot; if it conducts a nuclear test.
 &quot;Nuclear weapons can never guarantee North Korea's security and will only bring about and worsen the isolation of its politics and economy,&quot; Ban said, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
 The South Korean warning came after U.S. media reported over the weekend that Pyongyang might be preparing for its first nuclear test and North Korea threatened to bolster its &quot;nuclear deterrent.&quot;
 North Korea, meanwhile, lashed out at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for recently saying that Washington was willing to take the nuclear issue to the United Nations.
 &quot;If the United States wants so much to drag the nuclear issue to the UN Security Council, it may do so,&quot; North Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman said, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency. &quot;However, we want to make clear that we will regard sanctions as a declaration of war.&quot;
 North Korea declared in February that it had nuclear weapons and was boycotting international disarmament talks, which also involve the United States, China, South Korea and Russia. Since then, efforts to get the North back to the bargaining table have floundered.
 In the latest diplomatic push, Washington's top envoy on the North Korean nuclear issue met with South Korean officials Monday and discussed ways to revive the negotiations.
 Washington, however, is reportedly exploring other options in stopping North Korea from building up its alleged nuclear arsenal.
 The New York Times reported that the Bush administration is debating a plan to seek a UN resolution allowing countries to intercept shipments in or out of North Korea that may contain nuclear materials or components.
 During three previous rounds of negotiations, North Korea has claimed to have nuclear capability.
 American analysts have said during the past week that they believe some of the claims are genuine. U.S. intelligence analysts have estimated that North Korea has produced at least two nuclear bombs.

TITLE: Armenians Press For Recognition
 Of Mass Killings
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YEREVAN, Armenia - Hundreds of thousands of people on Sunday commemorated the mass killings of Armenians during Ottoman rule 90 years ago, vowing to press their case to have the deaths recognized by the world as genocide.
 
The country observed a minute of silence at 7 p.m., and Yerevan residents were to place candles on window sills in memory of the victims.
 Ottoman authorities began rounding up intellectuals, diplomats and other influential Armenians in Istanbul on April 24, 1915, as violence and unrest grew, particularly in the eastern parts of the country.
 Up to 1.5 million Armenians died or were killed over several years as part of a genocidal campaign to force them out of eastern Turkey. Turkey acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians died, but says the overall figure is inflated and that the deaths occurred in the civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
 France, Russia and many other countries have already declared the killings were genocide; the United States, which has a large Armenian diaspora community, has not.
 President Bush issued a statement of solidarity with the Armenian people on Sunday from Crawford, Texas.
 Turkey, which has no diplomatic ties with Armenia, is facing increasing pressure to fully acknowledge the event, particularly as it seeks membership in the European Union. 
 The issue is extremely sensitive in Turkey, and Turks have faced prosecution for saying the killings were genocide.

TITLE: Commuter Crash in Japan Kills 50
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AMAGASAKI, Japan - A packed commuter train jumped the tracks in western Japan on Monday and rammed into an apartment complex, crumpling passenger cars into twisted metal. At least 50 people were killed and 340 injured in the deadliest rail accident here in four decades.
 
Investigators immediately focused on whether excessive speed or the actions of the inexperienced driver caused the crash in an urban area near Amagasaki, about 250 miles west of Tokyo. The 23-year-old driver had overshot the stop line at the last station before the accident.
 Rescuers were trying to free four people found alive in the wreckage more than nine hours after the crash, said Yoshiki Nishiyama of the Amagasaki fire department. They were trapped in one of the two worst-damaged cars, but their conditions were unknown.
 The seven-car commuter train was carrying 580 passengers when it derailed at 9:18 a.m., wrecking an automobile in its path before slamming into a nine-story apartment complex just yards away. Two of the five derailed cars were flattened against the wall of the building, and hundreds of rescue workers and police swarmed the wreckage and tended to the injured.
 &quot;There was a violent shaking, and the next moment I was thrown to the floor... and I landed on top of a pile of other people,&quot; passenger Tatsuya Akashi told NHK. &quot;I didn't know what happened, and there were many people bleeding.&quot;
 The Amagasaki Fire Department said at least 50 people were killed. It was not clear how many of the dead were passengers or if bystanders or apartment residents were among the victims. Train operator West Japan Railway Co. said at least 343 people had been taken to hospitals.
 The accident was the worst rail disaster in nearly 42 years in Japan, which is home to one of the world's most complex and heavily traveled rail networks. A three-train crash in November 1963 killed 161 people in Tsurumi, outside Tokyo.
 Monday's accident was under investigation. &quot;There are many theories but we don't know for sure what caused the accident,&quot; Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said. &quot;The prime minister instructed us to respond with urgency.&quot;
 Survivors said the force of the derailment sent passengers tumbling through the inside of the cars. Photos taken by an NHK reporter aboard the train showed passengers piled on the floor and some clawing to escape from the busted shells of the cars. The derailed train cars had smashed into the first-floor parking garage of the apartment complex, NHK said.
 Investigators struggled to come up with reasons for the crash. Tsunemi Murakami, the train operator's safety director, estimated that the train would have had to have been going 82 mph to have jumped the track purely because of excessive speed.
 He said it still was not certain how fast the train was running at the time of the accident. The crash happened at a curve after a straightaway, requiring the driver to slow to a speed of 43 mph, Murakami said.
 Experts also suspected speed was to blame.
 &quot;If the train hadn't hit anything before derailing... the train was probably speeding. For the train to flip, it had to be traveling at a high speed. I would say it was going 50 kph (31 mph) above the speed limit,&quot; Kazuhiko Nagase, a Kanazawa Institute of Technology professor and train expert, told NHK.
 The train operator apologized.
 &quot;Our most important task now is to rescue the passengers from the accident and we are doing our best,&quot; West Japan Railway Co. President Takeshi Kakiuchi told reporters.
 NHK reported that the automatic braking system at that stretch of track is among the oldest in Japan. The system stops trains at signs of trouble without requiring drivers to take emergency action, but the older system is less effective in halting trains traveling at high speeds.
 The driver's inexperience may also have been a factor. He only had 11 months on the job. He had committed a previous overrun at a station in June 2004 and was issued a warning, officials said.


TITLE: British Film Actor Sir John Mills Dies at 97
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Actor Sir John Mills, who played the quintessential British officer in scores of films, died Saturday after an Oscar-winning career spanning more than 50 years that included roles in &quot;Gandhi&quot; and &quot;Ryan's Daughter.&quot; He was 97.
 
Mills' roles ranged from Pip in David Lean's &quot;Great Expectations&quot; to the village idiot in Lean's &quot;Ryan's Daughter,&quot; for which he won his Academy Award as best supporting actor in 1971.
 But he took his place in film history as soldier, sailor, airman and commanding officer, embodying the decency, humility and coolness under pressure so cherished in the British hero.
 Small, fair-haired, with a boyish face and very blue eyes, he was the son, the brother, the boy next door who went off to fight the Germans and only sometimes came back.
 In &quot;Forever England&quot; he was the ordinary seaman who pins down a German battleship. In Noel Coward's 1942 classic &quot;In Which We Serve&quot; he was a Cockney able seaman, and in Anthony Asquith's &quot;The Way to the Stars,&quot; one of the most popular films of the war, he was a schoolmaster-turned-RAF pilot.
 Age seemed hardly to touch him and he carried on in military roles for decades, eventually becoming the commander, as in &quot;Above Us the Waves&quot; in 1955. 
 Mills started his career as a hoofer, a song and dance man in old Fred Astaire roles, far from the trenches.
 Born Lewis Ernest Watts, the son of a Suffolk schoolmaster, he started work at 17 as a grain merchant's clerk but longed for the stage.
 Later he moved to the capital and changed his name.
 He was acting with a traveling troupe called The Quaints, in Singapore in 1929 when Noel Coward saw the show and suggested Mills look him up in London.That led to parts in Coward's revues and eventually his war movies, where Mills swapped dancing shoes for uniform.
 Mills' own military career in the Royal Engineers lasted little more than a year after the outbreak World War II, until he was declared unfit because of an ulcer.
 Mills was married first to actress Aileen Raymond, then in 1941 to Mary Hayley Bell, an actress-turned-playwright. He was made a CBE, or Companion of the Order of British Empire, in 1960 and knighted in 1976.
 Mills was wiry, fit and remarkably youthful in to old age, which his daughter Hayley attributed to &quot;joie de vivre.&quot;
 &quot;Maybe what attracts people is that exuberant spiritual quality that they recognize is still present,&quot; she said in 1986.
 At 80, Mills rejected any idea of giving up acting.
 &quot;I've never considered myself to be working for a living; I've enjoyed myself for a living instead,&quot; he said.
 Mills is survived by his wife and their children. The funeral service will be held on April 27 in Denham, England.

TITLE: Chelsea Set for Title Glory After 50 Years
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Wayne Rooney and Wes Brown lifted Manchester United to a 2-1 victory against Newcastle in the English Premier League on Sunday. 
 
The win kept United in touch with Arsenal in the race for second. United is one point behind second-place Arsenal, which hosts Tottenham on Monday. 
 If Arsenal loses, it will hand Chelsea its first title in 50 years. If not, Chelsea can clinch by winning at Bolton next Saturday. 
 Meanwhile, Chelsea captain and defender John Terry was named the English Professional Footballers' Association Player of the Year at an award ceremony on Sunday. 
 He fought of competition from team mates Frank Lampard and Petr Cech as well as Arsenal striker and last year's winner Thierry Henry, Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard and Crystal Palace striker Andrew Johnson for the prestigious award. 
 &quot;It is unbelievable and the ultimate accolade to be voted for by your fellow professionals whom you play against week-in and week-out,&quot; Terry was quoted as saying by the BBC. &quot;You just go out there and try to give it your best, and for them to show their appreciation and vote for me is fantastic.&quot; 
 The England defender has been in imperious form this season as Chelsea head for their first league title in 50 years and he has also been instrumental in leading his side to the Champions league semi-finals. 
 <strong>RUSSIA</strong> League leader FC Zenit St. Petersburg fell behind on goal difference after a 3-0 defeat at Krylya Sovietov Samara allowing Torpedo Moscow to top the table despite its match against CSKA Moscow being postponed.
 Denis Kolodin fired Samara ahead with an 81st-minute scorcher and then a tap in from Andrei Gusin and an embarrassing Pavel Mares own goal sealed the game in injury time. 
 Champions Lokomotiv Moscow continued its indifferent start six games into the season with a 1-1 home draw with Amkar Perm after Marat Ismaylov rifled in a late effort to cancel out Konstantin Paramonov's first-half opener. 
 Zenit next faces Lokomotiv on Saturday at home in a match the St. Petersburg team must win if it is to build on the momentum it established at the start of its 2005 campaign. 
 <strong>ITALY</strong> Pavel Nedved scored in the closing minutes as Juventus won 1-0 at Lazio to tie defending champion AC Milan in the Serie A with five games to play. 
 Nedved beat two defenders inside the penalty area and volleyed the winner in the 85th minute to make up for the absence of strikers Zlatan Ibrahimovic, David Trezeguet and Alessandro Del Piero. 
 Ibrahimovic is suspended, Trezeguet has an ankle injury and Del Piero limped off the field in the first half. 
 Also, Brazilian substitute defender Rafael scored an injury-time goal as lowly Messina stunned Inter Milan 2-1, and Sampdoria downed AS Roma 2-1. 
 <strong>SPAIN</strong> Ludovic Giuly scored twice to help leader FC Barcelona to a 4-0 victory over Malaga and leave it three wins away from its first Spanish league title since 1999. 
 Defender Oleguer Presas and substitute Gerard Lopez also netted at Malaga's La Rosaleda stadium as Barcelona restored its six-point advantage over second-place Real Madrid with five games remaining. 
 Barcelona has 75 points, while Real Madrid, which beat Villarreal 2-1 on Saturday, has 69. 
 <strong>GERMANY</strong> An exhausted looking Bremen was beaten by Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 in a severe blow to the team's hopes of returning to the Champions League next season. 
 Jacek Kyzynowek scored in the third minute and Marko Babic in the 37th as Bayer Leverkusen sent the Bundesliga's defending champion reeling to its third loss in four matches. 
 In Sunday's second match, U.S. goalie Kasey Keller and Moenchengladbach salvaged a 0-0 draw against FC Nuremberg. 
 <strong>FRANCE</strong> Midfielder Juninho scored his 12th league goal of the season as Lyon coasted to a 3-0 win at Auxerre and moved closer to a fourth straight title. 
 Ghana midfielder Michael Essien and Brazil defender Cris also scored as Lyon moved 11 points ahead of second-placed Lille. Lyon, looking to join Saint-Etienne and Marseille as the only French teams to have won four consecutive titles, has 69 points and needs two wins to secure the championship. 
 <strong>GREECE</strong> Michalis Konstantinou scored twice as Panathinaikos Athens beat Halkidona 6-3 to stay on top of the Greek first division. 
 Markus Muench, Ezequiel Gonzalez, Dimitris Papadopoulos and Fanis Gekas were the other scorers for Panathinaikos, which was playing before empty stands because of crowd violence in a match against Olympiakos two weeks ago. 
 <i>(AP, Reuters, SPT)
 </i>

TITLE: Russia Nets Euro Tour, Future Looks Bright
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Viktor Kozlov netted a goal and set up two more Sunday as Russia beat Sweden 5-2 to win its first Euro Hockey Tour title. 
 
Russia took the title 7-3 on aggregate, having won the first game of a two-game final 2-1 in Stockholm on Friday. The win was Russia's first major success since winning the world championship in 1993. Right wing Alexander Syomin hit Sweden's post before defender Niklas Kronwall put Sweden in the lead, scoring from close range at 5:54. 
 Alexei Kovalev equalized with a wrist shot on a power play, but Johan Franzen restored Sweden's lead just 54 seconds later. Viktor Kozlov leveled it at 2-2 with a wrist shot from the left circle at 16:44. Yevgeny Malkin then came close twice in one minute, forcing Sweden goalkeeper Johan Holmquist to make stunning saves two minutes before the first interval. 
 Ilya Kovalchuk put Russia in the lead six minutes into the second period with a slap shot from the blue line. Alexander Ovechkin, the top NHL draft pick last year by the Washington Capitals, made it 4-2 with a goal from close range at 32:04. There was little struggle in the third period after Kozlov set up Alexei Syomin's goal at 51:46.
 
 o
 Team Russia defeated the Czechs 6-5 in the final game of St. Petersburg's Bolshoi Priz junior hockey tournament at the Yubileiny Sports Palace last Thursday.
 Russia, with a near perfect performance during the tournament, finished with nine points and had clinched first place Wednesday night after they tied Team St. Petersburg - the only team they didn't beat. 
 Russia, Finland and Sweden each had seven and took second and third places respectively. Finland won the tie break having scored more goals in the tournament. The Nordic rivals tied each other 0-0, and both had a goal difference of +4. 
 Given Russia's dominance in the tournament, including a 10-1 slaughtering of Slovakia, it's no surprise the top three scorers were Russians Dmitry Shitikov, Nikolai Lemtugov, and Sergei Shirikov.
 <i>(AP, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Moscow's Sexy Spin Fires Up Olympic War
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN - Spin doctors, PR strategists and image consultants scurried through the hotel lobbies and bars. Young women handed out brochures, caps and T-shirts. Candidates pressed the flesh, flashed the charm and chased votes.
 
It looked like a scene from a political convention, but this was no ordinary election campaign. This was the latest battlefront in a high-stakes global competition: the race for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
 Never before has such a glamorous field vied for the games - Paris, London, New York, Madrid and Moscow. And with less than 75 days before the vote, the contest is getting testy.
 Leaders of the five cities came to Berlin to push their case to an audience of IOC members and international sports federations. 
 If the frenetic lobbying and schmoozing was anything to go by, it's going to be a madhouse when the bid cities and International Olympic Committee gather in Singapore for the July 6 vote.
 The Berlin gathering highlighted the challenge of bid cities trying to navigate the strict rules put in place after the Salt Lake City scandal, which led to the ouster of 10 IOC members for accepting cash, scholarships and other inducements from the 2002 Winter Games host city.
 &quot;We come from a period of excesses, we come from a period of red carpet treatment, we come from a period where we had a corruption scandal in Salt Lake City,&quot; IOC president Jacques Rogge said. &quot;This is something we don't want to repeat.&quot;
 With IOC members prohibited from visiting bid cities, and bid leaders barred from going to see the IOC delegates, there's often confusion and uncertainty over what the candidates can and can't do.
 On Saturday, London withdrew a package of more than $20 million in financial incentives, including $50,000 in subsidies to each national Olympic body toward the cost of using pre-games training facilities in Britain.
 London said it made the decision to heed Rogge's warning to avoid a bidding war.
 &quot;In light of President Rogge's remarks ... we feel it is in the best interests of the Olympic movement to withdraw the charters at this stage,&quot; London 2012 said in a statement.
 Other contentious issues emerged in Berlin.
 Eyebrows were raised when editions of the International Herald Tribune were distributed in the hotel with a London wraparound promotion. It wasn't clear whether that was a violation of the rules.
 Rival cities were furious when London's presentation to international sports federations lasted 23 minutes - way beyond the 10-minute limit.
 Others sniped at Moscow's use of two attractive hostesses in tight T-shirts at the Russian city's exhibition stand.
 Paris, the front-runner from the beginning, remains the favorite. New York and London are pushing hard. Madrid hasn't made much of an impact publicly, but could still be a factor. 
 Moscow is the dark horse.