SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1105 (71), Friday, September 16, 2005
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TITLE: Putin, Bush To Debate Ex-Soviet Territories
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — When President Vladimir Putin visits U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington on Friday, disputes over post-Soviet turf are likely to be the sour counterpoint to any talk of cooperation a reÿection of the cold spell that has replaced one-time high hopes for the relationship. 
Four years ago, Putin helped turn a new page in U.S.-Russian relations by offering steadfast support to the United States after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and welcoming the American military deployment in ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia to support military action in Afghanistan
But the initial euphoria about a new Russian-U.S. partnership soon gave way to disputes over the U.S. war in Iraq, Putin’s authoritarian streak at home and his government’s muscling of other ex-Soviet republics.
Russia, which sought to cast its war in Chechnya as part of the global ¸ght against terror, bristled at U.S. contacts with Chechen rebel envoys as a reÿection of American “double standards.”
Bilateral ties were badly bruised last year by a dispute over Ukraine, where pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko rode a wave of public protest to win the presidency in a battle against a Moscow-backed rival.
Ukraine’s Orange Revolution and similar protests that ousted unpopular regimes in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan fueled the Kremlin’s fears that other former Soviet republics could be drawn into the Western orbit.
“Russia believes that the United States is trying to establish its control over ex-Soviet republics,” said Sergei Markov, a political analyst with links to the Kremlin. 
“Russia’s efforts to defend its interests in the post-Soviet space have irritated the United States, but Putin isn’t going to forget about the national interests just to please American public opinion.”
A Kremlin of¸cial who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity said Wednesday that the situation in the ex-Soviet space would be “one of the most dif¸cult issues” in Friday’s talks.
Tensions rose over the summer, when the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, dominated by Russia and China, urged the U.S. military to withdraw its bases from alliance members Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan then ordered U.S. troops to leave within months, while Kyrgyzstan agreed to continue hosting them until the situation in Afghanistan stabilizes.
Markov said that Uzbek President Islam Karimov was the driving force behind the call for the U.S. pullout because he was angry over U.S. criticism of his government’s brutal suppression of a protest in May. Kyrgyzstan backed the move since it wanted to charge a higher price for the U.S. rent of its base, Markov claimed. But other observers saw the move as a joint effort by Russia and China to drive the United States out of the strategically placed, resource-rich region.
“The stakes are high on both sides: for Russia this is a matter of principle and for the Americans that means safeguarding access to energy resources,” said Yevgeny Volk, the head of the Heritage Foundation’s Moscow of¸ce.
The SCO is just one sign of the increasingly close relationship between Russia and China amid the differences with the United States over ex-Soviet lands. 
Another was this summer’s ¸rst ever Russian-Chinese military exercise, featuring strategic bombers and nuclear submarines in an unprecedented show of force.
The cold spell seems to have taken its toll on personal relations between the two presidents, as well.
“The shoulder-patting is still there, but the mutual trust that existed after Sept. 11 is gone,” Volk said. “The reason is objective: there can’t be a friendship between the heads of states while the bureaucracies of both nations view each other with distrust.”

TITLE: Hate Crime Sparks Off Student Protests
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova and Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The murder of a Congolese student in a St. Petersburg suburb has been solved, the head of the city police crime squad Vladislav Piotrovsky said Thursday during a meeting with African students.
Piotrovsky declined to give any further details.
Last Saturday night, Ronald Epasak, a 29-year-old third-year Congolese student at the St. Petersburg Forestry Academy, was on the way to the apartment that he rented with his brother at 3 Ulitsa Vavilovykh in northern St. Petersburg, when he was attacked shortly after midnight.
The student died at the city’s Yelizavetinskaya hospital Tuesday night after three days in a coma. Epasak sustained multiple wounds, severe brain damage and fatal blood loss. 
Piotrovsky said Epasak’s murder wasn’t race-related, saying the victim was drunk when attacked. 
“The student was hanging around with the lowest of the low of this district’s inhabitants,” he added. “They attacked him on the street when he went out to see them.”
Anatoly Krasnoshchoka, a surgeon at the Yelizavetinskaya hospital, where Epasak was treated, said it was clear from the start that the student’s wounds were fatal. 
“He was attacked in a brutal, sadistic way, with multiple deep and large wounds, and one of his ears was simply cut off,” Krasnoshchoka said. “Only fanatical bigots could do something like that.” 
Yelena Kudryavtseva, who treated Epasak when he was brought to the hospital, said that she did not detect any traces of alcohol when the patient was received.
Epasak’s murder resulted in a wave of protests by the foreign student community. Students of Asian and African origin complained about being constant targets of racist attacks. 
The city police and the prosecutor’s office say that the attack was not a hate crime, and that there was no evidence of racist motivations.
Yelena Ordynskaya, senior aide to the city’s prosecutor general, said that investigators don’t have proof that the murderers were driven by racial hatred. “It could have been a spontaneous attacked by hooligans, or there could have been a financial reason,” Ordynskaya said.
The police statements failed to reassure the local African community. 
Instead, the mention of Epasak’s alleged ties with local low lifes irritated the protesters. African students compared living in St. Petersburg to living in a ghetto during a spontaneous meeting of protest outside the city’s Legislative Assembly on Thursday. 
“We have to carefully choose where to live, where to go and where not to go: continually having to be on alert is intolerable,” said David Masamba, one of the meeting’s organizers. “The police imply it was the student’s fault that he was meeting the wrong people. This is outrageous.”
Igor Rimmer, a deputy in the Legislative Assembly, said the criminal situation in St. Petersburg in general is very alarming. 
“I can’t say that crimes against black people are more frequent or more brutal than crimes against ordinary Russians,” Rimmer told the protesters Thursday. 
“Criminals kill feeble old pensioners to get their wretched few hundred rubles. This is no less terrible.” 
Infuriated by statements by local lawmakers and law enforcement officials, who view the murder in the context of widespread criminality and not specifically as a sign of rampant racism, students from Asia and Africa marched from the city parliament to City Hall.
“My brother told me I can’t rely on local police to protect me from skinheads, and if I want to survive in this country I should find my own means and resources,” said Rahman Rungwe, a 20-year-old Tanzanian.
Rahman’s brother, Hashim, is a third-year student at the St. Petersburg State University.
Hashim said that he has lost count of the number of racist attacks he has suffered. 
“I twice contacted the police asking for help but then I realized that I was the last person they wanted to see,” he said.
While human rights advocates in Russia have frequently said that there has been a rise in ethnically motivated crimes, the police are accusing them of misrepresenting the reality of Russian society. 
Pavel Rayevsky, head of the St. Petersburg police press office, has said that ethnic minorities tend to exaggerate the scale of race-related crimes to divert attention away from their own wrongdoings.
Andrei Stanchenko, head of the St. Petersburg police task force investigating crimes against foreigners, said this summer at a meeting of the local branch of the Russian Tourism Union that there are 1.5 million illegal migrants in the city, and many of them are heavily involved in crime. 
Yury Vdovin, deputy head of the local branch of human rights organization Citizens’ Watch, said racism in Russia has been growing at an alarming pace, and that the authorities find it convenient to brand racism as mere hooliganism.
“There are some racists in uniforms as well,” Vdovin said.
Human rights advocates also expressed concern at the recent tendency among nationalist movements to assume a role of the major opposition force in the country, while the democratic forces are losing their sphere of influence.
Yury Belyayev, head of the St. Petersburg nationalist organization Party of Freedom, which was outlawed in April, admitted that his “young patriots” attack black and Asian people regularly. 
“We have vowed to continue until Russia gets rid of all this rubbish,” Belyayev said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. 
“We do this partly to punish the negroes and partly to teach a lesson to the government, which refuses to legalize our organization.”

TITLE: City Charter Court’s Appeal Turned Down
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In the latest development in a long-running dispute, the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal made by St. Petersburg Charter Court judge Lyudmila Kuleshova. The  appeal would have made it illegal for the city’s Legislative Assembly, its speaker and the City Hall to make decisions concerning the Charter Court.
Kuleshova is currently the only legitimate member of the court.
St. Petersburg’s Charter Court, the last legislative body independent of City Hall, suspended its activities in August following the resignation of three of its seven judges, Olga Gerasina, Natalya Gutsan and Alexei Liverovsky. The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly has this week removed three more judges, Alexander Osotsky, Vera Ilyinskaya and Nikolai Kropachev.
The judges were removed on the grounds that their terms have expired. Kuleshova’s appeal centers on the fact that the law establishing these terms was passed by the Legislative Assembly only in July. The Constitutional Court will give a final ruling on the appeal.
At present the judges of the city’s Charter Court have to be approved by the local Legislative Assembly, which also has a right to remove them when the judges reach retirement age or the end of their term. Later this fall, the parliament will have to form a new Charter Court.
The conflict between the city’s Charter Court and City Hall has been dragging on since March when the Court’s judges produced a sensational verdict ruling that Governor Valentina Matvienko had appointed her administration in 2003 without observing the City Charter. 
That ruling, if allowed to stand, would invalidate Matvienko’s administration and all the decisions that it has made. 
The main task of the Charter Court is to prevent violations and monitor observation of the City Charter, an equivalent of a city constitution.
Local human rights advocates describe the Charter Court, which forbids lawmakers from conducting business while holding office and limits the governor’s right to rule by decree, as a thorn in Matviyenko’s side. “A puppet Charter Court would make the power in the city even more centralized and fully concentrated in Smolny,” democrat lawmaker Sergei Gulyayev told reporters Wednesday.
Lawmaker Mikhail Amosov, head of the Democratic faction of the Legislative Assembly, said in a telephone interview Thursday that the parliament made a premature decision about removing the judges Wednesday. “The assembly should have waited for the verdict of the Constitutional Court,” he said.

TITLE: Russian Tycoon Linked to Ukrainian Election
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV — A top Ukrainian official denied allegations that exiled Russian magnate Boris Berezovsky financed the presidential election campaign last year of Viktor Yushchenko, brought to power after “Orange Revolution” protests. 
Oleh Rybachuk, Yushchenko’s chief of staff, was among several of the president’s allies denying any suggestion that Berezovsky, now an avowed foe of the Kremlin, had channeled funds to the president’s campaign. 
“Neither Viktor Yushchenko nor Oleh Rybachuk knows or has ever known Berezovsky,” Rybachuk told Fifth Channel television. “Yushchenko has never even spoken to Mr. Berezovsky.” 
Other officials denounced the allegations as an attempt to denigrate Yushchenko, who won the re-run of a rigged election after weeks of mass protests in his favor. The president last week sacked Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her Cabinet after months of government infighting. 
Ukraine’s first post-independence president, Leonid Kravchuk, now a member of parliament, said Wednesday he had information that Berezovsky had funneled at least $15 million to back Yushchenko, opposition leader at the time. 
Kravchuk said at a news conference several of the president’s top allies had acted as intermediaries. He said that if the allegations were proved true, parliament could launch impeachment proceedings against Yushchenko. 
Once close to ex-Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Berezovsky fell out with his successor Vladimir Putin and has been granted political asylum in Britain, from where he regularly accuses the Kremlin leader of curbing democratic freedoms. 
Berezovsky, wanted in Russia on fraud charges, told the Fifth Channel he had spoken to Kravchuk. But he said he did not tell the former president that he had provided money specifically for Yushchenko’s campaign. 
Impeachment procedures in Ukraine’s parliament are complex, making it extremely difficult to remove the president. 
Several attempts to remove Yush-chenko’s predecessor, Leonid Kuchma on allegations of complicity in the murder of an investigative journalist proved unsuccessful.

TITLE: Kasyanov Will Run For President in 2008
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said late Wednesday that he would run for president in 2008.
The announcement is likely to anger the Kremlin, with President Vladimir Putin having said in the past that he feels it his duty to select a successor.
Kasyanov, who hinted that he might run in February, said on Ekho Moskvy radio that doubts he had harbored about a bid had evaporated over the past three months.
“My answer now is yes. The absence of any positive change has convinced me. I cannot just leave because there is no one else to develop the political processes,” Kasyanov said.
He also said he would participate in Moscow City Duma elections in December and in other elections but would not run as a candidate. 
State-controlled Channel One television reported Kasyanov’s announcement on its 9 p.m. news broadcast.
Putin fired Kasyanov in February 2004. Kasyanov, who had held the post for about four years, was seen as being close to the oligarchs and had grown increasingly critical of the Kremlin. Shortly before he was fired, he had criticized the legal assault on Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his Yukos oil company. 
Khodorkovsky’s arrest and the subsequent dismantling of Yukos are widely seen as the Kremlin’s punishment for Khodorkovsky’s political and business ambitions.
In July, the Prosecutor General’s Office opened an investigation into Kasyanov’s acquisition of a former state-owned villa — a corruption probe that itself is widely seen as a Kremlin warning to Kasyanov to stay out of politics. 
Kasyanov said Wednesday that he considered the allegations “political and groundless.”
He said he would release details about his property when he kicks off his campaign for the presidency.
Kasyanov earlier accused the authorities of trying to mount a smear campaign with the investigation.
Kasyanov has grown increasingly critical of Kremlin policy this year, and on Wednesday he took aim at Putin’s recently announced plan to spend 115 billion rubles ($4 billion) on health, education and social policies. 
“This is a wrong social turn, it is not a systematic improvement. It is just a handout,” Kasyanov said.
He said he was working to unite leading democratic-minded political movements and felt optimistic about the prospects for unification.
“Without an alliance in the near future, democracy in Russia will face a happy end,” he said. 
“Then you can forget about this course that I have said is correct for more than 10 years. This will happen for sure unless today we don’t help citizens to wake up and if democratic forces don’t unite and don’t form a real challenge,” Kasyanov said.
The liberal Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces parties are discussing how to join forces ahead of the Moscow City Duma elections on Dec. 4. 
The two have said that they need to work together if they want to secure any seats in the 35-member chamber.

TITLE: Hepatitis, Typhoid on Rise
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg is facing a rise in the number of hepatitis A and typhoid cases, but less dysentery, city experts say.
During the first eight months of 2005 the hepatitis A rate more than doubled over the same period in 2004, Oleg Parkov, head of the city’s Rospotrebnadzor or Russian Customers Watch said.
This year St. Petersburg registered 2,519 cases of hepatitis A, compared to 1,093 cases for the same period in 2004.
“This year we have a periodic increase in hepatitis A, which happens once every five years, when the population’s immunity against hepatitis A weakens,” Parkov said.
He said that hepatitis A is transmitted through water, fruits and vegetables brought from other regions, or from people returning from vacations.
“This year we also had a serious outbreak of hepatitis A among the staff of the Pyatyorochka retail stores, with more than 100 people being infected,” Parkov said.
To provide for vaccinations against Hepatitis A until the end of 2005, the city needs to allocate an additional 13 million rubles from its budget, the city’s Health Committee said, Interfax reported Tuesday.
The city also experienced a rise in typhoid cases, with 30 people infected with the disease registered in the first eight months of this year, compared to eight people during the same period last year, Parkov said.
He said that typhoid is mainly transmitted by homeless people, a group that often suffers from it.
However, Parkov said that this year the city had 47 percent less dysentery cases, which he called “good news.”
Meanwhile, at a meeting on Tuesday the St. Petersburg authorities considered and approved a plan aimed at improving the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the city.
At the meeting, Igor Rakitin, acting head of the local department of Rospotrebnadzor said that the plan would decrease the number of stray animals in the city, implement preventive measures to cut down on tick and mosquito bites, and reduce the rat population, all of which exacerbate the problem.

TITLE: ‘Russia Today’ Starts Broadcasts
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia launched experimental broadcasts Thursday of a new 24-hour English-language satellite TV news channel aimed at polishing its image abroad and presenting foreign audiences with a Russian view of the world. 
Boasting a staff of 344 journalists and $30 million earmarked from the state budget, Russia Today kicked off test broadcasts with a British anchor reading news against a pink-and-orange background.
Dozens of editors and producers busily working on their computers in spacious newsrooms. 
The channel will be broadcast in North America, Europe and Asia. 
“All too often, the view of Russia does not correspond to reality: information on Russia is either distorted or incomplete or just nonsense,” said Margarita Simonyan, the chief editor.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Hunting Season Opens
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The hunting season opens in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast on Sept. 17, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Russian Agriculture Watch has begun issuing permits for fall and winter hunting of animals for fur and badgers.
Hunting for hares and foxes will be allowed from Sept. 25 through Feb. 28 of 2006; for beavers, raccoon dogs, and musk rats — from Oct. 1 through Feb. 28 of 2006; for lynx, martens, minks, squirrels — from Nov. 1 through Feb. 28 of 2006; and for badgers – from Sept. 17 though Oct. 31 of 2005. 
The hunting of river otters, marsh otters, and wolverines remains prohibited as they are listed as endangered species.

Private Car Towing
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Six private companies have been allocated the right to tow away and store cars at penalty parking lots if they are illegally parked, Interfax reported Thursday.
Fourteen organizations took part in the tender for the towing licenses.
To qualify for the tender, companies needed to have no fewer than 10 towing vehicles, suitable parking lots, and be able to provide insurance for the loading and unloading of the vehicles.
The penalty charge for towing will remain unchanged at 2,927 rubles ($103), and 12 rubles ($0.42) per hour will be charged until the car has been reclaimed.

Convict Flees Court
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A man sentenced to four years imprisonment Tuesday was able to escape by walking out of a St. Petersburg court because no court marshal was present to stop him, the Associated Press reported, citing court officials.
Alexei Popov, who was convicted of drug-dealing, walked out of the courtroom just before a police escort arrived at the city’s Vasileostrovsky district court to take him to prison. Police are searching for him

Illegal Medicine
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Customs officials at Pulkovo Airport confiscated 19 kilos of undeclared medicine from a German citizen on Monday.
A customs inspector found 80 different medicines in the luggage of the passenger who had arrived from the city of Dusseldorf, Fontanka.Ru said Tuesday.
The medicines seized require obligatory customs declarations. Their value has not yet been calculated.

TITLE: Taleon Looks to Raise $20M From an IPO
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg-based Taleon group hopes to take advantage of the growing Russian stock market and raise $20 million through an initial public offering by the end of this year.
Organizers and book-runners for the IPO — Finam and Planeta Capital investment companies — will conduct an additional issue of 70 million Taleon shares (equivalent to about a 10 percent stake in the group) to attract investment to its hotel complex development.
“The group has reached a level that corresponds to a public company status,” Finam cited Taleon’s general director Alexander Yebralidze as saying in a statement released Tuesday.
“We’ve not completed our estimates yet, but we hope that Taleon’s market capitalization will be no less than $200 million,” said Vladislav Kochetkov, Finam press secretary.
The IPO has been set for the first half of December, to be carried on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) or the Russian Trading System Index (RTS), or both, Kochetkov said.
Taleon has  been operating since 1992. The group is engaged in elite real estate investment and reconstruction projects, restaurants, tourism, gambling, hotel and publishing business ventures.
At the moment Taleon is busy with a $40 million reconstruction of housing near to the Yeliseyev Palace hotel. The company plans to increase the number of rooms at the hotel from 29 to 100, and additionally construct a cinema, a pool and a trading area.
Real estate experts said investment in the hotel business is timely. “Hotels will be in high demand next season. Commercial real estate projects here still allow profitability of 14 percent to 18 percent, which would be rare in Moscow,” said Igor Gorsky, general director of Kommercheskaya Nedvizhimost Becar.
If Taleon succeeds in attracting the hoped for investments, it will be enough to finance the construction of quite a decent hotel, the expert said.
IPO organizers expect positive financial gains, pointing to Interros’ development subsidiary Otkrytye Investitsii (Open Investments), which underwent an IPO in 2004, as an example of a successful public offering in Russia.
However stock market experts questioned Taleon’s ability to attract a broad range of investors.
“IPO expenses will pay off only if market shares are liquid. And declared issuing volume raises serious doubts in the liquidity of Taleon’s shares,” said Alexander Kleshchev, head of the portfolio investment department at LenMontazhStroi investment firm.
“[Taleon’s] relatively small operation volume, insufficient market publicity and company non-transparency will scare off potential shareholders,” Kleshchev said.
He said that a capitalization amount of $150 million, which the IPO organizers had initially quoted, exceeded the company’s real value by 1.5 times.
“For a company of such a small size the profit to capitalization ratio should be at least 20 percent,” Kleshchev said.
Because of the Russian stock market’s strong growth this summer “companies going for an IPO now are able to gain higher interest and prices than ever before,” said Alexander Vinogradov, head of strategic analysis at AVK Analitika investment firm.
He saw the floatation of 10 percent as a sensible move for the current owners that involves offering “a considerable stake, while avoiding a large-scale redistribution of shares and loss of control.”

SHADOW BOXING
Given the disclosed profits, market experts doubted that Taleon could boast a capitalization of $200 million, although the non-transparency of the company could mask a simpler explanation.
Kleshchev suggested that Taleon’s managers could have arranged an agreement with large investors prior to the IPO, who would be ready to buy the floated 10 percent stake.
Moreover, the amount of money Taleon expect to raise “will cover only part of the required expenses and not the main one,” Vinogradov said. The main benefit of completing an IPO would come in afterwards, as in being able to secure bank loans more easily, Gorsky said.
“IPO is an action that promotes an image of honesty, decency and the self-sufficiency of a business. Investors need to trust the company, and regular financial reports, disclosure of business processes, company structure and profits provide this,” Gorsky said.

HOME, THEN AWAY
Following the recent trend of Russian IPOs on foreign stock markets, the press secretary at Finam confirmed that Taleon’s Yebralidze is interested in a share emission in New York or London, though “the date has not been set.”
Kochetkov said that at the moment Taleon would not be ready for a major international bourse like the LSE in London. It could look to London’s other bourse, the Alternative Investment Market as a “more feasible option,” he said.
Last year Taleon group’s revenue reached 525.3 million rubles ($18.5 million), net profit — 133.3 million rubles ($4.7 million), earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) — 285.61 million rubles ($10 million). Its assets are worth $142 million.
About 75 percent of Taleon is owned by Alexander Yebralidze and 25 percent by Yakov Barsky. The group runs Yeliseyev Palace hotel, Leokaspis construction company, Konstans-Bank, Taleon tourism firm, Fidus development company, and a casino.

TITLE: CIT to Open Metals Fund
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of the country’s largest fund managers, CIT Finans, will launch by the end of this month the first mutual fund in Russia that is linked specifically to metallurgy and auto industries, the company said Thursday.
The interval fund will be based mainly on second tier bonds of domestic steel and auto manufacturers, capitalizing on the increased focus the two industries have received in the last year.
“We will focus mainly on metals. However, both sectors have lots of large companies,” Vadim Barausov, head of investor relations at St. Petersburg-based CIT Finans, said Thursday.
“The two markets are in the process of consolidation, so lots of deals are taking place. Those ready for more risk and more liquidity will be interested,” he said.
Together with another new product, a mutual fund that focuses on second tier bonds — issued by smaller, more volatile companies — CIT Finans will increase its portfolio of higher risk, higher yield mutual funds. This will also take the total number of CIT’s open funds to 11, the broadest spectrum offered in Russia.
Alexander Tchekine, in charge of fixed income research and vice president of UralSib financial corporation, saw the offering of new bond-driven mutual funds as a positive step that could help the domestic auto industry lift its capitalization as it aims to compete against foreign car brands.
“ To fuel their growth [manufacturers] can turn to the bond market much easier than to equities, and it does not need the same degree of disclosure” — something many large factories do yet feel comfortable with, Tchekine said.
CIT Finans initially plans to quickly raise at least 5 million rubles ($180,000) for each of the two new mutual funds, and later to increase the funds’ size.
Sergei Mikhailov, director for development at PromStroiBank fund management company, said the creation of industry-specific mutual funds was logical, and the use of second tier bonds apt for getting high returns on investment due to the risks.
However, with little knowledge of mutual funds in Russia, “offering such a wide range of mutual funds on the market will only complicate choice,” he said.

TITLE: Shtokman Shortlist Down to 5 Bidders
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom on Friday will name five potential partners for the giant Shtokman gas fields in the Barents Sea, a source familiar with the situation said Wednesday.
The long-awaited announcement, to be made in Moscow on Friday morning, is due just hours ahead of a meeting in New York between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. business leaders that will likely include the CEOs of the three U.S. energy majors bidding to be part of the project, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
Putin was in New York for the three-day 2005 UN World Summit, called to commemorate the United Nations’ 60th anniversary.
Putin’s meeting with the U.S. energy companies will be held “in line with boosting the energy dialogue, including joint projects in the oil and gas sector,” a Kremlin source said Wednesday, Interfax reported.
The Kremlin press service confirmed that the meeting with the U.S. businessmen was on Putin’s agenda but said no separate meeting with the energy companies was planned.
At their Bratislava, Slovakia, summit earlier this year, Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush sought to revitalize the energy dialogue between the two countries, which has been slowed for the best part of two years as a result of the fallout from the Yukos affair.
Most of the liquefied natural gas from Shtokman has been earmarked for export to the United States, which plans to boost gas imports tenfold to 100 billion cubic meters per year by 2020.
The Shtokman fields, located on the shelf of the Barents Sea in the Arctic, contain proven reserves of 3.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 31 million tons of gas condensate, while their development costs are estimated at $10 billion to $15 billion. The project will begin to deliver commercial gas some time after 2010.
Apart from the three U.S. majors, France’s Total, Japan’s Sumitomo and Mitsui, Norway’s Statoil and Norsk Hydro, Royal Dutch Shell and U.S. energy services company Sempra have said they want to be involved in Shtokman. 
Gazprom has not said exactly how many partners it will select for the fields’ development, the building of an LNG plant and an associated port. Senior Gazprom officials have said that they are looking to select two or three partners for the project. The final decision is expected by the end of the year. 
Analysts on Wednesday tipped the three U.S. majors, along with Norway’s Statoil and Norsk Hydro, as the most likely companies to make the cut.
“LNG technology, money and access to markets are the criteria. ... The Norwegians have the ongoing LNG projects, while the U.S. companies have money and access to the market,” said Stephen O’Sullivan, co-head of research at UFG.
Some analysts have also mentioned Japan’s Mitsui as a possible contender but noted that any attempts to figure out Gazprom’s choices were just guesswork.
In a separate move Wednesday, Norsk Hydro announced it would drill an exploration well with Gazprom in the Shtokman fields’ area of the Barents Sea. 
Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, said that Shtokman was a key test for how much of a share foreign investors would be allowed in Russia’s strategic reserves and what effect a future law on subsoil resources would have on foreign investment in the oil and gas sector. “This project must be looked upon as a litmus test,” Somers said.
Putin’s meeting with the U.S. energy majors should help to rebuild some of investors’ confidence in Russia after the Yukos affair, Somers said, noting that Russia had effectively taken the last two years to rethink its policy toward the state’s role in strategic sectors.
Shtokman aside, there are still plenty of projects for the U.S. energy majors to discuss with Putin, including the possible construction of LNG plants near St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Domodedovo Seen As New Hub to U.S.
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Domodedovo, Moscow’s most modern airport, is gearing up to become a major hub for trans-Atlantic flights. 
U.S. carrier Continental Airlines will begin daily service to Moscow next spring, and domestic carriers Transaero and Domodedovo Airlines are also looking to start operations to the United States, airport director Sergei Rudakov said.
“It is clear. As of next year, this continent [North America] will be involved in our operations,” Rudakov said at a news conference.
Officials from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration are scheduled to visit Russia in October to inspect the airport for compliance with its standards. 
“I think we are able to meet their requirements,” Rudakov said. 
Continental will fly from Newark, New Jersey, becoming the third carrier to operate Russia-U.S. flights, as business ties between the two countries grow. 
The KrasAir-led AirUnion alliance is also considering starting flights from Domodedovo to the United States, Rudakov said, as is Transaero.
Domodedovo Airlines, part of AirUnion, is planning a regular flight to Miami, beginning in spring next year and has already received clearance from both Russian and U.S. civil aviation authorities, said Olga Trapeznikova, spokeswoman for AirUnion.
“We already fly to Canada and are studying a few destinations in the United States, but neither New York nor Washington,” said Transaero spokesman Sergei Bykhal, refusing to elaborate.
Privately owned East Line Group, which operates Domodedovo, has invested $500 million into the airport’s development over the past few years. 
Domodedovo is set to overtake  Sheremetyevo, the country’s No. 1 airport, in passenger numbers and currently serves an estimated 13.6 million travelers, Rudakov said.
Over the past few years, Domodedovo has attracted such major international carriers as Swiss Air and British Airways, and Continental would become its 16th foreign airline.
East Line plans to more than double terminal space to 225,000 square meters in the next year and to invest a further $300 million into construction and upgrades in the next two years, said company chairman Dmitry Kamenshchik.
Also in the pipeline is the development of the area surrounding the airport, including construction of a $30 million, 300-room hotel and a $90 million toll road to the airport.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Moody’s Lifts 9 Banks
LONDON (Bloomberg) — Nine Russian banks had their long-and short-term foreign-currency deposit ratings put on review for a possible upgrade by Moody’s Investors Service.
Moody’s made the announcement after it earlier said it may upgrade the Russian Federation’s Ba1 foreign-currency bank deposit ceiling, according to a statement on the ratings company’s newswire today. Ba1 is the highest junk rating.
The banks are Sberbank; Vneshtorgbank; Gazprombank; JSCB Bank of Moscow; Russian Bank for Development; Vnesheconombank; Russian Agricultural Bank; KMB-Bank; and ZAO Raiffeisenbank Austria, Moody’s said.

Sistema Looks East
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — AFK Sistema will bid for Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon Hizmetleri AS, Turkey’s second-biggest mobile-phone operator, Vedomosti reported, citing Vladimir Yevtushenkov, Sistema’s president.
Sistema registered a unit in Turkey and is ready to pay about $3 billion for Telsim, which has about 8 million customers, the paper said.
Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s biggest mobile phone operator, and Norway’s Telenor ASA are among the companies that expressed interest.

Yukos Loses Appeal
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Yukos lost an appeal in a 62.4 billion-ruble ($2.1 billion) suit brought against the company by a former unit now owned by Rosneft, Interfax reported Thursday.
Yuganskneftegaz, which state-owned Rosneft bought in December, won the claim in May for oil Yukos received and never paid for. Yukos lost a previous appeal on July 14.

MegaFon Loses Head
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Barclays Capital Chairman Hans-Joerg Rudloff resigned from the board of MegaFon, Russia’s third-largest mobile-phone operator, as the telephone company’s shareholders battle for control.
Shareholders will vote on accepting Rudloff’s resignation on Nov. 18, MegaFon spokesman Andrei Klimov said Thursday. He declined to comment on who might replace Rudloff, who was one of seven directors, or on why the Barclay’s chairman left. TeliaSonera AB, the Nordic region’s largest phone company, owns 44 percent of Megafon.
Rudloff and former Telefonica Chairman Juan Villalonga, who quit MegaFon’s board earlier this year, left after shareholder OAO Telekominvest tried to influence them to take sides against Alfa Group in an ownership battle at the company, Vedomosti newspaper said Thursday, citing an unidentified MegaFon shareholder and a person close to the board.

Komstar Buys Local
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The largest multi-service telecom operator Komstar Unified TeleSystems acquired a 45 percent stake of local alternative telecom operator Metrocom, the company said Thursday in a statement.
The deal is worth $22.5 million to Komstar, including the refinancing of a loan taken out by former owner Antel Holdings L.L.C.
Metrocom specializes in telephone, Internet and data exchange services. It holds 14 percent of the alternative telecom market in St. Petersburg, with earning of $28 million in 2004, the statement said. 
A blocking 55 percent stake of Metrocom is owned by the city’s property committee.

TITLE: Revolution in Perpetual Motion
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: Francois Mitterrand, when he was a left-wing opposition deputy, once described the French Constitution as a permanent coup d’etat. At a later point, he himself became president of France and felt absolutely fine acting within that very same constitution.
These days, however, Mitterrand’s description increasingly suits Russia better than it does France. In the constitution devised for General de Gaulle, power was concentrated in the hands of the president, but political parties retained some sort of importance and parliament had real influence, albeit reduced. The Russian Constitution repeats all the authoritarian features of the French Constitution, but it has been carefully purged of all the elements that might lead to the emergence of a democratic process.
This system is very convenient for the people sitting in the Kremlin. But our “managed democracy” has one fatal flaw: It does not provide for any handover of power. Everybody realizes perfectly well that the elections are a fiction and their only point is to legitimize a handover of power that has already taken place within the presidential administration.
In countries that became managed democracies before Russia, the power handover occurred either through a decision by the ruling party or through direct military intervention. For example, in Mexico the Institutional Revolutionary Party controlled the elections for decades, getting 80 percent of the votes no matter how voters mark their ballots. Whoever  was made head of the party by the outgoing leader automatically became the next president. In some Asian countries it was done even more simply. Military officials would hold a private meeting and announce the name of the winning candidate to politicians.
Alas, in Russia the system of personal presidential power has been taken to an absolute, and, therefore, attempts to create a state party have not been successful. United Russia is too weak, openly unpopular and, most importantly, does not hold the reins of power. Any decision made at one of its congresses will not be viewed as final and may be challenged by other groupings. 
As for the military, not only does it not enjoy the same influence as those in Asia and Latin America, it is also not as well consolidated or politically organized as a corporation. In other words, not only can it not impose its will on other political players, it also is incapable of taking a common stance. In these conditions, the power handover depends on court intrigues, or spin-doctoring, as they are known in Russia. In 2000, this operation was carried out surprisingly smoothly, but President Vladimir Putin got into the Kremlin only after apartment buildings were blown up and the second Chechen war took place. The talent of Boris Berezovsky, the best political intriguer of our time, also played a not insignificant role.
After the first Operation Successor had been successfully carried out, people were able to rest on their laurels for a while. But 2008 is getting inexorably closer, forcing all the various groups in the ruling bureaucracy and oligarchy into painful searches for a solution. 
The very fact that Putin’s presidential mandate is running out means that a political crisis is inevitable, even if the socioeconomic situation in Russia remains stable. In 1998 and 1999, the presidential administration was supposed to put down malcontents among regional leaders and this battle was successfully continued during all of Putin’s presidency. By abolishing popular gubernatorial elections and centralizing finances, the Kremlin has solved this issue to a large degree. 
But at the same time, the presidential administration has turned into a likeness of an early 18th-century tsar’s court in St. Petersburg. Plots are hatched, people engage in machinations against each other and weave all possible sorts of intrigues of which the only aim is to undermine the positions of their partners. Undertaking Operation Successor with an administration like this will be far more difficult the second time around. 
The fact that the Kremlin has no serious opposition only complicates the issue. When they sense no threat from outside, the Kremlin bosses concentrate all their efforts on fighting each other. According to the rules of court intrigue, the victory of one faction means defeat for the other. 
The only way of making sure that everyone is kept from getting at each other’s throats is to extend the president’s term. At the very least this would put off any unpleasantness for another four years. In any case, the people are already used to Putin. But, paradoxically, it is precisely this solution — the safest from the point of view of those in power — that would mean a change in the Constitution.
Whichever way you look at it, you can only call it a revolution.

Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute for Globalization Studies.

TITLE: North Korea Needs Carrot And Stick
TEXT: Financial Times

The seemingly interminable six-party talks aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees and foreign aid are veering dangerously close to absurdity. 
Tuesday night’s meeting in Beijing was diplomatically described as the beginning of the second part of the fourth round of negotiations. But this is really the fifth installment  since the process began.
Unless you count the fact that the United States and North Korea have not gone to war in the meantime, the negotiations have achieved nothing, besides granting a tyrannical regime two years of breathing space to pursue its nuclear ambitions.
For all their inflammatory public rhetoric, the North Koreans have proved to be skilled negotiators. Their latest success is to have everyone arguing about whether Pyongyang has the right to a peaceful nuclear power program when the real issue is nuclear weapons, not nuclear electricity.
Washington’s case is almost fatally undermined by an inconsistent approach to nuclear proliferation, which the United States tolerates in Pakistan, India and Israel but rejects in Iran and North Korea. Even so, and in spite of widespread pessimism, a two-point solution to the crisis is in reach if all sides are willing to grasp it and make concessions.
First, the Chinese, South Korean and Russian governments must accept that indefinite negotiations are not acceptable because they allow Pyongyang to subvert one of the main purposes of the talks, which is verifiably to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons. They must agree on deadlines and threaten sanctions.
Second, the United States and its ally Japan should not allow themselves to be blinded by the North Korean smokescreen over peaceful nuclear programs and should make every concession they can to remove the issue from the immediate agenda.
Washington should call North Korea’s bluff on its latest demand. Christopher Hill, the U.S. negotiator, should say aloud that North Korea has as much right as any country to nuclear power — provided it rejoins the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and accepts verifiable dismantling of its weapons programs. 
The question then will be whether North Korea was ever serious about the talks in the first place.

This comment ran as an editorial in the Financial Times, where it appeared in longer form.

TITLE: Moving the Goalposts for Khodorkovsky
TEXT: Something is very wrong when you read the results of an opinion poll and think, they should have kept this quiet. That is the reaction I found myself having when I read that 28 percent of the people in Moscow’s Universitetsky District surveyed by the independent Levada Center were ready to vote for Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the upcoming by-election to fill their district’s State Duma seat. You would think the poll results would make me happy, both for Khodorkovsky, who has so many supporters, and for the Universitetsky District, which has so many politically motivated and open-minded residents — even if, with their high education level and liberal views, they are entirely atypical of Russian and even Moscow voters as a whole. And it did. But I also thought, I wish they had not published the results.
Why? Because now efforts to prevent Khodorkovsky from running for the seat will be redoubled. Let us review what has happened so far. On Sept. 2, the Central Elections Commission set the date of the special elections in two Moscow districts for Dec. 4, quashing rumors that the elections would be postponed to make sure Khodorkovsky could not run. Central Elections Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov told reporters, irritably, that he had no intention of adjusting election timing to personalities. The crux of the matter was that, while Khodorkovsky has been found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison, his sentence does stand until the Moscow City Court considers his appeal. As long as his appeal has not been heard, Khodorkovsky has the right to run for office. And since appeals generally take months to get to a hearing, the early-December date seemed to promise Khodorkovsky would run.
Not so fast. By the time Veshnyakov made his statement, Khodorkovsky’s lawyers had been notified that the appeal hearing was scheduled for Sept. 14 — not only much earlier than they expected, but, they argue, earlier than the law allows. At the time the date was set, the paperwork had not even been finalized in the lower court. Not only that, Khodorkovsky’s defense lawyers say, but the document notifying them of the hearing was signed by a judge of the lower court, who has no authority on the appeal, and was conveyed to the lawyers not by the court itself but by fax from the prosecutor’s office —which is an apparent violation not only of procedure but of simple decency. It all seemed pretty transparent: The system had shifted into gear trying to prevent Khodorkovsky from running for office, and appearances did not matter.
The courts and the prosecutor’s office are not the only ones trying to do their bit to stop Khodorkovsky. The administration of the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention facility, where Khodorkovsky is being held, appears to be holding up his application for registration as a candidate in the district. Until this bit of correspondence is cleared and delivered, Khodorkovsky’s supporters cannot start collecting the signatures required to have him registered. Meanwhile, the number of political activists who plan to take part in the campaign is growing; they include representatives of opposition organizations from every part of the political spectrum. And, if the poll is to be believed, the number of voters who support Khodorkovsky is growing as well: 28 percent is probably enough to win that election if his name is on the ballot.
What makes this story particularly poignant is that this may be the last direct election to the State Duma. Next time, the parliament will be elected by voting for parties not individuals — and these will be only the parties that clear the registration hurdles set by the draconian new law on political parties. So this may be what the last direct election on the federal level in Russia looks like: a candidate who is in jail, and a huge state machine huffing and puffing and embarrassing itself in an effort to keep him from winning.

Masha Gessen is a contributing editor at Bolshoi Gorod.

TITLE: Open season
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After summer’s slumber, St. Petersburg’s classical music titans are waking with the 2005/2006 season opening this week. 
The internationally acclaimed German violinist Julia Fischer performs at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Sept. 16 alongside the Philharmonic’s symphony orchestra under the baton of Yury Temirkanov in a program of works by Dvorak, Weber and Sibelius. 
Temirkanov, whose contract with Baltimore symphony orchestra expires at the end of this season, is to be succeeded by Marin Alsop. He is not however expected to play a more regular part in the Philharmonic’s program this year than is usual. 
Gia Kancheli’s new work “Al Niente,” dedicated to Temirkanov, will have its Russian premiere at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Sunday. Temirkanov will conduct and the performance marks Kancheli’s 70th birthday. 
Maxim Shostakovich will take the venue on Sept. 24 — Dmitry Shostakovich’s birthday — to conduct his father’s tenth symphony, Concerto for violin and orchestra No. 1 and Festive ouverture.
The Mariinsky Theater opens its 223th season on Tuesday with Alexander Galibin’s rendition of Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” with Vladimir Galuzin as Hermann and Valery Gergiev conducting. Ballet fans will be delighted to see Diana Vishnyova’s home debut in “Swan Lake” on Wednesday. Mariinsky stars Daria Pavlenko and Leonid Sarafanov dance “La Bayadere” on Sept 30. 
The Mariinsky’s pantheon of opera stars join forces in an impressive gala-concert on Thursday, featuring tenor Galuzin, baritone Vassily Gerello, soprano Anna Netrebko and bass Sergei Aleksashkin. The concert’s programme is dominated by arias from Guiseppe Verdi’s familiar operas but includes Netrebko singing Juliet’s “Waltz Song,” the most popular aria from Charles Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliet” and several other arias being performed for the first time in Russia.
Galuzin is also scheduled to make an appearance during a Puccini Masterpieces Festival taking place at the Mariinsky. On Sept. 26, he sings Calaf in “Turandot.” The following performance in the Puccini series will be Mariusz Trelinski’s “Madame Butterfly.”
The Mariinsky’s first opera premiere of the new season will be Moscow director Dmitry Bertman’s interpretation of Verdi’s “Nabucco” showing on Oct. 22, 23 and 30. 
One of the composer’s early operas, “Nabucco” was the first genuine operatic success for the then 29-year-old composer when it premiered in 1842. Among the composer’s lightest works, and arguably his most enjoyable opera, free of his later dark tones, “Nabucco” is loosely based on an Old Testament tale about the persecution of the Jews by the Assyrians. 
The Jews are eventually triumphant, and their famous chorus “Va, pensiero”, one of the opera’s highlights, was perceived in Italy as an anthem for oppressed people and was believed to encourage patriotic spirits in a country which was occupied by Austro-Hungarian Empire when Verdi wrote the opera.
Bertman’s production was originally created for Moscow’s Helicon-Opera, where it premiered in 2004 as a joint project with the Dijon Opera Theater and Paris’s Opera de Massy.
The Mariinsky’s forthcoming program of Verdi operas features Walter Le Moli’s “Rigoletto,” Andrei Konchalovsky’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” Charles Roubaud’s “La Traviata,” Elijah Moshinski’s “La Forza del Destino,” Yury Alexandrov’s “Otello” and “Don Carlos,” David McVicar’s “Macbeth” and Alexei Stepanyuk’s “Aida.”
Later in the year, Glasgow-born director McVicar will present a rendition of Benjamin Britten’s “Turn of the Screw.” It will be the Scottish director’s second collaboration with the Mariinsky, where he has already created a production of Verdi’s “Macbeth.”
McVicar’s take on Verdi’s “Scottish opera” premiered in April 2001 to  tepid reviews but this was due to uneven, shaky singing, rather than McVicar’s direction. The director exposes the crumbling back wall of the stage to extend the Mariinsky’s performance space, while the singers’ rather static stage presence is enhanced by the smart use of what resembles a giant guillotine blade that descends and ascends from time to time to create a fittingly chilly atmosphere.
In 2001, which UNESCO declared the year of Verdi to mark the 100th anniversary after composer’s death, the Mariinsky mounted works in his repertoire with shattering speed. This resulted in a hit-and-miss selection of shows, which in turn got a frosty reception in London at a Verdi Festival later in the year. Yury Alexandrov’s “Otello” was even branded as racist by a scathing British reviewer, apparently shocked by the director painting the Russian singer playing the lead in black make-up from head to toe.
McVicar, who studied acting, design and directing at the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Scottish Academy, gained international attention after the success of his version of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” for Scottish Opera. The director’s most acclaimed productions are of Bizet’s “Carmen” for the Glyndebourne festival, Verdi’s “Rigoletto” for London’s Royal Opera House, and Britten’s “The Rape of Lucretia” and Handel’s “Alcina” for the London-based English National Opera.
Already nominated for the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award several times, McVicar is already very much at home with Britten. The director’s previous engagements have included the composer’s “The Rape of Lucretia” at the English National Opera and his “Billy Budd” at the Chicago Lyric Opera.
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg’s State Cappella concert hall is back. The venue reopens on October 1 following massive repairs. 
Additionally, the St. Petersburg Conservatory begins its new season on Saturday with Tchaikovsky’s “Yevgeny Onegin,” followed by Verdi’s “La Traviata” on Friday and Rossini’s “Il Barbiero di Siviglia” on Sept. 28. “Anna Karenina,” a musical show by the late St. Petersburg composer Vladislav Uspensky can be seen at the Conservatory on Sept. 24.
Sadly, Mariss Jansons, a successful St. Petersburg conductor, who currently is music director of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, won’t be conducting in the city for yet another season. The reason behind Jansons’ absense remain obscure although the conductor is always positive about his putative return when he speaks to the Russian media.
A regular with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, Jansons is one of only three Russians — alongside conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky and violinist David Oistrakh — to be awarded membership of the Musikverein, the prestigious Viennese international music society that boasted Mozart and Beethoven as members. The maestro’s most recent performance in St. Petersburg was in May 2003, during festivities for the city’s 300th anniversary.
The idea of Jansons bringing Concertgebouw to St. Petersburg is at this stage nothing more than a vague dream. Getting sponsorship for such a tour requires a fundraising virtuoso.
“I find it tragic that there is less and less space for idealism in a world where financial issues predominate over virtually everything else,” Jansons told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview in 2003.
Russian audiences, which have largely lost connection with the international classical music mainstream, are becoming more and more depressing for Jansons, who says that today’s concertgoers have no sense of music, compared with their pre-Perestroika counterparts. 
The problem is now so urgent that the Shostakovich Philharmonic has resorted to inserting a note in its programs asking audiences not to applaud between movements and to switch off cellular phones. 
“It’s obvious that they need time, but what people are brought up with these days in musical terms is alarming,” Jansons said. “I switched on my television the other night, and saw countless ads for Nikolai Baskov singing with Montserrat Caballe. Sadly, most Russians don’t watch television critically; they just accept what they see. It’s a question of quality. I don’t mind the advertising, but presenting singers [like Baskov] as ‘international stars’ is just dishonest.”
Worse, Jansons himself is not here to make a difference.
www.mariinsky ru, 
www.philharmonic.spb.ru

TITLE: Solid foundation
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Described as the “Last Angry Band in Britain,” Asian Dub Foundation, a nine-member, multicultural collective, attacks the war in Iraq in its latest album, “Tank.” 
The title track has lyrics such as “Never left old home city Georgia / World is just called Arizona / Death metal getting louder and louder / Pumping pumping in me tank.” 
Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times by phone from London this week, guitarist, programmer and producer Steve “Chandrasonic” Savale spoke out about the album, his political stance and the forthcoming St. Petersburg concert.
“Each track has a different theme. There isn’t one particular theme that was obviously overshadowed by the Iraq war and its aftermath,” he said. 
According to Savale, Asian Dub Foundation’s approach “suggests a different feeling to music, it suggests an alternative view of the world.”
“I don’t like the rock star ideal, I find it very false and very manufactured. In modern times, particularly. I mean it is not a real existence. There really isn’t that much special about it. A lot of the time I actually think. ... I think the problem is the desire to be a star actually sidelines the music. My main objection to it is that to be a rock star now usually means you going to make really unimaginative music.”
A recent interview in The Guardian cited American free-jazz orchestra leader Sun Ra, Jamaican reggae producer Lee “Scratch” Perry and Mark E. Smith of The Fall as Savale’s heroes.
“[Smith is] an influence, yeah, but I wouldn’t say he’s very heroic,” he said with a laugh. “But an influence, definitely, huge — for me personally, not the band as a whole. I think it’s the musical approach, really. The approach to lyrics and approach to music. I like the fact it’s kind of anti-music, you know. He doesn’t really pander to any convention at all. It’s very direct. He kind of deconstructs mundanities. He sees strange alternative mutant sort of perspective of mundane.
“You know, Mark E. Smith can go to a pub and see all the kinds of strange creatures and strange intentions. I think that’s what I really like about it. He has very twisted ways of doing northern working-class life.” 
Savale is busy working on an opera about Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, commissioned by the English National Opera. The premiere is set for September 2006.
“I just bought a book about Gaddafi a long, long time ago, I read it and it seemed to me that the guy was so eccentric and his life is so interesting, that actually it would be a good subject for a musical, albeit a very controversial one,” he said.
He said he wants to portray Gaddafi in his complexity, rather than as an entirely evil figure. 
“We’ve got to have a true sense of reality about the nature of international politics and how things come together. How a society like Libya evolves, and how a figure like Muammar Gaddafi emerges. ... It may come as a surprise that there were some good things about Libya in terms of the living standards of the people. And compared to what was before, under the British-dominated monarchy. Of course, there are some absolutely terrible things, and we don’t hesitate to deal with those as well.”
Speaking about the recent London transit bombings by British-born Muslim terrorists that have challenged the idea of British multiculturalism, Savale traced the problem to British and American foreign policy.
“Certain people in the media would like to challenge the idea. That’s why I’m saying any minority group, some of whom decide to use bombings and terror to pursue their course. I don’t think it makes that much of the difference and the people on the right wing want to try and make it that. 
“I mean the real threat is the war in Iraq, and British and American foreign policy that led to the Islamists monopolizing the response. I mean that’s the real problem here. You know, this is a very minority version of Islam.  It’s the revolutionary Islamists whose ideology is disgusting and totally in opposition to the spirit of the Koran and the majority of practicing Muslims in the world are absolutely shocked by this behavior.
“But the problem is they have become to be seen by some young Muslims, particularly, as the only people who are prepared to stand up to the Bush-Blair axis and the policy in Israel and Iraq and Afghanistan and so on. And that is problem.”
Savale does not subscribe to the views of President Vladimir Putin who sees the Chechen rebels as part of an international terrorist network.
“I don’t think there’s much of a comparison between Chechnya and, say, the war in Iraq, because the problem in Chechnya seems to me to be fallout from the whole Russian nationalities problem that stretches back to before 1917,” he said.
“Chechnya is actually territorially, geographically, formerly part of the wider Russian state, the Soviet state. So I think it has a completely different history.  Obviously it suits Putin’s government to label it as Islamic extremism, and obviously Putin would find common cause with Blair and Bush, and the extremists in the Chechen leadership will find  common cause with Osama bin Laden.”
Despite the band’s work and a conversation permeated with political issues, Savale avoids labeling Asian Dub Foundation as a political band.
“Well, that’s what people say, that’s not what we say,” he said. “I mean ‘political’ doesn’t mean anything. Everything’s political. Either everything’s political or nothing’s political. The Spice Girls is political, Crazy Frog is political. Their message is one of consumption. I’m critical of acceptance of the status quo, so that’s political, isn’t it?”

Asian Dub Foundation, Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa on Saturday. 
www.asiandubfoundation.com

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Asian Dub Foundation, the London-based band that blends ragga, dub and psychedelic rock, will perform as part of the one-night Afisha Music Festival this week. The band will perform songs from the band’s fifth album “Tank,” its most recent, as well as from its predecessor, 2003’s “Enemy of the Enemy,” according to the band’s guitarist Steve “Chandrasonic” Savale, who described the show as a “mixture.” He also said that the most famous tracks from the band’s first three albums may also be performed.
Three members of the band performed as the “Asian Dub Foundation Sound System” at the Stereoleto festival last year. This caused some confusion with  some expecting a live show from the band’s full lineup, especially since adverts used a photo of the whole band. However, all nine members will be performing this time.
“With the live band, you have percussion, bass, guitar, a full live band,” said Savale. “And we don’t play the other people’s records, either. It’s all Asian Dub Foundation songs.” See interview, this page.
Asian Dub Foundation’s supporting act will be XLover, a funny international electro-pop act whose songs touch on subjects such as  toilet sex (“Lovesucker”). The London-based band, whose debut “Pleasure and Romance” came out this July, is fronted by vocalist Nina Rai, who is fast becoming a fashion icon, and features Bryan Black, who worked with Prince at Paisley Park Studios in his hometown of Minneapolis. 
The Afisha Music Festival opens at at Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa at 8 p.m. on Saturday.
The city's leading punk band PTVP will join S.O.K. and 2H Company to confront the Russian government with a Red Concert this week. 
“The idea is to show that not everybody agrees that you should go cap in hand [to the authorities],” said PTVP singer Alexei Nikonov by phone this week. “All the bands will perform anti-governmental songs at the concert.”
“The three bands play in different styles: rap, reggae and punk. These are the three most democratic styles in music, because any guy from the street can do rap, which 2H Company proves. They look like they are from [working class St. Petersburg suburb] Kupchino and it’s clear that they are boys from the street,” Nikonov said. “Punk is street music as well, and the reggae that S.O.K. performs is also street music, even if it’s southern street music.” The Red Concert will take place at Red Club on Sunday.
The Dutch Punch festival of indie music and film from the Netherlands will continue this week. Apart from “Vier Voor Vier,” an opera based on Daniil Kharms’ absurdist classic “Yelizaveta Bam,” at Shuvalovsky Palace on Sunday, De Kift will perform at Platforma on Saturday. DJ Bone will offer a mixture of garage punk and ska at City Club on Friday and Datscha on Saturday. Zea play at Platforma on Friday. 
We vs. Death and Zea will also perform at Moloko on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

TITLE: Past perfect, present continuous
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Now in its eighth year, the city’s groundbreaking Early Music Festival returns this week. Every fall, vibrant performances of its refined ensembles evoke, embody and revive the long-lost noble spirit of St. Petersburg. 
A relative newcomer on the festival calendar, the event, subtitled this year “The Extreme Edges of Baroque” kicks off on Tuesday with a concert by the flamboyant British ensemble “Red Priest.”
Established in 1997 and named after prolific Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1676-1741), who was a red-haired Catholic priest, the quartet has carefully cultivated its image as a group of “baroque punks.” 
The ensemble brings to St. Petersburg its “Nightmare in Venice” program, featuring Vivaldi’s “Nightmare Concerto,” Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill Sonata,” Jacob van Eyck’s “The English Nightingale”, Jean-Marie Leclair’s “Demon Airs and Simphonie” and Christophe Wilibald von Gluck’s ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits.”
Absurdist humour, innovative musical arrangements, whimsical dress sense and impeccable technique distinguish the ensemble.  International media have described the group’s style as “sonically supercharged,” “electrifying,” “deliciously twisted” and “immaculately forged.” 
“Mad, bad and delicously dangerous... whacky ideas, an impish sense of humor and astonishing virtuosity,” reads a review in Gramophone in 2003. 
The ensemble’s leader Piers Adams has a reputation of one of the world’s finest recorder players. The quartet also features violinist Julia Bishop, cellist Angela East and harpsichordist Howard Beach. The musicians almost always perform from memory.
Early music, embracing everything created between the medieval era through to early classicism, long remained a missing link in repertoires of Russian orchestras. The brainchild of local enhusiasts Marc de Mauny and Andrei Reshetin, the Early Music Festival was originally designed for a narrow circle of the initiated. But interest was instantly sparked, news traveled fast, and the event is now in full blossom.
During the nearly two weeks of the festival, which ends on Oct. 4 with a concert by the festival’s own Catherine the Great Orchestra in Moscow, audiences will be treated to performances of Italy’s Mala Punica, France’s L’Arpeggiata, William Byrd and Alla Francesca, and Belgium’s Ausonia. The Catherine the Great Orchestra was the first ensemble dedicated to performing early music and baroque works in contemporary Russia. 
“The Extreme Edges of Baroque” will be explored simultaneously in three cities — St. Petersburg, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod — with almost all guests traveling to all three places.
L’Arpeggiata and Alla Francesca have performed at the festival before. Founded in 1989 and led by flutist Pierre Hamon, “Alla Francesca” has the music of the 13th to 15th centuries as its main focus, and is connected with the Center for Medieval Music in Paris. The ensemble has a flexible membership varying from two to ten depending on the needs of the program.
Specializing in medieval music, Alla Francesca, a sensation during last year’s festival, is bringing its instrumental program “Istanpitta” this year which introduces festive dance music from the Visconti court to the festival. The music comes from a surviving Italian manuscript of the late-14th century discovered and still kept in the British Museum in London. Very little medieval instrumental music has survived to the present day — which makes this chance to immerse oneself in the instrumental arts of the minstrels of the royal courts especially precious. The French ensemble appears in the Glinka Philharmonic on Sept. 28. 
“Not all the pieces performed in Istanpitta come from the London manuscript,” Hamon said in an introfductory note to the program. “We have decided to broaden it to achieve a mirror effect by incorporating some examples of folk Italian tunes from the same or later period. The program also features one of the most fascinating medieval tunes, ‘Lamento di Tristano.’”
L’Arpeggiata, founded and led by Christina Pluhar since 2000, and focusing on improvisatory music of the 17th century, is presenting a much-praised program “All’Improviso” to make full use of its array of instruments, including voice, theorbo, baroque guitars, clarinet, percussion and double bass.
In this program, L’Arpeggiata is joined by jazz clarinettist Gianluigi Trovesi to juxtapose historical and modern improvisation techniques.
Despite the festival’s impressive geographical expansion, the selection of local venues this year has slightly shrunk — being limited to Glinka Philharmonic Hall, the Sheremetev Palace, the Menshikov Palace, the Maltese Cappella of the Mariinsky Palace and Peterhof’s Grand Palace. 
Thankfully, the magnificent Menshikov Palace, which beautifully suits this kind of music and has hosted several of the festival’s concerts in previous years, including a mesmerizing performance of Alla Francesca last year, hasn’t been dropped from the list. But this gracious, atmospheric palace, resembling an Italian Renaissance palazzo, is has a low profile and is rarely used as a concert venue. This time, the Menshikov Palace is hosting “Handel and his Italian Friends,” a program featuring renowned flautist Peter van Heygen, cellist Marian Minnen and harpsichordist Kris Verhelst.
The festival also features top-flight Italian ensemble Mala Punica, which performs at the Glinka Philharmonic on Oct. 2. Its Narcisso Speculando program is devoted to madrigals of the Florentine abbot Don Paolo da Firenze from the early 15th century.
Established in 1987, Mala Punica, which translates into English as pomegranate, specializes in the music of the Trecento and Ars Subtilior in Italy, a repertory which is frequently referred to as “the avant-garde of medieval Europe.”
“‘Fra duri scogli’ depicts the violence of a tragic and desperate shipreck, while ‘Un pellegrin uccel’ evokes a courtly idyll of falconry, and the subtle anxieties of a lady who has released her hawk, with layer upon layer of word-play, and a maze of references to political allegiances and the threats exchanged by rival factions in Paolo’s Florence,” the ensemble’s leader Pedro Memelsdorff said in the program introductory note.

Links: http://www.earlymusic.ru, 
www.redpriest.co.uk, www.arpeggiata.com

TITLE: Out of the shadows
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mongolia gave a name to at least one Soviet rock band. The Moscow-based Mongol Shuudan (Mongolian Post Service) took it from Mongolian stamps, popular collectibles in Soviet times. 
The Mongolian folk trio Temujin joined local rock legends Akvarium on stage in 1994. But the contemporary music scene of the Northern Asian country remains obscure for the Russian rock musicians and fans. Now make way for Britpop from Ulaanbaatar.
Tsetsenbileg Magsarjav, in St. Petersburg to visit Alexei Zubarev, Akvarium’s ex-guitarist-now-soundtrack composer, and possibly to collaborate on a track or two, belongs to a new generation of Mongolian musicians. 
Magsarjav, 25, is the vocalist with Shnunin Galt Tereg (“night train”), a band inspired by British and European bands that he grew to like as a teenager in the 1990s. The band’s 2004 debut album “Tsenher Shuvuu” (“blue bird”) shows its penchant for melody while Magsarjav’s singing in Mongolian gives it a strange, unearthly feel.
Mongolia is a vast land, almost 90 percent of which consists of pasture or desert, with a sparsely distributed population. Nearly half of its estimated 2.8 million population live in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, and two other cities. 
Long distances make Mongolia practically unreachable for Western rock acts, but Nazareth, Scotland’s forgotten hard rock band, toured the country in 2003, Magsarjav said. However, international rock music finds its way in through MTV and counterfeit CDs and DVDs manufactured in Russia and China.
“When you see a Chinese character on a record, you have no desire to buy it, because the quality is very poor — but Russian pirate disks are of good quality,” he said.
According to Magsarjav, Russian pop and rock music are popular with Mongolians. 
“First, they show MTV Russia there, and many people know [St. Petersburg rock bands] Kino, Akvarium and DDT. Kino is especially popular. From more recent music Splean and Zveri are very well known, everything that is played on MTV.” He added there is a band called Madness [sic] formed by fans of Kino’s late frontman Viktor Tsoi.
Magsarjav speaks fluent Russian. He came to the Soviet Union at the age of six and spent five years in Irkutsk, where his parents worked as teachers for the Mongolian consulate. 
But he said many Mongolians speak Russian. Just as  school students mostly studied English as a foreign language in the Soviet Union, Mongolian kids did Russian until  reforms in the 1990s when they were given the choice of studying English or Japanese.
Magsarjav said that rock bands were the subject of censorship under Mongolia’s Soviet-era communist regime and had to change lyrics that were not approved by a cultural commission. Western rock was banned.
“We don’t have very many bands that play alternative music or, say, new rock,” said Magsarjav. 
“Until the late 1990s there were few bands that played live, using guitars and the other instruments. It was mostly boy bands or girl singers.”
Currently there are dozens of bands that perform every night in tents on Ulaanbaatar’s bar and cafe scene, as well as in clubs. One of these, the FM Club, is associated with InfoRadio, a station that broadcasts concerts from the venue in full.
Alongside veteran hard rockers Hurd and Haranga, there are newer local acts including grunge rockers Nisvanis, heavily influenced by Nirvana, or Chono (“wolf”) that describes itself as punk.
“There are bands that sound like some other bands,” said Magsarjav.
“For instance, there is a band which is similar to Coldplay in every aspect. We try not to imitate.
“That’s because we listen to everything, be it pop, rock or hip-hop. If music is beautiful, we like it. Some say, ‘This music is crap, don’t listen to it,’ but I think that’s stupid. You should listen to everything.”
According to Magsarjav, Shnunin Galt Tereg’s melancholic songs deal with “love, loneliness.”
“We don’t have angry songs,” he said.
Today’s Shnunin Galt Tereg has been together for almost three years since three musicians from a former incarnation of Shnunin Galt Tereg and two members of Magsarjav’s own band Scream joined together to continue as one band.
“We started out as unprofessional, untrained musicians,” he said. “It was just several guys getting together and starting to play songs by the Western bands that we liked. We listened to a lot of Radiohead, Blur and Oasis, and we were only starting to do our own songs. Then we started to get invited to play at pubs and bars.”
Shnunin Galt Tereg was signed by Sonor, arguably Mongolia’s biggest record label, after being noticed at Playtime, a young bands’ festival in 2004. According to Magsarjav, Mongolia does not have its own CD pressing plants, and, while recording in the city’s studios, local bands have their CDs manufactured in South Korea, Singapore or China. The pressed CDs are brought into Ulaanbaatar and sold in the city’s numerous record shops.
Magsarjav said Mongolian bands mostly go abroad to perform to Mongolian communities in South Korea, Europe and the U.S.
Zubarev met Magsarjav on a vacation to Mongolia in July and appeared as a guest guitarist with Shnunin Galt Tereg at the FM Club. 
“A member of Parliament who supports democratic music came to the show and drink tea with us. He knows them all by name,” said Zubarev.
What makes Mongolian rock music different is its melodism which comes from the Mongolian national character, according to Zubarev.
“They all are very melodic,” he said.
“It may seem almost ‘pop’ to us, but for Mongolians it’s just natural. You can take any 20 people, from a kiosk, a shop or whatever, and start to sing a melody and they’ll catch it — in unison, clearly, beautifully. It will never be like that with Russians, when everybody sings in his or her own tonality and it doesn’t go together. A tough heavy rocker can take a guitar and it will sound very melodic, almost like something from The Beatles, to the Russian ear, while to him it might be a strong statement. It’s a difference of perception.”

TITLE: World Leaders Unite on Action on Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Paul Taylor and Evelyn Leopold
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — World leaders united on Wednesday on the need to ban incitement of terrorism but fell short of ambitions for a fundamental reform of the United Nations at a summit on the agency’s 60th anniversary.
The 15-member Security Council held a rare top-level session to adopt a resolution on terrorism proposed by Britain following the July 7 London bombings.
“We have a solemn obligation to stop terrorism at its early stages,” U.S. President George W. Bush told the session. “We must do all we can to disrupt each stage of planning and support for terrorist acts.”
Bush also issued a more nuanced appeal, saying that war alone would not defeat terrorism if the world ignored “the hardship and oppression of others.”
Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the gathering of kings, presidents and prime ministers that despite some progress, negotiators had failed to achieve the profound overhaul of UN policies and institutions he sought.
He conceded that in many areas, including enlargement of the Security Council, members remained sharply divided. “We have not yet achieved the sweeping and fundamental reform that I and many others believe is required,” Annan said.
“Our biggest challenge and our biggest failing is on nuclear-proliferation and disarmament,” he told the opening session of the three-day summit.
Negotiations on a summit document the world leaders are to endorse dropped disarmament proposals from Norway and South Africa, backed by about 80 nations. The United States objected to calls for nuclear disarmament but stressed the danger of terrorists and rogue states obtaining unconventional weapons.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin served a reminder of the topicality of the issue, warning Iran that it faced referral to the UN Security Council unless it met its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Tehran insists it has the right to enrich uranium for what it says is a civilian nuclear program, but Western nations suspect it of a clandestine drive to develop an atom bomb.
The foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany wanted a meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday in what could be a last-ditch effort to “test the temperature of Iran’s new leadership” on the nuclear issue, a European diplomat said.
Annan said it was a breakthrough that the international community had agreed for the first time it had a responsibility to intervene to protect civilians against genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
But billions of people still depended on radical action to achieve the Millennium Development Goals that include halving extreme poverty by 2015, Annan told the gathering, which was overshadowed by a scandal over abuses of the UN oil-for-food program in Iraq.
Bush referred obliquely to the scandal, saying the United Nations must be “free of corruption, and accountable to the people it serves” and practice the high moral standards it preached.
The president also insisted the United States was committed to the Millennium Development Goals. He pledged to drop all trade barriers if other countries did the same.
Tanzanian President Benjamin William Mkapa said it never occurred to him that the UN members would have problems in agreeing to eradicate poverty.
“When a jumbo jet crashes, we will rush in with assistance but we forget that each day 30,000 children die unnecessarily from poverty-related preventable causes — equivalent to 100 jumbo jets crashing every day,” Mkapa said.
In a veiled criticism of the United States, the world’s richest nation, Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende said the Europeans had agreed to boost development aid spending but “we need to see more equal burden-sharing”.

TITLE: Baghdad Suicide Bombers Launch Wave of Attacks
AUTHOR: By Slobodan Lekic
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Two suicide car bombers struck within a minute of each other just a kilometer apart in south Baghdad shortly before noon Thursday, killing at least seven policemen and raising the day’s bombing death toll in the capital to at least 31, police said. 
Earlier Thursday, a suicide car bombing killed 16 policemen and five civilians in the same neighborhood, signaling a new round of violence one day after residents suffered through Baghdad’s bloodiest day of the war.
At least 160 were killed and 570 wounded Wednesday in more than a dozen bombings, which the terror group al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for. Many of the victims were day laborers lured by a suicide attacker posing as an employer. 
In an audiotape posted Wednesday on an Internet site known for carrying extremist Islamic content, al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, purportedly declared “all-out war” on Shiites, Iraqi troops and the government 
The al-Zarqawi tape was a clear attempt, coming on the heels of the attacks, to create a climate of fear, sow deeper sectarian discord and scare Iraqis away from the Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution.
In claiming it carried out the Wednesday attacks, al-Qaida said it was retaliating against the Iraqi-U.S. rout of militants from their base in Tal Afar, the northern city near the Syrian border.
Wednesday’s spasm of violence terrorized the capital for more than nine hours. The first attack, at 6:30 a.m., was the deadliest: a suicide car blast which tore through the predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Kazimiyah.
In what was believed to be a new tactic, the bomber set off the explosive after calling construction and other workers to his small van and enticing them with promises of employment, a witness said. At least 112 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded, according to Health Ministry officials.
Thursday’s attacks began at 8 a.m. Four hours later the twin bombing boomed out across Baghdad.
“There was just 1 minute and 1 kilometer between the two car bombs,” said police Captain Firas Gaiti. He said at least seven policemen died and 10 were wounded.
A spokesman for the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars condemned Zarqawi’s threats and said he was trying to foment civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.
“Zarqawi speaks from the position of revenge,” Muhammed Bashar Faidi, a spokesman for the group, said on Al-Arabiya television Thursday. “This position by Zarqawi is aimed at provoking sectarian war [but] if he wants a war he should ¸ght the occupation forces and not innocents.”
In addition Wednesday, attackers killed 17 men including Iraqi drivers and construction workers for the U.S. military in a Sunni village north of Baghdad before dawn. That raised the death toll in and around the capital Wednesday to 177. A senior Health Ministry official said 570 people were wounded.

TITLE: Residents Able to Return Home
TEXT: Agence France Presse
NEW ORLEANS — The death toll from Hurricane Katrina passed 700 and the floodwaters began to recede, as New Orleans’s mayor, Ray Nagin said much of the jazz capital’s population could return next week.
“Within the next week or two we should have about 180,000 people back in the city of New Orleans,” Nagin told CNN’s Larry King Live.
He said electricity should be running, and sewers and water supplies should be working in some parts of the city.
About 485,000 people fled before or after Hurricane Katrina.
“Once they come back we’ll have the critical services for them to at least live a semi-normal life,” he said.
On Tuesday, President George W. Bush said the hurricane “exposed serious problems in our response capabilities at all levels of government.” He added: “To the extent that the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility.”

TITLE: Russians No Stranger to Victory at Roland Garros
AUTHOR: By Patrick Vignal
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — Not only will the French hosts feel right at home during this weekend’s Fed Cup final but also their Russian visitors will be at their ease at Roland Garros. 
France’s formidable singles line-up of Amelie Mauresmo and Mary Pierce will be firm fans’ favourites at the venue of the French Open, but Roland Garros is a happy hunting ground for the Russians. 
Anastasia Myskina won the French Open last year, beating Yelena Dementyeva in the final and the pair will be back on the same center court this weekend and are likely to face Mauresmo and Pierce in the opening singles. 
“Of course playing at home is an advantage but I think it will be very tight,” said France captain Georges Goven. 
“We have Amelie Mauresmo and Mary Pierce but Russia have Anastasia Myskina and Yelena Dementyeva, which is not bad either. 
“Myskina has not been quite as strong this year but everybody knows how well she can play on clay. As for Dementyeva, she’s a great competitor. Beating her is never an easy task.” 

SPECIAL PLACE 
France, playing their third successive final, fell 3-2 to the same opponents in last year’s final in Moscow. 
But Roland Garros is a special place for Pierce, who lifted the French Open trophy there five years ago and played the final again this year. 
Mauresmo does not like it so much, having often cracked under pressure and never gone beyond the quarter-finals at the French Open. 
The former world No. 1 , however, can rely on her Fed Cup experience, having won her last 15 matches in the competition. 
“This is not the French Open,” she said. “It’s a totally different context and it will be a different atmosphere. 
“This is a treat. We’re all looking forward to it.” 
Russia captain Shamil Tarpishchev also named Dinara Safina and Vera Duchevina, keeping faith with the team that beat the United States 4-1 in the semi-finals in Moscow in July. 

NO SHARAPOVA 
The weekend tie would have been even more glamorous had not world No. 1  Maria Sharapova turned down an invitation to play for Russia this year. 
Mauresmo and Pierce will be supported by Nathalie Dechy and Tatiana Golovin with Virginie Razzano as first replacement. There is a question mark on Pierce’s fitness after her exhausting run to Sunday’s U.S. Open final, in which she was crushed by Belgium’s Kim Clijsters. 
“The group’s main strength is that they’re all burning to play,” said France captain Georges Goven. 
“Everybody’s on the same level. Of course Amelie and Mary are favorite to play singles but the others are ready to step in at any time.” 
Pierce has not been as reliable as Mauresmo in Fed Cup action lately but the 30-year-old, back at her best after a string of injuries and setbacks, is the only player to have contributed to both France’s triumphs, in 1997 and 2003. 
Goven said that playing in Paris and at Roland Garros for the first time in 37 years should be a great morale booster for the home team. 
“The girls are very excited,” he said. “They keep talking about it. We have been told that we will probably play to a packed house. It will be a real treat for the team and a bonus for women’s tennis.”

TITLE: Terek Team Asks Putin To Stop Relegation
AUTHOR: By Sonia Oxley
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: A Chechen football club facing relegation from the Russian Premier League has asked President Vladimir Putin for help, saying its survival would boost peace efforts in the volatile Caucasus region. 
Terek Grozny, sitting at the bottom of the table with eight games left, accused referees of trying to ensure that the club was relegated from the top division by repeatedly ruling against it. 
“Today, Terek are more than a team for the Chechen Republic,” the club wrote in an open letter to Putin, published on its web site www.terek-grozny.ru. 
“It is annoying that the fate of a whole nation, its mood, is decided by referees. … Vladimir Vladimirovich, we ask for your intervention in the situation.” 
Although the Kremlin has yet to respond to the letter, the pleas may strike a chord with Putin, who has been keen to stress that normality is returning to the war-ravaged region. 
The club, run by pro-Kremlin officials, has been seen as a political tool to improve Moscow’s image in the region and its successes on the pitch are greeted with much interest. Last year, Putin met the team after they won the Russian Cup, an honor normally reserved for national teams. 
Terek, who play their home matches in Pyatigorsk — a five-hours drive from Grozny — because there is nowhere suitable in their home city following a decade of war, asked Putin to arrange for their remaining games to be refereed by foreigners to ensure fairness. 
The letter, signed by the club’s management, players and fans, listed refereeing decisions that it believed had cost them matches this season, their first in the top flight. 
“At the beginning, we thought this was a refereeing error. Now, when over seven months these errors repeat themselves from game to game, we have no doubt: it is a purposeful attack on the Chechen team by the refereeing body,” the letter said. 
“It is obvious that in Russian football there are people who are interested in Terek leaving the elite of Russian football and returning to the first division.” 
The disciplinary branch of the Russian Football Union declined to comment, saying it had not received a copy of the letter. 
After being disbanded in the early 1990s because of the political situation, the club was resurrected five years ago by then-Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov. 
The Pro-Moscow Kadyrov was assassinated in May 2004 and his son Ramzan took over as club president. 
“In reviving the team in 2000, the president of the Chechen Republic, Akhmad Kadyrov set a goal — through sport, through culture — to bring peace to the Chechen land,” the letter said.

TITLE: Slutskaya, Plyushenko To Skate in Olympic Arena
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TURIN, Italy — Figure skaters Irina Slutskaya and Yevgeny Plyushenko will take part in an exhibition on Sept. 24 in the arena that will be used for the upcoming 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. 
The Russians, both silver medalists at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, will be joined by Stephane Lambiel, who won Switzerland’s first men’s figure skating world title in more than 50 years in Moscow in March. 
Turin’s new Palavela hosted the European short track and figure skating championships last winter and organizers of the “Gran Gala Lancia Ice” exhibition are hoping to duplicate the large crowds that showed up for those events. 
Also scheduled to participate are Italy’s 2002 Olympic ice dancing bronze medalists Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio, and 18-year-old Carolina Kostner, one of Italy’s top medal hopes for Turin and winner of the bronze medal at the world championships earlier this year. 
Only a few other test events remain for the Feb. 10-26 games: a hockey tournament at the nearly completed Palasport Olimpico and the completed Torino Esposizioni on Nov. 9-12, and World Cup speedskating at the nearly complete Oval Lingotto from Dec. 9 to Dec. 11. 
The Turin Games run from Feb. 10 to Feb. 26. 
Officially, it will remain a secret until the opening ceremony on Feb. 10, but Alberto Tomba is the odds-on favorite to light the Turin torch. 
Italy’s former skiing great even hinted recently that he could be the last torchbearer. “The first torchbearer will be the Italian winner of the Olympic marathon [Stefano Baldini], while the last will be a surprise. Maybe it will be me,” Tomba said earlier this month at a Turin Games promotional event in Berlin. 
Tomba, who will turn 39 in December, became the first Alpine skier to win medals in three different Olympics — Calgary in 1988, Albertville in 1992 and Lillehammer in 1994. He won three golds and two silvers. 
Baldini, who won the marathon in Athens last year, will be the first torchbearer when the Turin relay begins in Rome on Dec. 8. 
There will be 10,001 torchbearers in all to carry the torch through every region and province in Italy.

TITLE: Russian Pole Vaulter Isinbayeva Named World Athlete of the Year
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MONACO — Yelena Isinbayeva and Kenenisa Bekele were named as the International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) female and male athlete of the year for the second consecutive season last weekend. 
Ethiopian Bekele, 23, retained the world 10,000 meters title in Helsinki last month after winning the world cross country championships long and short course titles for the fourth successive year. 
He also broke his own world 10,000 meters record by nearly three seconds at the Brussels Golden League meeting. 
Isinbayeva, also 23, became the first woman to jump 5 meters at the London grand prix then set her 18th world record with 5.01 meters after winning her first world title in Helsinki.