SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1111 (77), Friday, October 7, 2005
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TITLE: Low-Key Birthday For Putin
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW —With little of the hype that characterized the run-up to his 50th birthday, President Vladimir Putin was set to celebrate his birthday Friday with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in what could well be Schroeder’s final foreign visit as his country’s leader.
Schroeder arrived in St. Petersburg on Thursday evening on a private visit as a guest of Putin, who turns 53 on Friday.
Spokesmen for the Kremlin and the German Embassy in Moscow said Thursday that they did not know what celebratory events were planned, but Friday is the second and final day of a Central Asian Cooperation Organization summit, which has brought leaders from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the city.
German Embassy spokesman Wolfgang Bindseil said that while Schroeder’s visit was a private one, Putin and the chancellor might address Russian-German relations at a news conference scheduled for Friday evening.
Putin was the guest of honor at Schroeder’s 60th birthday party in April 2004.
Negotiations between Schroeder and opposition leader Angela Merkel, who are competing to lead Germany’s next government after elections last month which saw Schroeder’s government narrowly defeated, appeared set to last through the weekend, The Associated Press reported Thursday.
Schroeder will return to Germany early Saturday morning, Bindseil said.
There has been markedly less pomp in the run-up to Putin’s birthday compared to the political frenzy to congratulate him that marked his 50th birthday three years ago, which Putin spent at a CIS summit in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital.
In September 2002, the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper asked what was the country’s biggest political problem. “Not the 2003 budget, not Chechnya and not the fires in the Moscow region,” the newspaper wrote, but “what to give V. Putin for his 50th birthday.”
According to media reports, Putin is not a big fan of ostentatious presents, though he did accept a diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft after a meeting with U.S. business executives in St. Petersburg in June. Kraft later said it was a present, though it was speculated initially that Putin pocketed the ring when Kraft merely meant to show it to him.
Bindseil said he did not know what Schroeder planned to give Putin as a present, and a Kremlin spokesman said he could not comment on other gifts Putin was to receive.
The press service for Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said he planned to give Putin something nice, “but also useful,” Moskovsky Komsomolets reported Thursday.
Meanwhile, opposition groups are planning to hold a small demonstration Friday evening in Moscow to commemorate Putin’s birthday. Members of the Garry Kasparov-led United Civil Front and the youth group My, or We, plan to don Putin masks and prisoners’ caps and carry birthday cakes, while giving people a chance to write postcards to Putin, Natalya Alexandrovskya, head of UCF’s Moscow branch, said Thursday.
“The prisoners’ caps are a symbol of what is increasingly becoming a police state,” Alexandrovskaya said. “These days anybody can land up in prison.”
The demonstration will start at about 6:30 p.m. near Pushkin Square, Alexandrovskaya said.
A Kremlin spokesman said those wishing to send gifts to Putin could send letters and packages to the postal address listed on the Kremlin’s web site. He said he did not know if any presents had arrived as of Thursday.

TITLE: Kremlin Moves In On Yukos Yet Again
AUTHOR: By Elif Kaban
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Kremlin has moved in for the kill at fallen oil firm Yukos with a new money-laundering probe aimed at its imprisoned founder, while an international scramble intensifies for what is left of the company’s assets.
Raids this week at the Amsterdam and Moscow offices of Yukos as part of an investigation into an alleged scheme to launder $7 billion signaled an escalation in Russia’s attack against Yukos, which it has already crushed with a $27 billion back-tax claim, legal experts said.
“One would think they would just give up at this point,” said Jamie Firestone, a lawyer at the Moscow office of U.S. law firm Firestone Duncan.
“Most of us would just wish this thing to end as soon as possible, but it looks like the Russians are going for the maximum damage for everyone involved,” he said.
“The government is bent on the utter destruction of everybody and everything that had anything to do with Yukos.”
The raids contrast starkly with the market-friendly way Russia has announced plans for gas producer Gazprom to buy No. 5 oil firm Sibneft, which investors cheered as the dawn of a less aggressive Kremlin approach to business.
In May when Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Yukos’s founder and former CEO, was convicted of fraud and tax evasion, a prosecution spokesman promised that new charges would soon be brought against him, which would accuse him of other crimes.
On Wednesday, Yukos’s Dutch unit Yukos Finance B.V. was raided in Amsterdam, and in Moscow at least five offices including banks linked to the company were raided in a probe into an alleged scheme to spirit $7 billion out of Russia. 
Included in the raids was the office of one of Khodorkovsky’s lawyers, Anton Drel.
Drel told Reuters the search lasted until midnight. “I don’t even know what they seized. It’s all political,” he said.
The head of economic security at Russia’s Interior Ministry, Lieutenant General Sergei Meshcheryakov, told Interfax news agency that a number of banks were under investigation, including foreign banks with Russian correspondent accounts.
Khodorkovsky’s lawyers said prosecutors launched the searches to keep their politically ambitious client under control in a Moscow pre-trial center rather than move him to a penitentiary with a milder regime outside the capital.
Khodorkovsky, who says he is the victim of Kremlin intrigue, held a week-long hunger strike and launched a failed attempt to run for parliament after being sentenced on May 31.
“The authorities are so scared of Khodorkovsky that they don’t want him out of their sight,” Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and now an opposition figure, told Kommersant daily.
As creditors are pressing and huge tax claims are outstanding, the Yukos saga appears to be entering its finale, observers say. 
How the end-game proceeds may depend on a ruling next week by a court in Amsterdam, where Western bank creditors are chasing Yukos for $475 million of bad debts.
At stake in Amsterdam is the last remaining choice morsel in the Yukos carcass, its Dutch-based 53.7 percent stake valued at over $1 billion in Lithuanian oil refinery Mazeikiu Nafta, the biggest employer in the Baltic state.
The court is due to rule on Oct. 13 on whether to uphold a London High Court ruling in favor of a consortium of banks including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank AG and France’s Societe Generale.
With most Yukos assets in Russia frozen and its bank accounts seized, the banks are seeking to force Yukos to sell its Dutch-based assets.
In a parallel court action, Yukos’s main shareholder, Menatep Group, is also chasing the wealth tied up in the Dutch holding firm. 
Menatep is suing its own company — in its capacity as a creditor — in a bid to retrieve $650 million.
Mazeikiu Nafta, with the only refinery in the Baltic states, an oil export terminal and Lithuania’s pipeline system, is 40.66 percent owned by the Lithuanian state, which has an effective veto on who buys control from Yukos.

TITLE: Top Composer Takes On the Future of Music
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia’s “most playable living composer” was appointed honorary professor to St. Petersburg’s prestigious Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory on Thursday in a move he hopes will inspire a new generation of young musicians after years of post-Soviet drift in the classical music scene.
On the occasion of his appointment, Rodion Shchedrin spoke of both his “pride” and “confusion” about the future of composing and musicianship in Russia.
“I don’t understand it anymore. I meet the most gifted students during masterclasses and I can bet they are bound to have a top-flight career. But five years go by and I see no mention of them anywhere. They vanish,” Shchedrin said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. 
“The ship of art in the modern world has almost capsized. It is especially important to encourage emerging talent, when there are so many impudent and pushy ignoramuses who go places.”
Born in Moscow in 1932, Shchedrin, a member of the Bavarian Music Academy, currently resides in Munich with his wife, the internationally acclaimed ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who celebrates her 80th birthday in November.
His most famous works include “Carmen Suite For Strings and Percussion,” the operas “Dead Souls” and “The Enchanted Wanderer” and the ballets “The Little Humpbacked Horse,” “Anna Karenina” and “The Seagull.”
In 1994, Shchedrin and Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich co-authored the opera “Lolita” inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s novel of the same name. The premiere of the work in Stockholm caused heated debate.
Shchedrin says he is inspired by his new status at the conservatory. 
“Every time we wander through Salzburg at night, we feel spiritual presence of Mozart,” Shchedrin said. “But in St. Petersburg, there is a fascinating and thrilling concentration of the brightest musical names — Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich — and the city oozes history. It is a sacred place for every musician.”
The composer confirmed that he plans to give master-classes at the conservatory but wasn’t able to say when. Prior to his current appointment, Shchedrin gave a master-class at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in February of this year.
Russia’s artistic environment has changed drastically since the time, when Shchedrin was an aspiring composer.
State subsidies in the Soviet era enabled composers to regularly publish scores and have works performed, broadcast and recorded. But state funds were largely given to works connected to Soviet themes, such as the anniversary of the October Revolution, Lenin’s birthday, or a Communist Party Congress.
Prominent St. Petersburg composer Andrei Petrov says that such works were not necessarily artistically worthless. 
Aram Khachaturian’s ballet, “Spartacus,” produced in 1954, was perceived as a story of a people’s liberation movement. 
“And there were masterpieces, such as Dmitry Shostakovich’s Lenin symphony, but they enjoyed tremendous promotion,” said Petrov, who celebrates his 75th birthday with a series of concerts and a big festival this autumn. “But naturally, a composer inspired by [dissident poet] Boris Pasternak’s verse would be likely to face problems.”
Today young composers find it hard to get heard at all.
The St. Petersburg Conservatory, like the Vaganova Ballet Academy and major musical theaters, has suffered from a “brain drain” of talented musicians to foreign countries. To combat this, the conservatory has introduced a private education system, and has been critisized for accepting paying students who do not demonstrate the level of musicianship formerly required. 
Financial hurdles also prevent the conservatory from promoting emerging talent. Although new music is being performed at musical festivals, Russian concert organizations, including the conservatory, rarely record or broadcast on television. State funding has proved irregular.
“You need to pay for the venue and for the orchestra, and in the end the whole Herculean enterprise is completely utopian,” Shchedrin said.
Andrei Petrov shares Schedrin’s concerns.
“The liberty we enjoy now is a genuine relief, but financially the situation is grim,” Petrov added. “Out of 130 maestros in the St. Petersburg Union of Composers, no more than 10 live on the money they earn from composing.”
Shchedrin said it is important for an artist to believe in their good star and be always ready to make use of a sudden opportunity.

TITLE: Moscow Keeps Out Of Iran Nuclear Negotiations
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday dismissed speculation that Moscow might join talks between Iran and European negotiators on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.
“As for relations between the European trio and Russia, we are not expecting any change in these relations. There is no need for that,” Sergei Lavrov told reporters. “From the very beginning of the trio’s work in its talks with Iran, Russia has closely interacted in this process and this cooperation is continuing now.” 
“We are ready to make our contribution to this process, working in parallel, to achieve a result that is in everyone’s interest,” Lavrov said. 
His comments followed a meeting earlier in the day with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei. Their talks apparently addressed ways of resuming the talks between Britain, Germany and France, negotiating on behalf of the European Union, and Iran, which collapsed in August after Iran resumed uranium reprocessing work. 
Lavrov had strongly praised ElBaradei, Russian news agencies reported. 
“You have recommended yourself as a thoughtful worker who is guided by the IAEA charter documents, in that way guaranteeing maximum efforts so that the agency’s activities would not be politicized,” Lavrov said, RIA-Novosti reported. 
ElBaradei said he wanted to discuss creation of a system to ensure the peaceful uses of atomic energy and lower the risks of its improper use, RIA-Novosti reported. 
ElBaradei said Wednesday that he was optimistic the talks between Iran and the EU negotiators would resume within a month, but voiced his belief that a third party was needed to provide a “face-saving” way out of the impasse. That comment, and the fact he made it in Moscow, had increased speculation that Russia might be used as an intermediary.
Washington says Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at producing a nuclear bomb, but Tehran insists its program is intended to produce electrical power.

TITLE: U.S. Widens Adamov Probe
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A delegation from the U.S. Attorney’s Office was in Moscow on Thursday for confidential talks about the case of former Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said Thursday.
A Swiss court ruled Monday to extradite Adamov to the United States, shunning a rival extradition request from Russia. 
Embassy spokeswoman Courtney Austrian said she couldn’t say what was discussed or the length of the visit. 
An unnamed source in the Prosecutor General’s Office said that the delegation, led by U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, was meeting with representatives of the office, Interfax reported.
“In the course of talks, questions are being discussed in connection with the investigation of the criminal case against Adamov, as well as his possible extradition from Switzerland,” the source said.
The prosecutor’s office on Thursday referred questions to the Foreign Ministry, which refused to comment.
Adamov is accused by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of embezzling $9 million of U.S. aid intended to improve Russian nuclear security during his tenure as nuclear power minister from 1996 to 2001.
Adamov’s lawyer Timofei Gridnev said by telephone Thursday that he had no information about the meetings, but added, “If they are taking place, I would consider it a positive development.”
Gridnev said that Adamov’s legal team had not yet decided whether to appeal the Swiss Ministry of Justice’s decision earlier this week to extradite Adamov to the United States rather than to Russia. They have until Saturday to do so.
“We’re carrying on consultations and studying the arguments presented by the Swiss Ministry of Justice. A final decision will be made soon,” Gridnev said.
If extradited to the United States, Adamov will be represented in U.S. courts by Lanny Breuer, a onetime lawyer of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Breuer’s office said Tuesday.

TITLE: Putin Briefed by U.K. Anti-Terror Officials
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LONDON — President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged Wednesday to increase their joint efforts to combat terrorism during talks held at a high-security underground command center.
The two leaders were briefed by top British police and security officials in the underground meeting room of the civil contingencies committee, known as COBRA — an acronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. 
“Russia and the Russian people, like Britain and the British people, know the threat which global terrorism poses. But we also share the same determination not to be defeated by it,” Blair told reporters after the meeting. 
Putin is the first foreign leader to be invited into the COBRA meeting room, which is used by Blair to coordinate the response to disasters and emergencies.
The two sides said in a joint statement they had “resolved to continue to strengthen our partnership, in particular by increasing practical cooperation between our security agencies.” 
Putin said the Russian delegation was pleased with the talks. “We both understand the global challenges and threats of today, including that of terrorism,” he said. Putin said Wednesday he was grateful for British officials’ candor, especially in “sensitive” areas of their discussions.
The two leaders also discussed trade and energy on the second day of Putin’s trip to London. On Tuesday, Blair and Putin headed talks at an EU-Russia summit. On Wednesday, the leaders stressed Russia’s importance as an energy supplier to Britain. Putin said he hoped Gazprom would not take long to complete its share liberalization, opening ownership to foreign investors. 
In a ceremony at Blair’s office, Putin also bestowed medals on the British team that used a Scorpio underwater robotic vehicle to free a Russian mini-submarine and its seven crew members in August. It was the first time Russian service medals have been awarded to foreign military personnel. “I would like to thank you for the work done, for the mission accomplished in the rescue of the Russian seamen,” Putin said.
Royal Navy Commander Ian Riches, who led the rescue operation, received the Order for Maritime Services. 

n A deal announced Tuesday to will make travel easier between Russia and the EU will cover all EU countries except Britain, Ireland and Denmark, which have their own visa regimes, the European Commission’s Moscow delegation spokesman Sean Carroll said Wednesday.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the visa deal involved 11 EU countries, citing Britain’s Foreign Office.
Work on the agreement, reached at the EU-Russia summit in London, will begin Oct. 13, Carroll said. Justice ministers from EU countries and Russia will convene to initial the agreement, starting the signing and ratification process.
The simplified visa process will apply to both Russians traveling to the EU and EU nationals traveling to Russia, and will include a reduction of visa fees, Carroll said. For several categories of frequent travelers, such as businessmen, students, and journalists, it will become easier to obtain multi-entry visas, Carroll said.	
(AP, Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: Afghan War Film Breaks Box Office Records
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Afghan War epic “9 Rota,” or “Company 9,” earned $9 million in its first six days, shattering Russia’s opening-week box office records for both domestic and foreign films, the film’s distributor said Wednesday.
The Russian blockbuster by director Fyodor Bondarchuk surpassed previous opening-week records of $6.5 million, set by Hollywood-produced “The Matrix Revolutions,” and $6 million, set by the Russian historical drama “Turetsky Gambit,” according to distributor Gemini Film International.
“We expected good results, but not this good,” said Vadim Smirnov, a Moscow-based spokesman for the CIS distributor. “The results so far have surpassed even our best-case scenario.”
The figures for “Company 9” include box-office receipts in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
The film, which opened on Sep. 29, is based on the true story of a company of Russian soldiers abandoned in the Afghan mountains who fight on obliviously after the end of the decade-long war. While the movie includes big-budget battle sequences, it also contains echoes of past war films such as the 1959 “Destiny of a Man,” directed by Bondarchuk’s father, Sergei Bondarchuk.
The “Company 9” opening-week record is the latest in a series of recent highs for the domestic film industry. The 2004 special-effects blockbuster “Nochnoi Dozor,” or “Night Watch,” made $5.3 million in its first week, ultimately collecting a then-record $17 million. The film had a budget of $4 million.
Its success was topped in March of this year by “Turetsky Gambit,” or “Turkish Gambit,” a screen adaptation of a novel by Boris Akunin. Revenues topped out at $20 million, while the budget was reported at $5 million.
Production costs for “Company 9” were not immediately clear. Gemini Films said the film cost $9 million, while one industry insider cited previous reports of $3.5 million.
The film’s advertising budget has also been a matter of dispute. Vedomosti put it at $3.7 million, while Smirnov insisted it was no more than $1.5 million.
“In the West, published figures like these are a bit more reliable,” said Alexander Semyonov, editor of Kinobusiness Segodnya and Russian Film Business Today. “But there’s no question that ‘Company 9’ is a well-made film and the advertising campaign was handled very professionally.”
The film was co-produced by the production company Slovo and Alexander Rodnyansky, director of the entertainment channel STS, which Smirnov said gave the movie “a very big engine in terms of publicity.”
“Night Watch” and “Turkish Gambit” were produced by state-owned Channel One.

TITLE: Underwear Innovations To Kindle ‘Bra Wars’
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Russian market for women’s underwear is to undergo a technological revolution, as foreign producers scramble to pitch their wares a price and a cut above low-cost Asian imports.
Top European underwear manufacturers Laume and New Rosme said they will set store by innovative technology so as to maintain the company’s Russian sales, which this year are expected to be between 10 percent and 20 percent higher than in 2004, the companies said Tuesday.
The figures run in contrast to the decline in the fortunes of the domestic women’s underwear industry, which recorded a 20 percent plummet in sales last year, as Chinese imports dominated the economy-class market sector, experts said.
Lavia-based Lauma, for which Russian represents 45 percent of total European sales, said it will appeal to the mainstream and premium-segment Russian consumer by launching technologically advanced products such as the Body Care line.
Developed together with European textile producer Invista, which owns the LYCRA, SUPPLEX and TACTEL brands, the line will soon offer Russian women underwear covered with micro-capsules of moisturizing cream and perfumed fragrances, said Edgars Stelmahers, executive director of Lauma JSC.
Stelmahers said such high-end products would boost the company’s Russian sales by 10 percent to be worth 4 million euros ($4.8 million) in 2005. New Rosme’s executive director, Svetlana Fildmane, said she expected a sale growth of 20 percent this year.
The foreign makers see a future sales boost in distribution through department stores, a retail format just emerging in Russia, Filmane said.
“We think this new technology has come to Russia to stay,” said Leonid Nefyodov, Invista’s director for East Europe. “It will occupy a market share like the warm and cool-effect LYCRA fabric which holds 20 percent to 30 percent of the sportswear goods segment,” he said.
The optimism of foreign manufacturers and producers had the backing of industry experts.
“LYCRA performed a revolution in the textile industry 40 years ago: It changed the underwear, tights and sportswear markets. Textile combined with nano-technologies will define the industry’s future,” Andrei Magarik, editor-in-chief and publisher of the specialized magazine Rynok Lyogkoi Promyshlennosti (Light Industry Market), said Tuesday.
Whatever the call of the future, market researchers say that most Russian women are not ready to splash out on expensive underwear, because of low incomes.
Price sensitive consumers largely neglect product quality, said this month’s report by the Symbol-Marketing agency, which traced consumer trends on the Russian underwear market.
Published in October’s Modny Magazin (Fashion Magazine), the report said 70 percent of Russian women of middle and lower class picked price over quality.
Research by Komkon statistical agency, conducted this February among women older than 16, concluded that the average Russian consumer was more popular with cheaper underwear brands, such as Belorus’ Milovitsa and Cheryomushki, bought by 10.8 percent and 3.9 percent of those surveyed.
Meanwhile global underwear giants Wonderbra, Lilly and Triumph were only recognized by about 10 percent of Russian women, with less than 2 percent of those claiming to have bought the foreign brands.
Up to 95 percent of the lower-price segment is occupied by Chinese and Korean producers, with the rest being shared by manufacturers from Russia and Belarus, the research said.

TITLE: Medical Budget Gets Healthy Debate
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city’s spending on state health insurance will increase by 1.5 billion rubles ($52.5 million) next year. Market insiders, however, say the extra money will hardly solve many of the problems in the city’s medical sphere. Even with the increase, the total sum allocates an average of $70 per citizen a year.
St. Petersburg’s budget for 2006 budget was approved this week, confirming that up to 9.4 billion rubles ($329.2 million) of municipal money will go to the regional fund for state health insurance. 
The city’s governor, Valentina Matviyenko, said Wednesday that she saw the budget increase as vital to improving the performance of the fund.
Marina Leskova, press secretary at the regional fund for state health insurance, said that by Oct. 1 in St. Petersburg 4.8 million people were registered as able to get free medical treatment from the state (the figure includes residents of the Leningrad Oblast working in St. Petersburg).
The budget allocation, divided by the number of potential recipients, leaves less than 2,000 rubles ($70) per citizen to cover all medical treatment for a year.
The lack of funding means state clinics suffer a deficit of specialists, materials and equipment, and as a result patients are often forced to pay to get treatment quickly “out of turn” or with the private sector.
Moreover, the small funding limits the number of medical services state health insurance can cover. “For example, such policies already do not include dentistry. Many expensive analyses are unavailable free of charge,” said Alexei Lazutin, clientele network manager at EuroMed Clinic.
The failing of the state healthy sector does not necessarily mean a direct benefit for companies involved in private health business.
Only two or three people out of 10 who use private medical services take out private health insurance, Lazutin said.
According to Progress Neva life insurance society, insurance company pay-outs account for only 40 percent to 70 percent of private clinics’ revenue, and 20 percent to 30 percent of the revenue at state clinics which have a commercial department.
“I think this situation is absolutely inadequate. The optimal share of insured clients in commercial clinics should be about 80 percent, which would contribute to an improvement in medical services, controlled by the insurance companies,” Lazutin said.
Andrei Maidanik, deputy director of Progress Neva, said the difficulties patients face with receiving free services has translated into a steady rise in the number of private healthy insurance policies sold.
At present, about 30 percent of the working population has taken out a private health policy, he said. An important selling point, insurers point out, is that the private policies include almost all medical services, with the exception of cover for major operations, such as for patients who suffer a stroke or a heart attack.
The regional fund for state health insurance says it will continue to inform citizens of the possibilities they have of free treatment. In 2001, the fund even set up a special department to investigate complaints and disputes arising from people being sold “out of turn” medical services instead of regular, free treatment, Leskova said.
The insurers, however, point out they are not against the state providing free health care. It’s just that it can only work for certain levels of society, Maidanik said.
“The state should retain free services for the socially vulnerable groups — pensioners and children. Working people should have high-quality free medical treatment in emergency cases and for difficult illnesses. For the rest, it’s more proper to deal with private insurance,” he said.

TITLE: Farmers Struggle to Earn as Fuel Costs Rise
AUTHOR: By Anastasiya Lebedev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev on Wednesday called for more state assistance for the agriculture industry, which is being hit hard by skyrocketing fuel prices.
High fuel costs have cost the industry 20 billion rubles ($700 million) so far this year and will make it almost impossible for it to make a profit despite increased production, Gordeyev said.
The minister also expressed concern about next year’s harvest, which could decline because this year’s dry fall is currently interfering with the sowing of winter wheat. Agriculture accounts for 5.5 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product.
Farmers and other rural producers are feeling the pinch, having cut the amount they charge for grain and other products while their own costs are rising.
The cost of food to consumers has increased 7.1 percent so far this year, while inflation is at 8.6 percent, Gordeyev said.
The industry’s hands are tied in terms of increasing prices because of the effect on Russian consumers, who spend 46 percent of their income on food on average, the minister said.
Gordeyev said that he hoped the government would now step in to provide additional assistance to the agriculture sector to help it cope with increased fuel expenses. The fuel crisis is just one of many major problems facing agriculture, the minister said.
Depopulation in rural areas is an issue, with the country’s rural population falling by 1 million over the past four years.
The cost of modernizing farms is also an issue. Gordeyev estimates up to 45 percent of farms suffer “chronic” losses, making investment in machinery impossible.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: CIT Collects on Fund
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Investment fund manager CIT Finance has collected 21.8 million rubles ($780,000) for its Russian Metallurgy and Auto industry mutual fund, which closed on Sept. 29, the company said in a statement.
The fund is based on second tier bonds of domestic steel and auto manufacturers, capitalizing on the increased focus the two industries have received in the last year.
“The forming of the fund took just two days but attracted a high volume of investments, which shows that Russian investors are in need of new industry-related strategies,” the statement said.

Reserves at Top Level
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s foreign currency and gold reserves rose to record $159.6 billion, increasing for a sixth-straight week, the longest consecutive gain since at least May.
The reserves climbed by $3.4 billion in the week to Sept. 30, the central bank said Thursday in an e-mailed statement. That’s the biggest weekly gain since the week ended Feb. 18. The previous record level for reserves was $156.2 billion as of Sept. 23.

FDI in Russia Doubles
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia lured $10.7 billion in foreign direct investment in the first half of the year, more than double the $4.5 billion it received in the same period last year, the daily Vedomosti said.
The investment figure equals 3.2 percent of gross domestic product, higher than the 2 percent figure for the first half of 2004, Vedomosti said.

TITLE: Finns Seek to Build On Trade Relations
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — As Russia is set to become Finland’s No. 1 trade partner this year, the Finnish business elite is calling for both countries to intensify their cooperation in everything from forestry to high-tech.
But if Finns are to latch on to Russia’s growth, they need to dispel some nagging stereotypes about their giant neighbor, according to Finland’s first economic strategy paper on Russia.
“We are seeking to shift from mere trade relations to the integration of our economies,” said Esko Aho, the president of Finnish think tank SITRA, at the presentation of the paper in Moscow on Wednesday. “Russia has become Finland’s largest trade partner. If we had said that back in 1998, we would have been considered utopians,” said Aho, a former Finnish prime minister. 
Last year, Russia was Finland’s third-largest economic partner and looks set to become the largest trade partner this year, according to SITRA. In 2004, Finland was Russia’s 10th-largest trade partner. Last year, the volume of bilateral trade was just under 10 billion euros ($12 million), according to BOFIT, the Institute for Economies in Transition, part of Finland’s central bank.
Russia is an attractive partner not only because of its energy riches but also because of its promise in high tech, said BOFIT president Pekka Sutela.
During the Cold War, Finland was highly dependent on trade with the Soviet Union. After the collapse of communism, the aftershocks reverberated through the Nordic country’s economy. 
Even as Russia now returns as a key trading partner, old biases appear to be restraining a larger Finnish presence in the country.
“In recent years, speaking Russian has not been sexy,” said Stefan Widomsky, a Moscow-based vice president for Finnish cell phone maker Nokia, which participated in drafting the strategy.
Bitterness still divides the countries, who fought a brief but bloody war in 1939-40, with Stalin appropriating 10 percent of the country’s territory.
More than 30 Finnish businesses active in Russia contributed to SITRA’s strategy paper. Derk Sauer, CEO of Independent Media, the parent company of The St. Petersburg Times and The Moscow Times, also cooperated, as Independent Media was bought by Finnish media conglomerate Sanoma earlier this year.
“Business still holds much fear and incomprehension of Russia,” the strategy paper said.
Earlier this year, the Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce made a splash when it published a book entitled “Russian Customs for Finns,” which, among other things, explained how to bribe Russian officials. After an ensuing uproar, it was pulled from circulation.
Arkady Dvorkovich, head of the presidential administration’s expert department — which also gave its input to the strategy paper — said that the only prejudice he could detect was that Finland planned to be Russia’s bridge to Europe.
Finland is assuming that Russia is not part of Europe, which is untrue, he said. “Finland should remain the best expert on Russia,” he said. “This is a very important role, as we are not always understood.”

TITLE: French Firm Eyes 25% of Shtockman
AUTHOR: By Tom Miles
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — French oil major Total has offered gas monopoly Gazprom stakes in three projects in return for 25 percent of the huge Shtokman gas project, a company official said in an interview.
Total was one of five companies shortlisted last month by Gazprom as potential partners in the development of Shtokman, which has enough gas to supply the world for a year but presents huge challenges, lying far from land beneath stormy Arctic seas.
“We are looking for a significant stake in Shtokman — I would say around 25 percent,” Menno Grouvel, Total’s head of exploration and production in continental Europe and Central Asia, said in a telephone interview.
A claim of that size puts Total in conflict with several of the other shortlisted firms, which want similar stakes in the project. Gazprom wants to keep at least half of Shtokman for itself, meaning that some candidates’ hopes will be dashed.
As well as Total, Gazprom has shortlisted Norway’s Statoil and Hydro and U.S. firms Chevron and ConocoPhillips. It intends to whittle the final team down to two or three partners.
In return for involvement in Shtokman, which contains 3.2 trillion cubic metres of gas, Total would invite Gazprom to take part in three of its own projects, Grouvel said.
“The idea was to involve Gazprom into exploration and production projects and downstream projects elsewhere, outside of Russia, and this is what we did. There is one exploration and production project, one LNG project and one downstream project.”
Asked if Total was offering equity in all three projects, he said: “Equity or something similar, yes.”
Total is interested in involvement in all parts of Shtokman, which involves developing the field, producing gas, piping it to shore, turning it into liquefied natural gas, or LNG, shipping it to North America and selling it to U.S. customers.
Analysts say the field’s remote location and harsh weather will multiply the already huge costs of developing LNG. The whole project is likely to cost more than $20 billion, and Gazprom intends to get its foreign partners to put up about 30 percent of the money, with the rest coming from debt.
But Total, the world’s fourth largest oil firm by market value, has deep pockets — an annual capital expenditure budget of $12 billion — and is pursuing other projects in Russia besides Shtokman.
“What we’re looking for is an industrial project where there is an exploration component, appraisal, development, partnership, sharing risk, whether technological or geological. If there are opportunities, we’ll take them,” said Grouvel.
The firm is also on the rebound from a failed attempt to buy into Russian gas firm Novatek, whose owners snubbed its advance and launched a $1 billion public share offering instead.
“We are looking for all sorts of projects. We have a number of ideas, some quite advanced,” said Grouvel.
Among the opportunities, Total is hoping to partner Russian state oil Rosneft in its Vankor field, a big deposit in the relatively untapped region of East Siberia.
Grouvel said Total would also consider bidding for the licence to develop Sakhalin-3, a field off Russia’s Pacific coast, together with a Russian partner. Rosneft, Exxon and Chevron previously had the licence, but it was revoked in 2003 and the government plans to reauction it.
Total is also in talks about joining Rosneft’s huge Kazakh joint venture, Kurmangazy, which the Kazakh government says contains more than 7 billion barrels of oil, which would make it one of the world’s biggest deposits.
Rosneft has said it is looking for a “strategic investor” to take a minority stake in the firm, but Grouvel said Total had not considered investing in the state-run firm.

TITLE: Miers Has Yet To Show Her Credentials
TEXT: Financial Times
U.S. President George W. Bush’s choice of Harriet Miers, White House legal counsel, for the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the recently retired Sandra Day O’Connor is perplexing — not least for his conservative sup-porters.
After the successful installation of John Roberts as chief justice there was no more eagerly antici-pated decision. Conservatives and the religious right expected Bush to use this pivotal position to tilt the court in their direction for the next genera-tion.
Liberals have been preparing to do battle to prevent precisely that outcome.
Both sides will have to wait some time to judge what this choice portends, because the president has reached into his intensely loyal inner circle and pulled out someone with no judicial record at all.
That is quite a gamble at a time when Bush is des-perately trying to re-establish his leadership cre-dentials after Hurricane Katrina and amid collaps-ing domestic support for the war in Iraq.
Miers is a lawyer who once headed the Texas bar association. But she has never been a judge. She be-came attached to Bush’s entourage when, as gover-nor of Texas, he appointed her head of the state lot-tery commission. Nominating her on Tuesday, he underlined that she would “strictly interpret our constitution and our laws. She will not legislate from the bench.”
That is pretty much the position staked out by Roberts at his confirmation hearings. Yet Roberts, a mainstream conservative with impeccable legal credentials, still had half the Democrats in the Sen-ate vote against him. Miers, by contrast, is an un-known quantity. The Republican right is sounding at best underwhelmed, worried about what it does not know about Bush’s choice. The Democrats are in the same position. They will almost certainlytry to fit her into a presidential pattern of appointing cronies to sensitive positions.
Just how sensitive will become apparent as and when difficult and divisive issues such as abortion, federal versus states’ rights or the death penalty come before the court. The stage is set for drawn-out confirmation hearings, which is where Miers will have to earn her elevation. There is little to suggest she is Supreme Court justice material, so far. She has everything to prove.

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

TITLE: Journalists Under Fire
AUTHOR: By Maria Yulikova
TEXT: On March 8, 2002, business reporter Natalya Skryl, 29, was assaulted outside the apartment building where she lived in the southwestern city of Taganrog. Skryl was struck a dozen times with a blunt object and died shortly afterward. To this day no one has been charged with her death.
Skryl worked as an investigative reporter for a local newspaper, Nashe Vremya. At the time of her death, she was investigating, among other stories, the struggle for control of Tagmet, one of Russia’s biggest metallurgical plants. 
The day before she was killed, Skryl told her colleague that she was going to meet a source to get some exclusive, secret information about the ongoing machinations over Tagmet, and hinted she would write something sensational. According to her fellow journalists, Skryl’s reporting had become more prying and analytical all round a couple of months before her death. 
Skryl’s case is not the only unsolved murder of a journalist in Russia. According to the latest report of the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, there have been at least 12 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia since President Vladimir Putin assumed power in 2000. CPJ research has found that Russia now ranks as one of the five most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to work in. 
Perhaps most striking, however, is the fact that journalists in Russia are not being killed while reporting on the scene, but just for their intention to write or investigate a story.
The past five years have certainly not been the only dangerous period in Russia’s recent history. The war in Chechnya and the political and economical upheavals that accompanied the process of liberalization and democratization of Russia caused great dangers for journalists as well as for ordinary citizens. Over the past decade, for instance, 18 journalists have been killed while reporting on Chechnya.
Igor Yakovenko, head of the Union of Russian Journalists, supports the view that Russia is one of the most dangerous and restrictive environments for journalists.
“Russia hasn’t changed much,” he says. “When the communist censorship disappeared, the other types of censorship became effective: censorship by Kalashnikov, judicial censorship and tax increases.” 
The Union of Russian Journalists has done its own investigations into unsolved murders of Russian journalists. Russian officialdom, however, has responded indifferently to the problem. As Yakovenko points out, this is symptomatic of a larger problem: the government’s callous indifference to the lives of ordinary citizens. 
“We still don’t know who is responsible for the sinking of the submarine Kursk as well as for the Nord-Ost or Beslan hostage-takings,” Yakovenko says. “Russian law enforcement agencies and courts are very ineffective.” 
Even the investigation into such a high-profile case as the murder of the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, Paul Klebnikov, in July of last year has left unanswered questions.
Although two Chechen suspects were arrested and the Prosecutor General’s Office claimed another Chechen, suspected rebel financier Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, was the mastermind behind the killing, the results of the investigation provoked controversy and have been widely questioned.
Frustration with the official response to Klebnikov’s death led a group of prominent U.S. and Russian journalists to launch an independent investigation.
In the case of Skryl, local police and prosecutors inspected the crime scene, her office, and interrogated young men from her neighborhood. 
“The day after the murder, the police brought several young men, of Natasha’s age, to the police station,” said the victim’s mother, Nelli Skryl. “And the policemen beat them, trying to make them confess to participating in the crime. The mothers of these boys then called me to tell me that it was my fault that their children were beaten up.” 
In the beginning, the prosecutors claimed the murder was a case of hooliganism, then they insisted it had been a robbery, but neither money, nor jewelry were stolen, only reporter’s notes. In the end, the investigators finally agreed with Skryl’s colleagues, who suggested that this was a contract killing because the journalist knew about — and might publicize — damaging information about an ownership battle connected with the Tagmet plant. 
Nevertheless, the prosecutors did not seek any evidence for a contract killing. They did not even question Skryl’s colleagues. Having found no suspect, local prosecutors halted the investigation. 
“They don’t do anything, because it is much easier to stop investigating on the grounds of the absence of any suspects than to admit that this was a contract killing and search for the masterminds and executors,” said Grigory Bochkaryov, of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
More than two years have passed since the murder, yet no one has been charged. Both Skryl’s family and her colleagues requested information on the progress of the investigation at the local prosecutor’s office, but there was no answer. 
The Glasnost Defense Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that protects the rights of journalists, also requested information and wrote protest letters to the Prosecutor General’s Office, but this did not yield any results. CPJ sent another request to the Prosecutor General’s Office in August. It is still waiting for a response.

Maria Yulikova is a Moscow correspondent for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

TITLE: Right Idea on the Wrong Track
AUTHOR: By Masha Gessen
TEXT: It’s like hearing an inferior cover of a favorite song: the words and notes are there, but somehow, it still doesn’t sound like the real thing. So it was when Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth movement, issued a demand for a renewed investigation of the events of October 1993.
In the last 12 years, Nashi noted, “there has appeared a generation that barely remembers the fire from the tanks and the faces of those who staged a pogrom at the Ostankino television center and the mayor’s office.” I was already working as a journalist back then, but I have to admit that even my recollection of that period has grown hazy.
Here are some facts that are not in dispute. All of that year President Boris Yeltsin was locked in battle with the Supreme Soviet, which stonewalled reform. In March, Yeltsin staged a nationwide referendum to prove he was more legitimate than the parliament. He had a case: Unlike the members of the Supreme Soviet, he had been directly elected. On Sept. 21 he issued a decree dissolving parliament — in clear violation of the Constitution.
The parliament refused to obey the decree, and instead declared Yeltsin impeached. The parliament voted to consider Yeltsin’s estranged vice-president, Alexander Rutskoi, the new head of state. The Supreme Soviet barricaded itself in the White House. In short order the rebels were armed and stepping out into the city, ultimately marching to the Ostankino television tower and the Moscow mayor’s office. On Yeltsin’s orders, army troops fired on the rebels and the White House, crushing the insurgency by Oct. 5.
A state of emergency was in effect until Oct. 15, with some newspapers banned outright and others subjected to severe censorship, and a curfew imposed in the city. Once it was lifted, the political machine shifted into high gear: New elections and a referendum on a new Constitution were scheduled for December. Many of the people who had taken part in drafting the Constitution were surprised by the document that was ultimately approved — it had apparently been doctored en route to the printing press.
Dozens of people died. A committee was formed to investigate the crisis — and soon disbanded. There was no high-profile trial, no published conclusion, no real public debate. Privately and semi-privately, the liberals of the day split into two camps: those who thought that Yeltsin had done the right thing by crushing the remnants of the Soviet system embodied by the Supreme Soviet, and those who thought that nothing could justify bloodshed, violating the Constitution and suspending basic freedoms for any amount of time. I still subscribe to the latter camp, which comprised a minority then and, I suspect, has acquired few converts along the way.
So I read the list of questions that Nashi want answered. They want to know why the Constitution was violated. They want to know why no one was held accountable for the blood that was shed. They want to know why no one was held accountable for inciting the storm at Ostankino. They also ask several overly specific questions that betray the bias of someone who thought up this latest Nashi action. It seems fair to assume that the ultimate goal is to discredit any number of people who may prove inconvenient for the Kremlin, using largely forgotten but still emotionally charged events to do so.
So Nashi is singing this song slightly off-key, and for all the wrong reasons. Still, I think an investigation — and perhaps an alternative investigation if Nashi succeeds — would be a healthy thing. What Nashi members don’t realize is that these things can set off a chain reaction. While we are at it, I would like to see an investigation into the start of the first war in Chechnya, the deaths of Nord-Ost hostages, and a re-investigation of the storming of the school in Beslan. That’s just for starters.

Masha Gessen is contributing editor at Bolshoi Gorod.

TITLE: New musical expression
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With ambitions to start musical movement, a new festival brings together international composers and performers from the edge of the avant-garde.
A selection of well-known improvisational and experimental artists from the U.S., France, Uzbekistan and Russia will perform at the APosition Musical Forum that opens Friday in St. Petersburg.
The Petersburg event is an extension of the Dlinniye Ruki, or Long Arms, festival held in Moscow. Dedicated to the memory of the late avant-jazz promoter and producer Nikolai Dmitriyev, the festival was launched last year by Dom, the Moscow arts center he founded. The name stems from the Long Arms record label that Dmitriyev also co-founded, with the late pianist Sergei Kuryokhin in 1996.
“Originally it was going to be called the Long Arms festival in St. Petersburg as well, but for a number of reasons we can’t use the name officially here,” said artistic director Alexei Plyusnin, a local musician and promoter.
Plyusnin said he was approached by the Long Arms festival to help to form the festival program last year. He went to the U.S. to negotiate to with American artists about taking part in the festival last September with a grant from CEC ArtsLink, an international arts service organization supporting the exchange of artists and cultural managers between the U.S. and Central Europe, Russia and Eurasia.
“I liked the atmosphere in New York,” said Plyusnin. “When you open All About Jazz [a newspaper] you see that every day, no matter if it’s Monday, Sunday or Wednesday, there are 15 to 30 jazz and experimental music, creative concerts, taking place in diverse places. You can go to a concert by Muhal Richard Abrahams for $25, huge money by New York standards, with an audience of 15 people, and two hours later, half of his band will play in the street for free. There’s a feeling that the whole city is swinging.”
To bring some American pizzazz to St. Petersburg, festival highlights include the Kingston, New York-based avant-garde accordionist Pauline Oliveros, Californian minimalist pioneer Terry Riley and the New York-born, Berlin-based vocalist and percussionist David Moss. Performance artist Shelley Hirsch, saxophonist Charles Gayle and guitarist Mark Stewart of Bang on the Can are all based in New York. 
Riley and Hirsch performed at SKIF, the largest St. Petersburg festival of experimental music, in 2000. 
For Plyusnin, the APosition Musical Forum stems from his work as SKIF’s art director. Hence, the similarity in the musical direction and choice of artists.
“It’s natural because it was us who did SKIF. Now SKIF has changed and it will not be similar anymore,” said Plyusnin who worked on the festival from 1999 to 2004.
“It’s my repertoire, I compiled it, it’s what I like. As a musician, I am interested in their professional level, which is very high,” said Plyusnin about the festival program and performers. “It’s neo-academic music, free of performer’s limitations, and free jazz, improvised music —the place where school and dilettantism merge.”
APosition is a creative partnership formed by Plyusnin in 2000, and its name refers to both innovative U.S. jazz composer and musician Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Rock in Opposition (RIO), a movement of “progressive” bands launched by the British band Henry Cow in 1978.
“I want it to be something that should is provocative. With SKIF it didn’t work and everything came down to giving pleasure,” said Plyusnin.
“I quit mainly because our ideological approaches diverged. Everything else is secondary.”
Although there are a few similarities between the two festivals, there is a drastic difference. Unlike SKIF, a chaotic three-day music marathon with a constantly changing schedule, the APosition Musical Forum is a series of concerts at the Cappella, a staid classical-music venue and the experimental-music club GEZ-21. Riley and Hirsch will also hold masterclasses in rooms at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
“I had the idea of over-democratizing the distinction between the listener and the artist, of erasing it. It was an ultra-hippie approach rooted in the 1960s,” said Plyusnin about his ideas for SKIF.
“There was a reason why there’s never been an accurate schedule at SKIF, even if everybody asked for it. But the effect of entering the room, seeing somebody playing and deciding whether you stay or go without knowing who is playing, it’s simply invaluable. 
“Usually perceptions are formed in advance by newspapers and posters, but it’s great when you simply come, you like the concert and when it’s finished, you ask a person sitting next to you, who was that? It means that your perception is cleaner.”
The APosition Musical Forum is the exact antithesis to SKIF in its format, according to Plyusnin.
“It’s the total opposite. It’s anti-egalitarian, anti-hippie. It’s a bare idea and a weapon of a different kind,” said Plyusnin.
“You come to a concert that starts exactly to schedule, you listen to the music silently then you stand up and go. Let’s see how it works.
“I had hoped [with SKIF] that we would strike a spark that would bring an avalanche of new music into the city and into the country. It didn’t happen. There emerged some new names, but not enough. Now we are trying a different method.”
CONCERTS
Fri., Oct. 7
Christian Brazier, Alexei Plyusnin, Marcus Godwyn, Dmitry Kakhovsky and Alexander Vladimirsky GEZ-21. 8 p.m.

Sat., Oct. 8
Didier Lasserre and Sebastien Capazza GEZ-21. 8 p.m.

Tues., Oct. 11
David Moss/Charles Gayle/Pauline Oliveros/Mandelbrot Cappella. 7 p.m.

Wed., Oct. 12
Mark Stewart/Shelley Hirsch/Terry Riley/Evelina Petrova Cappella. 7 p.m.
Thurs., Oct. 13
Mark Stewart and Shavkat Matyakubov/Charles Gayle GEZ-21. 8 p.m.

Fri., Oct. 14
Shelley Hirsch and Alexei Plyusnin 
GEZ-21. 9:30 p.m.

MASTERCLASS
Pauline Oliveros, Conservatory, Mon., Oct. 10, 3:15 p.m.
Terry Riley, Conservatory, Thurs., Oct. 13, 3:15 p.m.
Mark Stewart, GEZ-21, Thurs., Oct. 13, 8 p.m.
Shelley Hirsch, GEZ-21, Fri., Oct. 14, 8 p.m.

TITLE: Quick silver
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: NAGOYA, Japan — Mariinsky dancers are very popular with Japanese audiences. So perhaps Nagoya, Japan’s fourth largest city, is not such an unlikely venue as it may seem to meet one of the finest male dancers of the Mariinsky Ballet — first soloist Andrei Merkuriyev, who was guesting in late September with the Michiko Matsumoto Ballet, a 50-strong ballet company with a 47-year-old history in the city. 
Nagoya hosted this year’s World Expo, whose theme is “Love The Earth”, which attracted over 22 million visitors in six months.
The Michiko Matsumoto Ballet performed in the Aichi Arts Center on the penultimate day of the Expo. And the company fittingly chose a programme in keeping with the Expo’s spirit of global cooperation. It picked a well-known Russian ballet “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai” created for the Mariinsky Ballet (then called Kirov Ballet) in 1934 by Rostislav Zakharov, and cast some of the leading roles for St. Petersburg dancers.
Merkuriyev was cast in the second male leading role of Vaslav, the fiance of the beautiful Polish maiden Maria, who is killed by the Khan Ghirei at the end of Act 1 when trying to protect Maria from the invading Tartars.  He made his debut in this role at the Mariinsky Theater as recently as July. It seems a long way to fly just to dance in Act 1 of this four-act ballet. 
But Merkuriyev wasn’t the only St. Petersburg guest for these two performances. There were two other dancers from the Mussorgsky Theatre — Misha Venshikov who played Maria’s father, and Vladimir Tsal who was in the ensemble. Another dancer was Ilya Zabotin from the Peterhof Ballet.
The St. Petersburg connection didn’t end here.  Maria was danced by the company’s ballerina, Sayumi Yato, who is a former dancer of the Mussorgsky Ballet who returned to Japan last year. Yato and Merkuriyev were colleagues when Merkuriyev was a member of the Mussorgsky Ballet before joining the Mariinsky Theater in 2001.
Was this Merkuriyev’s first guesting with this company? I asked him when we met on his free day after his performance on the previous night. Merkuriyev was in a happy and relaxed mood. 
“I first guested with them in 1998, and I danced ‘Swan Lake’ with Sayumi. I am a frequent visitor to Japan. I was on the Mariinsky tour in 2003, and next year the Mariinsky will return to tour Japan.” Merkuriyev was also in Japan with the Mussorgsky Ballet prior to joining the Mariinsky Theater.
Merkuriyev flew to Nagoya in mid-September immediately after his month-long holiday. 
“I had a fabulous time in Barcelona.” A lot has happened to Merkuriyev in the past six months. In April he won the prestigious Golden Mask Award for best male dancer. Immediately afterwards he joined the Mariinsky Ballet on its tour to Wales, where he made an impressive debut as Romeo. In May he danced the young Drosselmeyer in the premiere of “The Magic Nut” at the Mariinsky Theater.  
In late July he delighted London audiences at Covent Garden in a number of roles during the Mariinsky tour — “The Prodigal Son,” Romeo, and in the Forsythe program where he was striking as the lead male dancer in “In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated.” 
In early August, he participated in a gala in Dartford in Kent. I was delighted to see him shine again as the Prince in Ratmansky’s version of “Cinderella” which was actually created on him.
Merkuriyev is one of the finest and most popular male dancers in the Mariinsky Theatre and performs often. He particularly excels in dramatic roles. One of his best roles is Des Grieux in the English choreographer Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet “Manon.” 
In recent years, he has formed an excellent partnership with soloist Natalia Sologub who is at present pregnant and on maternity leave. 
Merkuriyev, unable to dance with one of his favourite regular partners, is nevertheless philosophical and looks forward to the challenges of dancing with other ballerinas. 
“I like dancing with Yevgenia Obraztsova too, in particular.” Obraztsova, the Mariinsky’s beautiful 21-year-old dancer who is in the film “Russian Dolls” was his Juliet when he made his debut in Wales.  
Merkuriyev was extremely busy on that Sunday when we met in my hotel, as it was his last day in Japan before flying back to St. Petersburg the next morning.  After our interview, he was going to visit Chacott, a ballet-wear shop. 
“And I am also looking to buy a DVD player this afternoon.”
He added, “I hope that different choreographers will choose to work with me and be satisfied with my dancing.” 
Merkuriyev’s dancing will no doubt continue to delight audiences all over the world beyond Japan and St. Petersburg. 

Andrei Merkuriyev appears at the Mariinsky Theater in “La Sylphide” on Oct. 26 and “The Nutcracker” on Oct. 29.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: APosition Musical Forum, a festival of experimental music featuring such artists as Terry Riley, David Moss and Shelley Hirsch opens at GEZ-21 on Friday. Further events will take place at the Cappella on Tuesday and Wednesday. 
Composer and musician Riley is highly reputed as the founder of the minimalist movement.
“Well, it happened a long time ago and it’s surely difficult to say exactly what happened,” Riley recalled in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times five years ago.
“I was searching for new solutions in tonality and music, because I was interested in tonal music, but at that time in the early ’60s tonal music wasn’t very fashionable, most people weren’t doing it and the compositional processes that I arrived at, I think, resulted in what’s called ‘minimalism’ today.”
Riley’s discoveries have also resonated in music by rock groups such as The Who, the Soft Machine, the Velvet Underground and Talking Heads, among others.
“Well, my main connection to [rock] was during this period in the ’60s and ’70s, and at that time I felt that there was great potential in rock music, because of its theatrical aspects and just a pure raw energy that these groups delivered,” Riley said.
See article, starting on page i.
Russia’s formerly faux lesbian pop duo t.A.T.u. re-entered the British charts with “All About Us,” which  debuted on this week’s Top 10 at number eight. Other chart winners this week in the U.K. include similarly  manufactured “girl bands,” the Sugababes and Pussycat Dolls.
On the duo’s second album, called “Dangerous and Moving,” Yulia and Lena are backed by Sting, Trevor Horn, the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, and the Carpenters’ Richard Carpenter.
In the video by film director James Cox (“Wonderland”) at least one of the singers looks like a prostitute and gets picked up by a male stranger whom she later shoots to death in defense. For television the video was heavily censored for violence. 
Meanwhile, Valery Starikov, the vice mayor of Russian provincial town Perm, was reported as saying that a city-owned concert hall will raise the rent for artists who “position themselves as representatives of non-traditional orientation.” 
According to Kommersant daily, Starikov cited female singers such as Zemfira Ramazanova, Diana Arbenina of Nochniye Snaipery and Svetlana Surganova as examples of such behavior. 
Guitarist Alexei Zubarev, formerly of the BG Band and the 1990s version of Akvarium, will take part in a performance promoted by the local Gallery of Japanese art. Zubarev will improvize as a pair of Japanese calligraphers demonstrate their art at the Chemiakin Foundation on Wednesday.
J.D. and the Blenders, probably the only local band that performs soul jazz will play at Moloko on Saturday. The acclaimed Cape Verde folk singer Cesaria Evora returns with her morna songs to Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Thursday.

TITLE: With one voice
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Classical music fans this weekend will have the chance to ease the plight of the city’s ailing poverty-stricken hospices by attending a special choral concert that is just one event in a worldwide series of fundraisers.
A giant worldwide “Mexican wave” of concerts, starting in New Zealand and ending in the U.S. on Saturday, sweeps over St. Petersburg at St. Peter’s Church where the city’s concert in the global “Voices For Hospices” project will be held.
The concert, featuring Mozart’s “Exsultate, Jubilate” for soprano and orchestra and Coronation Mass for four soloists, choir and orchestra, starts at 7 p.m. 
Remarkably, all performances that are part of the ambitious project are scheduled to start at the same time — according to local time zones — producing the effect of an enormous chain of concerts rolling over the globe. 
“Voices For Hospices” is the world’s largest international simultaneous singing event and this year involves more than 400 performances in more than 40 countries. 
The project began in 1998 when the Princess Alice Hospice in the U.K. organized a small charitable concert. Since then, participating singers have raised over $9 million for hospices and palliative care centers around the world. Each event is tailored to raise donations for local clinics.
The driving force behind St. Petersburg’s participation in this noble international initiative is Swedish conductor Kristofer Wahlander, the founder of the St. Petersburg Festival orchestra and artistic director of last month’s Nordic Music festival.
“It is a privilege for me as a musician to be part of this project,” Wahlander said. “Classical music is a very important part of life in St. Petersburg, and these performances strike a chord. I am convinced that our concert will help to make a difference in terms of attention the hospices receive. Classical music is a very good key to open people’s hearts.”
Wahlander first took part in a series of “Voices For Hospices” concerts in 2003, when he conducted the Kaliningrad Philharmonic Orchestra and two local choirs performing Handel’s Messiah at the Shostakovich Philharmonic. He first learned about the project by chance after being approached by charity enthusiasts after one of his performances in 2002.
The “Voices For Hospices” concerts try to raise funds for local hospices to brighten up the last days of terminally ill patients and improve their quality of life as well as encourage public awareness. Many of St. Petersburg’s cash-strapped state-run hospitals struggle to provide an adequate level of care, with reports of outdated equipment, meagre food provision and even treating patients in corridors. Hospices find themselves in an especially hard situation as it is particularly difficult to convince private sponsors in Russia to give donations to dying people.
St. Petersburg’s participation in this project is jointly supported by the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. 
Wahlander will be leading an international musical team assembled of established soloists from Denmark, the U.K. and Australia. Russian participation comes from the Lege Artis Choir, the St. Petersburg State Chamber Choir and the legendary St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Danish soprano Susanne Elmark and British mezzo Annie Gill will join Australian tenor Andrew Goodwin and Russian bass Alexander Morozov in a performance of Mozart’s Coronation Mass.
“An interesting musical aspect of the concert is that the ‘Exsultate, Jubilate’ will be performed after the Credo in the mass, exactly the way it was played back in Mozart’s time — an exciting revival of a long-lost performing tradition,” Wahlander said.

“Voices for Hospices” at St. Peter’s Church, 22/24 Nevsky Prospekt, on Saturday at 7 p.m. Admission is 100 rubles and all proceeds will be sent directly to local hospices.

TITLE: Making notes
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The fifth annual International Conservatoire Week festival, running through Wednesday at the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory, is this year dedicated to the 140th anniversary of the birth of Alexei Glazunov, a distinguished Russian composer who was a director of the Conservatory from 1905 to 1928.
During the week-long festival, musicians from Germany, Poland, the U.K., France, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, the U.S. and Russia perform a range of  music from different genres and periods on the stage of the Glazunov Hall of the prestigious academy. 
Although during its first four years musicians from 42 higher musical educational institutions took part in the festival, performers from Paris, London, Zurich, Tallinn, and Aarhus in this year’s event have come to St. Petersburg for the first time.
By tradition, young talented musicians — many of whom have already won music contests and attended other festivals — get the opportunity to demonstrate their skills to a large St. Petersburg audience.
It’s not only the young generation of musicians whose performances music lovers can enjoy during the festival week. Many established classical music stars have come to the city to perform and give master classes and lectures to conservatory students. 
“The main purpose of the festival is to give our students new horizons,” Alexander Tchaikovsky, rector of the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory and the festival committee chairman, said at a press conference held on Sept. 28. 
“During this week they get a unique chance to get acquainted with their foreign colleagues, talk to well-known musicians, and maybe to learn some professional skills from them.”
Scientific research is also part of the festival with the convening of an international conference on the theme of “A.K. Glazunov: His Time and Works.” There will also be a concert management seminar and new book presentations.
The festival’s opening concert on Wednesday was dedicated to Glazunov. Star jazz saxophonist Igor Butman returned to his classical roots to perform, with the St. Petersburg State Academic Cappella orchestra, the Russian premiere of Rodion Shedrin’s his composition “Dialogues with Shostakovich.” Shedrin has recently been appointed honorary professor at the conservatory. 
On Thursday, a memorial plaque to composer Genrikh Venyavsky was unveiled ahead of a concert dedicated to him.
Mandolins and guitars feature in a concert Friday by German guests, and a Russian folk music orchestra performs.
On Saturday, a “transatlantic dialogue” between American and Russian vocalists takes place, and a “Festival Fanfare” concert with brass and wind instruments players from Russia, Germany and Netherlands is performed on Sunday. 
On Monday, there is a concert under the title “His Majesty’s Ensemble,” and songs of war, peace and love dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II will be performed on Tuesday. A concert conducted by Vasily Sinaisky presenting the symphonic works of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich wraps up the International Conservatoire Week on Wednesday.

The International Conservatoire Week at the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory, Tealtralnaya Ploshchad (opposite the Mariinsky Theater) runs through Wednesday. See listings for details.

TITLE: Blair Blames Iran, as Violence in Iraq Mounts
AUTHOR: By Aseel Kami
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Iraqi insurgents killed at least 16 people in two strikes on Thursday, sending a suicide bomber to blow up a bus near near the oil ministry in Baghdad and shooting oil ministry security guards in the north.
Police said a suicide bomber strapped with explosives boarded the bus carrying mostly students from a nearby police academy and blew himself up, killing at least 11 people and wounding another 11.
Emergency workers pieced through the smoking wreckage, near a bus stop on a main road near the massive oil ministry complex.
Gunmen also shot dead five oil ministry security guards who were driving to the northern city of Kirkuk, one day after another bomb attack critically wounded six security guards for the state-owned North Oil Company in the city, an oil centre.
Sunni Arab insurgents have frequently assassinated oil officials and sabotaged crude pipelines as part of a campaign to topple the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, which is gearing up for a national referendum on a new constitution next week.
Earlier this week the oil minister himself survived an apparent assassination attempt when a bomb exploded beside his motorcade — part of an escalating campaign of violence that is also taking a heavy toll on the country’s civilian population.
Iraqi and U.S. officials have voiced fears of a further increase in violence ahead of the Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution, which the insurgents have vowed to wreck.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday that evidence pointed to Iran or its Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla allies as the source of explosives used in new, more powerful roadside bombs in Iraq, although Britain did not have conclusive proof.
“What is clear is that there have been new explosive devices used not just against British forces but elsewhere in Iraq. The particular nature of those devices leads us either to Iranian elements or to Hizbollah,” Blair said. “However we cannot be certain of this at the present time.”
Tehran denies it helps militants in Iraq, although Blair’s allegations looked likely to compound concern over possible meddling by Iranian factions.
The accusations, first made by a senior British official in an anonymous briefing on Wednesday have also added to tensions between Britain and Iran at a time when London and Washington are seeking U.N. action over Iranian nuclear programmes.

RAMADAN VIOLENCE
Sunni Arab militants have vowed to step up the violence with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began for the bulk of Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslims on Wednesday — an event marked by a deadly blast at one mosque that killed at least 25.
On Thursday rescue workers sifted through the wreckage of the mosque in Hilla, about 100 km (62 miles) south of Baghdad after the blast, which a spokesman for Hilla security forces said was caused by a car bomb parked next to the mosque loaded with up to 50 kilos (110 lbs) of explosives inside.
A police spokesman in the city said the mosque may have been rigged with dynamite — a rarity in Iraq’s insurgency — and put the death toll at 25 with around 90 wounded.
For the most extreme followers of the Sunni branch of Islam, Shi’ites are apostates who have abandoned the true religion. The schism dates back to a conflict among the first followers of the Prophet Mohammad.
Sunni Arab political leaders have threatened to boycott the Oct. 15 constitutional vote, which is followed in just four days by the start of the trial against Iraq’s former Sunni Arab dictator Saddam Hussein.
Iraq’s Kurdish President Jalal Talabani, on a visit to London, played down a dispute with his Shi’ite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari that had raised fears of a split in the country’s ruling alliance as it faces Sunni Arab unrest.
Talabani said there had been disagreements over the formation of a joint government but that they had been resolved.
“However, we are a democratic country and ... even amongst ministers there are differences,” he told a news conference.

TITLE: Paper: Al Qaeda Has Started Recruiting People With Net Ads
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DUBAI — Al Qaeda has put job advertisements on the Internet asking for supporters to help put together its Web statements and video montages, an Arabic newspaper reported.
The London-based Asharq al-Awsat said on its Web site this week that al Qaeda had “vacant positions” for video production and editing statements, footage and international media coverage about militants in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and other conflict zones where militants are active.
The paper said the Global Islamic Media Front, an al Qaeda-linked Web-based organisation, would “follow up with members interested in joining and contact them via email”.
The paper did not say how applicants should contact the Global Islamic Media Front.
Al Qaeda supporters widely use the Internet to spread the group’s statements through dozens of Islamist sites where anyone can post messages. Al Qaeda-linked groups also set up their own sites, which frequently have to move after being shut by Internet service providers.
The advertisements, however, could not be found on mainstream Islamist Web sites where al Qaeda and other affiliate groups post their statements.
Asharq al-Awsat said the advert did not specify salary amounts, but added: “Every Muslim knows his life is not his, since it belongs to this violated Islamic nation whose blood is being spilled.”
The Front last month launched an Internet news broadcast called Voice of the Caliphate, which it said aimed to combat anti-Qaeda “lies and propaganda.”

TITLE: Italy Opens Murder Trial Into Death of ‘God’s Banker’
AUTHOR: By Phil Stewart
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ROME — More than two decades after Roberto Calvi was found hanging under London’s Blackfriars Bridge, five people went on trial in Italy on Thursday accused of murdering the man known as “God’s banker” for his close Vatican ties.
A Sicilian mobster, a Sardinian financier and three others are accused of killing Calvi, whose death in June 1982 was initially ruled a suicide.
Rome prosecutors say the Mafia murdered Calvi for stealing from them and from Italian financier Licio Gelli, who was the head of the shadowy P2 masonic organisation.
The trial opened on Thursday and was adjourned until Nov. 23 after brief initial proceedings held inside a maximum security prison in Italy’s capital.
Convicted Cosa Nostra treasurer Pippo Calo listened via teleconference from his prison elsewhere in Italy. Calo was shown on a monitor in the courtroom, looking calm and wearing a dark sports coat with his hands folded in his lap.
In a court document seen by Reuters, prosecutors say Calo, 74, ordered the murder. Calvi was “asphyxiated by strangulation and hanged in London under Blackfriars Bridge, on the Thames, in such a way as to simulate suicide.”
He had bricks stuffed in his pockets and $15,000 on his person when found dangling from scaffolding under the bridge. His death came shortly after the bank he headed, Banco Ambrosiano, went bankrupt in a spectacular scandal involving loans to Latin American companies.
Ambrosiano was then Italy’s largest private banking group and worked with the Vatican.

“CLEAN HANDS”
After the initial suicide ruling, prosecutors say a recent medical review found evidence pointing to murder, including the type of damage to his neck bones.
His hands and fingernails were also clean. If he had stuffed bits of brick in his own pockets and climbed a rusting scaffolding to hang himself, prosecutors have argued there would have been traces of dirt.
The other defendants are Sardinian financier Flavio Carboni, his former Austrian girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig, businessman and alleged Rome crime boss Ernesto Diotallevi and Calvi’s former bodyguard, Silvano Vittor.
Diotallevi is accused by prosecutors of being a go-between for Calo and Carboni, helping Calvi flee Italy and supplying the fake passport found on Calvi’s body at the time of his death.

TITLE: NHL Matches Resume After ‘Lost Season’
AUTHOR: By Ira Podell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Wayne Gretzky lost, and so did Sidney Crosby. 
It’s way too early to tell what side of the ledger the NHL will fall on in its return following a season lost to the lockout. 
Hockey was back in full force Wednesday night as all 30 NHL teams were in action from coast to coast. 
“It actually feels like we were just here. I’m surprised how quickly things seem to be back to normal,” Detroit forward Brendan Shanahan said. 
Not so fast. 
Gretzky, the most prolific scorer in NHL history, is now the coach of the Phoenix Coyotes. Crosby is an 18-year-old phenom that was chosen No. 1 in this year’s draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins. He comes with the billing that he might replace Gretzky in many places in the record book. 
After one game, both are looking for their first victories. 
Phoenix fell 3-2 at Vancouver. Crosby had one assist, but it wasn’t nearly enough as Pittsburgh was beaten 5-1 at New Jersey. 
“We want to win every night, but we’ve got 81 more games to go and if I get the effort like that and we keep improving from where we were three weeks ago to now, we’ll win our share of games. Believe me,” Gretzky said. 
The rules are new, tie games are a thing of the past, and Gretzky and Crosby are factors that weren’t in play 16 months ago when the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup in the last game that mattered before Wednesday. 
The best debut took place in Washington, where Alexander Ovechkin — the No. 1 pick last year — scored his first two NHL goals in the Capitals’ 3-2 home victory over Columbus. But kudos go to the Ottawa Senators, who outlasted the Toronto Maple Leafs to become the first team to win by shootout — a 3-2 win. 
“It is exciting. It’s nice to have a winner,” Senators forward Daniel Alfredsson said. “Both teams battled hard for 65 minutes. I think it’s right that the losing team still gets a point.”
The Leafs didn’t quite see it that way. 
“I’m not one of the ones that like the game being settled this way,” coach Pat Quinn said. 
Crosby at least found his way onto the score sheet. That part is out of Gretzky’s hands now, it’s up to his players to help his record improve. 
Todd Bertuzzi had a unique return of his own. The Vancouver forward was back after 17 months, having served his time for a blindside punch that left Colorado’s Steve Moore with a concussion and broken bones in his neck. 
“It was just good to get a win, good to be in the dressing room and fun to be in this atmosphere,” said Bertuzzi, who received the loudest roars — topping even Gretzky. 
Winning is something the Lightning have grown accustomed to. They closed the 2003-04 season with consecutive victories to capture the Stanley Cup in seven games over the Calgary Flames. 
They had to wait well over a year to celebrate it the right way with a banner raising and by showing off the individual awards they received. 
The Lightning won again, topping Carolina 5-2 in the opener. 
But Wednesday night was less about what happened on the ice and more about those who showed up to watch it. In every rink, the words “Thank You Fans!” were stenciled into the newly widened offensive zones. 
“I am so excited for things to be back — last year was horrible,’’ said Amber Turbyne of Waldorf, Maryland, who attended the Capitals game. “I usually hold a grudge like something awful, but I’m too happy to have hockey back.”
The NHL started down the long road of trying to wow its returning fans, win back those that were lost, and convince those that never cared to take a peek at the new product. 
“I was concerned about the attitudes of the players. ... I haven’t seen one speck of disappointment or bitterness,” Dallas coach Dave Tippett said. 
In Philadelphia, fans came out in full force, decked out in orange T-shirts just as they were the last time the Flyers played at home in Game 6 of the 2004 Eastern Conference finals. 
They were excited to see new addition Peter Forsberg, who starred for the Colorado Avalanche and became an NHL MVP in the 13 years since the Flyers traded him away for Eric Lindros. 
Forsberg made a great first impression by assisting on Philadelphia’s opening two goals of the season. But he was in the penalty box when the New York Rangers snapped a third-period tie en route to a 5-3 comeback victory. 
Crosby will shoot for his first goal and first ‘W’ on Friday at Carolina. 
“The kid’s going to be a great player in this league for a long time,” said Mario Lemieux, Crosby’s teammate and boss who turned 40 on Wednesday. “I thought he played well and didn’t look out of place at all.” 
Gretzky’s second game was Thursday at Los Angeles, where he starred for eight seasons. 
In Dallas, the Stars looked to the past while embracing the future. To mark the 12th anniversary of the team’s first game in Texas, the Stars had youngster Haley Kesterson on hand to drop the ceremonial first puck. Haley was born minutes after that initial game and was picked on her 12th birthday to represent the team’s fans. 
Jeremy Roenick spoiled the night for the Stars by scoring twice in Los Angeles’ 5-4 win. Already battling past concussions and another sustained during the preseason, Roenick needed five stitches to close a gash over his left eye. 
“It feels good. I feel like a hockey player again,” he said. 
Paul Kariya played his first game with Nashville, giving the still young franchise its first real superstar. He was cheered the first time he touched the puck. The Predators beat San Jose 3-2. 
“Every game in this league is going to be tough,” Predators goalie Tomas Vokoun said. “There were a lot of surprising scores on the scoreboard tonight. You just don’t know who’s going to be good.”

TITLE: Wie Turns Pro to Earn Millions
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HONOLULU, Hawaii — The amateur records of Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie are nothing alike. 
Woods whipped up on boys his age, finishing his career without pay by becoming the first male to win three straight U.S. Amateur titles. Wie sought out the best competition, which took her to professional tournaments from the time she was 12. She never won, but her feats are no less amazing. 
The one thing they do have in common is their tremendous marketability. 
“What’s similar in her and Tiger is, they have instantaneous worldwide appeal,” said Bob Wood, president of Nike Golf. 
Dressed in hot pink Nike apparel, Wie became the richest female golfer Wednesday before a crowded conference room when she announced she was turning pro, six days before her 16th birthday. 
“I’ve just been thinking about it for a really long time, but it all came down to the last few months,” Wie said. “I felt ready. I felt mature enough. I felt really comfortable ... I felt it was the right time.”
Wie signed multiyear endorsement deals with Nike and Sony said to be worth as much as $10 million a year. Her first act as a professional was to give some of it back. 
She pledged $500,000 to the U.S. Golf Hurricane Relief Fund, set up by the major golf organizations. 
Wie is represented by the William Morris Agency and agent Ross Berlin, who said the young star is his only client. 
“Michelle understands the responsibility that comes from such exposure,” he said. 
The 6-foot golfing prodigy will carry only Nike clubs and wear the swoosh on her cap and clothing, with the Sony logo on her golf bag. Other companies are sure to follow in the Wie sweepstakes, banking on the Hawaii teen who has been competing against golf’s best players since she was in the seventh grade with braces. 
“She’s the whole package. But it’s all potential. It’s all in front of her,” Wood said. 
Wie is already one of the most famous athletes in the world, commanding large galleries wherever she goes. She’s young, talented, charismatic, photogenic and bilingual. Wie is fluent in Korean and is taking Japanese. 
“She’s just a great story. She’s a great Nike story. If there’s anybody that can personify ‘Just Do It,’ it’s Michelle,” Wood said. 
But Wie must now deliver with major expectations placed on her shoulders. 
“I realize there’s higher expectations, but it’s super exciting,” she said. “Everything is at a higher stake and I’m really looking forward to it.”
Wood said what excites him is that Wie has the potential to transcend the sport. And it starts with winning. 
“They have to be a champion first,” Wood said. “Michael Jordan wouldn’t have transcended if he hadn’t won championships. I don’t think when Tiger turned pro, he had done that either. He has now.”
But Wie has a long career ahead of her.