SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1119 (85), Friday, November 4, 2005
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TITLE: Opinions Divided on New Unity Day Holiday
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A new holiday celebrated for the first time on Friday is supposed to help unite the country under a new patriotic banner.
But People’s Unity Day, which is supposed to commemorate the day in 1612 that Moscow was liberated from Polish occupation, is stirring up a heated debate in some circles, with critics calling it little more than a celebration of Russian Orthodoxy triumphing over Roman Catholicism. Moreover, the government has gotten the Nov. 4 date wrong, historians say.
Ultranationalists, meanwhile, intend on Friday to stage a march denouncing the “occupation” of Russia by illegal migrant workers, and Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov is organizing a military march on Red Square for Monday, the day of the Soviet-era holiday that the new holiday has replaced.
There is little debate about what happened in 1612: Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin, a butcher from Nizhny Novgorod, led the Nizhny Novgorod volunteer corps in forcing the Polish invaders out of Moscow. 
The troops took Kitai-Gorod on Oct. 22 and drove False Dmitry out of the Kremlin on Oct. 26.
The victories helped end the so-called Smutnoye Vremya, or Time of Troubles, a period of internal strife and foreign intervention that began in 1598 with the death of Tsar Fyodor I and lasted until 1613, when the first Romanov assumed the throne and signed an order restoring the Russian state. Mikhail Romanov presented Pozharsky with the title Savior of the Motherland.
Valery Ryazansky, a United Russia deputy who co-authored the Kremlin-backed bill that changed the holiday, said a new Russia needed new holidays, and People’s Unity Day was chosen because “it symbolizes the will of the Russian people to unite to make this country better.”
“I hope the new holiday will become a tradition in our country,” he said.
The Kremlin picked Nov. 4 as the day to celebrate the event, replacing a Nov. 7 holiday that commemorated the 1917 revolution in Soviet times and was celebrated as the Day of Accord and Reconciliation in the 1990s. Some Russian Orthodox Church officials also strongly supported the change.
Yakov Krotov, a historian and the host of a religious program on Radio Liberty, said the choice of the new holiday had “a clear religious subtext.”
“The Kremlin was looking for a day to celebrate the victory of the Orthodox Russians over the Catholic Poles, but they got the wrong date,” Krotov said.
Calls to the Moscow Patriarchate went unanswered, and Metropolitan Kirill, head of the foreign relations department of the patriarchate, made no mention of the issue at a news conference Wednesday. He did say that the Time of Troubles was worse than World War II and that the new holiday should not be linked to any anti-Polish sentiment in Russia.
The Kremlin has cast the holiday in a patriotic light, calling it an opportunity to celebrate unity.
“You will never find a historian who will tell you that Nov. 4 marked an important date in Russia’s history,” said Alexander Lavrentyev, a senior official at the State Historical Museum, which opens an exhibition about the Time of Troubles on Friday.
“It is very difficult to set a date for when the Time of Troubles ended, but it was certainly not in 1612. It ended at the start of 1613,” he said.
Ryazansky could not say why Nov. 4 had been picked, calling the choice “a coincidence.” 
He also stressed that the holiday was not intended to offend Poland, noting that the events happened 400 years ago.
The Polish Embassy declined to comment.
The Kremlin might have picked Nov. 4 because it is close to Nov. 7 and would allow people to enjoy the November break they have grown used to, Communist Deputy Sergei Reshulsky said.
“This is just a fake holiday. Even the dates are wrong,” he said. “The Kremlin came up with this holiday just to make people forget their communist past.”
The United Russia-dominated State Duma approved the change last November as part of a major holiday revamp that also extended the New Year’s holiday through Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7, giving the country a whole week of vacation.

Crowds gathered at an exhibition celebrating the Russian Orthodox Church that opened Wednesday at St. Petersburg’s Manezh exhibition hall on Ploshchad Dekabristov. 
The show, which runs through Sunday, displays icons, bells, religious arts and crafts, bibles and other church items. Russian Orthodox websites, tour operators for pilgrims, and priests and monks giving advice will also participate in the show. 
See picture, below.

TITLE: Report: Russia Has Secret CIA Prison
AUTHOR: By Stephanie Nebehay
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GENEVA — The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called on Thursday for access to all foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States after a report of a covert CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency)  prison system for al Qaeda captives.
The Washington Post said on Wednesday the CIA had been hiding and interrogating inmates at a secret facility in Eastern Europe, one among so-called “black sites” in eight countries thought to include Russia under a global network set up after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We are concerned at the fate of an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held at undisclosed places of detention,” Antonella Notari, chief ICRC spokeswoman, told Reuters in response to a question.
“Access to detainees is an important humanitarian priority for the ICRC and a logical continuation of our current work in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay,” she added.
Also in Geneva, the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee said it had received two letters and a report from the United States which it hoped would address the issue of detainees being held outside the country.
“It was in our request to the United States. We are going to see how they answer,” committee chairwoman Christine Chanet for France told journalists, saying the committee had yet to study the documents.
The European Commission said on Thursday it would look into media reports naming two east European countries as allowing the CIA to hold al Qaeda suspects outside of any national or international legal jurisdiction.
Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for European Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini, said the EU executive would check the reports with Poland, a new member state, and Romania, which is due to join the European Union in 2007.
The U.S.-based campaign organisation Human Rights Watch said earlier it had indications the two were hosting CIA prisons.
Both denied the allegations on Thursday and the Commission’s Abbing said it had no knowledge of any such prisons at present.
“What I think we will do is to at a technical level... check what the truth is in these stories. We will check the accuracy of those reports,” he told a daily briefing.
He said the treatment of prisoners was not a matter of EU competence but any secret prisons would not appear compatible with the EU’s non-binding Charter of Fundamental Rights or the so-called Copenhagen political criteria for EU membership, which include upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights.
He said the Commission’s decision to check the reports did not signal any formal investigation, nor would it be appropriate for Frattini to personally question government leaders in the countries concerned.
Carroll Bogert, associate director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, outlined earlier what had led the group to believe Poland and Romania were hosting the alleged CIA prisons.
The Washington Post said it had not published the names of the European countries at the request of senior U.S. officials, who said disclosure could disrupt counterterrorism efforts or make the host countries targets for retaliation.
Russia’s FSB security service and Bulgaria’s foreign ministry both denied such facilities existed on their territory as did Thailand, which was named in the Washington Post report.
The U.N.’s Human Rights Committee monitors a 1976 treaty on basic freedoms. The regular report on compliance filed by the United States last Friday was some seven years overdue.
The committee, which will examine the report in July at a public session, said last year it had specifically asked that the issue of detention centers be included.

TITLE: St. Petersburgers Are Sympathetic to Plight of Foreigners
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Local citizens demonstrated remarkable unity in their opposition to ethnically motivated crimes, at least as far as a new survey carried out by the St. Petersburg Agency For Social Information this month shows.
Ninety-six percent of locals reacted negatively to attacks on foreign students, the survey shows. Only 2 percent said they were indifferent, and a further 1 percent welcomed the attacks. Ninety-three percent of respondents said foreign students definitely should have the opportunity to study in St. Petersburg. 
The agency polled 500 St. Petersburgers over the age of 18.
Violence against non-Russians has seen a sharp rise across Russia over the past year. According to Moscow-based human rights center “Sova”, 6 foreigners died and 96 were injured in Moscow this year in hate crimes, while 2 people lost their lives and 19 received injuries during racially motivated attacks in St. Petersburg. In Voronezh, another two foreigners were killed and 19 wounded by nationalists.
Roman Mogilevsky, head of the Agency For Social Information, said the results of the new research were sensational.
“We regularly monitor issues like xenophobia and extremism, and there hasn’t yet been such incredible uniformity in respondents’ answers,” Mogilevsky said. “It is obvious that the recent wave of attacks produced a strong negative impression on St. Petersburgers and has caused alarm.”
But the research shows that the locals feel they are equally exposed to street violence. Asked whether foreigners are more vulnerable to extremist attacks, 75 percent of respondents said Russians are in equal danger. Ten percent said Russians are more vulnerable to such attacks, while 12 percent thought foreigners are more likely victims.
Numbers of foreign students in St. Petersburg have been dropping since the brutal murder of Vietnamese student Vu An Tuan in October of 2004.
There are now about 13,500 foreign students in town, down from 15,000 students St. Petersburg in 2003.
“The media made a very big deal of the murder, and bad news traveled very fast,” said Igor Maksimtsev, deputy rector on international affairs of the St. Petersburg University of Economics and Finances and a member of the city Council For Foreign Students’ Affairs, set up by Governor Valentina Matviyenko in January. “The media reported the murder but said very little or nothing at all about the outrage it caused in society and the response by the authorities and law enforcement.”
But Ali Nassor, member of the “African Unity” association, said the police themselves are infamous for xenophobia and suggested it should be officers who are polled to reveal their attitudes toward people of other races and nationalities.
“We have experienced it many times, and heard from our members about it but it would be nice to operate from a document,” he said. “The alarming statistics, if presented to the authorities, would force them to do something.”
Mogilevsky said the agency is planning to undertake such research in the near future. He also said a lack of interaction with people of different ethnicities leads to intolerance. 
Part of the survey investigated the level of exposure that locals have to foreign cultures, and the results are at odds with a large city purposely  built as a cosmopolitan center open to other influences and nicknamed Russia’s “window to Europe.”
Fifty-five percent of local citizens have never traveled abroad, according to the survey. Fifty-seven percent of those polled have never dined in a restaurant serving any cuisine other than Russian and forty-nine percent of respondents said they had never attended an exhibition of art by a foreign artist. 
Seventy-one percent of respondents replied “no” to a question asking if they personally know any foreigners who study, work or do business in the city. Only 14 percent of respondents have foreign colleagues, 9 percent study with people from other countries, and 3 percent do business with them.
Mogilevsky said the public is not to blame for the results. 
“These are the natural consequences of the city not being a cosmopolitan place for many years,” he said. 
Maksimtsev spoke with nostalgia about the Soviet practice of raising school children in the spirit of “internationalism.” 
“Students who came to study in the U.S.S.R. could sometimes be beaten up but the reason was not likely to have been enthic hatred but something different, like a fight over a girl,” he said.
In Soviet schools there was a system of regular “political information” lessons, where pupils were informed about the struggles of developing countries and stagnation of capitalism, and collected clothes and toys for African and Asian children from poor countries.
However, the new research contrasts with the agency’s 2004 project investigating locals’ attitudes towards other cultures.
In that survey, nearly every fourth respondent, or 23.6 percent, said they “strongly dislike” people from the Caucasus. Another 13.2 percent named Azeris as the ethnic group they liked least, while another 10.5 percent admitted to hating Chechens. Only 15.8 percent of people said they didn’t feel negative about any nationality.
The difference between the two polls suggests that outrage against hate crimes can coexist with a substantial level of xenophobia.
St. Petersburg citizens will take part in a “March Against Hatred” on Saturday, organized in memory of the late Nikolai Girenko, Russia’s leading ethnographist and expert on ethnically-motivated crimes. At least 500 human rights advocates and enthusiasts are expected to participate in the event. The march is scheduled to start at 12.30 outside Sportivnaya metro station and end with a meeting on Ploshchad Sakharova at 2 p.m.

TITLE: Duma Deputies Outraged By TV Cannibal Documentary
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: State Duma deputies on Wednesday overwhelmingly called for television channels to cut down on the amount of violence they show, in what First Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska said was a “yellow card” for the channels.
The resolution, initiated by Sliska and fellow United Russia member Farid Gainullin, was approved 417-1. 
It called on television companies to more strictly adhere to a voluntary code of conduct signed in June by the chief executives of six leading national channels — Channel One, Rossia, TV Center, NTV, Ren-TV and STS — to avoid promoting a “cult of violence and cruelty.”
The impetus for the vote appeared to be a documentary called “Cannibals” shown Sunday evening on NTV that dealt with cases of cannibalism in Russia.
During the Duma debate, Sliska said that television channels focused more on ratings than adhering to the code of conduct.
“How can they care, if a film about cannibals was the highest-rated program and most commercially successful on NTV?” Sliska said, Interfax reported.
The documentary, which aired at 7:55 p.m. and featured interviews with psychologists and convicted cannibals, was the most watched NTV program on Sunday and was in Sunday’s top 12 most watched shows in Moscow, according to TNS Gallup Media, Kommersant reported. The ratings figures could not be accessed on the TNS Gallup web site on Wednesday.
“It was disgusting footage,” Sliska said of the documentary, Gazeta reported Wednesday. “Blood, dismembered bodies. This could cause psychological damage not only to children but to adults too.”
Boris Boyarskov, head of the Federal Service for Media Law Compliance and Cultural Heritage, said “as a television viewer and citizen” he agreed with Duma deputies’ concern over the documentary, but that there was no law in place to punish NTV over the program, Interfax reported Wednesday. 
Boyarskov said his agency would investigate whether the documentary had violated any media laws.
“But I can say right now it’s unlikely that any warning will be issued,” he said, Interfax reported. By law, a television channel that receives two warnings can have its license revoked.
Irina Petrovskaya, a prominent television critic, said Wednesday that she had watched “Cannibals” and that it was broadcast simply for shock value.

TITLE: Institute Tests Bird Flu Vaccine
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The first twenty volunteers to test a new vaccine against bird flu developed at the St. Petersburg Influenza Research Institute will begin the trial this week, the institute's director Oleg Kiselyov said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Work on the vaccine began in May, when the institute received the H5N1 strain of the deadly virus from a U.K. research institution. 
The vaccine was developed six weeks ago, and if tests prove successful, production of it will begin in March before birds migrate in the spring.
The experiment is not life-threatening, Kiselyov said.
“The worst thing that can possibly happen to the volunteers is that they develop a moderate fever, up to 38 degrees Celsius [one degree above normal],” he said. The director said he is even considering participating in the experiment himself. “If 3.5 percent of volunteers develop such a fever, the experiment will be stopped.”
Each volunteer will get paid 200 euros or about $241, Kiselyov said. The trial concludes in December.
The volunteers are aged between 25 and 28 years old, and come from local medical academies. The institute's medical personnel is also taking part. During the trial, approved by the Russian government, the test's participants will be housed at the institute's clinic to be observed by epidemiologists around the clock.
Kiselyov described the clinic's conditions as “decent.” 
“The food is good, and the wards have been recently renovated according to European standards,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sergei Dankvert, head of the Russian Agriculture Monitoring Agency, said this week that chances of a human catching bird flu in Russia are “less than minimal.”
“Hundreds of thousands of Russians have been in contact with infected poultry since the epidemic hit the country in June but nobody picked up the virus,” Dankvert told reporters on Wednesday. “Even in the unlikely case of a single person being in contact with hundreds of thousands of infected poultry in a close space, chances would slightly exceed one case per million.”
The domestic poultry population in Russia is about 1 billion birds.
Bird flu will be discussed at the forthcoming G-8 summit of industrialized nations in St. Petersburg next summer, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday. 
The Center For Strategic Research of the Presidential Administration in Moscow declared the issue a priority in the discussions.
If the St. Petersburg vaccine proves effective, it will be used to vaccinate the staff of poultry farms, customs officers in the Far East and doctors who may be exposed to the dangerous illness.

TITLE: $1M Violin Bought by Russian
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian lawyer Maxim Viktorov acquired one of Italian maestro Niccolo Paganini’s violins for a little more than $1 million at a Sotheby’s auction in London on Tuesday.
It is the most expensive musical instrument ever purchased by a Russian at Sotheby’s.
Viktorov paid $1.001 million for the rare 18th-century violin, one of 20 remaining that were once possessed by the 19th-century Italian virtuoso. 
Regina Imatdinova, managing director of Moscow-based Violin Art Foundation, said the instrument would make its debut in Russia on Dec. 1. 
“It will sound at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory during the [closing of the 3rd annual] Paganini Moscow International Violin Competition,” Imatdinova said.
Viktorov, managing partner at the Legal Intelligence Group law firm, is chairman of the board of trustees of the Violin Art Foundation. 
The nonprofit body organizes the annual Paganini competition, which is to commence in Moscow on Nov. 20. 
Viktorov was unavailable for immediate comment Wednesday. 
“Legal Intelligence Group is his job, while the Violin Art Foundation is his hobby,” Imatdinova said, adding that Viktorov would lend the valuable instrument to the violin competition’s grand prize winner for one year. 
Thirty contestants from six countries will compete this year, she said.
Before becoming managing partner at Legal Intelligence Group in 2002, Viktorov also did a stint as vice president of the Russian Fuel Union and banking council secretary for the Moscow region governor’s office in the 1990s, according to his resume, posted on the Legal Intelligence Group’s website.
The lawyer has managed to stay out of the limelight until now, unlike such high-profile investors as billionaire Vladimir Potanin, who donated $1 million in 2002 to keep one of Kazimir Malevich’s “Black Square” paintings in Russia, or oil and metals tycoon Viktor Vekselberg, whose Faberge egg purchase pegged at $100 million made headlines last year. 
Russian collectors are becoming serious buyers of Russian art works, but “it is still quite rare for them to purchase valuable musical instruments,” said Tim Ingles, head of the musical instruments department at Sotheby’s.
“This is the first instrument of such value purchased by a Russian collector at Sotheby’s,” Ingles said.
The violin is rare because it was crafted in 1720 by renowned Cremonese violin maker Carlo Bergonzi. No more than 50 Bergonzi instruments have survived. 
The violin was sold to Sotheby’s by a European woman who inherited it from her father, who had been an amateur musician in New York in the 1950s.

TITLE: Soviet-Style Parade Revived
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Attention may be on the new People’s Unity Day holiday, but the old holiday celebrating the October Revolution will not go unnoticed.
The first military parade since the break-up of the Soviet Union will be held on Red Square on Monday. 
The event will be a reenactment of the famous parade on Nov. 7, 1941, when Soviet soldiers marched through Red Square and then headed straight for the front to fight against Nazi Germany.
Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov is helping organize the parade, Izvestia reported. Soldiers wearing World War II-era uniforms rehearsed on the square this week. 
The parade is not the only Soviet tradition set to be revived this month. A parade of athletes — similar to the grand sports parades that took place under Stalin — is scheduled to take place in Red Square on Nov. 12, said Gennady Shvets, a spokesman for the Russian Olympic Committee. He noted, however, that the parade had been postponed twice this year already.

TITLE: Channel Five May Have National Aims
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With outside investors set to spend $25 million for a controlling stake in Petersburg Television and Radio, industry experts are speculating on the future of the company’s TV channel, formerly a federal station. 
Rossiya bank, Severstal-group and Baltic media-group could buy 1.5 million new shares in Petersburg TRC, in theory providing resources for a re-launch and federal broadcasting of the company’s channel Five, Interfax reported Monday citing undisclosed source close to the deal.
Larisa Konashyonok, head of public relations at Petersburg TRC neither confirmed nor denied the information. As for federal broadcasting, “such a theme is discussed. Various choices are considered,” Konashyonok said.
Enlarging the authorized capital stock, due to begin on November 23, will decrease the city stake in the company from 68.2 percent to 18.5 percent. This was a natural step according to Alexei Zubok, marketing director of local television channel STO, “since city authorities are not ready for the philanthropy of spending $15 million to $20 million in annual investment.”
New investors could finance returning the channel Five the federal status it last held in 1997.  At present it can only bid for frequency space in particular regions. TRK Petersburg would benefit from wider broadcasting since “many Russian companies are interested in precise advertisement placement in 10 to 15 large cities within the framework of regional expansion,” Zubok said.
“If in 2005 the Fifth channel earned between $4 million and $4.5 million in a St. Petersburg advertisement market worth around $54 million, with federal broadcasting it could aim for a slice of the $500 million budget spent on television advertisement across the regions,” Zubok said.
Another industry expert spoke out against widening distribution of channel Five programs, indicating that acquisition of the channel by a national network to distribute national programs locally would be a more reasonable option.
“The idea of local stations producing their own content and distributing programs only in a certain region is already out of date. The last local station in Moscow M1 was recently acquired by STS Media and is being turned into the core station of a second national network for STS Media,” said Hans Kuepper, associate director of transaction advisory responsible for the media sector at Ernst & Young.
Potentially, national networks could be interested in acquiring a regional station in St. Petersburg and in doing so increasing the number of their viewers, ratings and advertising revenue.
However, according to Kuepper, although the television market in Russia grows at 30 to 40 percent a year, the attractiveness of a particular regional media asset to investors depends on the terms of the deal.
“If the business model which is proposed to potential investors is to
improve the quality of a regional station it remains to be seen if that can be done successfully,” Kuepper said.
Zubok agreed that in becoming national Petersburg TRC will face many difficulties due to the uncompetitive content of its programs.
“The Fifth channel invests only $12 million to $20 million into production, while Rossia, ORT, NTV, STS and TNT channels combined spend more than $1.5 billion,” Zubok said.
Among the problems with channel Five content he named considerable copying of central channel programs, and an excessive focus on social problems.
As for a possible merger with the national channel Ren TV, which has been discussed in the local media, he said that although it “would decrease administrative expenses for shareholders, a reluctance to compromise on both sides will prevent the deal.”

TITLE: Russia, EU Agree To Steel Deal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW  — Russia and the EU have agreed to raise quotas for the import of Russian steel to Europe by 11 percent next year, further opening Russian producers’ access to lucrative Western markets, the trade ministry said Thursday.
Under agreements with the EU, Russian steel makers had been allowed to export 2 million metric tons of steel (2.2 million tons). Next year, the quota will be raised to 2.3 million metric tons (2.5 million tons), the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said.
The ministry said the limit for 2005 had also been raised, to 2.2 million metric tons (2.4 million tons). The quota had been set at 1.8 million metric tons (nearly 2 million tons) in 2004.
In a statement, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson called the agreement “a clear sign of the growing links between the EU and Russian economies.”
The new quota will be effective until the end of next year or the point at which Russia joins the World Trade Organization. Russian officials have said they aim to see Russia join the WTO in spring of next year after which quotas will automatically be dropped.
Russia has already signed agreements with the European Union — its main trade partner — as well as China and Japan on joining the Geneva-based WTO.
Russia has made 50 such agreements so far, but has yet to reach a deal with a handful of countries, including the United States.

TITLE: Petersburg Provider Moves Into Kazakhstan Market
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg-based provider i-Free has started distributing mobile content services in Kazakhstan, the company said Wednesday. The agreement was signed with KaR-Tel, a mobile operator with more than 1.6 million subscribers.
“By the end of next year we expect to attract 20 percent of KaR-Tel subscribers. To reward customer loyalty we opened a call-center in Kazakhstan providing information and advice about products and services,” said Yekaterina Ivanova, manager for international development at i-Free.
i-Free will first distribute mobile games, pictures, ring-tones and the Jamango dating and communication service.
“Kazakhstan has the most attractive potential. In terms of population it is the fourth largest country in the CIS. It has a high GDP. The supply of additional services to mobile phones is only starting to develop there and we have the chances to get ahead,” Ivanova said.
She indicated that the company, which last year held 14 percent of the Russian market but also operates in the Ukraine and Moldova, is eyeing up countries in Asia and the Americas as areas for further expansion. Since starting out in 2001 the company has gained a client base of over18 million.
The deal got a positive reaction from telecom experts, however they said that i-Free should be aware of specific market features.
“Unlike Ukraine or Belarus, the Kazakh market is hard to enter due to the specific ways in which it conducts its business. But the market is very promising. It is the largest market in the CIS after Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus,” said Oksana Pankratova, leading telecom analyst at iKS Consulting.
Pankratova forecasts i-Free providing services to four to five percent of its mobile operators’ subscribers. 
“In Russia nine to 10 percent of mobile subscribers use content services. Though the content market has long existed, active market development has been seen for only two years,” she said.
Victor Naumov, Head of IT and intellectual property protection group at DLA Piper, indicated several legal issues that could be difficult for a telecom company to tackle in Kazakhstan.
“The first issue is intellectual property protection for mobile content. It is most likely that Kazakhstan lacks the necessary legislation and i-Free will have to arrange deals with every single intellectual property owner or use a special organization to manage them.”
“It is still unknown whether Kazakhstan has a system in place to protect consumers, for example, through properly disclosed information about products, or the company’s accounts,” Naumov said.

TITLE: Trade Minister Gref Lends Support to Regional Jet Plan
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref on Wednesday threw his weight behind the Russian Regional Jet, promising government support for the landmark project, which is expected to put Russia back on the map of global aviation.
“We have full confidence that this jet will be made,” Gref told reporters after the project’s presentation at the Moscow design bureau of fighter jet manufacturer Sukhoi, the leader of the project.
Gref, who in the past has criticized the Russian aviation industry, during the presentation repeatedly needled Sukhoi executives on whether their jet was in the same class as those made by Brazil’s Embraer.
“I have sat in the Embraer cockpit, I suggest you do too,” Gref told Sukhoi CEO Mikhail Pogosyan. Embraer, along with Canada’s Bombardier, is a global leader in regional aircraft production.
Gref, however, said that his visit to Sukhoi boosted his confidence in the RRJ, and he confirmed that in the next three years the government would allocate 8.6 billion rubles ($300 million) for the project. The funding, which is expected to cover more than one-third of the project’s development, has already been included in the government’s draft budget for 2006. 
RRJ, a family of jets seating between 65 and 95 passengers, will be test flown in the first half of 2007 and will enter mass production in January 2008, with 60 jets to be made that year. Sukhoi plans to sell up to 750 such jets internationally by 2024, including 300 in Russia and the CIS.
OAO Aeroflot, Eastern Europe’s largest airline, will sign a contract this month to purchase the jets, Economy Minister German Gref said Wednesday, Interfax reported, without saying how many of the aircraft the state-run carrier would order. Sergei Kharitonov, Aeroflot’s deputy chief executive, has said the company is looking to buy as many as 30 of the aircraft. Aeroflot spokeswoman Irina Dannenberg declined to comment on Gref’s remarks, saying only that the airline is looking at its options and expects to make a decision by the end of the year. (Bloomberg).

TITLE: Estonian Bank Suspends Staff at Centre of SEC Investigation
AUTHOR: By David Mardiste
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TALLINN — An Estonian investment bank, the subject of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry, said on Wednesday it had started an internal investigation and suspended staff at the centre of the probe.
The SEC on Tuesday charged Estonian company Lohmus Haavel & Viisemann (LHV) and two of its employees with fraud, in relation to a scheme to steal corporate news release data from Business Wire in advance of the official release.
Estonia’s financial watchdog told Reuters it also was mounting its own investigation into the allegations.
In a statement in Tallinn on Wednesday, LHV said it had suspended two employees pending the results of its inquiry.
LHV Managing Partner Rain Tamm said his bank neither participated in nor authorised the scheme.
“We have suspended them (the employees) while conducting an internal investigation,” Tamm said. “We are cooperating fully with the SEC in order to identify the cause of this situation and to resolve it.”
The SEC statement said that Estonian citizens Oliver Peek, 24, and Kristjan Lepik, 28, were charged with the “electronic theft and trading in advance of more than 360 confidential press releases issued by more than 200 U.S. public companies”.
Peek and Lepik could not be reached for comment. According to the complaint, LHV became a Business Wire client in June 2004 and then used a program to gain unauthorised access to confidential information contained in impending press releases.
LHV said its investment funds and trading accounts were not used in the scheme and that the internal inquiry was focused on five specific customer accounts of its products used by professional traders.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Metro Maker Profits
ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) — The profits of Vagonmash, one of the largest producers of metro and railway wagons in the CIS, increased 2.58 times to 1.33 billion rubles ($45.7 million) in the first nine months of 2005, compared to 0.52 billion in the same period last year, a company press release announced Wednesday. 
It means that this year the company has already made one and a half times more than during the whole of 2004. The net profit of the company was 11 million rubles for this period, compared to 12 million for the whole of 2004.
The St. Petersburg company has strengthened its market position followingthe manufacturing of wagons for a newly-constructed metro system in the town of Kazan, as well as work in St Petersburg, Minsk, Kiev, and other towns in Russia and the CIS. 
Moreover, the company worked on the renewal of Pochta Rossii, (the Russian Post), on projects for Russian Railways, and for some commercial carriers.

Reserves’ Record High
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s foreign currency and gold reserves rose to a record $164.3 billion last week as the central bank bought foreign currencies to curb the ruble’s strength. The bank added $1.6 billion to the reserves between Oct. 22 and Oct. 28, it said in an e-mailed statement today. The reserves may rise to about $180 billion by the year’s end, according to the median estimate of seven economists surveyed by Bloomberg on Nov. 2.
The reserves have surged from $12 billion in 1998, when President Boris Yeltsin’s government defaulted on $40 billion in domestic debt. 

Citigroup Credits
St. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Citigroup will become the sole organizer of a 50 million-euro syndicated credit for North-West Telecom, the biggest land line operator in the northwestern region of Russia, Interfax reported Thursday. 
The credit, which is unsecured, will be used for the modernization and digitilization of their networks, and to expand their coverage areas.
The statement also said that the credit will have a 15 months discounted period, will be fully repaid after three years and one month, and will have an expected margin of 2 percent.

TITLE: It’s a Holiday Time of the Year ... Or Is It?
AUTHOR: By Masha Gessen
TEXT: And a happy holiday to you. Go to the dacha, sleep in, get drunk, be happy. What holiday is it? It’s a Friday — that’s all most Russians can tell you.	
In the last 15 years, Russia has acquired some new holidays, such as Constitution Day, on Dec. 12, and another day, June 12, which is sometimes known as Independence Day, which begs the question: Independence from what? Hard to say. But now November offers a possible answer. It must be independence from Poland that we never tire of celebrating.
Once upon a time, we celebrated the anniversary of Great October, the 1917 Bolshevik coup that established the state later known as the Soviet Union. Great October was celebrated in November, but this stemmed from the gap between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars.
In 1991, communist rule and the Soviet Union collapsed, but Russia kept celebrating Great October for a number of years. The Communist Party, naturally, used the day to rally its troops. Finally, Boris Yeltsin renamed the holiday, calling it the Day of Accord and Reconciliation. The idea was that it would stop being a day of confrontation and would come to symbolize Russia’s coming to terms with its bloody and shameful past.
This was one of the very, very few things that the Yeltsin government ever did to help Russia come to terms with its past. Unsurprisingly, it was not successful. Communists and other left-wingers continued to rally, and the rest of us continued to try to ignore them.
Last year, President Vladimir Putin’s administration took up the problem of the November holiday. Literal-minded as these people can sometimes be, that is precisely how they seemed to conceptualize the issue: There was a November holiday that was wrong, and they needed a November holiday that was right. So they looked for something that happened in November. Unfortunately, the year comprises 12 months, and the great milestones of Russian history are more or less evenly spread throughout the year, so the pickings for November were slim.
They found Nov. 4, the day the Poles were kicked out of the Kremlin. Or not. The events of the period resisted simple demarcation, and continue to do so today. Let’s put it this way: Fasten your seatbelts, and I will try to summarize briefly what some people choose to believe happened on Nov. 4, 1612.
Russia was in chaos back then. The period known as The Time of Troubles had begun with the death of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich in 1598. This member of the Ryurik dynasty had died intestate, which is to say, it was unclear who should take the throne. (It is perhaps testament to the presence of some historical memory that contemporary Russian leaders always aim to appoint successors.) Fyodor’s brother-in-law and closest adviser, Boris Godunov, was then elected to the throne by the boyars. His seven-year reign was more or less a disaster: Famines and plagues devastated the country while in Moscow the oligarchs conspired constantly against him.
In 1603, a man calling himself Dmitry and claiming to be the surviving younger son of Ivan the Terrible — and Fyodor’s younger brother — appeared in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, where he gathered an army of Russian emigres, Cossacks and other mercenaries, and Poles, and with them crossed into Russia. When Boris died in 1605, False Dmitry, as he is known to history, ascended to the throne.
The impostor stayed in power for less than a year, replaced by a Ryurik-line prince called Vasily Shuisky, who was in short order brought down by another False Dmitry, who then failed to seize the throne because the Polish Prince Wladyslaw wanted it too. Some Muscovites swore allegiance to Wladyslaw, who promised to preserve Orthodoxy for the Russians — but it seems he was lying because in fact his father, Sigismund III, wanted the throne for himself and Roman Catholicism for Russia.
There were also the Swedes, but we will leave them out. Things were a mess. The throne was vacant. 
Polish troops were in the Kremlin. A Nizhny Novgorod butcher named Kuzma Minin formed an alliance with Ryurik-descendant prince Dmitry Pozharsky, and together they led an uprising that put an end to the chaos in the Kremlin — although not to the Dmitriad Wars, which went on until 1619. Ultimately, Mikhail Romanov was installed as tsar, beginning a dynasty that ruled Russia until 1917.
The Minin and Pozharsky uprising is not a bad event to celebrate. If the people in the Putin administration actually thought about anything other than the calendar proximity to the old holiday, what must have appealed to them is the fact that the uprising made what appeared to be order out of chaos. There is also the enticing fact that the uprising brought a simple butcher and a prince together with the people — which lends some legitimacy to the name of People’s Unity Day.
The problem is, it would still take a lot more than the designation of a single day to bring people together — just as it would have taken a lot more than the old designation to help Russia come to terms with its past. And just as with the Day of Accord and Reconciliation, there will be people and political parties that will use the day, and the public’s exceedingly vague recollection of history, to their own ends. A number of Russian nationalist organizations are planning to stage a march on Friday, appealing to the current (and never entirely dormant) anti-Polish and generally xenophobic sentiment. Now how is this better, exactly, than the communists who used to march on Nov. 7?

Masha Gessen is a contributing editor at Bolshoi Gorod.

TITLE: Fair Auctions 101
AUTHOR: By Konstantin Sonin
TEXT: Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko scored a major victory last week when the government auctioned off the Kryvorizhstal steel mill for more than $4.8 billion, despite the protests of the opposition and a series of legal challenges filed by the winners of an auction held last year. Competition among the bidders was so intense that the mill sold for twice the opening price and more than five times what it went for in 2004, when a consortium led by former President Leonid Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk bought Kryvorizhstal for $850 million.
The sale was a political victory over Yushchenko’s domestic opposition, especially when you take into account that the privatization effort was spearheaded by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. By holding a normal privatization auction, Yushchenko also achieved something that his rivals in Russia have never managed to do. 
Politics aside, a number of purely economic lessons can be drawn from the Kryvorizhstal auction. The most interesting of these is the impact it will have on the metals market in the Commonwealth of Independent States, but this will not become clear for another few years, so let’s focus on the economics of the auction itself.
There are two main dangers involved in holding a privatization auction of this sort: collusion between the bidders and corruption among the organizers. Collusion is a particularly serious problem, because in certain circumstances bidders don’t even need to form a secret alliance in advance. They can bid in such a way that a ring or alliance takes shape in the course of the trading session. The second danger is that the organizers of the auction set the rules in a way that gives one bidder a clear advantage.
Foreign bidders, including Russian companies, were effectively barred from participating in last year’s Kryvorizhstal auction on the usual pretext of defending national interests. Restrictions of this sort, like collusion between the bidders, result in less profit than if the auction had been conducted on the up-and-up. Auctions run by the state are particularly vulnerable to both collusion and corruption because the government officials in charge have little incentive to encourage aggressive bidding or to secure the highest price.
The key to the success of last week’s auction was allowing foreign steel producers to participate. This reduced the risk of collusion because it becomes harder to form alliances as the number of bidders increases. It also limited the risk of corruption by decreasing the advantage to be gained by cutting a deal with the organizers. 
In theory, ascending-bid open-format auctions, where bidders successively raise the sale price until just one bidder remains, are more susceptible to collusion than sealed-bid auctions. But sealed-bid auctions are more vulnerable to corruption because bidders are often ready to part with considerable sums in order to find out how much their rivals have offered.
So what can Russia learn from the Kryvorizhstal auction? Surely the organizers of the Yuganskneftegaz and Slavneft auctions, as well as the privatization auctions of the 1990s, understood how corruption and collusion reduce profits. The lesson of Kryvorizhstal is for the Russian people, not the bureaucrats. And what it teaches us is that if the state holds a privatization auction but doesn’t broadcast the bidding live, and disqualifies a major bidder to boot, you can bet that corruption and collusion are involved.

Konstantin Sonin, professor at the New Economic School/CEFIR, is a columnist for Vedomosti, where this comment first appeared.

TITLE: Treasure hunt
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Treasures from the collection of the late banker Edmund Safra, who died in 1999 in mysterious circumstances with a rumored Russian connection, are being sold this week at Sotheby’s auction house in New York.
The sale of works from one of the greatest private collections of the 20th century features the most important selection of works by Russian court jeweler Carl FabergÎ to be offered at auction in the past 25 years, according to Sotheby’s experts. 
The items, including clocks, picture frames, cigarette and fan cases, cane and parasol handles, candle sticks and other decorative objects from the collection of Safra and his wife Lily, are expected to fetch more than $6 million.
The death of 67-year-old Safra, whose fortune exceeded $2.5 billion and who was rated 199th on Forbe’s list of billionaires, is still surrounded by a thick cloud of speculation. The banker was found asphyxiated in a locked bathroom at his luxurious penthouse in Monaco on Dec. 3, 1999.
The results of an official investigation suggested the banker died as a result of the failed attempt of one of his male nurses to stage a fire in order to perform his boss’s rescue. But this explanation didn’t satisfy many and rumors persist as to the true nature of Safra’s death. 
Some say the Jewish banker could have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists, who may have used the nurse, while others blame the Russian mafia.
The Italian newspaper La Stampa published a report claiming that shortly before his death the banker had been spotted at Cap d’Antibes with London-based Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who is facing huge embezzlement and tax evasion charges in Moscow.
But an article in Vanity Fair Magazine contradicted this account. Sources close to Safra, who had Parkinson’s disease, denounced the allegations, suggesting the banker was too feeble and dependent on medication to possibly travel that far.
But the Russian connection has been mentioned in many publications.
An article in the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur contains an interview with a Monaco attorney, who refused to be named, saying that “Safra denounced the Russian Mafia, and some of his clients who were concerned by that could have become afraid and used [the nurse]. It wouldn’t be the first time a poor soul was used in the service of a grand criminal scheme.” 
None of these claims has been officially confirmed.
“One thing is certain: Edmund Safra, whose specialty was private banking for wealthy clients and who was said to know ‘all the secrets of the financial planet,’ had his enemies,” Dominick Dunne wrote in an article in Vanity Fair Magazine in December 2000. 
In life, the banker cultivated a polished image among the world’s rich, but  Safra was haunted by rumours, suspicion and speculation. 
“He was accused of having laundered money for the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, as well as for the Colombian drug cartels,” Dunne wrote. “And both his bank and his private jet were alleged to have been pressed into service to move money and personnel during the Iran-contra scandal. The rumors of Safra’s involvement were found to have been part of a smear campaign by American Express, and Safra ultimately won a public apology and an $8 million settlement, which he donated to charity.” 
Sotheby’s expert Gerard Hill said he doesn’t expect the sale of Safra’s Russian treasures to be influenced by the mystery of his death, although interest is sure to be great.
“I haven’t heard the connection mentioned yet,” Hill said.
The auction features, among others, a rare FabergÎ Gold, Silver and Translucent Enamel Combination Desk Clock and Calendar made in Moscow in 1899-1908, a FabergÎ Gold, Enamel and Diamond-Set Parasol Handle (1899-1903), a FabergÎ Gilded Silver and Translucent Enamel Combination Clock and Miniature Frame (1899) and seven portrait miniatures of the children of Tsar Alexander II and Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna on sculptural stands from the late 19th century.
“Stunning works of art in polished and cut steel made by the Tula Arms Manufactory will also be offered, as will choice examples of Russian furniture, mirrors, miniatures and tableware,” Sotheby’s said. “The spectacular Russian treasures will be sold alongside magnificent French, Continental and English furniture, Decorative works of art, clocks, porcelain, paintings and carpets.” 
It is not known why Safra’s widow Lily chose to sell the items at this time.
The two-day auction on Thursday and Friday was preceded by a five-day showing. Hill, director of Russian works of art for Sotheby’s, mentioned the FabergÎ Gold Gilded Silver and Translucent Enamel Table Cigarette Box, 1908-17, designed in the racing colors of Leopold de Rothschild, as an object of particular artistic significance. 
“Enameled in deep blue and yellow stripes, which were the racing colors of Leopold Rothschild, the box has a simple yet elegant design and extremely sophisticated technique,” Hill said. “The ability to enamel such a large surface with these vibrant colours over an engraved ground is a technique requiring tremendous talent.”
Rothschild competed with the king of England in horse races. And there is another piece in the collection enam

eled in the racing colors of King Edward VII, Hill added.
Many of the items offered for sale have been off the market for decades. 
“The Rothschild tale box was purchased by Mr. Safra in 1973, and hasn’t been seen since that time,” Hill said. “And there are many other things in the collection in the similar category that were bought many years ago.”

TITLE: Twist in the tale
AUTHOR: By A. O. Scitt
TEXT: The New York Times
Roman Polanski’s last movie, “The Pianist,” which was widely hailed as a return to form, was also an intensely personal movie for the director. Adapted from someone else’s autobiography, the movie, about a Polish Jew struggling to survive the nightmare of Nazism, nonetheless dealt with experiences painfully close to Polanski’s own life. The same might be said about his wonderful new adaptation of Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist,” a novel that has been brought to the screen many times before, but never with such a dark intensity of feeling.
Or almost never. A precedent for Polanski’s somber, heartfelt interpretation of Dickens can be found in David Lean’s black-and-white versions of “Oliver Twist” and “Great Expectations,” both made just after World War II. Those films seem marked by the shadows of their own time as much as by the memories of Victorian poverty, and this new “Oliver Twist,” while scrupulously reproducing the costumes and dÎcor of the 19th century, seems hardly to be contained within the distant past. Polanski, a Polish Jew born in 1933, spent much of his childhood in hiding and in flight, which is pretty much the condition of Dickens’s young hero (as it was of Dickens himself). Polanski has, in many of his films, gravitated toward innocent protagonists hounded and bedeviled by monstrous cruelty and, when they are lucky, borne up by small instances of kindness and charity. His retelling of Dickens’s tale of a friendless boy discovers within the story those familiar, primal emotions of terror, fragility and the almost perverse will not only to survive but to remain human in inhuman circumstances.
In the landscape of “Oliver Twist,” as in “The Pianist,” goodness is so rare and inexplicable as to seem almost absurd. Oliver is played by Barney Clark, who was 11 when the film was made and whose slight frame and delicate features emphasize his character’s vulnerability. An orphan, Oliver lands first in a workhouse (its resemblance to a concentration camp is hardly accidental), and before long finds himself apprenticed to a weak-willed coffin maker. At every turn he is menaced by adults whose grotesqueness, while comical, is also a measure of their moral deformity, and of the ugliness of the society that makes them possible. The worst thing about these villains, who tend to occupy positions of at least relative power, is that they believe their sadism and lack of compassion to be the highest expressions of benevolence. Like Barbara Bush after seeing the “underprivileged” citizens of New Orleans exiled to the Astrodome, they insist on telling Oliver that things are working out pretty well for him.
The look of the movie, shot in Prague by the Polish cinematographer Pawel Edelman, is consistent with its interpretation of Dickens’s worldview, which could be plenty grim but which never succumbed to despair. There is just enough light, enough grace, enough beauty, to penetrate the gloom and suggest the possibility of redemption. The script, by Ronald Harwood (who also wrote “The Pianist,” for which he and Polanski won Oscars), is at once efficient and ornate, capturing Dickens’s narrative dexterity and his ear for the idioms of English speech.
Ben Kingsley, hunched over and snaggletoothed, makes his Fagin a figure of hideousness and pathos. The film omits reference to the Jewishness that makes Fagin, along with Shylock, one of the more problematic figures in the English literary canon, but it does not bother to explain or expunge the vicious elements of racial caricature — the nose, the clawlike fingers, the hand-rubbing greed — that cling to the character. There is, nonetheless, great tenderness in Sir Ben’s performance, and in the way Polanski treats him. 
The rest of the cast honor the best traditions of British acting. Jamie Foreman is a scarily thuggish Bill Sykes, Leanne Rowe is a heartbreaking Nancy (who is nearly as much a child as Oliver), and Edward Hardwicke, as Oliver’s benefactor Mr. Brownlow, is the embodiment of stuffy British decency. 
But there is nothing stuffy about this film. It is bracingly old-fashioned — a literary adaptation with a somewhat overdone orchestral score (by Rachel Portman) and lavish sets and costumes. But unlike too many film adaptations of classic literature, “Oliver Twist” does not embalm its source with fussy reverence. Instead, with tact and enthusiasm, Polanski grabs hold of a great book and rediscovers its true and enduring vitality.

TITLE: Pub grub
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The onset of cold weather stimulates an appetite for red meat. In the summer, beef, pork, or lamb can be dispensed with, but as the days get shorter and the temperatures fall, one develops a strong desire for a well-cooked beef steak, served in a warm and cosy place.
Since the Red Lion moved to Ploshchad Dekabristov, Porter House is the only pub on the Petrograd Side. It’s on Voskova Ulitsa, not far from Gorkovskaya metro station, near the sytny rynok open food market, Lenfilm studios and the Leningrad Zoo. This in an old-town neighborhood where some streets still carry the names of merchants (who used to own pivnye — traditional Russian beer and spirits bars), while others are named after the revolutionaries whose aim was to destroy the merchant class — such as 19th century radical Samuel Voskova. 
After a few hundred years of class struggle, the pivnye have been substituted by popular Irish (or English) pubs like Porter House.
It has three halls: one in the front with a bar overlooking the street, and two at the back with a more formal restaurant set-up. With green walls, modestly decorated with photographs and cartoons, wooden paneling and beams, sofas with cushions, and quiet music Porter House has a warm and welcoming atmosphere, suited to either a lively dinner with company or relaxing and contemplating life on one’s own. It would look even better with a fireplace.
The pub (and restaurant) offers more than 40 sorts of whisky from all over the world ranging from 160 to 560 rubles ($5.60 — $19.60) a shot, and around 20 sorts of beer, including an inhouse unfiltered lager for 90 rubles ($3.15) a half liter. As well as Guinness (199 rubles, $6,98), Timmerman beer (with a dintinct cherry flavour) can certainly be recommended (also 199 rubles for a half liter). 
There is a wide range of dishes to start with, from salads and cold starters (from 186 rubles to 220 rubles/$6.50 to $7.70) to soups (90 -200 rubles/ $3.15-$7). 
We tried the beef carpaccio (186 rubles, $6.50), which came very fresh and thin, covered with a bit of creamy sauce and slices of Parmesan cheese, and salmon rolls (also 186 rubles), pieces of smoked salmon rolled in blini and cut into smaller parts. 
The soups are highly recommended — we had the mushroom soup (made from white mushrooms with crispy onion) and cheese soup (very smooth, with pieces of skinned tomatoes in it), both for 96 rubles ($3.36).
There is a good variety of main dishes available, and this is where a winter craving for red meat can be satisfied.
Steaks to choose from include beef or pork, and we tried grilled beef-steak with roast potatoes and vegetables (310 rubles/$10.80) and veal medallions with spinach in a berry sauce (284 rubles, $9.96). The first is highly recommended but the second was a bit small for us.
Apart from meat selection, you can also choose from a variety of fish and game dishes, including a duck fillet, and chicken or goose drumsticks. (As a rule, we are very cautious about various “legs,” since sporty birds are lean and sucking on bones is not what we like). The menu also has Italian and Mexican dishes, with risotto and fahitas available.
Porter House is a good option either for a drink or a meal on a cold St. Petersburg evening. It’s not very busy because it’s off the beaten track, but you may want to check in advance if there is a football match on at nearby Petrovsky Stadium if you don’t want to meet crowds of football fans. But Porter House is good for altogether different animals.
Porter House
31/20 Voskova Ulitsa, Petrograd Side. Tel: 233 3352.
Open from noon until the last customer leaves.
Menu in Russian and English.
All major credit cards accepted.
Dinner for two with beer 2,245 rubles ($78).

TITLE: Perception of sound
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: They are called Metamorphosis, but although they are based mainly in the Czech Republic, the name has nothing to do with Franz Kafka’s unsettling story about a man who turns into an insect.
“In a way it just came out of the [fact] that the project has to have a name. It doesn’t have any deeper connection behind it,” guitarist Richard Deutscher said, sipping an espresso in a St. Petersburg cafe this week. 
“I like the name, the project itself is changing all the time. It’s changed us in a way. But there’s no connection to Kafka.”
Formed in Vienna, Austria, in 1996, the multi-national ensemble, which blends classical and punk and occasionally sings in Turkish or Czech, has undergone many changes — from its lineup to where it is based. Guitarist Martin Alacam, violinist Christoph Pajer and cellist Jan Kavan all now live in the Czech Republic, but Deutscher has been based in St. Petersburg for almost three years. He first came to the city when he performed at the SKIF alternative music festival in 2001.
With Metamorphosis, the musicians’ musical preferences are also ever-shifting. Deutscher has had periods of listening to Shostakovich in his kitchen, then jazz, then experimental music.
“There’s no major influence, I like everything,” he said.
“I like pop music, I like classical music, I like jazz, I like experimental music — everywhere I can find some groups which are inspiring. Right now I like to listen to Radian, the Vienna group. It’s bass, synthesizer and drums. The drummer has his very own style, very minimalist. He has a sound that you very, very seldom find. I even discovered Harry Belafonte in him.
“For a while the Czech scene was  very important to us. In the early 1990s, when it became possible to travel to the Czech Republic, we went a lot to the festivals there. It was interesting, because there was such a rich scene, like a lot of small villages had their own festivals there, which were really local, and the Czech musicians, I think, developed their very own style. It’s happened around the scene in Brno; Iva Bittova, Vladimir Vaclavek, Pavel Fajt, the people around [the band] Dunaj, all had their own way of how to deal with the rhythm. They played a lot with polyrhythmic structures. And we listened a lot to this music. It was definitely a very big influence on us, especially how they dealt with the rhythm.”
Deutscher’s all-time favorite guitarist, Leonid Soybelman, however, comes from the former Soviet Union.  Soybelman formed his first band, the avant-rock Ne Zhdali, in Tallinn, Estonia, before moving to Israel and then to Europe where he formed the experimental, Klezmer-tinged band Kletka Red.
“I just like the way he plays guitar. He’s my favorite guitar player, I would say,” said Deutscher.
The website of Leo Records, the label that released Metamorphosis’s second album, says it is  comparable to work by the Kronos Quartet, a famous new classical ensemble, and a pair of alternative rock/punk bands. “Forget Kronos Quartet, The EX and the Pixies — now you have them all in one band,” reads the album’s notes. But Deutscher finds this comparison a little far-fetched.
“I find that a little bit funny — the connections that people have, and I can’t always follow it,” he said. “We are always compared to the [U.S. avant-rock band] Rachel’s, for example. Sometimes it’s enough if there is some violin in a rock band — they’re already drawing comparisons.
“I would say that Kronos, for example, is an absolutely conceptual band, which we are not. The music we play is 100 percent our own whereas Kronos mainly play other people’s music. I don’t see many connections, except maybe stringed instruments, but for me, for example, [Alexander] Balanescu is closer. I was really impressed by Balanescu’s solo concert at SKIF. It is one of the concerts that I will always remember.”
An aggressive element can be heard in Metamorphosis’s music that stems from the musicians’ love of punk rock.
“We all like to listen to punk music. I still listen to Iggy Pop,” he said.
“I also like to listen to the Pixies. There was a phase when I really loved that band.”
The band’s recording debut, “Contaminated Chamber Music,” was released on the Prague-based Rachot label in 1998.
“The guy who ran this label had a quite good nose for interesting music in the Czech Republic,” said Deutscher.
“He worked with [singer/violin player] Iva Bittova on her first albums, and also Dunaj, which is also very interesting, but he only had them in the beginning because he wasn’t interested in letting these artists perform anywhere other than the Czech Republic. With time it got difficult to work with him, and he also had personal problems and he didn’t organize concerts for us for almost a year without telling us anything about it, so finally we decided it’s better if we organize ourselves. When we wanted to release the second album, it was kind of clear that he didn’t want to release it anymore.”
The second, and so far Metamorphosis’s most recent album, “Dip,” was released on Leo Records in 2002. Leo is a small but highly esteemed British label specializing in innovative, improvisation-based “new music,” that was established by Russian emigre Leo Feigin from St. Petersburg in 1979.
Deutscher said the band contacted Leo Records after thorough web research.
“We were searching for labels on the Internet and found Leo [Feigin], wrote to him, and he was one of the few guys who answered,” he said.
“It was not easy to convince him, I have to say, because he wrote that we were quite a strange fruit, but he liked the music very much and he really just went for it, even if it’s not the kind of improvised music which he has a lot on his label. Unfortunately I never met him — this is a really Internet kind of story.”
“Leo was very supportive for us, because he really tried to spread the word. We got good reviews for the album from several magazines which would have ignored us if it had been released on some small label. Which is the usual story: we played a lot of concerts and, on the other hand, haven’t really made a big effort in promoting ourselves. It’s not our focus and it was really hard for us to get any kind of press together.  Through some contact Leo managed to get an article in Wire magazine. And in this context Leo was really supportive. He is quite a name in the scene and he helped us really a lot with this.”
Although the members of Metamorphosis, who are also involved in solo projects and collaborations, are split between two countries — making it difficult to work as a single entity — Deutscher said it has always been the situation with Metamorphosis.
“Martin is half-Czech, half-Turkish, he moved first to Prague, and at that time we all lived in Vienna and he was in Prague, and at that time it was a little bit like now,” he said.
“Our first album was done, more or less, in the kitchen, with some bottles, and we were playing there all the time. But then we moved to Prague. We met at some house in the countryside and we played there for two weeks. When we have concerts, we meet and combine it with rehearsal periods.
“We have a lot of material now, which we want to release very, very soon. Actually the St. Petersburg concert will be the last where we’ll play old material. After that we want to release an album. We have material together for two albums but nothing’s really ready, so we have to meet and rehearse it.”
According to Deutscher, after the concert the band will stay for a while in St. Petersburg to rehearse some new material and then will meet again to rehearse for another week in the Czech Republic, where Metamorphosis is due to perform later this month. Recording sessions are set for March with the album coming out by the end of the summer, he said.
During his stay in St. Petersburg Deutscher has been involved in quite a few collaborations with local musicians.
“I played a lot with the saxophonist George Bagdasarov, but he plays mainly acoustic instruments which are processed by a computer,” he said.
“I played with him and really enjoyed it. Then there was an improvised project with Ramil [Shamsutdinov] of Markscheider Kunst, and this led to a collaboration where we really rehearsed something. 
“But actually I am here working with dancers. It started in St. Petersburg and has become my main work now, here in St. Petersburg and Vienna. I’ve been working for several years on a software program with a friend, which translates motion directly into sound. We made one program here with the Iguana dance theater, and right now I’m working with ballet dancer and  choreographer [Vladimir] Adzhamov. This is really great for me in St. Petersburg because there are a lot of super dancers around. 
“There are the greatest dance schools, and I was lucky to find this. People are very open here and want to experiment with these technologies, and I think it’s really interesting work for all of us.”
New technologies have affected the band’s sound, even if Metamorphosis’s members agreed not to use computers  when the band formed, said Deutscher.
“What influences Metamorphosis is that we all became computer nerds: the violin player works a lot with a computer (he’s made a soundtrack to the silent movie “Battleship Potemkin”) and there’s also a project in which he plays with two guitars and also live samples. Our cellist is a programmer, and he does soundtracks for games and also programs for games themselves. Martin is also processing guitars through some loop boards. And it influences our music a lot. We don’t want to use computers in this project, but it’s changed our perception of sound. We work much more with the sound itself now with this new material.” 

Metamorphosis performs at Platforma on Sunday. www.metamorphosis.at

TITLE: Open water
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Estonian capital Tallinn may have had the distinction of hosting yachting events during the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but St. Petersburg is the undoubted yachting capital of modern day Russia.
As the navigation season ends ahead of winter, when the Gulf of Finland and St. Petersburg’s waterways freeze over, the city’s premier yachtsmen can look back on another satisfying year of sailing. 
Nikolai Smirnov, captain of the yacht “Veya,” and his crew have already moored the vessel at the St. Petersburg River Yacht Club for the winter. Recollecting summer adventures at sea, Smirnov is looking forward to a new season opening in seven months when he will be able to sail again.
Smirnov has been fascinated by sailing since  childhood, and he is still devoted to the hobby. 
“I remember I was about five years old when I first watched a program about yachting on TV,” Smirnov said. “Although I was very impressed by that beautiful sport, my parents wanted me to skate instead.” 
But Smirnov was more interested in water in its liquid, unfrozen form. After learning to swim at the age of nine, Smirnov first joined the Strelna yacht club, then joined the Olympic reserve group for children at the then Leningrad Central Yacht Club.
Having participated in many different competitions, Smirnov was in the top 10 at the U.S.S.R. championship, took the first prize at the Leningrad championship, won prizes at the Vyborgskaya regatta and the Teleregatta sailing competition this year. 
“I really appreciate the atmosphere of the yacht club,” says Smirnov. “It’s a wonderful world full of diligent, healthy, purposeful, like-minded people — many of whom start sailing at the age of six or seven and often never stop.” 
Although it is a hard sport which requires physical and mental stamina from dedicated sportsmen, Smirnov believes that people of different ages and professions can unite to form a self-sufficient crew. 
For example, Captain Smirnov, a mobile service center manager by profession, is in charge of a team of between 6 to 10 young and middle-aged men and women among whom are a lawyer, a call-center operator, a doctor, a journalist, a plumber, an Human Resources manager and a furniture designer.
As a member of the examination committee and the captains’ board at the St. Petersburg River Yacht Club, Smirnov thinks that, in order to face bad weather conditions such as storms with cold water flooding the boat, a good yachtsman should have not only strong health and will but also be acquainted with marine science and be a qualified sailor.
“It’s always funny when people think that if they have a driving license they can steer a yacht as well,” Smirnov said. 
“It’s not that easy. People who want to be a licensed skipper or captain need to take special theoretical and practical courses that can last from several months to years and then pass exams.” 
This remains the case despite the fact that all modern yachts are equipped with a global satellite navigation system, Smirnov said, adding that winter is a good time for both beginners and experienced sailors to take special courses to maintain their qualifications in marine science. 
Having sailed in the waters of Lake Ladoga, the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, and visited countries such as Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and France, Smirnov says that distance is no problem but lack of fresh drinking water can be. Most of the long-distance voyages Smirnov and his team have made were aboard “Veya,” a well-equipped 9.15 meter-long yacht that is supplied with six berths, a small kitchen and enough space for keeping tanks with fresh water.
Smirnov says that with more than 300 years of sailing history — virtually unbroken except for the crisis period of the early 1990s — yachting has always been popular in Russia. 
He is quick to dispel a myth about yachting being supposedly banned in the Soviet era in order to prevent yachtsmen from escaping abroad. 
“Those who have crossed the Russian sea border know that it is closed and well-patrolled,” he said. 
“It’s not that easy to hide in a sea that is totally controlled by the frontier guard service. I assume it was impossible to escape by sea from the U.S.S.R. as well.”
Experienced in traveling abroad, Smirnov admits that Russia is far behind the West in its sailing culture. 
“Unfortunately, even in St. Petersburg, the maritime gateway of the country, we don’t see lots of yachts moored in the port as you would in European cities,” he said. However, the captain is positive about the prospects of yachting in Russia.
“I am happy to see that after emerging from the grip of a countrywide economic crisis which influenced sport, yachting has started to gain popularity among people and is developing again,” Smirnov said. “More and more people come to the yacht club in the desire to join a team and start sailing. 
Russian teams are represented with championships abroad and the yacht club’s old buildings are being repaired and new ones are being built. More moorings for new yachts are appearing.”
It’s not only the yachting enthusiasts who go to the yacht club in summer. In recent years, more and more visitors have gone to the St. Petersburg River Yacht Club to attend at different concerts and parties held there. 
Smirnov thinks that by combining sport and entertainment, the yacht club’s management not only makes money but also attracts new people to the romantic sport.
But yachting is undoubtedly expensive. Aside from the fact that yachts can cost anything from $50,000 to $500,000, repairs are required annually. But Smirnov says not only wealthy people sail. 
“Now, everyone who wants to start sailing can come to the yacht club and join a team for free,” he says. It is only later that newcomers need to invest in the yacht. He explained that most of the yachts at the club, including “Veya,” belong to the yacht club and sportsmen are allowed to use them if they provide all the necessary maintenance. 
From October until April or May, all the club’s vessels are put into dock in order to be repaired and repainted.
Meanwhile, wanting to start the new navigation season in good shape, Smirnov keeps fit by skating and skiing.
“The navigation season is only just finished but I’ve already started missing sailing,” Smirnov said.

TITLE: Death Toll in Ethiopian Unrest Rises to 42
AUTHOR: By Tsegaye Tadesse
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ADDIS ABABA — Three people were shot dead in the Ethiopian capital on Thursday, doctors said, in a third straight day of political unrest that has killed at least 42 and stirred fears for the giant African country’s stability.
The violence has prompted Britain to warn its citizens against non-essential travel to Ethiopia and an alarmed African Union called on both government and opposition in the country, the Horn of Africa’s dominant power, to show restraint.
Witnesses said police in Addis Ababa opened fire to disperse anti-government protests in several pockets of unrest across the city, a bastion of opposition to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Doctors said that in addition to the three killed on Thursday, the overnight death toll among those wounded on Tuesday had risen to eight from three.
“We have one person dead. He was 19 years old and hit in the chest,” a doctor in Zewditu Hospital said.
Another doctor in the Black Lion hospital said a 60-year-old man was killed in unrest in an eastern suburb of Addis Ababa. The third doctor said a man in his 20s was shot a few kms (miles) from St Paul’s Hospital and was dead on arrival.
Police have also detained scores of people including human rights activists, residents said.
The violence broke out on Tuesday when riot police clashed with demonstrators apparently heeding a call by the opposition Coalition for Democracy and Unity (CUD) for renewed protests against a May 15 poll it says was rigged.
“From last evening police have been rounding up CUD zonal leaders and human rights activists,” Adam Melaku, head of the independent Ethiopian Human Rights Council, told Reuters.
“We are very scared,” he said.
Residents said police went from house to house picking up mainly young men suspected of involvement in the violence, which followed months of worsening tensions between the government and opposition in sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation 
Information Minister Berhan Hailu confirmed the arrests but did not say how many had been detained. He repeated an accusation that CUD leaders had been responsible for stoking the bloodshed.
“There is no witch-hunt against CUD members except those involved in inciting violence,” he told Reuters.
Eight people died overnight from their wounds, medical sources said on Thursday, raising the death toll from Wednesday’s clashes between riot police and opposition supporters to 31. Eight were killed on Tuesday.
The government says fewer were killed on Tuesday, putting the toll at 11 protesters and two police officers.
Political tensions in Africa’s top coffee grower have deepened since a multi-party vote in May handed Meles a third five-year term in power, despite a big swing to the opposition.

TITLE: UN Says Money Needed For Quake Relief Effort
AUTHOR: By Christopher Bodeen
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan — A U.S. general stressed Thursday that American helicopters and troops will help victims of South Asia’s earthquake for months to come, but the World Food Program warned that its own relief flights might have to be scaled back within days. 
The UN agency said it was running out of money because donors have not given enough to meet the region’s desperate needs.
Survivors, meanwhile, prepared for dampened celebrations Friday of Islam’s biggest feast, the Eid al-Fitr, amid the rubble and sadness of communities shattered by the Oct. 8 quake. Some 80,000 people died and 3 million are homeless, mostly in Pakistan’s part of Kashmir.
“All the houses fell down in our village and we haven’t got anything to celebrate with or give to the kids,” said a 21-year-old from the village of Douba Syedan who gave his name only as Khabir.
During a visit to Muzaffarad, the commander of U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan repeated American assurances that the U.S. helicopters and troops diverted from Afghanistan to quake relief would keep flying through the winter and beyond.
“It’s a huge effort. It’s got to be a sustained effort, and we’re here with our Pakistani friends, with our allies, working as a team to get this massive mission done,” Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry said.
U.S. helicopters would resume relief flights Friday near Pakistan’s frontier with India after a halt that was ordered Tuesday when a U.S. chopper reported being fired on with a rocket-propelled grenade, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Nida Emmons said.
The CH-47 cargo helicopter was not hit, and the Pakistani military said the pilot may have mistaken road-clearing explosions for an attack. Emmons said flights were resuming after a joint Pakistani-American “cooperative review” of the incident.
“We do consider it safe to fly there,” she said.
The World Food Program first warned Oct. 28 that without more donor money it would be forced to reduce or halt flights in the quake zone in about a week. Spokesman Robin Lodge said Thursday that the UN agency has enough resources to continue at full strength a few extra days but that it might have to ground some helicopters soon.
“We’re not necessarily going to have to stop them altogether, but unless funding comes through we’ll have to scale back because these things are incredibly intensive to fly,” Lodge said. “It’d be safe to say that within the next three or four days, we’ll have to look at scaling back.”
The agency would like to have 22 helicopters in the air but so far has only 17. It has appealed for $100 million to finance flights over the next six months, but donors have supplied only a tenth of that, Lodge said.

TITLE: Riots Spread in Paris Suburbs
AUTHOR: By Jamey Keaten
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France — Rioting youths shot at police and firefighters Thursday after burning car dealerships and public buses and hurling rocks at commuter trains. France’s government faced growing pressure to curb the violence, fueled by anger over poor conditions in suburban Paris housing projects. 
Rampaging for an eighth day, youths ignored an appeal for calm from French President Jacques Chirac, whose government worked feverishly to fend off a political crisis amid criticism that it has ignored problems in suburbs heavily populated by first- and second-generation North African and Muslim immigrants.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a string of emergency meetings with Cabinet ministers throughout the day. He told the Senate the government “will not give in” to violence in the troubled suburbs.
“Order and justice will be the final word in our country,” Villepin said. “The return to calm and the restoration of public order are the priority — our absolute priority.”
The riots started last Thursday after the electrocution deaths of two teenagers hiding in a power station from police they believed were chasing them in the northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
By Wednesday night, violence had spread to at least 20 Paris-region towns, said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris where the violence has been concentrated. He said youths in the region fired four shots at riot police and firefighters but caused no injuries.
Nine people were injured in Seine-Saint-Denis and 315 cars burned across the Paris area, officials said. In the tough northeastern suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, youth gangs set fire to a Renault car dealership and burned at least a dozen cars, a supermarket and a local gymnasium.
Traffic was halted Thursday morning on a suburban commuter line linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains overnight at the Le Blanc-Mesnil station. They forced a conductor from one train and broke windows, the SNCF rail authority said. A passenger was lightly injured by broken glass.
The unrest has highlighted the division between France’s big cities and their poor suburbs, with frustration simmering in the housing projects in areas marked by high unemployment, crime and poverty.
The violence also cast doubt on the success of France’s model of seeking to integrate its large immigrant community — its Muslim population, at an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe’s largest — by playing down differences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities.
Opposition groups accused the government of letting the situation spiral out of control, either by failing to act quickly enough or letting in too many immigrants over the years.
“We see that the situation in certain neighborhoods is not getting better at all but degenerating,” Socialist Party President Jean-Marc Ayrault told LCI television, who said Chirac’s conservatives “did not know how to take control.”
Right-wing French lawmaker Philippe de Villiers said he wants to “stop the Islamization of France.”

TITLE: Russian Rocket to Revive Olympic Hopes
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former NHL star Pavel Bure hopes he will have the same success building the hockey team Russia will send to the Turin Winter Olympics as Wayne Gretzky did putting together Canada’s gold medal squad at the 2002 Games.
Bure, 34, was named general manager of Russia’s Olympic hockey team Tuesday after announcing his retirement as a player. “I think it’s a great opportunity to build a team,” Bure said in an interview with MOJO Sports Radio in Vancouver.
“Look what Gretzky did for Canada at the last Olympic Games. I know there are lots of Russian guys who would love to come and play for the Russian team.”
The Russians have had a hard time assembling rosters in international play in recent years as current NHLers fought with the old guard in management. Bure’s arrival may help Russia field a stronger team in Turin.
“Only players who want to be on the team will be there,” Bure said.
“I am jealous in a good way of Team Canada and Team USA. It’s such a privilege that players get invited to represent their country. I hope the same thing will happen with Team Russia.”
Bure’s appointment was announced by Alexander Steblin, the head of the Russian Hockey Federation, at a news conference in Moscow.
“I can promise you one thing, from now on you won’t see such a mess with the national team that you’ve seen here before,” Bure told reporters.
“You won’t see grouchy players here anymore. Only those who really want to play for Russia will be called into the team.”
But Canadiens star and Russian team veteran Alexei Kovalev wasn’t sure about that when asked for his reaction Tuesday.
“I don’t know how it’s going to be,” Kovalev said in Montreal. “For me it’s kind of unusual seeing a young person being general manager of the national team. We’ll see what happens. I can’t tell anything right now.
“For me it doesn’t really matter who is the general manager of the team,” Kovalev added. “I don’t have to deal with him. I’m just a player and he’s the general manager.”
Bure, known as the Russian Rocket for his dazzling speed and highlight reel goals, spent 12 seasons in the NHL with Vancouver, Florida and the New York Rangers. He had not played since he injured his right knee in March 2003 while with the New York Rangers.
“I was waiting and waiting and doing my rehab but it didn’t work well,” Bure told MOJO Radio.
“I put two and two together and decided to retire and be G.M. for now. It’s part of the job. Sooner or later players have to retire. I knew one day it was going to come. It’s too bad it came this way.”
Bure said he will finish his law degree next year and plans to become a corporate lawyer.
In 702 regular season games Bure had 437 goals and 342 assists for 779 points. He had another 35 goals and 70 points in 64 playoff games, including Vancouver’s run to the 1994 Stanley Cup final, which the Canucks lost in seven games to the New York Rangers.
He led the NHL with 59 goals with the Florida Panthers in 2000-01 and 58 goals the season before, also with Florida.
Bure also had back-to-back 60-goal seasons with the Canucks, his first NHL club, in 1992-93 and 1993-94.
“He was electrifying,” former Canucks teammate Trevor Linden said Tuesday from Vancouver. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen or played with a player that’s brought people out of their seats like that.
“He was probably the most exciting player I’ve ever seen, just that explosive speed and that ability to make something happen when you just don’t think anything was going on.”
The Canucks drafted Bure 113th overall in the 1989 draft. He immediately paid dividends in Vancouver, collecting 60 points (34-26) in 65 games in 1991-92, his rookie NHL season.
“He was probably Vancouver’s first superstar,” Linden said. “That was a big step for this organization. We had never had a player that was as dominant as he was.”
The Canucks and Bure had a messy split. He refused to report to the team for the 1998-99 season, forcing a trade to Florida.
He still refused to give a specific reason for wanting out of Vancouver.
“I had to move on,” he said.
“I had a great time in Vancouver and have great memories but I had to move on. Sometimes you have to do what’s right for you.”
Bure said he actually had planned to leave a year earlier but decided to stay when the Canucks signed Mark Messier as a free agent.
“When I found out Mark was going to play for the Vancouver Canucks, I said I have to stay one more year and play with such a great player,” he said.
Russian press officer Seva Kukushkin said that Bure would likely head to North America later this week to scout NHL games and speak with Russian players. Kukushkin said Bure could be on hand Saturday in New York when the Rangers host the New Jersey Devils.
“If you would have asked me about that 10 years ago, I’d probably say I’m not that sure, but there’s a lot of people that mature into their role,” said Panthers forward Martin Gelinas, a teammate of Bure’s with the Vancouver Canucks.
“Good for him. He’s been playing the game long enough that he has the knowledge of the game and he’s pretty proud of his country so I’m sure he’ll do a good job.”
Bure also helped Russia win Olympic silver at the 1998 Nagano Games. He scored an Olympic record five goals in a 7-4 semifinal victory over Finland. He also collected a bronze medal with Russia in 2002 at Salt Lake City.
“When I played I only strived to be the best, to win the gold and that’s what I’m planning to achieve here as general manager,” Bure said.
That message struck a chord with Finnish center Olli Jokinen, Bure’s former teammate with the Panthers.
“For a lot of guys, once Pavel calls you and asks you to be on the Olympic team, mostly likely the answer will be yes,” Jokinen said in Montreal. “He’s the kind of guy you respect as a player, so I think they’ll have a strong team.”

TITLE: Red Devils To Face The Blues
AUTHOR: By Julien Pretot
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — Faced with failing to clear the Champions League group stage for the first time in 11 years, Manchester United and manager Alex Ferguson need a convincing performance against Chelsea on Sunday to quiet fan unrest. 
A 1-0 defeat by Lille on Wednesday left an uninspired and toothless United third in a tight Group D with two games left. 
Villarreal top the group with six points and United (five points with Lille) entertain the Spanish side on Nov. 22 before travelling to Benfica (four) in the last round of matches. 
Of more immediate importance for a worried Ferguson is the Premier League game against champions Chelsea. 
Defeat at Old Trafford would end United’s already faint title aspirations and increase unrest among fans who booed off the United team at the Stade de France on Wednesday. 
“Without question, those fans want to see us win,” said Ferguson, in charge since 1986. 
“We were not in our best form, that has to be said. We are going to have to fight our way through this.” 
Manchester United have not failed to qualify from the group stage of the Champions League since the 1994/1995 season and they will have to find their scoring touch to make the last 16. 
“Villarreal are top of the group and the home match with them is going to be very important,” said Ferguson. 
“Our home form over the years has been terrific and we have to make sure that’s the case when we play them.” 
Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy, scorer of one of only two United goals in the group stage this season, said qualification could hinge on the game against Villareal. 
“That’s a massive game now,” he said. 
“It’s a hard period we are going through right now but it’s still in our own hands.” 
At the Stade de France, Milenko Acimovic rubbed salt in United’s wounds following their 4-1 thrashing by Middlesbrough last weekend when he blasted home a Gregory Tafforeau cross on 38 minutes. 
The English side were off the pace in midfield and injured captain Roy Keane, who slammed his team mates after the Middlesbrough game, and suspended Paul Scholes were sorely missed. 
Wayne Rooney, who was back from a one-match suspension, had one of his worst performances with United while Van Nistelrooy did not create a single chance.