SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1123 (89), Friday, November 18, 2005
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TITLE: United Russia Showcases its Youth Wing
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: VORONEZH — The increasingly crowded field of political youth movements gained a new member — or at least a new name — as the United Russia party’s Young Guard wrapped up its founding congress with a rally full of razzmatazz that invited comparisons with its kissing cousin, the equally pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi.
About 2,000 young people were bused in from different regions for the rally, held in an aircraft hangar on the outskirts of Voronezh. The choice of Voronezh, where last month a Peruvian student was knifed to death, was “no accident,” said Boris Gryzlov, the State Duma speaker and United Russia party leader. 
He urged participants to form “a barrier against fascism.” 
Taking the stage with a lineup of film stars and musical acts as the nose of a half-built airplane loomed behind him, Gryzlov invoked the congress’ central themes of hope and unity, and told the crowd, “The future is in your hands.” 
In comments to reporters later, Gryzlov said that one of Young Guard’s responsibilities was to combat “fascist youth movements that seek to destabilize society and win foreign funding.” 
United Russia condemned “all possible racist, nationalist and fascist escapades,” he said, adding that the authorities should not bow to racism, but rather “create normal conditions for the education of foreigners.” There have been a series of attacks on foreign students in Voronezh.
“We consider it our duty to bring these sorts of things to an end,” Gryzlov said. Gryzlov’s comments appeared to be aimed at quelling disquiet about racially motivated attacks and racist slogans used by nationalist groups, such as those used on a march through Moscow earlier this month on People’s Unity Day. 
The strongly anti-racist line appeared to distinguish Young Guard from Nashi, which has vaguely described itself as an anti-fascist movement. Nashi leaders’ definition of “fascists” has on occasion been extended to include some liberal politicians. 
The Voronezh congress was largely a renaming congress, as Young Guard is a new incarnation of the pro-Putin Youth Unity movement formed in 2000. 
Many of the young people gathered in the aircraft hangar wore T-shirts with the slogan “I’ve Been Called,” yet seemed unsure who had called them, or to what purpose.
In addition to a new moniker, the group has new 40-something celebrity leaders, including television anchor Ivan Demidov, 42, and film director Fyodor Bondarchuk, 41. 
The group’s stated goal, however, is a deeply conservative one.
Young Guard’s main task “is not only to politicize youth, but to give them a path to power to preserve the current government order after 2008. We don’t hide the fact that the current authorities more than suit us,” Demidov said Wednesday, over the noise of a booming sound system in the aircraft hangar. 
Demidov also said that Young Guard’s proximity to power — with the pro-Kremlin United Russia party holding a large majority in the Duma — meant the group could have “a real influence” on the country’s political life.
Comments by Demidov and other Youth Guard leaders, barely audible as many in the audience clamored for T-shirts and noisemakers, sounded like a milder version of those uttered by Nashi leaders.
Youth Guard’s relationship to Nashi was a repeated topic of discussion, perhaps because Nashi’s leadership has measured its vocal support of President Vladimir Putin with condemnations of “bureaucrats.” 
Demidov spoke only of similarities, however, calling Nashi “among the most prominent youth movements today.” 
“We are different in our methods, but our goals are identical,” he said.
Gryzlov’s patrician image generated far less enthusiasm among the youth than that of Bondarchuk. 
Already a well-known actor before the record-breaking opening of his directorial debut “9 Rota,” or “Company 9,” last month, Bondarchuk was spotted before he reached the stage and overwhelmed by autograph-seekers. Once he made it to the stage, the filmmaker kept his comments brief.
“Have you seen the film ‘9 Rota’?” Bondarchuk asked, to a roar of affirmation. “The last line in that film is, ‘We will win.’ Well, we will win!”
The youth group also capitalized on Bondarchuk’s star power in Moscow on Tuesday with a send-off event for the congress’ Moscow delegation.
Bondarchuk appeared there with a group of actors from the film, and attendees received autographed DVDs.
The prevailing mood among many of the youth milling around the hangar in Voronezh on Wednesday was something less than celebratory, however.
Even while Bondarchuk was addressing the crowd, one young woman in a Young Guard T-shirt broke away to address a reporter.
“Do you know what you should write? Write that they got us to come here from Moscow by promising us real food, and they haven’t given us anything other than some kind of sukhariki,” she said, referring to a snack food made from dried bits of black bread. The young woman gave her name as Maria, but when asked to give her last name, she glanced nervously at a group of leaders from the movement and shook her head.
Other young people told of being let out of schools or universities and bused from surrounding towns without a clear idea where they were headed.
Lena Sokolova, 20, from the town of Lipetsk, said she had come on one of four buses from the town that brought about 200 people to the rally.
“I’m not sure who organized it, but it basically got me a day off,” Sokolova said. “I don’t pay much attention to politics.”

TITLE: Museum’s Paintings At Center Of Scandal
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — First he went after Russian government bank accounts, then a giant sailing ship, only to have both slip out of his hands. 
Two fighter jets later escaped his grasp, but controversial Swiss businessman Nessim Gaon struck again this week when Swiss authorities seized four truckloads of paintings from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts worth an estimated $1 billion.
But Gaon’s company, Geneva-based trading firm Noga, lost out once more in its attempt to claim unpaid debts when the Swiss government ordered the release Wednesday of the 54 paintings owned by the Russian government, including works by Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet.
The Swiss government invoked a constitutional clause regarding national interests to reverse a Tuesday court ruling ordering the seizure of the paintings in connection with Noga’s long-standing claims against the Russian government.
“The responsible officials have been ordered to release the paintings immediately,” Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Lars Knuchel said by telephone from Bern on Wednesday evening.
The paintings were seized in Geneva and on the Swiss-German border near Basel at around 8 p.m. Tuesday after they had been packed up following a five-month exhibition in the Swiss town of Martigny, said Igor Petrov, spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Bern.
“There were four trucks carrying the paintings,” Petrov said by telephone. “Three were detained at the border going to Germany, and one in Geneva going to France.”
The dispute dates back to 1991, when Noga signed a deal to import consumer goods and agricultural products to Russia in exchange for oil. 
Some $1.5 billion in contracts later, the relationship between the company and Russia soured, and Noga began pursuing the government through the courts.
Gaon won numerous court victories, largely because Russia had waived the usual right of governments to sovereign immunity when signing the contracts. In the mid-1990s, Gaon got Switzerland and Luxembourg to freeze $700 million in Russian assets, and then in 1997 a Stockholm arbitration court awarded him $23 million.
But Gaon said he still could not collect the debt. So Noga went to the French courts and won a 450 million franc ($63 million) ruling in Paris in March 2000 under which the French authorities could seize Russian government assets over the debt. 
In May 2000, France started freezing government bank accounts, and in July 2000, the Sedov, the world’s largest sailing ship, was seized in Brest, France. The seizures were later overturned by French courts. Russia claims the debts dated back to the Soviet Union. 
In May 2001, a Paris court of appeals ruled in favor of Noga, and a month later, two Russian fighter jets at the Paris Air Show literally flew away to avoid seizure by French officials. 
In 2003, a French court ruled that the disputed Sukhoi and MiG were military planes and thus could not be arrested and sold to cover debts.
On Wednesday, Noga claimed that Russia owed the company $895.7 million. 
Russia “continues to neglect its obligations, and this is hurting its image as a law-abiding state,” Noga said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement, which was sent out before the Swiss government stepped in. 
The return of the paintings to the Pushkin Museum depends “on the decision of the Russian Federation to finally honor its dealings with Noga,” the statement said.
A woman who answered the phone at Noga’s Geneva office Wednesday evening said no one was available to comment on the Swiss government’s scrapping of the court order. Calls for comment to Noga’s lawyer, Alan Veuillet, went unreturned Wednesday evening.
The paintings had been on display at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny since June 13, and the exhibition ended Sunday, according to the foundation’s web site.
The collection includes the “Portrait of Doctor Rey” by Van Gogh; “Are You Jealous?” by Gauguin; “Lady With Fan” and “The Violin” by Picasso; “La Grenouillere” and the “Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary” by Renoir; and “The Bathers” and “The Man With the Pipe” by Cezanne, the web site said.
An unidentified Swiss official told Interfax on Wednesday that the paintings were insured for more than $1 billion.
Irina Antonova, head of the Pushkin Museum, said she was pleased with the Swiss government’s decision to step in, but that it remained to be seen if the paintings had suffered any damage during the seizure.

TITLE: City Aims To Shake Off Image of Intolerance
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg City Hall has begun developing a program to counteract the city’s growing reputation as “the capital of national intolerance.” 
The tolerance program will be based on three key points — educating children and teenagers, teaching state workers and the police appropriate communication strategies for dealing with foreigners, and providing support to the mass media for the covering of positive results in the fight against xenophobia, said Sergei Makarov, deputy head of the city administration’s Legal Committee, Fontanka.Ru reported.
The program is to be developed by the middle of next summer.
“Such a program really is needed in St. Petersburg, which is such a multinational and multi-confessional city,” said Yury Vdovin, co-head of the city’s Citizen Watch human rights organization.
He said that during recent years the city has lost many of its traditions of equality and internationalism.  Under the pressure of difficult economic situations, people have shown a tendency to lay the blame for their troubles on immigrants from other regions, especially the Caucasus, Vdovin said.
At the same time, Vladimir Shnitke, head of Memorial human rights organization, said those who come here from the former Soviet republics to improve their economic lot often find it hard to legally establish themselves. 
“The Russian legislation makes it difficult for them to get official status.  As a result, they can’t find decent jobs, cannot afford decent apartments to live in, and have difficulties supporting what are often large families,” he said. 
“In the end, these people have to either take illegal jobs or start committing crimes,” Shnitke said.
However, he said that big cities such as St. Petersburg and Moscow need migrants to fill the vacancies which local residents avoid. 
“That is why it is so important to fix the legislation for these people,” he said.
Shnitke said the Tolerance Program should also consider developing Russian language education programs, particularly for the children of migrants. He said that they often lack the basic language skills required for study at Russian schools.
Besides teaching tolerance at schools and covering the issue in the mass media, the city also should organize events where people of different nationalities can get acquainted with each other and learn the difference between their cultures, Shnitke said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Beer Fines Raised
MOSCOW (SPT) — Anyone caught drinking beer on the street or in other public places will face a fine of between 100 ($3.50) and 300 ($7) rubles under an amendment to the Administrative Code passed by the State Duma on Wednesday. The current fine is 100 rubles.
The ban includes parks, sports stadiums and public transport. The amendment also raises fines for violating regulations on the sale of alcohol to between 2,000 and 3,000 rubles for shop assistants, and to 20,000 to 30,000 rubles for shop owners.

Putin Laments Crashes
MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin lamented the high rate of traffic accidents in Russia, saying Tuesday that the loss of life is a threat to the country’s economic potential. 
Last year, nearly 35,000 people died in vehicle crashes, and another 250,000 were injured, he said. 
“The largest part of the population dying are the able-bodied. These are absolutely irrecoverable losses for us,” Putin said in televised comments. 
“In effect, it undermines the potential of the Russian society, its demographic reserve,” he was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying.

Ten Days Of Holiday
MOSCOW (SPT) — Official holidays in Russia will run from Dec. 31 through Jan. 9. 
There will be no working days during that period, said Andrei Isayev, head of the Labor and Social Politics Committee at the Russian State Duma on Thursday.
Isayev said that several of the country’s trade unions had proposed that one of these days off be transferred to May 2, but neither the government nor employers’ representatives had supported the idea.

City Orphans Statistics
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Only one child out of every 100 orphans gets adopted in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported on Tuesday, far fewer than the number fostered.
In total, only 10 percent of the city’s orphans have been taken into foster families, said Anatoly Ulyanov, director of Orphanage No. 9.
Anatoly Ulyanov, director of Orphanage No. 9, said this low figure was the result of a lack of awareness in society of what fostering involves.
Fostering entails a short-term stay in a family until parents can be found to adopt the child, Ulyanov said.

TITLE: Student Murder Investigation Continues
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the prosecutor’s office continues investigating the brutal murder of local anti-fascist activist Timur Kacharava, a 20-year-old philosophy student at St. Petersburg State University, his friends and colleagues say he was the victim of an organized and well-armed neo-nazi group.
Kacharava was stabbed to death outside the Bukvoed bookstore on Ligovsky Prospekt opposite the Moskovsky Railway Station at around 7 p.m. on Sunday, when two dozen teenagers armed with knives attacked Timur and his friend Maxim Zgibai, another student.
“St. Petersburg’s fascists aren’t a disorganized gang; they are a fully-fledged, militarized group, boasting a diverse structure, complete with scouts, guerrillas and access to classified databases containing personal information on local citizens,” said Timur’s friend Oleg N., who asked that his real name not be given for security reasons. “Timur had been attacked by fascists before. He had complained of being followed. Just three days prior to his murder, he told his girlfriend he felt threatened and worried for his life.”
The St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office hasn’t yet reached any conclusions about the motivation for the crime, said Yelena Ordynskaya, senior aide to the chief prosecutor. “We are considering all scenarios at the moment,” she said.
Immediately prior to the attack on Sunday, Kacharava and Zgibai had been taking part in an international humanitarian initiative titled “Food, Not Bombs”, giving food to the homeless and street kids. 
An outspoken pacifist and anti-fascist, Kacharava drew additional attention as a musician. He was a guitarist with two local punk bands, Sandinista! and Distress, known for the provocative wit of their lyrics. 
Earlier this fall, Timur was on tour with Distress in Sweden. He returned just a few days before the attack.
St. Petersburg students accuse the city police of turning a blind eye to the activities of local nazi groups, and say that locating them hardly involves arduous detective work.
“If every student knows where they gather, I am sure the police does as well,” Oleg N. said, citing Mayakovsky’s monument on Mayakovsky street and Prospekt Veteranov metro station as popular meeting spots. “If fascists are still around, there can be only one reason for this: the police aren’t interested in jailing them.”
Kacharava died of severe blood loss before the ambulance arrived at the scene of the crime ten minutes after the incident. Zgibai, who sustained multiple knife wounds and severe brain damage, is undergoing intensive treatment in the Mariinsky hospital.
“Maxim is conscious but still in very deep shock, and can recall all the details of the attack,” said fellow anti-fascist Mikhail S., who also asked that his name be changed for security reasons.
Asked about the St. Petersburg anti-fascist movement, Mikhail said, “We aren’t registered as an NGO or a political party, and our leadership is informal. We are shocked by Timur’s murder but we will continue our activities.” St. Petersburg sociologist Tatyana Protasenko, a senior researcher with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said the public’s indifference shocked her as much as the killing itself.
“They stabbed him in a busy place at a busy time of day, across the square from the Moskovsky railway station, and nobody tried to stop them or take immediate steps to catch them,” Protasenko said. “It shows how intimidated and frightened people are. But the alarming apathy is a sign of the public distrust in the law enforcement agencies. Not expecting any real help, people are becoming increasingly individualistic, relying on their own resources and reluctant to offer a helping hand.”
Anna Sharogradskaya, head of the Regional Press Institute, is convinced that Kacharava’s murder was politically motivated. “This young man took part in many anti-fascist events, including the ‘March Against Hatred,’ dedicated to the memory of the late Nikolai Girenko, Russia’s leading expert on ethnically-inspired crimes,” Sharogradskaya said. “We have to face the truth.”
Her opinion was echoed by Sergei Mironov, chairman of the Federation Council. “Sadly, fascism is on the rise in our country,” Mironov told reporters Wednesday. “And this isn’t hooliganism at all, as our law enforcement agencies often prefer to call it. It looks like a political murder to me.”
Recent research carried out by St. Petersburg’s Agency For Social Information suggests that locals feel they are all equally exposed to street violence, regardless of their ethnic origin. Asked whether ethnic minorities 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 to be victims. In a separate incident that some have argued is also indicative of the situation concerning extremists in the city, several members of left-wing political organizations were attacked by over 20 unknown assailants at the Chernyshevskaya metro station on Wednesday, Interfax reported.
“They were returning from a concert devoted to the Day of Tolerance, when the assailants attacked them and started beating them up without a reason,” said Andrei Dmitriev, head of the local branch of the National Bolshevik Party, Interfax reported. Two people were hospitalized in the attack.

Timur’s friends and supporters have set up a multi-lingual website with updated information about memorial events, media coverage and reports on the investigation. You can visit the page at:
http://www.stop-it.narod.ru

TITLE: Safety For Foreigners Gets Review
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Addressing growing concerns about the safety of foreign students in Russia, Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko said Tuesday that his ministry would reconsider the list of universities it recommends for foreign students and boost security on all campuses where they now live and study in an effort to protect them from racially motivated attacks.
Fursenko acknowledged, however, that he cannot guarantee that there will be no new attacks against dark-skinned students in Russian cities.
“Unfortunately, I cannot say that this was the last such incident,” Fursenko told reporters, referring to last month’s attack in Voronezh, in which 18-year-old Peruvian student Enrique Arturo Angeles Hurtado was killed and two other students injured by a group of skinheads.
“Tolerance is a matter of education and culture and cannot appear overnight,” the minister said, adding that nearly all of the 15 suspects detained in connection with the attack were students, while some attended the local teacher training university.
Fursenko said he believed that children should be taught tolerance in school from an early age. Thus, schoolteachers should start addressing the issue of racial tolerance in class, he said, adding that this was a “long-term” measure.
To protect foreign students today, he said each university should set up a council to assess the security situation in its city and advise students on how to behave.
While saying his ministry bears full responsibility for assaults on foreign students, Fursenko said police tend to underestimate the problem, which indirectly encourages the attacks.
“I disagree when such incidents are interpreted as cases of hooliganism,” he said.
Police are often reluctant to investigate racially motivated attacks as such, classifying them as hooliganism, and official numbers of such attacks are difficult to obtain from police.

TITLE: Pugachyova In Chamber
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — After a five-hour session held in the Moscow City Duma building, President Vladimir Putin’s 42 nominees to the Public Chamber late Tuesday selected a second tranche of 42 members.
The second tranche was selected from a list of 184 candidates from national nongovernmental organizations.
As expected, the new members included billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Vladimir Potanin, as well as a bevy of celebrities.
The 84 members tapped for the chamber so far will pick the final 42 members from regional NGOs in early December. 
Pop diva Alla Pugachyova, lawyer Genri Reznik and former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov were among the prominent celebrities selected as members.
The major functions assigned to the chamber by law include reviewing bills before they are voted on by the Duma, and oversight over official bodies.

TITLE: Investment In the Frame For Lenfilm
AUTHOR: By Yevgenya Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Lenfilm, the legendary St. Petersburg-based studios, are in talks to attract an estimated $50 million worth of investment, the company said Wednesday.
Having changed its legal status earlier this year, the studios is set to sign an investment contract in September 2006. It said that production will remain its core business with ten films planned for the next five years.
“We are currently negotiating with companies who agreed to develop our film business specifically in St. Petersburg,” said Andrei Zertsalov, Lenfilm’s general director. 
Russian law states that “a joint stock company made up of 100 percent state capital, is not legally allowed to sell its share to a principal investor without an open tender procedure,” Ilya Tamarkin, chief of joint stock companies department of OSV Consulting group said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Zertsalov said that the company sold its non-core assets in order to be able to finance the modernization of the studios’ facilities. 
Meanwhile, an investment expert who asked not to be named said that Lenfilm’s goal may not be easily realized. 
“For investors it’s more logical to invest in a certain film, where they can receive a share of distribution. To invest in a company when it’s unclear where and what they will produce is very difficult psychologically,” he said.

TITLE: St. Petersburg To Face Huge Skilled-Labor Shortage
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg is facing a serious shortfall in skilled labor which could threaten sustained economic growth, a roundtable comprising some of the city’s top officials and businessmen agreed Thursday.
“By 2015, every fourth job in Lenoblast’s economy will be a vacancy,” said Grigory Dvas, Vice Governor and Chairman of the region’s Economic Development Committee, at  “WANTED: Blue Collar,” organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. 
The Vice Governor of St. Petersburg, Mikhail Oseyevsky, likewise warned that the city’s ageing population, as well as a deficit of male workers, could check future rates of economic growth. 
In the midst of such warnings it was left to AmCham’s Executive Director, Maria Chernobrovkina, to recognize that such a situation was not unusual in the contemporary world, and the solutions everywhere remain the same — to reestablish a system of technical education, and import skilled workers to the country through immigration. 
Thus the costs and complications still surrounding the immigration process were also subjects for discussion, as was the need to intensify ties with city universities to ensure better-trained graduates. Head of Motorola’s Research and Development center in St. Petersburg Vladimir Polutin complained that this process had been neglected by both the Ministry of Education, and the city government.

TITLE: Online Poker Site Launched For Russian, Polish Players
TEXT: LONDON (SPT) — Ongame, the world’s third-largest online poker network, has launched its real-money poker website in Poland and Russia, a company press-release said Tuesday. 
Ongame is the first of the major online gambling operators to make poker, in the form of its Europoker.com site, available online to Polish and Russian players in their native languages.
The million-dollar campaign to accompany the Russian launch will run until the end of 2005, when limits come into force governing the promotion of gambling. 
The popularity of gambling in Russia has boomed in the past three years with the number of casinos growing by 93 per ent, from 30 to 58, and slot machines by 250 percent, from 20,000 to 70,000, the press release quoted Moscow Authorities as saying. 
In addition, investment in marketing gambling has increased by 38 percent in the past 12 months.
Jakob SÚderbaum, VP and Director of New Markets at Ongame said: “With there currently being no clear market leader and only a short period before advertising restrictions take effect, the next six weeks will prove critical to the long term look of the Russian market.”

TITLE: Putin to Push Pacific Influence
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin’s trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum this week will give him an opportunity to talk with U.S. President George W. Bush and pursue efforts to expand economic ties with booming Pacific Rim nations. 
Putin’s meeting with Bush on the sidelines of the 21-nation APEC meeting in Busan, South Korea — their fifth this year — is expected to focus on tense issues including Syria and the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. 
Moscow has resisted the U.S. push for international sanctions against Syria, a longtime ally of Moscow, over Syria’s alleged involvement in the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February. 
It also has opposed Washington’s efforts to refer the Iranian nuclear program to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, saying the issue can be handled by the world body’s nuclear watchdog agency without imposing sanctions. The United States contends Iran intends to use its nuclear program to build atomic weapons. 
Global policy aside, Russia is likely to use the APEC summit to seek greater access to rapidly growing regional markets. Russia accounts for less than 1 percent of APEC trade and would like to win a greater share. 
“Unlike the Soviet Union’s predominant role in the region as a military power, Russia is now rethinking itself as an energy power,” said Alexei Voskresensky, an expert on the region at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. 
For several years, China and Japan have lobbied for alternative routes for a pipeline from eastern Siberia’s oil fields to Pacific Rim nations. The Russian Cabinet last year endorsed the Japanese-backed route to the Pacific coast, but then decided that the destination for its first stage would be near the Chinese border.
Voskresensky said that China’s swift economic development and growing demands for energy would likely trigger further rivalry over Russian energy resources. “Geopolitical competition for Russia’s resources isn’t over yet. It’s likely to go into a new round,” he said. 
Moscow also sees the development of economic ties with APEC as a tool that might help galvanize the anemic economy of the sparsely populated regions in Siberia and the Far East, which suffer from decrepit infrastructure and power shortages. 
“Pacific markets offer a new opportunity for Russia’s high-tech industries,” Voskresensky said. 
But other observers warn that Russia has little to offer to quickly growing Asian markets beyond energy resources, saying that struggling industries in Russia’s Far East are unable to deliver competitive products. 
“Russia lacks an economic basis for a more active involvement in the regional economic cooperation,” said Stanislav Bylinyak, an APEC expert with the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Oriental Studies. 
Despite the government’s efforts to diversify the economy, Russia’s exports still rely on raw materials and arms. China is the No. 1 customer for Russia’s weapons industries, and Moscow also has sold weapons to Malaysia and Indonesia. 
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that Moscow hoped to win the forum’s approval of Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organization. Russia and Vietnam are the only APEC nations not in the WTO. 
Of all APEC members, China has evolved as Russia’s key political ally and economic partner. After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Cold War rivals have developed what they called a “strategic partnership” to counter the perceived U.S. domination in global affairs.

TITLE: Urals Oil Blend Set To Be Traded in London
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The New York Mercantile Exchange will start futures contract trading in the Russian oil blend Urals in London, the U.S. bourse said in a statement Wednesday.
NYMEX, the world’s largest energy market, has formed Russian Energy Futures, a joint venture with Russian commodities trader Expertica, to promote and develop futures trading in Russia’s mainstay crude brand on the exchange’s London platform, NYMEX Europe.
“There has been an increased interest in establishing a crude oil benchmark in Russia,” NYMEX president James Newsome said.
“We believe this will create price transparency based on fair market-determined price.”
Market insiders agreed the move would bring greater clarity to the setting of Russian oil prices but also warned that it would punish Russia for being too slow to set up Urals futures contract trading at home.
“Russia now has 12 months to respond. Unless the government supports a broad Urals exchange with some prices going forward, Russia’s participation in [Urals blend] trading in the future will be relatively minor,” said Chris Weafer, chief analyst with Alfa Bank.
Despite numerous proposals to trade Urals blend on Russian bourses, an idea actively lobbied for separately by Alfa Group linked Crown Resources trading company and by the Moscow Interbank Exchange, they never took off.
A source at Expertica, created by the managers of Crown Resources, told Vedomosti that Urals trading in London will begin in the first half of 2006. The Budapest bourse will also begin trading in Russia’s crude in January 2006.
The NYMEX-Expertica venture has the backing of the Russian government and energy industry, Expertica director Ian Kilpatrick said Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.

TITLE: Russia Sets Date for Gazprom Share Deal
AUTHOR: By Elif Kaban
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Russia has for the first time given a clear time frame for removing curbs on foreign ownership of shares in gas giant Gazprom, a move that will make it the world’s biggest emerging markets stock.
After years of delays, the parliament’s energy affairs committee approved the proposed changes, and its chairman, Valery Yazev, said on Wednesday that the measures would have their first reading in the State Duma on Nov. 23.
“Gazprom is extremely undervalued, and one of the reasons is the lack of a liberalized market for its shares,” Yazev said. “Our legislative proposal, once passed, will open the way for a substantial growth in Gazprom’s capitalization.”
When the curbs are removed, Gazprom will become the biggest stock in the Morgan Stanley Capital International, or MSCI, global emerging market index, compared with a weighting now that is barely above zero percent.
That in turn would lead to a doubling of Russia’s weighting in the emerging markets investment universe and make Gazprom stock a must for investors managing $3 trillion in assets whose performance is measured against the MSCI benchmark. “It is all finally happening,” said Eric Kraus, chief strategist at Sovlink Securities. “President Vladimir Putin has given his blessing to this idea and made it clear he wants it done.”
In Wednesday’s trade, Gazprom’s local shares were little changed in a weaker market at 143.4 rubles ($4.97), valuing the company at $118 billion. Its London-listed proxy shares, equivalent to 10 locals, eased 0.9 percent to $58.
Separately, agencies quoted Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov as saying the Justice Ministry was due to sign off on the reform this week.
To liberalize the shares the government needs to legalize holdings bought by foreigners before 1997, then amend the law on gas supplies to allow foreign ownership, and finally ease rules covering which exchanges Gazprom shares may trade on.
Sharonov said a draft government order on the reform as well as the draft presidential decree giving the green light to the liberalization was now at the Justice Ministry. He said both had already been agreed by other authorities.
Until now, markets had been worried about possible delays to the liberalization, after Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said it would only happen in 2006. But Gazprom chief Alexei Miller reiterated this week that the reform would be approved by the end of the year. Its shares have soared 90 percent in the past six months — after doubling in 2004 — in anticipation.
Foreign investment in Gazprom equity is currently capped at 20 percent, and while foreign investors can freely trade American Depositary Shares in London, these account for just 3 percent of Gazprom’s free float.
Despite the latest flurry of deadlines, the Russian legal process is notoriously slow, and analysts said nobody knew what other sign-offs might be required for the changes to take effect.

TITLE: Education Can Damage Your Health
TEXT: For all the criticism that the Kremlin is reverting back to Soviet-era practices, the one thing the authorities are not doing is promoting “people’s friendship.” In Soviet times, authorities mocked racism in the West, and state television played up the inequality between blacks and whites in the United States. The state showcased racial and ethnic harmony, as seen in Moscow’s mammoth golden Fountain of People’s Friendship, and dark-skinned Russians got the roles of bumbling do-gooders in Soviet comedies.
These days, state television allows nationalist politicians to spew their hatred for nonethnic Russians and serves up reality crime shows in which nearly all the criminals are dark-skinned. President Vladimir Putin is preaching a message of tolerance, but at the same time the Kremlin is tapping into nationalism and, at least indirectly, inciting ethnic hate. 
Rodina, by all indications a Kremlin brainchild, has run campaign ads likening people from the Caucasus to garbage and saying it’s time to clean up Moscow. The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, an older nationalist party that also has served the Kremlin over the years, has suggested that Russian soccer fans — die-hard nationalists — be sent to France to put down the rioting by young people of African and Arab origin. It is also disturbing that city authorities allowed nationalist youth to march through the center of town earlier this month giving Nazi salutes and shouting anti-immigrant slogans.
Perhaps the Kremlin is only nurturing nationalism as a back-up plan to retain power after the 2007-08 elections. If the threat of fascism seems real enough, many people will vote for anyone they believe capable of keeping out the brown shirts, meaning anyone the Kremlin puts forward — or excuse Putin if he takes extraordinary measures to prevent a fascist takeover. 
Whatever the possible motivation behind the surge in “Russia for Russians” sentiment, its consequences are already very real. Many Russians are openly showing their contempt for people from the North Caucasus, Central Asia and China, accusing them of stealing jobs, taking over outdoor markets and passing off inferior goods, and smuggling drugs to Russia.
Dark-skinned people are routinely harassed on the streets, and a growing number have been killed in racially motivated attacks. As things look now, ethnic hatred is only going to intensify. 
For students from Africa and Latin America — who continue to come here to study as they did under Soviet-era programs that touted ethnic and racial equality — the threat to their safety is real. Until the Kremlin takes the lead in opposing racism, students should think seriously before coming to Russia to study. Tuition here may be cheap, but unfortunately their lives may be too.

TITLE: Putin’s New Faces From the Regions
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: The latest government shake-up, which President Vladimir Putin carried out in his trademark “special operations” style, revealed a change in the Kremlin’s personnel policy. Most significantly, Putin drew on previously untapped sources to fill a number of top jobs.
It’s worth pointing out at the start that the sheer number of new faces unveiled on Monday testifies less to a robust new recruiting policy than to a fear of upsetting the delicate balance between the main clans inside the Kremlin. The president had little choice but to appoint relatively obscure officials with no allegiances to any particular clan.
Putin’s new chief of staff, Sergei Sobyanin, and his new envoys to the Volga and Far East federal districts, Alexander Konovalov and Kamil Iskhakov, have a wealth of experience at various levels of government. Two of the three have served as mayors — Iskhakov in Kazan and Sobyanin in Kogalym. Prior to Monday’s reshuffle, Sobyanin was governor of the Tyumen region. Konovalov had been a prosecutor in Bashkortostan. 
Sobyanin is not the first governor drafted into service at the highest level. Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev arrived fresh from the governor’s mansion in Perm and reportedly has become one of Putin’s most trusted allies. But the appointment of Sobyanin brings to mind Nikolai Yegorov, once the governor of the Krasnodar region, who subsequently served in the Cabinet before becoming Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff for six months in 1996. Back then Yeltsin wanted someone knowledgeable about the North Caucasus. So what does Sobyanin bring to the table?
Sobyanin was instrumental in local self-rule reform and the less-than-successful plan to unite the Tyumen region with several districts lying to the north. Does his appointment signal the Kremlin’s intention to focus on power-sharing between the federal, regional and local levels of government, and to push ahead with further consolidation of the regions?
Apart from Trutnev, a former mayor of Perm, the last time a mayor scaled the peaks of power was when Samara Mayor Oleg Sysuyev became Yeltsin’s first deputy chief of staff in 1997. It was said that the Samara governor had a hand in Sysuyev’s rapid rise, thereby getting rid of a potential rival. The same is now being said about Iskhakov, who either got in the way of Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev or is being sized up by the Kremlin as Shaimiyev’s replacement.
Iskhakov’s promotion brings to mind another former mayor, Pavel Borodin, who went on to become the all-powerful Kremlin property manager. Borodin initially caught Yeltsin’s eye when the former president made a visit to Yakutsk. Iskhakov impressed Putin during Kazan’s millennial birthday celebrations earlier this year. This coincidence only underscores the Kremlin’s lack of a reliable system for grooming candidates for the country’s top jobs.
Konovalov’s appointment came as a surprise. No other prosecutor in recent years has made the leap into big-time politics. Konovalov made a name for himself as the chief prosecutor of Bashkortostan, where he was in charge of handling the fallout from a campaign of police brutality in Blagoveshchensk in December 2004. Konovalov may have been promoted to presidential envoy in order to put more pressure on the headstrong leaders of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan than the former envoy, Sergei Kiriyenko, had managed to apply.
Much has already been said about how Monday’s shake-up strengthened the government at the expense of the presidential administration. But the reshuffling of presidential envoys has received less attention. Yet not only has fresh blood been injected into the group, it also has a new head in Sobyanin, hardly a political heavyweight at this level when compared to his predecessor as chief of staff, Dmitry Medvedev. Sobyanin’s strength lies in his experience in dealing with the regions. You may recall that in the early days of federal reform he served for a time as the first deputy envoy to the Urals Federal District.
The changes made on Monday continue the trend of promoting members of regional political elites to the federal level. It is also clear, however, that this trend will not continue indefinitely. Most of the appointments were political, not administrative, moves. They have created a certain amount of confusion in the highest echelons of government and weakened the position of the president’s chief of staff. In so doing the appointments have reduced the government’s overall effectiveness. And a new race for influence is on. 

Nikolai Petrov is scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

TITLE: Nalchik Deception Continues
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Police made a breakthrough last week in their investigation of the Oct. 13 revolt in Nalchik: They discovered a large cache of weapons at a dacha in a nearby village. A sports bag with the passport and driver’s license of Anzor Astemirov was also found at the dacha, conveniently removing any doubt as to the ownership of the weapons.
I can understand when the cops in Voronezh apprehend a “terrorist” carrying a couple of bullets and are rewarded with promotions and medals. But why bother faking a weapons cache in Kabardino-Balkaria when there’s a refrigerated truck full of corpses in the capital city? No one even seems to know just how many corpses there are in Nalchik. The official body count ranges from 82 to 92.
When Yelena Dygova went out looking for her nephew Kazbulat Kerefov, she counted 132 corpses in a broken-down refrigerated truck. The corpses were rotting, crawling with worms, and limbs were falling off. Dygova didn’t find her nephew that day. She found him four days later, and her nephew’s corpse was still fresh.
It makes you wonder. If you’re convinced that these people are extremist rebels, and that you can prove their guilt in court, why not just arrest them and hold them up to the Kremlin as proof of a job well done? Why execute them in a basement somewhere and then chuck their bodies onto a pile of decomposing corpses? Some arrests were made, of course, though no one seems to know how many. Some sources say 20, others say 37.
The parents of Rustam — whose surname I will withhold to protect the family — went to the offices of the regional organized crime task force, or RUBOP, to find out what had happened to their son. They were told that he had taken part in the Oct. 13 revolt and gone into hiding. Rustam’s parents objected that their son’s car was sitting in the courtyard of their building. In no time special forces had surrounded the building, with automatic rifles and bullet-proof vests to make the operation seem more convincing.
Zaur Psanukov was arrested on Oct. 15. His parents were told that he had committed suicide by throwing himself out a window at RUBOP headquarters, whose windows are all covered with bars.
Again, why didn’t the police arrest the people suspected of taking part in the Oct. 13 attack? Why is it that for every extremist who was arrested there are several who managed to “escape.” And how do the escapees’ cars wind up in the RUBOP lot?
The answer isn’t pretty. What happened in Nalchik was an insurrection. And like most insurrections in history, it was caused by the excesses and corruption of the authorities. They abused everyone, but only the believers fought back.
The cops didn’t expect this. They figured they’d be able to continue kicking women, shaving crosses on Muslims’ heads and threatening whole families unless they coughed up $1,000 a year. Suddenly, the cops themselves came under fire.
The cops, especially agents of the department dealing with religious extremism, know perfectly well that the number of days they have to live is directly proportionate to the number of people they murder. You may know the old joke about a murder trial. “Why did you kill that old woman?” the prosector asks. “She only had 20 kopeks in her purse.” To which the defendant replies: “Five old women makes a ruble.” In this case, five corpses means another day above ground.
Previously, the greed of the authorities sowed the seeds of rebellion; now, it’s their animal fear. This is why the number of those “killed on Oct. 13” kept rising after the attack, and the number of “escapees” whose cars are sitting in the RUBOP lot continues to rise. This is why the police aren’t hauling them in. You can’t arrest someone on the charge of “animal fear.” This is why the people who put down the revolt are concealing the details of their successful operation and feeding the Kremlin stories about arms caches and Astemirov’s passport.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Going east
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The songs of Serge Gainsbourg have been reinterpreted with an Arab flavor and will be performed by his muse Jane Birkin in St. Petersburg.
Jane Birkin, the France-based English singer and actress, comes to St. Petersburg to perform “Arabesque,” the set that she has been touring with all over the world for the past three years, for the first — and ultimately the last — time.
“Arabesque,” an “orientalized” collection of songs by the late French singing legend Serge Gainsbourg, her former husband, started at the Avignon festival in 1999, when, on the advice of her and Gainsbourg’s artistic director Philippe Lerichomme, she collaborated with Algerian violinist Djamel Benyelles — to phenomenal success. 
According to Birkin, she wants to end the tour and cease its run in St. Petersburg because it was the city where Gainsbourg’s Russia-born parents were married in 1915.
Born the daughter of navy commander David Birkin and actress/singer Judy Campbell on Dec. 14, 1946, in London, the mini-skirted Birkin was at the center of Swinging London in the 1960s. 
Birkin made her (uncredited) movie debut in Richard Lester’s “The Knack” in 1965, but became instantly — and controversially — famous after the nude scene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup” in 1966. Her first husband was the James Bond composer John Barry.
Later she would add to the controversy with the song “Je t’aime... mon non plus,” her orgasmic collaboration with Gainsbourg that was banned by radio stations and even condemned by the Catholic church, all of which only added to its popularity.
Having moved to France in the late 1960s, Birkin has become one of the most popular English artists on the French scene, making dozens of films and performing songs that Gainsbourg wrote for her, even after they divorced in 1980. In 1995 Birkin played Andromache in Euripides’ “The Trojan Women” at France’s National Theater.
Birkin, who supports the Chechen children dance troupe Daimohk, is also an outspoken critic of the war in Chechnya. 
She spoke volubly to St. Petersburg Times by phone from Paris earlier this month, speaking with a clear English accent but using some French words, about her work, Gainsbourg, and her political activism.
Please talk about your concert in St. Petersburg. What songs are you going to perform?
Most of the songs were written for me after I left Serge [Gainsbourg]. A great many of them are very well-known in France, like “Baby Alone In Babylone,” “Run Away From Happiness” (“Fuir le bonheur”), and “Les dessous chics”. Songs from the time I was with Serge include “Histoire de Melody Nelson” and his very well-known “La Javanaise.” And it’s all to the accompaniment of Djam & Fam, which is a group that I have known about since 1999.
I was doing a show in Avignon, and my director artistique [Philippe Lerichomme] said: “Gosh, you’ve been singing Serge’s songs for so long. You must think of something different for the Festival d’Avignon.” So I said: “You know, I never get any good ideas.” He said: “Well, here’s an idea.” And it was certainly risky, because people were bound to say, Oh, why change Serge with a different rhythm, why? There are conservative people who would say: “Don’t touch him.”
On the other hand, Serge changed himself more often than most songwriters, which is the reason why he is the most popular songwriter in France — because he knew how never to repeat himself, never look back. He wanted to do “La Javanaise” in reggae, as you know, and “You’re Under Arrest” with the Americans. Serge was a great changer himself. Philippe Lerichomme said: “Why don’t you try to do Serge’s stuff, but with Djamel’s orchestrations, Arab orchestrations?” When I heard “Elisa,” which is one of Serge’s oldest songs, with that Arab orchestration I realized there was something magical about it. 
So we sang that year in Avignon, live on [the radio station] France Culture —I suppose it was only an hour. But it had such feedback and people were so excited, and it was so exciting to do, I thought it was a pity to stop. I was asked by the [French] National Theater to do whatever I wanted to for three days, and I thought, why not do this?
I’ve been doing “Arabesque” for the last three years non-stop in every country in the world. From Vietnam, to Canada, to South America. We’ve been to Israel, Palestine, the Gaza Strip, Ramallah. We’ve been throughout England, Scotland, Ireland. We’ve been across all Europe, of course.
“Arabesque” has taken me everywhere, probably thanks to the fact it's Arab music. It has an atmosphere, which means it really doesn’t matter if you don't speak French. People have cried just the same, they feel the emotion just the same. In Hong Kong they only had the two pieces of paper where everything was translated. I must remember to do that for St. Petersburg and for Moscow because it’s somehow more interesting. 
Serge is difficult to translate, because [his lyrics] always have at least three meanings. If it’s “Amour des feints,” it means “love of the dead” and “love of feigning,” so translating it would be very complicated. Even “Je t’aime... moi non plus,” well, people thought it was “I love you… So do I,” but it was “I love you… Nor do I.”  His stuff is always much more complicated than meets the ear or the eye.
 
Gainsbourg’s parents were Russian Jews who emigrated to France. Where did they actually come from?
Well, three books about Serge have just come out, so I should really look it up. We did a concert in Kiev, and I tried to find Feodosia, and I did find Feodosia. I took Jackie, Serge’s sister, and we went to where his mother [Olia Bessman] came from, which was Feodosia. The house doesn’t exist any more. The man from the museum was perfectly charming and he was trying to find what would have been the map of the city in 1915.
I know Serge’s mother came from Feodosia, and I think his father came from Baku. And I know they went to get married in St. Petersburg. 
I’ve already been [to St. Petersburg] three times, but this time it will be very emotional to come back with Serge’s songs, because that’s where his parents got married on a ration of potatoes.
His mother worked as a nurse in the Tsar’s army, so I know they had a wedding dinner. They were very poor, so I know it was potatoes that they cooked. They had no vodka, so they had alcohol, 95-percent alcohol from the infirmary. That was what their wedding was like in St. Petersburg. Then they went back to Feodosia, said goodbye to her family and then went to Istanbul.
They spent three years in Istanbul to save enough money to get to France. And then they first arrived in Marseilles and then went to Paris where his father was a pianist. Serge was born, and an older brother called Marcel who died, and Jacqueline and Lilianne. 
He changed his name when he was about 20 because he wanted to go into singing and songwriting and he thought [his given name] Lucien was sort of a weak name. He wanted to become more Russian, so he called himself Serge. He changed Ginzburg to Gainsbourg because he loved the English painter Gainsborough. And he was fed up with everybody pronouncing it wrong. 
And he was probably right to call himself Serge Gainsbourg because he made himself into a legend. 
The St. Petersburg concert will be based on your 2003 “Arabesque” album, but your most recent album is “Rendez-vous” (2004). Will you perform anything from it?
From “Rendez-vous,” no, but I do do two songs that are not Serge’s. One of them is “The Keys to Paradise” (“Les clefs du paradis”), which was from a previous record where I was dressed up as a butterfly on the cover [the 1999 “A la legere”]. And the song that [French singer] Zazie wrote about Serge, which was called “C’est comme ca.” Those two are not Serge’s, but all the rest are.
And I’ll sing it in Russia for the last time, because after three years I think it’s time to stop. 
But it was very difficult for to me not to come to Russia. Every time I said [to Gainsbourg] “Oh, you cry so much, you’re so easily moved to tears,” he’d say, “Ah what can I do? I can’t help it, I have this Slav nature.” And he did indeed have a Slav nature. I used to say,  “How extraordinary! He’s got no hair on his body.” It gave him a very sophisticated side. 
I used to buy him old Russian jewelry because he looked wonderful in Russian bracelets because he had such fine white arms, and he said: “That’s because I’m a Tartar.” 
I was never sure what was true or untrue. He liked this idea that he was a Tartar and Russian. And he certainly was made of Russian stuff. I mean he drank too much indeed but he could put away quite a lot, which would kill most people, and it killed him in the end. But he certainly had this Russian poet mad streak.
When I was in St. Petersburg last time, I went to Dostoevsky’s house. Serge’s house is going to be turned into a museum in Paris, and I thought I’d take this idea from Dostoevsky’s house, where they always fill up a little glass with tea and then they have this little packet of cigarettes where his daughter wrote “Papa’s dead” in pencil. 
I said to [my daughter with Gainsbourg] Charlotte that if Serge’s house is going to be a museum, we should put his little cup of coffee and Gitanes cigarettes sort of burning in an ashtray. It was so delicate to see that in the Dostoevsky museum. I took my mother [Judy Campbell] there and I took [filmmaker and Birkin’s husband] Jacques Doillon there, and all my children there. So I mean I've been there before. 
If St. Petersburg is the place where his parents were married perhaps it’s a good place to stop. And you have to learn how to stop. This will be the last of the “Arabesques.”

But you didn’t perform in Russia before? You were just visiting? 
Yes. I came to visit Russia. Serge never visited Russia. We went to Yugoslavia, that was the closest, when we did Abraham Polonsky’s film “Romance of a Horsethief” [1971]. I remember that his father was with us and his mother.  And Serge said that it was very like Russia.
We came down at Moscow airport once, on our way back from Japan. He rushed to the food counter, where he was pushed back by a very fat lady who pushed him back because he thought he could speak Russian and she turned him away rather coarsely. He couldn’t speak enough Russian for the food counter. 
I used to say to his parents that I’d take them back. And they’d say everyone they knew would be dead. They never got back. But I took Jacqueline to Kiev, and I went to Moscow many times. I went with [film director] Agnes Varda.
Somehow I feel I’m finishing in the right way. If I haven’t come and sung before, it was because nobody asked me. I only wanted to sing this time as long as I could also be with Memorial and the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers. This way they worked out the concerts, so that was my only way, because of my commitment to the Chechens.

You are a critic of the war in Chechnya. Please could you talk about this?
When the Chechen war came, and I saw the bravery of the mothers of the Russian soldiers who were fed up with watching their sons being shot to pieces in Chechnya I thought, They’re right. I’d read the Tolstoy novel [Hadji Murat] and I knew there’d been trouble in Chechnya, and I thought what bad luck to have a pipeline going to the Caspian Sea. When you’ve got petrol then you’re always in trouble. They’d been promised their liberty, they’d been promised to have an independent state. 
To go back on that promise seemed to be such a terrible mistake. Afterward, as it turns out, this last year things have got worse and worse, because all the leaders that used to be reasonable and used to be able to talk because they wanted peace too were killed. So they’ve become more and more isolated. It's a great tragedy.
So I don't know, perhaps every tiny bit helps. I don't want Russian people to die, and when I saw a Chechen children’s dance troupe in Paris, I thought, They’re not going to turn into wild fanatics, you know, these children are dancers, they got their values, they got their culture. 
I wanted to help them and let them be seen. I took them to the theater with [French theater director] Ariadne Mnouchkine in Paris and they were seen by all the theatrical people in Paris — Michel Piccoli and Patrice Chereau, and everyone saw the Chechen children dancing. 
The best I can do is to try and help this small dance group be seen because it must be terrible to see your culture go. Your culture, your lifestyle… And to live in Grozny now, can you imagine? I just wish it would all stop. The Russians must be fed up with the war, the Chechens are certainly fed up with the war. And you know that in the end of history it will probably become a separate state anyway. I am not a politician but I do care.
But I do understand equally that it's probably very annoying for Russians that here’s some stupid French person, English person speaking for the Chechen people, given that there’s propaganda in every newspaper, in every television show, and for them it’s just a whole lot of terrorists making their lives miserable. You never see both sides of it. 
I only say this because I’m a great member of Amnesty International, if I'm trying to do what I can for Amnesty, then you cannot shut your eyes when you see those concentration camps, and filtration camps and torture. 
If [the war] could stop, I would have thought it would be the Russian and the Chechen dream.

Jane Birkin performs at the Music Hall on Saturday. www.janebirkin.net

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey  Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This space is supposed to be about musical entertainment, but this week the local music community is in shock over the violent death of a St. Petersburg musician who was killed last Sunday. 
Twenty-year old Timur Kacharava was stabbed to death by a group of eight or 10 attackers in the city center, outside the Bukvoyed bookstore near the crossroads of Ligovsky and Nevsky Prospekts. His friend Max “Zgibov” Zgibai, bass player with the punk band Potom Budem Pozdno, was also stabbed. He was badly injured and is now in hospital.
According to his friends, who wished not to be named in print, Kacharava, Zgibai and others were apparently followed from Vladimirskaya Ploshchad, where they took part in a Food Not Bombs campaign event distributing food to the homeless. Suspected nazi lookouts were spotted on the square at around 4 p.m. 
Some of the campaigners were in the store while Kacharava and Zgibai were outside finishing a bottle of beer when they were attacked. The attack lasted about a minute — leaving Kacharava dead and Zgibai wounded, Kacharava’s friends said.
Kacharava, who was in his fourth year of studies at the St. Petersburg State University’s Philosophy Faculty, played guitar with local punk bands Sandinista! and Distress and was active in anarchist and anti-nazi movements.
Nazi attacks are frequent in St. Petersburg, but most of them get scant media attention. 
Last year Andrei Burlaka, the editor of the web site Rock‘n’Roll.ru was beaten by a group of Nazis who came toward him shouting “Heil Hitler!” They left him lying unconscious with a broken nose at Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro. That incident was not reported.
In a written statement on Thursday, Kacharava’s friends condemned Governor Valentina Matviyenko’s attempts to deny the political motives behind Kacharava’s murder as “insulting to his memory.”
Just a few days before his death,  Kacharava had returned from a five-date Swedish tour with Distress, a band he joined earlier this year. His main band, though, was Sandinista!, which he co-founded in 2003. Named after the Clash’s album, the band performed songs dealing with political and social issues. Sandinista!’s debut CD is scheduled for release on Moscow-based label Old Skool Kids Records. Some MP3 files can be downloaded from the band’s website at www.myspace.com/sandinistaxspbhc. 
This week people placed flowers and candles near the place where Kacharava was killed. Friends, musicians and everybody who cares will gather outside the Bukvoyed book store, 105 Ligovsky Prospekt, at 6 p.m. on Monday.

TITLE: The complete Pasternak
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The collected works of the poet and author Boris Pasternak, published for the first time by his son Yevgeny, gathers together a wealth of known and new material, and offers the most complete picture yet of a 20th century literary giant.
The complete works of 20th century Russian author Boris Pasternak, comprising 11 volumes and a CD-ROM, was published in Russia for the first time last Friday.
The author’s son Yevgeny teamed up with publisher Slovo and computer studio Mart to produce a limited edition of 5,000 copies of Pasternak’s complete works, some of which were suppressed during the author’s lifetime by the Soviet state — including his classic novel “Dr. Zhivago.”
Two volumes of poems written from 1912 to 1959, many of which had never been published before, stories, articles, essays, verse translations, Pasternak’s contemporaries’ memoirs, four volumes of letters as well as a detailed index with recently found shorthand reports of Pasternak’s speeches have also been included in the collection.
Known in Russia mainly for his poetry, Pasternak’s worldwide fame was cemented by “Dr. Zhivago” which was banned in the U.S.S.R. and smuggled to Italy where it was published in 1957. The official literary journal Novy Mir rejected the novel because of its “non-acceptance of the socialist revolution” and its harsh, epic sweep through the Russian Civil War. 
Two years before his death in 1960, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature but was forced to reject it by Soviet ideologues. In 1965 the novel was made into a Hollywood film directed by David Lean.
Pasternak was “rehabilitated” in 1988 during perestroika and “Dr. Zhivago” was published in Russia for the first time.
Yevgeny Pasternak belatedly collected his father’s Nobel Prize medal at a ceremony in Stockholm in 1989. He and his wife Yelena have worked on the complete works for many years, carefully gathering material from the author’s archive. Although no collection of Pasternak’s works was published during his lifetime, this is the second set of collected works that has been produced in the past 15 years. 
“The formation of the collection presented now was begun in the 1960s, just after my father’s death, when we took charge of his literary heritage,” Pasternak said at a St. Petersburg news conference held to mark the publication of the volumes on Nov. 11. 
“As a result of our activity, first, a detailed biography of Pasternak was published in 1990, then a 5-volume collection of his works followed. But with so many materials uncovered in the first collection, we realized the need for a complete edition of Pasternak’s collected works to be published.”
Pasternak said that while working on the present collection, he understood that it would be “practically impossible” to include every piece of verse, prose, unfinished dramas, letters (about a half of the material), and translations into a reasonable amount of volumes. 
In order, to set it into some limits, he and Yelena decided to include in the collection only the author’s works created for publication along with notes to Pasternak’s speeches.
Although four of the 11 volumes consist only of Pasternak’s letters, his son says that this represents only a small part of the huge correspondence of his father, who received between 20 to 50 letters every day and replied to most of them. 
“As well as in Russian, Pasternak corresponded in English, French and German. In every language he developed his own unique style that is hard to preserve during the translation,” said his son. Consequently, only his letters in Russian and his own translations of his letters written in other languages were included in the present collection.
Compared to the previous 5-volume collection, the present edition includes a fourfold page reference with archival materials gathered over forty years which gives readers a full impression of the Pasternak’s verse formation. 
“In the Soviet Era references to the poems were  considered as something ‘indecent’ and were not allowed to be published, but, now, in the full collection we have indicated biographic coincidences in order to help the readers to understand Pasternak’s verse,” Yelena Pasternak said. 
Many hitherto unknown versions and excised parts of poems, such as five quatrains from the epic poem “Spektorsky,” deleted parts of “Lieutenant Schmidt,” a different version of the famous poem “Hamlet,” and  draft versions of “Dr. Zhivago,” are included. A detailed reference to the history of the novel’s creation is included.
The CD-ROM multimedia supplement includes translations by Pasternak, his musical compositions, a few recordings of his voice (his son said that Pasternak was scared of “mechanical devices” such as tape-recorders), and a biographical collection of photographs. 
“The multimedia supplement is done neither in contrast with the published volumes nor as a digital version of it,” Dmitry Rubashkin, creative manager at Mart studio, said. “While the published volumes are good for long-term home use, the multimedia supplement facilitates the information search process and helps the reader to study the text.”
Despite a huge amount of work that has gone into the project, and the trove of archive materials collected, Pasternak said that “new” letters and other documents that belonged to his father are being found all the time. 
“I think the present collection is a good base for the next thing that is needed to be done — a full academic collection of Pasternak’s works issued with full philological reference provided,” he said.

The complete works of Boris Pasternak in 11 volumes with CD ROM is published by Slovo Publishing House at a list price of 4,400 rubles ($155).
www.slovo-online.ru

TITLE: A tale of two cities
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An unmissable exhibition opened its doors at the State Hermitage Museum last Friday under the title “Vienna and Budapest on the Edge of the Centuries: 1873-1920.” 
A joint project from two states — Austria and Hungary — the show includes more than 500 works of art and covers what is perhaps the most important cultural period of the two countries and their capitals. 
Such giants of the museum world as the Vienna Art History Museum, the Museum of Vienna and the Hungarian National Gallery, as well as many other institutions — including the Hermitage itself — have contributed works to the show. 
Among the exhibition’s gems are paintings by the Austrian composer and inventor of atonality in music, Arnold Schoenberg; Gustav Mahler’s richly decorated conductor’s baton; and, geometric, minimalist objects that belonged to the leader of the “Vienna Workshop,” Josef Hoffman, including his chair.
“The exhibition is put into a Russian context,” Hermitage Museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky said, explaining why most of the exhibition is located in the Nicholas Hall with its rich associations with Russian imperial history. 
The show documents notorious historical links between Russian Tsar Nicholas I and the Austrian Kaiser Franz Josef (who ruled for 68 years, from 1848 to 1916). Although Austrians and Hungarians lived together under one state for nearly five centuries (from 1526 to 1918), it was only in 1867 that the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was created and headed by Emperor Franz Josef and his wife, Empress Elisabeth. 
The year 1873 was chosen as the starting point of the Hermitage show since this was the year Budapest was formed by the unification of the towns of Buda, Pest and Obuda, and also the year that Vienna held the World Expo.
The first, “historical” part of the exposition pays attention to grandiose town-planning decisions in both cities and features two prominent painters of the time — the Austrian Hans Makart and the Hungarian MihÇly MunkÇcsy.
However, the most interesting and controversial part of the display will be found at the turn of 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. 
This was a time when Vienna offered its own contribution to the European Art Nouveau style and avant-garde movement. The exhibition considers almost all important names and events of the time, but from quite an unusual perspective. 
There are no masterpieces in the show, or, to be precise, there are no representative, explicit things that constitute the so-called Viennese breakthrough. 
The groundbreaking Vienna Secession movement and the scandalous building on Michaelerplatz by Adolf Loos (author of the famous essay “Ornament and Crime”) are visually represented by a few posters. 
A couple of remarkable posters and a drawing, and one portrait, introduce two prominent Viennese modernist artists — Oskar Kokoshka and Egon Schiele respectively. Meanwhile, the exhibition is extensively filled with less well-known and more debatable Hungarian art which is nevertheless engaging.
It seems the organizers were faced with a difficult task. 
Budapest can hardly be positioned on a level with Vienna. The culture of Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, in the fields of philosophy, music, literature, architecture, fine arts, design, psychoanalysis and in the influential Vienna art historical theoretical school, is truly impressive. But there was an obvious deficit of all of these in Budapest. 
Vienna was the first city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Budapest was a long way behind. At the same time, the dramatic difference in the cultural and artistic achievements between the two cities is competently smoothed over in the show.
The most fruitful perspective, which curators have chosen, is to underline social links and more formal parallels between these two cities. 
Like Vienna, Budapest made its own “breakthrough” in the  sense that it has its own “barbizons,” “impressionists,” “art nouveau” and avant-garde artists.
Like Vienna, Budapest became a metropolis, where there were different art groups and associations. And, in turn, it was similar to the rest of Europe. Hungarian artists studied in Vienna, but later many of them, like artists everywhere in Europe, preferred to go to Paris or Munich.
But perhaps both cities benefited most from a rich musical relationship between them. Musicians such as Schoenberg, Mahler, Ferenc Liszt, Ferenc LehÇr and BÎla Bart×k worked in both cities and were important European figures in general. 
An autonomous event, though directly linked with the main project, is a large graphic retrospective of the works of Hungarian artist MihÇly Zichy in the Concert Hall of the Hermitage, drawn entirely from the Hermitage’s own collection.
Zichy came to St. Petersburg in 1848, and until his death in 1906, worked as a painter to the Imperial Court. As the court documentarian, Zichy depicted in drawings, water-colors or gouache events of state significance such as weddings, coronations, military parades, hunts, receptions and balls. This part of the exhibition presents an engaging illustrated history of the life of the monarchy. 

Vienna and Budapest on the Edge of the Centuries: 1873-1920 runs through Jan. 22 at the Hermitage. www.hermitage.ru

TITLE: Living legend
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and well into the 1980s, Maya Plisetskaya reigned as undisputed queen of the Bolshoi Theater’s ballet troupe. 
To celebrate her 80th birthday on Sunday, the Bolshoi has concocted a glittering festival of dance that commenced Wednesday with three nights of performances on the theater’s New Stage and ending Sunday with a gala evening at the Kremlin Palace. On hand throughout the festivities is the great ballerina herself, together with her husband of nearly half a century, the distinguished composer Rodion Shchedrin.
“Everything that I feel here, at home in Moscow, cannot be put in words. I am absolutely excited about people’s attitude toward me, I do not even know how I can express my feelings of gratitude and happiness for all that,” Plisetskaya, who lives with Shchedrin in Munich, said when she arrived in Russia on Monday, Pravda reported.
Although Shchedrin was appointed honorary professor to St. Petersburg’s Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory last month, there are no special events to celebrate Plisetskaya’s 80th birthday in the city. 
Festivities in Moscow began  Wednesday with a classic that formed a fundamental part of Plisetskaya’s repertoire: Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.”
The final festival evening on the New Stage, on Friday, will see a revival of “Carmen Suite,” a work that premiered at the Bolshoi in 1967 and brought with it perhaps Plisetskaya’s greatest artistic triumph. The score is Shchedrin’s arrangement of music from Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen,” and the dancing recreates the original work of Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso. 
The final festival evening is at the Kremlin Palace on Sunday, Plisetskaya’s actual birthday, with stars from St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, London’s Royal Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet and the Berlin State Ballet.
Born in Moscow in 1925, Plisetskaya seemed destined to embark on an artistic career: She had an actress mother whose sister and brother, Sulamith and Asaf Messerer, numbered among the leading lights of the Bolshoi ballet troupe in the years between the two world wars and whose second brother, Azary Messerer, was a well-known stage actor of the same era.
Like many others of her generation, Plisetskaya suffered enormously from the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. At age 11, she witnessed the arrest of her father, which eventually led to his execution, and then found herself effectively orphaned with the subsequent arrest and three-year imprisonment of her mother. Nevertheless Plisetskaya retained a place among the pupils of the Moscow Choreographic Academy and, upon graduation in 1943, was immediately invited to join the Bolshoi’s ballet company. 
But Plisetskaya’s real flowering on the Bolshoi stage only took place following the retirement in 1960 of the theater’s great mid-20th-century star, Galina Ulanova.
In the early 1970s Plisetskaya began to combine dancing with her own choreography. First came a setting of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina” with a score by Shchedrin.

TITLE: Bush Firm on Korean Nuclear Program
AUTHOR: By Jennifer Loven
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GYEONGJU, South Korea — U.S. President George W. Bush took a hardline stance against North Korea on Thursday, saying the U.S. won’t help the communist nation build a civilian nuclear reactor to produce electricity until it dismantles its nuclear weapons programs. 
With the nuclear dispute with North Korea at an apparent impasse, Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun put the communist regime on notice while meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, saying that it would not be allowed to keep its nuclear weapons programs.
“A nuclear-armed North Korea will not be tolerated,” Roh said.
The North has demanded that it be given a light-water reactor — a type less easily diverted for weapons use — in exchange for disarming. U.S. officials once rejected the idea outright and argued North Korea could not be trusted with any nuclear program, but now have left the door open as long as the state isn’t given a reactor as an incentive, but only as a reward after it has eliminated nuclear weapons programs.
“We’ll consider the light-water reactor at the appropriate time,” Bush said. “The appropriate time is after they have verifiably given up their nuclear weapons and/or programs.”
So far, Bush is getting one thing he wanted from his four-country swing through Asia: no public displays of dissension from the United States’ partners in the talks.
Negotiations between North Korea and the United States, Japan, South Korea, Russia and China in September concluded with North Korea promising to end its nuclear program in exchange for aid, diplomatic recognition and security guarantees. But a disappointing new round of talks ended last week without progress on the difficult next step — how to dismantle existing weapons and verify that the country has really ended all suspicious programs.
At Bush’s meeting with Roh — like that a day earlier in Japan with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi — the leaders made clear they remain committed to ending North Korea’s program. There was no mention of the differences between the United States and South Korea on how to deal with Pyongyang.
Roh, who has pursued engagement and closer ties with the North, opposes military action if diplomacy fails and is not keen on going to the UN Security Council for sanctions. Bush has not taken either option off the table.
“We have no disagreement at all that this issue must be resolved,” Roh said.
Roh has favored a softer approach, but he did not ask Bush to modify his approach, said Mike Green, director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council. “He didn’t ask for a more flexible position because” a statement of principles endorsed by all parties in September “was pretty clear,” Green said.

TITLE: Anglicans Face Split Over Gays
AUTHOR: By Paul Majendie
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Almost half the world’s Anglican archbishops have mutinied over the divisive issue of gay clergy, demanding action from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams over “unrepented sexual immorality” in the church. 
Their views, set out in an open letter to Williams in which they attack his leadership, could put the 450-year-old church on the road to schism.
Two years of divisions among the world’s 77 million Anglicans were sparked by the ordination of gay bishop Gene Robinson and the blessing of same-sex marriages in Canada.
Williams has always been personally tolerant of gay clergy and at a meeting this week of the church’s governing synod in London, he called for reconciliation, a plea that clearly fell on deaf ears among Anglican leaders in the developing world.
Seventeen of the church’s 38 archbishops, headed by Nigeria’s Peter Akinola, said in the letter: “We urge you to rethink your view and embrace the church’s consensus.
The Church of England also provoked fury among traditionalists by allowing gay priests to register under Britain’s new civil partnership law, as long as they remain celibate.
African church leaders in particular fear that if Anglicanism takes a lenient line on homosexuality, its followers will turn to more conservative Christian churches or Islam.

TITLE: Sharon Agrees to Early Elections in Israel
AUTHOR: By Amy Teibel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed Thursday to hold early elections, possibly as soon as February, kicking off a political campaign certain to freeze all moves to restart Middle East peace talks. 
After meeting Sharon on Thursday morning, newly elected Labor Party leader Amir Peretz said they had discussed holding the ballot between late February and the end of March, instead of next November as scheduled. 
Sharon’s government is in danger of collapsing because Peretz wants to pull Labor out of the ruling coalition.
Yosef Lapid, head of the opposition Shinui Party, said he and Sharon agreed on a March ballot.
“On the one hand, we want to shorten the process, but on the other, we have to give time to prepare for elections, and so we agreed they would be in March,” Lapid told The Associated Press.
Sharon told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that he had reached the conclusion it was best to have elections “as quickly as possible.”
Israel’s parliament is scheduled to hold a preliminary vote Monday on whether to dissolve the government.
The Israeli election campaign, combined with Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for January, will stall efforts to build on the momentum for peace following Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip in September.
Peretz, head of the second-largest party in Sharon’s coalition, told a news conference that Sharon had agreed that he would choose an election date by Monday.

TITLE: Tense Matches Decide World Cup Line-Up
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Australia, Trinidad & Tobago, Switzerland, Spain and the Czech Republic completed the 32-team lineup for the World Cup finals after a day of unrelenting drama and tension brought qualifying to a close on Wednesday. 
The action began in Sydney where Australia reached the World Cup for the first time in 32 years and became the first team to do so through a shootout after beating Uruguay 4-2 from the spot after a 1-0 extra time win saw the playoff end 1-1 on aggregate. 
Trinidad & Tobago survived a barrage of missiles from angry Bahrain fans after their match as they pulled off a spectacular comeback in the qualifying campaign with a 1-0 win in Manama for a 2-1 aggregate victory and a first appearance in the finals. 
Switzerland ended a 12-year absence from the finals despite losing 4-2 in Istanbul to Turkey. 
Their 2-0 win in the first leg in Bern saw them through on away goals as the tie ended 4-4 on aggregate, the Swiss having lost a 3-0 aggregate lead after scoring a first minute penalty. 
Spain reached their eighth successive World Cup since 1978 with a 1-1 draw in Slovakia for a 6-2 aggregate win, while the Czech Republic qualified for the first time as an independent nation. They last appeared as Czechoslovakia at Italia’ 90. 
The Czechs saw off Norway 1-0 in Prague after a 1-0 win in Oslo and, with their match finishing a few minutes after Spain’s, became the 32nd and last team to qualify for Germany. 
All 32 qualifiers are now known for next summer’s extravaganza, which begins on June 9 in Munich and ends on July 9 in Berlin. The draw takes place in Leipzig on Dec. 9. 

HIGH DRAMA 
There was high drama in Istanbul where Switzerland scored a second minute penalty through Alexander Frei to go 3-0 up on aggregate but then endured 90 minutes of a white-knuckle roller-coaster ride as Turkey clawed the aggregate score back to 3-3 with two goals from Tuncay Sanli and a Necati Ates penalty. 
Switzerland still led at that stage on away goals but after wasting four clear second-half chances they scored again through Marco Streller after 84 minutes to go 4-3 up on aggregate. 
Turkey came fighting back with Tuncay heading home in the 89th minute to complete his hat-trick and take the score to 4-2 on the night and 4-4 on aggregate but it was not enough. 

SHOOTOUT VICTORY 
There was even more tension on the other side of the world earlier on Wednesday when Australia became the first team to qualify for a World Cup on penalties. 
John Aloisi converted the decisive spot kick after Australia goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer pulled off two brilliant saves to send the capacity crowd of 83,000 wild. 
Australia’s Dutch coach Guus Hiddink has seen his team square the tie at 1-1 on aggregate with a first half goal from Marco Bresciano. 
Hiddink will be one of four Dutch coaches at the World Cup, presuming none of them lose their jobs by then, being joined by compatriots Marco Van Basten (Netherlands), Dick Advocaat (South Korea) and Leo Beenhakker (Trinidad & Tobago). 

CARIBBEAN DELIGHT 
Beenhakker, who turned Trinidad & Tobago’s campaign around after taking over last March, saw his side become the seventh debutant at next year’s finals with their 1-0 win in Bahrain giving them the tie 2-1 on aggregate. 
Dennis Lawrence headed the only goal after 50 minutes but defeat was too much for the Bahrainis who lost their composure at the end when defender Hussain Ali Hasan was sent off. 
The crowd threw seat covers and other missiles onto the pitch but could not diminish the joy of the winners who became only the fourth Caribbean side to reach the finals following Cuba in 1938, Haiti (1974) and Jamaica (1998). 
Trinidad, with a population of only 1.1 million will be the smallest nation in the competition. 
There was relatively less passion and tension in Bratislava and Prague where the two halves of the old Czechoslovakia experienced different, but expected outcomes.

TITLE: Showdown In China Criticized
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: SHANGHAI, China — Argentina’s David Nalbandian advanced to the Tennis Masters Cup semifinals with a 6-2 6-2 victory over Croatia’s Ivan Ljubicic on Thursday. 
Nalbandian served out at love in the last game, clinching the 67-minute match when Ljubicic sprayed a backhand wide. 
Ljubicic made 22 unforced errors and looked flat after taking top-ranked Roger Federer to a third-set tiebreaker before losing his last match. 
Next for Nalbandian is seventh-ranked Nikolai Davydenko — winner of the Gold Group — in Saturday’s semifinals. Davydenko is 2-0 in the injury-depleted Gold Group with one round-robin match remaining against Mariano Puerta. 
Federer will top the Red Group. He had a spot in the semifinals all wrapped up before his last round-robin match Thursday against Guillermo Coria. 
Federer is one of the few top stars remaining after a rash of injury withdrawals at the beginning of the tournament. 
“I thought I was the worst injured of all,” Federer said after beating Ljubicic on Tuesday. “Now that I can play, for me, it means very much — this is like a Grand Slam.” 
Federer hasn’t lost a match en route to winning the season-ending event in the last two years. 
The 24-year-old Swiss star is on a 33-match winning streak and is three victories short of equaling John McEnroe’s Open era record (82-3) for the best winning percentage in a season. 
He came to Shanghai at 77-3 and needed a third consecutive unbeaten campaign to tie McEnroe’s 21-year-old record. 
His next rival, sixth-ranked Coria, is already out of contention for the next round, meaning no player ranked from second to sixth will figure in the semifinals in the season-ending event. 
Second-ranked Rafael Nadal and No. 5 Andre Agassi withdrew with foot and ankle injuries on Monday. No. 3 Andy Roddick, No. 4 Lleyton Hewitt and Australian Open champion Marat Safin pulled out before the tournament. 
Nalbandian didn’t qualify originally for the eight-man tournament, but was drafted in to replace Roddick.
Federer believes that criticism from tournament organizers of the spate of pullouts at the year-ending Masters Cup was fully justified. 
He refused to condemn Chinese organizers for calling into question Agassi’s reasons for quitting the $4.45 million tournament earlier this week. 
“I think criticism is allowed at this point,” Federer said in Shanghai on Tuesday. “They signed a three-year deal. I understand the big disappointment from the government, from the tournament, from the fans.”
Organizers were scornful of Agassi’s decision to withdraw even though the eight-times grand slam winner arrived in China with an ankle injury. 
But Federer sought to heal any potential rift by praising Agassi for trying to play on his injured ankle. 
“I don’t know how bad it really was... but I think it’s still great that he shows up and tried,” said Federer. “Maybe the other guys could have tried too.” 
(Reuters, AP)

TITLE: Russia Hopes to Bounce Back in Gymnastics
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Russia’s young team has much to prove at next week’s world gymnastics championships as it tries to rebound from a disappointing showing at last year’s Olympics.
Russia, a dominant force in gymnastics in Soviet days, was a flop in Athens, failing to win a single gold medal for the first time since joining the Olympic competition in 1952.
The Russians, led by the aging Alexei Nemov and Svetlana Khorkina, managed only a silver and two bronze.
The world championships in Melbourne, which open next Monday, are the first major championships in 12 years in which neither Nemov nor Khorkina will be competing.
Khorkina, the only gymnast to capture three world all-round titles, retired last year after failing to win a coveted Olympic all-round crown, the only one missing from her resume.
The Russian diva, who finished second behind American Carly Patterson in the all-round competition, also missed out on becoming the first person to win the same apparatus title at three consecutive Olympics.
In Athens, the self-proclaimed queen of the asymmetric bars lost her grip and fell to the mat seconds into her complex display, ending her Olympic dream.
Nemov, with 12 Olympic medals to his name and the 2000 all-round champion, also bowed out empty-handed, finishing a disappointing fifth in the horizontal bar final after judges controversially marked him down.
The uproar over Nemov’s marks  brought the Olympic competition to a standstill as an angry crowd booed and jeered the judges for 10 minutes. The controversy contributed to the decision of the International Gymnastics Federation, or FIG, to introduce reforms after Melbourne.
The Olympic failure also cost long-serving Russian gymnastics chief Leonid Arkayev his job.
Arkayev, who was also Russia’s men’s and women’s head coach, had ruled the sport with an iron fist for three decades, single-handedly hiring and firing coaches, signing sponsorship contracts and picking the national team.
Despite winning many medals at world and Olympic competitions over the years, Arkayev was blamed for neglecting junior programs and forcing out many top coaches who disagreed with his management style.
“Selecting a team has become a real problem,” said Andrei Rodionenko, who was given the tough task of rebuilding the national side after taking over from Arkayev as head coach this year.
Rodionenko, 62, who guided the Soviets to eight gold medals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, was persuaded to return by former FIG president Yury Titov after coaching in Australia and Canada for several years.