SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1125 (91), Friday, November 25, 2005
**************************************************************************


TITLE: UN Backs Russian Nuclear Plan for Iran
AUTHOR: By Mark Heinrich and Louis Charbonneau
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VIENNA — The UN nuclear watchdog’s governors broadly agree it is better to explore a Russian compromise over Iran’s nuclear activities than to report Tehran to the Security Council, Western board members said on Thursday. 
A draft statement incorporating this position was submitted by the European Union’s three biggest powers — France, Britain and Germany — to the chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board as it began a two-day meeting. 
“There is a broad consensus not to allow Iran in the present circumstances conducting [sic] enrichment-related activities on its soil,” said the draft of a statement to be read by the IAEA board chairman at the end of the meeting. 
The EU draft text makes no mention of previous threats to refer Tehran to the Security Council for possible sanctions, which the United States and EU had been pushing for months. 
Diplomats said a decision by the EU and the United States not to push for referral at the meeting had averted a potential clash with Russia and China, who oppose any such move. 
Rarely united previously, they and the Western powers, along with developing countries such as India and South Africa, now seem to agree Russia’s proposal offers the best route forward. Moscow has suggested letting Tehran conduct less-sensitive uranium processing in Iran and shifting the converted material to Russia, where a Russian-Iranian joint venture would handle the critical enrichment process. Enrichment can yield fuel for nuclear power stations or bomb-grade uranium fuel. 
The EU text said the IAEA’s 35-nation board had “unanimous hope...that the negotiation process could resume, taking into account, among different ideas, the Russian proposals”. 
It also said: “None of the members of the board wishes Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.” 
Tehran denies wanting anything more than civilian nuclear energy but acknowledges hiding potentially weapons-related technology from UN inspectors for 18 years until 2003. 
The EU text cited “unanimous concern” about a disclosure last week that Iran had received papers from black marketeers describing in part how to build the core of a nuclear bomb. 
Peter Jenkins, British envoy to the IAEA, said this clearly reflected a quest for nuclear arms. He warned that while the EU had opted to give Iran more time to weigh Moscow’s proposal, the West’s forebearance was not unlimited. 
“Iran should not conclude that this window of opportunity will remain open in all circumstances,” he told reporters, without giving Iran a deadline. 
Iran has made clear it intends to start uranium enrichment on its own soil eventually. Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said this would be the main topic of any future discussions with the Europeans and Russians. 
“The next talks will be about the enrichment programme and there must be a framework and a deadline for talks, because without such things, negotiations will be fruitless,” he told Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency. 
The IAEA board of governors will not vote this week on UN Council referral but will issue a statement summarising concerns expressed by board members, diplomats on the board said. 
The Japanese chairman of the board will decide on the final text. Western diplomats said the non-aligned developing nations on the board would demand that the EU draft text be softened. 
Word from Iran on Wednesday that it expected to unfreeze dialogue with the EU has been seen by IAEA board members as a sign of flexibility from Tehran after months of tough talk. 
Diplomats said envoys of Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Iran tentatively planned to meet on Dec. 6, four months after the “EU3” group cut off contact in protest at Iran ending a suspension in processing uranium for nuclear fuel. 
In a significant concession to Tehran, the EU3 signalled its willingness to resume talks despite Iran’s refusal to halt uranium-processing operations at its Isfahan plant once again. 
The meeting, which diplomats say will take place in Vienna, Brussels, Geneva or Moscow, will focus on the Russian proposal.

TITLE: Aristocrats Put Forward Proposal On Restitution
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Descendants of nobles whose homes and estates were nationalized by the Bolsheviks following the 1917 Revolution have proposed that the state resolve the sensitive issue of restitution by introducing a new form of bond entitled a restitution certificate.
The proposal was voiced by St. Petersburg lawyer Andrei Sorokin, deputy head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Imperial Union-Order (RIUO) at a conference on restitution issues organized by Rosbalt News Agency on Thursday. The RIUO is an organization headquartered in the U.S. representing Russian aristocrats living abroad. 
“The experience of post-communist countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region shows that restitution can take different forms, and doesn’t necessarily mean the physical return of lost properties,” Sorokin said. “Victims of totalitarian regimes may receive financial compensation, land or bonds. In the light of international practice, we are suggesting this new solution.”
The proposal to create restitution certificates comes as a response to recent initiatives seeking to make possible the sale of a number of St. Petersburg’s crumbling historic mansions.
Plans to put some of the city’s historical mansions into private hands, which have received the support of Governor Valentina Matviyenko since April 2004, have also been backed by leading politicians in Moscow. A barrier to this move results from many of St. Petersburg’s palaces and mansions being listed as historical and architectural treasures. This means that they are under the protection of federal authorities rather than municipal authorities, complicating the privatization process. 
Initially, Matviyenko planned to initiate changes in the Russian legislation which would allow the privatization of historic buildings held as federal property, but the controversial proposals failed to receive the necessary support and were not even discussed by the Federal Duma. 
Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref has made several statements over the past few months calling for the privatization process to be stepped up. Culture and Communications Minister Alexander Sokolov said in June that privatization of the country’s crumbling architectural monuments could start in the next six months.
The aristocrats have attempted to initiate a dialogue with the state but the city authorities have ignored them, Sorokin said. 
Speaking at the Rosbalt conference, Galina Arkhipenko, head of the real estate department of City Hall’s Culture Committee, cited a number of palaces and mansions that currently house museums and theaters, and said it would be a disaster if these buildings were returned to their former owners. 
“The former owners are remembered through the names of the buildings. Take, for instance, the Shuvalovsky Palace or the Sheremetev Palace,” she said. “It’s a sign of respect.”
Some of the aristocrats present at the conference were not satisfied with this remark.
“Respecting a person means at least talking to them but the authorities speak about this as if we don’t exist. They speak as if communists themselves built loads of palaces and estates, and now there are too many of them, so the state wants to share the burden of maintaining them,” said Princess Vera Obolensky, director of the St. Petersburg branch of the French travel company CGTT Voyages. “But they didn’t build them, they expropriated them.”
Boris Turovsky, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the RIUO, said that the restitution issue should not only be a concern for aristocrats.
“By 1913, up to 90 percent of all land in the country was in the hands of the peasantry, and workers owned some property as well,” Turovsky said. “Besides, restitution is a gesture of honesty and self-respect, and a country which demonstrates this to its citizens would be much better trusted by foreign investors.”
Alexander Chuyev, a lawmaker of the State Russian Duma from the Rodina faction, and deputy head of the Duma’s Committee on NGOs and religious organizations, agrees. He believes that restitution has to be carried out to ensure future stability in Russia. 
“People need to support it, if only for the personal safety of themselves and their children,” Chuyev said. “Otherwise, there is always a risk that a new president or a new Duma will launch a new, irreversible expropriation campaign.”

TITLE: Toxic River Water Threatens Russian Territory
AUTHOR: By Chris Buckley
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HARBIN, China — A toxic slick of polluted river water reached the outskirts of one of China’s biggest cities on Thursday, nearly two weeks after an explosion at a petrochemical plant upstream. 
China said the blast had caused major pollution, spilling benzene compounds into the Songhua River from which Harbin, capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, draws its drinking water. Harbin is home to nine million people, including three million urban residents. 
Russia’s environmental protection agency said it was worried the pollution might affect drinking water in its Khabarovsk region, which the Songhua enters several hundred km downstream from Harbin. The State Environmental Protection Administration’s Zhang rejected accusations that the local authorities had waited too long before telling residents or Russia about the pollution. 
“The water will still flow through Heilongjiang for another 14 days” before reaching Russia, Zhang said, suggesting the pollution level would drop significantly by the time it enters Russia.
Local officials warned residents to be on the lookout for symptoms of benzene poisoning, which in heavy doses can cause anaemia and other blood disorders, as well as kidney and liver damage. 
In a sign of how the spill has jarred national nerves about widespread pollution, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao issued instructions demanding safe drinking water be ensured. 
In Heilongjiang, Governor Zhang Zuoji ordered hospitals to brace themselves for possible cases of poisoning and promised to drink the first glass of water from city taps once the pollution passes. 
According to initial estimates, the explosion resulted in 100 tons of benzene and related products being released into the water, deputy head of the State Environmental Protection Administration, Zhang Lijun, told a news conference. 
A provincial government spokesman said the 80-kilometer stretch of pollution passed Harbin’s water supply inlet early on Thursday and would flow beyond the city on Saturday. 
Water supplies could resume partially as early as Sunday, Xinhua said. Harbin’s mayor, Shi Zhongxin, said the water would at first be unsuitable for drinking. 
Residents’ reactions ranged from stoic acceptance to anxiety, but there were few signs of panic in Harbin, where most residents continued to work and shops and restaurants remained open. 
“It’s worrying, because it may not have a strong smell or colour, so you can’t tell when it’s gone,” said Hong Shan, a retired official exercising beside the river. “It’s up to the government to keep us informed. We can’t tell ourselves.” 
Commentators in Beijing and further afield condemned the “lies” told before the authorities revealed what had really happened. A paper in Harbin itself tried to play down the crisis. 
Farmers in surrounding areas mostly said they draw water from wells, and so were not panicked by the spill. 
“We’ve stored up enough water to get by, but I don’t know if this pollution can seep into the underground water,” said Gao Erling, from Sifangtai Village near Harbin. 
The explosion happened at a chemicals plant in neighboring Jilin province about 370 kilometers from Harbin on Nov. 13. 
The plant was only a few hundred meters from the Songhua, but at the time officials there warned only of air and ground contamination, not water pollution. Five people were killed in the blast. 
Across China on Thursday, a blast shook a chemical factory in the southwestern province of Sichuan, killing one person, injuring three and raising fears of benzene contamination in the nearby town of Danjiang, Xinhua news agency reported. 
The Jilin plant, Jilin PetroChemical Co., had insisted it was not responsible for the pollution, state media said. But the deputy general manager of China National Petroleum Corp., Jilin PetroChemical’s parent company, apologised to Harbin residents. 
China’s environment administration said on Thursday the plant should be held responsible for the toxic spill, Xinhua said. 
The pollutants had already passed through the smaller city of Songyuan, between Jilin and Harbin, where water supplies had been partially cut for seven days. 
A Harbin environmental protection group recently issued a report documenting widespread chemical pollution along the Songhua River. 
The report said that many factories were secretly dumping waste water and chemicals into the river, and water treatment plants could not do enough. 
“Overall, the water quality along the Songhua has improved in recent years, but there are problems with factories and pulp mills releasing untreated waste,” said Zhang Yadong, one of the authors. “People can suffer, but it’s fish that are worst hit.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Biometric Passports
MOSCOW (SPT) — Russians will be issued new biometric passports starting next year, according to a decree signed Wednesday by Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.
The passports will be embedded with electronic chips containing biometric information such as facial images in an effort to prevent fraud, said Mikhail Lychagin, a Cabinet spokesman, Interfax reported. 

No New President
MINSK (AP) — Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday ruled out the creation of a new post of president for the fledgling union being formed by Belarus and Russia. 
President “Vladimir Putin and I have ruled out this possibility. We have explicitly determined that the union will not have a president,” Lukashenko told reporters. 

Kazakh ‘Suicide’ 
ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) — The wife of a former Kazakh minister who was killed by multiple gunshot wounds said Wednesday that her husband was murdered and alleged that police tried to persuade her it was suicide.
Makpal Zhunusova found the body of her husband, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, in his Almaty home on Nov. 12. Police said he had two bullet wounds in his chest and one in his head, and said there was no evidence of a break-in.

TITLE: Duma Gives Nod to NGO Restrictions
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma easily approved in a first reading Wednesday a bill that would place nongovernmental organizations under strict state control and that foreign NGOs warned would shut them down.
“This bill will put an end to civil society in Russia,” Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent Duma deputy, said during a debate before the vote. “The Duma has neither the moral nor the constitutional right to vote in favor of it.”
“The bill is aimed at shutting down organizations that don’t share the government’s or President Vladimir Putin’s ideas,” Communist Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin told reporters during a Duma recess.
United Russia Deputy Andrei Makarov, however, defended the legislation as a way to fight extremism and money laundering, and denied that it sought to clamp down on NGOs. “Many criminal organizations disguise themselves as NGOs or use the status of an NGO to launder dirty money,” he said.
Pressed several times by reporters to offer an example of how criminals use NGOs as a cover, Makarov was unable to provide any examples.
Asked why deputies had not sought advice from NGOs in drafting the bill, Makarov said deputies had been working on the legislation for years. “We have carefully studied every single detail in that bill,” he said.
Deputies from all four political parties represented in the Duma helped draft the bill, and the 450-seat chamber approved it in a 370-18 vote, with 48 abstentions.
All the abstentions were from Communist deputies, who criticized the version that had been submitted for the vote and promised to propose amendments before the second reading. 
If the current bill is passed into law, the country’s 450,000 NGOs will be forced to reregister with the Justice Ministry’s Federal Registration Service under tighter rules next year. The agency would also have to check that NGOs do not use foreign grants to finance political activities.
Under the bill, which has to go through two more readings, registration officials would supervise the financial flows and taxes of NGOs and determine whether their activities were in accordance with the law and with the NGOs’ declared goals.
“We know how easy it would be for the tax police and fire inspectors to find something wrong and shut down unwanted organizations,” Ryzhkov, the independent deputy, said during the debate.
He said the bill violated the Constitution, which states that people have the right to freedom of assembly and association. “Why do you want to pass a bill all human rights organizations oppose?” he said.
The bill would also bar foreign NGOs from having representative offices or branches in Russia and restrict Russian NGOs’ ability to accept foreign cash or employ non-Russian workers.
People convicted of crimes and companies suspected of money laundering or assisting terrorists would be prohibited from financing NGOs — a provision that would shut down Open Russia, whose founder, oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is serving an eight-year sentence on politically tinged charges of fraud and tax evasion.
NGOs could be denied registration if the documents they provide contain false information, or if their name “offends the morality, national or other feeling of citizens,” the bill says. 
Nikolai Duckworth, the director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia program, said that if the bill became law, it would lead to the closure of foreign NGOs.
“As such, it would have a chilling effect on the right to freedom association and expression in Russia,” he said in a statement. “It is unfortunately all too easy to imagine how the increased powers of scrutiny could be abused.”
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said the legislation would “eviscerate” civil society in Russia. “The express purpose of this law is to emasculate the NGO community,” said Holly Cartner, Human Rights Watch’s regional director. 
Government officials have repeatedly accused Western countries of helping bankroll Ukraine’s Orange Revolution last year and Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003 through NGOs, and the Kremlin is worried that Duma elections in 2007 and the presidential vote in 2008 could spark a similar popular uprising.
Putin told a meeting of human rights activists last summer that the Kremlin would not tolerate the use of foreign money in political activities.
In a response to a vote in the U.S. Congress earlier this month to allocate $4 million for the development of political parties in Russia, the Duma voted on Friday to allocate $17.4 million to promote civil society in Russia and in the former Soviet Baltic countries. 
During Wednesday’s Duma debate, Alexei Ostrovsky, a member of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and a co-author of the bill, heaped scorn on NGOs and accused the CIA, the U.S. intelligence agency, of fomenting uprisings.
“We remember how those human rights organizations defended human rights in Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Georgia under the cover of the CIA, and we know how it ended,” he said. 
About eight environmental protesters tried to unfurl flags and posters outside the Duma building but were immediately arrested by police for staging an unauthorized rally.
Deputies said the bill would be approved in the second and third readings by the end of the year. The bill would then need to be approved by the Federation Council before Putin could sign it into law.

TITLE: Watchdog Calls For Open Trial
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A media freedom watchdog is urging authorities to open to the public the trial of two Chechen men charged in the slaying of Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov, a U.S. citizen who was shot dead on a Moscow street in July 2004.
The Moscow City Court said Tuesday that the suspects — Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev — would be tried behind closed doors because some of the materials in the case were classified as secret. It said a date for the jury trial would be set in two weeks.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) appealed for an open trial, saying that making the proceedings public would allow the media to report on the case and the public to evaluate the state’s evidence.
“Many courts have successfully protected state secrets by closing portions of testimony and sealing evidence,” the watchdog’s executive director, Ann Cooper, said in a statement. “Given Russia’s record of impunity in the murders of journalists, public and transparent proceedings would establish far greater credibility.”
Peter Klebnikov, Paul’s brother, told CPJ that his family had “confidence in the validity of the case” against the two suspects. 
“However, like everyone else, the family is still awaiting evidence that would implicate Nukhayev as the mastermind,” he said.
In June, prosecutors accused Chechen rebel financier Khozh Akhmed Nukhayev of ordering the murder in retaliation for Klebnikov’s 2003 book, “Conversation with a Barbarian.”
Authorities are looking for Nukhayev as well as two other suspects.
A final suspect, Fail Sadretdinov, who is in custody, has suggested that Klebnikov might have been killed because he was investigating a series of links between Russian politicians and Chechnya, Izvestia reported last week. Sadretdinov, who is accused of organizing the killing, based his claim on a report by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation that he said was among documents that he had been allowed to read in his case.

TITLE: Son of Defense Minister Cleared
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Alexander Ivanov, the son of the defense minister, will not be charged over a fatal traffic accident in which the Volkswagen he was driving struck and killed an elderly female pedestrian in May, Gazeta.ru reported Tuesday.
City police investigator Yury Laryushkin informed the relatives of Svetlana Beridze that Ivanov would not be charged in connection with the accident, according to the report.
The Volkswagen Bora that Ivanov was driving struck Beridze shortly after 10 p.m. on May 20 while she was on a crossing on Ulitsa Lobachevskogo, in southwestern Moscow. Beridze died at the scene from her injuries. She was 68.
Beridze’s daughter, Nina Plyushch, said that her family expected to receive a copy of the case file Wednesday and that they planned to seek out the opinions of independent experts because they thought an official investigation had not been impartial, Gazeta.ru reported.
Plyushch, who said she witnessed the accident, has maintained that Ivanov was clearly exceeding the speed limit at the time of the accident.

TITLE: Study Finds Northern Captial Safest Investment Destination
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Some investors now consider St. Petersburg to be a better place to do business than Moscow, and big-ticket taxpayers are packing their bags and heading for President Vladimir Putin’s hometown.
Expert Ratings Agency underpins that trend with a new study that has found Russia’s northern capital to be the country’s safest investment destination. 
Moving up two spots from last year, St. Petersburg topped Expert’s annual rating of the country’s “least risky” regions for investment, while Moscow came in 9th place. Lipetsk region came in second place and Novgorod third.
In its annual rating, Expert weighed the probability of losing an investment on a number of factors, including political attitudes, social indicators and macroeconomic figures. For example, regions where political protests are less frequent carry lower risks for investors.
While Moscow retained its status in the study as the region with the greatest investment potential, social indicators helped St. Petersburg gain the “least risky” rating this year. 
“Low social risks” catapult St. Petersburg to the top, said Grigory Marchenko, head of regional analysis at Expert. Not surprisingly, the war-torn republic of Chechnya came in last on the list. 
Social tensions are higher in Moscow than in St. Petersburg, Marchenko said. Grinding poverty resides side-by-side with opulent wealth in the capital; Moscow boasts 33 billionaires — more than any other city in the world — according to Forbes magazine.
Over the past year, several large firms have started a quiet migration to St. Petersburg, promising it tens of millions of dollars in taxes and other revenues.
Oil major Sibneft, which was recently acquired by Gazprom, has confirmed that it is likely to move its headquarters to St. Petersburg.
“We are proud that such companies as Gazprom, companies of a global scale, are actively coming to St. Petersburg today,” Governor Valentina Matviyenko said last week, according to the city government’s official Web site.

TITLE: Illegal Logging Costs $1.5 Billion
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russia’s Forestry Industry is perceived as one of the most corrupt in the world according to an index released by environmentalists. Only other former soviet states — Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan — were deemed even more corrupt.
The 2005 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI) which surveyed 53 countries  gave Russia only 2.4 points, 4.6 points below the accepted standard of 7. Leading the index, compiled by the Socio-Ecological Union, were Finland, leading with 9.6 points, followed by Denmark and Sweden with 9.5 and 9.2 points respectively.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) about 17 million cubic meters of timber, sawwood, pulp, paper and paperboard were illegally logged and traded in Russia last year, with regions bordering China holding the lion’s share. 
Anatoly Kotlobai, the WWF’s expert in illegal logging, attributed Russia’s forestry corruption to a lack of clearly defined laws and regulations surrounding the industry, leading to disruptions in global forestry’s industrial trade balance.
He said that “increasing demand for Russia’s timber and its derivatives in neighboring China and Japan has also exacerbated corruption in regions bordering on China.“
Exports to China jumped up to 17 million cubic meters last year from 529,000 cubic meters eight years ago, with the border regions of Primorye, Khabarovsky Krai and Chitinskaya reporting between 34 percent and 53 percent of illegal timber exports, according to Kotlobay.
But the head of Russia’s Federal Forestry Agency, Valery Rochshupkin said that about 10 percent of Russia’s annual timber exports are a by-product of grave violations of logging and trade norms. According to the WWF this is causing the nation an annual loss of about $1.5 billion against a worldwide loss of about $15 billion. 
A report by the national Forestry Research Institute, Nipielesprom, said that Russia earned $7.3 billion from forestry exports last year, the most since 1995 and more than twice as much as  each of the previous four years. 
However, Russia’s World Bank representative, Andrei Kushlin, believes that both Russia and overseas dealers are to blame for their share in disrupting the global market and ecological balance, citing lack of a strict interstate and inter-corporate governance charter. 
Between them Russia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States possess 51 percent of the world’s forest and Russia alone possesses more than a fifth of the world’s 3.5 billion hectares. 
The problem of illegal logging is also acute in Russia’s North Western region, with its 10 billion cubic meters accounting for 12 percent of the nation’s total forest area. According to the executive director of the North West Forest Industrial Confederation, Denis Sokolov, illegal exports to Finland are of particular concern.
Though Russians and Finns give contradicting figures of last year’s timber exports to Finland — 12 million cubic meters and 14 million cubic meters respectively — they both agree that at least 2 million cubic meters were of dubious origin.
But Vladimir Dmitriyev, WWF’s Russian coordinator of Forestry Policy, suggests a remedy for the malpractice. “We should create a mechanism to oversee forest products right through from logging to the consumer, both nationally and internationally,” he said. 
The mechanism should involve units monitoring logging and others monitoring transportation to mills and to end consumers. Other inspectors would assess quality. 
“If efficiently carried out, it’s a system that may give the consumer enough room to check the quality and investigate the legal origin of the product where necessary,” says Dmitriyev.
But Russian Energy and Industry Minister Ivan Materov is skeptical about Dmitriyev’s idea, despite the backing of some major players in the local timber industry, saying it is too costly and complicated to be realistic.
Materov called for export duty to be replaced by auctions of forest consignments to local exporters. In this way the auctions will repalce lost export duties, and the market itself will take the exporters to task over the quality and legal credibility of the commodity in question, he said.
Dmitry Chuiko, director for the development of industrial business at Russia’s largest pulp mill, Ilim Pulp, dismissed the ideas as “ leading nowhere.”

TITLE: Stalin-Era Skyscraper Sold For $274 Million
AUTHOR: By Conor Humphries
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Ukraina Hotel, a Stalin-era landmark on the Moscow’s skyline, fetched $274 million from an obscure bidder at auction on Wednesday, beating expectations and underscoring Moscow’s image as one of the most attractive — and opaque — hotel markets in the world.
A little-known company, Biskvit, now has until Dec. 10 to pay the 7.881 billion rubles to acquire the 1,000-room hotel following a 10-minute bidding battle at City Hall’s auction house. The final price was 80 percent above the starting price of 4.361 billion rubles ($151 million). 
God Nisanov, general director of Biskvit, denied that the company was a front for a secret bidder, Interfax reported. “No one stands behind it,” he said. 
Interfax, however, suggested that the owners of the Grand shopping center on Leningradskoye Shosse were behind the winning bid. 
After the auction, Deputy Mayor Iosif Ordzhonikidze told reporters that Biskvit — Russian for sponge cake — did not run any hotels in the capital, though he had no other information about the company.
A July article in Pravda’s online edition mentioned a “young, talented” businessman named God Nisanov from Azerbaijan. The paper reported that Nisanov had come to Moscow in the late 1990s, where he finished building Europe’s largest car dealership in 2004 and was now constructing a major mall.
Moscow City Hall did not supply a list of bidders, and during the auction they were referred to by an allocated number. Reporters were allowed to follow the auction only by closed-circuit television from a separate room.
Interfax reported that entities representing Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s conglomerate Sistema and Mikhail Gutseriyev’s oil company Russneft took part in the auction. 
Ligastroiproyekt, the developer of the Moskva Hotel, made the penultimate bid, the news agency  said. 
First Deputy Mayor Yury Roslyak said the auction exceeded his expectations of $250 million. He said that both the name of the hotel and its 1955 facade would be preserved. 
Roslyak dodged a question as to whether the company would be obliged to follow the city’s earlier plan to turn the Ukraina into a four-star hotel.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: MTS Eliminates Excess
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mobile TeleSystems, eastern Europe’s largest mobile-phone company, plans to eliminate a “significant” number of “excess” jobs next year to lower expenses, Chief Executive Officer Vassily Sidorov said Wednesday.
Mobile TeleSystems will also announce a takeover in the former Soviet Union before the end of the year, he said on a conference call with analysts. The company remains interested in acquiring Turkey’s Telsim Telekomunikasyon Hizmetleri AS, he said.
The company’s third-quarter net income rose 2.7 percent to $347.4 million, the smallest gain in more than four years, after it spent more on advertising and new features to attract customers, Mobile TeleSystems said.

Sunway Doubles Profit
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Sunway Group, one of the largest Russian importers of vegetables and fruits hopes to double earnings next year, the company said Wednesday at a presentation of a 1 billion rubles ($34.8 million) bond issue in Moscow, Interfax reported.
In 2006 net profit is forecast to rise up to $14 million, revenue — up to $350 million, EBITDA —  up to $24 million.
Money raised by the bond issue, scheduled for December, will finance a $500 million investment program, increasing the company’s floating assets and debt refinancing. In 2006, Sunway could undertake the second bond issue, the company said.
Sunway has 12 percent of the Russian market in fruit and vegetables and sold 350,000 tons of products last year.

U.K. Gas Imports
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, Europe’s largest natural gas supplier, plans to increase fuel deliveries to the U.K. by 25 percent next year on expectations prices will rise.
Gazprom plans to supply 5 billion cubic meters of gas to the U.K. in 2006, up from 4 billion planned this year, said Alexander Medvedev, a Gazprom deputy chief executive. The state-controlled company expects wholesale prices in Europe will rise to about $200 per 1,000 cubic meters next year, Medvedev told reporters Wednesday in Moscow.
Gazprom expects to ship 151 billion cubic meters of gas to western and central Europe next year, up 4.1 percent from this year’s forecast for 145 billion. 
Gazprom plans to export a total of 195.6 billion cubic meters of gas next year, the company said Wednesday.

Norilsk Share Buyback 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest nickel and palladium miner, will spend $700 million on a share buyback as it prepares to spin off its gold-producing unit, which is Russia’s biggest gold company.
The company will buy back 10,835,738 shares, Moscow-based Norilsk said Thursday on its website. The shares are valued at 1,855 rubles ($64) and shareholders approved the plan at a Sept. 30 meeting.
Norilsk wants to spin off ZAO Polyus, a 20 percent stake in Gold Fields Ltd., the world’s No. 4 gold producer, and 10 billion rubles ($352 million) in cash to create OAO Polyus Gold.
Aton brokerage values the new company, which will be owned by existing Norilsk shareholders, at as much as $4 billion.
Norilsk produces more than half the world’s palladium, a fifth of its nickel and 14 percent of its platinum. 
Last year Polyus produced 1.1 million ounces of gold. It wants to triple output by 2010.

TITLE: The Orange Revolution, One Year On
AUTHOR: By Andrew Wilson
TEXT: On Nov. 22, 2004, the mass protests began that sparked Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. One year on, has it all gone horribly wrong? Will historians come to withdraw the noun, and refer to the period simply as “Orange?” In the short term, the answer lies in the very different personalities of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and his former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.
Tymoshenko’s key strength is that she understands the effectiveness of “anti-oligarch” politics in the former Soviet Union. There is no doubt that the Kremlin’s campaign against Yukos in 2003-04 tapped into the strong popular resentments of the 1990s and served as a powerful loadstone to realign the political system, whatever the unexpected consequences. Tymoshenko thinks she can exploit the issue similarly in Ukraine. The length of the reprivatization saga under her premiership can only be explained by its function as election dramaturgia — especially when set alongside her populist budget spending on pensioners and mothers. Ukraine may have had no dramatic arrests on airport tarmacs — although as well as Kryvorizhstal, there have been some less-heralded steps, such as restoring the government’s majority control of the Ukrtatnafta refinery. Ukraine has no equivalent of Khodorkovsky in jail. What it does have is Tymoshenko, the East European Evita, friend of the poor. 
Tymoshenko, of course, if not herself a current oligarch, is at least a former highly successful businesswoman, which is her most obvious weak spot. Her vulnerability was shown in August when she was forced to sit through an embarrassing press conference while a brave journalist read out the price of her handbags, including a Manhattan PM Louis Vuitton at $1,280 and the pricier Le Talentueux at $2,140 — after she had put her official income declaration at 65,667 hryvnas (just under $13,000), plus a mere 900 hryvnas in the bank. She also collected some strange allies while she was prime minister, particularly in the parliament, where her faction almost doubled in size. Three who swelled the ranks were Oleksandr Abdullin, former president of Intergas, who used to represent implacable Tymoshenko opponents like Ihor Bakay and Viktor Medvedchuk’s Social-Democratic Party; Vasyl Khmelnytsky, the young businessman whose empire includes the Zaporizhstal steel enterprise and several local energy firms, and who helped to set up the fake “Green” Party in 1998 and the fake “Women for the Future” Party in 2002; and Oleksandr Feldman, who represented the so-called “Kharkiv Group,” UkrSibBank and AVEK. Beyond these strange parliamentary bedfellows, there is also the uncertain nature of Tymoshenko’s relations with the Pryvat group, led by “orange oligarch” Ihor Kolomoysky. 
With friends like these, Tymoshenko can fund the coming campaign, with or without her own money. On the other hand, some other new friends didn’t stay in Tymoshenko’s faction long: Several of the so-called “metallurgists,” including Mykola Soloshenko and Enver Tskitishvili, jumped ship as soon as she lost office in September, followed by “agrarians” like Mykola Hopochka, who likewise left her faction — but not the parliament — in November.
Tymoshenko has a ruthless streak. The September crisis unleashed a vicious war of kompromat, from which she initially came out ahead. Her ratings have remained steady, while those of Yushchenko’s party, People’s Union-Our Ukraine, have fallen. Indeed, Yushchenko has to face the nightmare possibility that the People’s Union is already fatally damaged, especially after he backed away from a purge of the so-called “business faction” at the party’s pre-election congress on Nov. 12. He is being urged by some to head its ticket, but that may now risk both his own prestige and contradict the spirit of his pledge that the People’s Union will not use “administrative resources” in 2006. And if reports that former Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun will end up in the Tymoshenko camp turn out to be true, it is likely Piskun will reload for Round 2 in the war of kompromat, with more assaults soon to come on the other side’s integrity.
Yushchenko’s great problem has always been an over-willingness to deal with the old guard. For the 2002 elections, for example, he took on so many turncoats from the Kuchma camp that he was forced to sack seven of them within two months when they voted for Kuchma’s candidate as speaker of the parliament. Before November 2004, many of Yushchenko’s supporters would have accepted a compromise of some sort with the old regime, but the Orange Revolution raised expectations dramatically. And on the campaign trail, Yushchenko himself had promised to repeat his policies as prime minister in 1999-2001, when carefully sequenced steps had successfully purged the economy of some of the more blatant schemes and scams. But apart from a successful push on tax revenues and the reform of some notorious cash sieves — the state railroad management, at least, is no longer robbing the house blind — nothing equivalent was even attempted in 2005 while the reprivatization controversy hovered in the political air. Beyond this, the failures to stamp out the Zvarych scandal when it first broke and to rein in the wheeler-dealer antics of Petro Poroshenko at the National Security and Defense Council were tactical errors that surely did not promote a Yushchenko-as-reformer message.
Yushchenko was sufficiently decisive in his response to the September crisis to raise hopes that the revolution could be restarted. He removed Poroshenko and all but one of the campaign financiers whom he had rewarded with ministerial seats. He sacked Piskun and appointed Serhi Holovaty, a respected reformer, as justice minister. But true to form, Yushchenko was not decisive enough. He claimed those he had sacked had done nothing wrong, leaving the door open for their potential return, and did nothing to probe the more damaging allegations, such as his chief of staff Oleksandr Tretyakov’s supposed involvement in the ongoing exploitation of RusUkrEnergo, or Boris Berezovsky’s claims of donating millions to the cause. Deputy Prime Minister Roman Bezsmertny’s blasÎ comments about Berezovsky’s useful “cooperation … on public campaigns” betrayed a woeful ignorance of the effectiveness of yet another propaganda hit.
Arguably, Ukraine needs a combination of the better qualities of both politicians: Tymoshenko can reach the kind of audiences Yushchenko cannot, and Yushchenko can temper Tymoshenko’s populist excesses. Ukraine needs a business-friendly government, but not a government run by business. Ukraine is still capable of reaching a much better deal with the oligarchs than has happened in Russia — not a dividing wall between politics and business but forgiveness for past sins in return for the gradual conversion of the suddenly rich into honest citizens. 
Ukraine now has a three-party system, consisting of the old opposition, Tymoshenko and Yushchenko’s People’s Union. Unless one or another receives a knockout blow in the March elections, a coalition government is likely. Neither Yushchenko nor Tymoshenko is going to go away. Can they cooperate again after so much blood has been shed between them?

Andrew Wilson is the author of “Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.”

TITLE: What Really Happened to Medvedev
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin replaced his chief of staff, Dmitry Medvedev, last week, and the pundits immediately began talking about the emergence of the president’s successor. Rarely do you encounter such unanimity among professional Kremlin-watchers.
There’s a simple rule of thumb for political analysts: When everyone is lying, focus on the facts, not the spin.
The official line was that Medvedev had been “promoted” to the position of first deputy prime minister. In reality, Medvedev was fired. In his work as chief of staff, Medvedev had almost constant access to the president. As first deputy prime minister he’ll get to see Putin on major holidays as part of a government delegation. 
What was so unexpected about Medvedev’s ouster? Independent political analysts agree that Putin’s second in command is deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin. Sechin prefers to avoid the limelight, however, so Putin gave the top job in his administration to Medvedev. 
Endowed with significant administrative clout as chief of staff, Medvedev soon emerged as a powerful figure in his own right. Everyone who has locked horns with Putin’s real No. 2 over access to the president has lost, however. Dmitry Kozak was exiled to the North Caucasus as a presidential envoy. Medvedev was no exception.
Medvedev had to be replaced with a trusted insider. Sergei Sobyanin fit the bill. As governor of the oil-rich Tyumen region, Sobyanin is by definition close to Rosneft, the oil company headed by Sechin.
And that would have been the end of it if not for the extremely successful PR campaign that accompanied Medvedev’s “promotion.” If the government’s military campaigns were this successful, Shamil Basayev’s head would have been displayed on a stake on Red Square rather than in an interview on the U.S. television network ABC.
The experts tell us that Medvedev is being groomed to succeed Putin as president. If that’s the case, why was he removed from the second most powerful job in the government and installed as the deputy to a prime minister with no real power?
So another high-ranking official got the boot. He wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. So why all the spin? Because Medvedev was good at his job, and if you admit that his increasing competence was the reason for his removal, it becomes all too obvious who really calls the shots in the Kremlin. 
Succession rumors get started for three reasons. The first is to compromise a rival. This explains the rumor that deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov was working on the idea of a parliamentary republic. This idea had first been proposed to Putin by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and it was viewed as evidence of disloyalty to the president. By tying Surkov to the same idea, the rumors effectively painted him as an ally of Khodorkovsky.
Second, would-be successors have been known to start such rumors about themselves in order to raise their political profile. Third, succession rumors are floated as a trial balloon to test the ostensible successor’s own reaction and to see if any sworn Putin loyalists would switch camps.
Rather than analyze the rumors, we need to discern the logic at work here. If someone calls you from the Kremlin and tells you in confidence that 2 times 2 is 17, and then someone else calls from the Kremlin and tells you that 2 times 2 is 5 1/2, there’s no reason to waste your time trying to figure out which caller is closer to Putin. Just do the math.
There is arithmetic, there is logic, and then there is the logic of power. And according to the logic of power, authoritarian rulers don’t resign their posts.

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

TITLE: Empire of eggs
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Graudt
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new generation of Faberges is attempting to revive the family tradition in a radically different era.
Their story has all the ingredients that thrillers are made of. A family history spanning several centuries and stretching across Europe, from St. Petersburg to London. An ancestor who gained worldwide fame as court jeweler to Russia’s imperial family. A dramatic escape from the Bolsheviks. A grandson born out of wedlock who only discovered his true identity in his thirties. And a legacy that lives on today.
This, in a nutshell, is the story of the Faberge family and particularly of Peter Carl Faberge, whose name has become associated with the preferred Easter present of the last two Russian tsars: the elaborately handcrafted Imperial Eggs.
Scattered around the world after the Bolshevik Revolution, the eggs were collected by other royal families, museums and moneyed collectors, so the Faberge name lived on even after Carl passed away. Now, for the renowned jeweler’s descendants, his grandson Theo and his great-granddaughter Sarah, their predecessor’s name is the proverbial hen laying golden eggs. Quite literally.
Two years ago, Theo and Sarah — who are both in the jewelry business too — set up a small shop in St. Petersburg. That was followed by last month’s opening of a new boutique on Moscow’s Red Square, just a stone’s throw from St. Basil’s Cathedral.
Speaking at The St. Petersburg Collection, her store in London’s Burlington Arcade, Sarah said she was still getting used to giving interviews. Indeed, just moments before I walked into the glass-fronted shop with its colorful display of Faberge eggs, Christmas ornaments and Russian-style lacquered boxes, a CNN camera crew was heading out the door.
Not that the name of Faberge has suddenly been brought into the limelight. It also made quite a splash last year, when oil and metals tycoon Viktor Vekselberg bought a collection of original eggs from the Forbes family for over $90 million and brought them back to Russia.
The main point of recognition for Theo and Sarah was the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg in 2003. Invited to the celebrations on an official visit, they presented the city with Theo’s 30-centimeter-high crystal Tercentenary Egg, engraved with images of nine tsarist-era palaces. Inside the egg was a miniature of the Bronze Horseman, the famous statue of the city’s founder, Peter the Great, astride a horse.
“My father, Theo, was always creative, always made beautiful things, and relatively late in his life he began to work exclusively for The St. Petersburg Collection,” Sarah said, speaking of her 83-year-old father, who lives outside of London.
“Now that my father is older, he is letting me do more on his behalf, but he is very much still interested in doing company business. It has been his life, his designing and his creating.”
Although most people associate Faberge with eggs, the company produces other items such as watches, pieces of jewelry and little Christmas decorations, all of which are available in their Moscow store at 5 Red Square.
Sarah, 47, said there is still a connection between the current family business and the work of her famed ancestor, but it is time to move forward. “Obviously we can’t emulate the Imperial Eggs,” she said. “We live in the 21st century. But we want to make pieces of beauty which are worthy of the name and of the same quality. That quality is the most important part of our operation.”
None of the eggs the Faberges make today are copies of Carl’s century-old creations. “It would be silly to copy something that is so exquisite,” Sarah said. “It’s been done, it’s beautiful in itself. They are too perfect as they are.”
The quantity of objects produced by her company is strictly limited, and there is no single workshop where eggs take shape, since its employees work from their homes. The St. Petersburg Collection employs about 30 craftsmen in Britain, each a specialist in their own field, be it gold, porcelain or wood. Until recently Theo was making the designs himself.
His only child, Sarah, who has taken a silversmithing course but otherwise has no artistic training, took up designing for the company after the birth of her son.
“When you have children, it does make you think about the future and future generations, so I took the opportunity,” she said. “Indeed I was very lucky to design, and it’s gone from there.”
Out of her designs, one of her favorites is the Neva Ice Egg. “When I was in St. Petersburg, I was particularly struck by the fact that Neva freezes over, and in the spring when I was there it was just breaking up. I wanted to symbolize the ice coming apart in the water and coming back again in spring,” she said. The egg is made of crystal with silver engraving, a moonstone on top and a golden angel inside.
Sarah first saw St. Petersburg when she was 16, and years after that visit, the depictions of the Zodiac in one of the palaces that she visited have found their way into the eggs she has designed.
The original Faberge firm was founded in 1842 by Carl’s father, the jeweler Gustav Faberge. Only after Carl joined the firm, however, did it achieve worldwide acclaim. In 1885, he was commissioned by Tsar Alexander III to produce the first jeweled, enameled Imperial Egg as a gift for Tsarina Maria Fyodorovna. The egg — in what would become a trademark feature — opened to reveal a yolk. It contained a golden hen with a diamond miniature of the crown and a tiny ruby egg. The gift proved to be such a hit that each year thereafter, a new egg was commissioned by the tsar and created by Faberge for the tsarina. The eggs became more and more elaborately jeweled, and all of them had a surprise hidden inside.
From 1895 to 1916, Tsar Nicholas II continued the tradition by giving two Easter eggs each year, one to his mother and one to his wife. Forty-four of the eggs are known to survive today.
“Carl Faberge was as much an entrepreneur as he was a designer; he was a very good businessman,” Sarah said.
With his luxurious creations unwanted by the Bolshevik regime, however, Carl fled Russia in 1917 and died in France in 1920. Some of his descendants pursued the family tradition of jewelry, but most of the line died out over the next few decades. His only surviving grandson today is Theo Faberge. Born out of wedlock to Carl’s son Nicolas and a model with whom Nicolas was having an affair, Theo was raised by an aunt and never learned about his Faberge identity until 1961. The discovery fueled his interest in craftsmanship, and he helped found The St. Petersburg Collection, the firm that now groups together Theo and Sarah’s work, in 1985.
Despite her family’s difficulties with the Soviet regime, Sarah has no hard feelings toward the Bolsheviks. “I am sure that my great-grandfather would have a different opinion, but I am lucky in that I have grown up here [in Britain], and I didn’t have to suffer what most Russian people had to suffer,” she said. “No, I just think what’s past is past, but we need to look into the future.”
Meanwhile, pieces by the new generation of Faberges are finding their way into the collections of museums such as the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. There are also a number of private collectors around the world, with quite a few in the United States.
Philip Birkenstein, chairman of The St. Petersburg Collection, insists that anyone can buy a Faberge. “Just because it has a Faberge name on it doesn’t mean it’s very expensive. There is something for everybody,” Birkenstein said. Prices in the company’s new Moscow shop, The Grand Collection Gallery, start at $200 and range up to $35,000.
The location of the new shop, whose windows open onto the iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral, is symbolic, Sarah said. “It is wonderful, really, to think [that the shop is now] on Red Square,” she said. “It couldn’t be in a better place. It feels like Faberge has come full circle, and now it’s come home. It belongs there.”

TITLE: And the winner could be...
AUTHOR: By Yevgenya Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new film made in St. Petersburg has won prizes abroad and could be up for an Oscar, but only one cinema in town is screening it.
The locally made film “The Italian” (“Italyanets”), which has been submitted by Russia for consideration in the 2006 Oscars, finally arrived in St. Petersburg cinemas on Tuesday. 
Based on a true story, which screenwriter and former journalist Andrei Romanov found in a newspaper, the movie features a 6-year-old child on the run from his provincial children’s home. 
A tangle of events leads the boy to reject an initially welcomed opportunity to be adopted by an Italian couple and causes him to set off on a desperate search for his mother.
Director Andrei Kravchuk’s screen interpretation of this simple, yet captivating story of an orphan boy, has already won prizes at festivals all over the world, including the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk Grand Prix at the big-league Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. 
Despite wide international recognition, however, the low-budget picture — Romanov said it cost less to make than the advertizing budget for the much-talked about $8 million Russian blockbuster “Company 9” (“9 Rota”) — is still experiencing difficulties getting screened in St. Petersburg and is only being shown at the Avrora cinema at present.
Romanov said the feature had an “odd format” that fails to attract film distributors who think it will not be interesting to audiences. “The Italian” is the type of film that requires more than straight-forward promotional efforts, Romanov said.
Meanwhile, the National Oscars’ Committee of the Russian Filmmakers Union recently selected “The Italian” to represent Russia at the 2006 Academy Awards in its Best Foreign Language Film category.
Kravchuk’s work bypassed another prize-winning movie “Dreaming of Space” (“Kosmos kak predchuvstviye”) directed by Aleksei Uchitel, which had  been thought to be in the running. “The Italian” will now be considered by the Academy in Hollywood for inclusion in the list of nominations in the foreign film category which is due to be announced in late January. 
If “The Italian” makes it to the final shortlist of the Academy Awards, where a record number of 58 countries including new entrants from Costa Rica, Fiji and Iraq are fighting for the opportunity, it will be an outstanding event for St. Petersburg’s film industry. 
No film made by the city’s film studio Lenfilm, which made “The Italian,” has received an Oscar nomination in its 80-year history.
Lenfilm representatives view the chance that one of its films will be nominated in the allegedly political Oscars competition with “a bit of humor” and admit the subject may not be popular due to the recent scandals over the adoption of Russian children in the U.S.
Even so, the film studio recognizes the importance of the event for the industry.
“If ‘The Italian’ is nominated for the Oscars, this will be a remarkable achievement for our film industry, even if doesn’t receive the sacred figurine,” the film studio’s press release noted.
Although the film’s creators did not confirm that their work was made with the Oscars in mind, the film’s ingredients speak for themselves.
A weepie which keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, magnificent acting from Kolya Spiridonov (6 years old at the time the film was made), playing the main character, and a happy ending — “The Italian” has it all.
“Everything you see in our film exists in reality,” Romanov said. But he also admits that “scarier stories do exist as well, but we wanted to write a fairy-tale, so we selected fairly merciful material.”
The film makers say their story has been equally understood all over the world because it effectively portrays human issues to which everyone can relate and which allow the audience to empathize with the characters. 
“When the film was on screen in [the Russian city of] Blagoveschensk, the audience was asked to bring their handkerchiefs with them. It got close to the situation where they wouldn’t admit people into the cinema without them,” Alexander Pozdnyakov, the film’s editor, said.
Although it reveals complicated social issues, the movie does not intend to preach to its audience, Romanov said, but allows viewers to make their own decisions.
“Moralizing is not our job. The artist’s aim is to plunge the audience into a state of the language of feelings, when people cry, laugh or feel resentful. That’s when catharsis occurs,” Romanov said.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Hundreds of people, mostly young, student-types, gathered this week to mourn Timur Kacharava, the local musician and anti-fascist activist who was murdered by extremists in the city center on Nov. 13. By different estimates, 600 to 1,000 people came to attend the memorial gathering  Monday. They brought flowers and candles to the site near the Bukvoyed bookstore where Kacharava was killed.
The gathering, which was watched by the police, was peacefull although three activists were reported to have been detained due to a clash with a passing skinhead. They were released by the police later that evening.
No further events have so far been announced, although it was reported that punk bands in Volgograd organized a memorial concert.
The week’s musical highlight could well be a gig by Arto Lindsay, the New York guitarist/vocalist, who performs in the city with a bassist and keyboard player. Lindsay was at the center of New York’s “no-wave” scene as the leader of DNA, the band he formed with Ikue Mori and Robin Crutchfield (later replaced by Tim Wright) in 1978. DNA’s influence can still be heard in bands such as Sonic Youth.
Although he now seems to concentrate on sophisticated, Brazilian-style pop, Lindsay occasionally gives way to more experimental and noisier sounds. 
“Pop musician, audio provocateur, sought-out producer: regardless of the title, Arto Lindsay is an artist,” says his official biography. (See article, page iii.) 
The Russian edition of British music weekly the NME closed two years ago but some of the people who used to work there just cannot stop. This week they are promoting an NME Party featuring some bands they used to cover in the magazine and which might be described as Russian versions of what the British magazine writes about. Mono/Stereo, Klever and The Vertigo will perform at Griboyedov on Friday.
Kamchatka Club closes for remont this week with two final concerts on Monday and Wednesday. See gigs and club guide.
Meanwhile, a new place is preparing to open in the city soon. Called Pin Up, its designs will be based on the U.S. pin-up art from the 1950s and early 1960s. With a massive bar and occupying 500 square meters, the club will be located in the city center at 37 Mokhovaya Ulitsa. According to art director Ruslan Aliyev, Pin Up’s musical policy will be retro with tracks by acts such as Tom Jones, the Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys.
Also equipped for live concerts, the place will open with a concert by local soul-funk band J.D. and the Blenders on Dec. 10. “We’ll host nu-jazz, a bit of ska, a bit of lounge and easy listening — that is, music with roots in the 1950s and 1960s,” said Aliyev. “There will be no drum ‘n’ bass or techno.” 
Aliyev also said that there are plans to book Western artists, starting from February. “But concerts will be by invitation only.”

TITLE: Brodsky in bronze
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A poignant sculpture commemorating the Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky is unveiled.
The late poet Joseph Brodsky, one of the giants of St. Petersburg’s cultural heritage, has made a symbolic homecoming to the city where he was born and where he lived for 32 years until he emigrated to the U.S. in 1972. And the poet has come home with his suitcase.
Konstantin Simun’s monument to the emigre poet, called “Brodsky Has Arrived,” which has been installed in the courtyard of the St. Petersburg State University, is the first attempt in St. Petersburg’s to commemorate with a statue the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987.
The sculpture depicting Brodsky’s head on top of a bronze suitcase, with his name tag attached to it, is placed simply on the ground and is a reference to the poet’s wandering nature. 
The driving force behind the monument is the Diaghilev Arts Center and the University’s Philological Faculty, which is enthusiastically turning its courtyard into a sort of fun sculpture park. The park’s concept, if it exists, is certainly eclectic: its last acquisition before Brodsky was a hippopotamus called Motya.
The monument’s location, however, isn’t designed for mass pilgrimage: access to the University courtyard is afforded only to its staff and students.
Brodsky didn’t study at the Philological Faculty. He had no degree at all. A self-taught translator and poet, Brodsky slammed the door on his school at the age of 15 and never looked back. He worked as a geologist-prospector, a morgue attendant and a stockman, and after being forced into exile in the U.S. in 1972, he became a university professor without a diploma.
In his years in the Soviet Union, Brodsky’s poetry was published secretly — attracting as much attention from literary circles as from the KGB.
Placed in a psychiatric hospital for political reasons in 1965, he was subsequently confined to a collective farm in the Archangelsk Oblast on charges of social parasitism — a Soviet term for not having a permanent job. Brodsky spent his years after being thrown out of the U.S.S.R writing and lecturing in the West.
Simun’s most famous sculpture so far is the monument to the Siege of Leningrad called “The Broken Ring of Blockade.”
“I am both happy and amazed that the Brodsky monument has been installed,” Simun said at an opening ceremony last week. 
Tatyana Yuriyeva, director of the Diaghilev Arts Center, knew Joseph Brodsky personally.
“In his last years, it was an open question as to whether Brodsky would come back to St. Petersburg,” Yuriyeva said at the ceremony. “The monument looks independent, detached and somewhat desolate in the courtyard, resembling the way the poet lived.”
Brodsky died in 1996.
The new monument is not connected to the notorious competition for the best Brodsky monument which was launched in 2002 with support from Alfa-Bank. Although that monument had been scheduled to be in place in time for the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg in 2003, the winning design by sculptor Vladimir Tsivin hasn’t seen the light of day.
The of fate Tsivin’s design — two pillars inscribed with Brodsky’s verse next to steps leading to the River Neva — was sealed by its suggested location on the Neva embankment near the State Mining Institute.
The city’s committee for the preservation of architectural monuments banned the work on the grounds that the embankment, being a historical monument, cannot be altered. 
Simun took part in the competition and even became one of its finalists but his project wasn’t selected.
Any location in the city other than Vasilievsky Island, where the University is located and where the scuppered 2003 design would have stood, would be unsuitable as most people associate Brodsky with this part of St. Petersburg.
One of the most famous lines from Brodsky’s verse is “I will come to die on Vasilievsky Island.”
The consensus that Vasilievsky Island is the only suitable site for an official monument on the strength of this line has been criticised for not saying anything new about Brodsky. 
Although he could have done, Brodsky never returned to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and he died in New York. According to his wishes he was buried in Venice, Italy. 
But those who knew the poet personally explain that Vasilievsky Island is suitable in a much wider sense.
“Brodsky frequented [one of] our friend’s apartment on Vasilievsky Island [when the friend was St. Petersburg State University student], and this ‘house with the dark-blue faÍade’ is present in his verse,” said Yakov Gordin, editor of the literary magazine Znamya and a member of the Expert Council of the Brodsky Monument Competition. “For Brodsky, Vasilievsky Island appeared to be the essence of St. Petersburg as a symbol of the city.”
When Brodsky died, St. Petersburg’s late mayor Anatoly Sobchak promised to do “everything in our power to ensure that the memory of Brodsky is preserved forever in his native city.”
Sobchak’s successor Vladimir Yakovlev gave written approval for the creation of a Brodsky Memorial Apartment Museum, and Yakovlev’s successor, Governor Valentina Matviyenko, urged action at a government meeting in May of this year. But Tsivin’s monument is still hanging in the air.
But, poignantly, a desolate suitcase placed in a closed courtyard is for now Brodsky’s only public memorial in St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Arto noise
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Guitarist and singer Arto Lindsay, who first came into the public eye as a key member of New York’s late-1970s “no-wave” scene with his band DNA, performs in the city this week. 
After his DNA days, Lindsay performed with the Lounge Lizards, the Golden Palominos and the Ambitious Lovers, became an award-winning producer, and was commissioned to compose music for a dance/theater piece for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Company.
Lindsay’s current style may seem somewhat less wild than his past work suggests, but alongside Brazilian style-songs he said he may produce some more experimental, noisier sounds at his St. Petersburg show.
“We’re going to play mostly songs from the new record [2004’s “Salt”], but some nights I also play a noisier solo section as well, depending on the audience and depending on how I feel,” said Lindsay, speaking by phone from Rome earlier this month.
“Some Brazilian, some noise and some funk. That’s kind of what my music is like.”
Now on a European tour, Lindsay performs with his long-time bass player, frequent co-songwriter and co-producer Melvin Gibbs and new keyboard player David Boyle. 
Lindsay said his interest in Brazilian music dates to his childhood because he grew up in that country with his parents who were missionaries.
“My family moved to Brazil when I was three-years-old, and I lived there for 15 years,” he said.
“Then I moved to New York and played with DNA. I then started to go back to Brazil and my interest in Brazilian music is almost as old as I am.”
In Brazil, the teenage Lindsay listened to The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, as well as to Brazilian pop music of that time. 
“I listened to the music that was popular in Brazil in the 1960s — Jorge Ben, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa — this was the music that was equivalent in Brazil to the Rolling Stones and The Beatles in Europe and the United States.”
Back in New York in the late 1970s, Lindsay was attracted to the punk/new wave scene at CBGB’s club. 
“I was really struck by the intensity of their music and, I don’t know how to call it, poetic content, maybe,” he said.
“I realized that the Ramones were kind of minimalists in a certain way, that the songs were really short and fast and simple, and I realized that Television had a lot of influences from jazz in a really interesting way, but I didn’t think about that stuff that much. Mostly I was just listening to the music.”
In 1978, Lindsay formed DNA, which became part of the brand new “no-wave” scene documented on the Brian Eno-produced four-band compilation album “No New York” later that year.
“We wanted to do something new. At least I was under the impression that if I did something really new, it would make me really popular, ha-ha-ha. It didn’t work out that way,” said Lindsay.
Even if “No New York” took the idea of “no wave” beyond New York, Lindsay said DNA already had a New York following, because it played a lot in the city before the record. He also has some reservations about Eno’s role in the album. 
“His role was to record it. That’s it. Period,” he said.
“I mean, after we recorded ‘No New York’ I became good friends with Brian and we talked about many things. But before the record and during the recording that’s all he did. He records it, you know? It actually made me very angry that he was not paying enough attention when we were recording. In a sense it was kind of a marketing thing for him to put his name on the newest music. It was just a smart producer’s move. I mean, I think Brian is so interesting, and I learned so much from Brian’s work, but I don’t think that having recorded ‘No New York’ was... Well, he didn’t really have a creative input, it was more like he was a curator.”
Although Eno chose some bands for the album, Lindsay said the main idea for the bands was to try and exclude the others.
“[Eno] invited some bands and then the bands he invited made kind of a political decision to keep other bands off the record,” he said.
“Like the bands who were on the record said, ‘No, no, four is enough, we don’t want more bands, we don’t want more guys, that’s a different kind of music, we don’t want them.’”
Apart from DNA, the sampler featured the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and Mars.
“Every band really went about in a different way, but obviously there’s something that [they have in common],” said Lindsay.
“A lot of bands included people that had just begun to play. There was something in common, like electric Miles Davis, this kind of extreme performing that Iggy Pop would do, James Brown... It was popular music but it was also something pretty extreme about it: screaming, there were some ideas like that. “
“But there was no group, there was not a movement with a manifesto. It was like a moment or a mini-moment.”
According to Lindsay, his Brazilian influences were evident even then.
“Even in DNA there’s a lot of Brazilian influence, I mean, lyrics in Portuguese, things like that, the whole attitude of experimenting or trying different stuff was everywhere in Brazil, with people like Os Mutantes, Caetano and Gil and Tom Ze and so on. That seemed natural to me,” he said.
Lindsay traces his distinctive guitar style to Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix.
“I didn’t really know about Sonny Sharrock or Fred Frith or Derek Bailey or any of these people until after I started. And critics compared me to them, so I checked them out. So I don’t know, it just came from my desire to play guitar, and I thought, ‘Oh, John Cage, free jazz, I could try to do it like this.’ You know, just an idea.”
Lindsay said he does not divide between commercial bands and avant-garde music.
“Sometimes the most commercial music is the most innovative music. Sometimes the avant-garde music is actually conservative, I think,” he said.
Arto Lindsay performs at Platforma on Sunday. www.artolindsay.com

TITLE: Art and commerce
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg gallery owner Edward Emdin combines his experience working on the world’s art market with respect for local artists’ work.
With the opening of Andrian Gorlanov’s exhibition at the EDGE gallery last week, gallery owner Edward Emdin continued to celebrate the launch this year of his second venture in his home town, ten years after he opened Sol Art in St. Petersburg. 
Having been involved in the gallery business for more than 12 years, Emdin gained his professional experience opening galleries and organizing exhibitions of contemporary Russian art in the U.K. and U.S. 
But Emdin’s educational background hardly suggested a career selling art: he graduated from the St. Petersburg State Marine Technical University where he studied applied mathematics and got a diploma in engineering.
Upon graduating, Emdin left for London and started working in the souvenir business in the early 1990s. Soon he and two of his friends from Australia and New Zealand set up Bishop’s Gate Contemporary Art Gallery in London. 
“We just gathered together, exhibited some works and generally had a very good time,” Emdin said. Inspired by the experience in London, he presented several exhibitions along with lectures on contemporary Russian art in New York, Los Angeles, Florida and Santa Monica.
Emdin, who speaks perfect English and goes on business trips abroad frequently, says throughout the years he has never left Russia for longer than two months, and has created businesses in St. Petersburg. Besides running the Sol Art and EDGE galleries in the city, he has also managed exhibitions in Finland and Moscow.
With experience in the international gallery business, Emdin thinks that the art market in Russia remains underdeveloped. 
“There is just no gallery tradition in Russia now,” he said. “Customers are not used to coming to galleries to buy pieces of arts and painters are unable to choose the right gallery to exhibit their work.” 
He thinks that in a desire for short-term financial gain, many artists and galleries make unscrupulous choices and fail to foster the sort of reputations upon which a healthy market rests. 
The problem is a lack of connoisseurs in St. Petersburg, Emdin said, and many good works produced by local painters get sold in Moscow and abroad. He hopes that his Sol Art gallery has bucked the trend and established a good name by following high standards. 
Over the years it has presented paintings by famous artists as well as having searched for new names. 
Large exhibitions of works by distinguished painters such as Alexander Poklad from Lithuania and Dmitry Polarouche from Russia were first presented by Emdin at Sol Art. 
Although Emdin is optimistic about the future of the art market in St. Petersburg, with its traditions of a strong fine arts school and artists consistently inventing innovative approaches to making art, it is still not that easy in his opinion to find really good work. When it is found it is usually immediately sold, he said. 
Having had no special education in art, Emdin says he doesn’t think that it is crucial to obtain a diploma in arts in his profession. 
“When I choose paintings, I rely only on my own taste and feelings. When I look at a painting, many things gained from my own professional experience are just obvious to me,” he said. 
“I don’t think that there should be any fashion for pieces of art. The truth is that things of good quality are always fashionable.” 
As a person who developed a sensitivity to art in practice rather than in theory, Emdin says that, unlike outside Russia where many art critics usually concur in their art tastes and opinions with the gallery owners, in Russia they seem to be in two opposite camps. 
“In Moscow, I was told that paintings that had been totally slammed by art critics were a tremendous success and immediately bought at the exhibitions,” he said. 
Aside from aesthetics, Emdin considers among the most important ascpects paintings must possess for them to be of commercial value such factors as the name of the artist, total number of his or her works, the names of the galleries where his or her works have been exhibited and the auctions where they were sold. 
“The most crucial thing to remember for people who buy pieces of art is what they are buying, who created it, and where they buy it,” says Emdin. 
Unlike the “Sol Art” gallery where lots of various works created in different period and styles by many different artists are exhibited, the EDGE gallery, which opened in the summer, presents entire exhibitions by individual painters.
On Nov. 17, original paintings by Gorlanov went on show.
“I  wanted to create in this work something positive and joyful that can warm people’s hearts for a long period of time,” Gorlanov said at the opening of his first individual exhibition which consists of 27 paintings created over 17 years. 
Gorlanov’s work sells at prices starting from $1,000-$2,000 and Emdin said that customers are likely to be Russian and foreign businessmen interested in Russian contemporary art. 
With most of his time spent at work, Emdin says that he has almost no pieces of fine art at home. 
“I just have no time to take home paintings I like because they get sold quickly in my galleries,” he said.
On Dec. 22, the EDGE gallery will open an exhibition of work by Yury Kalyuta, a professor at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, presenting many  of his new paintings for the first time.

TITLE: Suicide Bombing Leaves 30 Dead in Iraq
AUTHOR: By Bassem Mroue
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — A suicide car bomber targeting U.S. troops handing out toys to children at a hospital in central Iraq killed 30 people Thursday, including four police guards, three women and two children, officials said. 
Another 35 people were wounded in the morning attack in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Dr. Dawoud al-Taie, the director of the local hospital.
Elsewhere, three American soldiers from Task Force Baghdad died of gunshot wounds Wednesday in Baghdad, and a fourth died of wounds sustained Wednesday from a roadside bomb in Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad, another statement said.
Most of the more than 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq got a traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey and all the trimmings at their bases Thursday. In Baghdad, they were visited by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who called their service “a huge sacrifice, but a sacrifice for a good cause.”
The suicide bomber in Mahmoudiya was targeting U.S. military vehicles parked near the hospital, said Iraqi army Captain Ibrahim Abdeallah. He said two U.S. soldiers were wounded and one Humvee damaged.
The U.S. soldiers were distributing toys to children in the hospital, said police Major Falah al-Mohammedawi.
Dr. Osama Kassab of Baghdad’s Yarmouk hospital said 23 were injured and three killed at his facility. It was not clear if these were in addition to the dead and wounded cited by the doctor in Mahmoudiya.
“It was an explosion at the gate of the hospital,” said one woman who had wounds on her face and legs. 
“My children are gone. My brother is gone.”
Mahmoudiya is a religiously mixed town in the so-called “Triangle of Death,” a region known for attacks on coalition forces and Shiites moving through to visit shrines south of the region.
In the southern Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, gunmen ambushed a police patrol, killing four officers, police Captain Qassim Hussein said.
In a separate attack, a bodyguard for the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party branch in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, was wounded in a drive-by shooting Thursday. Hussein Abid al-Zubeidi, who is also a member of the Diyala provincial council, said he escaped unharmed from the attack near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
In a similar shooting, former Iraqi army Colonel Hussein Mohammed was killed late Wednesday in Baqouba, said Dr. Ahmed Fouad, a morgue attendant.
Insurgents have repeatedly struck in the Khalis-Baqouba area, mostly focusing on Iraqis who join the security forces or participate in politics.
A roadside bomb Thursday slightly injured three Polish soldiers and one Iraqi child near Camp Echo, the headquarters for Poland’s military mission in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, said Colonel Zdzislaw Gnatowski, a military spokesman in Warsaw.
Government spokesman Laith Kubba told reporters that insurgent attacks are expected to rise before the Dec. 15 parliamentary election. He said “Muslim extremists and Saddam [Hussein’s] criminals” will be making their last stand.
Some insurgent groups have declared a boycott of the election and have threatened politicians who participate.
The presidential security adviser said several insurgent groups have contacted President Jalal Talabani’s office in the past few days to respond to his call for them to lay down their arms and join the political process.
“Many groups have called and some of them clearly expressed the readiness to join the political process,” Lietenant General Wafiq al-Samaraei said on Thursday. This shows that “the initiative was welcomed by Iraqis.” 
Al-Samaraei, a former military intelligence chief under Saddam, did not say whether the groups were Muslim extremists or member of Saddam’s Baath Party. 
But some residents of Anbar province said four insurgent groups that are active in that area were conferring among themselves to chose a representative to meet government officials. 
The United States hopes that a big Sunni turnout next month will produce a broad-based government that can win the minority’s trust, helping to take the steam out of the insurgency and hasten the day when American and other foreign troops can go home. 
Many Sunnis, who comprise about 20 percent of Iraq’s 27 million people but were dominant under Saddam, boycotted the January election, enabling rival Shiites and Kurds to dominate the transitional government, which heightened tensions. In Qaim, U.S. Marines of the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion spoke Thursday about missing family and friends back home as they prepared to spend Thanksgiving on patrol near the Syrian border. 
“Serving my country is important but losing friends makes me more thankful for what I have and for what I used to take for granted,” said Corporal Brian Zwart, 20, of Fruitport, Michigan, who operates a 25 milimeter cannon atop an armored personnel carrier.

TITLE: South Korean Stem Cell Hero Apologises
AUTHOR: By Jon Herskovitz and Lee Jin-joo
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SEOUL — South Korea’s pioneering stem cell scientist apologized on Thursday that two members of his team had donated their egg cells for research, saying his rush to advance science may have clouded his ethical judgment. 
Hwang Woo-suk, who became a hero in South Korea after major developments in cloning research, has been caught in a swirl of allegations over his work after a U.S. collaborator left the group, saying Hwang unethically procured human eggs.
Time magazine called Hwang’s team’s cloning of a dog the year’s most amazing invention. Snuppy was the world’s first cloned dog — dogs are considered one of the most difficult animals to clone.
“Being too focused on scientific development, I may not have seen all the ethical issues related to my research,” Hwang said.
Hwang also said he was stepping down as the head of a global stem cell hub, established last month in South Korea. He also resigned from government organizations to “seek repentance.”
Hwang will continue his research, but said he was considering leaving once his work was finished.
He told a packed news conference he had become aware after the fact that the researchers provided egg cells in 2002 and 2003, even though he had turned down their offers to do so.
“At the time technology was not as advanced as today and creating one stem cell line required oocytes [eggs]. It was during this time when my researchers suggested making voluntary donations. I clearly turned it down,” Hwang said.
Hwang said he could understand their way of thinking and said if he were a woman, he probably would have donated eggs.
“I again sincerely apologize for having stirred concern at home and abroad,” he said.

TITLE: EU: Iran Papers Only For The Production Of Nuclear Arms
AUTHOR: By George Jahn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS — The European Union is accusing Iran of possessing documents used solely for the production of nuclear arms and is warning of possible referral to the U.N. Security Council, according to a statement made available to The Associated Press on Thursday. 
The press statement, made available before planned delivery later in the day, was described by a diplomat as a summary of what Britain, France and Germany would tell a closed session of the International Atomic Energy Agency board which began meeting on Thursday.
The statement said the EU would accuse Iran of possessing suspicious documents that “have no other application than the production of nuclear weapons.”
“Failure to make progress” on easing international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program “will hasten the day when the board decides that a report to the Security Council must be made,” said the statement to be delivered by Peter Jenkins, the chief British delegate to the IAEA.
The European Union also reserves the right to call an emergency board meeting before the next scheduled gathering in March — for possible Security Council referral — “if Iranian behavior makes it necessary,” said the statement.
The statement alluded to new revelations of concern contained in a report drawn up for the board meeting by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, including a finding showing the Iranians in possession of what appeared to be drawings of the core of an atomic warhead.
But the main issue is Iran’s refusal to give up its right to uranium enrichment, which can be used to generate power but also to make weapons-grade material for nuclear warheads. Iran says it wants only to make fuel, but international concern is growing that the program could be misused.
A plan floated in recent weeks foresees moving any Iranian enrichment plan to Russia. There, in theory, Moscow would supervise the process to make sure enrichment is only to fuel levels.
But Iran insists it wants to control the complete fuel cycle domestically.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters in Tehran on Wednesday that, while his country was willing to resume formal talks with key European powers on its nuclear program, “naturally we aim to have enrichment on Iran’s territory.”

TITLE: Liverpool, Inter and Chelsea Into Last 16
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — European champions Liverpool, Inter Milan and Chelsea moved into the last 16 of the Champions League on Wednesday, although Liverpool took their place despite being held to a goalless draw at Anfield by Real Betis. 
That point was enough to see them through from Group G along with English rivals Chelsea, who also advanced after a comfortable 2-0 win over Anderlecht in Brussels, the Belgian side’s record-extending 12th successive Champions League defeat. 
Ten teams are now through to the last 16 with Liverpool, Chelsea and Inter joining Arsenal, Ajax Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Olympique Lyon and Real Madrid in the first knockout round. 
Despite failing to win, Liverpool (11 points) did enough to qualify and will either finish first or second in the group depending on the outcome of their last match at Chelsea (10 points) on Dec. 6. 
Chelsea at least ended a year’s wait for an away win in the competition after five defeats and a draw. 
Inter Milan had good reason to celebrate their place in the last 16 after a thumping one-sided 4-0 win over Artmedia Bratislava at a deserted San Siro in Group H. 
It was the last of their four matches to be played behind closed doors after crowd trouble against AC Milan last season and was secured with a superb hat-trick from Brazilian Adriano. 
Inter also took the field with no Italians in the side and only one European — Portuguese Luis Figo who scored their opening goal. 
Rangers kept their hopes alive in the same group by drawing 1-1 at Porto leaving Inter confirmed in top spot on 12 points, followed by Rangers (6), Artmedia (5) and Porto (4). 
Inter’s arch-rivals AC Milan also produced a 4-0 win with a blistering performance against Fenerbahce in Istanbul with European Footballer of the Year Andriy Shevchenko going one better than Adriano by scoring all four goals in their Group E victory. 
The result was in stark contrast to Milan’s last match in Istanbul when they lost the Champions League final to Liverpool in May after being 3-0 ahead. 
Schalke 04 crushed Group E leaders PSV Eindhoven 3-0 in Gelsenkirchen with a hat-trick, including two penalties, from Levan Kobiashvili and with one match to play AC Milan and Schalke have eight points and PSV seven with all three still hoping to qualify. Fenerbahce are out of contention on four. 
Lyon (13 points) secured top place in Group F ahead of Real (10 points) although they lost their 100 percent record after the teams drew 1-1 at the Bernabeau. Guti put Real ahead in the first half and Norwegian striker John Carew equalised for Lyon late in the second. 
Lyon cannot be knocked off top spot even if they lose their last match at home to Rosenborg Trondheim and Real win at Olympiakos because the French champions have a better head-to-head record after beating Real 3-0 in September.  
The final matches take place on Dec. 6 and 7 before the knockout phase begins in February.

TITLE: Judging Mistake Resolved
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia — Another gymnastics competition, another scoring controversy. 
Gymnastics officials announced Wednesday that a scoring error was made during the men’s preliminaries Tuesday at the world championships. But unlike the debacle at the Athens Olympics, this one was quickly resolved. 
Russian Nikolai Kryukov was sixth in the high bar preliminaries, scoring a 9.650 and earning a spot in the finals. But the German federation lodged a protest, and officials reviewed all of the finalists’ routines using the video replay that was instituted after Athens. 
Officials discovered Kryukov’s routine should have had a start value of 9.8, not 10.0. The change dropped him into 15th place with a score of 9.450 and moved German gymnast Fabian Hambuechen into the eighth spot. 
At a joint press conference with the heads of the German and Russian gymnastics federations, International Gymnastics Federation Secretary General Andre Gueisbuhler said the Russian gymnastics federation had accepted the decision “with a great spirit of fairness.” 
At last year’s Athens Olympics, a dispute over a scoring error left Paul Hamm’s all-around gold medal in limbo for two months. 
South Korea’s Yang Tae-young won the bronze medal in Athens, but gymnastics officials said two days later that he was wrongly docked a tenth of a point on his second-to-last routine, the parallel bars. Add in that extra 0.10, and he would have finished ahead of Hamm.  
But that assumes everything in the final event played out the same way — something no one can say with any certainty. The Court of Arbitration for Sport finally declared Hamm the rightful winner two months later. 
As a result of the controversy, the FIG approved the use of video replays when a gymnast appeals his or her score. The new rule applies only to a routine’s level of difficulty — its start value — not the execution. 
Gueisbuhler praised the new replay system, saying it helped to “establish the correct ranking, and to guarantee that justice is given to the competitors.” 
Gueisbuhler also defended the overall level of judging at the competition, saying only 10 routines had to be re-scored out of about 500 routines performed Tuesday. 
But five of those mistakes were on the high bar, he said, and the two judges charged with rating difficulty on that apparatus — Gow Fong Wei of Taiwan and Roland Himberg of Sweden — had been given warnings. 
“The FIG will continue to monitor the judges’ work,” he said.

TITLE: Competing in Men’s Event, Wie Opens Well in Japan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KOCHI, Japan — Michelle Wie shot a 1-over-par 73 Thursday, trailing Toshimitsu Izawa and Yoshiaki Kimura by five strokes after the first round of the Casio World Open. 
Wie, only the second woman to play in a Japanese men’s event, teed off from the 10th hole at the par-72 Kochi Kuroshio Country Club and bogeyed the par-4 16th hole when she three-putted. 
She bogeyed Nos. 2 and 3 before recovering with back-to-back birdies on the sixth and seventh holes. 
“Coming back like that will give me confidence for tomorrow,” Wie said. “It’s good to know I can do that even when I’m not playing that well.” 
Wie’s first birdie of the day came when she hit a sand wedge from 100 yards that landed 4 feet from the hole on the par-4 sixth hole. 
On the par-5 No. 7, she drove into the rough, but blasted out with a 5-wood and then hit a sand wedge to 4 feet from the hole before making the birdie putt. 
“I wanted to be a little higher,” Wie said. “But considering how I struggled in the middle I’m pretty happy with the round I had. Hopefully, I can come back tomorrow and play a better round.” 
Wie is making her sixth start in a men’s professional tournament. She has failed to make the cut in three PGA Tour starts, a Nationwide Tour event and a Canadian Tour event. 
Huge crowds followed the 16-year-old American. By contrast, defending champion David Smail had only a handful of fans following him. 
The $1.17 million tournament, the next-to-last event on the Japanese men’s tour, is Wie’s first since she was disqualified last month in her pro debut. 
“I felt a little nervous off the tee,” Wie said. “But being nervous like that can be a good thing.” 
Sophie Gustafson missed the cut in the 2003 Casio tournament, the only other time a female player has appeared in a top Japanese men’s tour event. 
Because of a backlog of players, Wie had to wait 40 minutes after her first nine holes. 
“I never had to do that before,” Wie said. “I missed a couple of 4- or 5-foot putts that I should have made.”