SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1126 (92), Tuesday, November 29, 2005
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TITLE: Chechnya Vote Strengthens Kremlin Hand
AUTHOR: By Oliver Bullough
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GROZNY, Russia — A pro-Kremlin party led in Chechnya’s Moscow-sponsored parliament elections on Monday, election officials said, signaling an outcome that will entrench a pro-Russia strongman in power in the rebel region. 
In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin, who has pursued a harsh campaign to stamp out Chechen separatism, hailed Sunday’s poll as a milestone in rebuilding the constitutional order in the war-shattered Muslim region.
“There is no doubt that the election to the first parliament of our republic was legitimate,” Chechen election chief Ismail Baikhanov told journalists. “The clear leader is [the pro-Kremlin] United Russia ... with 61.9 percent of the vote.”
He did not say how many votes had been counted.
Separatist rebels took no part in the vote and called it a charade, as they have past Moscow-sponsored elections.
Chechnya has not had a parliament since its last legislature — which functioned during the short-lived independence won in the first war with Russia in 1994-96 — fell apart after Putin sent troops to retake the region in 1999.
United Russia’s victory will pack the new parliament with loyalists of regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov — the son of an assassinated pro-Moscow president and de facto ruler of the region despite his official title of deputy prime minister.
Kadyrov, a bearded, burly figure, has thousands of armed men at his command — many of them former rebels like him and many of whom are accused by rights groups of brutality against local people.
Baikhanov said that the Communist Party, which came second, had nearly 12 percent and the Liberal Union of the Right Wing Forces was third with around 11 percent.
The official turnout was nearly 60 percent, but some Russian newspapers and rights activists suggested that the figure could have been exaggerated.
Human Rights group Memorial, which had a network of supporters observing the vote, said electoral activity, at least in Grozny, was lower than suggested by official turnout figures.
“Moreover, Memorial workers identified obvious discrepancies in turnout figures between those provided by chairmen of electoral commissions and those witnessed by observers from political parties,” it said in a statement.
“The elections finalize the legal process for restoring constitutional order in this republic,” Putin said in televised remarks to his government in Moscow.
In 2003 Chechnya elected former separatist Muslim leader Akhmad Kadyrov — Ramzan’s father — as president. He was killed by a rebel bomb in 2004.
Some commentators suggested that the election could be used as an instrument to propel Ramzan Kadyrov to the presidency when he turns 30 next year — the minimum age required for the post.
“With the Kremlin’s blessing, a regime of Ramzan Kadyrov’s personal power is being nourished in Chechnya,” Moscow daily Vedomosti wrote.
Chechnya’s election was important for the Kremlin as a demonstration that the troubled region was returning to normal life after years of warfare and confirming itself as a part of the Russian federation. 
But the polls are unlikely to impress separatist rebels, whose battle for independence against pro-Moscow troops has killed tens of thousands of civilians over the last decade and who stage daily attacks on troops and Moscow loyalists.
“We understand it pretty well that there is still a lot of work ahead to remove all factors that produce instability,” Putin said.

TITLE: OutspokenNewcaster Is Silenced
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Outspoken Ren-TV newscaster Olga Romanova was abruptly taken off the air after complaining that the channel’s management was blocking her from airing reports that might irritate Kremlin officials.
Romanova and media freedom advocates criticized the decision to dump her “24” news program as an assault on free speech, but Ren-TV general director Alexander Ordzhonikidze insisted that he had axed the show in a revamp aimed at boosting ratings.
Romanova said three security guards physically blocked her from entering the studio on Thursday night, just hours after she complained on independent radio station Ekho Moskvy that Ren-TV management was blocking her reports. Among the reports, she said, was one earlier in the week that prosecutors had decided not to charge Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov’s son Alexander in the death of an elderly pedestrian whom he struck with his car in May.
“Soon after I made my complaints on Ekho Moskvy, I was asked to provide the channel with a letter saying that I could not go on the air because I was very sick. I’m not sick. How could I do that?” Romanova said by telephone Friday.
She said she did not believe that the Kremlin was involved in the closure, and accused Ordzhonikidze of “simply doing the best he can to please the Kremlin.”
Ordzhonikidze said politics had nothing to do with the cancellation. “We want to improve the quality of our programs, and we’d like to have other hosts to lift ratings,” he said by telephone.
Asked why guards had stopped Romanova from entering the studio, he explained that Ren-TV had “a tough security clearance system.” “We have terrorists nowadays, and we cannot allow into the studio everyone who wants to get in,” he said.
Asked whether Ren-TV would continue to question the Kremlin line, he said, “In our work, we should show what is happening in the country and in the world.”
Ren-TV was founded and run by Irina Lesnevskaya and her son Dmitry, who protected its editorial independence. But it was sold as part of a takeover deal, completed in October, and is now 70 percent owned by oil producer Surgutneftegaz and Steel giant Severstal, both of which are seen as loyal to the Kremlin. European media company Bertelsmann AG holds the remaining 30 percent.
The station’s new owners earlier said there would be no change in editorial policy. On Nov. 4, Ren-TV was the only television channel to report the march of scores of ultranationalists through central Moscow. The young people made Hitler salutes and spoke against nonethnic Russians.
Romanova’s reporting was tinged with sarcasm — as were all of Ren-TV’s news programs. Her comments were sharp and her accusations direct. Her economic reports were sophisticated, and she spoke to an intellectual audience.
Romanova also writes for several publications, including for Vedomosti, which is co-owned by Independent Media Sanoma Magazines, the parent company of The Moscow Times.
Free speech advocates said the events at Ren-TV were a further assault on press freedom and an example of how widespread self-censorship has become.
“Under five years of an authoritarian regime, our society has lost the power to control the state. It is the state instead that has full control of society,” said Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations. “Under such circumstances, the Kremlin does not need to call a channel and ask for news items to be taken off the air. Managers do it themselves, just in case.”
Most major broadcasters have come under the Kremlin’s control during Putin’s five years in office, starting with the contentious takeover of NTV television by state-run Gazprom in 2001.
Anna Kachkayeva, a media analyst with Radio Liberty, called the Ren-TV development “politically motivated” and accused its management of seeking to show its loyalty to the Kremlin and the channel’s new owners.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said he was worried by the development. 
“Olga Romanova’s treatment is a clarion call that tells us that we have lost the last station that kept even a little independence and objectivity in its coverage,” he said, Interfax reported.
Mikhail Fedotov, the secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, a former press minister and the author of the law on media, said Sunday that he was defending Romanova’s legal interests and expressed confidence that the issue would be resolved, Interfax reported.
The State Duma’s leadership on Friday ordered the Information Policy Committee to contact Ren-TV management and prepare a report about the situation.
Ren-TV broadcasts directly to Moscow and the Moscow region, and it reaches viewers elsewhere in the country through local affiliates.

TITLE: Stars Fly In For Charity
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Celebrity guests and millionaires were invited by a British clothing tycoon to St. Petersburg this weekend to attend  three days of lavish balls, concerts and parties at the Grand Hotel Europe and palaces in the city.
“Guests included former U.S. President Bill Clinton, singer Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, and model and actress Liz Hurley,” Irina Khlopova, PR manager at the Grand Hotel Europe, told the St. Petersburg Times in a statement on Monday.
Richard Caring, a clothing supply multimillionaire, flew 450 guests to the event, which was held in aid of Britain’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, reported The Independent newspaper. Guests paid $8,600 each to attend. 
The weekend began on Friday when Caring flew many of his guests from the U.K., The Sunday Times reported on Sunday. A reception was held that night at the Yusupov Palace. 
On Saturday a banquet and ball were held at the Catherine Palace where Sir Elton John, Tina Turner and Sting performed, according to reports. Guests at the ball were dressed in Napoleonic-era outfits. 
“The costumes, prepared to measurements taken in advance, were awaiting guests in their rooms at the Grand Hotel Europe upon their arrival,” Khlopova said. “Bill Clinton was decked out in a red military tunic with gold embroidery.”
“I haven’t done this since I was 25,” the former president, who met with Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko on Sunday for informal talks in Kiev, was reported to have said when he left the hotel to attend the ball. 
“The hotel was given over to the guests in its entirety, including all its restaurants and bars, which worked round-the-clock for the event,” Khlopova said. The event, which included a charity auction, aimed to raise more than $17 million for the NSPCC. 
The NSPCC told The Independent it was not involved in the organization of the event but was aware that it was taking place.
The Sunday Times reported that other guests included Philip Green, the retail billionaire; Allan Leighton, chairman of Royal Mail; and Sir Tom Hunter, a Scottish entrepreneur. 
“As a true jazz lover, Bill Clinton was spotted in the Lobby Bar of the Grand Hotel Europe and at Sunday’s jazz brunch,” Khlopina said. “Liz Hurley and her husband treated themselves to Russian cuisine, ordering borscht and beef Stroganov. They also bought Beluga caviar as a souvenir. Sting, on the other hand, opted for sturgeon caviar.”

TITLE: New Book Recounts Children’s Forgotten Civil War Odyssey
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: For 800 children sent on summer vacation to the Urals in 1918, it was meant to be a three-month escape from war-torn St. Petersburg. Known as Petrograd at the time, the city was suffering chronic food shortages.
But as the Russian Civil War raged, it became impossible for the children to return. They began an incredible three-year-long Odyssey around the globe — eventually returning to St. Petersburg the long way around the world via the Russian Far East, Asia, the U.S. and Europe.
The existence of the journey was kept hidden to the Soviet public for a simple reason: the children were rescued by officers from the American Red Cross. 
With the arrival of “The Unbelievable Story or The Children’s Ark,” Vladimir Lipovetsky’s novel about these adventures, the story is for the first time reaching a mass audience in Russia. St. Petersburg sailor and journalist Lipovetsky came across the subject by sheer accident on a trip to the U.S. in 1978.
“I researched this mind-blowing story for 25 years, working in archives in New York, San Francisco, Japan, Belgium, Vladivostok and St. Petersburg,” Lipovetsky said. “The characters I describe in the book have become close people to me.”
Lipovetsky wasn’t planning to write the book himself, and appealed to already established cultural figures, from writer Daniil Granin to filmmaker Sergei Gerasimov, but in vain.
“Everybody turned this fascinating story down for the same reason: it would look like pro-American propaganda and will be sure to cause a sour reaction from the Russian government,” the author said.
From Vladivostok the boat, a Japanese cargo boat rented by the Red Cross for the rescue, docked at San Francisco, the Panama Canal, New York, Brest andHelsinki.
The children who made the journey kept their travels a secret. That famous St. Petersburg choreographer Leonid Yakobson was one of them, only came to light after he died, during Lipovetsky’s research.
“They were afraid to mention it and many of these children eventually suffered in some way or another,” said Lyubov Krokhalyova, daughter of Leonid Danilov, who made the journey. “Some of them just weren’t trusted because of this exposure to Western life, some were denied the right to get higher education.” 
Lipovetsky said the Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, a friend of Yakobson, was astonished to  hear that he had been one of the wandering children. 
“She just didn’t believe it at first,” he said. “She said Yakobson would have told her. But we received a written confirmation from Yakobson’s widow that he was there. And it was then already that he demonstrated an ability for dancing: one of my heroes recalls an episode when many girls were dancing on board the Japanese ship, and Lyonya was the only boy to dance.”
The episode was based on Yakobson’s reminisence. 
The story began in the spring of 1918, when Petrograd authorities decided to send children from the starving city to safer and warmer places. Eight hundred children, aged between 7 and 15 years old, left for the Urals.
However, by the time they were to return home, White general Alexander Kolchak’s troops blocked the railway in Siberia, making the trip impossible. The children faced a hungry and cold winter.
American Red Cross volunteers working in Siberia found out about the plight of the children, and started plotting a rescue plan. After they discovered that taking the train to St. Petersburg was not an option, they took the bold decision of arranging a detour by sea.
Lipovetsky compares the story to the Arabian Nights. 
“You can tell a new episode every night, and there will be no end to the story,” he said.
Lipovetsky wrote his book as a semi-fictional account.
“The writer chose the most difficult genre for his novel,” said Alexei Gordin, head of Azbuka publishing house, which has published the book. “In a documentary you simply list the facts. Writing fiction is more entertaining but fiction is a rather ‘irresponsible’ genre. But in semi-fiction you not only have to stick to historical truth, you need to reconstruct people’s feelings without insulting anybody’s memory.”
Several children died during the journey. 
“The first two children, a little brother and sister, died while on the train in Siberia,” Lipovetsky said. “It is difficult to watch over 800 kids, and during a train stop they ran away, ate some poisonous berries and died.”
A girl died after she was bitten by a tropical fly when the boat was crossing the Panama canal. A boy was killed during an accident with a U.S. soldier’s gun.
“There were several deaths but children were dying by hundreds in starvation-stricken Petrograd,” Lipovetsky said.
Upon arrival in Petrograd in 1921, the children and their parents had trouble recognizing each other. One mother  looked for a specific birthmark to recognize her son. One girl refused to accept that an emaciated woman was her mother, Lipovetsky said.
Vladimir Pozner, head of the Russian Television Academy, called the book a literary and historical epic of heroism.

TITLE: Patriarch To Meet Cardinal
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: A senior Vatican official attending an international conference in St. Petersburg on the social doctrine of the Catholic Church was due to meet the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow on Tuesday, Interfax reported. 
Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, was scheduled to meet Tuesday with Patriarch Alexy II and Metropolitan Kyrill, head of the Russian church’s foreign relations department, Martino’s office said.
The information center of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Russia said that problems of Orthodox-Catholic dialogue would be discussed, Interfax reported.
The visit comes weeks after the Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, returned from Moscow and said an upgrade in relations was not yet possible. During his visit, Lajolo met with Russian Orthodox Church officials, including Kyrill, but not with Alexy.
Pope Benedict XVI has pledged to make a “fundamental” commitment to healing strained ties with the Orthodox Church. 
His predecessor, John Paul II, long sought to visit Russia, but was blocked by the Russian Orthodox Church, which accused the Catholic Church of poaching converts after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Vatican has rejected the allegations, saying it is only ministering to Russia’s small Catholic community — about 600,000 people in a country of about 144 million.
Cardinal Martino was due to officiate at a service in Moscow’s Catholic cathedral on Wednesday.
Ushering in the Christmas season Sunday, Pope Benedict called it a time for joy when Christians should find it within themselves to hope that they can change the world. 
The pontiff addressed the crowds in St. Peter’s Square during his traditional Sunday blessing that also marked the beginning of Advent, which starts four Sundays before Christmas and is the beginning of the ecclesiastical year.

(SPT, AP)

TITLE: Yusupova Creates Silver Age Festival
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The great granddaughter of Felix Yusupov, the last owner of the Yusupov Palace, opened the city’s first arts festival dedicated to the Silver Age at the palace on Saturday.
Kseniya Sheremetyeva-Yusupova Sfiri inaugurated the festival which features theater costumes, clothes, paintings, drawings, photographs and porcelain from the early 20th century.  
Organizers said they want Felix to be associated with pre-Revolutionary artistic traditions, and not only with his murder of Grigory Rasputin at the palace in 1916. Yusupov was a well-known connoisseur and patron of the arts.
A charity ball this Saturday will close the festival and recreate a similar ball organized by Yusupov in London in 1920. The money collected then supported emigrants from Russia.
Now, money will be raised for the renovation of a private chapel on the third floor of the palace, said Nina Kukuruzova, director of the palace, Interfax reported.

TITLE: United Russia Bear Has Its Color Washed Out
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The United Russia party approved a new logo at its sixth congress in Krasnoyarsk on Saturday, retiring the brown bear on its colorful emblem in favor of a white bear and a more minimalist approach.
The new logo features a white bear with a blue outline striding above the party’s name in block letters. Above is a waving Russian tricolor on a white background.
The party’s old logo featured a brown bear beneath the party’s name with the tricolor in the background and an orange map of Russia, with a red star on Moscow, at the top.
State Duma Speaker and United Russia leader Boris Gryzlov said Saturday that the change made the logo “more interesting and dynamic, and all congress participants agree with this.”
“As far as the cost of production of the new emblem is concerned, it will be cheaper because it uses only two main colors, while the old one had four,” Gryzlov said, Regnum.ru reported Saturday.
“We brushed, shampooed and dyed the bear,” Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, another United Russia leader, said on NTV television.
Also at Saturday’s congress, the party confirmed the new make-up of its supreme council.
Some 2,000 participants attended the congress, including delegations from Armenia, Estonia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Ukraine, state television channels reported Saturday.
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the unsuccessful presidential candidate backed by the Kremlin in last year’s Ukrainian elections, attended the conference as a guest.

TITLE: Activists Find it Difficult To Protest Against Fascism
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police physically prevented human rights activists from attending a City Hall-approved rally against fascism near Belorussky Station on Sunday, and when demonstrators rallied instead at City Hall, dozens were promptly detained and whisked away to a police station. 
Liberal politicians, who organized the demonstration in response to a march by thousands of nationalists and skinheads through central Moscow earlier this month, accused authorities of encouraging nationalism and quashing a civil initiative aimed at curbing it.
“We are outraged at how the authorities are playing games with fascists and not allowing us to say a word,” Nikita Belykh, leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, or SPS, said outside the Tverskoi police station, where riot police brought 52 protesters.
“We are very alarmed by the authorities’ actions that allow fascist marches and prohibit us from providing an adequate response,” Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the Moscow branch of the liberal Yabloko party, said just minutes before police dispersed the rally. “Authorities need to keep the fascist genie tight in the bottle. Instead, they keep letting it out of the bottle.”
The showdown occurred at 2 p.m., when about 200 people carrying Russian flags, anti-fascist signs and posters of crossed-out swastikas converged on Tverskaya Ploshchad, across from City Hall. Scores of riot police tried to block the crowd, but dozens of protesters managed to seep through police lines to the Yury Dolgoruky monument. They then unfolded large posters and began chanting, “Fascism will not be let through.”
Minutes later, about 50 riot police officers swooped down onto the crowd, pulling people out one by one and dragging them to three police buses parked nearby.
“It is forbidden by Moscow authorities to stage a rally here,” a police captain shouted through a megaphone into the struggling crowd.
“It is allowed by the Constitution for citizens to gather,” someone shouted back from the crowd.
Aides of Belykh and Mitrokhin pulled the two out of the crowd seconds before the police closed in.
“Why weren’t you as tough with the fascists on Nov. 4?” several protesters asked police officers. On that day, the new People’s Unity Day holiday, about 3,000 nationalists and skinheads marched across the city center, making Nazi salutes as police quietly looked on. One march organizer told The Moscow Times then that the event had been cleared with the deputy prefect of Moscow’s central district, Sergei Vasyukov.
Police cleared the square in about five minutes Sunday. A police officer picked a large paper sign reading, “The Mayor’s Office Encourages Fascists” from the wet street and tore it into pieces.
Vasyukov said police broke up the rally because it had not been authorized. Speaking to reporters on Pushkin Square — where a rally by the nationalist Rodina party had been scheduled but was not held because activists failed to show up — Vasyukov said organizers of the anti-fascist rally had submitted requests for two rallies at the same time and that City Hall had granted approval for only one, in front of Belorussky Station. The second rally was to be held on Tverskaya Ploshchad.
“According to the law, you cannot be in two different places at the same time,” Vasyukov said. 
Moscow Police Rapid Response Unit (OMON) chief Vyacheslav Kozlov said the same thing. He also said no one had been injured on Tverskaya Ploshchad. “No one was hurt, the Lord spared us,” he said, Interfax reported.
The square in front of Belorussky Station was tightly sealed off by police when the rally was due to begin. Asked why demonstrators were not being allowed into the square, a police officer, who did not give his name, said police had been ordered to prevent provocations. 
Belykh, the SPS leader, said activists from his party and Yabloko had applied on Nov. 16 for permission to stage a rally at Belorussky Station and then march down Tverskaya Ulitsa. He said the request for the march was turned down a week later — even though authorities, by law, must reply within three days — and the reason given for the decision was that it would inconvenience Moscow residents.
He noted that the nationalists had been allowed to march on Nov. 4 and that Communists had been allowed to march on Nov. 7.
Belykh said the organizers had then asked to rally on Tverskaya Ploshchad instead of at Belorussky Station, but that the request was rejected.
Among those detained Sunday were leading human rights activists Sergei Kovalyov of the Institute for Human Rights, Dmitry Orlov of Memorial and Svetlana Gannushkina of Civic Assistance. Also detained were Alexander Osovtsov, the leader of Open Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s human rights group, as well as prominent liberal activists Alexander Ryklin and Yevgenia Albats.
Several detainees brought to the Tverskoi police station were allowed outside to smoke and to chat with journalists. They had to turn over their passports before going outside, they said.
Ryklin said over a cigarette that the police officers were treating the detainees not aggressively but in a “businesslike” manner. He said detainees would be required to pay a small fine and then be released. Ekho Moskvy radio reported later that all 52 detainees had been released.
In addition to the human rights activists and Rodina, ultranationalists had planned large rallies Sunday, but apparently few people showed up.
In a statement posted on its web site, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, or DPNI, said it had held small demonstrations at 37 open markets across Moscow on Sunday afternoon under the banners “Moscow Belongs to Us!” and “Russians, Arm Yourselves!”
Participants handed out more than 10,000 leaflets with information on how to legally obtain firearms, despite the fact that police tried to break up the demonstrations and detained several participants, DPNI said.
The claims could not be independently verified. There were no signs Sunday of any demonstrators at two markets in northern Moscow where DPNI said it had organized rallies.
Ekho Moskvy reported that several young men were handing out leaflets at a market next to the Universitet metro station in southwest Moscow but that no demonstration had taken place. Policemen did not allow the young men to wear DPNI armbands or unfurl DPNI banners, it said.

Staff Writer Carl Schreck contributed to this report.

TITLE: City Seeks $1 Billion For New Road Link
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new high-speed link road is set to be constructed in St. Petersburg after the government signed a decree last week offering over $620 million for the project — about one third of the total cost.
The 46.4 kilometer road would run north-south through the city connecting the ring road’s western interchanges with the sea port and main transport hubs of the city. 
According to St. Petersburg vice-governor Yury Molchanov, the total cost of the project is $2 billion.
“It will have to be a toll road, and be constructed in accordance with the concession scheme,” Molchanov said at a press conference Thursday.
The concession scheme implies that the federal budget finances the southern part of the road (8.4 kilometers) while central and northern parts (12 kilometers and 26 kilometers respectively) will rely on other sources. A further $370 million will come from the city budget, with the rest expected to come from private investors.
“It would be a public private partnership on a concession basis. We are dealing with a serious amount of money and we need a serious foreign investor,” St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko said to Interfax.
Experts were generally positive about the project but nevertheless conscious of the details.
“In general investors specialized in PPP favor road construction projects. Approximately 60% of all European PPPs involve road construction,” Olga Litvinova, office managing partner at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary in St. Petersburg.
“Those projects are easier to deliver on than any other PPP type of project. Construction risks are manageable and post construction service is minimal when compared to the construction and running of a health center, for example. Financial risks related to the post construction phase, risk of incomplete or improper funding are also relatively lower,” she said. 
The funding available from the budget, whether regional or federal, should also strengthen investors’ confidence in the reliability of the project for a high-speed link, Litvinova said.
However, she warned, “both factors will be insufficient unless there are is a profound technical and economic assessment, including a traffic study. The compatibility between the government’s vision and investors’ preferences also need to be addressed with regard to structure.”
The project would be run within the framework of the long-debated law on Concession Agreements, which was adopted in July this year by the State Duma.
“There are a number of serious tax issues which remain unresolved in relation to concession agreements and unless they are resolved within a short period of time, the structuring of an agreement from the point of view of tax will be a challenging task,” Litvinova said.
A real estate expert warned of other considerations.
“Of course, such projects as Western high-speed diameter could not be merely commercial. The social component is the main part of such projects,” said Nikolai Kazansky, leading specialist at Colliers International real estate agency.
“The payback period will definitely be longer in this project than in most commercial real estate projects...especially if the city succeeds in attracting western credit resources, which do not demand a quick return,” he said.
By September next year the city government expects to issue a tender to find a private investor, Molchanov said, suggesting that a French, Italian or Spanish company is most likely to win since “those countries are leaders in road construction.” The road’s southern section should be completed by the end of 2008, with the whole project due for completion by 2010.

TITLE: No More Cheap Subsidies, Russia Tells Pro-Western CIS
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Russia said Friday that it would stop supplying subsidized energy to some former Soviet republics and charge them world rates, putting further strain on the Commonwealth of Independent States. 
Russia — whose role as the region’s main energy provider gives it considerable clout — has hinted it is trying to devise a new model for dealing with ex-Soviet republics following mass upheavals that have swept new pro-Western leaders into power in some countries. 
“We need to move away from gray, unclear barter payments and switch to civilized payments, to world prices,” Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said in response to a question about Russia’s energy supplies to Ukraine, speaking after a top-level CIS meeting. 
Georgia, meanwhile, criticized Russia’s plans to nearly double its gas prices, saying the move was politically motivated. And Ukraine has argued over Moscow’s demands that it pay Western European prices for its gas while Moldova also faces higher gas rates. All three countries have leaders who have worked to distance their countries from Russia. 
However, Belarus, whose autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko is on good terms with Moscow, also enjoys subsidized gas rates, but these are not being renegotiated. 
Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli, in Moscow for the CIS summit, lamented Russia’s intention to raise gas prices to $110 per 1,000 cubic meters from the current price of $60. He said the market price for the South Caucasus region was $65 to $70 per 1,000 cubic meters. 
“We understand that it is a political decision,” Nogaideli told reporters.
The summit participants signed a number of agreements, including on economic, energy and humanitarian cooperation, Fradkov said. They also agreed to work out a new scheme of contributions to the organization’s budget.

TITLE: Ford Workers May Act Again
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST PETERSBURG — Workers at a Russian assembly plant run by U.S. carmaker Ford Motor Co. stopped their week-long go-slow on Monday, but labour union officials said action may resume if pay demands are not met.
“We’ve started working as usual. At the moment we have peace and friendship,” said Alexei Etmanov, a senior union official. 
“We’ll have to see what happens by the end of the week. We are holding talks at the moment.”
He said the union would hold a conference next week to decide whether to hold further action.
The go-slow — a form of protest when employees deliberately work with less effort to win concessions — started at the St Petersburg plant last week after workers demanded a pay rise.
“Production has fallen in the past week,” said a spokeswoman for Ford in Russia without giving any figures. “The company is looking for ways of protecting its clients from additional costs of car deliveries.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Foreign Control Fears
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian officials, fearing the new subsoil resources draft law will create a way for foreigners to gain control of key deposits, are keeping the bill from a parliamentary reading, Vedomosti reported Monday.
The new law would limit companies that are half or more than half foreign-owned to minority stakes in strategic fields, which are determined by the size of their reserves. 
Opponents of the draft legislation are concerned foreign companies will end up with control of strategic fields if exploration raises reserves to the strategic level set by the law, Vedomosti said, citing an unidentified government official.
Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov’s government will discuss the law Monday, more than two years after work on it began, Vedomosti said. 

Contraband Electronics 
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A group suspected of transporting contraband electronics was arrested at a warehouse near St. Petersburg, Interfax reported Wednesday.
According to the Northwest customs department, a truck full of household appliances and printers was spotted passing through the Russian-Estonian border, though accompanying documents indicated it was carrying cardboard and construction materials. 
The truck was followed and the smugglers arrested during unloading. 

$50M Financial Deal
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — American leasing company Montrose CIS offered St. Petersburg Social Commercial Bank cooperation in delivering leasing services to corporate clients.
The potential of such cooperation is estimated at $50 million, the bank said in a statement. 
Priorities for Montrose CIS are the leasing of planes, railway carriages, medical equipment, plants and real estate. 
It is also involved in ports, oil fields, railway construction, and power and energy, as well as the refinancing of the leasing portfolio of other companies and back-leasing schemes.

TITLE: Stalled Pension Reform Threatens Bond Market
AUTHOR: By Gleb Bryanski
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Moscow — Pension reforms have ground to a halt because most people cannot decide where to invest their savings, leaving the state with a flood of cash which threatens to swamp the domestic bond market. 
Under the three-year-old reform meant to stimulate the development of a pension fund industry, younger Russians were given a choice over where they invest part of their retirement savings. 
But, put off by a lack of trust in the state and poor publicity, most Russians did nothing. Their contributions are being funneled as a result into a national pension fund managed by state-owned Vneshekonombank. 
The Vneshekonombank fund has accumulated $5 billion in assets, but it is restricted to investing in Russian government bonds whose yields, at below 7 percent, fall short of double-digit inflation. 
“Over half our population has no idea what a financial security is - let alone of the need to invest at all - because they are used to getting their pensions from the state,” said Alexander Popov, head of the State Pension Fund. 
Elderly Russians, having seen their savings eroded by hyper-inflation or confiscated in banknote swaps, now have to get by on state pensions averaging $80 a month — less than a third of the typical wage. 
Late in the Soviet era, banknotes were taken out of circulation as a means of managing the money supply. 
But, after surviving the 1998 financial crash, younger Russians mistrust financial markets and would rather spend their money on property or consumer goods than save for their old age. 
“We need to inform people, maybe we can teach pension basics in schools,” said Popov. 
As part of the pension reform, a savings component was added to the existing pay-as-you-go system under which people born since 1967 have the right to choose where to invest about a  quarter of their total contributions. 
However, only a tiny minority has done so, and millions of so-called “silent” pension savers did not even bother to react. 
Their money is now with Vnesh-ekonombank’s pension fund, which by law can invest only in Russian treasuries. That is a problem, because the government is so flush with oil revenues that it has no real need to issue new debt. The Finance Ministry does issue bonds targeted at the pension fund but recognizes this is just a stopgap measure. 
“Growing pension savings will exceed the amount of state debt in circulation within a few years,” Alexei Savatyugin, head of the ministry’s financial policy department, said. 
The state is deciding whether to let Vneshekonombank invest in riskier assets, while giving private pension funds a bigger piece of Russia’s pensions pie. 
“Allowing Vneshekonombank into the market with all its billions would not simply mean market manipulation. It means there would only be one player left,” Savatyugin said, referring to Russia’s fixed-income and equity markets. 
The bank has the means to buy up most of the country’s narrow stock and bond markets and its entry would send prices soaring. 
Popov said silent savers’ assets could be split into two portfolios — conservative and riskier, allowing selected private funds to manage the latter. Meanwhile, the composition of the conservative portfolio should be extended to triple A-rated foreign securities and other state-backed papers. 
Vneshekonombank would retain control over assets and choose private fund managers, in effect providing state guarantees for savers. 
“We have to achieve the main goal of the pension reform — to provide a steady flow of long-term resources to our real economy. Right now we are just shifting money between pockets,” Popov said. 
Private pension funds rejoice at the idea but say that state backing for investments in riskier assets could be a disaster. 
“It won’t work. The state cannot give any guarantees, the volume of investment will soon exceed the state budget, a citizen should take the investment risk himself,” said Pavel Teplukhin, head of Troika Dialog’s asset management business. 
Teplukhin, whose company manages pension savings for 20,000 Russians, said it would be easier to change people’s mentality by compelling silent savers to opt where to put their savings. 
He said polls show up to 12 percent of Russians are ready to invest in private pension funds but either have no information or consider the application process too difficult. 
“The state made us understand that the pension reform is no longer a priority and left us face to face with 40 million people,” Teplukhin said. 
Troika Dialog has only just been allowed to publish figures on investment returns, which at 50 percent in the first nine months of 2005 beat the national pension fund’s 12.5 percent. 
“These figures should push people to make more active choices,” said Vneshekonombank’s Popov. “The more people leave us, the better.”

TITLE: Alfa Buys 13 Percent Turkcell Stake, TeliaSonera “Weaker”
AUTHOR: By Ben Holland and Maria Fredriksson
TEXT: ISTANBUL (Bloomberg) — Alfa Group bought a 13 percent stake in Turkcell Iletisim Holding AS, Turkey’s biggest mobile phone company, completing a deal that’s been challenged by Turkcell shareholder TeliaSonera AB.
Alfa exercised an option to buy the Turkcell stake from Cukurova Group for $1.6 billion on Nov. 25, according to Istanbul Stock Exchange filings Monday. Russia’s Alfa, which will get two seats on Turkcell’s seven-member board, is also lending $1.7 billion to Cukurova.
The transaction is a setback for Stockholm-based TeliaSonera, which owns a 37 percent stake in Turkcell and agreed to buy another 27 percent earlier this year. 
The Swedish company said on Monday it will take legal action against Alfa for interfering in its plan to buy the Turkcell stake. TeliaSonera is already involved in a dispute with Alfa regarding ownership of a quarter of MegaFon, Russia’s third-biggest wireless operator.
The Turkcell deal is “slipping out of their hands,’’ said Bengt Moelleryd, an analyst at Nordea in Stockholm, who rates the stock ‘sell.’
 “TeliaSonera’s position has weakened and its influence in Turkcell will diminish. This is definitely negative for TeliaSonera.’’
A Swiss court last week lifted an injunction barring Cukurova from selling shares while arbitration continued. The transaction helped Cukurova repay most of its debt to the Turkish government. Cukurova now holds a 27 percent stake in Turkcell.
Cukurova sold the shares to Alfa after buying them back from Yapi & Kredi Bankasi AS, a lender sold by Cukurova in September.
Cukurova paid 1.64 billion liras ($1.2 billion) to buy a 13 percent stake from Yapi Kredi, according to a separate statement by the bank Monday.
Separately, TeliaSonera said it has been informed by an auditor in Turkcell Holding that funds amounting to about $135 million have been transferred from Turkcell Holding bank accounts without proper authorization, it said in another statement.
The Swedish company “has reason to believe that the funds were taken out by Cukurova representatives’’ to fund parts of Cukurova’s payment obligation to the Turkish government, TeliaSonera said in the statement.
“Both parties should be informed about a transaction like this and we didn’t know anything about it,” TeliaSonera spokesman Michael Kongstad said. “Cukurova management has told us this is what happened.”
A receptionist at Cukurova Holding in Istanbul said nobody was available to comment on TeliaSonera’s statement.
Turkcell shares fell 2.3 percent to 8.45 liras as of 1:21 p.m. in Istanbul on Monday. 
The stock has lagged the Turkish benchmark index since March, when Alfa’s bid was first reported. In that period Turkcell shares rose 18 percent, less than half the ISE-100 Index’s 44 percent jump.
That's because investors are concerned that the three-way division of the Turkcell board between Cukurova, TeliaSonera and Alfa will increase the potential for shareholder disputes, say analysts including Basak Engin at Oyak Securities in Istanbul.

TITLE: Would-Be Aviator Finds Niche In Factory Finance
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Irina Meshko, financial director at the Sestroretsk tool works, says that a career in business was never part of the plan. However, having been hired as an accounting assistant at Jensen group in 1999, it took the 30 year-old Meshko only six years to rise up the professional ladder.
When a child, Meshko dreamed of continuing the family tradition by becoming a military aviator like her father and elder brother. 
“I wanted to be a pilot but my father thought I should become a ballet dancer,” she said.
Although her childhood dream never came true, Meshko entered St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Service where she studied accounting, auditing, and economic analysis.  A year and a half before graduation she started work as an accountant at the Obukhov plant, that produces equipment for space rockets, nuclear power plants and oil extraction. There she hoped to gain practical knowledge to use for her upcoming thesis. 
“Unlike many of my schoolmates who at that time just wanted to get a high-paid job, I looked for a positive professional environment where I could deal with different aspects of accounting and get an idea of how a big enterprise operates,” she said. 
Equipped with her diploma, Meshko continued working at the Obukhov plant but soon realized that she was no longer excited by her job. 
“It took two hours to fulfil my obligations at work so I had plenty of extra time which I tried to use studying theoretical accounting issues as well as the English language.”  
Eventually Meshko left, however, for a homeopathic center, where she combined work in accountancy and sales. 
“It was at the homoeopathic center that I got involved in sales but there was still no real possibility for professional growth,” she said.
In 1999, Meshko sent her resume to the EMG Professionals recruiting agency and got invited to an interview for the position of accounting assistant at the Jensen group, a foreign investment company that had just started working in Russia. 
“With a lack of work experience, I was almost completely unable to answer the chief accountant’s questions concerning any professional knowledge, and speaking to the general director Steven Wayne, I needed a translator because, at that time, I could hardly keep up any kind of conversation in English”.
However, Meshko says that the psychologically intuitive Wayne was soon rewarded for hiring a young specialist.  The ever-diligent Meshko gained professional experience in several Jensen Group companies. Long 16-hour days and a lot of hard work were eventually rewarded when she was made chief accountant for all four Jensen Group companies. 
When a few years later, at the end of 2002, another company, Jensen Chemicals, was launched, she got involved in a new project aimed at chemical research. After a couple of months Meshko had to make a difficult choice. 
“By that time, I had to choose between a post as managing director at Jensen Chemicals, or work as a financial director of the Jensen Group. Although the position of managing director seemed to more prestigious and financially more interesting, I was attracted by the prospect of improving my professional qualifications in finance and operational management.” 
Within six months Meshko got involved as Financial Director in the Jensen Group’s biggest investment project, Sestroretsk Tool Works factory. According to her, having bought the Sestroretsk tool works the Jensen group faced a crisis that had repercussions for the whole enterprise. Having looked at the situation, she took courses in International Financial Reporting Standards, eventually receiving a diploma in the subject. This helped her to set up from scratch a fiscal accounting section at the Sestroretsk works.
With the instrument factory, heating plant, and real estate, the Sestroretsk tool works represents a huge enterprise that once provided the St. Petersburg suburb of Sestroretsk with over 5000 jobs. Working 12 to 15 hours a day, Meshko said that most of the time she spent dealing with human resource problems. 
“Most of our employees have worked here all their life. It was not easy for them to be subordinate to a “young” girl who they’d have hardly associated with the post of financial director”, Meshko said.
Now, after two years of hard work, she appreciates the acknowledgement and support of the people she works with. Meshko thinks that, as a manager, one should always try to set a good example to other company employees. 
“I can say that I rely on the members of my team and almost never meet with their resistance. If there is lots of work I know that they would work the extra hours with me.”
Living in St. Petersburg, Meshko every day commutes to the suburbs, often leaving work as late as midnight.
Having always been a best student at school and at the university, Meshko said it was her father who influenced her and instilled in his daughter an amazing work ethic. 
“He always taught me not to set any limits and aim only for perfect results”, she said. “Like him, I believe that besides the career and money-making there are a lot more important values in life that people should care about.”
As a manager who still headhunts for good specialists, Meshko thinks that employees with an MBA degree do not always provide high quality management. And although Meshko thinks that lots of male businessmen are prejudiced against their female counterparts, she believes that in Russia women often seem more diligent and reliable workers than men. 
“Maybe, historically, women in this country used to be in charge of lots of things and that makes them more responsible than men,” said Meshko, who has mostly hired women as members of her team. 
Plans are currently afoot to rebuild both the instrument factory and the heating plant that provides heating for more than 60 percent of Sestroretsk. Alongside this is the huge challenge of reconstructing the 30-hectare Sestroretsk tool works site and renaming it Sestra River Developments.

TITLE: Oil Dollars Fuel Boom In IT Sector
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s oil boom is driving the domestic IT sector to grow nearly three times faster than the rest of the economy, the country’s leading IT companies said Wednesday.
As the petrodollars pour in, Russian businesses are beginning to adopt more sophisticated IT systems while the government makes large-scale IT investments, said Mikhail Lyashch, president of Compulink.
Government programs such as Electronic Russia, which aims to propagate the use of high-tech equipment across the country, translate into multimillion-dollar contracts for the sector, Lyashch said, speaking at an investment conference organized by Interfax and Britain’s Chatham House think tank. The IT market is expanding at a rate of about 27 percent annually, triple the rate of gross domestic product growth, said Oleg Kuzhikov, vice president of mergers and acquisitions of IBS holding. Last year, the economy grew by 7.2 percent. The country’s IT market — including software development, IT services and hardware sales — is set to top $23 billion by the end of 2005, according to J’Son & Partners.
“Oil and gas resources are limited, while IT is based on a limitless, renewable resource — the human intellect,” said Mikhail Krasnov, president of Verysell Group.
Hardware sales currently make up about 67 percent of the total market, Kuzhikov said. But as Russia’s economy develops, the IT services segment, now 13 percent of the total market, is set for explosive growth, he said.
By 2010, IT services will be greater than hardware sales by market share, said Sergei Gorbuntsov, an analyst with J’Son & Partners. Overall, the country’s competitive advantage lies in providing “non-standard solutions” for complex problems, Krasnov said, in part thanks to Russia’s tradition of science education.
Just over a year after opening an R&D center in St. Petersburg, Sun Microsystems now has some 300 programmers there, making Russia its second-largest overseas development location after India, said Sun’s marketing director, Sergei Moiseyev. 
As the IT market continues its double-digit growth, more domestic companies will start searching for capital to expand. IBS, which includes software developer Luxoft and other high-profile IT businesses, held a private offering last week, raising funds from undisclosed Western and Russian investors, Kuzhikov said. On Monday, Vedomosti reported that the company had raised $113 million by selling roughly 33 percent of its shares. Compulink and Verysell are considering IPOs in the near future.
“Investment in people is always very risky” compared to investment in tangible capital, Compulink’s Lyashch said. Nevertheless, he said, market consolidation is under way.

TITLE: Tide Turning In Battle With Software Piracy
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — While all of Russia’s major corporations have been guilty of using unlicensed software, companies are increasingly cracking down on abuse, an anti-piracy lobby group said Wednesday. 
“All big [firms] have illegal software,” Jean-Paul Seuren, the Russia representative for Business Software Alliance, said in an interview. “They are not managing their software as an asset.”
As much as 87 percent of the software used in Russia is pirated, Seuren said, but companies are beginning to go to great lengths to cut down on unauthorized software. “The direction is there,” he said.
Major companies such as Gazprom, LUKoil and Russian Railways, or RZD, have yet to complete the switch to licensed software, Seuren said, citing authorized dealers and former employees. One aluminum firm, he said, has been using 1,500 pirated copies of a program.
Companies rejected the suggestion that they were using black-market wares. A Gazprom spokeswoman said the company used only licensed software, and a LUKoil spokesman said the oil major paid “tens of millions of dollars” to buy authorized products. All programs installed on employees’ computers are first screened, he said. 
RZD spokeswoman Natalya Aka-fyeva said the railways spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” on software, which it purchases through open tendering. 
While oil company TNK-BP conceded that the use of pirated software may have been a problem at TNK in the past, spokesman Ivan Gogolev said it was no longer an issue.
Seuren said companies were doing more to tackle piracy and commended the Economic Development and Trade Ministry for its cooperation.
Microsoft — one of the global IT giants backing the Business Software Alliance, which opened its Russia chapter in May — said it had also noticed greater compliance with licensing.
“It is certainly lower in the corporate sector, and we register a further decline in the level of piracy,” said Sergei Alpatov, license compliance manager for Microsoft in Russia. “But unfortunately, the situation is far from ideal.” 
Smaller companies also violate intellectual property laws, Seuren said.
Professional software is expensive and many companies still cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars for a licensed version, Seuren said. At Gorbushkin Dvor, Moscow’s giant electronics market, some software is still available for as little as $3, he said, though he acknowledged that the number of pirated products had dropped over the past half year.

TITLE: Northwest Applies Itself To Internet’s Possibilities
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Northwest is one of the leaders in educational and cultural web projects, a competition to find the nation’s best web site has revealed. 
Assessing regional entries for the project is part of St. Petersburg’s Week of Digital Technologies, which runs from December 5 to 11, and is organised by Intel and TransTelecom. The week will comprise seminars and exhibitions for citizens and local business people with special emphasis put on the Internet.
“These events are focused at a very wide public,” said Alexander Palladin, press service director at Intel in the CIS.
According to research conducted this summer by Levada analytical center, only 14 percent of Russian families have personal computers while 11 percent of respondents claimed that they have no idea at all about the Internet.
“It was one of the main reasons that we launch such events. Our goal is to overcome social inequality,” Palladin said.
In St. Petersburg Intel will hold seminars on information security issues, the possibilities of digital technologies in business, and technical innovations in educational programs as well as an exhibition of digital technologies and tournament for children on searching the Internet.
The search engine Yandex will also hold seminars and master classes on Internet technologies, web advertisement and web search tools.
The competition for the best Internet project was declared at the beginning of this year and about 1,600 participants across Russia filed applications. 350 applications came from the Northwest region. 
On December 8 Intel will choose the best web project in the Northwest region from a total of 75 applications, including the web sites of schools, institutes and universities applying for contest, said Lyudmila Fyodorova, deputy head of public relations department at TransTeleCom, a subsidiary of Russian Railways operating fiber optic and digital networks along railway roads.
“This tender allows us to demonstrate interest not only in the technical side of our business but also in web content,” Fyodorova said.
“Internet is not a mere technical tool but also a powerful and not yet fully understood environment, the dangers of which are still to be discovered. The tender aims to show the Internet’s positive effects, which could contribute to solving many problems,” she said.
An expert saw the actions as positive, though he said that Internet project tenders in general could be more fine-tuned.
“The tenders are getting larger now. Large projects, developed by well-known brands with teams of over one hundred specialists, have entered the fray. This drives young, talented but not yet large and famous companies to despair,” said Andrei Balashov, director for Internet projects at DataArt.
“Some time ago there was a significantly greater amount of tenders for Internet projects, for example Nagrada.ru, which was supported by the same company – Intel,” he said.
“We really lack tenders for particular industries and specialized tenders for non-profit social projects. It could significantly increase the number of participants and improve the quality of Internet projects,” Balashov said.
Balashov is the author of Davno.Ru web project supported by DataArt, which is the largest web collection of Soviet postcards and posters.
By the end of the year Russia will have 21.8 million Internet users, according to the minister for information technologies and communication Leonid Reiman, Interfax reported this month.
With the exception of office computers there would be over 17.4 million personal computers in the country, or 12 computers per 100 people, he said. 
However, according to the last report by the Public opinion foundation, Russia has only 17.6 million Internet users (16 percent of the adult population). Internet usage is most popular in Moscow and the Northwest, boasting 41 percent and 24 percent of all users respectively. The Far East region takes the third place with 15 percent. In other regions the level of Internet penetration is between 13 percent and 11 percent.

TITLE: Siemens Still Bidding For Power
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Germany’s Siemens has won backing from the Industry and Energy Ministry for what it said was a bid to buy 25 percent plus one share in engineering firm Siloviye Mashiny, or Power Machines, the ministry said on Friday. 
Siemens has asked the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service to approve the bid, said a ministry spokesman. 
“Siemens has held talks with our ministry. They announced they wanted to consolidate 25 percent plus one share in Power Machines. We support such a decision,” he said. 
A Siemens spokesman said the company was in talks to buy a stake in Power Machines, but did not comment on the talks except to say that Siemens had not made a formal offer. Siemens already has a four percent stake in Power Machines, an engineering company which has a large number of defense orders and is involved in Russia’s closely guarded nuclear sector. Power Machines officials were unavailable for comment.

TITLE: Big Names Checking In Across the Country
AUTHOR: By Conor Humphries
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As Russia booms, Western hotel operators are fighting for a piece of the action, scouring the provinces for locations for their ambitious mid-range rollouts and sparring for the capital’s juiciest sites. 
While luxury brands like Ritz-Carlton and Westin have been focusing on securing a beachhead in Moscow, home to more billionaires than anywhere else in the world, some of the most fervent activity is in the huge, underdeveloped markets of the regions. 
But what remains to be seen is whether Russia is as keen on international operators as the operators are on Russia. 
Major mid-sector hotel chains such as Ibis, Best Western and Holiday Inn say they are planning significant pushes into smaller provincial cities in bids to become the country’s dominant domestic chain. 
In April, Best Western signed a franchise agreement for a dozen Russian locations, mainly in the regions, while late last year Days Inn announced plans to develop 45 locations around the CIS.
Park Inn is due to open its first hotel in January in Yekaterinburg, with the brand’s owner, Rezidor SAS, planning to open up to 50 hotels in the CIS by 2012, mostly under the Park Inn Brand, said Arild Hovland, director of the company’s Moscow office.
The Accor hotel group is currently tripling its staff in the country to help support the regional rollout of Ibis, said Keith Lindsay, managing director of the company’s Russian operations. 
Michael Cooper, whose Intercontinental group owns the Holiday Inn brand, said his strategy for the country was to put a hotel “in every town.” 
“Our ultimate aim is to become the hotel of choice for the local population, the local business population and the local tourist population,” he said at Jones Lang LaSalle’s Russian Hotel Investment Forum last month. 
John Eaton of Hermitage Hospitality, the local operator of the Days Inn brand, is focusing on the same target.
“As the country develops, it’s not going to be expats who are traveling through the country for foreign companies. It will be young Russian executives,” he said at the forum. “They will not be wanting to pay $200 to $300 for a room, but willing to pay $75 to $125 for a room — and that’s where the market is.”
Brands are moving now in the hope of securing sites while prices are still cheap, said Stephane Meyrat, a hotel consultant at the Colliers real estate brokerage. 
Against the background of a stagnating market in Western Europe, Russia seems too good an opportunity to pass up, he said. 
“Russia is perceived as a booming market,” he said. “The opportunity is here, not there.”
But like other market watchers, he said the operators would have a hard time convincing owners of the value of a Western name above the door.
“[Owners will ask] how much business is brand affiliation going to bring in and how much will it cost to build a hotel according these brand specifications,” Meyrat said. “Many see a franchise as an expensive luxury with little benefit.”
Another risk for Western operators is competition from local chains such as Russian Hotels, which last year announced plans to invest up to $250 million in 20 to 30 hotels in the Russian regions and CIS capitals.
The very enthusiasm of the operators could also be a danger, potentially leaving the regions with too many Western-branded hotels. 
“If too many international brands race to the same city there will probably not be enough high-end business to go around,” said Scott Antel, head of the hotel and leisure practice at the law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary. “There will be a big first mover advantage in many of these locations.”
While the regions appear to offer mid-range brands economies of scale, luxury brands see Moscow as the key to the country’s new money. 
While most of the mid-range brands are targeting locations in the capital, the fiercest fighting among the Western operators appears to be over control of several stunning locations being freed up by the redevelopment of Soviet-era behemoths.
The Ritz-Carlton won the first round, beating out rivals to secure the former Intourist site on Tverskaya Ulitsa, and is due to enter the market in mid-2006. Four Seasons then won the tender to run the new Moskva Hotel, due to come on line late next year. 
Now attention is focusing on the Ukraina Hotel, due to be auctioned by City Hall on Wednesday, and the Rossiya Hotel, which closes its doors at the end of the year for demolition and redevelopment.
In addition to such attractions as sky-high demand and a shortage of quality rooms in the capital, the world’s most storied brands are eager to break into the market because of the opening it offers into the pocketbooks and loyalties of the country’s affluent minority. 
“The spending power of this part of the world is just humongous,” said Roeland Vos, whose Starwood company is looking for a partner to bring the Westin brand to Russia. “It is incredible what these individuals are able to spend throughout the year and what their loyalty is worth for us.”
But whether local hotels need Western brands to fill their rooms in the current booming market is another question. 
“Moscow is probably the best hotel market in the world at the moment insofar as the average rate and revenue per room being achieved,” said Scott Antel. “You only need to put out a sign on the door with the word ‘hotel’ and you can command $200 a night.”

TITLE: Russia’s Big Problem Is Oil-Related
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: During U. S. President George W. Bush’s recent trip to Asia, there was a sharp contrast between his public call for more freedom and democracy in China and his closed-door meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Apparently, the White House has become convinced that Russians are only fit for a stunted kind of freedom and a mongrel “managed democracy.”
It didn’t seem that way during the 1990s, when Russia aspired to become a modern industrial democracy and a full member of the community of nations. What went wrong in recent years can be summed up in a single three-letter word — oil.
The Soviet Union may have been repressive and sclerotic, but it was an industrialized state. Soviet citizens produced goods and performed services — however shoddily or inefficiently — and earned their modest bread by the sweat of their brow. 
After the fall of communism, mistakes were made by Russian leaders as well as Western economic advisors. Instead of modernizing existing plants and equipment by bringing in foreign investment, the Soviet industrial base was allowed to fester and decay. Workers were paid illusory wages for illusory work while red directors pilfered everything they could lay their hands on.
Nevertheless, as recently as in 1998 there was still hope. After the overvalued ruble collapsed, investment in domestic manufacturing and food processing industries picked up substantially. 
However, since 1999, when oil prices began to climb, the ruble has appreciated once more and imported consumer goods have swamped the country. Even though swaths of Russian industry still stumble on, Russia has effectively become an oil dependency. 
Oil dependencies are invariably troubled. Just listing them provides a litany of woes: Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela.
Oil dependencies feature huge discrepancies between poverty and wealth. Yet, even their poorest citizens display a healthy aversion for hard work. Why should they break their back when their fellow-citizens — whose only distinction is an ability to elbow their way to the oil trough — wallow in petrodollars? What they want is a more equal distribution of oil revenues. What they get is authoritarian regimes, since those who enjoy the lion’s share of wealth — usually government officials and their cronies — have no wish to spread it around.
This is exactly what is happening in Russia. Refugees from the former Soviet Union do the most work, while the average Russian rails against the fat cats who have stolen “his” oil. Putin was hired in 1999 by Yeltsin-era oligarchs to protect their wealth, but instead his cronies have appropriated oil assets for themselves.
Some countries have escaped oil dependence. Since joining the North American Free Trade Area in 1994, Mexico has built a domestic industrial base, which has provided it with higher standards of living and greater democracy, ending a decades-long monopoly on power by the Revolutionary Institutional Party. The new, modern Mexico was on display during Bush’s previous trip to Argentina. His greatest ally in promoting a hemisphere-wide free trade bloc was Mexican President Vicente Fox. His staunchest opponent — not surprisingly — was Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Oil dependencies, despite selling their oil in world markets, seem to have no interest in a stable world order. Chavez is but the latest on the list of mavericks, madmen and pariahs who have ruled oil-exporting countries. Even Saudi Arabia, which plays a responsible oil exporter, has produced Osama bin Laden, most of the 9/11 hijackers and a slew of Islamic radicals.
Elements of roguery have appeared in Russia, as well, when for example officials at a very high level accuse foreigners — notably the West — of supporting Chechen terrorism and aiding so-called color revolutions in the post-Soviet space. Russia’s embrace of such odious figures as Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Uzbek President Islam Karimov are steps in the same direction.
This casts a new light on Bush’s reluctance to criticize Putin and speak out against Russia’s backsliding on democracy. Washington may yet come to regret allowing Russia, which is still armed with thousands of nuclear warheads, to slide uncontested into oil dependency.

Alexei Bayer, a former Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Special Economic Zones 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia gave preliminary approval for creation of six so-called special economic zones where companies will be allowed to pay lower taxes, in an attempt to diversify the economy away from oil, Economy Minister German Gref said, quoted by the Interfax news agency.
The country will probably develop the zones in and around Moscow, in the city of Tomsk in central Russia, in the Lipetsk region southeast of Moscow, and in the autonomous republic of Tatarstan, the news agency said.
 Russia is expected to try special economic zones to help diversify its economy away from commodities, such as oil and gas, which make up about a quarter of the economy. Companies working in such zones are expected to produce home electronics equipment, car parts, develop nuclear physics and other technologies, Gref said, the news agency reported.

Gazprom Bond Limit
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom raised the borrowing limit on its program for euro medium-term notes to $15 billion from $5 billion, Interfax reported, citing a draft prospectus for a new Eurobond sale.
The Moscow-based natural-gas producer began presentations today in London to investors as it plans to sell 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) of notes, the newswire said. The company earlier sold lots of 1 billion euros of notes under the program in September 2003 and in May 2005, as well as $1.2 billion of bonds in April 2004, the newswire said.
ABN Amro Holding NV and Credit Suisse First Boston are the managers for the current Eurobond sale, the banks said in a statement on Nov. 24.
The securities will be offered through the Euro Medium-Term Note program of the company’s Gaz Capital SA unit, the banks said.

Moscow Court Convicts 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — A Moscow court convicted nine people of embezzling money from Yukos Oil Co. in 2004, Interfax reported Monday from the court hearing.
The Lefortovo court found Alexander Kurtsin, a deputy manager at the Yukos-Moskva’s property department, and eight other people guilty of theft of 342 million rubles ($11.9 million) from Yukos, the news service said. Prosecutors asked that Kurtsin be jailed for 13 years and fined 1 million rubles, the news service said.
Yukos spokeswoman Claire Davidson wasn’t immediately available for comments.

Severstal Strategy
LONDON (Reuters) — Steel producer Severstal , which has grown by acquiring assets, said on Monday it will focus now on internal efficiencies to add value. 
“Over two years we grew from producing 10 million tons a year to 16 million tons by acquisition. Now we are going to focus on internal costs and efficiency,” Andrei Laptev, head of strategic planning at Severstal, said. 
Last month Severstal was cautious at the auction of a 46.12 percent stake in Erdemir , Turkey’s largest producer of flat steel. Its bid was the lowest at some 35 percent under the highest bid, he said. 
 
Ukraine Unconstructive 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, Europe’s largest natural-gas supplier, said Ukraine’s “unconstructive approach” to talks about deliveries of the fuel threaten gas supplies to the European Union.
Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov on Nov. 23 canceled a planned visit to Ukraine because of a dispute over pricing natural gas. Russia, the world’s largest energy producer, ships most of its gas exports to Europe via neighboring Ukraine, including shipments to Germany.
Ukraine is resisting demands from Moscow-based Gazprom, which wants to more than triple the price it charges Ukraine for gas to at least $160 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas as early as next year. 

Uzbek Telecom Sale
JAKARTA (Bloomberg) — PT Bakrie & Brothers sold its stake in Bakrie Uzbekistan Telecom for $4 million, Bisnis Indonesia reported, citing Bakrie & Brothers’s President Bobby Gafur Umar. 
Jakarta-based Bakrie & Brothers controlled Bakrie Uzbekistan, known as Buztel, through its unit, PT Bakrie Communication, that owned 99 percent of the Uzbekistan-based company, the report said.
Bakrie & Brothers owns 97 percent of Bakrie Communication, the paper said. Buztel was established in 1997, the paper said. The buyer wasn’t identified.

Economy Grows Faster
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s economy may grow 6.1 percent this year, faster than a previous estimate of between 5.9 percent and 6 percent, Interfax reported, citing central bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev.
The central bank will continue letting the ruble strengthen against foreign currencies because it’s “undervalued,” Ulyukaev said in an interview with the news agency on Nov. 26 and published on its web site today. The ruble will probably strengthen more than the planned 9 percent against the basket of
foreign currencies when adjusted to inflation in 2006, he said, quoted by the news agency.
Russia should not increase spending more next year to cut inflation to bellow 10 percent in 2006 from 11 percent expected this year, Ulyukayev said.

Russneft Selling Bonds 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russneft, Russia’s fastest-growing oil company, plans to sell 7 billion rubles ($243million) of bonds to lower borrowing costs as the nation’s booming economy slashes interest rates.
The bonds probably will be sold by the end of the year, Russneft Vice President Eduard Sarkisov said in a phone interview. He declined to comment on a Vedomosti report that Glencore International AG, the Swiss trader that handles 3 percent of global oil sales, owns more than 40 percent of Russneft’s $2 billion in debt. 

Anadolu Efes Profits 
ISTANBUL (Bloomberg) — Anadolu Efes Biracilik ve Malt Sanayii AS, the largest beermaker in the Middle East, reported a 29 percent rise in third-quarter profit as sales increased.
Istanbul-based Anadolu Efes had net income of 118 million liras ($87 million), up from 92 million a year ago, according to its income statement published on the Istanbul Stock Exchange web site. The median estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News was 85.7 million liras.

Sibneft Dropping CSKA
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — BP’s chief executive Lord John Browne told the UK-based The Guardian in an interview he expects TNK-BP to be slapped with more back tax claims for 2002 but said the claims were nothing unusual.
"The temperature always keeps changing — from cold to medium — but the back taxes [against TNK-BP] were sorted out for 2001 and I expect there will be further large claims for 2002 and so on but equally these are not unusual. There are many other places in the world where large claims are made. Discussions usually take place and a settlement is reached," Browne told the Guardian.

Gazprom Buy Back 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — State-controlled Gazprom’s banking unit offered to buy back stakes in several media assets from EvroFinance Mosnarbank by year’s end, Vedomosti said, citing two unidentified people it said were close to the talks.
Gazprombank sold the television, radio and publishing assets, including 31 percent and 28 percent of broadcasters NTV and TNT, to EvroFinance in 2002 for $100 million and an agreement to restructure $600 million of debt owed to Gazprom, the newspaper said. Those assets are probably worth between $350 million and $500 million now, Delta Private Equity managing director Kirill Dmitriev told the daily.
 
Sobyanin Says Invest
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — President Vladimir Putin’s new chief of staff, Sergei Sobyanin, said oil revenue should be invested in the economy, according to an interview broadcast on Rossia, a national television channel.
Russia “should feel no shame” about the economy’s dependence on oil and natural gas, which define its role in the world, Sobyanin said, according to a transcript of the interview shown on Rossia’s Vesti news program Sunday.

TITLE: The Problem is a Three-Letter Word
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: During U. S. President George W. Bush’s recent trip to Asia, there was a sharp contrast between his public call for more freedom and democracy in China and his closed-door meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Apparently, the White House has become convinced that Russians are only fit for a stunted kind of freedom and a mongrel “managed democracy.”
It didn’t seem that way during the 1990s, when Russia aspired to become a modern industrial democracy and a full member of the community of nations. What went wrong in recent years can be summed up in a single three-letter word — oil.
The Soviet Union may have been repressive and sclerotic, but it was an industrialized state. Soviet citizens produced goods and performed services — however shoddily or inefficiently — and earned their modest bread by the sweat of their brow. 
After the fall of communism, mistakes were made by Russian leaders as well as Western economic advisors. Instead of modernizing existing plants and equipment by bringing in foreign investment, the Soviet industrial base was allowed to fester and decay. Workers were paid illusory wages for illusory work while red directors pilfered everything they could lay their hands on.
Nevertheless, as recently as in 1998 there was still hope. After the overvalued ruble collapsed, investment in domestic manufacturing and food processing industries picked up substantially. 
However, since 1999, when oil prices began to climb, the ruble has appreciated once more and imported consumer goods have swamped the country. Even though swaths of Russian industry still stumble on, Russia has effectively become an oil dependency. 
Oil dependencies are invariably troubled. Just listing them provides a litany of woes: Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela.
Oil dependencies feature huge discrepancies between poverty and wealth. Yet, even their poorest citizens display a healthy aversion for hard work. Why should they break their back when their fellow-citizens — whose only distinction is an ability to elbow their way to the oil trough — wallow in petrodollars? What they want is a more equal distribution of oil revenues. What they get is authoritarian regimes, since those who enjoy the lion’s share of wealth — usually government officials and their cronies — have no wish to spread it around.
This is exactly what is happening in Russia. Refugees from the former Soviet Union do the most work, while the average Russian rails against the fat cats who have stolen “his” oil. Putin was hired in 1999 by Yeltsin-era oligarchs to protect their wealth, but instead his cronies have appropriated oil assets for themselves.
Some countries have escaped oil dependence. Since joining the North American Free Trade Area in 1994, Mexico has built a domestic industrial base, which has provided it with higher standards of living and greater democracy, ending a decades-long monopoly on power by the Revolutionary Institutional Party. The new, modern Mexico was on display during Bush’s previous trip to Argentina. His greatest ally in promoting a hemisphere-wide free trade bloc was Mexican President Vicente Fox. His staunchest opponent — not surprisingly — was Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Oil dependencies, despite selling their oil in world markets, seem to have no interest in a stable world order. Chavez is but the latest on the list of mavericks, madmen and pariahs who have ruled oil-exporting countries. Even Saudi Arabia, which plays a responsible oil exporter, has produced Osama bin Laden, most of the 9/11 hijackers and a slew of Islamic radicals.
Elements of roguery have appeared in Russia, as well, when for example officials at a very high level accuse foreigners — notably the West — of supporting Chechen terrorism and aiding so-called color revolutions in the post-Soviet space. Russia’s embrace of such odious figures as Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Uzbek President Islam Karimov are steps in the same direction.
This casts a new light on Bush’s reluctance to criticize Putin and speak out against Russia’s backsliding on democracy. Washington may yet come to regret allowing Russia, which is still armed with thousands of nuclear warheads, to slide uncontested into oil dependency.
Alexei Bayer, a former Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

TITLE: A Civil Society Needs Protection
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin’s government looks like a democratic government. There is a parliament, there are courts, there are regional governors — but all of them ultimately answer to the Kremlin. It is window dressing of democratic government, little more.
The same fate, it seems, now awaits Russia’s nascent civil society. Instead of civil society, there will be a Public Chamber packed with Kremlin loyalists and celebrities. Instead of nongovernmental organizations, there will be organizations dependent on the government.
A bill that passed in a first reading Wednesday in the State Duma would require all nongovernmental organizations to register or reregister with the Justice Ministry. The government would oversee the organizations’ activities and financial records, in addition to checks carried out by the tax authorities. 
These measures, which would allow the authorities to keep tabs on every little group, presumably warm the hearts of all those former KGB agents now running the country. 
Under the legislation, foreign funding would be illegal for any Russian organization that engaged in “political activities,” which conceivably could range from programs that promote the rule of law, a free press or human rights to projects to protect the environment or improve small business practices. Foreign NGOs that operate in Russia would effectively have to leave.
In what seemed to be an effort to compensate for the loss of foreign money, the Duma last week amended the 2006 federal budget to provide $17.4 million for promoting civil society in Russia and defending the rights of Russians in the Baltics. 
But only those organizations that support the Kremlin  would likely be able to count on government funding. There is little tradition in Russia of individual charity, and no financial incentive in it. Businesses tend to limit their support to projects that have official blessing. 
A civil society is only beginning to grow in Russia, and it should be nurtured, not cut off at the roots. If the bill before the Duma reflects the Kremlin’s fears of an Orange Revolution, then the people in power are more out of touch than they realize: Suppressing a nascent civil society will only make the advent of one more likely — and sooner.

TITLE: Passing Over the People
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Gryaznevich
TEXT: This week, I’ll be providing you with a perfect example of the problems outlined last week, and demonstrating just how essential these public hearings really are. 
Despite the array of pessimistic predictions on the speed with which we’ll see a civil society developing in Russia, life does have a way of cheering us up once in a while. A striking example of this comes in the form of the protests undertaken by the inhabitants of Dachny in the Kirovsky Region against official plans for the construction of an overpass. The idea is that it will create a transport route between the southwestern regions of the city, coming up from Dunaisky Prospekt, and two new roads — the ring road and the western high-speed bypass. It’s planned that these two new roads will meet in the Dachny region. 
In accordance with the established procedure, discussions of the intersection were held in June and July of this year, the designs having been drawn up by Stroiproyekt and City Hall’s Town-Planning and Transport Committee. During those talks, the two municipal councils closest to the site (nos. 25 and 27) both came out against the plans. At the hearings at the Kirovsky region administration many criticized the project, and the vast majority of the local inhabitants attending called for the plans to be scrapped. It’s worth noting that, judging by their remarks, these citizens understand the importance of developing the city’s thoroughfares and support the construction of the intersection in their region. They’re only against the concrete solution being provided to the problem. They’ve even gone as far as to come up with their own proposal. 
Local residents formed a Dachny Micro-Region Community Council to campaign on the overpass issue and adopted an appeal to the Legislative Assembly and City Hall. They’ve already collected 10,000 signatures against the option developed by Stroiproyekt. This council has put together an alternative solution, the concept having been put forward by a Municipal Council No. 25 Deputy, Anatoly Bezrukov.
The arguments that have been made by the local residents appear to be entirely reasonable. They’ve also received the support of a key organization in this sphere, the Territorial Development and Transport Infrastructure Research Institute (TDTIRI),  which assisted as a consultant along with Sergei Andreyev, a Legislative Assembly deputy. The main complaint is that the entire transport flow to and from the overpass will have to pass down one small thoroughfare — Dachny Prospekt. That means transport flows on the Prospekt will increase 30 times over. The 50,000 inhabitants of 60 buildings on the Prospekt are understandably concerned that pollution will also increase dramatically as a result. 
In addition, the Council maintains that the Prospekt simply won’t be able to cope with these traffic flows. It’s fairly narrow and is crossed by three major roads that are placed fairly close to one another. That means traffic jams are virtually guaranteed, and the Prospekt can’t be widened as the housing is too close to the road itself. In its letter to the Chairman of the Town-Planning and Transport Committee, Vladimir Antonov, the Council stresses more than anything else that the Stroiproyekt plan will simply be inefficient. The letter makes some very professional points on the technical issues involved, and is convincing in its argument that the Council’s proposal will remove these defects. Its major advantages derive from the fact that the ramps up to and down from the overpass will be placed in the center of a park area (the Aleksandrino Forest) where there are no housing buildings. 
In purely professional terms, its advantage lies in its capacity to disperse the transport flows. It’s interesting that, according to the calculations of the TDTIRI, the intensity of flows on the new route (which passes through the forest park) will be considerably less than they would be on the packed Dachny Prospekt if the Stroiproyekt plan is implemented. In fact, according to the TDTIRI, all the streets in the vicinity of the overpass will have their loads lightened when compared with  Stroiproyekt’s plan, with flows being “branched off” to a far greater extent. Just look at the figures: the community plan will let 85,000 cars through a day, while Stroiproyekt’s plan can cater for just 50,000. And, on top of that, the community plan is considerably cheaper. Perhaps that’s why the bureaucrats don’t like it?
It seems obvious that the Community plan is at least worthy of serious consideration. Independent research should be carried out into all the proposed plans. If the public hearings held by the Kirovsky Region Administration had been honestly held, it’s possible that the current scandal could have been avoided. Instead, Smolny has provoked a serious conflict, and we may end up with another poorly thought out intersection. 
The most important thing in all this is that the local residents managed to organize the professional development of an alternative plan, and surpassed the bureaucrats in terms of the quality of their solution.
From the point of view of developing a civil society, it’s evidence of the appearance of something new — citizens are now not only capable of carrying out organized protests, they’re also capable of constructive actions aimed at resolving real problems. After all, the overpass has to be built somewhere. That means that people really are ready to organize themselves. 
It’s clear that the inhabitants of Dachny won’t allow the official plan to implemented. They’ve already said that they’ll block the main roads in the area if their voices aren’t heard. They’ve already gone to court claiming that the official report on the hearings was falsified by the bureaucrats and, having discovered a series of legal infringements, they’re ready to go to the prosecutor’s office. In these circumstances, the City Hall would be well-advised to engage in a constructive dialogue with the community. It would be good for all of us. 

Vladimir Gryaznevich is a political analyst with Expert Severo-Zapad magazine. His comment was first broadcast on Ekho Moskvy in St. Petersburg on Friday.

TITLE: Bush Blues
AUTHOR: By Chris Floyd
TEXT: Last week, America’s troubled sleep was shattered by a trumpet blast of truth sounding deep in Washington’s corridors of power, where the rule of the Lie has held sway for so long. This intrusion of reality into the bloodstained fantasyland of the Bush Regime comes late in the day for the moribund Republic — perhaps too late — but it has struck a mighty blow against the Lie’s adherents, driving them into spasms of hysterical panic, like rats exposed suddenly to the light.
The unlikely instigator of this historic upheaval was U.S. Representative John Murtha, the 73-year-old conservative Democrat and war hawk, one of many “opposition” leaders who once strongly backed President George W. Bush’s murderous folly in Iraq. Murtha, a Vietnam vet, has been a stalwart of the military-industrial complex for decades, supporting U.S. wars around the world and showering legislative largess on the weapons industry — which has obligingly kicked back lobbying contracts to his kin and friends, The Los Angeles Times reports.
But a penchant for typical backroom grease is not necessarily incompatible with political courage. And Murtha showed plenty of the latter when he rocked Washington with a truly revolutionary act in these degraded times: stating the obvious. Calling Bush’s war “a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion,” Murtha said U.S. forces should “redeploy” out of Iraq immediately; otherwise, Iraqis will never feel free, the insurgency will grow, terrorism will spread and the United States will sink further into debt and dishonor, putting the nation’s very survival at stake.
This riot of understatement has been self-evident to most sentient beings for a long time; that it is now sinking into the occluded consciousness of Potomac power players is a turning point of genuine significance. Although Murtha was immediately assaulted in one of the most raucous displays of bile ever seen in Congress — with Bushist attack dogs labeling the war-wounded Pentagon patron a coward, traitor and terrorist-appeaser — his about-face has brought the so-called “extremist” antiwar position of swift withdrawal squarely into the political mainstream, and it won’t go away now. And why should it? After all, it just happens to be the position of a majority of the American people, as poll after poll reveals.
None of this means the Bush nightmare is over, of course; not by the longest shot. This gang will grow ever more vicious as their support crumbles; in fact, it’s a good bet that the worst is yet to come. The Bushists know that they have prison sentences hanging over their heads if they ever lose their grip on power. They will either do “whatever it takes” to keep holding the whip hand — in which case we are in for political and social strife the likes of which America has not seen since the Civil War — or, at the very least, they will make things bad enough that the nation’s power elite will negotiate a settlement, as in Richard Nixon’s day: We won’t prosecute you if you’ll just go away. In any case, it won’t be pleasant.
So no false hopes of a new day dawning. Let’s not forget what happened after the “new dawn” after Nixon’s departure: Six years later, Ronald Reagan was in office with an even worse crew — a lunatic fringe of aggressive militarists, hard-right ideologues and religious extremists allied with rapacious corporate elitists, all bent on destroying the idea of a common good beyond the bottom line. This poison has gone deep into the American bloodstream, and its virulence has been increased a thousandfold by the current regime. Bush’s exit won’t cure the body politic of this wasting disease. 
Nor will it halt the voracious system of dominance and empire that has driven U.S. foreign policy — under Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives — for the past 60 years, covering the earth with more than 700 military bases while waging ceaseless war, directly and by proxy. Indeed, war profiteering has become essential to the wealth and power of the elite, and is now deeply embedded in the U.S. economy as a whole. Bush accelerated this all-devouring engine into overdrive; but he didn’t create it, and his departure won’t derail it.
Thus, even if the Bush Regime collapses entirely, we will still face an uphill battle against “Bushism” and all the long-term currents it represents. We must also guard against something even worse rising in its place. For the Bush years have shown how fragile American democracy is, how relatively little it takes for a predatory faction to seize the state and manipulate the public, cow the opposition, intimidate the press and use violence in pursuit of loot and power. The template is there now, and it’s entirely conceivable, perhaps inevitable, that some new would-be dictator — more competent, more subtle, more adroit than the ludicrous klutz from Crawford — will use it to create a more efficient and durable instrument of domination.
Still, the immediate task at hand — ending the bloody war crime in Iraq and restoring some vestige of legality and reality to American politics — is a tall enough order. So we should take heart from events like Murtha’s declaration and Bush’s freefall in the polls. There has been a shift in the political landscape, which provides cautious but credible grounds for hope of some measure of change. Not a false triumphalism, for there is never any final “triumph” in human affairs; there is only the continual, never-ending task of trying to rise above our worst instincts. But for the first time in years, the sun of possibility has broken through the stinking murk of the Bush Imperium.

For annotational references, see Opinion at www.sptimesrussia.com.

TITLE: Republican Calls For Bush To Explain Plan
AUTHOR: By Jackie Frank
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON — The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee urged President George W. Bush on Sunday to go before the American public to explain his plan for the war in Iraq.  
Virginia Senator John Warner told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said such a public address would be helpful to hold on to public support during the next six months while Iraq sets up its own government and gains the ability to maintain its security.
Bush, who has been out of public sight since he arrived on Nov. 22 at his Crawford, Texas ranch for a Thanksgiving break, has been facing waning support for the war and the lowest job approval ratings of his presidency.
“I think it would be to Bush’s advantage. It would bring him closer to the people, dispel some of the concern that, understandably, our people have about the loss of life and limb, the enormous cost of this war to the American public,” Warner said.
“We have got to stay firm for the next six months. It is a critical period ... in this Iraqi situation, to restore full sovereignty in that country. And that enables them to have their own armed forces to maintain that sovereignty,” he said.
Bush was to speak on immigration in Arizona on Monday and then will return to Washington on Tuesday and give a speech about the war on terror at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis on Wednesday.
Anti-war protesters, including Cindy Sheehan whose son died in Iraq last year and who became an icon for the peace movement after her 26-day vigil near Bush’s ranch in the summer, gathered in the tiny central Texas town again, although in much smaller numbers. They vowed to come to Crawford every time Bush visits his ranch.
Warner was one of the authors of a Senate-passed resolution that called for Iraqis to start taking the lead in their own security next year to allow a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops.
While the Senate rejected a Democrats’ demand that Bush submit a plan and an estimated timetable to withdraw, Democratic Senator Joe Biden of Delaware said on NBC it would be “virtually impossible” to sustain 150,000 American troops in Iraq for the next two years.
Although Biden said he did not believe the Iraq war was lost, he added: “I think we have a six-month window here to get it right. But I have to admit that I think the chances are not a lot better than 50-50.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar, said on “Fox News Sunday” that more pressure needs to be put on the Iraqis to take responsibility for their security.
“But the fact is that we are going to try to train them to perform, and the question is how well they do so, whether they mop up on each other or whether they have a unified country,” the Indiana Republican said.
Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said the goal was to enable multinational forces to be drawn down to under 100,000 troops by 2007.
“Basically, we want to create the right conditions in the urban areas for the Iraqi security forces to assume the responsibility of security in these cities and towns,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
U.S. defense officials said last week that the Pentagon plans to shrink the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, now at 155,000, to about 138,000 after the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections and is considering dropping the number to 100,000 next summer if conditions allow. However, a variety of scenarios are being reviewed, including no troop cuts, based on political and security conditions in Iraq.

TITLE: Kiev Says Famine Was Genocide
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV — Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko said on Saturday it was time to apportion blame for the man-made famine that killed millions of his compatriots under Soviet rule in the 1930s.
Yushchenko was addressing a candlelight ceremony marking the 1932-33 famine induced by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s orders to requisition grain and break the spirit of Ukraine’s “kurkuly” farmers who resisted his drive to collectivise agriculture.
The day had been chosen as the official commemoration day for the famine that was never recognized by the Soviet Union.
The president told 5,000 people in a Kiev square that up to 10 million died in the famine and pressed his case for the United Nations to declare it a genocide. Historians’ estimates put the figure at about 7.5 million.
“The famine was a crime against humanity which had perpetrators, but from the legal standpoint, no guilty parties have been found,” Yushchenko said before kneeling by a monument to the victims erected in the 1990s.
“A murderer may be found responsible for killing one person, but for the destruction of millions, no one is held responsible. Perhaps this is why we in Ukraine have such difficulty today restoring the rule of law, good and social justice.”
Yushchenko said the failure of the Communist system to repent for the famine “stood behind further misfortunes. Perhaps this is why we encounter such difficulty in changing our consciousness, haunted by fear and ideological slavery.”
The pro-Western Yushchenko, brought to power on a wave of Orange Revolution rallies against election fraud, says freedom of speech is one of the chief gains of his first year in office.
He has pledged to improve the judicial system and develop post-Soviet civil society. Officials vow to pursue prominent criminal cases — notably the murder of an investigative journalist in 2000 and the dioxin poisoning the president suffered during last year’s election campaign.
Mourners placed 33,000 candles in Mykhailov Square, corresponding to the number of lives the famine claimed daily at its height. Flags on public buildings bore black ribbons.
The sound of a young woman wailing wafted through loudspeakers and the names of countless victims were read out.
The systematic confiscation of grain and livestock in Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, left millions to die in their homes or in the street, with soldiers dumping bodies into pits. Cannibalism became rife.
The famine was only commemorated after the fall of Soviet rule as Communist authorities for decades denied it had taken place. Historians have also focused on mass famines which beset Ukraine in 1921 in the confused aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and in 1946 after World War II. 
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Sunday praised Ukraine’s reforms since last year’s Orange Revolution but counseled Ukrainians to have patience. 
“It takes time to build the kind of vibrant, progressive, forward-moving nation that you are all working to build,” Clinton said at a news conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
Many Ukrainians have expressed disappointment at their nation’s failure to improve living standards and battle corruption since last year’s mass protests against election fraud. There have been no demonstrable improvements in poverty rates, and Yushchenko’s approval ratings have plunged after a split with his Orange Revolution partners and allegations of corruption against some of his closest aides.
(AP)

TITLE: Peres Mulls Joining Sharon
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JERUSALEM — Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres may leave the Labour Party that ousted him as its leader and join Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s new centrist list, a spokesman for Peres said on Monday. 
The defection of the 82-year-old Peres would represent a vote of confidence by the Nobel peace laureate in Sharon’s oft-repeated pledge to make “painful concessions” for peace with the Palestinians.
But the jury is out over whether Peres, branded a “loser” by Israeli political satirists for repeated defeats in national elections, would win or cost Sharon votes in Israel’s March 28 ballot.
Israeli media reports said Sharon had offered Peres the job of peace envoy if the prime minister’s new Kadima party wins the general election, Israeli media reports said.
Speaking to Israeli reporters on Sunday, Peres said: “It is a very difficult decision, as it is so tied up with historic and other considerations. It will take me a day or two to decide.”
While Peres enjoys wide popularity overseas, many Israelis have been disillusioned by the interim peace accords he championed in the early 1990s, agreements followed by a Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000.
“They very much want him,” Yoram Dori, a spokesman for Peres, said about officials in Kadima. But he said no specific job had been discussed and Peres was “considering what would be the best way to contribute to Israel in the coming years.”
“The Labour Party is something he built up and headed for 20 years. It’s not a simple matter,” Dori said.
A visibly stunned Peres, vice premier in Sharon’s coalition government, lost a Labour leadership election on Nov. 9 to trade union chief Amir Peretz, whose decision to pull the party out of the cabinet reshuffled the political deck in Israel.
Faced with a far-right revolt in Likud over a unilateral Gaza pullout completed in September, Sharon opted to quit the party he co-founded and stake a claim to a middle ground.
The former general, accused by opponents of the withdrawal of having surrendered to Palestinian violence, has pledged to seek peace under a U.S.-backed road map that charts a path toward a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
But he said there could be no talks on statehood until the Palestinians disarm militants under the peace plan, which also calls for a halt to Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.
Sharon and Peres, who have a combined age of 159, forged an alliance a year ago when Labour joined the Likud-led coalition to help the prime minister carry out the first evacuation of Jewish settlements from land Palestinians want for a state.

TITLE: Blizzard Reaks Havoc in U.S.
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DENVER, Colorado — The trip home after the U.S. national holiday Thanksgiving was slow going for many travelers Sunday as blizzard conditions wreaked havoc from Colorado to the Midwest. 
Major airports reported few delays outside the central part of the country, where a storm system brought blowing snow and thunderstorms.
Rain delayed flights out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport up to an hour and a half Sunday morning, but improved to about 30 minute delays by afternoon, Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said. Some 210,000 passengers were expected to pass through its concourses Sunday.
In California, a Greyhound bus headed from Los Angeles to San Francisco overturned, killing two people, injuring dozens and backing up traffic on California’s Highway 101 near Santa Maria for most of the morning.
Authorities suspect driver fatigue contributed to crash — the bus had left shortly after 3 a.m. and the driver had been on the road the night before.
The biggest trouble spot for travelers stretched from Colorado through Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas where blizzard conditions and freezing rain sent cars spinning off roads and forced a shutdown of several highways, including a large stretch of eastbound Interstate 70, the major east-west corridor, from Denver to the Kansas line.
Freezing rain turned roads to ice rinks for miles around Fargo, N.D.
“It is bumper to bumper,” North Dakota Transportation Department district supervisor Bruce Nord said. “There’s slush on the road. It’s just unbelievable, the traffic. When one goes in the ditch, it takes three or four people along.”

TITLE: Last Assassin Of Gandhi Dies at 86
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW DELHI — Gopal Vinayak Godse, the last surviving conspirator in the assassination of the Indian independence leader and international pacifist icon Mohandas Gandhi, has died. He was 86. 
Godse died at his home in the city of Pune late Saturday, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted his son Nana Godse as saying. 
Gopal Godse was part of the group of assassins that attacked Gandhi as the frail 78-year-old walked toward a prayer ground situated in the garden of a New Delhi home on Jan. 30, 1948. Godse’s brother Nathuram stepped out in front of Gandhi and fired three shots.
Nathuram Godse and another man were hanged for Gandhi’s slaying, while Gopal Godse served 16 years in prison.

TITLE: China Hit By Mine Disaster
AUTHOR: By Benjamin Kang Lim and Judy Hua
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — An explosion ripped through a state-owned colliery in northeast China, killing 68 miners and trapping 79 underground, just days after Chinese leaders called for vigilance to prevent major accidents. 
 The blast late on Sunday was the latest disaster to strike Heilongjiang, whose capital city, Harbin, was held hostage for five days by a toxic spill coursing through the Songhua river that provides its water supply, forcing a shut-down of tap water.
Li Yizhong, head of the country’s top work safety watchdog, urged about 270 rescue workers to spare no effort to save 79 miners trapped at Dongfeng coal mine.
Sixty-eight of 221 miners working underground at the time have been killed, while 74 have been rescued, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Investigators blamed the blast on coal-dust explosion, which knocked out all ventilation systems in the pit. The main system resumed operation on Monday.
The accident came about two weeks after an explosion at a chemical plant in nearby Jilin province poured 100 tonnes of cancer-causing benzene compounds into the Songhua river.
An 80-kilometer slick passed through the Songhua River and out of Harbin at the weekend.
Making no mention of the toxic spill, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao called last week for vigilance to prevent major accidents which cause huge casualties and property losses.
Hu and Wen urged law enforcement agencies to implement stricter inspection measures and punish those responsible in accordance with the law, state media said without elaborating.
Taps were turned back on in Harbin, home to nine million people, on Sunday and Heilongjiang provincial governor Zhang Zuoji drank tap water to prove it was safe.
Officials have warned residents to be on the lookout for symptoms of benzene poisoning, which can cause anemia, other blood disorders and kidney and liver damage.
Governor Zhang defended a government decision to delay announcement of the toxic spill by 10 hours, saying it was a “white lie,” the Legal Evening News reported.
“We rectified this ‘white lie’...to protect the right of the people to know,” he was quoted as saying.
The Harbin crisis has raised wider questions about the costs of China’s breakneck economic boom. Around 70 percent of its rivers are contaminated and the cabinet recently described the country’s environmental situation as grim.
Water was discharged from nearby reservoirs to dilute the toxic spill and 1,000 soldiers installed charcoal filters at water plants to ensure water would be drinkable.
Environmentalists have complained that China is not sharing enough information about the spill to protect Russia’s residents and rivers downstream from the Songhua.
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing has expressed regret to Russia’s ambassador over the incident. 
China’s mining industry is the biggest and the deadliest in the world. Accidents killed more than 2,700 miners in the first half of this year alone. 
The country has launched safety campaigns to clean up and shut down illegal mines in the hope that consolidating China’s thousands of tiny and primitive operations will improve safety.

TITLE: Saddam Trial Resumed After Killings
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — The trial of Saddam Hussein for alleged crimes against humanity resumed in a heavily guarded courtroom Monday with the former Iraqi president angrily complaining about having to walk up four flights of stairs under foreign guard. A former U.S. attorney general sat with the defense team. 
After a short session during which the first testimony was read into the record, Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin adjourned the trial until Dec. 5 to allow time to find replacements for two defense lawyers who were slain and another who fled the country after he was wounded.
Saddam and seven co-defendants are charged in the killings of more than 140 Shiite Muslims after an assassination attempt against the former president in the Shiite town of Dujail in 1982. Convictions could bring a sentence of death by hanging. The former leader pleaded not guilty of charges of murder, torture, forced expulsions and illegal detentions at the opening session last month.
Earlier Monday, Judge Amin ordered all handcuffs and shackles removed from Saddam and the seven co-defendants before they entered the court. Mortar fire echoed through the center of the capital just before the session began.
Dressed in black trousers and a gray jacket, Saddam was the last of the eight to enter, walking with a swagger, appearing cheerful and greeting people with a traditional Arabic greeting “peace be upon the people of peace.”
Once inside, Saddam had a brief but heated exchange with the chief judge, complaining that he had to walk up four flights of stairs in shackles and carrying a copy of the Muslim holy book the Quran because the elevator wasn’t working.
The judge said he would tell the police not to let that happen again. Saddam snapped: “You are the chief judge. I don’t want you to tell them. I want you to order them. They are in our country. You have the sovereignty. You are Iraqi and they are foreigners and occupiers. They are invaders. You should order them.”
Saddam complained that he was escorted up the stairs by “foreign guards” and that some of his papers had been taken.
“How can a defendant defend himself if his pen was taken. Saddam Hussein’s pen and papers were taken. I don’t mean a white paper. There are papers downstairs that include my remarks in which I express my opinion,” he said.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former Qatari Justice Minister Najib al-Nueimi were seated with the defense team inside the heavily guarded room, along with Saddam’s chief lawyer Khalil Dulaimi.
A moment of silence was observed in memory of two defense lawyers assassinated since the trial’s opening, and defense attorneys were on hand for the session, despite threats to boycott the hearing to protest against the government’s alleged failure to protect them.
Afterward, the court played the videotaped testimony of former intelligence officer Wadah Ismael al-Sheik, who investigated the assassination attempt and who died of cancer soon after making the statement in a U.S.-controlled hospital last month.
Judge Amin read the official transcript as the tape played without sound. According to the transcript, al-Sheik, who appeared weak, frail and sat in a wheelchair, said about 400 people were detained after the assassination attempt, although he estimated only between seven and 12 gunmen took an active part in the ambush of Saddam’s convoy.
“I don’t know why so many people were arrested,” al-Sheik said, adding that co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam’s half brother and head of Iraqi intelligence at the time, “was the one directly giving the orders.”
A day after the attempt, entire families were rounded up and taken to Abu Ghraib prison, he said. A year later they were moved to another detention center in southern Iraq.
Al-Sheik said he never spoke to Saddam about the affair and received no orders to torture the prisoners. But he noted that Saddam decorated intelligence officers who took part in the followup operations.
He also said co-defendant Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former vice president, headed a committee that ordered orchards in the area — the base of the town’s livelihood — to be destroyed. The orchards had been used to conceal the assailants, he said.
Several mortar blasts could be heard in central Baghdad, although it was unclear where they occurred. There were no immediate casualty reports. 
Tight security surrounds the court proceedings. The precise starting time was not announced due to fear of attack by both Saddam’s supporters and opponents. 
Meanwhile, Iraqi police arrested eight Sunni Arabs for allegedly plotting to kill the judge who prepared the indictment of Saddam, authorities said Sunday. 
The eight alleged plotters from Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority were apprehended Saturday in the northern city of Kirkuk, police Colonel Anwar Qadir said. 
He said they were carrying written instructions from a former top Saddam deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, ordering them to kill investigating judge Raed Juhi, who prepared the case against Saddam and forwarded it to the trial court in July.

TITLE: Ten Dead in Iran Quake
AUTHOR: By Alireza Ronaghi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TEHRAN — Ten people were killed and 50 injured when an earthquake razed mud-brick villages on the Gulf island of Qeshm off Iran’s south coast on Sunday, officials and state media said. 
Iran’s official news agency IRNA said the quake, with a magnitude of 5.9, shook southern Iran for about 10 to 15 seconds at 1:53 p.m. local time.
Tahereh Irankhah, a volunteer with the Red Crescent relief agency in Qeshm, said the main hospital on the island was struggling to keep up with the number of patients.
“The number of people injured is very high, and people are in the corridors. We need tents and blankets,” she said.
State media said there were three strong aftershocks.
“The earthquake was really strong and people poured into the streets in panic. My husband immediately rushed off to one of the stricken villages,” said Sara Sadeqi, 22, a housewife in Qeshm City, the island’s capital.
State television quoted the disaster center in the province of Hormuzgan, which administrates Qeshm, saying 10 people were killed. Regional Governor Heidar Alishvandi said 50 were injured.
Mohsen Kazemi from Iran’s Red Crescent said the four hardest hit villages were Tonban, Gavarzin, Khaledin and Gourian.
Qeshm is the biggest island in the Gulf and is a free-trade zone in southern Hormuzgan province with a population of about 120,000 people.
It is famed for its palm forests and its beaches are much loved by tourists and nesting sea turtles.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was of 6.1 magnitude, and placed it about 58 kilometers southwest of the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas.
There is a large refinery at Bandar Abbas, but state television quoted Iran’s OPEC governor, Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, as saying the country’s oil output and production facilities had not been affected by the quake.
The tremor was the first fatal quake in Iran since February when more than 600 people died in a magnitude 6.4 tremor, centered on the town of Zarand about 700 kilometers southeast of Tehran.
That quake revived painful memories of the devastating 6.8-magnitude quake in 2003 that killed 31,000 people in the desert citadel city of Bam, 1,000 kilometers southeast of Tehran.
Sunday’s tremor was also felt in the neighboring United Arab Emirates.
Witnesses in high-rise buildings said they felt the ground shake for about a minute.

TITLE: Man U Honors George Best by Winning
AUTHOR: By Trevor Huggins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Manchester United came from behind for a pulsating 2-1 Premier League win at West Ham United on Sunday in their first game since the death of the club’s former great George Best. 
A minute’s applause rang around Upton Park before kickoff, while Best’s former team mate Bobby Charlton paid tribute to the Northern Ireland winger who died in a London hospital on Friday. 
Clapping and one-minute silences were properly observed at nearly every English game at the weekend. Players wore black armbands and tributes flowed from former players and leading figures from around the world. 
Sunday’s match started badly, though, for Best’s former club, which was behind after 52 seconds. But second-half goals from Wayne Rooney and John O’Shea turned the game around and hoisted United to second in the table behind champions Chelsea. 
Wins for Everton and Fulham, along with a draw for West Bromwich Albion, moved all three clubs away from the relegation zone in the day’s earlier matches. 
Nigerian defender Joseph Yobo headed the only goal as Everton beat Newcastle United 1-0, American striker Brian McBride scored both in Fulham’s 2-1 win over Bolton Wanderers and West Brom earned a creditable 2-2 draw at Middlesbrough. 
The most awaited game of the weekend was also the last. 
Charlton paid tribute to his former friend, who will be buried in his native Belfast on Friday, and the warmth of the Upton Park response. 
“On behalf of everyone at Manchester United, I would like to say a big thank-you to everyone at West Ham who has put on this marvellous effort today,” Charlton said. 
“It doesn’t really surprise me and I hope that what George Best has given to football will improve the game as we know it.” 
United manager Alex Ferguson was touched by the applause from the West Ham fans. 
“It was fantastic, truly remarkable,” he told Sky Sports. 
“The one great thing we’ve had is to come to a club who appreciate great footballers and who produced so many themselves. 
“They know exactly how we feel when we’ve lost such a great player — as they did with [former England captain] Bobby Moore.” 
Once the match got underway, United was caught out by West Ham’s very first attack, engineered by Matthew Etherington and coolly finished by striker Marlon Harewood. 
A moment of great skill by Rooney, seen by some as a potential successor to Best, latching onto a pass from Park Ji-Sung and dodging his marker before firing home, made it all square in the 48th minute. 
Irish defender John O’Shea rose to head the winner from a corner eight minutes later. 
The game was also a crossing of paths with two former United men, keeper Roy Carroll and forward Teddy Sheringham, who scored in their 1999 European Cup triumph, turning out for West Ham. 
Two brothers were also pitched against each other, with United central defender Rio Ferdinand being marked at corners by his younger brother Anton in the same position for West Ham. 
The venue was also a special one for Rooney, who had made history at Upton Park in February 2003 as the youngest player to wear an England shirt as a 17-year-old. 
His team’s victory moved United on to 27 points, 10 behind Chelsea, who were 2-0 winners at Portsmouth on Saturday, and one ahead of Arsenal, who trounced Blackburn Rovers 3-0. 
United and Arsenal have a game in hand on the champions. 
Boosted by their wins in the earlier kickoffs, Fulham moved up to 14th place on 15 points while Everton edged out of the bottom three to 16th place on 13. 
West Brom are just outside the relegation positions on 12 points, followed by Portsmouth (10), Birmingham City (9) and Sunderland (5).

TITLE: Russians Sweep St. Petersburg Skating Grand Prix
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Double world champions Tatyana Navka and Roman Kostomarov eased to victory in ice dancing on Sunday, completing a Russian sweep of all four events at the Cup of Russia Grand Prix. 
Navka and Kostomarov, who led throughout the three-day competition at St. Petersburg’s Ice Palace, easily beat Israeli champions Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhnovski into second place. 
The Russians, performing their free dance to the music of the Carmen Suite, earned a total of 200.91, more than 16 points better than Chait and Sakhnovski, who also finished behind Navka and Kostomarov at this month’s Cup of China Grand Prix. 
Another Russian duo, 2003 world junior champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, came in a distant third on 176.69. 
All three couples qualified for next month’s Grand Prix Final in Tokyo. 
The winners said they had to work hard for their victory. 
“It wasn’t easy because almost every week we’re changing our free program to make it better and more difficult,” Kostomarov said. 
“Today, we made a small mistake, but the most important thing is to skate well at the Olympics.” 
This is the last season that Navka and Kostomarov are skating together, as Navka has announced that she will retire after February’s Turin Winter Olympics. 
Domnina and Shabalin are expected to take over as Russia’s top duo. 
“We’re satisfied with our performance here, but we’re most happy that we have secured a spot in the Grand Prix Final,” Domnina said. 
“We feel very lucky, as we didn’t expect to be among the finalists.” 
The Israeli couple were satisfied with second place. 
“We’re very happy it’s all over,” Chait said. “We had a few deductions here, and now we go home and will try to get ready for the Grand Prix Final.” 
On Saturday, two-time world pairs champions Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin, two-time world women’s champion Irina Slutskaya and three-time world men’s title holder Yevgeny Plushenko all scored convincing victories to confirm their status as the top contenders for the Turin Olympics.

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: Sibneft Dump CSKA
MOSCOW (Reuters) — Sibneft oil company, sold last month by Chelsea’s billionaire owner Roman Abramovich, said on Monday it would be terminating its $54-million sponsorship deal with UEFA Cup holders CSKA Moscow. 
“The new owner decided that it would make no sense to invest money into advertising the brand of Sibneft on the international or regional level,” Sibneft spokesman Alexei Firsov said. 
Sibneft’s three-year sponsorship contract with CSKA was to have run until March 2007. 
CSKA beat Portugal’s Sporting 3-1 in the UEFA Cup final in May to become the first Russian club to lift a European trophy. Earlier this month they clinched their second Russian premier league title in three years. 
Russia’s state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom bought a 75 percent stake in Sibneft from Abramovich and other shareholders for $13.1 billion. 

Australia On Course
ADELAIDE, Australia (Reuters) — Australia were on course to complete a 3-0 series sweep against the West Indies after a controversial fourth day’s play in the third and final test on Monday. 
The Australians ended the day on 76 for two, needing a further 106 runs for victory with a full day to go at the Adelaide Oval. 
They were set 182 to win after leg spinner Shane Warne and fast bowler Brett Lee combined to dismiss the tourists for 204 just after tea. 

Speedskating Sweep
WEST ALLIS, Wisconsin (AP) — Shani Davis, Joey Cheek, and Casey FitzRandolph gave the U.S. speedskating team a medal sweep in a World Cup 1,000-meter race Sunday. 
Davis was first in 1 minute, 8.43 seconds to win for the second straight day at the Pettit National Ice Center. Davis, who set the world record of 1:07.03 in the 1,000 at a World Cup race last weekend in Salt Lake City, has won four straight races and is the favorite at that distance for the 2006 Turin Olympics. 
Cheek was second in 1:08.68 and FitzRandolph was third in 1:09.11. 

Torch Relay Begins
ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece (AP) — The curse of the Winter Olympics struck again, with heavy clouds over the birthplace of the ancient games frustrating efforts Sunday to light the flame for Turin using the sun’s rays. 
Bad weather also disrupted the ceremony for the Sydney 2000 Summer Games, as well as the past two Winter Olympics — in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Nagano in 1998. 
Officials had to make do with a backup flame lit during Saturday’s rehearsal beside the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera in this lush, riverside sanctuary in the western Peloponnese. Greek soap opera actress Theodora Siarkou, in the white gown and sandals of an ancient high priestess, lit that backup flame by using a concave mirror to focus the sun’s heat on a silver torch — after praying to the ancient sun god, Apollo. 
The 8,300-mile torch relay through Greece and Italy — with forays into France, Austria, Switzerland and Slovenia — ends at the Turin Olympic Stadium for the Feb. 10 opening ceremony.