SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1133 (99), Friday, December 23, 2005
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TITLE: Toxic Spill From China Hits Khabarovsk
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KHABAROVSK, Russia — A toxic spill from China reached Khabarovsk on Thursday, and the region’s governor appealed for calm in the Far Eastern Russian city, where residents have crammed their apartments with bottles, pails, pans and even bathtubs full of fresh water. 
The dreaded slick, which extends for 110 miles, entered the city limits five weeks after a chemical plant explosion in China’s northeast spewed 100 tons of benzene, nitrobenzene and other toxins into the Songhua River. The Nov. 13 accident shut off running water to the city of Harbin’s 3.8 million people for five days. 
The Songhua becomes the Amur in Russia, and Natalya Zimina, a spokeswoman for the regional administration, said levels in the Amur were normal and water supplies to the city of 580,000 would be maintained. 
The slick has been floating downstream and entered Russian territory last week. It could take four days or more to pass through Khabarovsk, but experts warn the ecological effects will last longer. Benzene and nitrobenzene are heavier than water and they are settling on the river bottom or sticking to the ice. 
Come spring, melting ice will pollute not just the river water, but also the banks, according to Yevgeny Rozhkov, an engineer from the Far East Meteorological Agency. 
Tons of carbon are being used to filter out contamination from water supplies taken from the Amur River, which normally provides the city with all its water. 
“We have done everything we could to safeguard and filter the water and we do not plan to cut off water to Khabarovsk,” said Governor Viktor Ishayev. He appealed to inhabitants of the city “to keep calm.” 
Officials have set up a telephone hot line to field calls from worried residents who have filled their apartments with bottles, pots and pans and even baths filled with water. 
Irina Zakonnikova’s family stopped using tap water on Thursday, even though callers to the hot line were assured that it was “absolutely safe” to wash and cook with running water. 
“We are trying to keep ourselves from panicking but of course there is fear,” she said. 
“Residents have stocked up on water and this should be enough to last them for two to three days,” said Vladimir Ott, the regional chief of the Federal Natural Resources Service. 
The regional administration has already banned fishing on the Amur — possibly for up to two years — and residents such as Zakonnikova have filled their freezers with frozen fish. 
But some people are flouting the ban despite the health risks. Galina Denisova, a 69-year-old retiree, was standing at a bus stop in subzero winter temperatures hawking fish. 
She said her husband had caught the fish in the Amur that morning.

TITLE: Kiev Says It Will Resist Blackmail
AUTHOR: By Aleksandar Vasovic
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV — Ukraine’s foreign minister warned Russia on Thursday that Kiev will not be blackmailed by its former imperial master in an escalating gas dispute. 
“We want to develop partnership, friendly and neighborly relations with Russia, but we will never accept blackmail and pressure,” Foreign Minister Borys Tarasiuk told reporters. 
His remarks were the latest volley in an ongoing feud between the two countries over Moscow’s demands that Ukraine pay more than quadruple the current price for the gas it imports from Russia next year. 
Ukraine, which is heavily dependent on Russia for its energy supplies, has warned it could review the $97 million annual rent Russia pays to base the Russian Black Sea fleet in Ukraine’s southern port of Sevastopol. 
Ukraine asked for a phased increase to give energy-inefficient industry time to adjust. Russia’s gas giant Gazprom, however, rejected the request and has threatened to turn off the taps if a deal isn’t signed by Jan. 1. 
Russia provides almost half of the European Union’s gas imports, and some 80 percent of that goes through Ukrainian pipelines. The feud has raised fears that these supplies could be interrupted. 
Tarasiuk said he regrets that “the line of confrontation, which can be seen in the actions and statements of some Russian politicians, narrows the opportunities for a normal dialogue.” 
“One should bear in mind that Ukraine depends on Russia as much as Russia depends on Ukraine,” he said. 
The gas and fleet disputes highlight a gaping rift in Russian-Ukrainian relations that emerged with last year’s Orange Revolution which brought to power pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko. 
The new leadership has sought to bring the former Soviet nation of 47 million away from the Kremlin’s sphere of influence and closer to NATO and the European Union. 
“The matter is not about the figures  ... but about the approaches shown by our [Russian] partners,” Tarasiuk said.

TITLE: ‘Bah Humbug’ From Killjoy Atheists
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — An ocean away, the traditional holiday debate rages: Have shopping malls and iPods taken the Christ out of Christmas? 
But if you ask Alexander Nikonov, the less Christ in Christmas, the better.
“Religion divides people. The task of Soviet society was to carry out a policy that made it as improper to talk about religion as about salaries or syphilitics,” Nikonov said. “Every religion makes a claim to have the absolute truth, and when you have the truth, you can do anything, including kill.”
While murderous priests and syphilis discussion circles are not a national problem, Nikonov has no mixed feelings when it comes to Christmas.
“On the official, governmental level, the holiday shouldn’t exist,” he said.
In another country, he might have added, “Bah, humbug.”
Nikonov is not an average Christmas skeptic. He’s part of the anti-Christmas elite. As head of the Moscow Atheistic Society, Nikonov kicked up a storm in November when he asked the Constitutional Court to remove the word “God” from the national anthem, saying it violated the constitutional separation of church and state. For him and other nonbelievers, official recognition of the Jan. 7 Orthodox Christmas, which started in 1990, is just as bad.
“We can’t fail to see how one of the so-called traditional religions — in other words, Orthodoxy — is making a claim with the gracious agreement of the authorities to a monopoly on Russia’s civic life and culture,” said Valery Kuvakin, professor of philosophy at Moscow State University and president of the Russian Humanistic Society. “This is why, in violation of the Constitution, the official Christmas holiday was introduced as a day off.”
If the willingness to complain about a day off is a sign of principle, Kuvakin clearly believes what he says. He stressed, however, that he did not begrudge believers their beliefs.
“I think it’s fine when Christians celebrate the day, believing that Christ was born on this day (in fact no one knows),” Kuvakin said by e-mail. “I bear no ill will toward these people, but for me personally it’s one of the manifestations of THE TYRANNY OF IGNORANCE.” The emphasis is his.
Kuvakin and Nikonov are clearly in the minority — and not just in resenting days off. Since the Soviet collapse, the percentage of Russians defining themselves as Russian Orthodox has climbed drastically, from 31 percent in 1991 to 59 percent this year, according to polls by the Levada Center. 
Exactly what that self-definition means is open to dispute. Only a fraction of those calling themselves Orthodox attend church regularly and, as with Christians worldwide, Christmas and Easter are the most common times they do so. About 3 million Russians attended Orthodox Christmas services in 2004, including 118,500 Muscovites, according to state figures.
Skeptics say that packed churches are more about diversion than salvation.
“In little towns the numbers are higher, but there are fewer worldly forms of entertainment there than in the major cities,” Mikhail Yeliseikin, who manages the web site Atheism.ru, said by e-mail. “Following ‘the path of the cross’ is a way to pass the time ‘meaningfully.’”
Though Yeliseikin has no Christmas plans himself — “asking an atheist how he’ll spend Christmas is like asking him how he’ll spend his next day off,” he said — the occasion will keep him busy on Jan. 8 as he collects church attendance statistics for his web site.
The irony of an atheist busy with church matters is hardly a rare one. A tour of Yeliseikin’s site and related ones such as Ateist.ru and Ateism.ru shows a community as obsessed with religion as the population of a monastery — if considerably less respectful. The theme of Christmas provoked readers of www.ateism.ru to write semi-scholarly articles tying Christmas traditions to ancient pagan festivals and jokes about Jesus walking into a bar.
Nikonov said there was a long Russian tradition of poking fun at religion.
“In Russian folk tales, the priest is always a negative character — sneaky, fat, greedy, vicious,” Nikonov said. “Our great poet Pushkin wrote ‘The Tale of the Priest and His Servant Balda.’ The tale has a cheery, happy ending: The priest is killed.”
But the good old days of priest-murder tales may be gone forever, Nikonov said, as the government seeks to use Orthodoxy as a unifying national idea.

TITLE: Avtovaz Gets New Board
AUTHOR: By Henry Meyer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s biggest carmaker Avtovaz on Thursday elected a new board with top managers representing the state, news agencies reported, cementing control of a key company in the automobile sector after parallel moves to increase the state’s hold on the energy sector. 
The new chief executive is Igor Yesipovsky and the new chairman of the board is Vladimir Artyakov, both representing the state agency for arms export, Rosoboronexport, Interfax cited company sources as saying. 
The new board also has three representatives from the state-owned Vneshtorgbank and one from the Russian state agency for industry, the Dow Jones Newswires reported. 
Avtovaz declined to confirm the board appointments but said that an official announcement would be made later. 
Analysts said that the move to secure control of the carmaker was part of a strategic push by President Vladimir Putin to reassert state influence in the national economy. 
Under Putin, Russia has moved to snap up chunks of the strategically important oil sector and the state now controls around 30 percent of the national oil industry. 
The Kommersant newspaper reported last month that Rosoboronexport had taken a controlling stake in OAO Avtovaz. The company, which has a complicated and opaque ownership structure, has not confirmed or denied the report. 
Yesipovsky said Avtovaz, which makes the famed Lada car and is based in the southern city of Togliatti on the Volga river, would concentrate on “producing cheap Russian cars,” the Prime-TASS news agency quoted him as saying. 
The new chief executive said that the carmaker may reconsider its joint venture with General Motors Corp. called GM-Avtovaz, which manufactures the Chevy-Niva sport-utility vehicle because it is not making a profit, Interfax reported. 
Although Avtovaz has the largest share of Russia’s expanding auto market, it has steadily lost ground to foreign rivals whose brands appeal to domestic buyers. 
By taking control of Avtovaz, the government aims to rebuild a powerful national car industry but the growing state role in the Russian economy has attracted criticism even within Putin’s administration. 
An outspoken economic adviser to Putin warned Wednesday that Russia was turning into a “corporate” state dominated by big companies. 
Economic adviser Andrei Illarionov said political freedom has steadily declined, while government-controlled corporations stifled competition and ignored public interests.

TITLE: Amended Bill on NGOs Quickly Passed in Duma
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma on Wednesday rushed through a raft of amendments to a bill that would increase state control over nongovernmental organizations and passed it in a crucial second reading, ignoring a wave of protest from Russian and foreign NGOs. 
Deputies voted 376 to 10 in favor of the contentious bill, having approved 62 Kremlin-supported amendments to the original version of the bill passed by the Duma last month. 
They threw out more than 80 other amendments that did not have the backing of the Duma’s Public and Religious Organizations Committee.
The entire debate, including a half-dozen votes, took less than an hour.
United Russia Deputy Sergei Popov, a co-sponsor of the bill and the committee chairman, said that the new version of the bill took into account all concerns, including those voiced by President Vladimir Putin and foreign NGOs.
The bill will be considered in a third, technical reading on Friday and then must be approved by the Federation Council before being signed into law by the president.
Critics of the bill denounced its approval as a rollback of political freedoms and civil society in the country.

TITLE: Economic Advisor Blasts New Face ‘Corporate’ State
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Andrei Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin’s maverick economic adviser, blasted the government on Wednesday for imposing a “corporatist” model on Russia that distanced the authorities from the people and skewed the playing field for businesses.
“The main outcome of this year is the formulation of a new, corporatist model for political, economic, social, public and international life,” Illarionov said at a year-end briefing for reporters. 
The state has built a so-called corporation, Illarionov said, “far removed from Russian citizens.” 
The new model means that some companies are slapped with back tax claims, while others are granted subsidies, he said. Likewise, the state invites foreigners into certain strategic companies but bars them from others.
In the political realm, Illarionov said, “traditional means of getting feedback from society are being destroyed.”
On Wednesday, the Constitutional Court affirmed the Kremlin’s right to nominate governors, who before this year were chosen directly by voters.
Illarionov referred to a recent ranking by Freedom House, which for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union put Russia in the “not free” category, along with Afghanistan and Rwanda. 
Going through his trademark list of the best and worse of 2005, Illarionov said that the “swindles of the year” were the state’s intervention in the energy sector and its attempt to use energy as a “weapon” on the international stage.

TITLE: Court Backs Putin Over Governors
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Constitutional Court on Wednesday backed the Kremlin in a challenge of the federal law that gives President Vladimir Putin the right to effectively appoint governors.
But the court refused to rule on complaints that the law violated the Constitution by allowing the president to disband regional legislatures and dismiss governors.
It acknowledged that Wednesday’s ruling contradicted a ruling made in 1996 that found it unconstitutional for the Altai legislature to appoint a governor. 
Vladimir Grishkevich, one of two plaintiffs in the case, said the court had come under enormous pressure to uphold the Putin-initiated law. The other plaintiff, the liberal Union of Right Forces party, or SPS, vowed to press on with the challenge in the court.
At issue is the law that scrapped gubernatorial elections from the start of this year in favor of presidential nominations. Putin selects candidates and sends their names to regional legislatures for confirmation. The law allows the president to disband a legislature that rejects candidacies more than once.
Grishkevich, a Tyumen geologist and former SPS member, appealed to the Constitutional Court in February, after Putin appointed incumbent Tyumen Governor Sergei Sobyanin to a new term. Sobyanin has since been promoted to presidential chief of staff. SPS joined the lawsuit later.
 The Constitutional Court ruled that the introduction of presidential nominations and legislative confirmations did not violate the constitutional principle of federalism because the final word stayed with regional legislatures.
The changes also did not impinge on citizens’ constitutional rights to “participate in the bodies of government and elect and be elected to the bodies of government” because “legislatures are plenipotentiary representatives of the people,” the court said in its ruling.
The court noted that the Constitution did not prescribe popular elections as the only way to organize all levels of government and did not specify which posts had to be filled by elected officials.
Thus, the president selects the prime minister and sends the nomination to the State Duma for confirmation, the ruling said. It also pointed out that regional authorities appointed senators to the Federation Council. 
The court acknowledged that the ruling contradicted the 1996 Altai decision but argued that the interpretation of the Constitution could change over time, depending on legal and social conditions.
A panel of 17 judges considered the lawsuit, and Chief Justice Valery Zorkin read the ruling. Two judges offered dissenting views, Zorkin said outside the courtroom. One of them, Anatoly Kononov, told reporters that it was unconstitutional to take away rights already enjoyed by the people.
Grishkevich and lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, who represented the plaintiffs, said the court had faced pressure to decide in favor of the Kremlin. They noted that Putin had met with many of the judges on Dec. 9 and thanked them for helping build a strong state.
Grishkevich said he found it suspicious that the State Duma had decided on Tuesday, a day before the ruling, that it would consider a plan to relocate the Constitutional Court to St. Petersburg. A move would likely disrupt the court’s work for years.
Senior SPS official Boris Nadezhdin said his party was preparing a new case and would back a complaint from a governor. “We have such a person in store. Expect surprises,” he told reporters.

TITLE: Senators Support Court’s Move to City
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Council of the Russian State Duma on Tuesday supported a proposal from the city’s Legislative Assembly to move the Russian Constitutional Court from Moscow to the Senate and Synod buildings.
“The senators are convinced that this historic location, which has always housed state organizations, can’t be made commercial,” Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly told reporters on Wednesday. 
The Legislative Assembly’s proposal followed a statement from presidential property manager Vladimir Kozhin, who expressed doubts about whether the state can afford the cost of reconstructing the buildings. At a news conference in Moscow last week, Kozhin suggested that the historic buildings, designed by the architect Carlo Rossi, may be offered to private investors.
The transfer of the Constitutional Court to St. Petersburg, if it happens, will mark the start of what has long been the dream of Governor Valentina Matviyenko, who has been promoting the idea of handing state functions to St. Petersburg since she started her job in the autumn of 2003. 
So far, her plans have received little in the way of backing from Moscow, with no leading politicians having spoken out in support of her initiative. Kozhin’s statement, however, has led to the proposal for the Constitution Court to be shifted to St. Petersburg being seen by many as the only way to stop the State and Synod buildings falling into private hands. 
Matviyenko said the move, if it happens, will serve to strengthen Russia’s legal system and ensure the independence of the court. “Power is overly concentrated in Moscow, and this isn’t right,” Matviyenko told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday. “Duties have to be more evenly spread in a large federal state like Russia, and the capital relieved of certain duties.” 
Lyubov Sliska, vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma has backed the proposal. “This is a good thing to do to end speculations about how corrupt and dependent Russian courts are,” Sliska said on Tuesday.
But Tamara Morshchakova, formerly a judge with the Russian Constitutional Court, dismissed these hopes as naive.
“If we talk about corruption, an overnight train — and that’s all it takes to travel to St. Petersburg — can hardly be seen as a major obstacle,” she told reporters on Tuesday in Moscow. “If we’re alleging that there’s corruption, this move would make no difference.”
Politicians in St. Petersburg however, are battling on.
“I am convinced that St. Petersburg, originally created as a capital city, is fully prepared to assume some of the federal functions,” Tyulpanov said.
His comment was echoed by Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council and a former St. Petersburger. “This initiative is reasonable and well thought out,” Mironov told reporters on Wednesday in Moscow.
Members of the Russian Constitutional Court have yet to be consulted on the proposed move and have offered no comment on the issue. The court’s press office said the organization will comply with any decision made by the State Duma.

TITLE: Cherkesov Lauds Progress on Anti-Drug Enforcement
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Federal Drug Control Service chief Viktor Cherkesov on Wednesday touted his agency’s efforts to combat drugs, saying a sharp post-Soviet increase in drug users had ended due to record drug seizures by his agency.
Cherkesov told reporters that the drug seizures had pushed up the street price of heroin, the drug of choice for young people, and made it less available to new users.
“The number of drug users is increasing, but the growth rate is now declining,” Cherkesov said, citing statistics from health officials that show the number of new drug users registered went down in 2005 — a first in 15 years.
He said the number of drug users has grown from 60,000 in the mid-1980s to 6 million, while the value of the illegal drugs market has surpassed $5 billion.
Cherkesov last month also announced an end to the sharp post-Soviet increase in drug users, and he said that the end had occurred sometime in the past 12 to 18 months. 
He did not provide precise figures on Wednesday, and health officials could not be reached for comment.
Cherkesov also said Wednesday that his agency had seized 130 tons of drugs in 2004 — 2.5 times more than the amount seized over the entire previous decade. He said a similar amount was seized in 2005.
He expressed dismay about the growth in the use of heroin. He said 4 tons — or 40 million doses — were seized this year, compared with just 6 kilograms in 1995.
As a result of the seizures, the price of the heroin, which almost exclusively comes from Afghanistan, has skyrocketed from $35,000 to $57,000 per kilogram, he said.
About 80,000 criminal cases were opened into suspected drug trafficking.
Cherkesov said that contrary to a popular perception that the drug trade is controlled by ethnicity-based gangs, such gangs only control 5 percent of the trade.
He said extremist groups in the Northern Caucasus actively participated in trafficking drugs from Afghanistan to southern Europe via Central Asian countries.
Last month, the Federal Drug Control Service signed a cooperation agreement with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and it signed a similar accord with the Chinese Public Security Ministry earlier this year.

TITLE: Demographic Crisis May Cost Country $400 Billion
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Russian economy is set to lose over $390 billion in the next two decades if the government, business and society do not take immediate action to reverse the demographic catastrophe already looming, a business lobby group said in a report Wednesday.
Businesses are already struggling with a shortage in the work force as the country’s falling birth rate and climbing mortality rate make the Russian population one of the world’s most rapidly shrinking, Delovaya Rossia, a lobby group for small and medium-sized businesses, said. 
“Finding workers is getting more and more difficult for business,” Boris Titov, chairman of Delovaya Rossia, said at a round table on demographic problems.
The Russian population has dropped by 10.4 million people over the last 14 years to 143.4 million, and the country is set to lose another 21.4 million by 2025. The economically active population will shrink by 3.6 million in the next five years alone if the demographic crisis is not tackled, the report said. 
The increasing economic and social marginalization of the male population and the widening gap in life expectancy between men and women risks turning Russia into a female-dominated country, the report said.
 The lobby group slammed the government for its lack of a demographic policy, warning that the state could lose $390.8 billion in gross domestic product by 2025. 
Demographic policy “is not even part of the priority programs proclaimed by the state,” Titov said.
Delovaya Rossia said the government should spend at least 4 trillion rubles ($139 billion) on demographic programs in the next 20 years, which should include financial support for families with two or more children, and for fighting abortions and deaths induced by alcoholism, car accidents and unhealthy lifestyles.
Setting clear-cut rules for immigration could also help to bring an additional 20 million people into the work force from the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, while measures should be taken to reduce the outflow of qualified employees and abolish adoption of Russian children by foreigners.
“If we don’t take measures in the near future, we won’t be able to talk about any economic development or doubling the GDP,” Titov said.
The World Bank warned earlier this month that the economy would lose $66.4 billion over the next decade if the government did not tackle the country’s population decline and encourage healthier lifestyles.
Andrei Kurayev, however, a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, cautioned against loosening restrictions on migration, as it may not be able to absorb incoming cultures. The Russian Orthodox Church should become more accessible to people, especially the younger generation, he said, and seek them out in their own environment — even “at rock concerts.”

TITLE: Gazprom Buys Zenit
AUTHOR: By Conor Humphries
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom has bought a controlling stake in FC Zenit St. Petersburg, a soccer club avidly supported by the gas giant’s chief executive, Vedomosti reported Tuesday.
Both Gazprom and Zenit declined to comment on the report. Governor Valentina Matviyenko said that while negotiations were underway, she was not aware that a deal had been reached, RIA-Novosti reported.
Last week Gazprom — which already sponsors Zenit — bought a 70 percent stake in the club from Vladimir Kogan’s St. Petersburg Banking House, the paper reported, citing sources in both companies. Gazprom subsidiary Lentransgaz, which holds 25 percent of Zenit, sold part of its stake to Kogan in 2002, giving his bank control of the club, the paper said. The sources declined to say how big the transaction was, but Vedomosti estimated it would be between $30 million and $40 million. 
Russian clubs are extremely difficult to value as it is often unclear what assets they own said Anton Derlyatka, head of East European sports business at A.T. Kearney consultancy in Moscow. But Derlyatka said the club was likely to be worth tens of millions of dollars. 
The club currently rents its stadium from the city authorities, but in November Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced a deal to finance a new venue for the team’s home games. Media reports at the time said the project could cost up to $200 million and be financed through tax payments by a Gazprom subsidiary that would be registered in the city. 
UFG brokerage said that foreign investors, whose access to Gazprom shares are about to be liberalized, are unlikely to welcome the purchase of a soccer club.
“It would be a negative development in the context of Gazprom’s largely unsuccessful program to dispose of non-core assets,” UFG said in a note to investors. Gazprom’s ring-fence restrictions against foreign ownership could be lifted in a matter of weeks, once President Vladimir Putin signs off on it. 
Several Russian companies including Russian Railways, RZD, and Norilsk Nickel own major football teams. “Gazprom cannot like all soccer teams, so they favor one,” said Valery Nesterov, an analyst at Troika Dialog. “They chose the one in St. Petersburg — it’s political.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Megafon Numbers 
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The subscriber base of MegaFon Northwest increased 35 percent on the year to 5.4 million users this year, the commercial director of the company’s Northwest branch Nikolai Demenchuk said at a press conference Wednesday. 
Currently the company accounts for 43 percent of the market in the Northwest region, Demenchuk said, adding that further regional expansion is the company’s priority. This year Megafon Northwest has built 520 base stations and upgraded 500 stations, Demenchuk said. 

Amstel Arrives
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Heineken is to introduce its premium Amstel beer in Russia, the company announced Tuesday. The new beer will be produced by St. Petersburg’s Heineken Brewery and will be available in both St. Petersburg and Moscow.

TITLE: Study: $22Bln Spent on Cars in ‘05
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: By the end of this year, Russians will have splashed out $22 billion on cars, a 22 percent increase from 2004, according to a new report published by PricewaterhouseCoopers on Wednesday.
Although the Russian car market is showing the first signs of slowing down, the share of foreign models is still growing steadily, the global consultancy said.
“We are getting toward the top of the hill, but new foreign models are growing tremendously strong,” Stanley Root, a PwC partner and the author of the report, said at a presentation.
This year, 1,720,000 vehicles are expected to be sold in Russia, 7 percent more than in 2004, Root said, citing preliminary data. 
While new imports will account for 23.8 percent of total vehicles sold, domestically produced models look to slip to 48.8 percent, according to the report. The rest of sales will be accounted for by foreign models made in Russia, at 8.7 percent, and used imports, at 18.6 percent.
Russians’ demand for foreign cars continues unabated. The number of second-hand foreign cars sold is set to hold steady at 320,000, despite a tightening of the customs regime. “You would expect a drop, but even a rather significant rise in customs tariffs hasn’t had a result” on the import of used cars, Root said.
Overall, Russians will spend some $22 billion on cars, up from $18.2 billion last year, PwC said.
Sales of new imported cars are expected to jump by 36 percent to $10.2 billion this year, according to the report. In 2004, foreign car sales leapt 70 percent.
“As incomes continue to grow and credit schemes become more available, Russian consumers are swapping domestic models for foreign brands,” said Valery Tarakanov, a spokesman for the Moscow-based Rolf chain of dealerships, which specializes in foreign cars.
The company’s sales are so convincing that Rolf has recently scored a $350 million syndicated loan from Western banks to help it add 13 new dealerships to its seven existing ones, Tarakanov said. 
Having decided that it cannot fight the allure of foreign autos, the government earlier this year lifted duties on key car parts in an attempt to get international carmakers to bring production to Russia. 
The government has said it wants domestically assembled cars — of both foreign and Russian pedigree — to account for 75 percent of car sales by 2008.
Root cast doubt on that goal. “The big question remains whether the government is going to reach that target since the share of imports in unit terms has not changed considerably in the last four years.”
That share is expected to be around 42 percent this year, a slight increase from last year’s 36 percent, the company said.
Low-cost Chinese models with such outlandish names as Jelly and Dadi Shuttle are set to take a bigger bite out of the Russian market, said PwC, which estimated that up to 12,000 Chinese cars would be sold in Russia by year’s end. Carmaker Great Wall will account for 90 percent of that number, Root said. 
Korean, Japanese and American models typically dominate the foreign cars market in Russia, though PwC did not provide a sales breakdown by brand.

TITLE: Governor Speaks Out In Favor Of Cheaper Loans
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mortgage interest rates should be halved and the initial deposit should be decreased to 10 percent, St. Petersburg’s governor said Tuesday.
To make the national program ‘Affordable House’ “not a mere declaration but a project that improves housing supply” a mortgage should be granted not for five years but for 20 or 30 years, Interfax cited Valentina Matviyenko as saying. The city governor suggested either lowering the rate of interest or subsidising mortgages from the federal budget.
Russian banks usually require a deposit of no less than 30 percent of the property’s cost, and the average interest rate is 11 percent in dollars and 14 percent in rubles.
“An increase in the number of mortgages in St. Petersburg to 5,000 next year is very likely,” said Sergei Bessonov, deputy director of the mortgage department at Uniastrum bank.
Among the reasons for this trend Bessanov cited more favorable terms of credit, a gradual decrease in interest rates, and simplified documentation.
Uniastrum works with the federal mortgage program, offering credits for 27 years. Next year the interest rate will decrease from 14 percent to 12 percent, according to an announcement by Alexander Semenyaka, CEO of the Federal Mortgage Agency. Next year the bank plans to establish its presence in 40 regions compared to the 28 where it currently operates.
Other market players were more pessimistic, saying that while 30-year credits are already offered in financial markets, decreasing the initial deposit would be too risky for banks. 
“At the moment a deposit of 25 percent to 30 percent is absolutely justified,” a market analyst said.
The same is true of interest rates. With inflation at 11 percent “banks could simply not lend at lower rates,” the analyst said.
“As well as the risk of default on repayments, and real estate market collapse, there are macroeconomic risks. Russia has a low credit rating and local banks have to borrow money at high interest rates. There is no point talking about reducing interest rates without changing the macroeconomic climate,” the analyst said.
Another expert agreed that the “lack of long term access to cheap finance makes it difficult for banks to decrease interest rates and extend periods of credit.” 
“Banks are waiting for the introduction of securities like bonds and private pension funds, and for insurance and investment companies to enter the financial market,” said Alla Trubnikova, PR advisor for the National Reserve Bank in St. Petersburg.
The three percent refinancing rate introduced by Russia’s Central Bank also affects interest rates. 
“Decreasing the refinancing rate would make credit more affordable. But analysts’ forecasts, which take into account inflation and other macroeconomic variables, suggest that rate is unlikely to decrease in 2006,” Trubnikova said.
Trubnikova also doubted the rationality of extending the loan period.
“We should bear in mind that not all borrowers can or want to take a 30 year long loan. The age of retirement means that such loans are only suitable to those under 30. Some borrowers try to shorten the loan period, as they are uncertain as to their future earnings,” Trubnikova said.
According to a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation last month, up to 60 percent of Russians wish to buy new apartments. However, only nine percent of them seriously plan on acquiring a flat within three to five years. Only one percent of respondents considered their savings sufficient to buy a flat, and 74 percent of people said they would never apply for a mortgage. Another 17 percent said they would consider taking out a loan if annual interest rates were around seven percent, the poll said.
According to an industry source, reducing interest rates would not solve the problem. 
“Over the last few years a one-room apartment in Moscow rose in price from $20,000 to $90,000, which hardly makes mortgages affordable. We need closer cooperation between developers and banks, but the recent law on partake investment does not make the situation any easier,” the source said.
“Other things being equal, more mortgages will only increase the cost of real estate,” she said.

TITLE: A Virtual Election in a Fantasy Chechnya
AUTHOR: By Svante E. Cornell
TEXT: The parliamentary elections in Chechnya orchestrated by the Kremlin on Nov. 27 were another step in President Vladimir Putin’s strategy to gain international legitimacy for his handling of Chechnya. While this may constitute a short-term victory, the elections do nothing to improve the deadlock in Chechnya and the rapidly deteriorating situation in the North Caucasus as a whole.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, if not earlier, Putin has painstakingly followed a five-step strategy for dealing with Chechnya. The first component was to isolate Chechnya and hinder both Russian and international media from reporting independently on the conflict. The second was to rename the conflict: Instead of a war, it was now an “anti-terrorist operation.” Third, Moscow sought to discredit the Chechen struggle and undermine its leadership by accusing the Chechen opposition collectively of involvement with terrorism. Fourth was the “Chechenization” of the conflict: an attempt to turn it into an intra-Chechen confrontation by setting up and arming a brutal and corrupt but ethnically Chechen puppet regime in Grozny under the leadership of Akhmad Kadyrov, the former mufti of the republic. Finally, Moscow declared that the war was over and that a process of normalization was taking place, seeking to legally and politically return Chechnya to the Russian fold and making it an international nonissue.
The first step in normalization was a referendum on laws to elect a Chechen leadership, which was duly held on March 23, 2003. This was followed by an October 2003 presidential election that sought to legitimize the rule of Kadyrov over Chechnya. An unforeseen step was the early presidential election of August 2004, held due to the assassination of Kadyrov in May the same year (which failed to derail Moscow’s plan). The parliamentary election held this November sought to finalize the process of normalization.
This process has garnered a modicum of international legitimacy, but it has blatantly failed to stabilize Chechnya. To the contrary, this misguided enterprise has spread the unrest in Chechnya to the rest of the North Caucasus, jeopardizing Moscow’s control over the region.
The main problem with Moscow’s strategy has been its total disregard for the realities in Chechnya. As a recent report by several Russian and international NGOs titled “A Climate of Fear” aptly suggests, the Kremlin has sought to create a “virtual Chechnya” through propaganda. In this Chechnya, life has normalized and the war is over; the only problem is that this Chechnya does not exist.
The real Chechnya, as documented by innumerable eyewitnesses and Russian as well as international NGOs, is a territory where basic human security does not exist. Federal forces and their subcontractors, the forces of Ramzan Kadyrov, commit atrocities against civilians with impunity while the increasingly radicalized resistance in turn uses indiscriminate violence in and outside Chechnya to increase the cost of the war to Moscow. The extreme brutality of Moscow’s campaign and the lawlessness that plagued Chechnya during its periods of de facto independence have led to a process of “Afghanization” at a wider social level. As in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, the human and material destruction and the collapse of civic norms and values have undercut the very functioning of society, creating a fertile breeding ground for radicalism among a young generation that has known nothing but violence and deprivation.
Thus Moscow’s political enterprise in Chechnya is at best a poor attempt at window-dressing. All four votes — the referendum, two presidential and one parliamentary election — have been farcical. Turnout figures have been widely inflated each time, masking the widespread refusal of the population to take part. In the referendum, the legal texts were drafted in Moscow and were not subjected to meaningful discussion or debate in Chechnya. No true opposition has been allowed to participate. The separatist opposition has been shut out of the process, making any form of reconciliation or conflict resolution impossible. In addition, many independent forces loyal to Moscow have also been shut out of the process by administrative and coercive measures — to safeguard the Kadyrov clan’s hold on power. In none of the elections was real choice available to the people. Freedom of assembly and freedom of the press have been severely restricted, and no true debate has existed. To cap it all, the armed groups ubiquitous in the republic have made any true political process impossible.
The Nov. 27 election was no different: Its results were widely believed to have been predetermined. Only 2 percent of Chechens interviewed in a pre-election poll thought the popular vote would determine the result of the elections. And indeed, United Russia swept the vote despite much lower ratings in the few opinion polls that were conducted.
Like Moscow’s entire plan for the normalization of Chechnya, these elections did nothing to help restore stability and speed up development in the North Caucasus. Instead, their cynical character further alienated the population of Chechnya and neighboring regions. At a time when it is increasingly clear that Moscow fails to control not only Chechnya but the entire North Caucasus, this is a worrisome development.
Even more disturbing is the Western response. In a statement betraying either outright cynicism or total ignorance, a European Union spokesman expressed hope that the elections would lead to peace talks — whereas Moscow’s entire purpose for the elections was to sideline any possibility of peace talks with separatists. Germany’s reaction was even more baffling, with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier characterizing the elections as “progress.” Clearly, EU and German officials cared little here about European values. The elections were monitored neither by the OSCE nor by the Council of Europe. The irony is that the absence of election monitoring — based largely on an assessment that the elections did not even merit the attendance of monitors — gave European officials a free hand to renege on their own principles.
Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan recently invited hundreds of OSCE and Council of Europe observers to their respective elections. The international observation missions, true to form, emphasized that all elections must be held to only one standard, that of the OSCE member states; hence, they did not state whether these elections constituted progress or not. Consequently, failing to meet these standards, the two governments faced strong European criticism that paid little attention to the significant progress both had made in their earnest but incomplete attempts at political reform.
Unlike presidents Ilham Aliyev and Nursultan Nazarbayev, Putin got it right: By staging an election so bad international monitors would not even attend, Russia effectively shielded itself from criticism and provided the opportunity for Western officials eager to appease Moscow to term it progress, instead of holding Russia to the international standards that Europe otherwise claims to hold so dear. 
In the long run this will not help Chechnya’s, Russia’s or Europe’s interests.

Svante E. Cornell is research director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the Silk Road Studies Program, a trans-Atlantic research and policy center affiliated with Johns Hopkins University-SAIS and Uppsala University.

TITLE: A Parallel March in a Parallel World
AUTHOR: By Masha Gessen
TEXT: What could be easier than going to a demonstration? It would seem the simplest sort of political activity: a short-term commitment with no special skills required, and it provides the added bonus of spending time outdoors with a group of like-minded individuals. You would think.
I went to the anti-fascist march on Sunday. Physically, joining the march was a challenge. Every side street leading to Myasnitskaya Ulitsa was closed off by police. 
The only way to join the march was to line up to go through the metal detectors set up at the opening of the Myasnitsky Gates. The pretense that they were set up to protect the safety of participants seemed just that, a pretense: They failed to react to the computer and various electronic junk in my bag.
The metal detectors, like the 400 cops who lined the street, were there to separate the march from the rest of the city. Such is the world of street protest in Russia these days — a parallel world. Somewhere from 1,500 to 3,000 people gathered in the center of Moscow to march down an empty street cordoned off to guarantee the absence of casual observers. 
Shops along Myasnitskaya Ulitsa were closed. Residents were kept from exiting their courtyards. Real living and breathing Moscow was firmly separated from the Moscow that was infected with politics. Then there was the protest itself, which amplified the feeling of having been transported to a parallel universe. 
The organizers — a broad coalition of liberal groups — tried to make order of the banners and posters and flags, but they were not very successful. A group of young people carried posters with the portraits of outstanding Russians, including members of the Ryurik dynasty and chess champion Mikhail Botvinnik, who was Jewish. 
A young couple carried a banner that said, “Russia, you are like a kiss in the freezing cold.” 
And Alla Gerber, a well-known human rights activist, carried a poster that said, “My great Russia is a country of sterling minds.”
Not only was this a parallel universe physically, its language also seemed parallel to the one with which I live. 
What did all these signs and banners mean? They were apparently an effort on the part of the participants to show that they love Russia as much as the ultranationalists do. But since when do declarations of love for one’s country count as the ultimate expression of patriotism? Why have even former dissidents forgotten that dissent can serve as a better measure of patriotism? Why are they speaking the language of the people they claim to oppose?
There was a deeper problem, too. The threat of fascism is an issue engineered by the Kremlin with a transparent dual goal: to siphon liberals’ efforts away from protests against President Vladimir Putin, and to provide justification for cracking down on opposition activity — in the name of fighting fascism. At the same time, the ultranationalist movements launched with the Kremlin’s inspiration and support are clearly taking on a life of their own, and should therefore be fought. We step into this trap with our eyes wide open.
So there we have it. Several thousand people spent their Sunday gathering in a parallel physical space to use parallel language to fight a battle that is parallel to the one they really wanted to take on. And the worst part is, they came because they felt they had no choice. That is certainly why I was there — and why I did not want to be there.
There are times in your life when you feel trapped — when you truly are trapped, in fact. You have your bearings, you can tell right from wrong, but you still cannot find a way out. That is how the anti-fascist march made me feel. It is how I feel more and more often these days. And it’s cold comfort to think that I am far from the only person in this country who feels this way.

Masha Gessen is a contributing editor at Bolshoi Gorod.

TITLE: A winter’s tale
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A century after his birth, the music of Shostakovich is the focus of this year’s Arts Square Winter Festival.
With the great love Russians have for anniversaries, the nation’s classical concert halls are hardly likely to be short of music by Dmitry Shostakovich, who would have reached the age of 100 next year. 
What is expected to become a year of Shostakovich centenary celebrations begins Dec. 28 at the Shostakovich Philharmonic with the start of this year’s International Arts Square Winter Festival in St. Petersburg. 
Subtitled “Shostakovich and His Time,” the event is dedicated to the life and work of one of the city’s most prominent composers. But don’t expect the concerts to be simply a series of Shostakovich’s classics.
“We thought that just playing Shostakovich would be boring,” said the festival’s artistic director Yury Temirkanov. “His contemporaries, fellows and friends wrote very different music, and we have decided to put his art in the context of what was being created in his time. We hope that this attitude will attune the essence of Shostakovich’s music and present it in a new light.”
Musicians and singers set to appear at the festival include soprano Barbara Hendricks, baritone Dmitry Khvorostovsky, violinist Vadim Repin, conductor Vladimir Spivakov and his ensemble “Moscow Virtuosi.”
The festival was launched in 1999 by Temirkanov, artistic director of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra at the Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall on Ploshchad Iskusstv — or “Arts Square.” Temirkanov’s idea was to restore the long-lost pre-Revolutionary tradition of a sparkling wintertime social life, with concerts, balls, masquerades and parties sweeping over the city during the New Year holiday.
During its seven-year history, the festival has become an extensive annual event, encompassing “Western” Christmas, New Year, Orthodox Christmas and Old New Year (according to the pre-Revolutionary calendar) celebrations.
The downtown square, centered around a statue of Russian national poet Alexander Pushkin, is adorned with some of the city’s finest cultural assets. Two of them — the State Russian Museum and the Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall — are at the heart of the Arts Square Festival.
“There is no square like it in the world, and we must use it to its full potential,” Temirkanov said.
The festival opens with a Dec. 28 concert at the Shostakovich Hall, featuring Maxim Shostakovich, the composer’s son, conducting the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in a program of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.1, Piano Concerto No.1 and five pieces from the opera “Katerina Izmailova.” 
The guest soloist will be pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn, son of the legendary Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
One performance to look out for during the festival will be a concert of works by 20th century Russian composers Georgy Sviridov, Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturyan under the baton of Temirkanov with the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and violinist Vadim Repin; another will be the closing concert of the festival on Jan. 7, when baritone Dmitry Khvorostovsky will sing Shostakovich’s “Suite on Verses by Michelangelo” for bass-baritone and orchestra, with Temirkanov conducting the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.
The festival’s long-term partner, the State Russian Museum, traditionally organizes an exhibition running concurrently with the performances in the festival. This year, the exhibition is “The Art of Collage in Russia in the 20th century,” which has already opened in the museum’s Benois Wing and will run until March.
Natalya Kuleshova, deputy director of the Russian Museum, said the show explores the development and diversity of the genre over the last 100 years.
“The first items on display date back to the Silver Age, and the most recent one have been created and acquired by us just three or four years ago,” Kuleshova said. “The fragmentary style of collage as a genre is provoked by the rhythms of life in big cities and it perfectly reflects the modern chaotic way of thinking.”
There is no direct link between the life and music of Shostakovich and the art of collage in Russia but Kuleshova feels the projects fit well together.
“We felt that the diversity and style of the visual art represented at the exhibition will match the spirit of the music,” Kuleshova said. “They are connected by a string of associations, rather than by any literal or material thing.”
The festival is also designed as a social occasion, with the highlight being Temirkanov’s traditional New Year’s Eve Ball, which is always held at the magnificent Yusupov Palace.
As with every previous Arts Square Winter Festival, Temirkanov is introducing a talented newcomer to the city’s concert-goers this year. The name to watch this year is pianist Alexander Kobrin.
On Jan. 3, he appears alongside actor Leonid Mozgovoi, cellist Nina Kotova and Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji in a program of poetry reading called “Two years of Strife,” set to music by Shostakovich.
Temirkanov’s previous protÎgÎs have included, among others, the Chinese pianist Lang Lang and the Kazakh conductor Alan Buribayev.
The performances of an already established but still very young talent, Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji, are not to be missed.
On Jan. 4, Shoji performs with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Temirkanov in a program featuring Khachaturyan’s Violin Concerto, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 and Dmitry Kabalevsky’s Overture for Colas Breugnon.
A native of Tokyo, the 22-year-old violinist gained international attention in 1999, when she became the first ever Japanese musician to win first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition in Genoa, Italy.
Shoji has performed here before. In 2000, the talented up-and-coming violinist was invited to the city by renowned pianist Irina Nikitina, who runs the annual “Musical Olympus” festival showcasing concerts by winners and laureates of the world’s most prestigious musical contests. Nikitina was overwhelmed by Shoji’s performance in Genoa, and personally invited the gifted violinist to St. Petersburg.

www.philharmonia.ru
www.artsquarewinterfest.ru
www.rusmuseum.ru

TITLE: The return of Decadance
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Once one of the most fashionable house clubs around, Decadance is back on the city’s clubbing map after two year’s absence and is ready to promote what its founders regard as the “right system of show business.” 
The revived club wants to destroy “the institution of discounts” that plagues many St. Petersburg nightspots and earn the respect of its public. The club’s promoters said they will also refuse to do anything to purposely attract clients. 
Decadance’s promoters said they may introduce a 1,000-ruble cover in an attempt to fight the persistent assumption that clubs are generally free to get in to. They said that this is largely a result of the financial crisis of 1998 when people stopped going out to nightclubs and covers were dropped or lowered.
“So now we are in a situation, when people don’t respect the place they visit and they tend to move on to a different club, and then to different club again,” Alexei Haas, Decadance’s designer said. 
When clients do pay a cover, they make sure they stay until they get their money’s worth, Haas said. 
According to Haas, who has worked in New York and for Kiss FM radio, free entry to nightclubs is absurd and cannot be found anywhere in the world.  
However, Decadance’s promoters promised free entrance to “all beautiful girls.”
Local clubbers might not like the idea of buying entrance tickets instead of presenting club cards or sneaking in for free, but Haas thinks it is perfectly normal.
“That’s how show business operates. Money is its blood.” 
Eduard Muradyan, one of the club’s founders and an influential figure in St. Petersburg show biz circles who is also behind the restaurant Moskva, said the club expects a return on the $1.3 million revival project in two or three years. 
Haas also believes the club will be a success. 
“When I work on club interiors my biggest aim is to help the venue to become a perfect money-generating machine. All the places I’ve designed in the past made their owners reach people very fast,” Haas said.
The designer has also worked on the interiors of well-known Moscow venues including Titanic and Zeppelin. 
Nevertheless the promoters said they eschew publicity and gimmicks such as “special nights” to attract people.
“I don’t like the word ‘program.’ We won’t try to squeeze anything out of ourselves just to come up with some special program, as many promoters do,” Muradyan said.
“Good music, a good atmosphere and good company. This is all we can offer to our guests and this is what makes us different from the city’s other clubs,” he said. 
As for “face control,” Muradyan and is associates refused to give any precise criteria. 
“We don’t want to define our policies in relation to the club’s music, dress code or face control. As soon as a person defines a certain thing then he or she loses his or her interest in this thing,” Haas said.
Despite the new club’s insistence that everyone pays, even those that  have the money may not get in. Conversely, Muradyan said they will be happy to see “any beautiful person with a positive attitude to life.” 
The usual intrigue as to who gets in and who doesn’t remains. 
“A club is a game. We don’t put people inside strict borders, we don’t promise anything and we don’t guarantee anything,” Haas said.

TITLE: The Word’s Worth
TEXT: Now that Russian law gives its hard-working citizens a long holiday between Jan. 1 and Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 7, how about a train trip? But before you go, it’s a good idea to master some of the lingo. Dictionaries aren’t much help with slang and the alphabet soup of railway abbreviations. 
The first issue is: What kind of ticket? Legend has it that during the Soviet period, railway officials were not allowed to use the word “class,” so they invented new terms to describe the various levels of comfort. Áèëåò â ïëàöêàðòíûé âàãîí (a ticket for a third-class car) is the lowest class of travel. 
According to dictionaries and the Russian Railways web site, ïëàöêàðòà is a numbered or reserved seat that goes along with your ticket (áèëåò). Depending on the train, this can either be a ñèäÿ÷åå ìåñòî (seat) or ëåæà÷åå ìåñòî (berth), but both are hard, and the compartments with berths have no doors. People usually refer to ïëàöêàðòíûé âàãîí to indicate the class of fare, and to further confuse you, in everyday speech people sometimes incorrectly turn the feminine ïëàöêàðòà into the masculine ïëàöêàðò: Ìû áðàëè ïëàöêàðò (We went third class). 
The next level up is êóïå — a compartment. The dictionary tells you this is any kind of train compartment, but the key concept for travelers is that êóïå has four “soft” berths and a door. When you order your ticket, you will be asked, Ñ óñëóãàìè èëè áåç? (literally, “With services or without?”). You go for the services, since they include ïîñòåëüíîå áåëü¸ (bed sheets). Otherwise, you sleep under your coat. 
The top fare is ÑÂ, which seemingly simply stands for ñïàëüíûé âàãîí (sleeper) — confusing, of course, because there are sleeping cars in the other classes as well. But Ñ means just two berths and exciting perks like ïðåäîñòàâëåíèå êîìïëåêòà ïå÷àòíûõ èçäàíèé, êîìïëåêòà ïîñòåëüíîãî áåëüÿ è íàáîðà ïðåäìåòîâ ñàíèòàðíî-ãèãèåíè÷åñêîãî íàçíà÷åíèÿ (provision of periodicals, bed sheets and a selection of toiletries). 
There is also ôèðìåííûé ïîåçä — a deluxe or special train, which has a name like Ñòðåëà (The Arrow) instead of just a number. And these days, now that we’ve forgotten about a classless society, there are intriguing new abbreviations: Ó — âàãîí ïîâûøåííîé êîìôîðòíîñòè (ñ äîïîëíèòåëüíûìè óñëóãàìè) (U: a car with special comforts (additional services); Ô — ôèðìåííûé âàãîí (F — a deluxe car); or ÁÑ âàãîí áèçíåñ-êëàññà (BÑ a business-class car). My favorite is the baffling ÍÔ — íåôèðìåííûé âàãîí ôèðìåííîãî ïîåçäà (NF — a non-deluxe car in a deluxe train). I guess this means that you have to go to the next car to use the ôèðìåííûé òóàëåò (deluxe toilet). 
But what I want is a ticket in âàãîí ÁÕ — áåç õðàïà (the non-snoring car). I must be working off a karmic debt, because my roomie for the longest trips is always the guy who snores non-stop all night, loud enough to wake the dead. 
What can you do? Nothing. 
As one conductor sadly told me: Õðàï íåèçëå÷èì. (Snoring is incurable.)

Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
Sergey Chernov is on vacation.

TITLE: In Kharms’ way
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Russian author Daniil Kharms was born a hundred years ago.
Centenary celebrations for absurdist author Daniil Kharms in St. Petersburg this year have come to a head in the last two weeks leading up to the 100th anniversary of the date of his birth on Dec. 30, 1905. 
Writer, poet, one of the founders of the famous group of avant-garde poets OBERIUT (“Association of Real Art”), Kharms was arrested in 1941 for anti-Soviet activity and starved to death in a prison during the Siege of Leningrad in 1942 at the age of 36. 
In the 1950s, Kharms children’s stories became well-loved but it was only after glasnost in the 1980s that so-called “Kharms for adults,”  — the most significant and powerful of his work — was rediscovered (although much of his literatary heritage had appeared in the West in the 1970s). 
Kharms’ amazing sense of the absurd and his double-edged, black humor makes it possible to parallel him with the surrealist and absurdist tradition, and place him alongside such authors as Lewis Carroll and Franz Kafka. 
Last weekend was marked with two noteworthy Kharms events. 
The Navicula Artis gallery at the Pushkinskaya 10 contemporay arts center opened an exhibition called “Kharms’ Christmas Tree” on Friday. 
With this marvelous project artist Yury Aleksandrov and curators Gleb Yershov and Andrei Klukanov restored Kharms’ idealized apartment and temporarily peopled it with local contemporary artists. 
The recreation of the apartment took few resources because it was made in an inventive and schematic way: the apartment’s plan is depicted on the floor of the gallery with the help of black lines. The idea is very similar to film director Lars von Trier’s methods in his recent films “Dogville” and “Manderlay.” 
The Kharms’ original 1928 drawing of his apartment is attached at the entrance. The restoration of the apartment is supplemented with the reconstructed biographies of its inhabitants — Kharms’s relatives — that hang on the gallery walls. 
Works by local artists also occupy the Kharms apartment. In the sitting room there is a wardrobe by the artist Shkap, the interior of which overflows with flowers as a metaphor of the man. In the dining room, the work “Hungry Times” expresses grim humor with artificial sandwiches placed on the dining table. 
A small square room dedicated to Kharms’ father is poetically decorated with a reconstructed panorama of the Kamchatka coast. Kharms’ father drew the orginal, now lost, panorama when he was exiled to Sakhalin, in Russia’s Far East, because he was an opponent of Tsarist rule prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. It is a perfect blend of art and biography. 
On Sunday, centenary celebrations were continued by another group of artists headed by one of the prominent figures of St. Petersburg’s non-conformist movement, Kirill Miller.
This event, immodestly claimed as the “event of the year” in its publicity, featured a big meeting with slogans, posters and megaphones in the yard of 268 Kamenoostrovsky Prospekt.
Accompanied by a performance from the Comic-Trust theater group, Miller presented a sculptural relief of Kharms on the wall of the building. The portrait of Kharms is inserted into a depiction of an exclamation mark, which, according to the artist, represents a laconic and graphic expression of the “energy of speech.” The idea sounds good on paper, but in reality the sculpture is a bit of a let down. 
More venues joined the Kharms celebration last week with an exhibition called “Kharms Might be Around” at the Rumyantsev Mansion wing Museum of History of St. Petersburg opening on Tuesday. There could be some truth in the title: the museum’s old women custodians resemble Kharms’ famous “babushki” characters. 
Unlike other exhibitions, this show consists of works of Kharms’s contemporaries. In the 1920s and ’30s, absurdity was all around in the Soviet Union. Following Kharms’ lead from a play he wrote in 1927 called “Leterburg” placing the city’s mental landscape between Tsarist St. Petersburg and Soviet Leningrad are the drawings of Alexander Vakhrameyev and very strange, not to say kitsch, colored porcelain figures of Pushkin. 
The exhibition suffers from casual selection, but the fact that almost all exhibits are displayed for the first time undoubtedly raises its value. The show also includes Kharms’ 1941 portrait of Vladimir Greenberg, paintings by Boris Ermolayev, water-colors by Mikhail Matushin, sketches by Gergiy Novikov, as well as engaging hand-made Christmas tree decorations produced by one of Kharms’ neighbors.   
Not to be outdone, the State Russian Museum joined centenary celebrations  with an exhibition called “The Miracle Man Was of Large Stature” at its Stroganov Palace annex on Thursday. 
The show gathers prominent contemporary artists from St. Petersburg, Moscow and Rotterdam such as Ludmila Belova, Mikhail Karasik, Vladimir Kozin, Vladimir Pushnitsky, and Andrei Chezhin to reflect on Khrams’ legacy with a presentation of their works including drawings, photographs, books, videos and installations. 
A highlight of the event is the premiere of “On Phenomena and Existence #3,” a film inspired by Kharms’ stories.  

“Kharms’s Christmas Tree” runs through Dec. 25  at the Navicula Artis gallery. www.navicula.ru
“Kharms Might Be Around” runs through Feb. 21  at the State Museum of History of St. Petersburg: Rumyantsev Mansion. www.spbmuseum.ru 
“The Miracle Man Was Of 
Large Stature”runs through end of January at the Stroganov Palace. 
www.rusmuseum.ru

TITLE: All you need is love
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Swiss video installations on show at the Hermitage Museum’s education center.
The National Center for Contemporary Art has brought a little love from Alpine Switzerland to wintry St. Petersburg with a video installation project called Love.com. 
The Russian organizer of the event, Maria Korosteleva, said that Love.com is probably the first attempt to show Swiss contemporary video art in St. Petersburg.
Swiss artists Katja Loher and Sylvie Rodriguez, taking part in the the project at the State Hermitage Musuem’s educational center, display two multimedia installations presenting contrary experiences of love. 
Although Loher’s piece is based on a fairly commonplace sense of what love is — something that happens between two people — it is quite extravagantly realized. In “Floating Rendez-vous” Lohar presents three videos projected on three large suspended balloons. 
The video part of the work, featuring a couple trying to live underwater, intensifies the balloon metaphor of love as something “suspended” and in which it is difficult to stay balanced and rational. 
In the opposite hall, Rodriguez comes back down to earth with an installation called “Where about?” In concrete terms the work adressess the price of love through the theme of hostage-taking and ransoms. Love demands small everyday verifications, but here it becomes the subject of a rigid external test. 
Since there are different types of hostage-taking situations, there are different types of love — that of relatives, of friends and of the state. 
The latter is the most topical and, unfortunately, the most elusive and unreliable. 
In the work, monologues spoken by hostages burst through big wooden sheets covered by photographic images of trees, clouds and deserted localities, expressing a feeling of total futility and indifference. 
As well as presenting their own works, Loher and Rodriguez have prepared a video art program by other artists. It consists of 10 love-themed pieces produced during the last five years by Swiss artists of different generations. 

“Love.com” runs through Dec. 29 at 
the The State Hermitage Educational 
Center, 45 Moika. 
www.ncca-spb.ru

TITLE: Looking both ways
AUTHOR: By Walter G. Moss
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What a phenomenon Edvard Radzinsky is. His new biography of Tsar Alexander II was on George W. Bush’s summer reading list this year; the author suggested in an interview that the U.S. president might have seen a parallel between today’s war on terror and Alexander’s battle against Russia’s first terrorists. Radzinsky’s earlier biographies of Rasputin, Nicholas II and Stalin were successful both in Russia and abroad. As a playwright, he once had as many as nine shows running simultaneously in Moscow; television audiences know him as the award-winning host of the Channel One series “Mysteries of History.” In a recent essay for The Wall Street Journal, Radzinsky wrote of a lecture he gave on Alexander to a nearly sold-out Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in 2003: “The evening was recorded and replayed on TV over three days. The ecstatic cameraman repeatedly cut to the faces of the lovely young women in the audience who, for over three hours, listened in rapt silence to a tale of the history of their Fatherland.”
Such success might well arouse envy in other historians, a possibility Radzinsky indirectly acknowledges while discussing the historian Nikolai Karamzin in “Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar.” “Karamzin was a brilliant writer,” Radzinsky writes, “who betrayed his muse of fiction ... and became a historian.” Because Karamzin’s work was extremely popular, it became “a source of inspiration for future Russian writers, and naturally an object of ruthless criticism for professional historians.” Being of the latter ilk myself, I’ll try to avoid that deadly sin of envy and stay as objective as possible. 
To begin with, Radzinsky, as translated by Antonina W. Bouis, has written a very readable work. His dramatic gift makes him among the most accessible of historical biographers, and he has again picked a subject worthy of his attention — the tsar who presided over the Great Reforms that abolished serfdom, overhauled the judicial system, established the zemstvo system of elected district assemblies and modernized the Army; won the reputation of “a royal Don Juan”; and was murdered, after numerous previous attempts, by the People’s Will terrorist group in 1881. Almost a quarter of the book is devoted to historical background and to Alexander as tsarevich, and even more space is allotted to the last three years of his life and to the terrorists who pursued him. Throughout the biography, readers are treated to colorful and accurate depictions of characters and settings. 
Yet Radzinsky’s dramatic gift has a downside. Loving drama, he seeks out the sensational and is prone to seeing conspiracies where the evidence for them is at best slim. “There was an Iago in the Winter Palace,” he writes, spinning a theory about how Minister of the Court Alexander Adlerberg and other reactionaries, including high-ranking officials of the security police, deliberately allowed the People’s Will to plot against, and eventually kill, the tsar. “The idea of making the People’s Will concentrate on killing the tsar would have suited them,” he writes. “Was that why the police were so useless and why the terrorists lived so freely?” Radzinsky leaves little doubt as to his own opinion. Other historians, however, generally attribute the police’s failures to disorganization and inefficiency. 
Although the title of the book might suggest differently, the ruler Radzinsky depicts does not generally come across as “great.” The author tells us that one of the tsar’s chief character traits was vacillation; Alexander was “a two-faced Janus, one head looking forward while the other looked back longingly.” This assessment seems accurate in view of Alexander’s effort to modernize Russia while maintaining a backward-looking autocracy. I would only add that the two-faced Janus trait was to some extent also characteristic of Alexander II’s successors, Alexander III and Nicholas II, who attempted the same difficult feat with a similar lack of success. Their tragedy and that of Russia was that modernization chafed against their traditionalism, sparking numerous tensions and conflicts. 
Radzinsky suggests that the greatness Alexander II did display was most evident during his early reform period, from the mid-1850s through the mid-1860s, and during the last year of his life, when he “was great once again” and began “looking only forward.” But little consideration is made of the historical factors that led Alexander to act more decisively on issues such as the emancipation of the serfs. And Alexander’s other major reforms are dealt with very briefly. There is no explanation, for example, of the zemstvos’ work or of the fact that the military reform greatly shortened the active-duty requirement. We are told that the judicial reform of 1864 created “equality of all citizens under the law,” but as historian Jerome Blum noted long ago, that equality extended to “everyone except the peasants,” who were, of course, the majority of the population. 
Regarding Alexander’s final year, Radzinsky believes that the tsar’s support for Minister of the Interior Mikhail Loris-Melikov’s reforms indicates a renewed strength and forcefulness. He maintains, but does not prove, that Alexander had decided to limit autocracy. Yet the Loris-Melikov plan, which the tsar backed shortly before his death, merely provided for the creation of several commissions that would make legislative recommendations in areas of finance and administration to the tsar’s advisory State Council. True, some delegates of the commissions would be elected, as would others on the State Council, but creating advisory groups does not limit autocracy. Decades ago, the historian Pyotr Zayonchkovsky, who is not listed in Radzinsky’s bibliography, noted that “Loris-Melikov’s project did not infringe on the principles of autocracy,” but that it could have marked the start of such a process if certain subsequent steps had been taken. A big “if” indeed. Nevertheless, Radzinsky’s point about Alexander being “great once again” is worthy of consideration.
As in his previous works, Radzinsky makes good use of archival materials and other primary sources such as diaries and reminiscences. Yet the present biography reveals less new information about its subject than did the author’s books on Rasputin, Nicholas II and Stalin. Unlike his other translated works, no English-language (or non-Russian) sources are listed in the bibliography. Books such as Richard Wortman’s two-volume “Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy,” various Western accounts of Russian terrorists, and Alexandre Tarsaidze’s “Katia: Wife Before God” are all valuable resources. Tarsaidze’s book includes many of the tsar’s letters to his mistress. If Radzinsky is aware of these letters’ existence, it is not evident in the biography. 
Although “Alexander II” is generally accurate, there are some mistakes. For example, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first wife, Maria Isayeva, was not previously “wife of the warden” of the prison camp where the writer labored for four years. In 1849, the rebel Mikhail Bakunin was sentenced to death by the Saxon government, not that of Prussia, and he did not take “part in the Polish uprising against Nicholas I,” though he did attempt to help the Poles in 1863. Although Radzinsky sometimes tells us where he got his information, he often does not (there are no footnotes or endnotes), making it difficult to assess its reliability. 
Despite these caveats, there is no denying that Radzinsky has once again written a biography that will significantly increase awareness of the subject and stimulate debate. Anyone who can get an audience to listen “for over three hours ... in rapt silence to a tale of the history of their Fatherland” deserves the gratitude of historians everywhere. History is much more exciting than our dull prose often renders it, and Radzinsky reminds us that people will read and listen if we make the past come alive.

Walter G. Moss teaches history at Eastern Michigan University and is the author of “A History of Russia” and “Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.”

TITLE: Blair Pays Surprise Visit to Iraq
AUTHOR: By Jill Lawless
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BASRA, Iraq — Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Polish counterpart paid their troops in Iraq surprise visits on Thursday to bring them holiday greetings. 
Blair flew into the southern city of Basra from Kuwait aboard a British military plane. The trip was not disclosed in advance for security reasons. The pre-Christmas visit was Blair’s fourth trip to Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
Blair was to meet with senior British and American officials on Iraq’s security situation and last week’s parliamentary election.
Washington and London, facing persistent domestic opposition to the war, hope the election will produce a stable government and pave the way for the withdrawal of some American and British troops. The ballots are still being counted.
Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz arrived late Wednesday at Camp Echo in Diwaniyah, the Polish military’s headquarters in central Iraq. He wished the troops there “a peaceful, happy and quick homecoming,” the Polish Press Agency reported from the base.
Marcinkiewicz’s visit comes as the country awaits a decision on whether Poland will keep troops in Iraq. The last government had pledged to withdraw the force — currently numbering 1,400 — in January. However, Marcinkiewicz’s team, which took office last month, has hinted its may extend the mission.
Britain has 8,000 troops in the country, based around Basra. The contingent is second only to that of the United States, with 160,000 troops. Ninety-eight British troops have died in Iraq since the invasion.
The British leader has repeatedly said British troops will not leave Iraq until Iraq’s government asks them to go. Recently, though, Blair and senior ministers have spoken of reducing the number of British troops as early as March, after the new government is installed.
Blair said last month that it was “entirely reasonable to talk about the possibility of withdrawal of troops next year.”
Blair’s popularity has been battered by his decision to join the U.S.-led invasion, and he has faced allegations that his administration exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction to bolster the case for war.
Blair’s Labour Party was re-elected to a historic third term in May, but its House of Commons majority was slashed, partly as a result of opposition to the war.
Last week the commander of Britain’s 7th Armored Brigade in Iraq, Brig. Patrick Marriott, said there should be no significant reduction in the number of British troops until after provincial elections in the south next spring, because of the risk of factional fighting between rival Shiite groups.
In the months after the 2003 invasion, British troops enjoyed relative peace in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq compared to the restive Sunni regions further north. British commanders pointed out with pride that soldiers patrolled in berets, rather than helmets.
But violence in the region has escalated. Roadside bombs and other attacks have killed 10 British soldiers in southern Iraq since May. The instability was highlighted in September when British troops stormed a police station to free two commandos who had been arrested by Iraqi police. The soldiers were subsequently found in the custody of Shiite militias and the incident led to an eruption of violence in Basra.

TITLE: Saddam Claims He Was Beaten in Custody
AUTHOR: By Mariam Fam
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein insisted again Thursday that he had been beaten by his American captors, denouncing Washington’s denials as “lies” and mocking President George Bush’s claim that Baghdad had chemical weapons. 
In courtroom turmoil, an assistant prosecutor asked to resign and the defense team threatened to leave court unless a guard was removed. The judge ordered the guard out. He also admonished Saddam’s half brother, once head of Iraqi intelligence, to speed up his answers.
When the court gave the former leader an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses, Saddam instead used the time to expand on earlier assertions that he had been abused in custody. He claimed that the wounds he suffered from the alleged beatings had been documented by at least two American teams.
On Wednesday Saddam told the court he’d been beaten “everywhere” on his body and insisted the marks were still there. He did not display any marks.
U.S. officials strongly denied the allegations.
On Thursday, Saddam said American denials couldn’t be believed, noting that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq despite Bush’s pre-war claims that Saddam was harboring such weapons.
“The White House lied when it said Iraq had chemical weapons,” Saddam said. “I reported all the wounds I got to three medical committees. ... We are not lying, the White house is lying.”
The former Iraqi leader and seven co-defendants are on trial for the deaths of more than 140 Shiites after a 1982 attempt on Saddam’s life in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.
The first witness Thursday — speaking from behind a curtain and with his voice disguised — said he was 8 years old at the time of the killings in Dujail. He said his grandmother, father and uncles had been arrested and tortured, and that he’d never again seen his male relatives, implying they’d been killed.
Saddam said the court should not depend on the testimony of witnesses who had not reached adulthood at the time of the alleged crime. The witness then told a defense attorney he hadn’t been arrested and didn’t see any dead bodies.
Saddam’s half brother and co-defendant — Barazan Ibrahim, who was head of the Iraqi intelligence during the Dujail killings — argued with prosecutors, accusing them of belonging to the Baath Party, Saddam’s former party, in an effort to discredit them in the eyes of Iraqis.
One assistant prosecutor threatened to resign over Ibrahim’s allegations, but the judge wouldn’t allow it. “The biggest insult I’ve gotten in my life was being accused of being a member of this bloody Baath Party,” the prosecutor said.
The judge at one point told Ibrahim to speed up his answer, and Ibrahim responded: “Don’t oppress me. I passed through this experience in the past. During the interrogation I used to be asked questions that need one hour to answer and they wanted a yes or no answer. When I used to answer he used to slap me in the face while my hands were tied from behind.”
Defense attorneys said one of the court guards then made threatening gestures toward Ibrahim, and said they’d walk out if the guard didn’t leave. The judge had the guard removed.
Witnesses on Wednesday graphically described how their captors administered electric shocks and used molten plastic to rip the skin off prisoners in a crackdown following the assassination attempt in Dujail.
Saddam then grabbed center stage with claims that Americans beat and “tortured” him and other defendants while in detention.
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad called Saddam’s allegations “completely unfounded” but said “we are prepared to investigate.”
“Beyond that, we have no interest in being a part of what are clearly courtroom antics aimed at disrupting the legal process,” said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. 
The trial’s chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Mousawi, said if authorities found evidence of abuse Saddam could be transferred to the physical custody of Iraqi troops. 
The prosecution’s first witness Wednesday testified about killings and torture in Dujail. Ali Hassan Mohammed al-Haidari, who was 14 in 1982, said Saddam’s regime executed seven of his brothers. 
Al-Haidari said that he and other residents from Dujail — including family members — were taken to Baghdad and thrown into a security services prison, where people from “9 to 90” were held. 
Blood poured from head wounds and skin was pale from electric shocks, he testified. Security officials would drip melted plastic hoses on detainees, only to pull it off after it cooled, tearing skin off with it, he said. 
“I cannot express all that suffering and pain we faced in the 70 days inside,” he said.

TITLE: Annan Reacts Strongly to UN Critics, Attacks Media
AUTHOR: By Edith Lederer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Kofi Annan lashed out at the media after a year of unrelenting attacks on the United Nations and criticism of his management of the $64 billion oil-for-food program in Iraq, calling one critic “an overgrown schoolboy.” 
He criticized reporters Wednesday for what he said was unfair coverage of his role in the oil-for-food program and insisted reporters missed the big story. That, he said, was the more than 2,200 companies and invididuals from some 40 countries that paid kickbacks or illegal surcharges to Saddam Hussein’s government to get contracts.
An 18-month investigation led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chief Paul Volcker cleared Annan of influencing an oil-for-food contract that went to a company which employed his son, Kojo, but was strongly critical of his management of the program.
At Annan’s year-end news conference, he honed in on one of his most persistent critics, James Bone of The Times of London, who for months has raised questions at the daily UN briefing about the secretary-general and his son’s knowledge and possible involvement in the oil-for-food scandal.
On Wednesday, Bone mentioned a Mercedes-Benz which Kojo imported into Ghana using his father’s diplomatic immunity to avoid taxes and customs duty, and said some of the secretary-general’s version of oil-for-food related events “don’t really make sense.”
“I think you’re being very cheeky,” Annan interrupted. “Listen James Bone, you’ve been behaving like an overgrown schoolboy in this room for many, many months and years. You are an embarrassment to your colleagues and to your profession. Please stop misbehaving and please let’s move on to a serious journalist.”
Annan said his greatest regret was failure to prevent the war in Iraq.
“One thing that I would have liked to see done is for us to have done everything that we could have done to avoid a war in Iraq,” he said. “That has brought such division within this organization and the international community. That is one thing that I must say still haunts me and bothers me.”
He called last year really difficult,” but said “I’m in great shape, raring to go next year.”
The secretary-general’s rare outburst Wednesday came in the throes of a battle over the UN budget and management reforms in the UN General Assembly as Annan heads into the final year of his 10-year term at the helm of the United Nations.
“I’m not afraid of criticism,” he said. “Some criticisms have been constructive and helpful and I accept that. Some have been out of place and have really gone beyond the zone of all reasonableness, and you wouldn’t expect me or anybody in this house to accept that.”
Bone walked out and said later: “The Volcker report raises many serious questions about the integrity of the UN, and it’s important that public officials paid with taxpayer money answer these questions fully and without accusing the press.”
At the end of the conference, the president of the UN Correspondents Association told Annan that Bone had a right to ask a question and was not an embarrassment.
“You have the right to ask all questions you want to ask,” Annan replied. “I reserve the right to refuse to answer questions I don’t want to answer. But there is a certain behavior and a certain mutual respect which we have to respect.”
In his final year as UN chief, he said his three priorities will be the fight against poverty and disease, peace and security, and reform of the United Nations as well as terrorism, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria relations and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

TITLE: Japanese Population Declines For the First Time On Record
AUTHOR: By Chisaki Watanabe
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO — Japan’s population dropped this year for the first time on record, the government said Thursday, signaling a demographic turnaround for one of the world’s fastest-aging societies. 
The Health Ministry’s annual survey showed deaths outnumbered births this year by 10,000 — the first time that had happened since such data were first compiled in 1899, ministry official Yukiko Yamaguchi said.
The announcement marked an acceleration of earlier projections that forecast Japan’s population of 127.7 million would start declining as early as 2006 and would likely fall by 27 million people to 100.7 million by 2050.
The crowded nation’s declining birthrate — 1.29 children per Japanese woman in 2004, also a record low — is at the root of the population turnaround. Later marriage ages, cramped housing and high education costs are cited as reasons for women having fewer children.
While fewer people could mean a roomier Japan, the shrinking population could threaten the country with labor shortages, tax shortfalls and an overburdened pension system as the ratio of taxpaying workers shrinks in comparison to the number of retirees.
Earlier this year, a report by the government’s Statistics Bureau said nearly one in five Japanese were aged 65 or older in 2004, and the figure could balloon to one in four in the next decade.

TITLE: Bertuzzi To Play For Canada in Olympics
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TORONTO — Rookie sensation Sidney Crosby was left off Canada’s Olympic hockey team while controversial forward Todd Bertuzzi was selected to make the trip to Turin as the defending gold medallists unveiled their Winter Games lineup on Wednesday. 
Suspended for 17 months for a brutal on-ice attack that left Colorado Avalanche’s Steve Moore with a broken neck, Bertuzzi’s inclusion on the Olympic squad was one of the few mild surprises as Canada opted for a mostly experienced lineup to defend the title it won in Salt Lake City.
The makeup of Canada’s men’s team had been the subject of national debate for weeks leading up to the announcement that was carried live on the country’s three sports networks.
That debate is sure to continue among hockey-mad Canadians in the final weeks leading up to Turin with Crosby, the most hyped rookie since Wayne Gretzky, being overlooked despite a superb debut season and a personal endorsement from Pittsburgh Penguins Hall of Fame captain and owner Mario Lemieux, who made the 18-year-old the number one pick in this year’s NHL draft.
“It’s never an easy task,” said Kevin Lowe, Team Canada’s assistant executive director, while making the announcement at Vancouver’s GM Place. “We talked this morning and there’s a good chance that it could be Sidney leading this team in 2010.
“But this time we wanted to go with proven veteran players.”
Lemieux, who captained Canada to gold four years ago, was among those left off the squad having ruled himself out after being admitted to hospital earlier this month with an irregular heartbeat. 
The 23-member team will include 10 holdovers from the 2002 Olympics, where Canada ended a 50-year gold medal drought with a win over the United States in the final.
Goaltender Martin Brodeur, defencemen Rob Blake, Adam Foote, Ed Jovanovski, Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger, and forwards Simon Gagne, Jarome Iginla, Joe Sakic and Ryan Smyth will form the nucleus of the squad.
Problems could lie ahead for Canada’s management team even before they arrive in Turin.
A story in the Toronto Globe and Mail on Wednesday, said that the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), which has final say in all team selections, was disturbed at the possibility having Bertuzzi, Shane Doan and Dany Heatley being named to the men’s squad and could keep all three from playing at the Olympics.
According to the Globe and Mail report, the COC has concerns about Bertuzzi’s attack on Moore that led to the power forward pleading guilty to assault causing bodily harm in a British Columbia court and one-year probation.
Heatley has also had well publicized brushes with law, pleading guilty to multiple charges in a vehicular homicide case stemming from a car crash that resulted in the death of his then Atlanta Thrashers team mate Dan Snyder.
Doan has recently come under the microscope for allegedly uttering a racial slur at a French referee at the end of a game between his Phoenix Coyotes and Montreal Canadiens.
Much of the festive mood surrounding the ceremony was diluted by the absence of Gretzky, the man widely regarded as the architect of Canada’s win in Salt Lake City and the 2004 World Cup.

TITLE: Eight-Year Doping Ban For ’05 French Open Finalist
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — The tennis career of Argentina’s Mariano Puerta lay in tatters on Wednesday after he was banned for a record eight years after a positive drugs test. 
The International Tennis Federation said its independent Anti-Doping Tribunal had ruled that 27-year-old Puerta tested positive for the banned stimulant etilefrine after his French Open final defeat by Spain’s Rafael Nadal in June.
In a statement on its official website the ITF said it was imposing an eight-year suspension from June 5 this year in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Agency code.
No tennis player had previously been banned for more than two years.
It was Puerta’s second doping offence and the unprecedented length of the ban effectively ends his career, although it fell short of the lifetime ban which could have been imposed under the rules.
Puerta served a nine-month ban after testing positive for the banned anabolic agent clenbuterol in 2003.
“The Tribunal determined that Mr. Puerta’s analytical positive result was caused by an inadvertent administration of etilefrine,” the ITF said.
In a statement issued through his solicitors, Puerta said: “My position has always been that I did not deliberately or knowingly ingest any prohibited substances.”
“I will be, of course, be considering an appeal with my lawyers but no decision will be taken until the New Year.”
The ITF said Puerta’s results at Roland Garros would be disqualified and he would forfeit the ranking points and 440,000 euros ($523,000) prize money he won in the singles and the 3,282 euros he won in the doubles. 
In addition, all results achieved by Puerta since the French Open will be disqualified and he will lose the entry ranking points and prize money of $330,925 gained in those events.
Puerta, who was ranked 13 in the ATP’s entry system before Wednesday’s ruling, has three weeks to decide whether to lodge an appeal.
France’s L’Equipe newspaper reported in October that Puerta had returned a positive test after traces of etilefrine were found in his urine after the Roland Garros final against Nadal, which Puerta lost 6-7 6-3 6-1 7-5.
At the time Puerta said there was no truth in the report.