SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1142 (8), Friday, February 3, 2006
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Iran Defiant as Russia, China Back Referral
AUTHOR: By George Jahn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA — U.S. and European diplomats campaigned behind the scenes Thursday in a last-minute effort to gain the broadest possible consensus for reporting Iran to the UN Security Council within days over concerns it is seeking nuclear weapons. 
The negotiations came as the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors began a two-day meeting on a European draft resolution calling for Tehran to be referred to the Security Council, which can impose sanctions.
Iran remained defiant and its chief nuclear negotiator threatened to suspend all voluntary cooperation with the IAEA if his country is referred to the Security Council.
Diplomats at the meeting said adoption of the resolution within the next few days was certain, but Washington and the European Union, the key backers of referral wanted to build as much support as possible.
The chief of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the meeting opened a “window of opportunity” to defuse the crisis, stressing that even if the issue is referred, the Security Council would not take up the issue before next month.
“We are reaching a critical phase but it is not a crisis,” he told reporters.
The IAEA board was expected to approve the motion easily because Russia and China — which have veto power on the Security Council along with the U.S., Britain and France — now support reporting Iran following months of opposition. 
But protracted back-room negotiations were being held to achieve broader consensus.
Iran, which claims its program is peaceful and aimed only at generating electricity, has warned that referral would provoke it into doing exactly what the world wants it to renounce — starting full-scale uranium enrichment, a possible step to developing nuclear weapons.
Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani reiterated that threat in a letter to ElBaradei that was made available to The Associated Press.
He said referral would leave his country no choice but “to suspend all the voluntary measures and extra cooperation” with the IAEA — shorthand for reducing monitoring authority over its nuclear activities.
Furthermore, “all the peaceful nuclear activities being under voluntary suspension would be resumed without any restriction,” the letter warned.
Grigory Berdennikov, Russia’s chief IAEA delegate, reinforced Moscow’s position outside the meeting, telling reporters that referral to the Security Council would send Iran “a serious signal.
Chief U.S. delegate Gregory L. Schulte agreed.
“It is time to send a clear and unequivocal message to the Iranian regime about the concerns of the international community by reporting this issue to the Security Council,” he said.
Washington has waited years for international suspicions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions to translate into support among board nations.
Only a simple majority is needed to approve the text, but America and its key backers have held off pushing for earlier referral in hopes of building support for the measure.
While a broad majority of member nations support referral, a handful of countries that have major policy disputes with the Americans remain opposed — among them Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and Belarus.
“My delegation manifests its total disagreement with the proposal ... to bring it to the Security Council,” chief Venezuelan delegate Gutavo Marques Marin said, reflecting the view of dissenting nations. 
A vote could be delayed until Friday, possibly even Saturday, as diplomats accredited to the meeting said the draft could still undergo small-scale modifications to gain more support. 
Diplomats said India, which had been opposed, was leaning toward supporting the draft now that China and Russia had signed onto it. Countries opposed have the choice of directly voting against the text or abstaining. 
Speaking for Germany, Britain and France — the three nations representing the European Union — German chief delegate Herbert Honsowitz told the meeting: “The time now has come for the Security Council to get involved.” 
Iran’s decision Jan. 10 to restart small-scale uranium enrichment — and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent calls for Israel to be wiped off the map — apparently rattled Beijing and Moscow enough to support the U.S. position. Iran became more insistent on its right to pursue a nuclear program and less cooperative in talks with European negotiators after the election of the hard-line Ahmadinejad last June. 
The call for referral was contained in a confidential draft resolution obtained by the Associated Press. It “requests the director general to report to the Security Council” on steps Iran needs to take to dispel international suspicion it could be seeking to manufacture nuclear arms. 
The draft expresses “serious concerns about Iran’s nuclear program” and notes “the absence of confidence that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.” 
If the board approves referral as expected, it will launch a protracted process that could end in Security Council sanctions for Tehran. 
“I am making very clear that the Security Council is not asked at this stage to take any action,” ElBaradei said. 
Moscow and Beijing support referral only on condition that the council take no action until at least March, when the board next meets to review the status of an IAEA probe into Iran’s nuclear program and recommends further action. 
Berdennikov, the Russian delegate, emphasized his country’s position on the delay, telling reporters Moscow “insists” no Security Council action be taken before March.

TITLE: Yeltsin, 75, Enjoys Bash At Kremlin
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Six years after handing over the reins of power to a then-little known Vladimir Putin, a chipper-looking Boris Yeltsin was due to return to the Kremlin on Wednesday to celebrate his 75th birthday with an invited 250 guests, including his former counterparts U.S. President Bill Clinton and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
And while members of today’s political elite offered congratulations and cautious praise for Yeltsin — still a highly unpopular figure among ordinary Russians — the man who steered Russia, at times unsteadily, into the post-Soviet era offered a piece of advice: If you love your children, keep them out of politics.
“It’s not easy being president of Russia,” Yeltsin said in an interview published in Wednesday’s Izvestia. “For the first it was very hard. For the second it’s also exceptionally difficult. For the third, fourth, and all who follow, it won’t be any easier.”
“My advice is, if you want your children and grandchildren to be happy, don’t send them into politics,” Yeltsin said.
Yeltsin also offered an echo of the vintage ‘90s-era bear growl he occasionally used to admonish the United States in an interview broadcast on Channel One television on Wednesday evening.
“I do not like the fact that the monopolization of policy by the Americans is still going on,” Yeltsin said, adding that the United States had “dictated terms” on Afghanistan and Iraq and was now doing so in Iran. “This is unacceptable,” he said.
State television channels reported the Kremlin celebration in their evening newscasts, but showed no pictures and it was not clear if Clinton or Kohl had arrived.
Public opinion about the man once known as “Tsar Boris” has remained dismal since he left office with a surprise declaration on New Year’s Eve 1999, leaving eight years of government crises, dubious privatizations, mass hardship and often embarrassing public appearances in his wake.
In a December poll of 1,600 Russians by the Levada Center, only 9 percent said they viewed Yeltsin favorably, while 49 percent wanted his immunity from prosecution — granted by Putin within days of his leaving office — revoked, and 70 percent said the Yeltsin era as a whole had brought more harm than good. The numbers, which carried a margin of error of 3 percent, were virtually identical to those from five years ago. 
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov typified such sentiments while speaking about the Yeltsin years on Wednesday.
“I consider that time to be lost time for the country. Much could have been done economically and in the social sphere to avoid the colossal deprivations, the loss of the nation’s authority, but it wasn’t done,” Luzhkov said at a journalism awards ceremony, Interfax reported.
“Without a doubt there were mistakes — the illusion that it would be possible to make global changes quickly, in one fell swoop,” Yeltsin admitted in an interview published in last week’s Itogi magazine. “It wasn’t possible to solve everything in an instant.”
But the man often blamed for the country’s dashed hopes of universal prosperity and great-power status still drew a star-studded crowd to his Kremlin birthday bash on Wednesday evening, which began with a chamber music concert in the Kremlin’s gilded Alexandrovsky Hall, followed by a reception in the Georgiyevsky Hall.
The expected guests included presidents Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan; State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov; and 20 governors.
Among the other former heads of state expected to attend were Kyrgyzstan’s ousted president, Askar Akayev, and former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, both of whom Yeltsin considers personal friends. 
Notably absent from the invite list were opposition politicians, including Rodina’s Dmitry Rogozin, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov —Yeltsin’s chief opponent in the bitterly contested 1996 presidential elections. 
Russian media reported that a liberal former protege of Yeltsin’s, Boris Nemtsov, had not received an invitation due to the Kremlin’s objection. A spokeswoman for Nemtsov reached by telephone Wednesday said, however, that she could not confirm the reports, and that Nemtsov would not have been able to attend, as he was in Israel.
Putin lavished praise on his predecessor on Wednesday.
“Thanks in large part to you and your active, fruitful efforts, Russia achieved fundamental successes in building a democratic government based on the rule of law and a civilized civil society, as well as in reviving traditional spiritual values,” Putin told Yeltsin, according to the Kremlin web site.
Putin had spoken more cautiously at his annual news conference Tuesday, saying it was far too early to judge Yeltsin and his era conclusively. However, Yeltsin’s “enormous historical service” was that during his presidency “Russian citizens received the most important thing: freedom,” Putin said.
Birthday wishes poured in during a day that included a visit from Patriarch Alexy II, who awarded Yeltsin the Dmitry Donskoi award for his contribution to church-state relations. Other awards included honorary judge’s robes from the Constitutional Court and being named a distinguished citizen of the Samara region, Interfax reported.
Effusive telegrams came from Latvian President Valdas Adamkis and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, with the latter taking on a political tinge in light of the bitter recent dispute over gas prices. Yushchenko noted in his birthday greeting that he had especially valued Yeltsin’s efforts to strengthen Russian-Ukrainian cooperation, Interfax reported.
A birthday telegram from Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the habitually provocative leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, mixed ironic congratulations with downright insults.
“Personally and in the name of LDPR I wish you a happy birthday! This year you turn 100,” said the telegram, which was posted on LDPR’s web site. “I am sure that you deeply regret becoming president. It brought happiness neither to you, nor to your family, nor to Russia. ... No one will curse or hate you anymore. Now you’re simply a kindly grandfather, and that’s a good thing.”
In recent interviews, Yeltsin has appeared unperturbed by critics who continue to accuse him of shaming the country with public drunkenness, trading major state assets for political gain and recklessly starting two Chechen wars.
“I wanted people to be happy and free, and Russia to be a strong, dignified, civilized country,” he told Izvestia. “I had no other goals.”

TITLE: U.S. Experts Slam Russian Nuclear Security
AUTHOR: By Henry Meyer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. experts on Thursday called on Russia to step up efforts to remove highly enriched uranium from civilian facilities and keep terrorists from acquiring radioactive materials, warning it could be only a matter of time before a terrorist nuclear attack. 
Michele Flourney, with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Moscow’s presidency this year of the Group of 8 major industrialized nations gives it an opportunity to play a global leadership role in countering this threat. 
Moscow could “take a leadership role in preventing catastrophic terrorism” during its G8 presidency, she told a joint Russia-U.S. news conference. 
Laura Holgate, with the U.S.-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, said that the terrorists could manufacture a Hiroshima-scale bomb without “prior nuclear bomb-making knowledge or experience” because the design was available from open sources and with a relatively small quantity of radioactive materials. 
A crude nuclear device could be manufactured with just 40-60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, according to the expert. 
“If we were to suffer from some kind of terrorist attack with nuclear devices, we would wish we had moved faster to secure and remove these dangerous materials. Now is the time to speed up the process,” Holgate said. 
“The reduction and elimination of threats from the civilian use of highly enriched uranium is achievable,” she said. 
During a trip to Moscow last month, the top U.S. official in charge of nuclear safety efforts said the United States plans to work with Russia to boost international security by transporting spent atomic fuel from Soviet-designed research reactors to a reprocessing plant in Russia. 
Holgate said that process of removing the highly radioactive materials from civilian facilities across the world could be speeded up by transferring them not only to the United States and Russia but to other established nuclear powers such as Britain and France. 
Over 100 civilian facilities in some 40 nations have enough highly enriched uranium on site to make one or more bombs, many without adequate security, she said. 
Holgate said the United States should offer more funding for this program, describing the current annual budget of $100 million as insufficient. But she said Russia itself, as the country with the largest number of research reactors, needed to take the lead in minimizing civilian use of highly enriched uranium. 
“Little progress has yet been visible in terms of shrinking the highly enriched uranium use of Russian research facilities,” she said. 
Flourney said that Moscow could use its special ties to many ex-Soviet bloc nations that hold significant stocks of radioactive materials to persuade them to send them back to Russia. 
She cited two cases of al-Qaida operatives arrested trying to buy what they thought was highly enriched uranium and documents found in Afghanistan and Pakistan that showed a sophisticated knowledge of nuclear issues 
“We’ve been lucky so far,” she warned. “But we are in a race with the terrorists.”

TITLE: Georgian Police Fight Russian Peacekeepers
AUTHOR: By Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Fistfights broke out after Georgian police tried to impound a Russian peacekeepers’ truck involved in a traffic accident near the breakaway South Ossetia province, sparking a clash that highlighted the tensions between Georgia and Russia.
The truck rammed into a local resident’s sedan Tuesday evening, shattering a headlight and denting the car; no one was injured, Rustavi-2 television reported Wednesday. 
When police tried to take the truck to a police station, the peacekeepers radioed for help from their comrades, who arrived in armored personnel carriers and got into fistfights with police. Shots were fired into the air to stop the clashes. 
Russia’s Defense Ministry said about 100 Russian peacekeepers were involved in a standoff with some 300 Georgian servicemen. 
“Only thanks to the Russian servicemen’s self-control, it was possible to avoid the incident’s exacerbation with unpredictable consequences,” it said. 
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin and South Ossetia’s separatist leader, Eduard Kokoity, met in Moscow and denounced Georgia’s “unlawful action” as an attempt “to discredit the peacekeeping mission,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. 
Georgian Defense Minister Irakly Okruashvili said that the Russian peacekeepers did not have Georgian authorities’ permission to travel to the area, and denounced their action as “outrageous.” 
The chief of the Russian peacekeepers, Marat Kulakhmetov, defended his subordinates, saying the Georgian military had violated a truce by sending a military unit into the conflict zone. 
“That was a deliberate provocation,” Kulakhmetov said. “That was an attempt to provoke an armed clash. We did everything to avoid violence.” 
The Russian Foreign Ministry later issued a separate statement saying that “the political arena in Tbilisi is dominated by people who want to provoke bloodshed and blame it on Russian peacekeepers.” It warned Tbilisi against “the escalation of such provocative actions against the peacekeepers.” 
Next week, the Georgian parliament is set to consider a resolution calling for the withdrawal of the Russian peacekeepers from South Ossetia, a move certain to further strain Georgian-Russian relations.
Georgia was left freezing last month when supplies of Russian gas were halted by a pipeline explosion. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili alleged the explosion and slow repairs on the pipeline were part of Moscow’s efforts to punish Georgia, charges Russia has vehemently denied. 
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday harshly assailed the Georgian leadership for “spitting” on Russia and warned that its action would backfire. Saakashvili responded Wednesday, saying his nation would “reunite no matter how others try to impede that.”
 In a separate incident, rival lawmakers in the Tbilisi city council brawled Tuesday during a debate over the energy crisis suffered by the country in recent days. 
The fight between members of the National Movement ruling party and opposition lawmakers erupted as the opposition criticized Saakashvili’s government over how the crisis was handled.

TITLE: Steep Rise in Police Corruption in 2005
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Crime in the police force grew dramatically in 2005, with nearly 50 percent more crimes recorded and one-third more officers held responsible for crimes, Interfax cited the Interior Ministry’s Internal Security Department as saying Tuesday.
The figures included 156 police officers in the North Caucasus who were found to have cooperated with rebels or even participated in terrorist attacks, the department said in a statement.
Recorded crimes by police officers rose by 46.8 percent year on year, and a total of 4,269 officers, including 630 senior officers, were held criminally responsible, the department said. Corruption and abuse of office were the most common crimes committed, the department said. 
Most of the officers convicted of corruption worked as patrolmen, or in passport and visa services, criminal investigation and the traffic police.
Of the 156 officers who cooperated with rebels or participated in terrorist attacks, 16 currently face criminal charges, while another 20 have been dismissed from the force. It was not clear from the statement what happened to the other officers, however, and no one answered the telephone in the department’s press office Tuesday afternoon.
Last September, several Chechen police officers confessed to helping the rebels between 1999 and 2001 and to participating in the bombing of five trains in Chechnya, the statement said.
The statement also referred to the most high-profile case of police corruption revealed last year, of a ring that was found to be selling fake identification cards and passes, including for the Kremlin.

TITLE: Diplomat Denies Misuse of NGOs
AUTHOR: By Stephen Boykewich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — British Ambassador Anthony Brenton on Tuesday rejected allegations that Britain had improperly funded Russian nongovernmental organizations, and insisted that Britain would continue funding NGOs in the face of a spy scandal that President Vladimir Putin has said justifies restricting them.
Speaking on Ekho Moskvy radio about a purported British spy ring and earlier FSB claims that a British spy had been funneling money to Russian NGOs, Brenton said such claims were “unjust.”
“The United Kingdom works very hard with a wide range of NGOs on objectives that are of value both to Russia and the United Kingdom. Our activity is entirely transparent and above board,” Brenton said.
“I completely agree with Putin’s comments about NGOs restraining the government’s authority, provided those organizations are openly and transparently financed,” Brenton said.

TITLE: State TV Challenges IT Portal
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russiatoday.com, a U.S.-based English-language news portal, said it has been asked by Russia Today television to prove that it has authorization from the Russian government to use the word “Russia” in its name.
The web site said in a statement that the request had come from Sergei Frolov, the general director of RIA-Novosti, the state news agency that set up Russia Today.
“Thousands of companies the world over will be quite surprised to know that they need an official stamp of approval from Moscow to use the name ‘Russia,’” said David Rothstein, CEO of European Internet Network, which owns and operates Russiatoday.com. 
The English-language satellite channel was launched late last year with a mandate to improve Russia’s image abroad.
The web site was set up in 1996 and acts as a clearinghouse for Russia-related news.
The statement said Frolov asked for proof after Russiatoday.com complained that the channel was infringing on its brand name.
In May, the State Duma passed a law forbidding Russian non-state media organizations from using the word “Russia” in their names.

TITLE: Run-Down Cinemas May Turn Private
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The number of privately-owned cinemas in St. Petersburg might double over 2006 as the city’s government plans to pass more then twenty run-down venues into the hands of private investors.
Following a reform of the state cinema network, only eight cinemas may remain state-owned: two so-called “festival” ones — Avrora and Rodina — and six childrens’ cinemas, Igor Odushko, the press secretary of the city’s Culture Committee said Thursday.  
This project is expected to attract a great deal of interest from cinema operators as the business of film distribution is on the rise and far from saturation.
“Historically, St. Petersburg’s cinemas were built in very favorable places, points of synergy where people enjoyed spending their free time. Therefore without a doubt these addresses will be of huge interest to investors,” Alexander Pozdnyakov, the president of the St. Petersburg Film Press Association, said in an interview Thursday.
Eduard Pichugin, general director of Epos, a company that manages the city’s biggest chain Kronverk Cinema agrees.  
“This is the right move from which everyone stands to gain,” he said in a statement communicated by the company Thursday.
Stating his company’s interest in these cinemas, Pichugin said that they had already tried to acquire some units to manage.
“We advanced such an initiative as early as 2001,” he said.
According to Pichugin, the location of Soviet-era theaters is an excellent selling point.  
In addition, “after renovation, virtually deserted venues might become successful entertainment or trade centers with a cinema function.”
However, Oleg Berezin, the general director of Neva Film, was less optimistic. He said that the project’s interest to potential investors is dependent on many factors. Some cinemas are not very well located and their infrastructure is in a state of decay, Berezin said.
“There is also the question of what conditions the city authorities will impose when handing over the property to private companies,” Berezin said.
Although a company would need to invest at least $100,000 to equip each individual cinema, that sum is minimal compared to the cost of renovation, which can amount to  $5 million in the case of some cinemas, the expert said.

TITLE: The Road to Ust-Luga
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The construction of a federal road between the Ust-Luga port in Leningrad Oblast and the city of Novgorod is awaiting government approval, Kommersant reported Wednesday, citing an official source. The new road would shorten the route from Ust-Luga to Moscow by 100 kilometers and help improve the port’s infrastructure.
Leningrad oblast governor Valery Serdyukov and Mikhail Prusak, governor of Novgorod oblast, proposed the project to the federal government last week.
The new road would link the Gulf of Finland to the federal road “Russia” which runs to Moscow. About 180 kilometers of the new road would pass through Leningrad Oblast and 89 kilometers through Novgorod Oblast.
“We are waiting for political approval from the government,” Vasily Sokolov, chairman of the Leningrad Oblast’s transport committee, said Tuesday at a press briefing.
The estimated cost of the project has yet to be revealed, but it should cost less than the building of a toll road between St. Petersburg and Moscow, Sokolov said.
Olga Litvinova, office managing partner of DLA Piper in St. Petersburg, said road construction is a favorite among investors specializing in infrastructure projects, representing up to 60% of the total value of such initiatives.
The complexity of the project — including the length of road, soil analysis, the legal allocation of land to the public domain — is the main factor effecting its realization, she said.
“Smaller, low-risk projects, such as the Ust-Luga — Novgorod road, may have a better chance of succeeding among investors,” Litvinova said.
And though she said that the government prefers large-scale projects, like a toll road between St. Petersburg and Moscow, Ust-Luga port itself has already received federal backing.
“The port is extremely important for us. It is one of the largest infrastructure projects of the decade,” president Vladimir Putin said on visiting the port last month. Putin indicated construction of a container terminal and a ferry line between Ust-Luga, Kaliningrad and German ports as crucial conditions for the port’s development.
According to the official plan, freight turnover at Ust-Luga could exceed 35 millions tons by 2010. However, shipping analyst at SeaNews information and consulting portal Alexei Bezborodov questioned the port’s need of a new road.
“Not one company which uses road transport — mainly container and timber operators — is going to work there,” Bezborodov said.
“The coal terminal does not need motor transport. It uses the railway, which is already available. Other terminals do not exist yet — even the projects do not exist. There is nothing to speak about. All this is merely ambition and PR,” Bezborodov said.
However, he admitted, the road could improve transportation infrastructure in the regions, which is at the moment “in a serious state of neglect.”
Considering there currently only exists a coal terminal, other infrastructure projects seem more important. Russian Railways and the Ust-Luga company announced the launch of a joint enterprise for servicing freight in the port, Prime-TASS reported Wednesday, referring to press service for Russian Railway.
Sergei Shidlovsky, president of the Transsphere group of companies, also said that “if Ust-Luga port is to process cargo that needs road transport, then the road will, of course, be in demand.”
However, he said, “road construction in Russia is unprofitable. It is only reasonable in terms of convenience.”
As compared to other similar projects, Shidlovsky said “toll road construction is much more attractive for investors in terms of the return on investment since it is a real business.”

TITLE: Ex-Putin Aide Attacks Damaging State Role
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of president Vladimir Putin’s ex-advisors has expressed doubts over the growth of the country’s economy. Speaking at Rosbalt on Tuesday, Andrei Illarionov, president of the Institute for Economic Analysis, issued a report claiming to prove that Russia’s economy is heading towards stagnation.
Economic growth largely depends on the quality of the country’s political institutions, Illarionov said. During the last 50 years countries with government spending of less than 20 percent of GDP have had the fastest annual per capita GDP growth (2.91 percent), while the annual growth of countries spending over 50 percent of GDP was only 0.95 percent.
The research was said to show that the strength of rule of law, contractual obligations, the risk of property expropriation, corruption and bureaucracy also affect per capita GDP.
Another of the report’s findings was that countries with a parliamentary political system grew three times faster than presidential regimes, and the less a country borrowed from the International Monetary Fund the faster was its per capita GDP growth.
During the last 30 years those countries actively importing oil grew faster than oil exporters, with OPEC countries having the slowest growth of all.
“World experience proves that limiting political freedom leads to economic slow down. The real economic growth rate in Russia is below its potential, while our neighbor Azerbaijan has 24 percent growth,” Illarionov said.
“We have chosen to follow a course that hampers economic growth and individual well-being — state monopolizing of the most important economic resources. We are in the company of countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad and Venezuela, all of whom have adopted such a policy,” he said.
In recent years GDP has increased from $180 billion to $760 billion while there has been a fall in the number of Russians living in poverty, but this is mainly a result of oil and gas sales, Illarionov said.
“Taking away $130 billion of oil and gas revenues from GDP and dividing this figure between those employed in other industries we come to a quite different per capita GDP,” he added. 
Illarionov indicated that decentralization of power and the privatization of the energy sector are the main conditions for a pluralistic system.
Vladimir Pantyushin, chief economist at Renaissance Capital, said that considering the correlation between democracy and economic growth Illarionov’s reasoning is not “totally correct.”
“Korea is an example of fast post-war growth, though democracy was introduced there only recently,” he said.
However Pantyushin agreed that “the state manages less efficiently than private owners.”
“The present trend for the state to acquire large assets will decrease efficiency and the return on investment. It means a reduction in economic output,” he said.
Economic growth will slow down, however it is unlikely to decrease by more than two or three percent, he said. In 2006 Pantyushin predicted 5.6 percent GDP growth and five to six percent growth in the coming years.
Anton Struchenevsky, economist at Troika Dialog brokerage, admitted a correlation between democracy and economic growth, but said that it is still difficult to establish a clear relation of cause and effect.
“I’ve seen studies proving that demand for democracy appears because of and in line with economic development,” he said.
However Illarionov’s skepticism is sound, Struchenevsky said. 
“The strengthening of state control on the economy does not positively affect growth. In 2005, despite favorable external conditions and an increase in oil prices, economic growth slowed. The basic conditions for success — diversification of the economy and improvement of budget policy — were started between 1999-2003, when we enjoyed a more liberal regime,” Struchenevsky said.
“While the hidden hand of the market contributes to economic growth, the visible hand of the state hampers it,” he added.
In 2006 Struchenevsky expects economic growth equivalent to 2005 figures, perhaps reaching 6.5 percent since “there is no evidence of an attack on business like there was in 2004.”

TITLE: Lower Debt, More Oil May Let Yukos Rise From Ashes
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Zhdannikov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Stricken oil firm Yukos said it had paid a large part of its back tax bills and expected oil output to rebound from a current nadir, giving it hope of rising from the ashes — if the Kremlin lets it. 
More than $30 billion in back tax demands have nearly ruined what was once Russia’s top oil company and forced it to sell its main production unit to state firm Rosneft, turning Yukos into a mid-sized oil producer still laden with heavy debt. 
Its founder and previously top shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is currently serving an eight-year sentence for fraud and tax evasion, which he says is a Kremlin punishment for his political activities. 
Analysts say they believe Yukos has no chance of surviving and that its remaining assets, which include two production units, five Russian refineries and a large network of filling stations, are poised to be carved up between state oil majors. 
Yukos said in a statement on Wednesday it had paid $21.3 billion in back taxes to the government and that its outstanding debt stood at $6.3 billion, excluding the latest $3.5 billion claim, which it plans to challenge in the courts. 
Yukos also said it planned to increase oil production by 12 percent from current levels to around 485,000 barrels per day by December 2006 but that average annual output would stay largely flat as the firm recovers from a previous steep drop. 
Its shares traded up 3 percent to 49.702 rubles by midday, slightly outperforming the broader market but still more than 90 percent off their peak of 515.64 rubles in September 2003, just before Khodorkovsky’s arrest.
Yukos chief executive Steven Theede said in a statement that drastic cost cuts over the past year had allowed his firm to put aside some funds to use for upstream and downstream investments. 
“The plans for 2006 look tough, but they are feasible,” he said. The firm’s average annual production will amount to 23.4 million tons, or 462,000 bpd, flat year on year, and refining will be also flat at 32.2 million tons, including volumes of other companies. 
Yukos, formerly Russia’s largest crude oil exporter, will export only 1.8 million tons of crude to China by rail and 1.5 million tons of refined products, as the firm still has to supply its domestic refineries and filling stations, it said. 
Yukos will spend a total of $610 million on its upstream sector, including $200 million on drilling new wells, and a total of $280 million on upgrading its refineries.
Yukos has sold its petrochemical technology unit Davy Process Technology for $71 million to help meet tax demands, the company said Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.
Yukos sold the London-based company to Johnson Matthey, the world’s largest platinum-group metals distributor, Yukos said.

TITLE: Austrian Bank Snaps Up Impex
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Raiffeisen Bank said Wednesday it had signed a deal worth $550 million to buy Impexbank, making the Austrian bank the largest foreign lender in the country.
Raiffeisen, which already dominates many Central and Eastern European markets, now aims to increase its share of the growing Russian retail market through the deal.
“This is one of the rare occasions where there was love at first sight. We both found each other,” Raiffeisen CEO Herbert Stepic said on Tuesday, adding that the deal had been struck within just one month of starting the negotiations. 
The group will merge Impexbank, a top-30 domestic lender, with its Russian subsidiary Raiffeisen Austria by 2007, Stepic said on a conference call.
The combined operations make Raiffeisen the country’s seventh largest lender.
Stepic said that Impexbank’s owners — Russia’s 13th-richest man, Boris Ivanishvili, and his partner, Vitaly Malkin — were ready to sell their assets quickly, having already pitched the business to Germany’s Deutsche Bank without success.
Raiffeisen has made nine acquisitions in Eastern Europe and the CIS in the last six years, seeking to boost profit in emerging economies as the market for consumer loans and mortgages grows.
“We see an unbrokered and increasing demand for financial products in Russia, ... [which] has a very dynamic GDP growth,” Stepic said. 
Through the acquisition, the Austrian bank picks up an additional 190 branches and 350 consumer outlets in 45 cities around the country. 
Until now, Raiffeisen’s business in Russia was focussed on Moscow and St. Petersburg, Stepic said.
To its local division, Raiffeisen will add a bank with total assets of 1.2 billion euros, and an annual profit of around 9 million euros.
Through acquisition, rather than organic growth, Raiffeisen has saved itself four years’ work, Stepic said. 
Sergei Donskoi, a banking analyst at Troika Dialog, called the move logical, saying the foreign lender had to work hard to push its brand in the regions. 
“In many places in Russia, Raiffeisen has never been heard of. People know three or four bank names and they are, mainly, Sberbank and Vneshtorgbank,” Donskoi said. 
Impexbank was founded back in 1993 and licensed in 1995, but underwent a serious overhaul four years later. 
Ivanishvili and Malkin bought the business in 1999, bringing with them the client base of Rossiisky Kredit bank, including notorious metals holdings Trans World Group and Metalloinvest. 
While Rossiisky Kredit was hit hard by the August 1998 financial crash, Ivanishvili and Malkin kept hold of both banks, which shared some of the same management.
Analysts said, however, that the businesses of Impexbank and Rossiisky Kredit — which still exists as an investment bank — had evolved separately. 
“The two banks are different legal entities,” said Richard Hainsworth, head of Rusrating rating agency.
The bank owners, Ivanishvili and Malkin, have suffered their fair share of scandals. Malkin, who is now a senator in the Federation Council, was subject to a money-laundering investigation by Swiss prosecutors over debt payments. The Swiss investigation has been dropped. 
According to bank transfers obtained by Global Witness, an NGO that investigates corruption in the natural resources sector, debt repayments from Angola to Russia ended up in private accounts, including those of Malkin. 
From a total of $776 million in repayments by Sonangol, the Angolan agency, the Russian Finance Ministry received only $161.9 million, Global Witness said in a 2004 report. The rest was transferred to accounts belonging to Angolan officials, a French arms broker and Malkin, Global Witness said. 
A total of $48.8 million was transferred to an account belonging to the Russian tycoon, while $60.5 million was transferred to an account belonging to business partner Arkady Gaidamak, the report said.
Separately, Gaidamak is under investigation for money laundering in Israel and cannot leave the country.  Malkin and Gaidamak have denied all charges. 
The Austrian banking group was quick to brush aside Impexbank’s history, saying that according to Raiffeisen information and due diligence, Impexbank did not have any business connections with Rossiisky Kredit.

TITLE: Kiriyenko Says Russia Needs Another 40 Nuclear Reactors
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s atomic energy chief said Wednesday that the nation needs to build dozens of nuclear reactors in a massive effort that would require restoring production links with related facilities in other ex-Soviet nations. 
Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency, said Russia needed to build about 40 new nuclear reactors in order to bring the share of nuclear energy in the nation’s energy balance to 25 percent, news agencies reported. Nuclear power now accounts for 16 to 17 percent of the country’s electricity generation. 
“We need to build two nuclear reactors per year beginning in 2011 or 2012,” to achieve the goal, Kiriyenko said in the Siberian city of Zheleznogorsk, site of a major nuclear waste storage facility.
Russia has 31 nuclear reactors and plans to open three new commercial nuclear reactors over the next five years and to upgrade existing ones. 
In recent years, Russia has overcome a public backlash against nuclear power that followed the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the government has supported an ambitious program to develop its nuclear industry. 
Kiriyenko also said Russia would need to restore production ties with nuclear-related industries in other ex-Soviet states, which once were run by the obliquely named Soviet Medium Machine-Building Ministry. 
“We need to use the resources of the Medium Machine-Building Ministry left in other ex-Soviet nations to the maximum extent possible,” he said.
While major nuclear-related industrial facilities are located in Russia, Kazakhstan is home to key uranium mining facilities and Ukraine manufactures turbines for nuclear power plants. Kiriyenko also said Wednesday that the state-controlled Rosenergoatom, the agency in charge of nuclear power plants, will be transformed into a joint-stock company within a year, but will remain fully state-owned. “There will be no private owners,” he said.
Kiriyenko also said Russia would charge a higher price for importing nuclear waste from foreign nations. 
“We need a clear and transparent price policy on imports and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel,” he said. “I can’t say how much the prices will increase, but they will rise.”
Zheleznogorsk now has storage for 6,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from Soviet-built reactors in Russia and abroad. It is set to be expanded to hold another 38,000 tons of waste by 2009. 
Kiriyenko said that the Zheleznogorsk facility could become an international center for storage and reprocessing of nuclear waste.

TITLE: Presidents Take the Stage for Different Shows
AUTHOR: By Rose Gottermoeller
TEXT: Tuesday saw the repeat of a curious phenomenon: The president of the United States and the president of the Russian Federation each took to the stage to talk about his country’s condition. 
The two events in many ways are different: George W. Bush’s State of the Union address is highly scripted, in front of the Congress and all the key figures in the U.S. government. No questions are asked — except afterward, when the media let loose. Vladimir Putin, by contrast, answered questions from 560 reporters for nearly four hours. While choreography had to play a role in Putin’s performance, there was definitely give and take with his audience.
Despite these differences, both men talked about their top priorities, and so the twinned events let us see what policy goals they have in common. Putin’s news conference was surrounded by the buzz that as the newly minted president of the Group of Eight, he would talk about his foreign policy goals. The same went for Bush: He too would concentrate on foreign policy, having seen his top domestic priorities fizzle during 2005.
Three issues were clearly on the minds of both presidents: energy, Iran and Hamas. 
Putin took pains to describe Russia as a reliable energy supplier. “To speak of some kind of new Russian energy weapon is completely unwarranted,” he insisted. Russia would in fact bolster its position by constructing the new gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea — important, Putin said, for “the stable supply of Russian gas to Western Europe.”
Bush, although he did not mention Russia, had unreliability on his mind. He stressed that “America is addicted to oil,” and called for a 75 percent reduction in U.S. oil imports from the Middle East by 2025. The answer for Bush was not in more suppliers, but in alternative energy sources and greater efficiency — good old American self-sufficiency. 
Also interesting is what Bush did not mention: He had widely been expected to talk about a major new nuclear energy initiative, but it did not appear.
When Bush turned to Iran, he had backed away from his famed “axis of evil” tag and the stress on forced regime change in Tehran. In fact, he assured the Iranian people that America would respect their right to choose their leaders and win their own future. But he also hit hard on the message that Iran must not be permitted to gain nuclear weapons.
Putin said nothing about Iran’s political scene, but focused on Russia’s activist role in the current diplomacy. Russia’s initiative to create international centers for nuclear fuel services would permit every country to have access to nuclear power while preserving global security. “This goes for our Iranian partners, too,” Putin stressed.
The Hamas win in the Palestinian elections, however, gave Putin the opportunity to take a big swipe at American diplomacy in the Middle East. He seemed to think that he could do better: “We need to sit together and listen to each other and agree on decisions.” Hard to see how when Russia differs from the United States and Europe on the terrorist status of Hamas — a fact that Putin also noted. 
Bush, for his part, had a simple message for Hamas: Recognize Israel, disarm, renounce terrorism and work for a stable peace. Here, he and his Russian counterpart were on some common ground, for Putin also called on Hamas to recognize Israel.
Most interesting, perhaps, were the silences. This is the year when Russian holds the presidency of the G8, and the United States is a prominent member of the G8 — one of those “fat-cat” countries that Putin pointed to in his remarks. Remarkable, therefore, that Bush said not a word about Russia or the G8 in his address, as if the issues so prominent for his G8 partners, especially energy security in Europe, had no meaning for the United States of America.
The Kremlin should not feel so bad about this, since Bush also failed to mention that other great Asian power, China, a country figuring prominently in Pentagon assessments of future threats to the United States. If China was not mentioned, then the bar for making it into the speech must have been high indeed. Isolationism, that American disease that Bush railed against in the speech, appears to be a danger in his own case.
In the end, Bush and Putin seemed to be operating in separate universes. This is fitting, perhaps, for two such different countries, one a great Eurasian power more concentrated on its neighborhood than anywhere else, the other a North American superpower whose culture and messianism both attract and repel the rest of the world. 
But the separation is not comforting when we have so much work to do. Energy security alone could keep us busy for decades, and there is the small matter of thousands of nuclear warheads and tons of nuclear materials still left from the Cold War. Communicable disease, the fight against terrorism, unfinished conflicts the world over — we two, together, have much to occupy us — if our separate universes do not hold us apart. 

Rose Gottemoeller is director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

TITLE: Moscow and Tbilisi Point Fingers
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: When two explosions last month shut down the main pipeline delivering natural gas from Russia to Georgia, the last vestiges of dialogue between the two countries were destroyed. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili claimed that the explosions were aimed at destabilizing Georgia so that it would break apart and “fall into the hands of Russia.” North Ossetia, where the pipeline blasts occurred, borders the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia, which seeks union with Russia. The Foreign Ministry replied in highly undiplomatic language, describing Georgia’s policy toward Russia as “a mixture of sponging, hypocrisy and unruliness.”
The angry rhetoric is easy to understand. Georgia was in the grip of a brutal cold snap when the gas went off. And there is little question that the pipeline explosions were part of a carefully coordinated terrorist operation in the North Caucasus region. 
The accusations flying back and forth between Moscow and Tbilisi strain credibility. No one but the assortment of characters from Nikolai Gogol’s play “The Inspector General” now working in the Foreign Ministry could believe that Saakashvili, like the non-commissioned officer’s widow in the play, would flog himself when it’s 20 below zero out. The notion that the Russians would blow up their own pipeline just before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe meets to discuss Russia’s attempts to use gas as a foreign policy weapon is equally hard to accept.
The simple truth is that separatists will continue to blow up gas pipelines in the Caucasus region whenever they please because the mountains lie outside the control of Moscow, Tbilisi and everyone else.
The pipeline explosions occurred several kilometers from the border between North Ossetia and Ingushetia. North Ossetia is Russia’s outpost in the North Caucasus. Ingushetia is a republic where Shamil Basayev happily gives an interview to Andrei Babitsky, and where the fighters on their way to Beslan set up their training camp near the obscure village of Psedakh. After Beslan you might have expected the feds to secure the Ingush-North Ossetian border, but that would amount to an admission that they’ve lost control of Ingushetia.
The situation in the mountains of Karachayevo-Cherkessia is no different. These mountains belong to a people that was deported along with the Chechens and the Ingush in 1943 — a people that has never forgiven Russia, and whose belief in Allah grows more fervid all the time. Karachayevo-Cherkessia today looks a lot like Chechnya did in 1993. In recent years, members of the dominant Karachai ethnic group have forced Russians out of nine large villages much as the Chechens drove Russians out of Grozny in the early 1990s. For Saakashvili it’s obviously more advantageous to talk about Russian intrigues than lawlessness in the Caucasus. But it’s interesting that Russia couldn’t resist this temptation, either. The Kremlin had to decide whether to describe these attacks as part of the ongoing war with local separatists or as the work of foreign enemies. Not surprisingly, they went for door number two.
One thing stands out in all this. Whoever planned the explosions last month — most likely Basayev — possessed a network of agents capable of simultaneously pulling off two attacks hundreds of kilometers apart. He also had a far better understanding of the strategic consequences of the attacks than the Kremlin dinosaur, which is so entranced by its own enormous size that it still hasn’t noticed that its long, craggy Great Caucasian Tail has fallen off.

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

TITLE: The end of an era
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A well-known figure on St. Petersburg’s nightlife scene, Aileen Exeter of City Bar, is parting ways with the popular expat hangout she established nearly 10 years ago. 
This weekend sees a series of parties that the American bar-owner described as the “big hurrah” for City Bar. But while Exeter is leaving for New York later this month, some of the bar’s old-time staffers are determined to keep the place going without her. 
Exeter’s exit leaves her pondering the decade she has spent running a successful business in Russia. Among the highs and the lows, Exeter says that living in Russia long-term can be lonely for foreigners.
“My definition of loneliness is when you watch Russian TV, or any foreign TV, and there’s an American television show on, and you scoot your chair right up close to your TV so you can hear English underneath [the Russian dubbing] — that’s when you’re lonely,” said Exeter, speaking with The St. Petersburg Times this week.
Described as an “American Pub & Eatery” on its sign, City Bar has been a little bit of the U.S.A in the center of St. Petersburg since it opened in July 1996, helping foreigners who live in or are visiting the city to combat loneliness or homesickness.
City Bar’s first location was in the Cappella building, but in 2002 it move to its current location not far away on Millionnaya Ulitsa.
As one unprepared Russian visitor put it, being at City Bar on a smoke-filled night was the equivalent of watching an American movie with a motley crowd of expats, foreign students and consulate officials making themselves at home and chatting freely in English.
A hit not least because of the genial personality of Exeter, who meets and chats with guests, City Bar was more than just a bar. It also served as a community center, a meeting place and an “idea exchange,” she said, with some people discussing their businesses and making valuable contacts. 
City Bar has also celebrated American holidays and lent English-language books and videos to English starved visitors.
“I had several marriages at City Bar, so it’s always nice,” Exeter said. “People met here and they now are married.”
According to Exeter, over the years visitors to City Bar have had something in common.
“The one unifying thing that I see is that they’re all a bit of a character, they all have something in them that makes them memorable,” she said.
“Not a sort of crooked type of person — I think that’s global, and in a sense I like that anywhere. But it’s been great. And it was great for me to deal with everybody on a daily basis, to run a bar. It’s certainly exposed me to a lot of people.”
City Bar’s spirit was enhanced by its multi-cultural workforce, Exeter said. 
“There was a guy from Sri Lanka, [people from] Uzbekistan, Russia, of course, Canada, Sweden. It’s a fairly international team, but America is an international place, and it’s a part of the American culture when you find very many people.”
American multi-culturalism did not always go down well with some of the Russian personnel, Exeter said.
“I remember being at the Cappella and I had a black guy working for me, and they locked the bathroom door and refused to give him a key, because he was a black man,” she said.
“I went crazy, I said ‘You cannot do this!’” 
City Bar’s specialty is international food with a stress on simple American cuisine. Exeter is especially proud of its hand-ground hamburgers. “When you do a hand-ground hamburger, you’re not overheating the meat. Isn’t it neat?” she said.
Last year, City Bar hosted a Hurricane Katrina benefit. Organized by Jennifer Gaspar from FIND (Fund for International Nonprofit Development), and featuring the local Alexei Kanunnikov Jazz Band playing New Orleans jazz for free and New Orleans artist David Bienn, the event raised $1,000 for the Red Cross.
“One night, one city, not very many people, actually. I think, we had 60-70 people, but that was great,” said Exeter, adding that City Bar’s charity activities have also included helping local children’s homes.
Exeter first came to Russia in April 1979, initially spending four months a year in St. Petersburg and eight months a year in the U.S., before getting involved with City Bar. Now she wants to return to that initial scheme, but reversed, with more time spent in the U.S. working with mortgaging while helping to expose St. Petersburg’s small businesses to Western financing and markets.
Although Exeter is leaving, several City Bar workers are eager to keep the place alive. Polina Yeryomenko, who was once a waitress there, said this week that she would manage the bar with former bartender Fyodor Vermus.  Exeter, who leaves on Feb. 15, described her time with City Bar as “nine and a half great years.” 
“Someone said to me, if I feel sad, and I said, ‘Of course I feel sad, it’s the end of something I’ve done every day. It’s scary, too, but it’s has to happen at some point and it does.’ My parents don’t get any younger, and I just feel I have to spend time with my family, too. 
“I’m very positive about Russia. I think that’s what’s needed, I mean, people who have good experiences, good times and positive words to say about anything is great. I have business in America, so it’s easier for me to deal with this business type of thing. Same stuff.”

City Bar farewell parties are held this weekend at 10 Millionaya Ulitsa. 
Tel: 314 1037. www.citybar.ru

TITLE: A plight described in music
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new clarinet concerto by St. Petersburg-based British conductor Peter Dyson that premiers at the Kolonny Hall of Herzen Pedagogical University on Sunday has been inspired by the plight of the city’s homeless people
“Conversations and Observations: Reflections of a Homeless Newspaper Seller in Winter” is drawn from Dyson’s memories and observations of local homeless people who have been hit by cars, left without help, selling  magazines on the street or wandering through the snow barefoot. 
Ten years ago at the age of 47, Dyson left the U.K. for St. Petersburg and switched careers from civil servant to composer. He came to study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Boris Tishchenko, widely known as the favorite pupil of the composer Dyson admires most, Dmitry Shostakovich. 
Dyson’s works have been played in St. Petersburg and smaller towns in Northwest Russia with some frequency, winning critical acclaim and encouraging reviews from classical music publications such as Gramophone magazine.
Dyson’s work was composed for the clarinet although the violin might seem to be the instrument that most fittingly conveys the piercing cold, biting wind and stinging frost that the homeless experience in St. Petersburg in winter.
“The clarinet seemed to be the right instrument in these circumstances,” Dyson said. “It has got a big range and a very mellow, low voice, and a very high piercing voice as well.”
The composer wanted an individual sound to evoke be the person on the street.
“It could be a man or a woman, and I deliberately left that vague,” the composer said. “The story that begins the piece is actually going to be read by a woman.” 
Dyson’s idea is to incorporate a written narrative into the performance to help the audience realize that the music is the voice of a homeless person and they are listening to their thoughts. 
A person stands on a corner, watching, talking, describing what he sees, and then the music starts: the piece is meant to create a visual image. For instance, the sound of horns is meant to resemble the blaring of car horns. The composer had particular images in mind.
“It is my street, and my road junction, and what goes from there, and the near misses,” Dyson explains, adding that he actually saw the accident featured in the story. A homeless man was hit by a car in early January, just before the recent cold snap that hit the city.
“I felt helpless,” Dyson said.“I was annoyed watching the man sitting in the road in the cold waiting for an ambulance to arrive, and then by the militia cars that went by. My linguistic skills are useless, and there was a sense of frustration and not being able to contribute anything useful in the circumstances, other than being a witness I suppose.”
“Sometimes the music comes before the story, sometimes the story suggests the music,” he said. “But it is not that I have written a documentary film score. It is about how you feel in your situation.”
The work’s musical language makes smart use of dissonance and evokes thoughts of alienation — something that new music and homelessness perhaps share to a certain degree — and being an outsider. 
“The horns punctuate things which are not really part of the main plot, a bit like the relationship between motorists and pedestrians,” Dyson said. 
The forthcoming premiere, is part of the 10th New Music International Initiative series of concerts and is performed by the Klassika orchestra conducted by Roman Leontyev, is not simply an arts event. Dyson hopes the work will encourage compassion towards the city’s many homeless people.
Homelessness statistics vary dramatically. The government-run City Homeless Registration Center lists 6,500 homeless individuals in St. Petersburg, while City Hall’s Social Affairs and Labor Committee has reported that there over 25,000 homeless people in the city. According to estimates of Arkady Tyurin, chief editor of “Put Domoi,” the city’s only magazine largely devoted to and distributed by the homeless, that there are however at least 54,000 homeless people living in the city.
Yelena Korneyeva, spokeswoman for “Put Domoi,” welcomed the concert. 
“A piece of classical music and Dyson’s very personal attitude will appeal directly to people’s hearts, which is exactly what is needed,” she said. “We  would like more ordinary people here to start thinking what they can do. For instance, in January, after we staged a performance on the Road of Life, people started bringing warm clothes for the homeless.” 
The magazine will be distributed before and after the performance which takes place at Kolonny Hall of Herzen Pedagogical University on the Moika on Sunday at 4 p.m.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Popular Russian bands Splean and BI-2  have refused to take part in a concert called “Russia Without Fascism, War and Violence,” due to take place in Moscow on Feb. 14, Gazeta newspaper reported. 
Alexander Ponomaryov, who manages both bands, explained that he sees taking part in a concert promoted by human rights groups and opposition parties SPS and Yabloko as “unethical,” according to Gazeta.
“I have a cultural foundation, Nashe Vremya (‘Our Time’), which is financed by the Russian government and that’s why it would be not ethical for my bands to take part in this concert,” he was quoted as saying.
Last year, Ponomaryov and BI-2 took part in an infamous meeting between Kremlin insider Vyacheslav Surkov and rock musicians.
Meanwhile, local listings and lifestyle magazine Afisha inspired a wave of rumors by publishing a list of big-name international artists coming to take part to a previously unknown music festival in the city. 
Promoters in Moscow and St. Petersburg said news that bands such as Arcade Fire and Pixies woud take part in Season Noir, a festival at the Shostakovich Philharmonic between March and July, published in Afisha last week was not accurate.
Season Noir, a series of events organized by the Moscow-based promoter Greenwave Music and local producer and musician Andrei Samsonov, has been scheduled to take part in Moscow and St. Petersburg from late March to May and feature shows by Marc Almond, Barry Adamson, Blixa Bargeld and Anthony and the Johnsons. A gig by Tuvan folk band Hunn-Huur-Tu and a concert by Samsonov himself have been also scheduled.
Morever, the local part of the event appears to be in trouble, as the Philharmonic, which was to finance and hold the event, announced it will close for repairs in March, according Samsonov.
“Our first concert is for March 25, and it only became known that the has Philharmonic refused [to host it] a week ago, so three months of work went down the drain,” Samsonov said.
The promoters will now have to find a different source of finance and a different venue or venues quickly, he said.
It was always unlikely that Mercury Music Prize-winning band Anthony and the Johnsons would  make it to St. Petersburg, notorious for its backward audiences. 
“It’s most likely that Anthony and the Johnsons will be too expensive for St. Petersburg, because it comprises 11 people,” said Samsonov. “They are pretty unknown — especially in St. Petersburg, while in Moscow we’ll gather 1,200 fans without problems.”
The Philharmonic’s press service did not reply to an emailed inquiry on the matter.
Arcade Fire will not perform in the city in the near future, according to promoter Svetlaya Muzyka. 
David Sylvian, also listed in Afisha, isn’t coming, according to Moscow’s Greenwave Music.
The Pixies have confirmed concerts in St. Petersburg in July. But it is not part of any festival.

TITLE: Written history
AUTHOR: By David Stromberg
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An anthology of literature by winners of the independent Andrei Bely Prize was presented to the reading public this week.
A few days before Christmas 1978, about 15 people gathered in the Leningrad apartment of art critic Yury Novikov to inaugurate the newly minted Andrei Bely Literary Prize, which consisted of three items: an apple, a bottle of vodka (first shots for laureates), and three rubles.
This month, Moscow publishing house NLO, Novoye Literaturnoye Obozreniye (New Literary Review), released a major, single-volume anthology with excerpts by all 63 Andrei Bely Prize laureates from 1978-2004. 
The publication was celebrated Monday at art-club Platforma, with readings by poetry laureates Arkady Dragomoshchenko (1978), Alexander Gornon (1991) and Mikhail Yeryomin (1998), as well as short speeches by Boris Ostanin, Boris Ivanov, committee members Alexander Skidan and Dmitry Kuzmin, and St. Petersburg University Professor Lyudmila Zubova.
The prize’s first three recipients were Viktor Krivulin for poetry, Boris Groys for philosophy/theory, and Dragomoshchenko for prose. All three had been published in the underground literary monthly “Chasy” (Watches).
“Chasy” was one of several samizdat magazines which formed an underground literary movement in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Critic and prose writer Ivanov was the magazine’s first organizer, and its editors included now-well-known writers and critics Ostanin, Novikov, and Dragomoshchenko.
“Chasy,” as well as such publications as “37,” edited by Krivulin and Tatiana Goricheva, and “Obvodny Kanal,” edited by Kiril Butyrin and Sergei Stratanovsky, aimed to circulate literary production and criticism from what was called the “second culture” of unofficial art.
“But ‘Chasy,’ unlike the other publications, was not based on a single set of aesthetic or ideological criteria,” said Dragomoschenko, whose novel “Chinese Sun” has recently been published in English by Ugly Duckling Press, and whose collection of essays “Dust” is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press. “It wanted to represent a varied relief, a literary map of the ‘second culture,’ and publish writers not just from Leningrad, but from various places in Russia.”
Ostanin, who had at that time dreamt of converting his dacha into an art commune, believed strongly in the magazine’s inclusion of all cultural thought — on art, theater, jazz, rock, literature — and joined the magazine as an organizer after several issues had been published.
“Ivanov was, and is, much more of a formalist than I,” said Ostanin, now the organizer of the Andrei Bely Prize. “He was very strict about releasing an issue of the journal every two months, regardless of whether we had content or not.  Even if we printed just a cover, we released a cover.”
Soon after the first issue of “Chasy” was published, there came the idea to create a literary prize whose criteria was not set by the government — which was considered corrupt and conservative — but by the terms of contemporary work itself.
“Communication was much harder then, took a lot more energy,” Dragomoshchenko said. “People had to travel to Moscow and back to interact. The publication gave us a reason to interact — we had to physically deliver it.  And the prize, too, was a way of gathering these people in one place.”
Everyone agreed on the need for such a prize, but couldn’t decide on a name. Ostanin first suggested “Camus,” because of both the Algerian-born French writer Albert Camus, whose work he was translating, and a French cognac that shares the name, a bottle of which he had received as a rare gift.
“And what happens when we finish this bottle?” replied Ivanov at the time. “Where will we get another bottle next year?”
The name of writer Andrei Bely was mentioned, and gained support because of the universality of his writing. Bely wrote in a variety of forms, including poetry, philosophy/theory, and prose — the same three categories that the prize recognized — so that as a single figure he embodied the entirety of the prize’s objective.
“Unlike French cognac,” said Ostanin, “vodka — which we also call ‘white wine’ — would always be available.”
In its early period, between 1978-1985, the prize was awarded yearly, and although there was a healthy debate surrounding the nominees, the critics always arrived at a consensus.  
By 1985 and the advent of perestroika-era reforms in publishing, samizdat writers started publishing their work officially, and “Chasy” lost its relevance as an outlet.
Between 1986-1996, the Andrei Bely Prize, although it was awarded less regularly, remained intact. Its reputation had grown, and by the mid-80s it was regarded as a serious prize with influence on literary culture. 
The prize-giving ceremony moved from Novikov’s apartment to clubs, exhibition halls, eventually the Akhmatova Museum. Some of its later recipients became, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, contemporary Russian stars: writers Sasha Sokolov and Andrei Bitov, poets Alexei Parshchikov and Olga Sidakova, and theoreticians Valery Podoroga and Mikhail Yampolsky.
“For some time after the collapse, there was an illusion of the normalization of cultural life, the return of emigres, and the publication of previously unpublishable authors,” critic, literary theorist, and poet Skidan said during a short speech at Monday’s event in Platforma. 
“But this work was being absorbed with no effect, like water poured on sand. Writing appeared and nothing happened. Which is why we decided to reintroduce the prize.”
In 1997 the prize was reformed, and a seven-member committee was established to administer the prize which included Moscow- and St. Petersburg-based writers and critics.
“We were getting old,” Ostanin said of the original three-member committee. “Dragomoshchenko resigned, and Ivanov and I felt that we were losing touch with the current happenings in literature, that our sort of judgment — which came out of samizdat — was no longer as relevant, because people were being published, and there were experts — here [in St. Petersburg] and in Moscow — who knew about them with more expertise.”
 “For the prize to stay alive,” he said, “it needed some new perspectives, and those perspectives happened to be more formal ones.”
Joining forces with Irina Prokhorova, a publisher at NLO, the group established an ongoing poetry series that publishes an individual collection from each winning and shortlisted poet. The current anthology, aside from collecting much of that poetry, includes several prose and theory pieces which have earned their authors the prize but have yet to be published anywhere else.
This week’s presentation of the Andrei Bely Prize Anthology, as did the presentation of the prize itself in December 2005, brought together much of St. Petersburg’s literati.
“This [anthology] outlines excellently the spectrum of the Russian language, the dynamic way it was opened up,” said Zubova, whose own work involves the phonetic analysis of Russian poetry. “[It shows] the dynamics of the change in the paradigms of literary taste... It also provides us with a history of literature separate from official positioning.”
Skidan defined the work slightly differently.
“There is now a new format for the novel, which is formulated for a supposedly cultural reader, a sort of vulgar post-modernism which is the new mainstream, ideologically supporting a transfer of consumer values to the ‘cultural activity’ of reading,” Skidan said.” The work in the anthology stands against this tendency — it requires instead an active reader that can intimately enter into a reading experience outside himself.”
Skidan announced that he is leaving the prize committee, because he believes that such positions needed to be rotated in order to stay vital.
The current incarnation of the prize is still defiantly independent because, as Ostanin said, “you can always round up a ruble, an apple, and a bottle of vodka.”
“Newer prizes vanish as soon as one or another company is no longer interested in supporting them. Also the fact that this year Yury Leiderman received the prize and not Vladimir Shishkin shows that there is a different kind of selection process at work. And we are still the only prize which is awarded to unpublished authors, or authors published on the internet.”
But Ostanin said the atmosphere of the prize had changed with the prize’s reform and the establishment of the larger committee.
“The prize started being awarded mostly to published authors, people who were recognized in other ways — through publication and general readership. Which is fine — it’s the history of the prize, and I’m not judging history.  But there’s no way around the fact that an entire Moscow literary society has been introduced.”
Dragomoshchenko expressed other reservations between readings of his poems at Platforma. 
“For some reason,” he said to the audience, “despite being a laureate since the prize’s inception in 1978, my new poetry collection was published with OGI [Obedinennoye Gumanitarnoye Izdatelstvo, United Humanities Press] rather than NLO, the prize’s publishing partner.”
Ostanin and Ivanov, maintaining their independent spirit, have chosen to add an Achievement in Humanities category to the prize.  
“It’s nothing specific,” Ostanin said, “just a general category that allows me and Ivanov to give the prize to whomever we want, without the involvement of the committee. This way we can always point out at least one person whose involvement in literary life might otherwise go unrecognized.”

TITLE: Man-made eden
AUTHOR: By David R. Marples
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Cursed land or untouched paradise? Two decades after the Chernobyl disaster transformed dozens of communities into ghost towns, a book by Mary Mycio assesses the damage.
The appearance last fall of “Wormwood Forest,” Mary Mycio’s absorbing book about Chernobyl, coincided with the release of a controversial report by several agencies of the United Nations and the governments of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus on the environmental and health effects of the 1986 nuclear disaster. Together, the two studies offer an antidote to more pessimistic analyses — an indication that the effects of the accident might be less bleak than initially predicted, and that a reassessment is warranted of the evacuated areas and of medical casualties, both now and in the future.
That Mycio, a Kiev-based reporter and lawyer who also holds a degree in biology, has been working on this book for some time is evident. Her initial findings appeared in the Los Angeles Times almost 10 years ago, and, in the preface, she describes how her research transformed her from “adamant opponent of nuclear energy to ambivalent supporter” as she came to understand that alternative forms of energy have also taken a heavy toll on her ancestral Ukraine. Rather than the expose of government lies she initially meant to write, “Wormwood Forest” dwells on the wildlife, vegetation and people of Chernobyl, alternating between explanation and storytelling in a way that is easy to follow and frequently anecdotal. 
The eight chapters are offered as a sort of travelogue, with the author wandering from the Belarussian side of the border to the Ukrainian, accompanied by various officials from the so-called Zone of Alienation, an area of highly contaminated land extending 30 kilometers out from the accident’s epicenter. The fourth reactor unit at the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded on April 26, 1986, as operators were testing whether energy from turbines could continue to supply electricity and maintain coolant flow for as long as it took to switch to diesel emergency power. Mycio thoroughly explains the environmental damage that ensued as radioactive material began migrating through the soil. Among the most immediate social consequences was the widespread evacuation of extensive areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Mycio takes a hard look at the merits — or lack thereof — of the evacuation, asking which country actually suffered the most. 
There is no clear answer to that question. Mycio provides a detailed table listing the people affected by Chernobyl through 2000 — 5.85 million in all — and shows, surprisingly, that over 2 million were from Russia, slightly more than the 1.94 million from Ukraine and 1.82 million from Belarus. In an objective and balanced assessment of the evacuation, she concludes that although the initial exodus was necessary and had an important impact on reducing radiation doses, the ones that took place more than a decade after the disaster did more harm than good because of the social and economic stresses involved. 
Mycio is particularly informative when looking at animal life, and particularly at the boars, deer, bison and various rodents that took advantage of the absence of humans and proliferated in their new natural habitat. Focusing on the successful breeding experiments with Przewalski’s horses, she dispels the myth of genetic mutations, noting that if there had been such mutations, these animals would have quickly died out. The author’s descriptions of journeys into various parts of the zone to examine these horses are never less than entertaining.
More sobering is her discussion of the water situation; strontium levels in certain waterways doubled between 1986 and 1994. One of the many ironies of the fallout is that, today, the highest exposure to radiation through water consumption occurs not in Kiev but lower down the Dnieper River where the water is used for irrigation. This gives the radioactive particles a suitable pathway into the food chain. Though there are no mutants among mammals or fish, data collected 15 years after the accident showed all fish exceeding official limits for radioactivity. The most dangerous area, close to the reactor, is termed the “right-bank floodplain”: “Each of its five square kilometers was contaminated with as much as 1,600 curies of cesium and 450 curies of strontium.”
Mycio is at her best when she focuses on the human element, providing poignant descriptions of the samosely, or voluntary settlers, who wandered back to their homes in the wake of the accident. From some 1,210 samosely in 1987, the number of settlers dropped to only about 300 by the start of the 21st century. Yet people legally living outside the zone are not immune to Chernobyl’s effects; radiation levels in the soil of some nearby areas measure from 15 to 40 curies per kilometer. Mycio refuses to speculate on the dangers, however, noting that much depends on the food consumed and the environmental variations from one region to another. 
The key problem — one that is implicit though understated in the UN report — is that there is no consensus on the effects of small or chronic doses of radiation. As Mycio notes, it is difficult to compare Chernobyl populations with those that do not undergo regular screening. Not surprisingly, the health effects appear far more evident in people who are closely monitored. Further, it is almost impossible to distinguish deaths due to Chernobyl-induced cancers from those arising from other factors. 
Rarely will one find a book that covers so much ground while remaining so accessible to the reader. Unfortunately, the lack of footnotes makes it at times impossible to discern whence various data derive. In her breakdown of the number of people affected by Chernobyl through 2000, for example, Mycio uses categories such as “people living in contaminated territories” and “invalids” without explaining what level of radiation constitutes a contaminated territory and how an invalid is defined. Equally frustrating is the table’s division of “liquidators,” or decontamination personnel, into two separate lists, one clearly pegged to the years 1986-1987 but the other (presumably for 1988-2000) not specified.
Similarly, some arguments are advanced and then left undeveloped, particularly Mycio’s assessment of charitable associations and of the health vacations offered to children abroad. The author criticizes Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl project for bringing affected children to Israel for medical treatment, calling it “a monumental waste of money” that would best be spent on establishing medical institutions in the contaminated areas. But is the same true for all charitable associations? And would such international efforts be possible in Belarus, which traditionally has never worked in harmony with non-governmental organizations and continues to imprison scientists who disagree with its assessment of Chernobyl’s impact? Mycio stops short of answering these and other important questions.
While one can only admire the author for her fortitude in working in the zone, the impression she leaves of a great nature reserve rising like a phoenix from the Chernobyl ashes will surely be used to strengthen the case of those who believe that the disaster’s consequences have been exaggerated. The historian might comment that the abandonment of settlements that have existed for eight centuries is an eternal indictment of nuclear energy. Mycio does not, and that is her privilege, but this book, which has many merits, will not end the debate. 
David R. Marples is a professor of history at the University of Alberta and the author of three books on the Chernobyl disaster.

TITLE: Healthy appetite
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Morkovka 
32 Bolshoi Prospekt, Petrograd Side.
Tel. 233 9635
Menu in Russian only. All major credit cards accepted. 
Open from midday to midnight.
Dinner for two without alcohol 1,750 rubles ($ 62.50)
It’s all about orange colors, vegetable shapes, health food and organic attitude. Morkovka, a new cafe whose name means “carrot” in English, looks set to attract well-off customers with an interest in healthy eating. The quirky name is rumored to have been coined by Ilya Lagutenko, the lead singer from the band Mumiy Troll, who is said to be friends with the owner. 
Morkovka is located a few meters from Bolshoi Prospekt and you needn’t rush to open its heavy glass door by yourself — a doorman (who is also the cloakroom attendant) is eager to help you. He also offers to hang up your coat, but this is not obligatory. When you enter Morkovka you find yourself in a large dining area, separated from the bar with a long metal wall. The design is eclectic — bright-green walls and orange furniture make you feel like you are inside a big salad. However, this impression is offset by art-deco lamps, large metal columns and stylized old Soviet radiators.
The menu is extensive with main courses based on vegetables and fish, and a separate Japanese section featuring sushi and sashimi. Whatever you order, you get a free shot of freshly squeezed carrot juice (yes, that’s what it takes to eat health food). Morkovka offers a variety of fresh juices, from beetroot, celery and pumpkin to tangerine, kiwi and strawberry priced from 100 rubles ($3.50) to 150 rubles ($5.35) for 0.2 liter along with traditional Russian fruit drinks, cranberry mors and kompot. 
Most salads and cold starters cost from 180 to 300 rubles ($6.42 to $10.70), which is a bit expensive for what they are. Soups, however, are a less pricey, costing from 120 to 200 rubles ($4.28 to $7.14) and offer better value. We had eggplant in pesto sauce (230 rubles, $8.20), served with a salad, which was flavorsome and, although there was not much of the dish, comes highly recommended. Another starter we tried was fried cheese with raspberry jam (220 rubles, $7.85), which once again, was rather small. Although we couldn’t make out which particular cheese had been used, the dish was not oily. 
Instead of ordinary bread, Morkovka offers home-baked bread (30 rubles, $1.07) in the form of two buns — one white and one baked with dried tomatos — to accompany the meal.
Because it is difficult for non-vegetarians to survive only on vegetables on a cold winter night, we chose fish for the main courses. Fish dishes vary from 350 ($12.50) to 600 rubles ($21.40), while vegetarian main courses cost from 200 to 400 rubles ($7.14 to $14.20). We had fillet of Japanese perch with vegetables (350 rubles, $12.50) and Teriyaki salmon (350 rubles, $12.50). The perch was not drowned out with extra flavors, allowing us to enjoy the taste of the fish; conversely the salmon was full of marinated flavors, and the perfectly garnished with spinach. 
Morkovka offers a variety of fresh fruits, cakes and fruit jellies for dessert, priced from 150 rubles to 250 rubles ($5.35 to $8.92), from which we tried a tangerine jelly (150 rubles, $5.35), which wasn’t anything special although it was refreshing and not overly sweet. 
Morkovka is certainly a good and safe place to eat healthy food, although to follow the cafÎ’s logic, it would have been wise to include nutritional information and where the food was sourced for each dish. Furthermore, Morkovka is unfortunately one of those places that takes itself too seriously. 
Interestingly, an old joke that was published in the inflight magazine of a Ukranian airline came to mind while I was eating at Morkovka. A sign for a health food store reads: “Shoplifters will be beaten on the head with an organic carrot.” I wonder what would happen at Morkovka to “restaurant-lifters” — those who eat but refuse to pay?

TITLE: Aid Sent To Palestinian Authority
AUTHOR: By Mohammed Daraghmeh
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israel froze the transfer of millions of dollars in tax rebates and customs payments to the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian officials said Wednesday that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have promised $33 million in quick aid to ease  a severe budget crisis.
Saudi Arabia promised $20 million and Qatar pledged $13 million to help the Palestinian Authority pay January salaries to 137,000 employees, a senior Palestinian official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal was not final.
Earlier, Israel said it was suspending the transfer of $45 million in tax and customs revenues it collected in January while Western nations weigh whether to continue supporting the Palestinian Authority after Hamas, with its history of suicide bombings and rejection of Israel, forms a government.
The Israeli action could cause unrest in the West Bank and Gaza.
Western donors, led by the U.S. and EU, funnel about $900 million to the Palestinians each year, most of it designated for reconstruction projects in the impoverished Gaza Strip and West Bank. They are reconsidering that funding, demanding that Hamas recognize Israel and renounce violence.
The 137,000 people on the Palestinian Authority payroll, including almost 60,000 security officers, are supposed to receive their salaries Thursday. Even with promises of new aid, a Palestinian official said the checks would not be ready until Monday at the earliest.
Even a week’s delay could mean hardship for large numbers of Palestinians. The Palestinian economy is in tatters after five years of violence with Israel. Unemployment is 22 percent, and even the meager government salaries support extended families in many cases.
Failure to pay the January salaries could pose the most difficult test yet for Hamas, which has resisted international demands to recognize Israel, disarm and renounce violence.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Israel was “not out of sync” with the rest of the world in holding up the transfer.

TITLE: Got Cellphone? Make a Movie
AUTHOR: By Rebecca Harrison
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JOHANNESBURG — Eight cell phones, $160,000, and a good idea — could this be the future of state-of-the--art film-making?
South African director Aryan Kaganof thinks so. And to prove it, he made SMS Sugar Man, which is billed as the world’s first feature film shot entirely on mobile phones.
SMS Sugar Man was filmed on eight phone cameras over 11 days with three main characters for less than $160,000. As well as traditional cinema screenings, the film will be beamed to cell phones in 30 three-minute episodes over the course of a month.
Kaganof says the tale of a pimp and two high-class prostitutes cruising around Johannesburg on Christmas Eve is blazing a trail for a new, democratic approach to film that will slash the cost of both making and viewing movies.
“I thought cinema in South Africa wasn’t the appropriate medium to represent who we are ... it’s a mostly white phenomenon. Then it struck me that a medium that Africans love more than any other is the cell phone,” he said.
Kaganof — who ironically bought his first cell phone last year to make the film — dismissed concerns over quality and said the footage looked “fabulous” when blown up to the standard 35mm feature film size.
While films made in or about Africa are grabbing the limelight outside the world’s poorest continent, small audiences at home — where most people cannot afford a night out at the cinema — make it tough for filmmakers to break even.
Finding a low-budget model like in Nigeria, where the homegrown “Nollywood” industry is hugely popular, is the only way of ensuring a future for South African film, said Kaganof.
SMS Sugar Man — which is due to premiere around May — cost just a fraction of the 6 million rand that many low-budget local films cost. By comparison, Hollywood pictures typically cost $40-50 million and often exceed $100 million.

TITLE: Brains Against Brawn at Super Bowl XL
AUTHOR: By Steve Keating
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DETROIT, Michigan — When the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks meet in Super Bowl XL on Sunday it will be a clash of American styles and cultures, blue collar verses white collar. Computer nerds verses steel workers.
Lining up at one end of Ford Field will be the Seahawks, the team with trendy teal uniforms from the rainy north west famous for gourmet coffee and home for billionaire computer geeks.
At the other end, the Steelers, the four-times Super Bowl champions with the black helmets and a gritty reputation forged from the local mills and coal mines.
While the two teams can draw similarities for their play on the field, off it they are as different as their owners and the beer drinkers and latte sippers who support them.
Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men with an estimated value of $22.5 billion, bought the team for $200 million in 1997 to keep the struggling Seahawks from flying south.
The Steelers came into the possession of the Rooney family in 1933, when Art Rooney paid $2,500 for the team with (according the NFL folklore) money he won that day at the race track.
While the Steelers have developed into one of the NFL’s most recognizable brands the Seahawks may well be the league’s most anonymous franchise.
Despite boasting the NFL’s leading rusher and MVP candidate in Shaun Alexander and posting a regular season record of 13-3, second only to the Indianapolis Colts, the Seahawks arrived in Detroit on Monday as clear underdogs.
For all their accomplishments, however, it will take at least one more victory on Sunday before the Seahawks will get the respect and validation they seek from football fans beyond the Seattle city limits.
“In Green Bay it was quite different than the situation in Seattle because they had a wonderful tradition,” said Seattle head coach Mike Holmgren, who was lured away from the Packers by Allen with a $32 million eight-year contract in 1999. 
“They had been in the game as long as any team and everyone knew who the Packers were.
“In Seattle, as players have mentioned this week, because of geography and appearances on “Monday Night Football” and national TV games, your exposure is limited to everyone else.
“I think the Super Bowl, and certainly if you win the game, brings those things your way.
“Then you can start to build recognition for your players, for your city if necessary, and certainly for your franchise.
Holmgren said the Super Bowl was a vital part of the process.
“We’ve had a good football team for a couple of years prior to this,” he said. “We didn’t get it done but this will allow people who didn’t know about us to know about us.”
As in any sport, tradition evolves slowly.
While swirling yellow Terrible Towels for decades have been the rallying cry of Steelers fans, Seahawks supporters have united behind the 12th Man.
Before each game a flag with the No. 12 is hoisted at Qwest Field in recognition of what is widely regarded as the loudest fans in the NFL.
During Seattle’s postseason run a 12th Man flag as also flown from the top of the city’s landmark Space Needle, catching the attention of many football fans, particularly at Texas A and M University who have filed a restraining order against the Seahawks for a trademark infringement to the phrase “12th Man”.
The Seahawks, of course, have also caught the Steelers attention.
“We know how tough Seattle is,” said Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. “They truly are one of the top teams, if not the top team, in the NFL.
“They got the number one seed in the NFC. It’s going to take a good football team [to beat them].
“It’s going to take our best football to come out and, hopefully, make this a good game.”

TITLE: Klitschko On The Ropes In Boxing Flap
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Volobuyev
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV — Ukraine’s government has no intention of interfering in a row pitting retired boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko against veteran officials of the country’s boxing federation, it said on Tuesday. 
Klitschko stormed out of a federation conference last weekend after failing to muster enough support to take over as president. 
He said he wanted to create a new body to promote the sport amongst young people and accused long-standing officials of engaging in routine corruption. 
“No steps are planned to deal with this matter. We have no right to interfere in the activities of a public organization,” Sports Minister Yury Pavlenko told a news conference. 
“We have advised them to act through the Justice Ministry and other legal bodies. If it is ruled that procedural violations took place, other steps may be taken. It is up to the federation to deal with the situation as it now stands.” 
Klitschko announced last October that injury prevented him defending his heavyweight title. He returned to his native Ukraine and announced he would run in March both for a seat in parliament and the job of Kiev mayor. 
The former champion had been elected honorary president of the Ukrainian boxing federation late last year and went to last Saturday’s conference with an ambitious plan to put a new team in place in senior positions. 
But it quickly became clear his supporters were outnumbered. 
“Ten years ago, when I left Ukraine, I saw the sort of corruption that reigned in the boxing federation. After my return I see nothing has changed,” he told the conference in an address shown on Ukrainian television. 
“They think only of themselves, with nothing but disdain for boxers and coaches. I have no wish to work with a team of this sort. I want to create a transparent, powerful body which will work for young people and not steal government money.” 
After Klitschko’s departure the remaining delegates re-elected executives, including Vladimir Ryabika, as president. 
“It is a great shame Vitaly walked out. He was persuaded to back a position which unfortunately had little to do with reality,” Ryabika told the daily Po-Kievsky. 
“His actions are not helpful to boxing in Ukraine. The federation is very authoritative and has many contacts with politicians and businessmen. If anyone thinks this affair will help him in his personal affairs, he had better think again.” 
Ukrainian boxers have excelled in competition under officials linked to the federation’s current leadership, their achievements including a gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 for Klitschko’s younger brother Vladimir. 
Ukraine won two silvers and a bronze at the 2000 Games in Sydney but was shut out in Athens. The ex-Soviet state also has many world and European championships to its credit, with some champions going on to the professional ranks.

TITLE: Memories of a Hockey Triumph 50 Years Ago
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Half a century ago this week, the Soviet Union, appearing in its first Winter Olympics, won all its games in a 10-team ice hockey tournament to clinch the gold medal. 
Viktor Shuvalov, the only member of that 1956 team still alive today, clearly recalls the success at the Cortina d’Ampezzo Games in Italy. 
“I still remember us winning the gold very well, as if it was just yesterday,” recalled the spry 82-year-old, who played centerforward on the top Soviet line with Vsevolod Bobrov and Yevgeny Babich. 
The anniversary was celebrated with a game in Moscow on Saturday when a Soviet All-Star team beat a selection of former European greats 7-6. 
Two years before its Olympic triumph, the Soviet Union had made its international debut in a similar fashion, going undefeated to claim its first global title at the 1954 world championship in Stockholm. 
The following year, however, it surrendered the title to Canada after losing 5-0 to its archrival in the final game. 
“We were really disappointed with our performance in 1955,” Soviet head coach Arkady Chernyshyov later wrote in his memoirs. “Not so much with second place but losing to Canada was hard to swallow. We really wanted to redeem ourselves at the Olympics.” 
They did just that, shutting down the Canadians 2-0 in the last game behind the excellent play of goaltender Nikolai Puchkov for their seventh straight victory to secure the gold. 
“What can you say when you play your best hockey and you still lose? It was a pleasure to watch the precision of their offense. Russia has emerged as a power in world hockey,” said Canadian coach Bobby Bauer. 
“There is one area where the Russians have achieved results bordering on the impossible and that is in ice hockey,” The New York Times wrote. 
The line of Bobrov-Shuvalov-Babich led the way, scoring 16 goals in seven matches. 
Bobrov, who also excelled in soccer, finished as a joint top scorer with nine goals while Nikolai Sologubov was voted the best defenseman. 
“We knew each other’s moves in our sleep,” Shuvalov said of his linemates. The trio had been together since the early 1950s, first playing for the Air Force team VVC, then for the Red Army club, later known as CSKA Moscow. 
All three miraculously escaped a plane crash over the Ural Mountains in January 1950 that killed all their VVC teammates. 
VVC was put together by Air Force General Vasily Stalin, the son of Josef Stalin, who used his father’s influence to poach the best players from other clubs. 
Just before that tragic flight, Shuvalov joined VVC from his native Chelyabinsk and was left at home in Moscow so as not to upset local fans by playing against his former team. 
Bobrov overslept, missed the flight and had to take a train to the Urals. Babich was injured and stayed behind. 
Former Soviet captain Viktor Kuzkin paid tribute to his predecessors. “Bobrov, Sologubov, Shuvalov — they were the first generation of Soviet hockey players who made an historic breakthrough,” Kuzkin, 65, one of only four hockey players to win three Olympic gold medals, said in an interview. 
“We were lucky to follow in their footsteps.” 
The rugged defenseman made his international debut at the 1963 world championship in Stockholm. 
“I was a young lad and coaches paired me with Sologubov so I could learn from him,” recalled Kuzkin, who was inducted into the International Ice Hockey Federation’s Hall of Fame last year. 
“He was 39 then and it was his last major championship but believe me he could still teach us a few tricks.” 
Once again, the Soviets beat Canada 4-2 in the last game to reclaim the title they had lost in 1956 before winning the next eight world championships and three Olympic gold medals. 
“We were truly the Big Red Machine as the Western press used to call us those days,” Kuzkin said of the team that won a record 22 world and eight Olympic titles. 
“We feared no one. I think most of our opponents, even the Canadians, not to mention the Czechs or the Swedes, feared us.” 
Kuzkin admitted, however, that the Russians lost their aura of invincibility after the Soviet breakup. 
“We have lost the continuity in our game,” he said. 
“In the early 1990s there was a mass exodus of our best players to the West. By 1992 everyone had left. The young kids had no one to look up to as I did playing alongside Sologubov.”