SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1146 (12), Friday, February 17, 2006
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TITLE: Talks With Hamas Set For March
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A high-level delegation from the Palestinian group Hamas will hold talks with Russian officials in Moscow early next month, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday, heralding a meeting the Kremlin hopes will cement its central role in Middle East diplomacy. 
“We have reached an agreement in principle about the arrival in early March of a delegation of the Hamas leadership to Moscow,” the ministry said in a statement. 
The militant group’s victory in recent parliamentary elections has prompted threats from the United States and European Union, which threaten to cut off massive aid to the Palestinians unless Hamas — responsible for scores of suicide attacks and designated a terrorist organization by many Western nations — recognizes Israel and renounces violence. 
Russia, with backing from France, broke the united Western front on Hamas and invited its leaders to Moscow for talks aimed at persuading the radical group to moderate its stance. The invitation, announced at a news conference by President Vladimir Putin, was the latest bid by Moscow to invigorate its role in Middle East peacemaking after years of taking a back seat to the United States. 
A Western diplomat in Moscow said Thursday that Russia was trying to use its distinctive position in the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators — not having formally designated Hamas as a terrorist organization — to make headway with the militant group. 
Similarly, Russia is using its open channels with Iran to try to negotiate a resolution to the crisis over Tehran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. 
Russian officials have promised to demand that Hamas recognize the state of Israel and abandon the use of violence. 
But the diplomat said the talks were not expected to significantly affect Middle East peacemaking. “In an ideal world, you’d see a 180-degree turn,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity. 
“I don’t think anyone expects that.” 
The other members of the Quartet are the United Nations, the EU and the U.S. 
Turkey, a country with close ties to both Israel and the Palestinians, also has been seeking to play a mediating role. Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ exiled political leader, was in Ankara on Thursday for talks where Turkish officials urged the group to renounce violence. 
Meanwhile, a top military officer said Thursday that Russia could decide on weapons deliveries to the Palestinians after the talks with Hamas leaders, the Interfax news agency reported. 
“This decision must be made with the new Palestinian leadership,” the army’s chief of the general staff, General Yury Baluyevsky, was quoted as saying. 
He said that two helicopters expected to be delivered to the Palestinians would be unarmed and were intended for transporting the territory’s leaders. 
“Armored equipment is also intended for stabilizing the situation,” Interfax quoted Baluyevsky as saying. 
The Palestinian Authority plans to buy two Mi-17 transport helicopters and 50 armored personnel carriers, Interfax said.

TITLE: Ivanov Defends Army
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev and Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov defended the top brass at a State Duma session on Wednesday against criticism of widespread hazing, warning that media organizations could be investigated if they called for a boycott of conscription and arguing that hazing was a societal problem that began in kindergarten.
Ivanov had been called to address the Duma in response to the scandal that arose last month over the brutal hazing of Andrei Sychyov, a conscript who had his legs and genitals amputated after being beaten on New Year’s Eve. 
“Yes, there was an outrageous occurrence that prompted the well-founded indignation of all clear-thinking people,” Ivanov told deputies. “Yes, unfortunately crimes and incidents occur in the military, and we are not evading responsibility.” 
Ivanov’s speech at the Duma coincided with a news conference of local army bosses in St. Petersburg. Igor Puzanov, chief commander of the Leningrad Military District, admitted the existence of hazing in the region but refused to give statistics.
“Even one case of hazing is a tragedy, so I don’t see any point in discussing numbers,” Puzanov told reporters on Wednesday. Despite repeated attempts by journalists to get figures, the commander was adamant.
“The problem does exist, and we haven’t been able to deal with it efficiently,” he said. “We are trying to reduce the scale of it by introducing tight training schemes, where commanders spend as much time with the recruits as possible.”
Ella Polyakova of the St. Petersburg human rights group Soldiers’ Mothers said only a professional army can put a stop to the hazing. “Until then, perhaps, night guards and round-the-clock surveillance cameras could help,” she said on Wednesday.
Even the top chiefs in the army admit that most of the recruits either come from the weakest of the weak or from lowest of the low. 
According to Puzanov, only about 10 percent of the recruits have the appropriate levels of physical fitness and moral qualities.
“The army is not a prison: it is not tailored to transform freaks and sadists into normal people,” Puzanov said. “Everybody who joins the army gets a gun, their moral standards notwithstanding. It is presumed that the recruits won’t misuse the weapons.” 
The commander objected to a proposal for increased surveillance and suggested improving the primary education system. “There is much more violence in Russian prisons than in the Russian army, despite huge numbers of guards and tight control,” he said. “One should think why the country’s schools produce monsters who arrive in the army as complete sadists.”
Ivanov sought to deflect public anger over hazing away from the top brass, blaming instead the soldiers who attacked Sychyov, rising rates of crime and violence throughout society and irresponsible news coverage.
“The Chelyabinsk case shouldn’t be a reason for the baseless accusations against the entire army, and against generals and admirals in particular,” Ivanov said. “Those directly involved must bear responsibility.” Using the term used to describe the hazing of first-year conscripts by their elders in the ranks, Ivanov said, “In our country, dedovshchina begins in kindergarten.”
Calls for a boycott of conscription “could become the object of strong interest from constitutional and law enforcement agencies,” Ivanov said. “In certain papers, ... it is incomprehensible which army they are talking about — the Russian army or an enemy army.”
The hazing of Sychyov by drunken soldiers at the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy prompted government critics and campaigners for military reform to call for Ivanov’s ouster after he initially referred to the case as “nothing serious” in response to a reporter’s question last month. 
Hazing in the military occurs “at least in part because the army is part of Russian society as a whole, where the crime rate sadly is not falling but increasing,” Ivanov said, citing the figure of 246 crimes per 100,000 citizens recorded last year, compared with 167 per 100,000 by members of the armed forces.
“So I don’t think the armed forces are in crisis,” Ivanov said.
Ivanov also said that abuse-related crimes in the military had fallen by 25 percent last year, but gave no concrete figures.
After news of the Sychyov hazing broke, Russian media reported a stream of similar recent incidents, and public protests demanding Ivanov’s ouster were held in Moscow and several other cities across the country.
The case has also led to renewed calls for greater civilian oversight over the military and an all-volunteer armed forces.
Rather than address these calls, Ivanov said military discipline would be improved through better reporting of incidents; a Defense Ministry proposal being prepared which will create a military police force; and the reduction in military service from two years to one, which is to be introduced in 2008.
Under a new regulation, officers must report crimes and hazing incidents in the ranks. Covering up a crime would result in their dismissal, Ivanov said.
Deputy commanders in each unit responsible for troops’ morale have been ordered to report crimes and hazing incidents without first clearing it with their commanders, Ivanov said.
He said students in universities offering military instruction would receive training on maintaining conscripts’ morale. The Defense Ministry also plans to devote one of its academies to training officers who would be responsible for troops’ morale. 
Ivanov also said his ministry was working on a proposal to create a military police force. The force would not be a “magic pill against all crimes and incidents,” he warned.
Complaining that the only punishment a hooligan or a drunk or drugged serviceman now faced in the military was an official reprimand, Ivanov called on the Duma to pass a law that would allow offenders to be arrested and tried by disciplinary courts in their units. The courts would be headed by commanders and overseen by the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office.
Ivanov also called for extra funding of 31 billion rubles ($1.1 billion) for the armed forces, so that a professional corps of 110,000 sergeants staffed by volunteers with higher education could be established. Currently, less than one-fourth of sergeants have professional qualifications, Ivanov said. Most sergeants are also conscripts, not volunteers.
“In fact, this is the only practical proposal put forward by Ivanov that could help reduce hazing in the armed forces,” said Alexander Golts, an independent military analyst. “Today, with officers having little incentive to keep order in the barracks, hazing by the older servicemen remains the main way of maintaining discipline.”
Ivanov began his address to deputies by quoting not statistics of crimes carried out in the military, but those committed by underage criminals in Moscow. 
Last year, the Defense Ministry recorded 16 conscripts’ deaths due to hazing incidents and 276 suicides. 
According to press reports, many conscripts commit suicide because of hazing incidents.
Ivanov denied there was a link between suicides and hazing in the military, however, saying that more than 2 percent of conscripts had suicidal tendencies, that 5.5 percent suffered from alcohol abuse and that 4.5 percent had used drugs.
Ivanov’s comments came a day after the Duma Defense Committee held a closed-door meeting with Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Savchenko, senior Defense Ministry commanders, Public Chamber representative Anatoly Kucherena and a representative from the Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, archpriest Dmitry Smirnov. 
After two hours, the gathering emerged with almost the same recommendations that were voiced by Ivanov on Wednesday, plus one more: that the Duma pass a measure to fund the hiring of Orthodox chaplains in the military.

TITLE: Judge in Beslan Case Considers His Verdict
AUTHOR: By Kazbek Basayev
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ — A Russian judge retired to consider his verdict on Thursday on the only person to stand trial for the Beslan school siege that killed 300 people, half of them children. 
Prosecutors have requested the death penalty for Nurpashi Kulayev, who they say is the only surviving hostage-taker of the group that stormed Beslan’s school in September 2004 with the intention of killing as many hostages as possible. 
However, some victims’ relatives say the authorities are using Kulayev as a scapegoat. They say a heavy-handed rescue operation caused many of the deaths but no officials have so far been brought to trial. 
“I do not consider myself guilty, not for the death of a single child or adult,” said Kulayev, his voice trembling, from a glass box in the courtroom when the judge asked him to enter a final plea. 
“As for the people who are guilty, let them confess their guilt when they are caught,” he said. 
The judge hearing the case in Vladikavkaz, capital of the North Ossetia region in southern Russia, said the court would reconvene to announce its verdict. He gave no date. 
A moratorium on the death penalty is in force in Russia, so the harshest sentence would be life imprisonment. 
A heavily armed group linked to separatist rebels in Russia’s Chechnya region seized the school on Sept. 1, 2004, the first day of the school year. 
The gunmen killed most of the men they took hostage. The women and children were herded into the school sports hall which was rigged with booby-trap bombs. 
On Sept. 3, a gunfight erupted between the hostage-takers and security forces. A total of 331 people — 186 of them children — were killed. Many died when the sports hall caught fire and the roof collapsed. 
Five women who lost relatives in the siege were on Thursday on the seventh day of a hunger strike in protest against a trial they say has been a whitewash. 
“The [officials] want to cover up Beslan. They do not want to punish the people who are to blame...who gave the order for tanks and grenade launchers to fire on the school,” said Ella Kesayeva of the pressure group Voice of Beslan. 
Her group has demanded a retrial. Other relatives’ groups have supported the death penalty for Kulayev. 
An official inquiry into the massacre concluded police and intelligence services were negligent. It said they might have prevented the attack if they had improved security at schools. 
The inquiry did not point the finger at senior officials who led the chaotic rescue operation. The inquiry chairman said that whatever mistakes officials had made, ultimate blame for the deaths rested with the hostage-takers. 
President Vladimir Putin has said Beslan was part of a campaign of international terrorism that also included the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities. 
Soon after the siege, he initiated sweeping political reforms — including abolishing direct elections for regional governors — which he said were designed to help Russia defend itself against terrorist attacks. 
Kulayev, a Chechen, has told the court he was among the hostage-takers in the school but he has said he did not kill anyone. The judge is sitting without a jury.

TITLE: Two Hostage-Takers Killed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police shot and killed two men who took a female officer hostage during their court appearance in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, news agencies reported Thursday. 
The shooting occurred late Wednesday in the city in the Ural mountains, about 1,500 kilometers east of Moscow. 
A man identified as Vladimir Slivov and his companion brandished a sharp instrument and took the woman hostage at a federal court building around 6 p.m., demanding to be freed, a police spokesman was quoted as saying. 
Police tried negotiating with Slivov, then shot him about two hours later after he threatened the officer’s life, spokesman Valery Gorelykh said. 
Slivov died immediately and his companion was wounded in the shooting and died later in hospital, the spokesman said, according to RIA-Novosti. The officer was unhurt. 
“The perpetrator demanded he and his accomplice be released and that they be allowed to take the policewoman with them. The perpetrator did not agree to any negotiations and the woman was threatened with being killed,” the police official said in comments televised on NTV. 
Slivov had served an earlier sentence for robbery, was released in April 2005 and then detained in July on similar charges, RIA-Novosti reported. He and the other man had been brought to court from jail. 
In another hostage-taking incident in Yekaterinburg, in December, a man armed with an assault rifle held five employees of a TV channel hostage for about two hours before surrendering to police.

TITLE: Putin Talks To Quartet On Peace
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin met Wednesday with the envoy of the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace mediators to discuss the tense situation in the region after last month’s surprise victory of militant group Hamas in Palestinian elections.
Envoy James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, said he had come to Moscow to seek advice as well as to inform the Russian leadership of his work. 
“I am here both to report to you and get your guidance,” he said. Russia currently holds the chairmanship of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. 
Putin told Wolfensohn he was “very glad to have an opportunity to talk about the situation currently developing in the region.” 
Russia is one of four Quartet members, along with the United Nations, the European Union and the United States. 
The Hamas victory has prompted threats from the United States and the EU to cut off aid to the Palestinians unless the group recognizes Israel and renounces violence. 
Russia, with backing from France, has broken the united Western front on Hamas, and Putin invited its leaders to Moscow for talks this month. 
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday called Russia’s invitation to Hamas a realistic way to foster future peacemaking, and said Moscow agreed that Hamas must commit to seeking peace with Israel to win international acceptance. 
“We will work toward Hamas accepting the Quartet’s positions. This is not just the Quartet’s opinion, but also that of the majority of nations, including Arab nations,” he said after talks with EU leaders in Vienna. 
“But this will take time. It is not easy. Unless we engage Hamas, which gained power as result of legitimate, free and fair elections, nothing will change.” 
(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: Comedy Classic Film Composer Is Dead
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The composer Andrei Petrov, whose works include the ballets “The Creation” and “The Master and Margarita,” the opera “Peter the First,” numerous symphonic works and over 80 film soundtracks, died on Wednesday at the age of 75 following a massive stroke. 
Petrov, a People’s Artist of the U.S.S.R. who lived in St. Petersburg all his life, was a rare breed of musician. He enjoyed enormous popularity across Russia for his film scores for Georgy Daneliya’s “Autumn Marathon,” Gennady Kazantsev’s “Amphibian Man,” and Eldar Ryazanov’s “Office Romance,” “Garage” and “Watch Out for Your Car.” He was also worshipped by classical music audiences, who admired his chamber and symphonic pieces, ballets and operas.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union he was invited to orchestrate Mikhail Glinka’s “Patriotic Song,” which served as Russia’s national anthem in the 1990s, until President Vladimir Putin brought back the Soviet-era anthem in 2001.
Putin expressed his condolences to the composer’s widow and relatives on Thursday in a statement released by the president’s press service. “Everyone who knew and loved Andrei Petrov — a wonderful composer, a talented and generous person — sincerely shares our sorrow,” Putin wrote. “He was deservedly referred to as a living classic.”
His statement was echoed by the words of the St. Petersburg writer Daniil Granin. “I knew Andrei Petrov for half a century, and during this time he gave happiness to millions of people,” Granin told reporters on Wednesday. “This loss makes the city feel empty.”
Petrov suffered a severe stroke on Feb. 2, and an operation was carried out on the following day from which he didn’t recover. 
To the vast majority of Russians, Petrov is known first and foremost as a film composer. Although he perceived classical music as an eternal art and soundtracks as a lesser “entertainment,” he was not at all discouraged by the fact that the general public is not very familiar with his symphonic works and ballets. 
“Most Russian contemporaries of Dmitry Shostakovich knew him primarily as the author of the romance from ‘The Gadfly’ and the song ‘The Morning Greets Us With Coolness,’” Petrov told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview in 2002. “Such is life.”
In an attempt to bridge the gap between his varied audiences — traditional classical concert-goers and lovers of film soundtracks — Petrov created a symphonic suite entitled “Street Melodies in Tuxedos” which comprised a series of arrangements of his popular hits. 
While the original arrangements had been written for instruments such as guitar, saxophone and accordion, in the suite the themes from Petrov’s film music appeared in symphonic versions, allowing symphony-orchestra musicians to demonstrate their skills. The program was an instant hit at the Shostakovich Philharmonic when it premiered in 2002.
In his early career, romantic themes were at the fore and the most powerful source of inspiration for Petrov, who often admitted to being a very romantic person by nature.
In recent years, the composer demonstrated a greater interest in plots concerning confrontations between good and evil, such as the conflict found in his ballet version of Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita.”
Petrov appreciated the opportunity that soundtracks gave him to appeal to a much larger audience than any concert hall could ever hold. 
“The precious thing I’ve learned from [movie director] Georgy Daneliya about movie music is that it shouldn’t be connected with a particular episode, but should soar over the film, encompassing the whole story,” Petrov said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times in 2000. 
“And if you achieve this, the music can also exist as an independent piece, and not be just a soundtrack. Composing requires ascent, rising above the ordinary, the transitory and the vanity fair we live in. When you rise above daily sounds such as the rumbling of railway tracks or neighbors squabbling, or the television blasting, then you are ready to compose.” 
A public commemoration ceremony will be held at the Shostakovich Philharmonic at 11.00 a.m. on Sunday, Feb.19. The funeral begins at 2.00 p.m. at the Literatorskie Mostki section of the Volkovskoye Cemetery, where Russian arts and culture luminaries such as the writers Leskov and Turgenev and the poet Blok are buried.

TITLE: Pressa Ruined
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Pressa complex on Ulitsa Pravdy, the site of a huge fire on Monday, appears to have been too badly damaged to be repaired and is likely to be demolished an official in the presidential administration said Wednesday.
Dmitry Khrekov, a spokesman for the Presidential Property Department, which owns the complex, said experts would assess the state of the building, but that preliminary analysis had shown it was not suitable for reconstruction.

TITLE: British Architect Victorious in New Holland Tender
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A plan by Sir Norman Foster, one of the world’s best known architects, has won the New Holland Island Redevelopment competition, Governor Valentina Matviyenko said Tuesday. 
The competition, announced by City Hall in November, invited tenders requiring participants to invest over $300 million and complete the project within seven years. 
The British architect’s winning proposal was part of a bid by ST Novaya Gollandia, which has promised to invest $319 million and complete construction within 30 months.
Shalva Shigirinsky, a Moscow-based developer behind ST Novaya Gollandia, said the company will finance 30 percent of the project’s costs with the rest to be borrowed from various sources, Interfax reported. Details of the project have yet to be defined more accurately, Shigirinsky said. Two other companies, NHI Group and Stroi Holding, competed for the high-profile contract.
Foster’s studio, Foster and Partners, is responsible for some of the world’s most iconic new buildings including the Swiss Re Headquarters in London (affectionately known as the “gherkin” or pickle), the new German Parliament in the Reichstag, Berlin, the Great Court for the British Museum, HSBC headquarters in Hong Kong and London, Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt and the Bilbao metro system.
“The triangular shaped self-sustaining island will provide 7.6 hectares of mixed-use cultural development including an indoor theater, conference facilities, galleries, a hotel, shops, apartments and restaurants, with a flexible outdoor arena at its heart,” Foster and Partners said in a news release on its web site Wednesday. “The project will regenerate the 18th century New Holland Island, presenting a unique opportunity to transform the city of St. Petersburg into the foremost venue for performance and visual arts in the world.”
Announcing the winner Matviyenko said the jury considered “world standards” as well as “preserving the harmony of old and new elements and accessibility of the island to citizens,” Interfax reported.
 “We aim to help St. Petersburg to exploit the extraordinary legacy of its urban structure and historic buildings and to establish an arts quarter that will reinvigorate the city and consolidate St. Petersburg’s position as an international tourist destination.,” Foster said in comments posted on his web site Wednesday.
The winning proposal does not include any residential buildings. A residential zone had been stipulated for 20 percent of the territory but later Sergei Sysoyev, deputy head of the Federal Agency for Property Management, said he was against any residential zone on the island. Offices, a hotel and museum will be located at former military warehouses while a former navy prison will be converted into a concert hall for 400 people. The project also includes the construction of a House of Festivals for 2,000 people, an open amphitheater for 3,000 people, three hotels with 542 rooms and eight bridges.
Igor Gorsky, director for development at Becar real estate agency that provided consulting services to Foster in relation to the optimum use of the island and the proportion of office, hotel and shopping areas, indicated several factors that helped Foster to win the tender.
The architect provided rational functional zoning and transportation convenience, creating three separate entrances to the island and several independent car parks as opposed to a proposal by Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat which had only one entrance, Gorsky said. Another advantage of Foster’s project, Gorsky said, is that it creates an “integrated complex corresponding to St. Petersburg’s conservative architectural tradition at the same time as being dynamic and energetic, because of the amphitheater configuration hidden inside the island.”
“Foster guessed the right solution, elegantly and accurately. He completed Peter the Great’s architectural idea without using excessive decorations like Egeraat,” Gorsky said.
“The amphitheater open to the water is also a plus for the city, which so far lacks convenient places for water shows,” he added.
Commercial exploitation of the island could provide annual turnover of up to $100 million to the managing company, while the pay-back period after the project’s completion will take six to seven years, Gorsky said.
“The complex will start generating profits earlier but it will cover additional costs since spending on the project is likely to exceed the plan by 20 percent to 30 percent,” he explained.
It is feasible to complete construction within three years, although the complexity of geological and hydrological explorations and the condition of the power network and other infrastructure could cause delays, Gorsky continued. 
However experts at city  developers Colliers International consider the stated completion period to be “unrealistic.”
“Particular buildings possibly could be restored or constructed in three years, but to complete the whole project during that time period is most unlikely,” said Vasily Dovbnya, senior consultant of the assessment and consulting department at Colliers International. “The volume of required work does not correspond to the declared time scale.” 
“To spread risk, it would be more rational to include the construction of residential buildings into the project. It would make the pay-back period shorter. On the other hand, there is the possibility that the poor environment and soil deterioration would not allow construction of residential property on the island,” Dovbnya said.
Victoria Kulibanova, development manager at Astera, said three years to four years was a feasible period for completing the project, though she suggested that developing infrastructure could increase project costs. The pay-back period would be 10 years to 12 years, she said.
As for the absence of residential property, she regarded this as a plus. “Elite real estate would not be in demand in this district since it requires isolation and solitude, something not permitted by the cultural and entertainment facilities to be located on the island. At the same time a more basic type of real estate would not harmoniously fit into the project,” she said.

(See “Fantasy Island” in AAT)

TITLE: Public Perception Hinders Growth in Life Insurance
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although long term life insurance hardly exists in Russia today, it has great potential, the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation reported recently in the publication “Reforming the Insurance Market in Russia.” 
According to the findings of the Paris-based organization, “the range of life insurance products offered by Russian companies is very limited.” 
Russian market analysts trace this to the public’s lack of trust in its government and an economic situation perceived as “uncertain.”
“Statistical data shows that in this country the development of long term life insurance has been insignificant compared to the same products in western countries,” Mikhail Podushko, strategic development director for Comcon-SPb research company said.
“I think the problem lies in not trusting the government’s ability to guarantee macroeconomic stability,” Podushko said.
Stanislav Rusin, head of International Accounting Standards reporting for Progress-Garant insurance company, blamed this on the uncertainty of the Russian economy and the discredited financial system in general.
“This generation of potential life insurance customers remember far too many more or less vivid, local or global shocks,” Rusin said.
Moreover, Rusin said that until recently Russian companies used life insurance as a means to minimize the tax payments.
Nevertheless, the report’s authors remain optimistic and predict an increase in demand for such products in future.
“As the economy continues to develop, and as the middle class increases in size, it is quite possible that the same requirements for life insurance, as experienced elsewhere, will generate significant growth in this market,” the report said.
It “recommends that both individual companies and perhaps the market as a whole begin the process of changing public perception as to the purpose of life insurance and the products that can be of value to individuals and families.”
Analysts also saw the potential for growth. 
“Changes [on the long-term life insurance market] are possible,” Andrei Maydanik, the deputy director of St. Petersburg-based life insurance society Progress Neva said Monday. 
When disposable income reaches $300 per person (currently the case in Russia) then the interest in life insurance develops, as was the case in Eastern Europe, Maydanik said.
“With an increase in wealth Russians can finally reach beyond merely satisfying their basic needs,” Podushko said.

TITLE: Sky Link Plans ‘Ambitious’
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: National mobile operator Sky Link has set what experts consider an ambitious goal of attracting about four million subscribers by 2010, 30 percent of them in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Sky Link will invest over $100 million into development this year, the company’s CEO said Monday at a press conference in Moscow, Interfax reported. About $50 million will be shared between Moscow and St. Petersburg. 
This year, for the first time Sky Link will publish financial reports that meet international standards such as US GAAP, which should help attract resources from abroad, the company said.
Managers expect to increase turnover to $240 million by the end of 2006 and up to $300 million in 2007.
According to primary data, Sky Link turnover increased by 50 percent last year, while investment into the network reached $80 million.
Some analysts are skeptical, however, about Sky Link’s plans for expansion.
Ilya Fedotov, telecom analyst at Veles Capital investment company, said that attracting credit abroad will be “problematic” for Sky Link due to its secrecy.
“Sky Link does not publish financial reports. The company is not even listed among Russia’s top 10 mobile operators while the CDMA standard to which Sky Link is affiliated is not widely distributed in Russia and is mostly used by corporate clients,” Fedotov said.
“Nevertheless, if Sky Link becomes more transparent and discloses financial reports according to IAS or GAAP, it will be an advantage,” he added.
Another expert was more optimistic saying Sky Link could benefit from high interest in the Russian economy.
“Russia is one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets. The willingness of foreign investors to finance Russian mobile companies was evident in the high demand for American Depositary Receipts issued by Vimpelcom and MTS operators,” said Igor Veretennikov, expert at Finam investment company.
“Sky Link positions itself as a 3G operator. And though in Europe and the U.S. this segment has not seen a dynamic rate of development, investors have not lost hope in it,” he said.
Veretennikov suggested that Sky Link could issue Credit-Linked Notes or Eurobonds to fund its development.
“It is not rational for Systema, Sky Link’s holding, to go after expensive credit, while Sky Link’s current revenue makes it too early to launch an IPO,” he said.
Systema is likely to finance up to 30 percent of the $100 million total from its own resources, Veretennikov said.
“Systema itself is capable of attracting resources that could be redistributed within the holding. However it is doubtful that they will be used by Sky Link,” said Eldar Murtazin, leading expert at Mobile Research Group.
About 89 million SIM cards are sold per year in Russia, while about 76 million people can be considered real subscribers. In relation to these figures Sky Link’s subscription base must be seen as insignificant, Murtazin said.
He suggested that by 2008 Sky Link could leave the voice connection segment of the mobile market altogether, becoming an alternative internet provider or starting its own IP-telephone services.
The scenario seems realistic when one considers the company’s strategy for expansion. According to Sky Link’s general director Valery Guzeyev, the company still mainly targets data transmission instead of voice connection.
“We do not compete with voice operators. Our bias is towards data transmission,” Interfax reported Guzeyev as saying.

TITLE: Gref Looks To Far East
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government will hold new tenders for special economic zones at the end of this year, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Wednesday, Interfax reported.
“If Russia wants to become the intellectual laboratory of the world, we need to develop this instrument,” Gref said in the State Duma, the news agency reported.
The government introduced special economic zones to help diversify the economy away from oil toward innovation sectors. Tax breaks and other benefits are offered to technology companies that reside in the zones.
After the first tender was held last fall, four locations were chosen as special zones for technology research, including the Moscow region towns of Dubna and Zelenograd, St. Petersburg and the Siberian city of Tomsk. Yelabuga, in Tatarstan, and the central Lipetsk region were chosen to house special zones for manufacturing.
After last year’s tender, Gref said he had been disappointed by the quality of proposals for manufacturing zones from the Far East and Western Siberia — regions that he said had great technical potential.
“The Far East must be helped in creating infrastructure,” Gref said Wednesday, adding that it would participate in the upcoming tender, Interfax reported.
He did not specify what other regions would participate or how many new zones would be created.
Tenant companies’ registration will begin after the planning and design of the new zones is completed, but not before the second half of this year, Gref said, Interfax reported.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Airbus Discount 
TOULOUSE, France (Bloomberg) — Airbus SAS is offering Aeroflot a $100 million discount as it tries to trump Boeing to win a $3 billion order for 22 long-haul jets from Russia’s national carrier, Vedomosti said, citing a source familiar with the offer.
The offer by Toulouse, France-based Airbus is for its A350 model, which Aeroflot is considering along with Boeing’s 787, the Russian newspaper said Thursday. The paper in December cited a person familiar with Aeroflot’s plans as saying that the Moscow-based airline would choose Boeing. 
Aeroflot expects to sign the order next month and may sign an option for another 12 airplanes, the paper said. The jets are to be delivered between 2010 and 2014.

MTS Record
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mobile TeleSystems, Eastern Europe’s largest mobile phone company, said the number of subscribers rose 2.2 percent to a record in January as demand in Ukraine surged.
Mobile TeleSystems added 1.31 million users, half in Ukraine, to make a total of 59.5 million, the Moscow-based company said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. 
Users in Ukraine increased 4.7 percent to 13.95 million.

TITLE: Caught Between Ballots and Bullets
AUTHOR: By Jackson Diehl
TEXT: Probably the most interesting reaction to Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian elections was one of the least noticed. It came from Essam Erian, a leading spokesman of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch. 
Erian duly lauded Hamas’s “great victory.” But then he added, according to a report by The Associated Press, that the Islamic militant movement should take up the challenge “of maintaining good relations with the Arab governments and world powers to secure support for the Palestinian cause.”
The message from one Muslim fundamentalist to another was unmistakable: Don’t be evil. Go along with the Egyptian government and the Arab League, which are demanding that Hamas renounce violence and accept previous Palestinian accords with Israel. Find a way to keep the aid dollars of the European Union and United States. No more suicide bombings.
Such rhetoric confounds the common assumption in Washington that Islamic extremists — al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood — are merely different versions of the enemy with which the United States has been at war since Sept. 11, 2001. But Erian’s words would come as no surprise to Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian who is Osama bin Laden’s deputy, or Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al-Qaida commander in Iraq. Both recently condemned the Muslim Brotherhood, and by extension Hamas, for playing U.S. President George W. Bush’s game of democracy. “How can anyone choose any other path but that of jihad?” lamented Zarqawi.
In fact, Bush’s strategy of insisting on elections — in Iraq, in Egypt, in Lebanon and in the Palestinian Authority — has had the effect of widening a rift among the region’s Islamic fundamentalists. Some, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, have embraced democracy, and broken with the terrorists. Erian recently published an article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram defending Ayman Nour, the secular democrat who was jailed in December on trumped-up charges by the government of Hosni Mubarak. His Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats, about 20 percent of the total, in Egypt’s parliamentary elections last fall. 
In Jordan, the Brotherhood, which will soon participate in local elections, helped to organize popular demonstrations against Zarqawi and al-Qaida after the bombings of three Amman hotels in November.
Hamas and Hezbollah, once firmly in al-Qaida’s camp, now straddle the gap. Both movements have joined in parliamentary elections, and both have ceased acts of terrorism for the past year while refusing to give up their militias, weapons or the option of violence. Because of their participation in democratic politics, each is under unprecedented pressure to choose between Zarqawi and Erian; between pursuing an Islamic agenda by violence or by ballots. 
Because Hamas is the first Sunni Islamic movement to win an election outright, its choice is particularly important: If it were to fully embrace democratic politics, the sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East — not just al-Qaida but Syria and Iran — would suffer a momentous loss.
It’s in that light that the Bush administration watches the complex, multi-sided maneuvering that has followed the Palestinian elections. On one side stand Israeli hawks and their hard-line supporters in the U.S. Congress, who insist a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority would be “a terrorist entity,” or “Hamastan,” as Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu calls it. They urge that the Islamists be prevented from taking office — or that the Palestinian Authority be strangled if they do. 
On a second side is Iran, which demands that Hamas make no concessions and offers fresh funding in the event of a Western boycott. 
On a third side are Egypt and other secular Arab regimes, which support neither democracy nor Islamic movements; they’d like to make the secular Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, into a strongman. 
On a fourth are the Europeans, who are likely to soften their current resistance to a Hamas government, and Russia, which already has. Hamas itself is divided between hard-line outsiders, who live in Damascus on Iranian funding, and leaders in Gaza who won the elections by stumping on a moderate platform of clean government and better services.
The pitfalls here are abundant: Deprive Hamas of its victory and it will return to the terrorism of Iran and al-Qaida, while the Palestinian Authority collapses. Let it off the hook and it will try to simultaneously govern and wage war on Israel, much as did Yasser Arafat. 
Somewhere in the middle lies the possible outcome suggested by the Brotherhood — a nonviolent Palestinian Islamic Cabinet that, while unready to endorse Israel, will accept existing Palestinian-Israeli agreements and the results of future elections. A peace accord would have to wait — one was in any case most improbable — but a foundation for the peaceful and democratic Palestinian state Bush has called for could at last be laid.
The odds are not great. Even if the Bush administration can calibrate the right mix of pressure and de facto tolerance, and get Israel to go along, Hamas might not respond. It may be, as some argue, that Islamic militants are incapable of converting to democracy as have secular terrorist movements. But without the elections, there would be no opportunity at all.

Jackson Diehl is a columnist at The Washington Post, where this comment first appeared.

TITLE: Spinning a Tale of Propane Tanks
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin first promised to “waste” terrorists “in the outhouse.” Last Tuesday he went further in a speech to the top brass of the Federal Security Service, instructing FSB agents to hunt down terrorists “in every cave” and “to destroy them like rats.”
One day after the president’s speech an explosion ripped through a two-story military barracks on a base in Chechnya, killing 13 and injuring more than 20. The base in Kurchaloi, some 30 kilometers southeast of Grozny, housed Chechen troops serving in a special Defense Ministry security force called Vostok. Officials announced that the barracks had been destroyed by a propane tank explosion. They even showed the offending tanks on television. 
The tanks were intact.
In his speech to the FSB brass, Putin commended the border guards for shoring up the country’s borders and making it harder for terrorists to enter. Judging by Putin’s speech, you’d have thought Shamil Basayev was hiding out in Mexico, like Trotsky. But when Basayev gave an interview to Andrei Babitsky last summer, he met the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter in Ingushetia. Earlier, the authorities had nearly captured Basayev and his wife on the outskirts of Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria. 
When it became clear that cops had driven Basayev around Nalchik, the Interior Ministry needed to save face. Not long after, the cops entered a mosque belonging to the Jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria in the village of Volny Aul and beat up hundreds of people. After several years of similar beatings, the Muslims of Nalchik rose up in armed rebellion on Oct. 13, 2005. And they were destroyed. In his speech last week, Putin singled out the operation in Nalchik as “an example of successful work by the Russian law enforcement agencies as a whole and by FSB employees in particular.”
Rasul Makasharipov, the leader of a radical Islamic rebel group who was killed by Interior Ministry commandos last summer, was first arrested in the wake of Basayev’s raid into Dagestan in August 1999. Makasharipov had served as Basayev’s translator in the Botlikh district. Makasharipov was subsequently released, and returned to Chechnya, where he tried to drum up support for another confrontation with government troops. Because he had been released, however, Makasharipov was suspected of being an informant. To clear his good name, he returned to Dagestan and started wasting cops. 
In Beslan on the night of Sept. 2-3, 2005 — the first anniversary of the Beslan tragedy — members of an Ossetian militia apprehended an Ingush man with a backpack, a paratrooper’s knife and the pale skin of a fighter who’d been hiding out in the forest. The man explained that he had come to pick apples — at night, on the anniversary of Beslan. 
The cops intercepted the militia’s radio transmissions and intervened. After detaining the Ingush man, the police set him free. An eyewitness suggested to me that the man had intended to blow up the railway line in the area. Three days after our conversation the line was in fact bombed, derailing a freight train.
Two parallel worlds exist in this country. In one world, the military, law enforcement and the security services have turned into an enormous supermarket that offers its services to criminals and terrorists alike. The siloviki release hard-core extremists for cash and provide a taxi service for Basayev.
In the other world, terrorists are wasted in outhouses and caves, and when Defense Ministry barracks explode, propane is the culprit.
What astounds me about the propane story is that they showed the intact gas tanks on television. Any explosives expert will tell you that when a propane tank explodes, the metal pretty much vaporizes. 
Then again, any spin doctor worth his salt will tell you that if you want people to believe that a propane tank explosion destroyed an army barracks, you’d better show them some tanks.

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

TITLE: Fantasy island
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: On Tuesday, the controversial 30-year saga of the redevelopment of one of the most mysterious sites in St. Petersburg — New Holland Island — finally came to a close when Governor Valentina Matviyenko announced that a plan by British architect Sir Norman Foster will be adopted (see story page 5).
The chief irony of the concluding chapter of the New Holland story is that the island, a formerly closed military zone during the Soviet era in downtown St. Petersburg — a few minute’s walk from the State Hermitage Museum, St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the Mariinsky Theater — will now be developed as a thriving cultural and commercial area. 
Like the city, the triangular island appeared artificially during the reign of Peter the Great when in 1720 the Admiralteisky and Kryukov canals were built. 
The island’s internal canal system and bridges brought to mind the Dutch city of Amerstam and at that time it served as a shipyard and housed an arsenal and as well as a naval jail. 
The island also features an arch and impressive brick warehouses (1765-1780) by Jean Baptiste Vallin-Delamothe based on designs by Savva Chevakinsky, listed by UNESCO as important World Heritage monuments. 
Consequently, all redevelopment plans proposed by architects over the years required that these, along with the prison, a blacksmith’s house, an extensive inner pond and water canals, be preserved. 
The first push for redevelopment of the small, 7.6-hectare island was made in 1975 by architect Veniamin Fabritsky, but it was only in 2002 after Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky Theater’s artistic director, turned his attention to the site that it obtained international focus. 
The American architect Erik Owen Moss proposed, along with a plan for a second performance space for the Mariinsky Theater, the redevelopment New Holland as a cultural center. Unfortunately, his exciting, and highly acclaimed plan failed because it was a part of his rejected Mariinsky II proposal. 
After the military finally vacated the historic buildings at the end of 2003, City Hall announced last November that an international competition would be held for the tender to redevelop the island. 
The final three proposals by Foster and Partners, German studio Engel and Zimmermann and Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat were exhibited with the winner announced on Tuesday. 
“What you have to realise is that the New Holland competition didn’t have the same high status among  international architects as Mariinksy II had,” Vadim Bass, a prominent St. Petersburg architectural expert explained. 
“The object to be renovated — an industrial zone — in terms of contemporary architecture has been one of the most typical and highly developed niches since the 1980s. International architects are very experienced in such reconstructions” Bass said.
In this sense there are no evident failures among the proposed designs, although some of them are more desirable than others.   
Foster, who won the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1999 and the architect of, among others, the renovation of the Reichstag building in Berlin, was the most celebrated architect in the competition. 
In his New Holland plan, the main architectural feature is a House of Festivals in which he recruits jagged, nervous lines and edgy shapes that are quite atypical for the architect. 
Foster’s expansive star-like palace is the only one among the proposed projects that makes captivating use of the extensive inner pond, integrating it as a real part of the entertainment complex by converting it into a majestic open-air water amphitheater. The palace also features a covered stage.  
Egeraat, who also participated in the Mariinsky II competition, proposed a more diverse and locally motivated project. 
“To create a distinguished new identity and enhance the site’s visibility, new volumes are made into iconic elements,” the architect said
Egeraat, although losing to Foster Tuesday, had suggested the best thought-out and inventive renovation of the island. 
In his proposed masterplan the island resembles a Dutch village that is altogether comfortable, human-scale and a high-tech haven. The group of small Dutch-style houses — the so-called “Hollanse hulzen” complex on the north end of the island — is the highlight of the project.
Another feature is a hotel to the south-east of the haven. Its edifice perfectly corresponds with the “Hollanse hulzen” ensemble and forms a good viewing point on the island with a pedestrian zone and roofs covered with vegetative ornament. 
The last feature is Egeraat’s House of Festivals which is a transformation of the circular former prison building. Here Egeraat, against the competition’s rules, built into the prison two more circular buildings that make the palace more multifunctional and flexible. 
“We know that we went against rules here, but we did it consciously as it benefited the whole undertaking,” a representative of Egeraat architectural studio explained The St Petersburg Times. 
In addition, Egeraat is quite sensible about transport links and pedestrian access to the island. On his web site Egeraat goes further and said he would have planned to connect the Mariinsky Theater to New Holland with a promenade along the Kryukov canal. 
The other losing project was carried out by German architect bureau Engel and Zimmermann and is, perhaps, the most conservative, straight and monotonous. 
“In fact, it lacks of validity of the architectural forms. There is nothing, except pure combination,” Bass said. Some parts of the project, such as a six story underground parking lot, were simply unimaginable given the city’s swampy land.

TITLE: Winter fashions your dog will love
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — If you come from a warm place like Sydney or Florida, you may think dog clothing is the ultimate in ridiculous extravagance. But your Russia-based dog is likely to think otherwise.
Dogs need to go for daily walks — and because Moscow’s sub-zero temperatures and sidewalks may be covered in ice or harmful chemicals to melt it, warm clothing and even shoes for dogs become not only practical but also humane.
“In temperatures of minus 15 degrees Celsius or below, it is imperative to put coats on dogs,” said Valeria Shishmaryova, a veterinarian at the Movet Clinic in western Moscow.
When the weather is not that cold, Shishmaryova said, dog owners should take two factors into account: breed and age.
For example, Roger, a 9-year-old boxer, always wears an old sweater when temperatures drop to minus 10 deg C.
“Because he has very short hair, he needs to be dressed in cold weather,” said Roger’s owner, Yekaterina Kuzmishcheva.
Another danger is the antifreeze chemicals the Moscow public utility services started using three years ago to prevent ice slicks on the roads and sidewalks. Although City Hall banned the use of such chemical reagents in residential courtyards last fall, authorities found in December that utilities workers were continuing to use chemicals that they had saved in storage, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported, adding that Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov had ordered the confiscation of the old stockpiles.
“Three years ago, we had many emergency calls about dogs having been poisoned,” Shishmaryova said. The chemicals hurt dogs’ paws, and the animals may start licking them and end up ingesting the toxins.
To prevent this, she said, it is necessary to wash dogs’ paws in warm water immediately upon returning home and then dry them with a towel.
“You should put shoes on if it’s possible,” Shishmaryova said.
Dog owners have various options for dressing their pooches, from bargain-basement garb at the pet store to designer wear.
A pet store next to Butyrsky Market, near the Savyolovskaya metro station, has a choice of clothes, from the tiniest jumpsuits for Chihuahua pups to giant-sized getups for Great Danes. The shop also sells shoes and hats. Prices for overalls start at 500 rubles ($17). A set of four shoes can be bought for 300 rubles, while hats cost between 100 and 200 rubles.
“Owners of both small and bigger dogs buy overalls for their pets,” said Yelena Rodionova, the owner of the shop. “It depends on their habits.”
Rodionova said she had never dressed her rottweiler. And instead of making the dog wear shoes, she puts on special cream on his paws and washes it off after walks.
At Rodionova’s shop the choice is not huge, but there are even pink bath gowns for smaller dogs.
“To dress your dog in one of those would be more of a show-off,” Rodionova said.
But for some dog owners, having a Chihuahua or a Yorkshire terrier is a status symbol — and dressing them in expensive designer brands is a must.
“All the glamour is for the owners of the show dogs,” said Kira Kedrova, a co-owner of Klyaksa shop, which sells clothes for dogs made by special brands, as well as international and Russian fashion designers.
A sweater by Yelena Suprun, for example, costs 4,500 rubles ($155).
Also sold are T-shirts, hats and shoes.
“If a dog owner can buy himself a sweater for $600, he can certainly afford an expensive wardrobe for his pet,” Kedrova said.
She said fashion designers followed the same trends in dogs’ clothes as in clothes for people, making two collections a year. 
“Designer clothes for dogs are easily recognizable due to the use of colors and logos,” Kedrova said.
Dogs’ clothes from specialized makers may not be as fancy, but they are practical.
“Today, quality requirements for dog clothes makers are as high as they are for makers of children’s clothes,” Kedrova said.
Simone Pengel, a photography agent from Switzerland, dresses her purebred Spanish greyhound named Fyodor, or Feo for short, in a coat.
“Feo has a very stylish coat from Wagwear, from New York City,” Pengel said. “But to be honest, I put it on because of all the people in the park. They all have to ask me otherwise if he is cold. He is fine without, I can tell you that, as long he is fit and runs and plays.”
Kuzmishcheva said she tried once to have her dog wear overalls.
“Roger took it as a game and didn’t want to do any business he was supposed to do outside,” she said. “So we got back to our good old sweater.”

Larisa Naumenko contributed to this report.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: City Bar is closed now that Aileen Exeter, the owner for the legendary expat hangout that she established nearly 10 years ago, is leaving for the U.S. Although a pair of the bar’s former staffers intended to keep the place going, they failed to come up with a workable plan, said Exeter by phone this week.
This year’s second international concert at the Ice Palace will be of the notorious “Heroes of Rock” series that effectively demonstrates that 1970s hard-rock acts forgotten in their native countries still can play stadiums in Russia. Thursday’s show includes (mainly British) hard rockers Uriah Heep, U.D.O., Nazareth, Tony Martin Band and, for some reason, German disco band Supermax.
Back in the U.K., a totally different set of bands were honored at the annual Brit Awards in London this week. Kaiser Chiefs won awards for best British Group, best British Rock Act and best British Live Act, while the Arctic Monkeys were awarded a prize for being this year’s best British Breakthrough Artist. Paul Weller was honored for his Outstanding Contribution to music.
Back in St. Petersburg, NME Party, a series of club shows promoted by some of the former staffers of the Russian edition of the British music magazine New Musicial Expess, continues this week at Griboyedov.
Although the Russian magazine closed due to lack of readers, the promoters continue to celebrate British music by staging concerts of “Brit-pop”-influenced Russian bands. 
However, this time the promoters have been lucky to bring a genuine foreign band, The Attics, which describes itself as a “Canadian Brit-Rock band.” 
Two songs from the band’s debut album “Once A World,” released last September, can be downloaded for free from its web site, www.theatticsmusic.com. Other bands playing the NME  show include Moscow’s Diffuzziya and St. Petersburg’s The Vertigo.
John Cale will perform at PORT, the club confirmed this week. The ex-Velvet Underground member and producer for Patti Smith, Nico, Squeeze and The Stooges will perform with a band — unlike his stripped-down show in St. Petersburg in 1999.
Pavel Klinov of concert agency Poligon, which promotes shows at PORT, said Cale’s new, hard-edged sound fits perfectly with the venue that specializes in “extreme” genres. Cale will perform on March 12.
British punk pop band Chumbawamba, which cancelled its local gig last year when the promoter, Platforma club, failed to produce the advance fee, confirmed it will play in the city, promoter Svetlaya Muzyka said. Ironically, the concert will be held at Platforma on March 31.
Masfel, a band from Hungary, will perform alongside the Moscow-based band Deti Picasso this week. The band performs what its web site describes as a “unique mixture of electro guitar pop somewhere in between jazz, drum n bass, dub, jazz, acid-jazz and modern rock.” The two bands will play at Red Club on Friday.

TITLE: Rock ‘n’ roll blues
AUTHOR: By Sergei Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: “Don’t commit suicide, don’t be like cattle,” cried Andrei Knyazev, one of the two vocalists for 1990s stadium punk band Korol i Shut, addressing a small crowd of fans on Monday as the Alexander Bashlachev Memorial Concert finally got under way.
Dedicated to the late Russian singer/songwriter who is seen as the forefather of a brand of folk-influenced, “poignant” Russian rock, the show was very much in the Russian rock tradition; it was messy and eclectic. 
Bashlachev, who threw himself out of a window in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, on Feb. 17, 1987, was mourned as the first Russian “rock martyr” and honored with memorial concerts — until his cult was overshadowed by that of Viktor Tsoi, the massively popular Kino frontman who died in a car crash three years later.
Except for a group of punk fans, Korol i Shut was somewhat out of place at the concert as the audience was made up mostly of middle-aged followers of 1980s Russian rock. 
“I don’t know you but my kids respect you, that’s why I respect you, too,” cried out a woman during the band’s sound check.
Posters had promised “All Stars” but Korol i Shut were the best-known act performing at the concert — apart from Akvarium’s Boris Grebeshchikov who arrived late in the evening to perform one song as a “surprise guest.” 
The rest of the lineup was made up of performers largely unknown outside the local underground rock scene, which might have left paying customers unsatisfied as the cheapest tickets cost a hefty $40.
The St. Petersburg event (a similar concert is scheduled to be held in Moscow on March 28), bore all the  hallmarks of a disaster as soon as it was announced early last month.
As soon as posters for the show, which was held at the pompous, Soviet-style Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, hit the streets, the top bands on the bill protested, claiming they had not even been approached by the promoters and had never agreed to take part.
The bizarre lineup on posters for the event, which was promoted by Komanda X, included many acts, from rock band DDT to pop diva Alla Pugachyova, but, one by one, Vyacheslav Butusov and U-Piter, Chizh & Co., Pilot, Svetlana Surganova i Orkestr and Agata Kristi all stated they were not playing. 
The rest simply did not show up.
“It’s very bad practice when [promoters] first put up posters, start to advertise an event and after that attempt to agree with the artists’ managers [artists] participation in the show,” said Svetlana Gudyozh, PR manager for Butusov and U-Piter, speaking by telephone this week.
To make things worse, the promoters threatened the band after its website had denied the promoters’ claims, calling such practices “profane,” she said.
“At one time Butusov’s cell phone, our director’s and mine were overloaded with text messages with threats from the promoters.” 
Several versions of the poster were later issued, one promoting a line-up of “All Stars” without naming names.
In the event, the concert began with a ridiculous and lengthy dance routine, where three dancers appeared to symbolically represent Bashlachev’s life and spirituality, and went so far as to include a decorative Cossack choir covering his best-known song “The Time of the Small Bells,” treasured by many fans as representing the idealistic and heroic spirit of 1980s underground rock.
Although no high-profile Bashlachev memorial concerts have been held during the past 15 years, Moscow journalist and promoter Artyom Troitsky, who “discovered” Bashlachev when visiting the songwriter’s home town of Cherepovets in 1984, argued that his work, permeated by the notion of freedom, is relevant again.
Addressing the audience, Troitsky said that the oppression and censorship of the Soviet era is returning to Russia, “thanks to the KGB guy from your home town,” referring to President Vladimir Putin.
“Bashlachev’s songs are about freedom — and this is especially important for those of you who don’t know what sovok (a derogatory term for all things Soviet) was like.”

TITLE: Culture clash
AUTHOR: By  Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An intriguing new exhibition of video art run by the National Center for Contemporary Art at the Anna Akhmatova Museum shows how modern artists from the west have been inspired by Russia.
Yet the Russia many have responded to in “The Significant Other: Russia as inspiration for the West” is its Soviet incarnation and the main interest (if not admiration) of the artists — almost all of them U.S. residents — lies in its communist past. 
The Soviet national anthem — an emotionally impressive opus with strong, morbid connotations (revived with new words for modern Russia by President Vladimir Putin) — is one of the most appreciated soundtracks played at the show. 
But a poor choice of work as well as a streak of infantilism and predictability in the show makes the the undertaking dated and barely relevant to contemporary art.
Only one work — American artist Jacqueline Goss’ video “How to Fix the World” — suggests a fresh and constructive look at Russia’s relationship to the outside world and cultural relativism. It even has relevance to recent tensions between the West and the Muslim worlds, and Russia’s place straddling them. 
The artist’s approach could be described as “applied science.” Indifferent to politics, it is based on more solid, scientific ground — namely, the book “Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976) by the most frequently cited Soviet psychology scholar Alexander Luria. 
In 1931, Luria traveled to Uzbekistan to document cognitive changes experienced by participants in literacy programs carried out at the collective farms and kishlaks (villages) in the Muslim regions of Central Asia in 1920s and ‘30s. 
Alhough there should be no illusions about the Soviet State’s ideological purpose behind these programs, Luria’s studies benefited science with methods for the observation of how cultural education and literacy influences the development of mental activity including the categorization of colors and shapes, the ability to draw conclusions without sensory proof, deductive thinking, and self-reflection.
This is complicated stuff but Goss’s very attractive 30-minute video piece is accesible and at the same time doesn’t miss the point. 
To visualize extracts from Luria’s investigation, Goss uses photographs of Uzbekistan taken from 1925 to 1945 by Max Penson which have been animated in color by the artist. 
Luria obviously didn’t fix the world. But he scientifically, and Goss now metaphorically, demonstrates how the problem of cultural misunderstanding can arise. Goss, inspired by  Luria, shows how the highly theoretical and abstract culture of the West contradicts a culture based only on first-hand experience. 
The following conversation with an Uzbek from Luria’s investigation is brought to life in Goss’ work. 
The investigator poses a question to test cultural perceptions: “There are no camels in Germany. The city B is in Germany. Are there camels in the city B?.”
A: “I don’t know, I didn’t see German kishlaks.” 
Q: “But, according to the problem?” 
A: “Maybe there are camels there.” 
Q: “Does it follow from my words?”
A: “If it is a big city, there must be camels.” 
Q: “But, if I say that there are no camels in the whole of Germany and that city is in Germany?” 
A: ‘Well, if this kishlak is located in a big city, probably there is no room for camels.” 

The Significant Other runs through March 3 at the Anna Akhamatova Museum. www.ncca-spb.ru

TITLE: Dancing in the dark
AUTHOR: By Mindy Aloff
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Was ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev the artist who captivated the world or the temperamental diva behind the scenes? A sensational memoir by Carolyn Soutar claims to tell the inside story.
During the first half of the 1980s, Carolyn Soutar served periodically as a stage manager in Britain for the Nureyev Festivals, a series of performances starring Rudolf Nureyev and various ballet companies from Europe and the United States. During this time — “the most extraordinary six years of my life,” as she calls it in her memoir, “The Real Nureyev” — she got to know the temperamental dancer from a narrowly fixed yet reliably defined distance: as his colleague in the backstage areas of the London Coliseum and what seems to have been the Palace Theater in Manchester. 
Soutar’s firsthand experience of Nureyev was, though often charming, rather slight. Her real expertise (which has nothing directly to do with the dancer) is in theatrical stage production and lighting, and the passages on these topics are the most illuminating in the book. Yet “The Real Nureyev” would never have been published on the strength of Soutar’s experience and expertise alone. And so the author also reports her conversations with individuals whom she tracked down in the mid-1990s, who maintained closer relationships with Nureyev than she enjoyed, and who, apparently, had not yet spoken publicly about him. 
We hear from the American dance writer Robert Tracy, who explains that, for 14 years, he served as Nureyev’s companion, sexually at first and later platonically (a relationship that concluded in the early 1990s with Tracy’s palimony lawsuit against Nureyev as the dancer was dying of AIDS). We hear from the well-respected ballerina Violette Verdy, who never performed with Nureyev yet who, after Nureyev and Tracy had separated over competition for the affection of other men, brought them back together. We hear from the ballerina Yoko Morishita, who was a protÎgÎe and, in the 1980s, a favorite stage partner of Nureyev, and who speaks of him with unremitting affection and gratitude. And, to cap things off, we hear from William Akers and Roger Myers, longstanding colleagues of Nureyev at The Australian Ballet, where the dancer staged ballets as well as performed. Akers and Myers provide some of the memoir’s most scathing gossip, including speculative answers to Soutar’s two burning questions, the only questions that seem to remain about Nureyev’s sensational and highly publicized offstage life since the 1994 publication of Peter Watson’s lubricious and unverifiable Nureyev biography: Did Nureyev sleep with Margot Fonteyn, and, if so, did she abort the fetus that would have been their child? 
The extraordinary tastelessness of this “reporting,” not to mention the fact that it does little to educate anyone about Nureyev’s genius as a dancer, seems to have taken in even Soutar, who proclaims her belief in the necessity of observing privacy in the lives of others even as she pushes to discover whose orifices were accorded the privilege of hosting Nureyev’s well-appointed sexual endowments, and how often. Her justification, it would seem, is that, because she loved Nureyev, she owes it to the world to expose the Byronic details of his reality, which, here, consist of anonymous nightly sex, self-indulgent displays of anger, inundations of misery and rotten driving. Interspersed throughout are examples of the star’s vulnerability, peppered with humor and encrusted with the author’s own sentimental memories of how, in order to partner his Odettes in “Swan Lake,” Nureyev “became a swan” himself (a metaphor that resonates without giving any actual information whatsoever). 
The idea that “the real Nureyev” was fully visible to the entire world onstage, where he lived most intensely, where his keen mind and artistic sensibility were most cogently realized, and where such complications to his perfection as his virulent anti-Semitism were irrelevant — and that the best way to report on this reality is to look carefully at what he did in performance and to educate oneself about how, through technique and awareness of his fantastic face and body, he conspired with light and space to dance — seems never to have occurred to Soutar or to anyone she consulted or interrogated. In this state of blissful ignorance, as in her appalling ignorance of dance history, she is very much a memoirist of our age. Who cares that Nureyev once rocked the world with how slowly he could turn in the air, so that each flying classical position revolved with sufficient clarity for study? Forget the revolutions: Get to the “real” stories about everyone he screwed. You thought that the score for George Balanchine’s “Western Symphony” is comprised of cowboy songs arranged by Hershy Kay? Not so: It was composed by a guy named Aaron Copeland, spelled with an “e.” 
My own burning question is: Why would anyone who maintains affection for his or her subject want to publish such a memoir? For Soutar’s affection is believable. Her professional stage-managing experience was in opera, and she explains that everything about the ballet, from its classic repertoire to Nureyev himself, was new to her in 1980. The art hit her like a ton of bricks, with Nureyev embodying it all, though his imperious, even contemptuous superstar attitude toward his co-workers and audiences was by then an anachronism in the dance world. 
Indeed, she seems to have fallen completely in love with the dancer after passing an early “test,” which consisted of his purposely delaying the curtain time of a performance for an audience of several thousand people in order to provoke Soutar to come to his dressing room to find out what had happened to him. Her knocks at his door evoked no response, and, when she finally announced her name and walked into the room, she discovered him waiting for her: He was “stark naked ... this living, breathing version of Michelangelo’s David.” Soutar retained her composure, both in Nureyev’s presence as he got into his costume, demonstrating a tinge of embarrassment while wrestling with his jockstrap, and later, in the company of her smirking colleagues, who knew the ways in which Nureyev liked to test his new acquaintances. She understood that performances opening with ballets in which he appeared would inevitably begin late. The inconvenienced colleagues onstage and in the wings would swallow their resentments and disappointments (or save them to hash out with Nureyev later), and the audience clamoring out front would finally get him — or, a version of him, since, as Tracy puts it, by 1980 his dancing was “on the downside of ecstasy.”
Note: Whoever devised the subtitle for “The Real Nureyev” — “an intimate memoir of ballet’s greatest hero” — was surely thinking about how to market the book. Of course, it can be argued persuasively that Nureyev was a “hero” in a number of ways. But “ballet’s greatest hero”? Greater than France’s RenÎ Blum, the cosmopolitan Jewish impresario who, during the 1930s, was the founding director of the short-lived Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, with Michel Fokine as artistic director? Blum was transported to Auschwitz, where he perished. Sometimes, words should — and do — have meaning, even for marketers.

Mindy Aloff, the editor of the DCA News, teaches dance criticism and aesthetics at Barnard College and at Eugene Lang College of The New School.

TITLE: Haiti President Given New Opportunity
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Given Haiti’s history of dictatorship, violence and perpetual political chaos, it could be seen as high praise that Rene Preval’s first term as president was relatively peaceful.
Preval was declared the country’s next president on Thursday after a deal was reached over charges of vote fraud. The deal gives Preval 50.9 percent of the vote and averts a runoff.
During his 1996-2001 presidency, Preval, 63, managed to build some roads and public squares, worked with peasants on land reform, and was not accused of massive human rights violations, despotism or theft.
He is the only leader in Haiti’s 202-year history to win a democratic election, serve a full term and peacefully hand power to a successor.
But that first term was marred by a political crisis that damaged his administration’s credibility, paralyzed the government and alienated international donors.
Preval is also seen as being close to former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was deposed in a bloody 2004 revolt. Preval was the hand-picked successor to the fiery former Roman Catholic priest and was viewed in some quarters as a puppet, patiently holding the presidency for his mentor.
Supporters in Aristide’s slum strongholds adopted Preval as their candidate. “Preval and Aristide are twins!” they shouted at election rallies.
The wealthy elite who campaigned to send Aristide packing turned their hostility on Preval, fearing his victory would lead the way for the return of Aristide, accused of corruption and despotism.
Preval has distanced himself from his one-time ally but not by much. He referred to Haiti’s first freely elected leader as “President Aristide” in a recent interview and has said there is nothing to stop him from returning from South Africa.
An agronomist, Preval is credited with ending a battle between peasants and the “grand dons,” powerful landholders in Haiti’s northern Artibonite farming region. He gave poor farmers government land the landholders said they owned.
He helped introduce Haitian Bleu, a high-end coffee grown near Jacmel in the south, creating a new industry.
“While in office, Preval was not as bad a head of state as others Haiti has had,” said Jean-Germain Gros, a Haiti analyst at the University of Missouri. “He does have a record of some accomplishment, which is important.”
In a country terrorized by a brutal, now disbanded, army and the dreaded Tontons Macoute — the Duvalier family dictatorship’s thugs — Preval’s presidency was notably free of widespread accusations of murder and corruption.
During his tenure, Haiti was without a prime minister for 21 months and his administration failed to hold elections for 18 Senate seats, crippling the legislature.
Preval was also accused of startling insensitivity when in 2000, he said Haiti’s economic situation was dire and advised Haitians to “swim to get out.”
The phrase seeped into the lexicon of a nation where tens of thousands of people have boarded rickety boats for a dangerous journey to the United States. Many die at sea.
When he handed the National Palace back to Aristide in 2001, Preval retreated to his hometown of Marmelade, where he continued a program to grow bamboo used in art and furniture.
A low-key campaigner, Preval said in an interview with Reuters television that he wants to decentralize government, strengthen the judiciary and police, and achieve the “great dream” of primary education for all.
“Five years will not be enough to finish the work,” he said.

TITLE: UN Alleges Torture At Guantanamo
AUTHOR: By Richard Waddington
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GENEVA — The United States on Thursday faced mounting international calls to close its Guantanamo prison camp with UN investigators saying detainees there faced treatment amounting to torture.
In a 40-page report, which had been largely leaked, five United Nations special envoys said the United States was violating a host of human rights, including a ban on torture, arbitrary detention and the right to a fair trial.
The report is likely to fuel new Arab anger over the treatment of Iraqi inmates at Baghdad’s U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison after Australian TV broadcast more images of abuse there.
“The United States government should close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay,” the human rights’ rapporteurs declared.
Until that happens, the U.S. government should “refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” they added.
Harsh conditions, such as placing detainees in solitary confinement, stripping them naked, subjecting them to severe temperatures and threatening them with dogs could amount to torture, which is banned in all circumstances and in all wars.
“The excessive violence used in many cases during transportation ... and force-feeding of detainees on hunger strike must be assessed as amounting to torture,” the report said.
In London, UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour told the BBC she saw no alternative to closing the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba where some 500 terrorism suspects are held, many of them for four years, without trial. Speaking ahead of the release of the report, Arbour said that, although she did not endorse every recommendation it made, the United States should put inmates on trial or release them and shut down the prison.
But Washington, which denies that Guantanamo inmates are mistreated or that international laws are being broken, accused the UN investigators of acting like the prosecution lawyers.
“It selectively includes only those factual assertions needed to support those conclusions and ignores other facts that would undermine those conclusions,” U.S. ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Kevin E. Moley, said in a letter to Arbour.
The United States denies that most of the rights, laid down in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Washington is a signatory, apply to Guantanamo Bay. If they did, Moley argued, this would lead to “the manifestly absurd result” that prisoners seized in the U.S. struggle against Al Qaeda would have more rights than those taken in normal armed conflict between two states.
Washington also denies that the force-feeding of inmates on hunger strike, which was undertaken to save their lives, amounted to cruel treatment.
The five UN investigators, who include Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture, and Leila Zerrougui, chairperson of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said the findings were based on interviews with past detainees, lawyers and replies to questions put to the U.S. government.
But the five turned down a U.S. offer to visit the detention center late last year because Washington would not allow them to interview individual detainees.

TITLE: Bird Flu Scare Grips Africa
AUTHOR: By Abdoulaye Massalatchi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NIAMEY, Niger — In West Africa’s bustling markets and street eateries, some consumers are spurning chickens, eggs and even their favourite dishes as a bird flu scare grips the region.
“I haven’t sold a single bird among the 40 or so chickens I put up for sale at Niamey’s market,” said Ada Ali, a poultry seller in  the capital.
In street-side tea houses known locally as “may chayi”, trays of eggs were left untouched as some customers passed up their usual omelette breakfasts and lunches.
Niger, one of the world’s poorest and most hunger-prone countries, is scrambling to protect itself from the deadly H5N1 avian flu strain found last week among commercial poultry in the north of its southern neighbor Nigeria.
Although no human cases have been reported in Africa so far, almost every West African government has banned poultry imports from Nigeria and launched public awareness campaigns to inform consumers about the dangers of handling dead or diseased birds.
Fears of an Africa-wide pandemic have been heightened by warnings from international experts who say the poorest continent does not have the technical know-how and health infrastructure to stem the spread of bird flu.
The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain has killed 91 people in Asia and the Middle East and infected birds, especially swans, have now been found in several European Union countries.
As local radios and TV channels in West Africa broadcast the health warnings, some consumers are already looking askance at poultry and egg products that have long been a staple of the region’s diet, in rice dishes, stews or just plain fried.
“I don’t eat chicken any more ... I also banned my family from eating chicken. I am afraid of what the television is telling us and I do not want to be contaminated,” said archivist Leopold Assongba during a shopping trip in Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin.
In Nigeria, where Africa’s first bird flu outbreak was detected last week, authorities have slaughtered tens of thousands of chickens, but veterinary experts say panic selling of diseased birds may have helped to propagate the virus.
Niger’s government has dispatched health experts, vets and soldiers to its 1,500 km (900 mile) southern frontier with Nigeria with orders to seize and burn any poultry and poultry products coming across the border.

TITLE: Widespread Attacks Kill 14 in Iraq, New Abu Ghraib Images
AUTHOR: By Paul Garwood
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq’s Interior Ministry has launched an investigation into claims that a police death squad has been operating in the country, a top official said Thursday. Attacks around the country killed 14 people, including six Iraqis in a car bombing and three sheiks in a drive-by shooting. 
Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari also condemned the latest images of detainees abused in the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, but noted that those responsible had already been punished.
The investigation into the death squads was announced as police found the bodies of 10 more men who had been shot execution-style and dumped in three different areas of Baghdad’s predominantly Shiite suburb of Shula.
Major General Hussein Kamal, Iraq’s deputy interior minister in charge of domestic intelligence, said the investigation followed U.S. military claims that soldiers had detained 22 Iraqi men wearing police uniforms who were about to kill a Sunni Arab man last month.
“We have been informed about this and the interior minister has formed an investigation committee to learn more about the Sunni person and those 22 men, particularly whether they work for the Interior Ministry or claim to belong to the ministry,” Kamal told The Associated Press.
A U.S. general said American forces had found evidence of a death squad operating in Iraq’s Interior Ministry, the Chicago Tribune reported on its web site Wednesday evening. Major General Joseph Peterson, who commands the civilian police training teams in Iraq, said the men were employed by the Interior Ministry as highway patrol officers.
An American military official in Baghdad confirmed the report but declined to provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was unauthorized to speak to the media.
The bodies of Sunni Arabs, bound and gagged and shot in the head, have been turning up in Baghdad for months, fueling allegations of sectarian killings, which Sunni Arab leaders say are often carried out by Shiites in army or police uniforms.
Shiites have also been systematically massacred by Sunni extremists in Baghdad, Diyala province and mixed areas to the south of the capital.
Human Rights Minister Nermine Othman said she believed lower-level Interior Ministry officials were using criminals to kill Iraqis.
“I think there are many people inside the Interior Ministry involved with these deaths or giving the uniforms of colleagues to criminals,” she said. “These officials are helping the criminals by informing them on where targeted people are going or where people are living. They are helping them in different ways.”
In a statement on the detainee abuse photos broadcast on an Australian TV station Wednesday, al-Jaafari said “the Iraqi government condemns the torture practices revealed through the recent pictures that show Iraqi prisoners being tortured.” 
But he welcomed the U.S. denunciation of the pictures, which date back to 2003, when earlier images were released of U.S. forces abusing detainees.

TITLE: Plushenko Pulls Out Power Performance
AUTHOR: By Pritha Sarkar
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TURIN — There has been only one mantra about the men’s figure competition at the Winter Olympics — the gold medal is Yevgeny Plushenko’s to lose. 
It doesn’t matter whether you ask Plushenko’s rivals, former Olympic champions or skating critics, they all have the same answer. On Tuesday, the Russian favorite proved why. 
His dazzling performance to Puccini’s Tosca earned him 90.66 points, the highest mark in the short program since the new scoring system was introduced following the 2002 Olympics pairs scoring scandal, and gave him a cushion of more than 10 points going into Thursday’s free skate. 
That is the largest margin any man has taken into a free program at a major championship. 
Such is his lead, the Russian can even afford to make a mistake or two and still walk away with the gold medal around his neck. 
“Plushenko’s in a class of his own,” 1980 men’s champion Robin Cousins said. 
“The arrogant teenager we weren’t really liking has grown into a very confident arrogance. Just in the quality of what he does is streets ahead of what everybody else is doing.” 
Plushenko has already pocketed three world gold medals and last month he grabbed a fifth European crown despite struggling for breath after being laid low with ‘flu. 
Now he wants to get his hands on the one medal that slipped through his grasp four years ago. 
The Russian was left bitterly disappointed when, despite being the reigning world champion, he was upstaged by compatriot Alexei Yagudin at Salt Lake City. 
It was an extremely bitter pill for Plushenko to swallow, especially since the pair had been former training partners when both were coached by Alexei Mishin. 
Yagudin had eventually terminated his association with Mishin, complaining the coach was favoring Plushenko over him. 
A stumble in the short program left Mishin’s top pupil with a consolation prize of silver, a medal that sticks out among his collection of gleaming golds. 
It is that one failure that has kept Plushenko’s competitive fires burning over the past four years and, barring any major mishap, he should become the fifth consecutive Russian or Soviet man to win the gold. 
“The fight starts right now,” Plushenko said. 
“I have 10 points more than everybody and I’m happy with the result. But I should perform the same like I did tonight in the free program. If I do my best, I can win first place.” 
His supremacy has left the rest of the field fighting for bronze and silver, and in pole position for the lesser medals is three-times American champion Johnny Weir. 
Weir, however, was under no illusion about his gold medal prospects despite finishing above all three medallists from last season’s world championships. 
“I’m certainly (surprised) going into second place ahead of the world champion,” said Weir, referring to his 0.96 point advantage over Stephane Lambiel. 
“I’m not going to count my eggs before they hatch. If Plushenko falls three times maybe, just maybe, somebody can slip past.” 
Cousins added: “I think it’s Plushenko’s championship to lose and then someone else’s to win.”

TITLE: Zenit Dismiss Rosenborg In Trondheim
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: History repeated itself when FC Zenit St. Petersburg beat Norway’s Rosenborg 2-0 in Trondheim in a UEFA Cup tie on Wednesday. 
The scoreline mirrored Zenit’s two previous matches with Norwegian sides to the delight of approximately 1,500 fans who traveled to Lerkendal Stadium in support of the St. Petersburg team.
As the goals crashed in and victory seemed certain, some Zenit supporters danced in the aisles partially nude despite a temperature of around zero deg C.
The spectators witnessed a Zenit team scoring two goals in contrast to Rosenborg which missed five big chances including a penalty.
After a dud 20 minutes with no chances at goal, Zenit striker Andrei Arshavin found himself onside and smashed the ball at the near post.
After Arshavin’s strike, Zenit supporters and the Norwegian police clashed after flares were set off in the Zenit supporters’ seating area. Two Zenit fans were arrested and expelled from the stadium.
In the 28th minute Dorsin chunked a free kick for a Rosenborg equalizer but Zenit keeper Kamil Contofalsky pushed it to the post and out to produce a corner.
In the next minute Contofalsky made a similar save but from a penalty shot by Frode Johnsen. The penalty was given after Alexander Anyukov brought down Rosenborg’s Daniel Braathen in the area.
Just two minutes later at the other end, Rosenborg goalie Espen Johnsen tried to clear the ball from to the left side. Instead the ball deflected on Alexander Kerzhakov and, with some luck, rolled into the goal from a sharp angle with Johnsen desperately trying to make the save.
“It was all my fault. It was a poor decision and a terrible hit. First of all it was a terrible hit,” the Rosenborg goalie told Trondheim paper Adresseavisen.
Throughout the game the Zenit defense was unable to position themselves correctly which led to many dangerous situations in front of Kamil Contofalsky’s goal. In the 54th minute Dorsin had a blast at the Zenit goalkeeper who made a miraculous save and just before the final whistle StÌle Stensaas shot a semi volley over the bar. 
Rosenborg coach Per-Mathias Hœgmo has said Zenit is “definitely beatable,” and that “Rosenborg could win the UEFA Cup.”
Hœgmo is still positive that Rosenborg can overcome the Russian team when the two sides meet in the second leg on Thursday in St. Petersburg.
“We created five to six large chances playing against a good opponent like Zenit. You really cannot expect more even though we lack a bit of precision in forward play,” he told Norwegian television.
The police dropped all charges against Russian supporters and they were thought to have left to return to St. Petersburg on Wednesday evening. 
The Norwegian Consulate in St. Petersburg said the evening had passed peacefully with no reported incidents. As well as having dealt with an increased workload issuing Zenit fans with visas to Norway, consular officials were rueful at the result of the match.

TITLE: The Prince, the President and Prime Minister’s Wife
AUTHOR: By Brian Friedman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TURIN, Italy — Russian President Vladimir Putin is keeping an eye on the Turin Games. 
Vyacheslav Fetisov, a former star in the National Hockey League and head of the Federal Agency for Physical Culture and sport, said that Putin called him on Tuesday and told him “he has watched closely what’s going on and he’s very happy with that.” 
Fetisov’s remarks came after Russia scored a gold medal in speed skating with Svetlana Zhurova’s victory in the women’s 500 meters. 
Putin sees “that the Russians try their best, and that’s all he asks,” Fetisov said. 
A prince, a president, and a prime minister’s wife have all been attracted to the sliding sports in the mountains. 
Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, attended women’s luge events Monday and Tuesday. Surrounded by bodyguards, she nevertheless managed to pose for photos with fans. 
On Sunday, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga charged through the mixed-zone area, bumping journalists out of the way as her bodyguards frantically tried to keep up. 
Her target: Latvian slider Martins Rubenis, whose bronze medal in men’s luge singles was Latvia’s first medal ever in the Winter Games. 
Vike-Freiberga, wrapped in a thick fur coat and hat, congratulated him warmly with a kiss as bemused journalists stood frozen to the spot. 
Prince Albert II, who attended the opening ceremony and some downhill skiing events, is an old hand at sliding. He competed for Monaco in bobsled five times at the Olympics from 1988 to 2002. He is also a member of the International Olympic Committee. 
Isolde Kostner had hoped to be standing on the medal podium at the women’s downhill. Instead she was standing in the crowd — and glad to be there. 
“It is my first Olympics as a spectator and I worried it wouldn’t be easy, but after the bad crashes of two days ago now I’m happy I’m not competing,” said Kostner, the Salt Lake City downhill silver medalist for Italy. 
Kostner announced her retirement from skiing in January after discovering she was pregnant. 
“My goal was to end my career with this Olympics, but it could have been very hard for me because the beginning of the season wasn’t very good,” Kostner added. 
America’s Graham Watanabe came to Italy to serve as a wax technician for his friends on the U.S. snowboardcross team. Now he’s in that team. 
Watanabe, 23, will replace Jayson Hale, who tore his knee during a practice session Tuesday, when the sport made its Olympic debut on Thursday.
Watanabe didn’t even qualify for World Cup events until winning the U.S. Snowboardcross Championships in December. In three races since, his best finish was 11th. 
It was not clear if Watanabe paid his own way to Italy. 
He has been staying with technicians, personal trainers and doctors — not athletes — while helping his friends set up their boards for the competition. 
“Grandma Luge” is gone from the Turin Olympics, but she’s still fighting. 
Anne Abernathy, a 52-year-old who has represented the U.S. Virgin Islands at every Winter Olympics since 1988, is demanding to be put back on the start list for the women’s luge competition, claiming she was wrongfully withdrawn from the event. 
Abernathy did not take the start line for Monday’s opening day of competition after she broke her right wrist during a training crash Sunday. 
The 52-year-old had a cast placed on her wrist and says she was ready to slide down the treacherous 19-turn Cesana track but race director Marie-Luise Rainer kept her out. 
“I was prepared to race yesterday. We had a special splint made so I could compete,” Abernathy said in an interview. “I was never given the opportunity.” 
Rainer refused to let Abernathy race after consulting a doctor, and the decision was upheld by race jury president Karl Zenker, an International Luge Federation board member. 
Now, Abernathy says Turin attorney Christina Martinetti will petition the International Olympic Committee to reinstate Abernathy on the start list, meaning she would be listed as a competitor for a sixth Olympics. 
No matter what ends up happening, Abernathy says she won’t be back for the Vancouver Games in 2010, though she may compete at next year’s world championships in Igls, Austria.

TITLE: Motherhood Gives Skater the Golden Edge
AUTHOR: By Paul Newberry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TURIN, Italy — Mother Russia is an Olympic champion. 
Juggling motherhood and speed skating, Svetlana Zhurova won gold in the women’s 500-meter sprint Tuesday with a 2-year-old son cheering her on back home near St. Petersburg. 
“Now, I have a big fan of me that I can do it for,” Zhurova said, breaking into a huge smile. 
Something sure clicked after she gave birth to Yaroslav — “Yary” for short — 26 months ago. While many top athletes-turned-mothers never overcome the effects of pregnancy, Zhurova actually improved on the solid, but hardly spectacular, results of her younger days. 
She resumed training just over a year ago, lost some 18 kilograms and came through last month with the biggest win of her career, capturing the world sprint championship at age 34. She topped that in Turin with the first medal — of any color — in her fourth trip to the Olympics. 
Zhurova had a combined time of 1 minute, 16.57 seconds over two 500s skated a couple of hours apart, beating out a pair of Chinese skaters who failed to give that country its first Olympic gold in long-track speed skating. 
Wang Manli, the dominant female sprinter since the Salt Lake City Games, settled for the silver, 21-hundredths of a second behind the winner. Rising star Ren Hui took bronze in 1:16.87. 
Talking about her decision to have a child, Zhurova said, “Sometimes it helps, sometimes not. In my case, it helped.” 
It certainly had a Zen-like impact on her mental state. Zhurova used to get too pumped up on race day, which kept her from coming through when it really counted. Until Tuesday, she had never finished higher than seventh in an Olympic race. 
“Physically, I was always strong,” she said. “I was really too strong. I was great in training but too strong in the races. Now, it’s all together.” 
Zhurova, her long, blonde hair tucked inside her skinsuit, showed she was the skater to beat with a time of 38.23 in the first 500. 
That put her in the final pairing for the second race with Wang, who had to make up a deficit of eight-hundredths of a second. But Zhurova had the edge coming off the final, treacherous turn and powered away from Wang down the long straightaway, easily beating her across the line.

TITLE: Russian Fails Doping Test
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CESANA, Italy — Russian biathlete Olga Pyleva was suspended Thursday for failing a doping test, becoming the first athlete to test positive at the Turin Games. Pyleva, who won silver at the 15km event Monday, was scratched from the field just before the start of the 7.5km sprint, in which she was considered a leading medal contender.
Without her in the race, France’s Florence Baverel-Robert won the gold medal.
In another shocker, Ukraine’s Lilia Efremova took the bronze. The only favorite to reach the podium was Anna Carin Oloffson of Sweden, who won silver.
Olofsson crossed just 2.4 seconds behind Baverel-Robert’s time of 22 minutes, 31.4 seconds. Efremova was 6.6 seconds behind the surprise gold medalist.
Pyleva also won gold and bronze medals at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.
“The IOC has provisionally suspended the athlete for a disciplinary issue,” International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Giselle Davies said Thursday.
An IOC panel will be convened to hear Pyleva’s case. If found guilty, she would be thrown out of the games.
Pyleva won silver in the 15km event Monday ahead of Germany’s Martina Glagow. Albina Akhatova, Pyleva’s Russian teammate, was fourth.
The IOC has conducted 380 tests since the athletes’ village opened Jan. 31; Pyleva is the first to be caught by the IOC’s most rigorous doping control program ever at a Winter Olympics. A total of 1,200 samples are being tested, a 72 percent increase over the number in Salt Lake City, where there were seven doping cases in total.

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: Lokomotiv UEFA Loss
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Lokomotiv Moscow was unable to take advantage of playing at home in the UEFA Cup when they lost 1-0 to Spanish side Sevilla on Wednesday.
Other results: Litex — Strasbourg, 0-2; Artmedia — Levski, 0-1; Basel — Monaco, 1-0; Hertha — Rapid, 0-1; Lille — Shakhtar, 3-2; Heerenveen — Steaua, 1-3; Schalke — Espanyol, 2-1; Bolton — Marseille, 0-0; Club Brugge — Roma, 1-2; Udinese — Lens, 3-0; Betis — AZ, 2-0.

Six Nations Success
ROME (Reuters) — After two rounds of fixtures England are the only team with two wins after overcoming Italy 31-16 in Rome. 
France recovered from their shock defeat in Edinburgh last week by beating Ireland 43-31 while holders Wales bounced back from losing at Twickenham by beating Scotland 28-18 in Cardiff. 
France came into the tournament as strong favorites for the title but after their first two showings their remaining opponents, including England, will feel they have a chance. 

$154,000 Drinks Tab
ANTWERP, Belgium (AFP) — World tennis No. 1 Kim Clijsters picked up a reported $154,000 champagne tab after offering each of the 10,000 spectators watching her second round match at a WTA event in Antwerp on Wednesday a bottle of bubbly.