SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1151 (17), Friday, March 10, 2006
**************************************************************************


TITLE: U.S. Report On Russia Ignored
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A major report by leading U.S. policy experts created an uneasy atmosphere for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his talks in Washington this week by urging a tougher line toward Russia, the Foreign Ministry said. 
Here at home, however, the report provoked little reaction, despite proposing harsh measures such as reviving the Group of Seven within the Group of Eight and shutting down the NATO-Russia Council unless certain conditions are met. 
The report — produced by a high-profile bipartisan task force for the Council on Foreign Relations and released Sunday — said relations between the two former superpowers no longer qualified as a strategic partnership and the United States should adopt a selective approach to Russia. 
The day after the report was released, Lavrov arrived in Washington for two days of talks with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a meeting with President George W. Bush. It was his first trip as foreign minister.
“The visit is taking place in the context of some complicated information in the United States about Russian-American relations,” Mikhail Kamynin, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, said in a statement Monday.
The 76-page report was the result of months of work by the task force’s 25 members, including former members of Democratic and Republican administrations, academics, and financial, cultural and environmental consultants. Its release, much anticipated by Russia-watchers in the United States, was all but ignored in Russia.
Mikhail Margelov and Konstantin Kosachyov, heads of Foreign Affairs Committees in the Federation Council and the State Duma, respectively, were unavailable for comment on Monday and Tuesday. 
Sergei Markov, a leading Kremlin-connected political consultant, said Tuesday that he had not read the report. Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA and Canada Institute, said that he was unaware of the report on Tuesday.
When told about the report’s highlights, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, said its authors had demonstrated that “the development of Russia is now crossing beyond some lines that the West is ready to tolerate.” While the report reflects previous criticism by individual experts of U.S. policy toward Russia, it carries much more weight, he said. “It’s a fundamental and nonpartisan report that cannot be ignored,” he said. “It’s an indicator of sentiments in the American establishment.” 
The report will be taken into account by the Bush administration, and Moscow should treat it seriously, he said. “Many have the illusion that our having oil and gas resources allows us to count on a high degree of understanding from the West. But there are obviously limits to using these recourses,” Lukyanov said. “It’s a quite serious signal.”
In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Tuesday that the report would have to be studied thoroughly, Interfax reported.
Michael McFaul, one of the report’s authors, said that for some in the Bush administration the report would be “a welcome recourse of ideas and others will be defensive about it.”
“There’s a real consensus about the trend toward authoritarianism in Russia,” he said by telephone from Washington. “The divide still remains as to what the U.S. can or should do about it.
“Some people believe this should be a major concern and others believe that this doesn’t really affect our relationship. ... We still have our national security issues to deal with,” McFaul said. 
“I’m where the report is — in between those lines,” he said.
The report urged the Bush administration to do more to stand up for American interests, even where it is likely to irritate Russia, by promoting democracy in Russia and its neighbors.
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns spoke in line with the report when he said in a Tuesday interview on public television’s “The Charlie Rose Show” that, “We don’t have to be shrinking violets. We can assert our national interest when it is opposed to the Russian point of view,” Reuters reported.
The task force was co-chaired by Jack Kemp, who served in the House of Representatives and was a Republican vice presidential candidate in 1996, and John Edwards, who served in the Senate and was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004. The report’s other 23 authors include John Gordon, Bush’s homeland security adviser from 2003 to 2004; Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001; and Stephen Sestanovich, a special adviser to the secretary of state for the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001.
The report said the two countries were diverging in a growing number of areas, as Russia was becoming less democratic at a time when Bush has made democracy a goal of his foreign policy. In addition, Russia — once seen as a pillar of increased global energy security — was using its energy exports as a policy weapon, it said.
Frictions between Moscow and Washington also arise in the former Soviet republics, an area where Russia wants to retain unchallenged clout, the report said. 
“A relationship that has to deal with a list of problems like this one is more likely to get worse than it is to get better,” the report said.
In order to advance democracy in Russia, the United States should “consistently and forcefully” talk about the authoritarian trend in the country, the report said. As an example of the effectiveness of such talk, the report referred to the changes Russia made to legislation restricting nongovernmental organizations after it received widespread international criticism. 
The report also insisted that the United States should go beyond mere expressions of concern about the rollback of Russian democracy and should increase funding of “organizations committed to free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007 and 2008.”
Russia’s current elections practices — such as denying registration to opposition candidates over technicalities or restricting their access to broadcast media — pose “a very real risk that Russia’s leadership after 2008 will be seen, externally and internally, as illegitimate,” the report said. 
Western governments must win public commitments and concrete actions by Russian officials to conduct the coming elections “on an open, constitutional and pluralist basis and to reverse the practices described above,” the report said.
“Early and explicit discussion is far preferable to harsh but meaningless critiques on election day and the morning after,” the report said.
Organizations like the Levada Center and Golos need increased funds and technical assistance now to be able to provide professional exit polls, the report said. The United States should also put its weight behind strengthening the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other groups that do elections monitoring, it said.
In other measures proposed by the report, the United States should ease Russian pressure on its neighboring states by promoting their quicker integration into the West.
Also, the democratic members of the G8, including the United States, should protect the credibility of the organization by playing a stronger coordinating role and effectively reviving the G7 within the G8. “Even with Russia’s inclusion in the G8, the G7 has continued to meet to discuss certain financial issues; selected political questions now require a similar format,” the report said.
“The United States and Europe should convince Russia’s leaders that ground that has been won can also be lost,” it said.
But Russia’s total expulsion from the G8 would make the institution much less useful for its other members in terms of energy security, it said. 
Increased friction in the post-Soviet space will have implications for cooperation between Russia and NATO, the report said. The alliance should scrap the NATO-Russia Council in 2007, the fifth full year since its creation, if NATO finds that Russia lacks a commitment to democratic principles or to collective responses to common challenges, the report said.
Despite these proposed policy changes, the United States should pursue cooperation with Russia where it serves common interests, the report said. American policy toward Russia must become more selective and vary from issue to issue, it said.
“Although President Putin is presiding over the rollback of Russian democracy, the U.S. should obviously work with him to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” the report said.
In order to build a stronger base for nonproliferation cooperation, the two countries should develop a legal basis for working together in civil nuclear energy projects, the report said. If Russia and the United States sign an agreement required by Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act they could cooperate in fuel supply and storage, reactor sales and advanced research.
The authors of the report included Stephen E. Biegun, Coit D. Blacker, Robert D. Blackwill, Antonina W. Bouis, Mark F. Brzezinski, Jessica T. Mathews, Michael A. McFaul, Mark C. Medish, Stephen Sestanovich, David R. Slade, Walter B. Slocombe, Strobe Talbott, Judyth L. Twigg, Margaret D. Williams and Dov S. Zhakeim.

TITLE: Russia Tries For Last-Minute Deal on Iran
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia is playing a delicate balancing game in tense talks over the Iranian nuclear standoff, trying to prevent Iran’s referral to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions without jeopardizing Kremlin ties with Washington. 
The diplomatic efforts reflect Moscow’s desire to protect its business interests in Iran while highlighting its growing aspirations to play broker between the West and rogue regimes. The Iranian nuclear talks come just as the Palestinian militant group Hamas wrapped up a visit to Moscow made at President Vladimir Putin’s invitation. 
Russia has been at the forefront of the Iranian nuclear talks over the past few months with a proposal to host Iran’s uranium enrichment program. The United States and the European Union back the idea as a way to ease Western concerns that Iran won’t misuse the process to create nuclear weapons. 
Uranium enriched to a low level produces fuel for a nuclear reactor, while higher enrichment produces the material needed for a warhead. 
The International Atomic Energy Agency 35-nation board plans to address the Iranian nuclear situation during its meeting in Vienna this week. Any agreement between Iran and Russia could stave off action by the UN Security Council, which has the power to impose economic sanctions on Tehran. 
Moscow has joined the United States and the European Union in urging Tehran to freeze all domestic nuclear activities, saying it would only agree to enrich uranium for Iran if Tehran resumes a moratorium on enrichment at home. 
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington that Moscow had made no new compromise proposals on the standoff. Both officials rejected the notion of a separate compromise that would see Iran suspend full-scale uranium enrichment for up to two years but retain a small enrichment program. 
A diplomat said that Iran made the suspension offer during talks in Moscow last week. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was confidential. 
Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said his country was not prepared to freeze small-scale enrichment. 
While the United States has been pushing strongly to refer Iran to the Security Council, Russia has warned against imposing sanctions on Iran, a major economic partner and ally. China, which like Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member of the council, is also likely to oppose any punitive actions against Tehran. 
Before leaving on a trip to the United States, Lavrov told a small group of foreign reporters that global powers have not agreed upon strategy on how to handle the Iranian issue if it reaches the Security Council and warned that the referral could lead to an escalation of the crisis. 
“I know how the Security Council works. You start with a soft reminder, then you call upon, then you require, you demand, you threaten,” said Lavrov, who previously served as Russia’s UN ambassador. 
“It will become a self-propelling function.” 
A peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear standoff is of key importance to Moscow both politically and economically. 
Russia is completing construction of an $800 million nuclear reactor in the port of Bushehr in southern Iran, set to go on line later this year. Tehran said it would welcome Moscow’s bid to build more reactors in the future — lucrative cooperation that would be shattered by sanctions. 
Politically, playing mediator in the Iranian nuclear crisis helps Moscow bolster its leverage in the Middle East and win bigger global clout. 
“The stakes are actually somewhat long-term for (the Russians) on Iran,” said Celeste Wallander, director of the Russia and Eurasian program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The longer the issue goes on, the more they (the Russians) are needed, and the more they get to play this out.” 
Russia’s invitation to Hamas was the first crack in an international front against the group, which has sent dozens of suicide bombers to Israel. It provoked anger in Israel and surprise among the other members of the so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators — the United States, the European Union and United Nations — which had agreed to withhold international recognition from Hamas until it moderated its stance. 
Russia insisted that it was acting on behalf of the entire Quartet, conveying its demand to Hamas to reject violence and recognize Israel. The Russian Foreign Ministry said after the talks that Hamas promised to maintain a year-old cease-fire if Israel refrains from force.

TITLE: Middleman Kogan Buys Up Russian Debt
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — One of the Russian government’s longest-running and most colorful debt disputes, its 14-year-old battle with Swiss trading firm Noga, could be nearing an end after the intervention of a Russian-born U.S. businessman. 
Alexander Kogan, president of St. Louis, Missouri-based IPD Capital, has negotiated to buy some $70 million worth of Noga’s debt to three European banks. The move leaves Noga owner Nessim Gaon without the backing of major financial organizations in a claim that dates back to an abortive oil-for-food deal in 1991.
Contacted by telephone via his St. Louis office on Wednesday, Kogan said he was buying Noga’s debts to France’s BNP Paribas and Credit Lyonnais and Switzerland’s Banque Cantonal de Geneve. In doing so, he was acting with the knowledge of Russia’s Finance Ministry and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, an international law firm that advises the Russian government on debt issues, Kogan said. 
The deal could be a key step toward ending a wide-ranging legal battle that has seen temporary seizure of high-profile Russian government assets such as the world’s largest sailing ship and a collection of valuable paintings, and two fighter jets forced to flee the Paris Air Show for fear of seizure. 
Press officials at the Finance Ministry, which oversees all Russia’s internal and external debt, had no comment Tuesday, saying that all the ministry’s foreign affairs spokespeople were in Algeria, where President Vladimir Putin was due to arrive Wednesday. Comments would appear on the Finance Ministry web site Thursday, a spokesman said.
Wednesday, International Women’s Day, was a national holiday.
A spokeswoman at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton’s New York office on Wednesday declined to comment on whether the company was involved in settling Russian debt.
Kogan said the Noga debt was the latest in a series of settlements of Russian government debt he had taken part in, including that of Russia’s debt to the Bank of America in 1999 and to Japan’s Nomura Bank in 2001. Kogan said he could not disclose the specifics of previous deals.
“This is my usual business,” Kogan said by telephone Wednesday.
To completely lay the Noga debt to rest, an official document would have to be obtained from the international arbitration court in Stockholm to the effect that Noga has no more claims against Russia, Kogan said. 
“This, of course, is a matter for Russia’s attorneys to take care of,” Kogan said. He declined to estimate how long it would take to obtain such a document.
Kogan said he had been involved in attempts to settle the Noga debt since 2001. The agreement to buy the debt from the three banks was reached some time ago but has yet to be fully completed, he said.
Noga and its owner, Gaon, have claimed that Russian debt to the company dating from a 1991 oil-for-food deal has grown to $1.1 billion over the last 14 years. The original sum, however, was $300 million, Gaon said by telephone from Switzerland on Wednesday.
Gaon complained that Kogan had gone behind his back to buy up his debt to the banks.
“We kept telling the banks that once we resolve our issues with Russia, we would pay the debt back,” Gaon said. “Why did Russia let [Kogan] do that? Is there any sense in doing that?”
Gaon said he still believed Russia should have paid him what he had demanded, but admitted that he was forced to seek some kind of settlement due to his current financial situation.
“If I don’t settle now, I am finished,” he said. “I am ready to sit down and negotiate. ... You [in Russia] have a lot of money now. It’s not like it was before.”
Although Kogan refused to specify the exact sum of the purchased debt, Gaon said he had owed the three banks’ $68 million. Gaon said he had been forced to sell two luxurious hotels, the Noga Hilton in Geneva and the Hilton Cannes Hotel, due to financial troubles.
Gaon also said he had lost $40 million in legal expenses alone. “And Russia paid double that amount,” he said.
Kogan, 47, is a native of Tomsk and a former employee of Tomskneft who emmigrated to the United States in 1991. As well as finance, Kogan said he had business interests in construction. His Air Structures American Technologies Inc., or ASATI, has built airdomes — lightweight air-supported tent-like structures — for Russian clients including Gazprom and the Emergency Situations Ministry, he said.
ASATI’s Russian-language web site boasts a single, but impressive, testimonial. “What a hall! So functional, so beautiful,” reads the comment attributed to Putin during a visit to an Emergency Situations Ministry venue. Another page on the web site suggests that the airdomes by ASATI could be used as recreational facilities across Russia. 

Staff Writer Maria Levitov contributed to this article.

TITLE: Fradkov Tips Voters In Belarus
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK — Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov met with top officials in Belarus on Tuesday and said he was sure voters in the country would make the “right choice” in the upcoming presidential election, which pits incumbent Alexander Lukashenko against opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich. 
“The people of Belarus will make the right choice that will strengthen cooperation between our countries,” Fradkov said during a meeting with Lukashenko. 
Meanwhile, a top campaign official for Milinkevich and the leader of a party supporting his presidential bid were detained after a rally in an eastern city.
Amid fears of unrest, with opposition protests expected if the vote is considered unfair and the government vowing a firm response, Lukashenko told Fradkov: “We control the situation, it is absolutely normal.” 
Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the opposition United Civil Party, said he and Milinkevich’s campaign chief in Mogilev, Vladimir Shantsev, were detained and forcibly taken to a police station after a rally in the eastern city that authorities said was illegal. 
“Lukashenko has turned the election campaign into a meaningless exercise,” Lebedko said by telephone. “The forceful actions against us demonstrate the lack of even minimal conditions for a presidential race.” 
Lebedko said authorities had at the last minute withdrawn approval for an indoors campaign meeting, forcing him to hold it on the street.

TITLE: Cruel Begging Scam Horrifies Activists
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s charitable foundation Help For Stray Dogs and a group of local enthusiasts working to build a shelter for stray cats have joined forces after discovering a giant pile of dead dogs and cats at an abandoned house on Obvodny Canal in February of this year.
The activists have launched a campaign against “korobochniki” — beggars who use stray animals to ask for money — this month and are preparing an appeal to the city parliament asking for an amendment to the law On the Protection of Animals and the introduction of a sterilization program.
“One of our volunteers happened to pass by a dilapidated apartment building and saw a sick-looking, shaky kitten coming out. When we examined the building we saw a nightmarish scene: dozens of animals’ corpses amidst the remains of boxes with ‘please donate to stray pets’ written on them,” said animal’s rights advocate Yury Simanovich. 
“We have long known that korobochniki were unkind to the pets, and we even spied on some of them — one turned out to be a drug dealer — but now we’ve found a new, horrendous case,” Simanovich said.
The animal rights activists are now preparing a series of leaflets to be distributed in veterinary clinics and pet shops.
“People should stop funding these monsters and paying them to accept new pets,” said animal rights advocate Natalya Denisova.
When people can no longer afford to keep their pets, they often bring them to korobochniki in the hope that they will help the animals with the money raised from their begging.
“But what awaits these animals is starvation, exhaustion and a slow death,” Simanovich said. “Not only do they not feed the pets, they inject them with tranquilizers so that they don’t run away. If they don’t sell the animals, they simply throw them away.”
At present, there are no state-run shelters for lost or stray animals in St. Petersburg. The several small shelters funded by local charities that do exist are unable to deal with the scaleof the problem. 
The large numbers of stray animals in town and the absence of an efficient system allowing people to find domesticated pets that have gone missing makes St. Petersburg a fertile ground for the korobochniki.
According to Yury Andreyev, St. Petersburg’s chief veterinary surgeon, of a total of 250,000 dogs in the city, 10,000 are homeless. 
Since it opened in 2001, the St. Petersburg charity Help For Stray Dogs has found over 300 new owners for abandoned pets. Most environmentalists agree that the most efficient and humane strategy for controlling the population of stray animals in big cities is sterilization — a system not yet used in St. Petersburg, despite several statements from Governor Valentina Matviyenko endorsing the policy.
Although City Hall adopted a sterilization plan for stray animals in September 2005, no funding has yet been allocated.
In Russia, sterilization has only been applied in a city-wide program in Moscow, though the program was recently suspended until the summer due to what officials described as “inefficiency.” 
Funded solely by state money, it was introduced in the early 2000s following an initiative of the Moscow City Duma in 1999. The budget for the mass sterilization of stray animals in Moscow was set at up to 40 million rubles ($1.4 million) annually. 
“According to Western experience, to make sterilization efficient, about 80 percent of female dogs have to be treated, while in Moscow the figures didn’t even reach 20 percent,” Andrei Poyarkov, a senior researcher with the Moscow-based Severtsev Institute for Ecology and Evolution, told reporters in February. 
Having devoted over twenty years of his life to research into stray dogs, Poyarkov is considered Russia’s top specialist in the field. “Besides, killing stray animals is sure to make the rest of them more aggressive towards humans.”
Local environmentalists will be using these arguments in their appeal to the Legislative Assembly in the very near future.
“There are no official ways to combat korobochniki at the moment,” Denisova said. “Even if a raid discovers that pets in their boxes are exhausted and sick, they can easily say that they found them in that condition a few minutes ago. And unless there were witnesses, it would be impossible to prove otherwise.”

Links://www.priut.ru. For more information or to offer donations, call 778-87-65.

TITLE: Heineken to Distribute Bud as “Luxury” Brand
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Heineken brewery will start producing and distributing Budweiser beer, the company said Tuesday, after signing a licensing agreement with Bud’s brand owner Anheuser-Busch. 
“Bud will be sold in ‘expensive’ bars and restaurants in major Russian cities and will come in 0.5 liter and 0.33 liter bottles and 0.5 liter cans,” Interfax reported, citing the Heineken statement.
Despite being the world’s largest beer producer, Anheuser-Busch relies on the U.S. market for most of its sales. Foreign markets account for only 16 percent of its revenue. 
According to the statement, Heineken occupies about 14 percent of the Russian beer market, being the third largest distributor in terms of sales after Baltic Beverages and InBev. Heineken already produces Bud beer in Italy, and sells it in Poland and the Canary Islands, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Victoria Grankina, senior analyst for consumer market at Troika Dialog brokerage, suggested that Heineken wants to find out how Bud would be consumed in Russia, given that licensed beer has been outpacing the market.
“In America Bud is a famous brand. But it is not obvious whether it will perform well in Russia. It will depend on whether consumers here like the flavor and the quality,” she said.
“Generally speaking, Russians who live in America do not like the taste of Bud. However, there is always interest in a new product, which could increase its sales at first,” Grankina said.
As for Heineken wanting to distribute Bud as an expensive brand, Grankina considered it as some kind of innovation.
“It’s not an expensive brand. In America it is considered a mass-market brand. Maybe Heineken wants to market it differently in Russia, but it’s not a premium-class brand anyway,” she said.
Another expert disagreed. 
“The Bud brand is familiar to some Russian consumers. Promotion of Bud primarily in hotels, restaurants and cafes seems quite a logical step,” said Mikhail Podushko, marketing director at Comcon-SPb statistics agency.
“How actively Heineken, which owns several licensed brands, will promote Bud depends on the terms of the agreement with Anheuser-Busch,” he said.
The Russian beer market is still growing fast in relation to other countries that foreign producers are targeting.
“The share of licensed beer in the Russian market is growing. During 2005 licensed beer sales increased by about three percent, and this segment is one of the most dynamic,” Podushko said.
Heineken has operated in Russia since 2002 when it acquired the Bravo plant in St. Petersburg. In 2004 Heineken bought the Sobol Beer plant and Tsepko company (owner of the Shikhan and Volga beer plants). Last year the company acquired the Patra plant in Yekaterinburg, Stepan Razin in St. Petersburg, Baikal brewery and Ivan Taranov Breweries.

TITLE: American Giants Look For Place in City Zones
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two giants of the IT industry, U.S. firms Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, are considering registering in the city’s special economic zones, Interfax quoted a statement from the city governor as saying on Monday.
“These companies have expressed lots of interest in St. Petersburg’s special economic zones. Sun Microsystems already operates in the city and sees the zone as an opportunity for further development,” Valentina Matviyenko said at a press conference to announce the results of her official visit to the United States.
Within a month City Hall will complete negotiations with Hewlett-Packard over the details of possible cooperation, Matviyenko said. According to vice Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky, during the visit they also held negotiations with software development firms and companies producing technical equipment.
“I think that within the next month we’ll be able to reveal those companies wanting to apply for a place in the zone,” Oseyevsky said.
Even regardless of the zone initiative, Siemens, Alcatel, Sun Microsystems and Motorola have already established R&D offices in the city. 
Anna Barsky, director of Sun Microsystems High Technologies Center in St. Petersburg, confirmed that during her visit to California Valentina Matviyenko met with Jeff Jackson from Sun Microsystems.
“One of the questions discussed concerned the Sun Microsystems development center in St. Petersburg and the possibility of including it in the state techno-park program,” Barsky said.
The Sun Microsystems center was opened in June 2004. At the moment it employs 330 people.
“Sun Microsystems plans to continue its investment in the Center,” Barsky said. Nevertheless, Victor Naumov, Head of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Protection Group at DLA Piper in St. Petersburg, warned against getting too carried away by the presence of foreign R&D in the city.
Naumov indicated some of the advantages of St. Petersburg’s zones, in particular its scientific potential, trained personnel and the technical institutes for IT specialists and engineers. He also mentioned tax concessions and preferential customs fees, as well as investment-friendly laws.
“The northern capital is culturally similar to Europe, an important consideration for business, and is favorably located in terms of transport,” he said.
However, in the long run “without state support of training programs, without restoring traditions in science and engineering, without clear and economically-balanced federal legislation concerning taxes, intellectual property protection and IT, we could fail to maintain the interest Russian and foreign companies have shown in the city,” he said. 
In this case “St. Petersburg would only benefit in part from the unique macroeconomic interest we see at the moment,” Naumov said.

TITLE: Consultants Employed To Speed Up Link
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The World Bank and Morgan Stanley are to act as consultants for constructing St. Petersburg’s high-speed link road, Interfax cited city vice Governor Yuri Molchanov as saying on Monday. The agreement was reached during City Hall’s U.S. visit at the end of February.
“The World Bank will help Smolny through the process of receiving financing from the Russian Federation’s investment fund, while Morgan Stanley will act as consultants to the ministry for economic development and trade,” Molchanov said at a press conference.
He explained that the World Bank was chosen without a tender because City Hall needs to file an application to the investment fund by May 20.
The new road will link St. Petersburg’s sea port with the city’s main transport hubs — the ring-road and highways running to the Baltic states, Scandinavia and the Russian regions.
The 46.4 kilometer-long link will have between six and eight lanes, 14 traffic interchanges and should be completed by 2010. The total cost of the project is about $2 billion. The project (will) get funding from the federal budget ($640 million), the city budget ($385 million) and other sources, including private investors, in the form of concession agreements, which could be opened for tender as soon as May, Molchanov said.  According to the vice governor, certain Japanese companies have already showed interest in the project.

TITLE: Aeroflot Eyes Plan to Scoop Up Rivals
AUTHOR: By Conor Humphries
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Aeroflot is considering expanding operations by snapping up rival state-controlled airlines, a senior company official said Tuesday, but denied reports that the move was part of a government plan to turn the flagship carrier into a state-run behemoth that would control most of the market.
State-controlled Aeroflot, the country’s No. 1 carrier, is mulling a plan to acquire government stakes in other airlines in exchange for newly issued shares, said Lev Koshlyakov, deputy chief executive officer at Aeroflot. The decision on the emission of new shares has been included on the agenda of Aeroflot’s shareholders meeting scheduled for June 17, he said.
Koshlyakov said the new shares were being issued “in order to expand the company’s activities,” but denied a Vedomosti report on Tuesday that the scheme would be used to bring all of the government’s airline assets under the company’s roof, introducing something approaching a monopoly.
“The formation of some kind of monopoly is not on the agenda,” he said. 
Koshlyakov declined to elaborate on which assets Aeroflot was considering acquiring.
The Vedomosti report, which cited an unidentified Aeroflot board member, said that the company was proposing that state-owned airlines Pulkovo, Rossia and Dalavia be folded into the flag-carrier, along with the government’s controlling 51 percent stakes in KrasAir and Vladivostokavia and its blocking stake of 25 percent in No. 2 operator Sibir.
Such acquisitions could leave Aeroflot with over 50 percent of the Russian airline market, Sergei Suverov, head of research at Gazprombank, said Tuesday. Aeroflot currently controls around one-fifth of the market.
Billionaire Aeroflot shareholder Alexander Lebedev told Bloomberg on Tuesday that the government was putting pressure on the airline to facilitate the consolidation of the industry. 
“The board has been discussing acquisitions for months, and now it seems some bureaucrats want to move ahead with it,” said Lebedev, who owns 31 percent of Aeroflot, the largest stake after the government’s controlling 51 percent. 
The move comes on the heels of President Vladimir Putin’s decision last month to sign off on the creation of a government-controlled holding company that will unite the country’s main aircraft makers. 
The state has recently also moved to tighten its grip on the automotive and energy sectors.
Suverov said that a dramatic move by Aeroflot might be in the offing to make up for slumping profits and the possible loss of indirect subsidies from foreign airlines flying over Russia, which are at risk due to the country’s prospective entry to the World Trade Organization.
“They need some kind of radical decision” to avert a crisis, he said. Large-scale consolidation might be Aeroflot’s answer to the growth in fuel costs and the possible loss of overflight royalties, he said.
Aeroflot announced on Friday that its net profits had fallen by 50 percent to 3.052 billion rubles ($109 million), according to provisional estimates, Interfax reported. The company’s income increased by 10 percent, while costs grew 14.9 percent, deputy general director for finance and planning Mikhail Poluboyarinov told the news agency. 
Yelena Sakhnova, an analyst with UFG, said that Aeroflot investors would welcome consolidation of the industry. “The industry has very low margins, and the effective companies will be those that work on a large scale.” 
Aeroflot’s shares climbed 8.8 percent following the publication of the Vedomosti story, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

TITLE: Pay Attention to the Candles
AUTHOR: By Celeste Wallander
TEXT: In Minsk, where the buildings are gray, the weather dour and the architecture Stalinist monumental, the lights and colors of dissent are challenging the last dictatorship in Europe.
On the 16th of every month, thousands of citizens in the capital and other parts of Belarus turn off their lights at 8 p.m. and light candles as a symbol of freedom and democracy. They have chosen to do this on the 16th to commemorate the date in September 1999 when businessman Anatoly Krasovsky and politician Viktor Gonchar disappeared. Their bodies have never been found.
Belarus hasn’t been a country for long. During most of its history, it was part of Lithuania, Poland or Russia. It declared independence during the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Since President Alexander Lukashenko was first elected in 1994, Belarus has become among the most repressive of the former Soviet republics.
The regime makes criticism a criminal offense, imprisons and terrorizes competitors and stands accused of causing the disappearance of political opponents and independent journalists. In addition to Krasovsky and Gonchar, as many as 100 other opponents of Lukashenko have disappeared, experts say.
Since 2003, Ukraine has had its Orange Revolution, Georgia a Rose Revolution and Kyrgystan a Tulip Revolution. The symbol of Belarussian resistance is denim. Young people have taken to wearing it to express their aspirations for a democracy integrated with Europe and the global community.
But there’s no indication that such a change is imminent. Presidential elections are scheduled for March 19, but human rights groups — and U.S. officials, speaking privately — warn that Lukashenko has shown every intention of doing whatever it takes to ensure himself a third term. He recently threatened, for instance, that if there were any “provocations — we’ll give them such a going over they won’t know what hit them.” Belarussian citizens, it seems, have good reason to fear their president.
But the demonstrations have continued. On Feb. 16, several hundred demonstrators dared to hold candles in peaceful vigils on streets and in public squares. In a throwback to Soviet tactics, they were forcibly disbanded by paramilitary troops.
Last week, police beat and detained Alexander Kozulin, an opposition presidential candidate. Another opposition candidate, Alexander Milinkevich, was told by officials that he could not meet voters in public on that day. When he went ahead with a meeting of what turned out to be thousands of supporters in Liberty Square in Minsk, they were surrounded by 1,000 police in riot gear. 
The election rally continued nonetheless. By a number of such shows of defiance, Belarusian citizens are signaling that they will not be paralyzed by neo-Soviet terror.
The U.S. government has not been shy in criticizing the Lukashenko regime. Last week, President George W. Bush hosted at the White House two wives of the “disappeared,” Iryna Krasovskaya, wife of the businessman, and Svetlyana Zavadskaya, wife of journalist Dmitri Zavadsky. 
After the beating last week of Kozulin, U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley warned that “there is not enough outrage and international attention on Belarus.”
He’s right. Pay attention March 16 to the candles, the denim and the courage of Belarussian citizens. Shine the light of the international media and a concerned global public into the cracks in Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime. Support the rights of Belarussians to choose their leaders with dignity.
We don’t know whether Belarussian citizens will dare take to the streets to reject a fraudulent election, whether their protests will be crushed or when regime change may come to Belarus. But we should notice and welcome the awakening of its citizens from a long winter of fear.

Celeste Wallander is director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington. She contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.

TITLE: Kadyrov Knows the Secret
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Ramzan Kadyrov is the new prime minister of Chechnya. The Kremlin seems to have adopted a hands-off policy, apparently reasoning that since the war in Chechnya is officially over, it has no business appointing the prime minister of a peaceful republic. The presidential administration doesn’t appoint the prime minister of the Ivanovo region, after all.
Kadyrov is in control of Chechnya, and his power rests on nothing so flimsy as his status as prime minister. Kadyrov’s power comes from his ability to do whatever he likes to anyone in Chechnya at any time.
Chechnya enjoys greater independence from Moscow under Kadyrov today than it did between the first and second Chechen wars under then-President Aslan Maskhadov. Federal troops are afraid to step outside their base at Khankala, which has come to resemble a reservation more than a military installation.
Moscow pays tribute to the Chechen government in the form of compensation for housing destroyed during the two wars. The going rate is a 50 percent cut off the top. Moscow has already shelled out for 140,000 private homes and 500,000 apartments, more than could have possibly existed in Chechnya before the fighting started.
The regional government is instituting Shariah in Chechnya. Casinos have been banned. The authorities have cracked down on the sale of alcohol. They’re even checking mobile phones to make sure that married women aren’t calling their old boyfriends. Needless to say this doesn’t stop Kadyrov himself from tossing wads of cash at female singers in Moscow restaurants.
Kadyrov makes no attempt to conceal his true feelings for Russians. When former Prime Minister Sergei Abramov was staying at Kadyrov’s compound — complete with chickens, horses and various other farm animals — he was regularly hounded by Kadyrov’s fighting dogs, which would be let out “by accident” as Abramov’s car pulled up to the house. Everyone in Chechnya knows that Kadyrov doesn’t respect the legendary 19th-century political and religious leader Imam Shamil because he surrendered to the Russians — or “infidel dogs,” as Kadyrov puts it — in 1859.
A couple of months ago, a drunken Chechen colonel cut off a Mercedes with tinted windows, grabbed his machine gun and approached the car. The driver’s side window opened, revealing none other than Kadyrov behind the wheel. Kadyrov ordered the colonel to get in the trunk. The colonel climbed in. On another occasion Kadyrov went incognito to visit a looted construction site. A drunken special forces officer stuck a machine gun in his gut. Kadyrov identified himself, but the officer said that he couldn’t care less.
It’s remarkable that both the colonel and the special forces officer are still alive. They didn’t even end up in a cellar in Tsentoroi, Kadyrov’s native village. It’s said that prisoners are no longer being held in the cellars of Tsentoroi; cages full of prisoners have been set up in the yard where dogs once chased after Abramov.
Kadyrov mentioned both of these incidents in a speech on local television as examples of what is wrong in Chechnya. Shortly thereafter he launched his war on booze: Three million bottles were confiscated — and subsequently sold in neighboring Khasavyurt.
Kadyrov should not be underestimated. Anyone who refers to Russians as “infidel dogs” but still has President Vladimir Putin’s private phone number, and who is implementing Shariah with Russian money, is neither a dope nor a puppet. Kadyrov has managed to do what Dzhokhar Dudayev and Maskhadov could not: He has built a centralized Chechen state for the first time in history.
Kadyrov knows the secret of the Putin regime: The Kremlin will turn a blind eye to absolutely anything. Plenty of people know this secret, but most take advantage of it to get themselves off the hook. Kadyrov takes advantage of it to increase his power.

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

TITLE: It’s only rock and roll
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: John Cale, the co-founder of the seminal New York band The Velvet Underground, returns to the city on Sunday in his first concert appearance here since April 1999. Back then, the gig took the form of a chamber-like solo concert at the St. Petersburg Conservatory’s theater with Cale backing himself on piano and, occasionally, acoustic guitar. 
A multi-instrumentalist who played viola on The Velvet Underground’s early records, Cale’s career spans more than forty years as a songwriter, performer and producer of contemporary music.
Now aged 64, Cale, whose classical music roots and work with minimalist composer LaMonte Young are well-documented, performs at the sweaty, “extreme-rock” club PORT with a full rock-and-roll band. 
Cale, who is now on the second leg of a European tour in support of his most recent album “Black Acetate” (2005), spoke to The St. Petersburg Times by telephone from a hotel in Vienna where he was performing earlier this week.

Does this album and tour mark a return to playing rock and roll?
Well, I started off doing rock and roll and then I went back, a couple of albums ago, into writing rock-and-roll songs, and now this is a show with a straight-up rock-and-roll band. So 80 percent of it is based on the new album, “Black Acetate,” then 20 percent is a mixture of different things. But it’s all rock and roll.

Are you playing in underground rock clubs or in theaters on this tour?
It’s a mixture, actually. In Bratislava [Slovakia], it was a club, and in Ljubljana [Slovenia] it was a theater. I like clubs better because the audience gets more involved in what goes on on the stage, and the kids come down to the stage, and it makes a show much more exciting for the performer. I mean if people sit down for a rock-and-roll show, it makes no sense at all to me. And it certainly does not help the performer at all.

Who are the members of your band?
Most of the new album, “Black Acetate,” it’s kind of a one-man band [and] most of the tracks on it are just Herb Graham [Jr., the producer and musician best known as the drummer for R&B singer Macy Gray] and I playing all the instruments. 
But when we came to finishing the album we realized that there wasn’t one track on it that was done live, it was all done with overdubbing. So we went out and found some musicians to come and play that one track. It’s a track called “Sold-Motel.” And those were the musicians I was on the road with.
Michael Moore is on drums, Joe Karnes is on bass and Dustin Boyer is on guitar. They are from L.A. and they’ve been on tour with me — they’ve done two other tours, this is the third tour, and we’re getting better. I mean we’re improvising a lot more.

Does the “Black Acetate” material sound different live than on the album?
Of course. You can’t do anything the way it is on the record, it doesn’t work. I mean a lot of times even when you have a really good rock-and-roll song, you have to change it a little bit for the stage. [It helps to produce] high mental energy.

Who goes to your concerts?
It’s strange, it’s a mixture of people... In Bratislava, for instance, there were older people who really were, I guess, the art aficionados who just sat down and did nothing — and then there were young kids, just 17 or 18 years of age, who were just down the front dancing away.

You don’t bring your own instruments with you on the road but rent them when you come to each town. Is there any philosophy behind it?
It’s just the necessity of the time.

Will you perform any Velvet Underground songs?
I hope so. It just depends on what instruments we can find. If we don’t love the instruments, we won’t do it, so I’m not sure yet.

Have you played “Venus in Furs” [from The Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut album “The Velvet Underground and Nico”] on this tour?
Well, I have done, yeah, but I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do that in Russia. It depends on whether we find the right instruments.

Do you see The Velvet Underground’s influence today in newer bands such as The Strokes?
I’ve no idea. What is the influence, can you tell me? Do The Strokes have a viola player? It’s a matter of feeling. I’m not going to say you’re wrong, I’m just wondering what it is exactly. Nobody seems to be able to tell me.

Do you follow the current music scene — is there any sort of renewal going on?
It’s not better and it’s not worse, there’s just more of it. You see, it is constantly changing. Everybody has his favorites, and everybody chooses which ones they like and follows them.
I’m always trying to get record companies to tell me who they’re interested in. I do not always get an answer, but there are always young musicians. I mean if you go online and go to MySpace.com, it’s full of young bands from all of the world, who are putting up MP3s of bands that they put together with their friends. MySpace.com is really just an enormous audition space.

Do you find that new technologies make making music more accessible to ordinary people?
That’s true, but it has also lowered the standard. Because if you make something in a really good studio, you get certain results, and if you make something on your computer at home, you get another kind of result.

What are your memories of the concert in St. Petersburg in April 1999?
Yeah, it was a solo performance. I remember we were treated very well, we got a tour of the Winter [Palace], I think it was. And the theater itself was very nice. I think it was university students. And I met a lot of people. Some very funny, amusing people I met. I didn’t spend enough time talking to them but they seemed to be people that travel a lot. They were from Russia but they [had] traveled to London a lot, and it was very interesting.

Are you already planning the next album? Will it be rock and roll or more experimental?
I wish I was. I mean I have responsibilities to the record at the moment which will continue to the end of the year, and then I can start thinking about recording another album. I don’t write songs outside of the studio. I write songs in the studio, always. It’s a lot faster, I can finish them quicker.
So I really try not to make up my mind before I go into the studio what the album will be like, it always changes. I don’t think we really figured out what this “Black Acetate” was going to be like until about a month before I finished recording it. And we had to choose from, like, 38 songs.

Does the title of the album, “Black Acetate,” refer to an old recording technique?
Yes, it was one step between recording on tape and putting a vinyl out. You had an acetate that was the test pressing.

What’s the metaphor for you?
It’s the state of mind that you’re in when you’ve really finished something, but you have to check it and make sure that it’s all right. And you have only a certain amount of time in which to check it. You would play the acetate. It would only last for five plays and then it’s gone, can’t play anymore. 
So the album itself, the new album, of course, you have more times to play it. But for me, it’s something that I’m always digesting and figuring out what I’m going to do next, because the next album will be very different.

John Cale performs at PORT club on Sunday. www.john-cale.com

TITLE: U.S. quartet captures the soul of Shostakovich
AUTHOR: By Michael Roddy
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — When the Emerson Quartet performed Dmitry Shostakovich’s bleak last string quartet in Salzburg recently, a young man in the audience said it was so powerful he felt like drowning himself in the nearby river.
“Good, we had the right impact then,” the foursome’s violist Lawrence Dutton laughed, when told of the conversation.
This is the centenary of the birth of the late St. Petersburg composer, who died in 1975. The U.S.-based Emerson, whose 2000 recording of all 15 Shostakovich quartets earned them one of their seven Grammy awards, is as renowned for their performances of his music as any group playing today.
The Emerson is performing the entire cycle in London this week, to wild applause, and will reprise the marathon at New York’s Lincoln Center in late April and early May.
It is not easy to listen to a week straight of Shostakovich, whose quartets are intensely personal, and run the gamut from tuneful movements with snippets of Jewish klezmer to the moody “death quartet,” with its six successive adagios.
Shostakovich was the most prominent Russian composer living in the Soviet Union during the turbulent times of Stalin’s reign of terror, the slaughter of World War II and the numbing fear of the Cold War.
He did not wear the crown easily and his quartets, some barely played in public during his lifetime, reflect that.
“He was writing in fear a lot of the time and yet he found a way to express a great deal of emotion,” Emerson co-first violinist Eugene Drucker said in an interview with Reuters.
The Emerson, who will celebrate their 30th year next year, have become so associated with Shostakovich that they have been able, in a sense, to re-introduce him to Russians. Building on the success of their Shostakovich CD, the group teamed up with British theater director Simon McBurney for a stage work, “The Noise of Time.” It uses actors, visuals and recordings of Shostakovich’s raspy voice as an introduction to the 15th quartet, written almost on the composer’s death bed.
At a performance last summer in Moscow, dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s wife, among others, thanked them.
“It brought back all those memories for them and a lot of young people don’t even understand the time of the Soviet regimes,” violist Dutton said.
“Here you have an American string quartet with a British theater company performing the music of Shostakovich and people are thanking us for showing them what that time was.”
It is an example of the power of the quartet form, which many people dismiss as too cerebral and which conductor/composer Pierre Boulez, in his “enfant terrible” stage, said was dead.
Philip Setzer, the Emerson’s “other” first violinist — he and Drucker rotate as first and second violinists — bristles at the idea.
“When people come to hear the concerts they’re swept away by the emotion of it... This is some of the greatest, most personal, most emotional music that these composers wrote,” he said.
The Emerson follows the great tradition of quartets that master the standard repertoire and introduce new works. But it has bowed to what cellist David Finckel calls a “visual age.”
Roughly at the time of the theater piece, the Emerson began to perform — Finckel excepted — standing up: No more middle-aged guys in penguin suits slumped in chairs.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: John Cale of Velvet Underground fame will come to the city to play rock and roll at PORT club on Sunday. The singer, viola, keyboard and guitar player may even perform the Velvets’ all-time classic “Venus in Furs” — if he likes the rented instruments. See interview, page i and ii.
On Saturday, at the same time as British pop singer Chris Rea is serenading the crowd at the Ice Palace, hip-hop/Latin-influenced rockers Fun Lovin’ Criminals will be performing at Manezh Kadetskogo Korpusa. In an embarrassment of riches, St. Petersburg’s leading band Leningrad will also be performing a rare local concert — its first since Dec. 2004 — at the same time. 
The band, which released its most recent album, “Khleb” (Bread), late last year, has been  busy touring and playing corporate parties, while frontman Sergei Shnurov posed for Moscow glossies with his actress girlfriend Oksana Okinshina, appeared on local television in patriotic war documentaries, and took part in the infamous meeting of the Kremlin’s “grey cardinal” Vyacheslav Surkov with rock musicians. Shnurov was strikingly tight-lipped about what was said at the meeting when listings magazine Afisha approached him for comment.
Last year Shnurov also released a song, “I Am Free” (Ya Svoboden), with the words “Only when you swim against the current/You understand the importance of free opinion,” seen by many as a protest against imprisonment of opposition oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. But although the track was released by the Yabloko party on a CD in defense of Khodorskovsky and Khodorkovsky’s web site posted the lyrics, Shnurov maintained it was merely influenced by the fate of the oligarch or simply said it was about freedom in general.
Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times recently, Artyom Troitsky said: “I absolutely admire such absolutely cynical guys as Sergei Shnurov, who is subversive and friends with the presidential administration at the same time. That’s what I call a ‘real rocker.’” 
Leningrad will perform at Yubileiny Sports Palace on Saturday.
New club Zorro seems not to have survived the official grand opening it threw with a concert by Markscheider Kunst and Wine late last month. 
Sources said it changed hands in a couple of days, fired most of its staff and will be called ROKS Bikers Club, as the place’s new owners are reported to be the local radio station ROKS and the biker club Werewolves.
“It’s the usual story, nobody needed anything,” said former art director Katya Sidorova, adding that she had to call and inform the music acts she booked for a concert about the cancellation.
The club’s new art director Alexei Rybin declined to comment as this paper went to press, saying he was ill. Zorro’s web site was in operation and displayed a gig program including this weekend on Thursday.
Meanwhile, a one-off concert by A-Ha, scheduled on March 24, was postponed until Nov. 10 by the band, according to the Ice Palace.

TITLE: Romantic revival
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: To open its sixth annual ballet festival on Thursday, the Mariinsky Theater presents a reconstruction of a 150-year old ballet.
French choreographer Pierre Lacotte, a restorer of undeservedly forgotten gems of 19th-century choreography, is reviving the original version of Jules Perrot’s romantic ballet “Ondine” at the Mariinsky Theater. The reconstruction opens the International Mariinsky Ballet Festival on Thursday, with a second performance on Friday March 17.
“Ondine” tells the story of a mermaid and her doomed love for a simple Sicilian fisherman, who is already betrothed to another. The fisherman falls in love with Ondine but can’t compromise his fiancee, and the ballet revolves around the sufferings and torments of this love triangle. 
As happens in virtually all 19th-century ballet classics, there is no happy ending, and the long-suffering characters all die shortly before the curtain falls.
“This ballet celebrates naivety and romanticism,” said Mariinsky dancer Leonid Sarafanov, who is rehearsing the lead male role of the fisherman Matteo in “Ondine.”
“The plot is as conventional as it could possibly be and there is much charm in this choreographic antique. The music, the moves and the synopsis all contribute to the recreation of a mesmerising and graceful, if somewhat old-fashioned, fairy tale,” Sarafanov said.
As well as Sarafanov, the ballet will be danced by an array of the Mariinsky’s top-flight soloists, including Diana Vishnyova, Yevgenia Obraztsova and Igor Kolb.
Set to the music of Cesare Pugni, the two-act ballet was originally choreographed by Jules Perrot in 1843 at London’s Royal Opera House (Covent Garden). Marius Petipa later reworked the ballet and presented his rendition at the Mariinsky Theater in 1874, followed by another version in 1892. 
Reinterpretations of “Ondine” didn’t end there. In 1903, also in St. Petersburg, Alexander Shiryayev designed his own adaptation of the work for the prima ballerina Anna Pavlova.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the ballet or parts of it were occasionally brought to life in the city — in 1921 and 1984 — but the work lost prominence in Russian companies’ repertoires and remained obscure to several generations of ballet audiences.
Pierre Lacotte originally worked with the Mariinsky on “Ondine” back in 2003, with the premiere of his reconstruction scheduled for spring of that year. 
But the show never materialized due to what the company said were “an unfortunate string of technical reasons” that still remain obscure.
The French choreographer had previously resurrected “La Fille du Pharaon,” the first ballet choreographed by Mariinsky icon Petipa for the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
Lacotte’s reconstructions include “La Sylphide” at the Opera National de Paris and Milan’s La Scala, “Coppelia” and “Paquita” at the Opera National de Paris and “Le Lac des Cygnes” at the Ballet National de Nancy. In 1979, Lacotte brought Marie Taglioni’s “Le Papillon” to the Mariinsky Theater.
The research and reconstruction process can be hugely time-consuming. Lacotte said it took him nearly four years to work on Perrot’s “Ondine.”
“I have always been interested in the original version of this ballet,” Lacotte said. 
“Later alterations were substantial and very much changed the work.”
When he began working on “Ondine,” only a modest amount of documents were available to Lacotte. 
“I had a violin score of Pugni’s work and some critical reviews,” he said. 
Lacotte wasn’t able to dig out enough about the original sets and costumes from Perrot’s work to be able to reproduce them. 
“We have created designs that reflect the aesthetics of that time,” he said.
Lacotte’s interest in Petipa, Perrot, Maria Taglioni, Jean Coralli and 19th-century ballets was sparked by Russian emigre ballet historian Lyubov Yegorova, with whom he studied for over a decade early in his career. 
“Ondine,” which abounds with difficult variations, poses great technical challenges, Sarafanov said. 
“As a dancer, I very much appreciate the opportunity this ballet offers to absorb the quintessential style of the French school in its crystal-clear original form,” he said. 
“It gives you new technical strengths because even the pantomime is very different from our standards. For example, to symbolize death, Russian classical dancers stretch their right arm and point to the ground but in the French tradition you need to cross your stretched arms.
Rehearsals for this ballet are particularly demanding on dancers as they require the highest physical and mental concentration, the dancer added.
Sarafanov is already familiar with Lacotte, having danced in his reconstruction of “La Sylphide” at La Scala last season.
“This choreographer is the most extensive ballet encyclopedia personified,” the dancer said. 
“Apart from teaching us the technique, he plunges us fully into the era and the atmosphere of the times when the original ballet was being created. His exciting explanations are always rich with precious historical detail.”
www.mariinsky.ru

TITLE: Ice breakers
AUTHOR: By Archie Brown
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: John Lewis Gaddis’  concise, readable history of the Cold War takes a skewed view of how the 80-year standoff between the world’s dueling superpowers ended by giving Ronald Reagan  more laurels than Mikhail Gorbachev for shattering the status quo.
In “The Cold War: A New History,” John Lewis Gaddis, the author of a number of significant books on the Cold War, has distilled his learning into a highly readable, concise volume. He has read widely and made good use of materials translated from Russian as well as the rich American sources.
Nevertheless, the book is stronger in its analysis of the making of U.S. than of Soviet foreign policy and is much more persuasive in its account of the early and middle years of the Cold War than of its ending. It is a very America-centered view of how the standoff ended, although it fails to take on board some of the best American literature on the subject. 
The book ranges widely and Gaddis is always ready with an apt and illuminating quotation drawn from memoirs, biographical literature or declassified government sources. His account of the Nixon presidency is masterly. Gaddis explicitly observes that his book “does not make any contribution whatever to international relations theory” on the grounds that this field “has troubles enough of its own without my adding to them.” Thus, the book makes for easy — and, for the most part, rewarding — reading, and it has been nicely produced by its publisher. 
In his interpretation of the last 20 years of the Cold War, Gaddis is in line with the conventional wisdom in Washington circles: he overstates the role of Pope John Paul II and of Poland in the process of bringing the Cold War to an end and gets the Gorbachev-Reagan relationship back-to-front, according primacy in making the decisive change to the U.S. president. 
Let us take the case of Poland and the pope. Gaddis writes: “When John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw airport on June 2, 1979, he began the process by which communism in Poland — and ultimately everywhere else in Europe — would come to an end.” The author sees the domestic imposition of martial law in Poland by General Wojciech Jaruzelski in December 1981, rather than invasion from the East, as meaning the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine whereby the Soviet Union had accorded itself the right to intervene in any Warsaw Pact country to uphold a communist system. Gaddis believes that, from this point, the Soviet leadership was no longer willing “to use force to preserve its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.”
The election of a Polish pope and his first papal visit to his homeland were events of great significance for the Poles, and they were a stimulus to the rise of Solidarity. However, although Solidarity was welcomed in the West and surreptitiously admired in parts of Eastern Europe, its example was not followed anywhere.
After the imposition of martial law, the Vatican — and, for that matter, the Pentagon — could do nothing to restore political pluralism in Poland until policy had changed fundamentally in Moscow. The year in which reform of the system turned to transformative change in the Soviet Union was 1988, the same year that saw the reemergence of Solidarity from its shadowy existence in church halls. The pope’s visit to Poland did not cause the end of communism. What did bring about the end of communism throughout Eastern Europe was the dismantling of the pillars of a communist system in the Soviet Union itself, together with the transformation of the foreign policy of the region’s hegemonic power.
Important arms-reduction agreements also played their part in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion, but the Cold War began with the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, and it ended when Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that there would be no more Soviet military interventions to sustain regimes rejected by their own people. It was in 1988 that Gorbachev made public this fundamental shift of policy — in the summer of that year at the 19th Party Conference, and in December in his speech to the United Nations.
Rather than take Gaddis’ view that the Brezhnev Doctrine ended in 1981, it is possible to see that the Soviet leadership had over several decades managed to retain their hegemony in Eastern Europe, even at times of trouble, by increasingly economic means. Very extensive bloodshed in Hungary in 1956, much less bloodshed in Czechoslovakia in 1968 despite the introduction of Soviet tanks, and a “virtual invasion” in Poland in 1981 when the Polish communist leadership was persuaded to crack down on the opposition for fear that if they did not, Soviet troops would do the job for them. Given the size of Poland, and the strength of Polish support in the United States, it was clearly preferable for the Brezhnev leadership to make the crackdown look like a domestic Polish affair. The idea, however, that any Soviet leader prior to Gorbachev was prepared to tolerate Warsaw Pact states becoming independent and non-communist is wholly fanciful.
Gaddis himself cites Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of state, Dean Rusk, saying that what happened in Eastern Europe “had never been an issue of war and peace between us and the Soviet Union — however ignoble this sounds.” Indeed, even short of using force — which would have been suicidal — the Johnson administration reacted remarkably feebly to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. An invasion of a Central European country within “the Soviet bloc” in the early 1980s would doubtless have made the Cold War very much colder, but it would not have led to war between the superpowers, since that could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be in the interest of either of them. 
I find Gaddis no more persuasive when he argues that if John Hinckley’s bullet had killed Ronald Reagan in 1981, the Cold War would not have ended because “there would probably not have been an American challenge to the Cold War status quo.” It was Gorbachev who came to power determined to end the Cold War. Many aspects of Reagan’s policies — from the “evil empire” rhetoric to his fixation with the Strategic Defense Initiative — made that task difficult for him. In the end, the fact that Reagan believed in the possibility of change in the Soviet Union, and had sufficiently strong anti-communist credentials to protect his rear in Washington, was an asset for the new Soviet leadership; the Gorbachev-Reagan partnership became a fruitful one. 
But any U.S. president with an ounce of gumption should, with Gorbachev as a partner, have been able to preside over the end of the Cold War. Jimmy Carter can count himself unlucky that his presidency coincided with the last years of Soviet foreign policy run by Leonid Brezhnev and Andrei Gromyko. Admittedly, President Carter would have been given a far harder time in the U.S. if, like Reagan, he had gone to Moscow in 1988 and said that the Soviet Union was no longer an “evil empire” and that those words  had applied to “another era.” 
George H.W. Bush might have been slower than Reagan to take advantage of the opportunity of a radical breakthrough in relations with the Soviet Union. His initial excessive caution upon succeeding Reagan suggests as much. Nevertheless, Bush in due course established relations of trust with Gorbachev. If, from the Oval Office, he had already experienced the frustration of trying to make headway with Brezhnev, Yury Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, he would probably have embraced Gorbachev all the earlier. 
The greatest weakness of this otherwise worthwhile book is that its author has an inadequate understanding of the domestic context of Soviet foreign policy, of the role of Gorbachev, of the conceptual revolution in Russia in the second half of the 1980s and, thus, of the sources of fundamentally new Soviet behavior, which, taken together, were decisive in bringing about the end of the Cold War.

Archie Brown is emeritus professor of politics at Oxford University and a fellow of St. Antony’s College.

TITLE: 50 Hostages Taken In Iraq Terror
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Gunmen wearing commando uniforms of the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry on Wednesday stormed an Iraqi security company that relied heavily on Sunni ex-military men from the Saddam regime, spiriting away 50 hostages. The ministry denied involvement and called the operation a “terrorist act.” 
On Thursday, two roadside bombings targeting Iraqi patrols killed at least two civilians and injured 10, police said.
One blast missed an army patrol in Amariyah, a mostly Sunni neighborhood in west Baghdad, but killed two civilians and injured seven, said police Capt. Jassim al-Wahish.
Another was aimed at a police patrol in Jihad, a mostly Sunni western neighborhood, injuring three civilians bystanders, said police Lt. Mohammed Kheyoun.
Meanwhile, police and the U.S. military reported finding the bodies of 24 men garroted or shot in the head, most of them in an abandoned bus in a tough Baghdad Sunni neighborhood.
They also reported the deaths of at least 15 others across Iraq, including a U.S. soldier and two Marines.
The Sunni minority, which was dominant in the country under Saddam Hussein, has complained bitterly that it is under attack from death squads associated with the Interior Ministry, in charge of Iraq’s police. And, over the past two weeks — since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra — violence has become increasingly sectarian. Nearly 600 people have been killed since Feb. 22. 
Many of the dead in that period were Sunnis, killed at close range after apparently being captured by overwhelming numbers of attackers. The nature of the killings suggested that a well-armed and organized force carried out the attacks.
There have also been repeated attacks against the Shiite-led security forces. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr and one of his assistants may themselves have been targets of assassination attempts Wednesday.
A bomb hidden under a parked car detonated as police from Jabr’s protection force were driving through Baghdad, killing two officers and wounding a third, police said. Four bystanders were injured.
And gunmen attacked the convoy of Interior Ministry Undersecretary Hekmet Moussa in west Baghdad, killing two bodyguards and injuring two others, police said.

TITLE: Women’s Day Sparks Global Equality Debate
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: HONG KONG — Campaigners have marked International Women’s Day by vowing to fight sexual violence and discrimination in Asia as the United States remains locked in debate about abortion rights.
While marches and debates were planned in countries still struggling for gender equality, the event looked set to pass largely unnoticed in nations where women have already made strides in politics, business and the home.
In Afghanistan, still slowly clawing its way to normality after years of civil war capped by five years of Taliban rule, activists were to launch a project to assess the extent of sexual violence against women. 
President Hamid Karzai was also to order the release of a number of female prisoners. Women in Afghanistan can still be jailed for actions such as adultery and running away from forced marriages.
In neighboring Pakistan, a woman whose gang rape on the orders of a tribal council triggered an international outcry was to lead a women’s rights rally.
“The day will be momentous as it will bring together, for the first time, men and women in an area globally marked for gender discrimination and cruelty towards women,” Mukhtaran Mai told AFP.
Organisers said they expected up to 5,000 people to attend the rally in the conservative central city of Multan.
Mai’s rape — a punishment for her brother’s alleged love affair — and her quest to bring her rapists to justice has garnered extensive international attention, much to the embarrassment of Pakistani authorities.
The issue also came to the fore in Indonesia, where Women’s Day coincided with a study being released showing that reported cases of violence against women jumped by 45 percent last year, the Jakarta Post reported.
In Australia and New Zealand, where women hold at least a quarter of the seats in parliament, there were no major events planned but campaigners warned that the fight for full equality was not yet won.
Despite New Zealand’s impressive leadership roll-call of a female prime minister and chief executive of the country’s largest listed company, glaring disparities in pay and under-representation in the boardroom persist.
Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward warned that unless the government did more to help women juggle the demands of a career and family, the economy would suffer.
North Korea took the opportunity to urge women to rally around dictator Kim Jong-Il by having more children. 
“The women should give birth to many children and rear them to be dependable men and women,” Rodong Sinmun, the communist party newspaper and mouthpiece, said in an editorial.
Meanwhile in the U.S. state of South Dakota, the governor signed a near-total ban on abortions in the state into law in what the governor called a “direct frontal assault” on the U.S. Supreme Court decision to legalize the practice 33 years ago. 
Supporters and opponents of abortion rights had been gearing up for a showdown even before Gov. Mike Rounds added his signature to the bill Monday and both sides expected a lengthy battle.
“We fully intend to challenge this law,” said Kate Looby, state director of Planned Parenthood, which operates the state’s only abortion clinic. “It’s just a question of how.” 
The bill would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless the procedure was necessary to save the woman’s life. It would make no exception for cases of rape or incest but such victims could get emergency contraception.
(AFP/AP)

TITLE: UN Takes Up Nuclear Issue, Iran Still Defiant
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday the West would suffer more than Iran if it continued to try to stop the Islamic Republic developing nuclear technology, local media reported.
Speaking a day after it became clear that the UN Security Council would take up Iran’s nuclear case, Ahmadinejad said Tehran would not be bullied or humiliated.
“They [Western countries] know that they are not capable of inflicting the slightest blow on the Iranian nation because they need the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech in western Iran.
“They will suffer more and they are vulnerable,” the semi-official ISNA students news agency quoted him as saying.
His comments were echoed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate decision-maker in the Islamic state, who urged government officials not to give in to Western pressure.
Khamenei said the move to send Iran’s case to the Security Council was part of a psychological war masterminded by Washington and aimed at undermining Iran’s clerical rulers.
“That is why if the Iranian nation and government steps back on nuclear energy today, the story will not end there and the Americans will make another pretext,” state television quoted him as telling the Assembly of Experts, an elected body of senior clerics which supervises the supreme leader’s activities.
“The officials are responsible for continuing Iran’s drive for advanced technology, including nuclear energy, without yielding to the pressures,” he said.
A senior Iranian security official warned on Wednesday Iran could inflict “harm and pain” to match whatever punishment Washington persuaded the Security Council to mete out for Iran’s refusal to heed calls that it halt atomic fuel research.
Iran says it wants to master nuclear fuel cycle technology to feed atomic reactors generating electricity. Washington and its allies believe Iran wants nuclear fuel to make atomic bombs.
Some Iranian officials have warned that if pressured further over the nuclear case Tehran could restrict its vital oil exports to push prices even higher.
They have also hinted Iran could use its influence with militants in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories to stir up trouble for the United States and Israel.

TITLE: Israel To Kill Hamas Leader If Attacked
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — Israel’s defense minister warned Tuesday the incoming Hamas prime minister would be assassinated if the Islamic militant group resumes attacks, but the acting Israeli premier also pledged a drastic cut in spending on Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and others in his front-running Kadima Party delivered these messages just three weeks before the Israeli election. The centrist Kadima is trying to court both hardline and dovish voters, and has been sliding in the polls.
Another key campaign issue is Israel’s position on Hamas, which won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in January and is poised to form a government. Hard-line candidates have accused Olmert of being too soft on Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction and refuses to renounce violence.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz of Kadima told Army Radio on Tuesday that Israel would not hesitate to assassinate Hamas leaders if the group resumes attacks against Israel.
Asked specifically about Ismail Haniyeh, the designated Hamas prime minister, Mofaz said: “If Hamas ... presents us with the challenge of having to confront a terror organization, then no one there will be immune. Not just Ismail Haniyeh. No one will be immune.”
Mofaz spoke a day after an Israeli airstrike on an ice cream truck killed two Islamic Jihad militants and three bystanders in Gaza City. Two of those killed were children, aged 8 and 14.
Haniyeh brushed aside Mofaz’ warnings.

TITLE: Muslim Singer Breaks Mold
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — The audience, mostly young Muslim women in veils, clapped, swayed and sang along as Sami Yusuf belted out a love song. The object of his adoration? Mohammad, the prophet of Islam.
With a British accent, Islamic lyrics and trendy video clips, 25-year-old Yusuf has become a music idol to a young generation of Muslims eager to reconcile their religious impulses with the appeal of modernity and pop and to proudly display an Islamic identity many feel is under attack. 
He rejects the “clash of civilizations” theories fueled by the current angry exchanges over cartoons of prophet Mohammad. He seeks to dispel stereotypes and to show that the Western and Muslim cultures he straddles can coexist.
Islam and the West have much to offer each other, he said in an interview at the British Embassy in Cairo, sporting a beige suit, trendy striped scarf and trim beard. 
“I am an example of that. I am a British Muslim. I am a proud Brit who is also proud of his religion.”
Yusuf was born to Azerbaijani parents and raised in London where he has non-Muslim friends, including Christians and atheists.
“The diversity that exists in the United Kingdom is close to the Islamic understanding of tolerance,” he said.

TITLE: Schumi Not 1st on the ’06 Grid
AUTHOR: By Salvatore Zanca
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAKHIR, Bahrain — For the first time in five years, Michael Schumacher will not have the No. 1 on his Ferrari as defending champion in Formula One. There are new champions — Fernando Alonso and Renault; new teams; new drivers and, once again, new rules and regulations to try to spice up the sport. 
And, for the first time, the season begins in the Middle East as the sport continues to move away from its traditional European base.
Schumacher has vowed to come back, although he is the oldest driver on the grid. Alonso, who became the youngest F1 champion last season, says he wants to remain as No. 1 before moving to a new team in 2007.
“It is very difficult to win a championship, and you need a lot of things around you to have the chance,” Alonso said. “Last year, I started the season dreaming of maybe winning one race and getting regular podiums, but we won the title.
“In 2006, I know we have a competitive car in the R26, so my only goal is to repeat the title.”
Schumacher certainly knows what it takes to repeat as champion. He did it in 1995 for Benetton after winning for the first time in 1994. Then he had a string of five straight titles for Ferrari between 2000 and 2004, before the rest of the pack caught up with the car with the prancing stallion.
“My only goal is winning the championship. Ferrari feels the same way,” he said. “When I see and feel how much effort everyone is putting in these days, I think I can be optimistic. We’ve been doing a good job in testing and it’s clear to see that the fighting spirit is back. We seem to be heading in the right direction.”
After the last race of the 2005 season in Shanghai in October, most drivers went on an extended vacation. Schumacher was eager to get some work in — he cut short his annual Norwegian holiday and tested the new car in February, a month earlier than last year.
But Alonso is ready, too.
“After a whole winter off, I want to see the people in the grandstands and feel the emotion of Formula One again,” he said. “Renault are the world champions, and the whole team is very motivated because of this.”
In an effort to create more competition, Formula One officials approved a new qualifying format for this season and authorized the reintroduction of tire changes and a smaller engine.
Under the new format, qualifying in 2006 will be held in three phases. The five slowest cars will drop out after the first 15 minutes, and five more will depart after the next 15. The remaining cars will compete in a 20-minute session for the top spots on the grid.

TITLE: Owners, Players Reach Labor Agreement
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GRAPEVINE, Texas — At the end, even the NFL’s maverick owners decided that labor peace was better than the uncertainty of working without a salary cap. They didn’t especially like doing it, though, after two days of meetings that sometimes got quite contentious.
“No one hit anyone,” Oakland’s Al Davis said after the owners finally agreed Wednesday to accept a deal that will add close to a billion dollars to the players’ pool in return for six years of labor peace. “Yeah, people were yelling a little bit, you know, but it’s part of life. The idea is to go and get something done.”
Davis, the NFL’s most conspicuous antiestablishment owner, turned into a league supporter for this one. The agreement will add $850 million to $900 million to the player revenue pool, contributed each year on a sliding scale by the 15 teams that earn the most from non-television and ticket income.
And while those teams aren’t happy to be throwing so much cash in the pot, they said they would rather do that than deal with the uncertainty of a 2007 without a salary cap and perhaps a work stoppage in 2008.
“The proposal was really a mean mother from the union,” said Dallas’ Jerry Jones, the leader of a faction of owners who for two years resisted the additional revenue sharing.
“We had a time today that we probably got into the Is and Mes a little bit. That’s what we were all looking to stay away from. You get that kind of stuff started, that’s kind of like drawing that line in the sand. Then everybody got ahold of it, looked back at it and said, ‘Let’s get in here to straighten this out.”
And they did, barely meeting a union-imposed 8 p.m. EST deadline to agree to its final proposal. In fact, they may not have met that deadline, announcing it at about 8:40, but no one seemed to care.
The deal will carry the NFL through the 2011 season. Two low-revenue teams, Buffalo and Cincinnati, cast the only votes against.
The agreement increases the salary cap from $85.5 million last season to $102 million, saving some veteran players who would have been cut and providing more money to free agents — either with new teams or by re-signing with their old ones.
And it’s $7.5 million higher per team than the $94.5 million they would have had in the final uncapped year of the current contract if they had not accepted the union’s last proposal.
Now the league’s free agency period, put off twice by protracted negotiations, will start Saturday to give teams additional time to get under the newly elevated salary cap.
The cap will increase to $109 million in 2007, which would have been an uncapped year that would have widened the spending gap between teams even more.
“We want teams to get additional money to re-sign players, rather than cutting them,” commissioner Paul Tagliabue said.

TITLE: Fans Pack Out Sports Bars To Follow Zenit
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: FC Zenit St. Petersburg were due to take to the field Thursday to play Olympique Marseille, fans were expected to glued to TV screens to follow their heroes on the quest for further advancement in the UEFA Cup. 
Because the first leg match in the final 16 round of the cup was shceduled to played in Marseille, Zenit fans were expected to flock to St. Petersburg bars to follow the action. 
This is a phenomenon that is growing more popular lately,  said Alexander Blinkov, PR manager at Vegas, a large casino and sportsbar complex on Manezhnaya Ploshchad.
He said that more football fans than ever crave to wacth team action with a large audience when they cannot travel to games such as Zenit away games or Champions League matches.
The volume of visitors has made Vegas charge for admission at such games and the bar is always full. But some guests are unhappy with the charge. 
“Some complained that they had to pay to see football, when they had already paid for a drink, but now they got used to it,” Blinkov said. 
He said Vegas had sold out of tickets by Wednesday, one day before the UEFA Cup match. He added that he could sell twice as many tickets if it was not for fire-hazard regulations.
At Football Bar on Italyanskaya Ulitsa, which can accommodate around 200 spectators, ticket also sold out. Tickets were sold for 200 rubles. At Vegas the price is 100 rubles.
The Red Lion English pub, located near the Bronze Horseman, does not charge admission for sports events, a representative of the bar said.

TITLE: Holders Liverpool Knocked Out Of Champions League
AUTHOR: By Stephen Wade
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LIVERPOOL, England — Defending champion Liverpool was eliminated from the European Champions League when visiting Benfica won 2-0 Wednesday night and advanced to the quarterfinals. 
The Portuguese team won the home-and-home, total-goals series on 3-0 aggregate.
Sabrosa Simao, who almost became a Liverpool player before the start of the season, scored in the 35th minute with a 20-yard shot and substitute Fabrizio Miccoli added a goal with two minutes left.
Peter Crouch and Jamie Carragher hit posts for Liverpool, which finished fifth in the Premier League last season and was allowed to defend its title only when the Union of European Football Associations put it in the first qualifying round last summer.
AC Milan, Arsenal and Lyon also advanced, joining Barcelona, Juventus and Villarreal. 
The final quarterfinalist will be determined when Internazionale of Milan hosts Ajax Amsterdam on March 14 following a 2-2 tie in the first leg.
Arsenal tied visiting Real Madrid 0-0 and advanced on 1-0 aggregate, while AC Milan won 4-1 at home over Bayern Munich to win the series 5-2. Lyon routed visiting PSV Eindhoven 4-0 to advance 5-0.
At Milan, Filippo Inzaghi scored in the eighth and 47th minutes, and the Italian team also got goals from Andriy Shevchenko in the 24th and Kaka in the 59th. Shevchenko has eight goals in eight European games this season. Valerien Ismael scored for Bayern in the 35th.
At Lyon, Tiago scored in the 26th minute and first-half injury time, Sylvain Wiltord in the 71st minute and Fred in the 90th.

TITLE: Canadians Show They Can Also Play Ball
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHOENIX, Arizona — Adam Stern hit .133 in 36 games for the  Boston Red Sox in an injury-plagued 2005 season. Adam Loewen spent all of last year at Class A Frederick in the a Baltimore organization. 
On a brisk Wednesday afternoon, they outshone the Jeters and A-Rods of Team U.S.A., leading Canada to an surprising 8-6 victory in the first round of the inaugural World Baseball Classic.
“We like to tell everyone we can play baseball, too,” Stern said. “We’re not just a hockey country.”
Stern hit an inside-the-park homer, drove in four runs and made two sensational catches in center. Loewen, a 21-year-old left-hander, gave up three hits and walked three but didn’t allow a run in 3 2-3 innings and got the victory.
“He pitched a heck of a game,” U.S. manager Buck Martinez said, “and he showed a lot of composure for a guy that hasn’t pitched about A-ball.”
Loewen escaped a bases-loaded jam in the first when Chipper Jones hit into a double play.
“The team played unbelievably behind me,” Loewen said. “Stern had the game of his life.”
Jason Varitek’s 448-foot grand slam helped bring the United States back from an 8-0 deficit, but a Canadian team made up largely of minor leaguers held on.
“It’s a very quiet locker room right now,” Martinez said. “I think everybody is feeling like they got kicked in the stomach.”
Chase Utley thought he had given the United States the lead in the eighth, flipping his bat and raising both arms in triumph after he hit a long drive to center with two on. But Stern made leaping catch at the wall near the 407-foot sign to end the inning.
“I thought Chase’s ball was gone when he hit it,” Derek Jeter said. “I mean, he crushed that ball, but you’ve got to hit it pretty good to get it out in that part of the park.”

TITLE: Kobe Leaves It Late to Spoil Hornets At Home
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW ORLEANS, Lousiana — Kobe Bryant, Lakers, scored 18 of his 40 points in the fourth quarter as Los Angeles spoiled the Hornets’ New Orleans homecoming with a 113-107 victory. 
Dwyane Wade, Heat, returned from a two-game absence to score 40 points as Miami won its 10th straight, 118-112 over Washington.Yao Ming, Rockets, had a season-best 38 points to go as Houston rallied from 17 points down to beat Indiana 103-99. 
Mike Bibby, Kings, scored 36 points to help Sacramento tie a season high for points in a 123-116 win over Milwaukee. 
Paul Pierce, Celtics, had his first triple-double of the season with 31 points to rally Boston to a 104-101 victory over Philadelphia.

TITLE: World Record Looms For Isinbayeva in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Nesha Starcevic
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Yelena Isinbayeva is coming home, and another world record is looming. 
The Russian pole vaulter will be going for her 20th world mark at the World Indoor Championships this weekend in Moscow. The field for the three-day event also features Ethiopian distance star Kenenisa Bekele, heptathlon rivals Bryan Clay and Roman Sebrle, U.S. sprinter/hurdler Terrence Trammell, and multiple indoor champions Maria Mutola, Ivan Pedroso and Stefan Holm. 
Isinbayeva already has improved her indoor record this season, clearing 4.91 meters in Donetsk, Ukraine, on Feb. 12. 
But she failed in three attempts to raise the mark to 4.92 meters at a meet in Birmingham, England, three weeks ago, and uncharacteristically has struggled at low heights at other meets. 
Isinbayeva, who has cleared 5.01 outdoors, has dominated women’s pole vaulting for two years. 
Isinbayeva won in Birmingham at 4.79 meters. Anna Rogowska of Poland also cleared that height, losing only because of a higher number of attempts. 
Rogowska later improved her personal record to 4.80 and is now second on this year’s top list. 
With a $50,000 bonus for a world record — plus a $40,000 reward for winning the gold medal — Isinbayeva will have a strong incentive to go for the record.