SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1162 (28), Tuesday, April 18, 2006
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TITLE: Nuclear Textbook Provokes Debate
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster approaches on April 26, a group of Russian environmentalists has published a school textbook about the accident and begun nationwide distribution.
Titled “Chernobyl Lessons”, the book, put together by experts from Ecodefense, Greenpeace Russia and Bellona, describes the disaster and its consequences in great detail, explaining the dangers of radiation, analyzing the mistakes that were made and suggesting protection strategies for similar situations. 
The lectures give a critical assessment of nuclear industry in general, and offer a comparative study of the risks and benefits of nuclear industry versus renewable energy, such as, for instance, wind energy. The book is intended to be used during lessons on biology, physics, sociology and personal safety.
One of the sections contains the testimonies of Chernobyl survivors.
Local teachers have been keen to acquire the book, Rashid Alimov, editor of environmental portal Bellona.ru, told The St. Petersburg Times on Friday. 
“We received orders for over two hundred copies after just the first two presentations, and the interest is growing,” Alimov said.
In Alimov’s opinion, the book should be of special use in St. Petersburg. “The Leningrad Nuclear Power Station still exploits the Chernobyl-type reactors, and the plant is close to the city,” he said. “People need to read it, if only for safety awareness, and because nobody else seems to be willing to educate them about it.”
Andrei Ozharovsky, one of the book’s authors and a leading expert with Moscow-based environmental organization “Ecodefence”, said the general syllabus in high schools in Russia gives a light-weight superficial coverage of the world’s largest-ever nuclear catastrophe.
“The teachers, if they touch on the topic at all, tend to present the Chernobyl disaster as some kind of technical malfunction, without putting the accident in context with the risks that nuclear industry presents as such,” Ozharovsky said during the book’s presentation at the Regional Press Institute on Friday. 
The book quotes Lyudmila Ignatenko, the widow of a man who survived the initial blast. As a firefighter, he was sent to the scene of the accident without any special protective gear.  “He was wearing a shirt, and all his colleagues were too,” Ignatenko said. 
“They hadn’t been warned about the radiation, they were told it was an ordinary fire.”
The book quotes Belorussian citizen Sergei Gurin, whose child was exposed to radiation when the radioactive cloud reached their town.
“My little son Yurik and I spent a day in the forest, without any knowledge of the danger,” he said. “God, could they not have warned us.”
But Vladimir Lebedev of the local information center of the Russian Atomic Agency (ROSATOM), branded the textbook biased.
“This book is blatant anti-nuclear propaganda, but nuclear energy is the world’s only future,” Lebedev said. “There is no alternative on a par with it and there is nothing its critics can do. The authors could have done better than scaring ordinary people.”
The book says over 600,000 people have been exposed to large doses of radiation resulting from Chernobyl’s deadly blast.
In Lebedev’s opinion, the textbook’s authors have exaggerated the damage. A report prepared by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005 claims that, to date, “fewer than 50 deaths have been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster.” The IAEA study was limited to those sent in to liquidate the results of the explosion and didn’t include those who suffered from the Chernobyl fallout.
A number of Russian and international ecological organizations, including Greenpeace, have criticized the IAEA report, suggesting the agency deliberately understated the number of victims and downplayed the negative consequences of the disaster.
“It is appalling that the IAEA is whitewashing the impacts of one of the most serious industrial accidents in human history. It is a deliberate attempt to minimize the risks of nuclear power in order to free the way for new reactor construction,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner, after the presentation of the IAEA report in 2005.
Collecting statistics for such research is tricky.
A number of respondents in the new textbook recalled numerous cases of state experts refusing or being extremely reluctant to connect their or their relatives’ illnesses with the accident.
“My daughter will never be able to have children; she is disabled, she is a Chernobyl survivor,” said Larisa Z., quoted in the book. “It took me four years to finally obtain a medical certificate confirming the connection between my daughter’s condition and her exposure to radiation.”

The textbook is available in electronic form at: http://www.chernobyl20.ru. Links: http://www.ecodefense.ru, http://www.greenpeace.ru.

TITLE: Russia In Dialogue Over Iran
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will insist on a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis when diplomats from six countries involved in searching for a resolution meet in Moscow this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday. 
“We proceed from the assumption that the Iranian nuclear problem should be solved through diplomacy,” ministry spokesman Andrei Krivtsov told The Associated Press. “This opinion is invariable and it will be reaffirmed at the upcoming talks.” 
Political directors of the foreign ministries of Russia, the United States, China, Germany, France and Britain will meet over dinner Tuesday to discuss Iran, a Western diplomat said on customary condition of anonymity.  Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak will represent Russia; Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the United States; and Assistant Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai, China. 
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met Monday with Cui to discuss the Iranian nuclear problem, the ministry said in a statement. 
Discussions of the Iranian crisis are to continue during a Wednesday meeting of envoys from the Group of Eight major industrialized nations, the Western diplomat said. 
The United States and Britain say that if Iran does not comply with the UN Security Council’s demand to stop uranium enrichment by April 28, they will seek a resolution that would make the demand compulsory. Enrichment can produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or material for a bomb. 
Russia and China, which have strong economic ties with Iran, have opposed the U.S. push for sanctions against Tehran. Russia is building a nuclear power plant in Iran’s southern port of Bushehr and has sold weapons to Tehran. 
A prominent Russian opposition leader, meanwhile, urged the Kremlin not to aggravate the situation by delivering weapons to Tehran. 
“Russia is in a position where it can influence further developments in the situation surrounding Iran, including from the military point of view,” Interfax quoted Grigory Yavlinsky as saying. 
Russia and Iran struck a deal in December for Moscow to supply sophisticated Tor-M1 air defense missiles to Tehran, drawing strong criticism from the United States and Israel. The missiles are to be delivered later this year, according to Russian media reports. 
Even though Russia continues to call for more diplomacy, analysts say that Tehran’s stubborn refusal to halt uranium enrichment efforts would make it hard for both Moscow and Beijing to stave off a U.S. push for sanctions. 
“Russia will search for ways of settlement without sanctions and the use of force ... but Iran must show wisdom and flexibility,” said Alexei Arbatov, the head of the Moscow-based Center for International Security. “If Iran doesn’t help, Russia won’t be able to do anything.” 
The business daily Kommersant reported Monday that intense bargaining over political support for the U.S. moves against Iran would dominate global politics in the coming months. 
“Moscow must take efforts to avoid being left in an unenviable position of Tehran’s sole defender,” the paper reported.

TITLE: Violence Continues as Two Mongolian Students Attacked
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MOSCOW — The beating of two Mongolian students in St. Petersburg over the weekend put an ugly stamp on what increasingly resembles an epidemic of racist violence in Russia. 
The two needed hospital treatment after coming under attack from a gang of around 10 men Saturday in the metro system, police said. 
The incident bore the hallmarks of a trend right across the country of unprovoked, often vicious attacks against non-whites — an embarrassing problem that President Vladimir Putin’s government has yet to prove capable of addressing. 
Just in the last week Russian media reported on skinheads using iron bars to beat to death two Roma in the south-western Volgograd region, and the death from his injuries of an ethnic-Vietnamese Russian citizen after his beating in the western Voronezh region. 
On Thursday, there were reports of six arrests after an assault by more than a dozen youths against Chinese construction workers in the Siberian city of Chita. 
A Malaysian student aged 22 was hospitalized with concussion after being struck on the head in the western Nizhny Novgorod region and an Afghan man was beaten up at a street market in St. Petersburg. 
For centuries the showcase of Russian artistic and liberal values, St. Petersburg has become the scene of some of the most notorious crimes. 
On April 7 a man armed with a swastika-decorated shotgun was alleged to have murdered a Senegalese student as he left a nightclub in the heritage-laden city, where world leaders of the G8 group will gather in July. In March a mixed-race girl, nine, was wounded there in a knife attack. 
The issue is being covered widely in Russia’s press and state-controlled television, but it remains unclear to what extent society cares. In the wake of the Senegalese student’s murder an anti-racism rally in St. Petersburg drew just 1,000 people. 
The government proposed Thursday to amend the law so that vandals with racist motives would face up to three years in prison. 
There would also be fines of up to a thousand times the minimum wage index rate, or 100,000 rubles (around $3,600), for the production, distribution or use of Nazi paraphernalia or symbols. 
But these measures have yet to be debated in parliament and there is no sign that the skinhead movement feels pressure. Internet sites displaying neo-Nazi insignia and applauding attacks on non-whites operate freely. 
One, run by a group called the White Patrol, welcomes what it calls “cleaning” of St. Petersburg and sports pictures of skinheads and swastikas. 
“We Russians never thought that we would become second-class citizens in the land of our ancestors,” starts an appeal for supporters to take to the streets across Russia on April 20 — the birth date of Adolf Hitler.

TITLE: Blast at Food Kiosk Takes A Third Victim
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: A third victim died Monday after an explosion at a food kiosk in St. Petersburg that authorities attributed to a gas leak, emergency officials said. 
Two people had died at the scene of the blast Sunday at a stand serving hot food in the Dybenko district in the south of the city. 
A duty officer at the local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said that a third victim died in the hospital Monday and that 13 people remained hospitalized with injuries. 
Authorities say they believe a leak from a gas canister caused the explosion.

TITLE: British Adventurer Seeks To Appeal Deportation Ruling
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A British adventurer attempting a round-the-world walk is expected to appeal a verdict ordering his deportation from Russia this week, a judge said Monday, the Interfax news agency reported. 
Karl Bushby, a former paratrooper who is halfway through a journey of 58,000 kilometers, will have to abandon his bid if he is deported because he will be barred from Russia for five years. 
Bushby and an American travel companion, Dimitry Kieffer, were ordered to be expelled on Friday by a court in the remote Arctic province of Chukotka for illegally entering Russia after they walked across the frozen Bering Strait from Alaska. 
Bushby, who began his trip in 1998 at the southern tip of South America, was detained April 1 along with Kieffer after the pair made a perilous 15-day trek across a 120-kilometer stretch of the frozen Bering Strait. 
He wants to be the first person to walk around the world in unbroken steps — from South America to Alaska, into Russia and then through Europe home to Britain by 2010.

TITLE: Chamber a Hit With Media
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Public Chamber may not influence government policy or even help the public. But, having just wrapped up its first plenary session, this much is clear: The media love it.
The chamber’s outlandish proposals — for instance, barring officials from using the words “euro” and “dollar”; drafting a 49-point, anti-extremism charter; and imposing career caps on officials who did not serve in the army — were among the issues covered most thoroughly by the media last week. (Less reported was the fact that lawmakers quickly shot down that last idea.)
“The chamber’s unclear status allows the notable personalities who are in it to use a lot of creativity when carrying out the Kremlin’s will,” said Masha Lipman, a political analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center.
The chamber, whose members include pop diva Alla Pugachyova and  physicist Yevgeny Velikhov, was conjured up by the Kremlin in the wake of the Beslan terrorist attack in the fall of 2004. 
At the time, President Vladimir Putin argued that the chamber would serve as a conduit between the people and the powers that be.
Army hazing and violent extremism directed against dark-skinned migrants have dominated the agenda of the chamber, created late last year. 
Sergei Markov, a political analyst with Kremlin ties who sits on the chamber, said his comrades did not fully grasp how to handle intense media scrutiny.
Markov cited the recent flap that ensued when Velikhov, the chamber’s secretary, publicly lamented that Russian officials frequently use the terms “euro” and “dollar.” His comments, Markov said, were portrayed by the media as representative of official chamber policy.
Igor Mintusov, head of the Nicolo-M political consulting firm, said the chamber’s 126 members faced a hard choice.
“Either they will be an institution that seriously, and without much media pomp, grapples with social problems and tries to solve them with the authorities — something like a Russian ombudsman,” he said. “Or, the chamber may degenerate into a debating society making populist, ineffectual noises about real issues that concern the nation.”

TITLE: City Seeks Plans For Gulf Square
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Young architects and designers from around Europe have been given an opportunity to contribute to the formation of St. Petersburg’s “sea facade”, the city’s committee for town planning and architecture said Wednesday, opening an international contest with a prize of 47,000 euros.
The International Competition for the Best Architectural Design Project for Europe Square — a piece of empty land on Vasilievsky Island in front of the Pribaltiiskaya Hotel and looking out onto the Finnish Gulf — will be held in two stages.
The first part of the architectural project, the scale of which some have compared with the ambitious plans to build a second stage for the Mariinsky Theatre and the redevelopment of the New Holland island, is scheduled for completion in June 2006. 
During that initial stage, the top 20 projects will be short-listed by a jury, half of them going through to the second stage where an eventual winner will be selected and the rest receiving special prizes.
Development of the area around the Pribaltiisky Hotel began in the 1970s on artificially raised sites, with the construction of new residential buildings and the laying out of two main thoroughfares — Morksaya Naberezhnaya and Ulitsa Korablestroitelei. 
The architectural dominant in the area is the 17-floor Pribaltiisky Hotel itself, constructed for the 1980 Olympic Games hosted by Russia.
Europe Square was founded in 2003 to promote St. Petersburg’s relationship with the Council of Europe and to commemorate the city’s 300th anniversary.
The competition has already attracted responses from Berlin, Antwerp, London, Helsinki, Vena and Milan, Interfax news agency reported last week.
According to Governor Valentina Matviyenko, young European designers “now have a chance to open up a new page in the city’s history and create an impressive architectural landscape for the new urban space.”
Vladimir Popov, president of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Union of Architects and co-chairman of the competition’s commission, said the initiative will help the city “to enter into the cultural spaces of Europe and the world.”
The project has also received the blessing of Mikhail Shemyakin, a key figure from the city’s nonconformist art scene, the creator of the Peter the Great monument at the Peter and Paul Fortress and the artist once described as a “black prince of the Russian underworld”  by the poet Andrei Voznesensky .
“I think, this project will be a large and an important event in architecture and design and in the historical perspective,” said Shemyakin, who is also a member of the competition’s jury, as reported by Interfax.  
There are some, however, who are skeptical about the project.
“There’s a point of view that says the task is more political then creative,” said Vladimir Sanzharov, president of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Designers’ Union in a telephone interview on Monday. “The whole of the area around the coast of the Finnish Gulf] is still in a very difficult situation — it lacks urban amenities and is in an appalling ecological condition, with many dumps on the site,” he said.
It remains unclear whether the project will represent a one-off attempt “to find a solution on a chosen patch of land, avoiding the general problems as a whole,” or will be a “strong element” in the development of the area, Sanzharov added.

TITLE: Khodorkovsky Knifed by Fellow Prisoner
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina and Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s nose was slashed early Friday by a fellow inmate while Khodorkovsky slept in a barracks in the Krasnokamensk prison colony he has been confined to for the last six months, his lawyers said.
A former prison officer in Krasnokamensk attributed the knifing to a change in the power structure at the prison, suggesting the attack was not orchestrated by state officials, as Khodorkovsky’s lawyers implied may have been the case. 
Still, there was uncertainty late Sunday surrounding the attack. Khodorkovsky, once the country’s richest man, is serving an eight-year term in the Chita region prison after a highly politicized investigation and trial.
While Russian prisons are notorious for violence and lack of order, Khodorkovsky continues to rankle senior state officials, who are believed to have initiated the campaign against Khodorkovsky in the first place.
“I assume there are enough people within the official establishment who are frustrated by Khodorkovksy not having shown any hint of weakness,” Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Yury Schmidt said by telephone Sunday. “There are plenty of ways to turn one’s life into hell.” 
Schmidt stopped short of calling the attack an assassination attempt. “The aim is unclear,” he said. “It could have been done to cause pain or to mutilate.”
Nikolai Moshchanits, the former prison officer, who formerly ran the prison football team and a production line where prisoners made clothes, said by telephone Sunday that Khodorkovsky’s attack had been ordered by a new smotryashchy, or criminal boss, who took over the colony a few months ago. The attack, Moshchanits added, was meant to be a “provocation.”
“He wanted to show to the prison authorities who was boss,” Moshchanits said. “There was no danger to Khodorkovsky’s life.” Khodorkovsky was chosen, he said, because he was the penal colony’s highest-profile inmate.
Moshchanits said the incident had been closely watched by prison officials across the country.
“A commission from Chita has already arrived, and one from Moscow is expected too. They will punish the prison officials and may even fire some. The reaction will be adequate,” he said. 
Natalya Terekhova, Khodorkovsky’s Krasnokamensk lawyer, would not speculate on the motive behind the attack. “I am sure it is not related to any criminal activities,” she said Sunday by telephone. “There has never been any reason for Khodorkovsky to be involved and there would not be.”
Khodorkovsky woke early Friday with his face covered in blood, Terekhova said. “He did not see the attacker,” she said. “He got up and ran to the mirror to figure out what happened. He then alerted the inmate in charge of the barrack, who in turn informed a prison officer on duty.”
Khodorkovsky was taken into the colony’s medical unit, where a dentist who also handles facial injuries stitched up a gash on Khodorkovsky’s left nostril.
Terekhova said it became clear shortly after the incident that it was a fellow inmate who was responsible for the knifing. The lawyer referred to the inmate as Kuchma, adding that she did not know his first name. Kuchma, 23, first made it into the news in mid-March after he and Khodorkovsky were punished for drinking tea in a place deemed inappropriate by authorities.
Khodorkovsky is not planning to take legal action against the prisoner, whom Russian media Saturday inexplicably called Khodorkovsky’s “young friend.” In Russian, the term connotes a sexual relationship.
Terekhova said Sunday that she had seen Khodorkovsky on Saturday afternoon and that the cut looked well taken care of by the doctor and did not appear to be causing much discomfort.
Prison officials on Saturday tried to downplay the incident, saying that Kuchma and Khodorkvosky were involved in a fight that prompted Kuchma to “scratch” Khodrokovsky’s nose.
“An investigation is under way, but most likely there was some sort of unpleasant situation during which the young inmate scratched Khodorkovsky’s nose,” a Federal Prison Service official told Interfax on Saturday. More official information was expected to be released on Monday.
But Khodorkovsky’s defense lawyers were unimpressed, expressing outrage that after the attack authorities were thought to have discovered another knife and a razor blade in Kuchma’s possession.
“One of the main arguments given by the authorities to justify Khodorkovsky’s move to Krasnokamensk was that it would be safer for him,” Anton Drel, also a Khodorkovsky lawyer, said.
Drel said Khodorkovsky’s lawyers had hoped that the authorities would make sure their client was safe, but he said they did not appear serious about protecting him. While Khodorkovsky is routinely searched and monitored, Drel said, other prisoners appear to enjoy more freedom inside the prison walls.
“He is not safe there,” Drel said. “Other inmates probably see that justice is very selectively applied and feel that they can behave accordingly.”
On Sunday, some of Khodorkovsky’s supporters also voiced fears for his life. 
“It was a well-planned attack,” said Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who is known for her coverage of Chechnya. 
“There had been rumors circulating that something like that could have happened. The Kremlin is tired of having a convict filing complaints for every violation committed against him. After this attack, the Kremlin hopes that [Khodorkovsky] will calm down.”
Khodorkovsky’s former business partner Leonid Nevzlin, who left Russia for Israel in the fall of 2003 fearing prosecution, also appeared to have little doubt that the attack was ordered from on high. 
“The Russian regime has stooped to a new low. First, they hold a show trial. Then, they throw Khodorkovsky in a remote Siberian prison, where he is being held in appalling conditions. Then, they try to eliminate him physically by exposing him to danger,” Nevzlin said in an e-mailed statement Sunday.

Staff Writer Francesca Mereu contributed to this report.

TITLE: ‘Worst Fears’ of NGOs Realized
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Human rights, social services and aid to those hurt by the Nazis and Soviets would be further compromised by a proposal on enforcing a controversial law on nongovernmental organizations, NGO representatives said.
Alexei Zhafyarov, head of the Justice Ministry’s Federal Registration Service’s NGO department, indicated that the April 7 proposal on how to enforce the law was expected to be approved by government officials. 
NGO representatives said the proposal would make the legislation, which was criticized by Western governments for squashing civil liberties after it was signed into law in January by President Vladimir Putin, even more burdensome by requiring annual reports on finances and activities.
NGOs would be expected to provide information on how much money they spent, for instance, on stationery and telephone services. The annual reports would be due by April 15. NGOs say they would need to hire more accountants or risk being shut down.
Foreign NGOs, which the Kremlin believes played a role in fomenting uprisings in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2004, would face even more onerous requirements, NGO officials say.
“Why are they demanding such an insane amount of details?” asked Yelena Topoleva, director of the Agency for Social Information, a group that manages PR-campaigns for civil-society projects. “Why they need all this is completely incomprehensible.”
Prominent human rights activists Oleg Orlov and Svetlana Gannushkina said in a statement that the proposal confirmed their worst fears. “Instead of the on-the-ground work we’re here to do, we are doomed to be consumed by a nightmare” of filing reports, Orlov, a leader of the group Memorial, said in an interview.
The proposal would require that NGOs file so much paperwork that it is unlikely anyone would actually read everything. Zhafyarov, of the Federal Registration Service, conceded at an April 11 meeting with NGO leaders that it would be impossible to study all the reports from the country’s more than 500,000 NGOs. 
NGO leaders have voiced confusion about how to distinguish between “main” events, which will have to be included in their annual reports, and other events, which would not have to be included. Zhafyarov told NGO officials at the April 11 meeting that the government would issue recommendations about filling out the reports.
“If we had to report about every small event or meeting over tea, we would have to shut down,” said Jens Siegert, director of the Moscow office of the Heinrich Boll Foundation. The foundation’s web site says the German group is affiliated with the Green Party and seeks greater human rights, women’s rights and environmental protections. 
The proposal further stipulates that NGOs detail the number of participants at events and the times those events begin and end.
Zhafyarov indicated in an interview Friday that the Federal Registration Service would investigate any questions raised by NGOs’ reports. The registration service would also look into any questions raised by prosecutors, he said. 
In anticipation of the new law, the registration service has created special departments outside Moscow to handle investigations, Zhafyarov said.
Foreign NGOs, in addition to filing the reports expected of domestic NGOs, would have to submit detailed reports every fiscal quarter about where their money was coming from and how they planned to spend it. Foreign NGOs would also be required to submit information each Oct. 31 about their plans for the upcoming year.
The requirement of quarterly reports puzzled Siegert, who said the Federal Tax Service already collected that information from foreign NGOs.

TITLE: 15 Young Men Attack Roma Camp, Killing 2
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON — A group of 15 young men attacked a Roma camp in the Volgograd region, beating inhabitants with metal bars and killing a man and a woman, the Interior Ministry said Friday.
Two other Roma from the camp in the town of Volzhsky — an 80-year-old woman and a 14-year-old girl — were gravely wounded in the Thursday night attack and hospitalized, said Roman Shchekotin, a spokesman for the ministry’s southern district department.
Three men, aged 18 to 20, have been detained and face charges of racially motivated murder, Shchekotin said. Police are searching for the other attackers.
In St. Petersburg, where a Senegalese student was fatally shot earlier this month, a 31-year-old Afghan man was beaten at a market on Friday and hospitalized with broken bones and bruises, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Five Years On, Protesters Take To the Streets, Mourning NTV
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — On the fifth anniversary of Gazprom’s takeover of NTV television, some 1,500 protesters and several prominent former NTV journalists rallied Sunday on Pushkin Square to demand greater media freedom and a television free of Kremlin control.
The protesters — many of them pensioners who pledged to listen only to independent Ekho Moskvy radio — gathered at 1 p.m., waving Russian flags, wearing “I’m free” pins, and holding posters reading, “Kremlin, get away from TV,” or “Take the remote control away from Putin.”
Many also wore T-shirts and pins calling for the release of jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and chanted “Censorship today, dictatorship tomorrow.” In front of a Channel One cameraman, protesters held a poster reading, “Channel One, stop lying.”
A handful of former NTV journalists made speeches from a stage, but few other journalists offered their support.
Viktor Shenderovich, who is best known as the main screenwriter for the axed “Kukly” political satirical television show, lashed out at the state of the media.
“You could watch me on three TV channels. Now you can only listen to me on two radio stations,” Shenderovich said to the applause of the crowd. “What happened five years ago was only the start of a leadership that has proved incapable of ruling a democratic country.”
Shenderovich has shows on Ekho Moskvy and Radio Liberty.
Gazprom, the state-controlled gas giant, took over NTV on April 14, 2001, in what it said was an attempt to recoup multimillion-dollar debts owed by the channel’s parent company, Vladimir Gusinsky’s Media-MOST. Gusinsky and media freedom champions denounced the takeover as Kremlin-orchestrated and said it was motivated by NTV’s critical coverage of the Kremlin and the war in Chechnya. 
Journalists left NTV en masse. 
Gazprom ended up taking over all of Media-MOST’s assets, including daily newspaper Segodnya, magazine Itogi, cable operator NTV-Plus and Ekho Moskvy. It closed Segodnya but has left Ekho Moskvy’s editorial policy in the hands of the editors, who also own a stake in the station.
Since the takeover, NTV’s news coverage has inched closer to that of Channel One and Rossiya, the two main state-run channels. 
Several hundred people rallied in April 2001 to protest the takeover of NTV, which was the only nationally broadcast channel not controlled by the state.
“We can only return to television when you want us back, when you take to the streets to call us back,” said Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Radio Liberty talk show host who worked at NTV.
“Freedom for Khodorkovsky,” Kara-Murza told the crowd, which started chanting “Freedom, freedom.”
“Yes, let Khodorkovsky go free,” screamed Lyudmila, a 67-year-old pensioner who was wearing a pin with his name. “I’m so worried about him. I think authorities want to destroy him.” She refused to give her last name.
Two demonstrators took the stage holding pictures of wisecracking pig Khryun and worrywart rabbit Stepan in front of their faces. The characters are from a popular satire program on NTV.
Stepan told journalists “to be brave” and to fight for their rights, while Khryun suggested they do so quickly.
“Ekho Moskvy can’t take anymore,” he said, referring to the many television journalists who have gone to the station.
Sergei Dorenko, a former anchor on TV-6 and ORT, now Channel One, said there used to be rivalry between the channels. “Yes, I know it was a fight among clans, but at least you could choose,” said Dorenko, who hosts a morning talk show on Ekho Moskvy.
Among the other journalists who spoke were former NTV head Yevgeny Kiselyov, former Itogi editor Sergei Parkomenko and Olga Romanova, a former Ren-TV newscaster who complained in November that her show had been pulled off the air due to reports that might irritate Kremlin officials. They all now host programs on Ekho Moskvy.
Radio Liberty journalist Yelena Rykovtseva expressed disappointment that more people would not learn about Sunday’s rally, noting that the participants did not need to be educated about media freedom.
“They listen to Ekho Moskvy and Radio Liberty, and they are well-informed people. Those who really need press freedom are not here because they didn’t know that this demonstration was taking place,” Rykovtseva said.
She said people had forgotten what independent television news was during the past five years and that they had grown so accustomed to state-controlled television that “they do not even notice the lack of press freedom.”
The national television channels tend to provide positive coverage of Kremlin policies, and all but ignore human rights abuses in Chechnya and elsewhere. Outspoken journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who covers Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta, expressed doubt that things would change.
“I understand that when you get a chance to publish your story you have to take it, but it is so difficult to get stories about Chechnya published in Russia,” she said.
Journalists from the major media organizations mostly ignored the rally. 
“I was surprised to see so few of them,” said Anna Kachkayeva, a media analyst with Radio Liberty.
“Russian journalists don’t believe that taking part in the rally can help solve the problem of press freedom. They are disillusioned,” she said.
Alexei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a free speech watchdog, said today’s television could be compared to the so-called period of stagnation in the 1960s.
“We need glasnost,” he said.

TITLE: Charting a Career Path From Cabinet to Boardroom
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — He rose to the rank of minister in Kiev. In Moscow, he recently reached the level of president — though his dominion is steel and his office is in an ordinary seven-story building in one of the city’s many courtyards.
The new head of steel giant Evraz, Valery Khoroshkovsky, 37, acknowledges that he does not have a lot of experience in metals. And he insists that he was not hired due to his connections or a 13-year friendship with Alexander Abramov, Evraz’s majority shareholder and former president. 
It’s about standing tall. “After I make a decision, I never pass the buck,” Khoroshkovsky said.
“Above all, Evraz acquired me as a manager, and that is the absolute truth. Often, people have tried to present it as the purchase of my lobbying potential — which undoubtedly exists. But, as you know, Evraz is not present in Ukraine,” he said, reclining on a leather chair in Evraz’s small but elegant boardroom.
Khoroshkovsky and his vision for Evraz, the country’s No. 2 steelmaker, are something of a mystery among metals industry insiders, with Khoroshkovsky largely shunning public appearances since his appointment on Jan. 1, which also happens to be his birthday.
An early mentor was Abramov, whom he says inspired his entrepreneurial spirit in the early 1990s. Abramov is Russia’s 14th-richest businessman, with $4.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Khoroshkovsky does not figure on the Forbes list, and he declined to discuss his wealth.
Some Kiev-based analysts remember Khoroshkovsky as a progressive, well-liked, but never heavyweight politician, as economy minister from 2002-04. “He did not have enough time in office to become well-known to the general public,” said Andriy Gostik, an analyst with brokerage Concorde Securities.
Khoroshkovsky is believed, though, to be one of the few businessmen to have the ear of President Viktor Yushchenko.
Khoroshkovsky, who speaks English fluently, readily answered most questions during a recent 45-minute interview, but he sidestepped some inquiries about his first metals trading company (“It doesn’t matter, the company has been left in the past”) and why he left politics (“Business is more honest”).
In Evraz’s boardroom, oil paintings of fishing boats, heavy with impressionist dabs, contrasted with minimalist industrial works and a framed honorary judo belt that reads: “To Alexander Abramov.” Khoroshkovsky said his art tastes tended more toward Slavic landscapes, though he is not a serious collector.
Khoroshkovsky got his first taste of the metals business after meeting Abramov in 1993. He was a postgraduate economics student at Kiev State University, and he was introduced to Abramov by Yakov Apter, then a Ukrainian lawmaker and the head of the Kerchensky metals plant.
Abramov, a physicist turned entrepreneur, was running a trading firm, Evrazmetal, that supplied Russian steel mills with raw material in return for steel products for resale.
Khoroshkovsky said that seeing Abramov’s vibrant business just after the Soviet collapse impressed him. He set up a firm, Veneda, and moved it into metals trading in 1994, working with Ukraine’s Dneprodzerzhinsky and Olshevsky metals plants. 
“At the time, it was a fairly good business,” he said.
For the first few years, his relationship with Abramov remained purely social. “We were on a very good, friendly footing for a long time, without any accompanying business ties,” he said.
In 1995, profits in metals trading fell drastically, leading Khoroshkovsky to channel his company’s activities elsewhere. Abramov chose just the opposite, swapping debts for factory shares and beginning to forge what is now Evraz.
Khoroshkovsky conceded that Abramov had played it smart, saying, “We learned about business from our own trials and mistakes.”
Khoroshkovsky went into banking. His company Merks joined forces with an Abramov-affiliated company called Ferrotrade to start snapping up shares in Ukrsotsbank, a top-five Ukrainian lender.
“In about a year, a year and a half, we brought our stake to a controlling one,” Khoroshkovsky said. “Later, I bought [Ferrotrade’s] shares and continued on my own. You could say it was my biggest project in business before Evraz,” he said.
Khoroshkovsky sold his Ukrsotsbank stake in 2004 to Ukraine’s second-richest businessman, Viktor Pinchuk. Yury Ushkov, a banking analyst with Troika Dialog in Kiev, put the value of the deal at $200 million.
Khoroshkovsky’s known business interests have included Merks’ furniture retail business, the Galakton dairy plant, trading firm BOVI, and soda, machinery and bus factories. Last year, he paid about $250 million for 61 percent of Ukraine’s biggest television channel, Inter-TV. 
He acknowledged “a series of other shareholder interests” in Ukraine, but declined to specify them.
Several Kiev analysts declined to put a figure on Khoroshkovsky’s fortune, but said he ranked somewhere after Pinchuk — who is former President Leonid Kuchma’s son-in-law — and the country’s richest businessman, Rynat Akhmetov.
“Initially, Khoroshkovsky seemed like he was a front for some of Pinchuk’s businesses. But now it appears that Khoroshkovsky was just another successful businessman who was once a junior partner in some of Pinchuk’s deals,” Gostik said.
In 1995, Khoroshkovsky pumped a small fortune into a bid to win a seat in Ukraine’s parliament. When he lost, he joined the new National Democratic Party, which went on to gain control of the parliament two years later.
He served a number of advisory roles in government, first to the Ukrainian Cabinet, then as aide to the prime minister, Valery Pustovoitenko. He finally won a parliamentary seat in 1998.
All that time, Khoroshkovsky kept an eye on his business interests. He insisted that he never mixed business and politics.
“I owned mid-sized businesses that had no kind of political influence. I cannot say I gained something for my business thanks to politics or that I had any political advantages thanks to business,” he said.
He noted, however, that business experience proved vital to his and other young Ukrainians’ understanding of how to run a country that was still emerging from communism. “Business was the only school for young politicians. A separate institution, a separate education, did not and does not exist.”
Asked to name one thing he learned from politics, Khoroshkovsky chose the word “compromise.” 
In the context of Kuchma’s rule, the word could be open to interpretation. “While in office, Kuchma was the only political power, and he made all the decisions,” said Peter Bobrinsky, head of equities at Concorde Capital. “It didn’t matter if ministers had any opinions or not.” 
Kuchma named Khoroshkovsky economy minister in December 2002, and he made some waves the next year by slamming Ukraine’s economic policy and threatening to resign if the country entered a common economic space with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The head of his political faction immediately warned that any ministers who opposed the idea would be sacked from government.
Khoroshkovsky resigned in January 2004, complaining that the Finance Ministry was preventing his ministry from drawing up long-term economic plans.
“In that sense, you could say he was not the politician who made the biggest impact in Ukrainian politics,” Bobrinsky said. “But I’d take any criticism of him with a pinch of salt. He worked at a time when ministers didn’t really matter.”
It may not be surprising then that Khoroshkovsky said his reason for leaving politics was that “business is more honest and has greater freedom.”
No sooner had Khoroshkovsky resigned than Abramov called to offer a position as vice president at Evraz with the promise to eventually become president, Khoroshkovsky said.
“Abramov and I are old friends. We had always kept in touch. He monitored how I developed, I looked at what he was doing,” Khoroshkovsky said.
As part of the deal, Khoroshkovsky was given an option to buy Evraz shares, and he immediately scooped up a 1.88 percent stake, now worth $163 million, for an undisclosed amount.
Does he see himself joining the ranks of the steelmaker’s major shareholders in the near future? His answer was no. With Evraz’s market capitalization at $8.9 billion, “it’s not exactly a cheap hobby,” he said with a smile.

TITLE: Moscow’s Kristall Loses Rights to Gzhelka Brand
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The long-running dispute between local alcohol producer LIVIZ and the Moscow-based Kristall group over the rights to use the Gzhelka brand ended in favor of LIVIZ, Interfax reported Thursday.
The Kristall plant registered Gzhelka as a trademark in 1993. In 2002 Kristall sold all rights for Gzhelka to several firms connected with the company’s CEO, Sergei Zivenko. The Gzhelka company then filed a law suit to restore its rights for the trademark.
The dispute continued for over two years. The latest decision, made by the Federal Arbitration Court on Thursday last week, canceled all previous court decisions and confirmed Gzhelka company rights to the Gzhelka brand.
“This decision means that the Rospatent decision to revoke the rights of the Gzhelka company for a combined Gzhelka trademark is canceled,” Interfax reported Gzhelka CEO Yury Loktionov as saying.
“When the court decision comes into force the Kristall group will not have the rights to use the combined trademark ‘Ptitsa Gzhelka’ or the word ‘Gzhelka’ in the transcription of the Russian,” Loktionov said.
“The war is over and now only the LIVIZ plant in St. Petersburg has the right to produce Gzhelka vodka, with the trademark belonging to the Gzhelka company,” he added.
“LIVIZ produces Gzhelka according to an agreement with the Gzhelka company. From the very beginning all rights to that brand belonged to Gzhelka,” LIVIZ press secretary Konstantin Vinogradov said by telephone on Friday.
“This law suit was aimed at prohibiting the Kristall group from using the trademark. As far as I know, the Gzhelka company did not seek any financial compensation from the action,” he said.
According to Interfax, Kristall’s lawyer, Yakov Mastinsky, said that the earlier decisions made by the Moscow Arbitration Court on Aug. 22 last year and on Feb. 2 this year “gave the Kristall group the right to produce and distribute Gzhelka vodka.”
Since 2006 all Gzhelka labels produced by the Kristall group have been marked with ZIVENKO, the last name of company president Gergei Zivenko.

TITLE: Bureaucrat Takes on Okay
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Known for his numerous attempts to destroy the illegally-built cottages of well-off Muscovites, Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of Rosprirodnadzor — the federal agency for the protection of natural resources — has turned his attention to the transgressions of St. Petersburg.
Speaking at a Rosbalt press conference last week Mitvol said he had found numerous violations of laws designed to protect water environments, both by local firms and state organizations. The federal official attached most blame to the Okay supermarket recently built on Bogatyrsky prospekt near the Black river, Chernaya Rechka.
The Dorinda company opened the 8,100 square meter supermarket, with parking space for 800 cars, on March 13. 
At the press conference, Mitvol said that the supermarket’s owners had bought 27 hectares of land from city authorities, and another 28 hectares they had ‘appropriated’ without any legal documents — “local authorities did not notice it,” Regnum news agency quoted Mitvol as saying.
These 28 hectares are located in a zone of environmentally protected water, Mitvol said, which includes part of the very river that was filled with sand and covered with asphalt to create the car park.
According to Mitvol, the company does not have the required state ecological expertise and other necessary documents.
At the moment the supermarket has paid a fine of 50,000 rubles ($1,805) for abusing the law on water conservation, Mitvol said.
He offered to launch a criminal investigation, adding that the owners should “return the 28 hectares to the city by ‘recultivating’ the land,” which means removing the sand and asphalt. Rosprirodnadzor will also demand compensation for the expenses incurred in water protection activities, Mitvol said.
This week Rosprirodnadzor will appeal to the General Prosecutor’s Office, providing all documents concerning the construction of the Okay supermarket, he said.
At the moment six Okay supermarkets operate in the city. Earlier Dorinda announced plans to expand the chain in St. Petersburg to 10 supermarkets over the course of this year, investing about $200 million in the process.
“I can not officially comment on the situation at the moment. Of course, being accused of usurpation on such a large-scale we have to prepare an official answer, and will issue a detailed statement next week,” general director of Dorinda Holding Alexei Krauze said by telephone on Friday.
A legal expert considered the situation strange, though claims related to water protection legislation are not rare for the city.
“The company should have got ecological expertise and federal approval prior to its actions. If they filled up the river it is, certainly, a violation of the law, which entails penalties and claims,” said Sergei Spasennov, head of corporate and real estate practice at Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners.
Any construction near rivers and ponds demands the protection of water  and water treatment activities, which should be comprehensively detailed in the project’s plans, Spasennov said.
“If the river is an impediment to construction, the company can move the river-bed or use pipes to protect the river. Despite being expensive, such measures will insure the company against future difficulties and claims,” he said.
Private companies frequently face claims concerned with water protection, Spasennov added.
“Any analysis taken from waste water or storm run-off will show violations. Practically all companies pay some form of fine. In some districts the city’s water monopolist, Vodokanal, pays these penalties and redistributes the costs among its corporate consumers,” he said.
“Standards are so strict that companies have to purify the waste as if it were drinking water. Not all organizations can afford to build such treatment facilities,” he said.
Despite the huge penalties, new water treatment facilities have been slow to appear in the region and with only federal funds available, the reconstruction of those that already exist is proving insufficient, he said.

TITLE: Law May Drive Out Advertisers
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: New legislation could mean the outdoor advertising industry will lose up to 80 percent of its current placement areas. Rather than protect the business community, City Hall is driving advertisers out of the city center.
A new state standard defining the technical requirements of advertising space on roads and in urban and rural areas was adopted in September of last year. The new Law on Advertisement that makes reference to this standard will come into force in July.
The standard prohibits mobile advertising and advertisements near road signs. In city areas advertising must be located no closer than five meters from the roadside, in rural areas — ten.
Speaking at a Rosbalt press conference on Friday, the president of the National Association of Advertising and Information, Sergei Zheleznyak, described the standard as “unrealizable and groundless.”
“As you know, in the city there are no pedestrian areas that are five meters wide, and ten meters away from the rural roadside one finds forest,” he said.
“This standard puts at risk the very existence of outdoor advertising,” said Vladimir Ryabovol, head of News Outdoor Russia in St. Petersburg.
Businessmen said that adverts have nothing to do with road safety. About 36,000 people annually die in car accidents, and this figure has stayed about the same since the 1980s, regardless of the growth in advertising, said Andrei Beryozkin of the Association of Russian Communication Agencies.
“Through cooperation with road inspectors we have all the options we need to ensure drivers’ safety. If something hampers traffic we will get rid of it anyway,” said Alexander Kadyrov, director of the city’s Center for Advertising Space. 
Advertising is only 12th among the causes of car accidents in Russia, something which could be regarded as a statistical uncertainty, Berezkin said.
Nevertheless, Viktor Nilov, deputy head of road inspection, objected that advertising “is an important factor even if it is only 12th in importance.”
The greatest nuisance is caused by advertising over roads, near road signs and at crossroads, where drivers have to be especially attentive. 
Ryabovol said that outdoor advertising contributed $28.5 million in taxes to the city budget last year. This year the city budget will lose about $15.6 million.
However Vladimir Barkanov, head of City Hall’s finance committee, spoke out against “comparisons between the loss of profits and the loss of human life.”
The loss of tax revenue was already foreseen in the city budget, said Alla Manilova, head of the committee for cooperation with mass media.
“In the third quarter of this year we will appeal to the federal government to prohibit advertising downtown. Nobody will come with an excavator and there will not be any discrimination. We will simply not renegotiate current agreements when they expire,” Manilova explained.
Zheleznyak said that his association will appeal to regional authorities to cancel or suspend the standard. Regional authorities should enforce regulations, and state standards should be based on proven research, he said.
Smolny deputy Viktor Yevtukhov also suggested that regional authorities should regulate laws on advertising instead of the federal legislature.
“The standard could force current companies out of the market while introducing other standards would replace them with other market players,” he said.

TITLE: GAZ Buys Chrysler Technology
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: GAZ, the country’s second-largest automotive firm, said Friday that it planned to invest a total of $150 million over the next two years in two new cars, based on older-generation Chrysler models. 
The company, which is best known for its Volga sedan, will buy licenses and equipment to produce Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Stratus sedans under its own brand in Russia, GAZ said.
The investment comes weeks after GAZ said it would invest up to $250 million annually over the next five years to develop new models and train its work force.
It declined on Friday to say how much of the $150 million investment would be paid to Chrysler, which is now working on new versions of both the Sebring and Stratus models.
Under the deal, GAZ, which is part of billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s empire, will transfer older manufacturing equipment from Chrysler’s Sterling Heights, Michigan, plant to Nizhny Novgorod, where the Volga is made.
GAZ also plans to buy engines from Chrysler’s engine plant in Saltillo, Mexico, GAZ said in a statement. 
The first cars based on the Chrysler technology are expected to roll off the production line at the end of 2007 or in early 2008, Erik Eberhardson, vice president and chief strategy officer at GAZ, said by telephone Friday. 
GAZ plans to initially produce 65,000 cars per year, said Eberhardson, adding that output could be increased if necessary.
“The models will be restyled and adapted to Russian roads,” Eberhardson said. The company has not yet decided what the new models will be called, he said.
The starting price for both models will be around $17,000, he added. The starting price for the Sebring models that DaimlerChrysler now sells in Russia is close to $24,000.
GAZ, whose line of automobiles is primarily composed of light commercial vehicles and buses, decided against developing its own models from scratch due to the high costs involved, up to $1 billion per model, Eberhardson said. 
The move by GAZ makes AvtoVAZ the only domestic automotive company trying to keep afloat with its own model range. AvtoVAZ, which makes the Lada, has said it plans to develop up to 12 new models over the next five years.
“Americans will have a hard time taking root in the Russian market,” said Kirill Chuiko, a UralSib automotive analyst who estimated that no more than 20,000 to 30,000 Chrysler cars sold under the GAZ name would sell in Russia each year.
Gairat Salimov, a car analyst with Troika Dialog, said the deal would add value to the company. D-class models like the Sebring and Stratus belong to “one of the highest-growing segments in Russia,” he said. 
Chrysler is part of DaimlerChrysler, which has expressed interest in building its own plant in Russia. The newer version of the Sebring will be introduced in Russia by the year’s end, said Yelena Divakova, a spokeswoman for DaimlerChrysler in Russia.

TITLE: Court Freezes Yukos Foreign Sales
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A U.S. court has issued a temporary injunction blocking Yukos from selling its Mazeikiu Nafta refinery just as the stricken oil major said it was on the verge of clinching a deal with the Lithuanian government on its sale.
A Manhattan bankruptcy court late Thursday issued a 10-day stay on any sale of Yukos foreign assets by Yukos president Steven Theede, who is a U.S. citizen. 
The New York court made the ruling on the request of Eduard Rebgun, the supervisory manager appointed last month by a Moscow court to oversee Yukos’ bankruptcy. Rebgun said by telephone Friday that he filed for bankruptcy protection to defend creditor interests and to stop Yukos’ assets from being stripped.
The move to take the case to a U.S. court raises the stakes in the state’s fight for control of the oil major’s remaining assets and could pave the way for the Russian government to finally win control of Mazeikiu. Rosneft was behind a bankruptcy case against Yukos that was filed in Moscow in March. The state-owned oil giant has also been one of the oil majors circling the Lithuanian refinery. Yukos’ 53.7 percent stake in Mazeikiu, the sole refinery in the Baltic states, is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion.
Yukos said it would respect the court order. “Yukos will comply with the instruction of the court,” company spokeswoman Claire Davidson said Friday. “That means any discussion related to the sale of Mazeikiu must be put on hold.”
Yukos had been in the final stages of talks to sell its shares in the refinery to Lithuania. On March 29, a Russian court imposed a ban on the sale of Yukos assets, but Yukos continued negotiations. Yukos insisted any transaction involving Mazeikiu was outside the jurisdiction of Russian law because the refinery is owned by Yukos International UK, a Dutch-based subsidiary.
The Lithuanian government had until now been proceeding with negotiations on this basis. Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said Friday that his government was ready to buy the refinery at any moment. 
Lithuania owns a 41 percent stake in Mazeikiu and is looking to sell a majority stake to a new strategic investor. Until now, Kazakhstan’s KazMunaiGaz had been leading the race, two people familiar with the situation said.
A former senior manager at Yukos said the Russian government now ran the risk of having the details of its politically tinged legal campaign against Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s oil major examined by a U.S. court — if the case ever got beyond the stage of temporary injunction.
“There is a serious risk this could backfire,” said former Yukos first vice president Alexander Temerko, who has been a close ally of Khodorkovsky for nearly 20 years. 
“This sets a precedent that could lead to very serious developments that are not in the interests of the Russian Federation.”
Once the nation’s biggest oil major, Yukos has been smashed by more than $30 billion in back tax claims in a relentless legal onslaught that has led to greater state dominance over the strategic oil sector. Bankruptcy proceedings against the struggling firm are widely seen as the last chapter of the Kremlin-orchestrated campaign against the firm.
The filing in the United States looked like a desperate attempt by the government to win control over Mazeikiu, Temerko said by telephone Friday. “Rosneft already controls the rest of Yukos through the prosecutor general. Mazeikiu was the only asset out of their reach.”
If Yukos succeeds in selling its Mazeikiu stake, more than $1 billion in proceeds will go toward paying off creditor claims. Under a Dutch court ruling, the proceeds would go toward paying off GML Ltd., Yukos’ majority shareholder, and the $483 million outstanding on a $1 billion loan to a group of Western banks that the Russian bankruptcy filing was originally based on. Rosneft later took over the bankruptcy case and the debt from the banks. 
By selling Mazeikiu in time, Yukos could avert the company’s liquidation. But if Rebgun is able to win an extension of the asset sale freeze until June 27 — the day a Russian court is due to decide whether to liquidate Yukos — the firm’s management will lose this chance.
Tim Osborne, managing director of GML Ltd., said Rebgun may have decided to take the case to the United States rather than to the Netherlands, where the Mazeikiu assets are held, because previous attempts to stay the sale in Dutch courts had failed.
Rosneft last year filed suit with a Dutch court to block the sale of Mazeikiu over $2.1 billion it claimed Yukos owed to Yugansk. Yugansk was acquired by Rosneft in a forced auction in December 2004. The Dutch court initially issued a temporary stay but later rejected Rosneft’s case.
Rebgun said he had made the filing in the United States because Theede was a U.S. citizen. 
“It’s likely that he’s going to take the decision of a U.S. court more seriously,” Rebgun said.
He rejected Theede’s argument that Russian courts had no say over Mazeikiu, noting that the directors of Yukos International were the same executives running Yukos. Yukos is clearly trying to strip assets, he said. 
Osborne said Rebgun’s filing showed that the government had no interest in seeing Yukos pay off its creditors. Rebgun is nothing more than a lackey for the Kremlin and for Rosneft, and is doing whatever they tell him to do to ensure that Yukos does not survive, he said.

TITLE: Oil Export Route Needs Investment, Official Says
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Russia may halt oil products shipments through its northern river route to the port of St. Petersburg in 2007 due to the poor technical state of the canal, the head of the canal system said Friday.
“If we fail to start dredging operations this year, the 2006 navigation will be the last one for the large-capacity fleet,” Vladimir Nikolayev, head of the state Volgo-Balt canals system that manages the route, said at a news conference.
In the country’s north, firms ship oil through the system of river canals known as Volgo-Balt to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea and Onega Bay on the White Sea, where oil is reloaded into floating storage and re-exported to northwestern Europe.
Nikolayev said the canal was currently 3.7 meters deep, while 4 meters is required for a passage of vessels with a deadweight of more than 5,000 tons. He said the shallow depth automatically brought down freight flow by 10 to 12 percent as it forced shippers to underload by 600 tons on each 5,000-ton tanker.
He also said it was currently impossible to carry out all the necessary dredging work in the canals and that he did not know when such works could start.
“I do not have a kopek to spend on dredging. We have only completed about 7 percent of our nine-year investment program,” Nikolayev said.
Analysts say if Volgo-Balt stops shipping oil products, firms will switch to rail.
Pyotr Razumov, head of the Vizhn Flot shipping firm, said he was concerned over the possible closure of Volgo-Balt. He forecasts Russian firms will ship around 1.6 million tons of fuel oil through the route in 2006, of which 1.5 million will be from Yukos’ Samara refineries and around 300,000 tons from Tatneft’s and LUKoil’s Nizhnekamsk and Perm refineries.

TITLE: World Bank Urges Russia To Invest in Foreign Assets
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The World Bank urged Russia on Monday to pump some of the billions of dollars it receives from its oil exports into foreign companies’ shares.
The bank’s chief economist for Russia, John Litwack, said that Russia’s Stabilization Fund — which receives nearly every dollar of oil companies’ profits over $27 per barrel — could clock in at a healthy $2.3 trillion come 2030, if it was invested properly and left untouched.
The fund, which currently stands at more than $55 billion, was created as an inflation-fighting tool to absorb the petrodollars pouring into Russia’s economy as oil prices break new records. Litwack suggested that the fund could eventually act as a safety net for the government’s efforts to shift the economy away from its vulnerable dependence on oil and gas exports as well as insuring the country against any sudden drop in prices.
“One of the points we stress is that if they can take the money and invest it in a well managed portfolio of foreign assets ... and prices stay high — they’ll be able to accumulate such a large resource that just the income would be a huge cushion against oil price shocks,” Litwack said.
Light, sweet crude for May delivery briefly touched $70 a barrel before easing slightly in European trading Monday. 
Prices were pushed higher by concerns over declining gasoline stocks in the United States, supply disruptions in Nigeria and tension over Iran’s nuclear program.
The bank’s latest report on the Russian economy featured an economic model for the stabilization fund that assumed oil prices would fall gradually to $40 by 2030 and that the government also wouldn’t touch the cash pile for about 24 years.
In that case the fund could be worth $2.3 trillion, with the return alone equivalent to 17 percent of gross domestic product, or about $800 billion, he said.

TITLE: Report: Russia Lifts Norwegian Salmon Ban At Two Farms
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OSLO — Russia has lifted a ban on imports of fresh salmon from two Norwegian fish farms, Norwegian state broadcaster NRK reported on Saturday, citing Kommersant.
Moscow banned all imports of fresh salmon on Jan. 1, after health officials said they had found excessive levels of cadmium and lead in them, findings Oslo has disputed.
“The head of the Russian food agency, Sergei Dankert, said the ban had been lifted after Russian specialists inspected fish farms in Norway,” NRK said.
NRK did not say from which fish farms the ban had been lifted, although it said this meant the ban would be lifted from all Norwegian fish farms shortly.
Seafood is Norway’s third most-valuable export after energy and metals.

TITLE: Fishy Business Inflates Prices in Russia’s Wild East
AUTHOR: By Anton Doroshev and Denis Dyomkin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VLADIVOSTOK — The saury fish on supermarket shelves in this port city on Russia’s Pacific seaboard is caught off the coast and processed on the doorstep, but costs less to buy seven time zones away in Moscow. 
This paradox is all too familiar to the 650,000 people who live in Vladivostok. They regularly complain about a cost of living that is among the highest in Russia while incomes lag behind. 
Critics of the local administration say the reason is clear: cosy relations between officials and favored business interests are stifling the market forces that should be weakening prices. 
“If you’re a foreign businessman, say from Singapore or Kazakhstan or wherever, and you want to start up a business in Vladivostok, they just won’t let you,” said Nikolai Markovtsev, a former deputy mayor of the city. 
A three-hour drive from China and three day’s sailing from Japan, Vladivostok is a maze of narrow streets crammed on to a steep hillside overlooking the Pacific. 
Fishing, timber and shipping are the biggest industries. The city has a reputation as the center of the “Wild East” — a hotbed of chaos, corruption and violent organized crime. 
But it could hold a lesson for the rest of Russia, too. 
At a time when critics accuse President Vladimir Putin of sharing out political and economic power among a narrow clique of insiders, Vladivostok shows what can happen if this style of government is taken too far. 
The cost of living in Vladivostok is now so high that even diplomats in the city are feeling the pinch, said a member of staff at the U.S. consulate, who did not want to be identified. 
“Prices have gone up so much that the consul-general has asked the State Department to put locally-hired staff on the same pay scale as staff in Moscow,” she said. 
A pair of Adidas trainers cost 2,125 rubles ($77.19) in Moscow. In Vladivostok an identical pair cost 3,500 rubles. 
Local entrepreneurs say it is commonplace to have to make payoffs to corrupt officials — a business expense that is passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
They say going to the authorities for help is useless: the widespread perception in Russia is that the police and the courts are corrupt, too. 
Alexei makes a modest living as a middleman, selling on small batches of fish brought ashore by trawlers that operate out of Vladivostok’s port. 
“We wanted to get into the meat business; it’s very profitable,” he said. 
“But there are only four suppliers here. You can pull off one deal, maybe two. But by the third, they will bury you.” 
With competition limited, companies in Vladivostok see little need to advertize.
“Everyone’s advertising has died out. There’s no trade advertising left at all,” said Oleg Klimenko, editor of the Golden Horn business newspaper. 
In an interview with Reuters, Sergei Darkin, the 43-year-old governor of the Primorye region that includes Vladivostok, agreed the cost of living was high. 
He denied that corruption and a lack of competition were to blame for the high prices, saying instead it was inflationary pressures in Russia’s booming economy. “It’s the standard of living that’s driving the prices up,” he said. 
However, Darkin’s opponents say he is part of the problem. They say the business groups that do well are the ones that have links to the governor, or to the region’s other power broker, Vladivostok Mayor Vladimir Nikolayev. 
A former stevedore in the docks who went into the fishing business, Darkin was elected governor in 2001. 
At about that time, a Moscow television station broadcast footage it said showed Darkin acting as chief mourner at the funeral of a local organized crime boss in the 1990s. 
Darkin has repeatedly denied any criminal links and prosecutors have brought no charges against him. 
Critics say the Kremlin has not helped. Direct elections for governors such as Darkin were abolished last year. Governors are now appointed by the Kremlin, subject to approval by the regional parliament.  
The Kremlin said the new system would allow it to get rid of governors who were failing local people. Yet, Darkin last year became the first governor to be re-appointed to his old job under the new system. 
“Direct blame rests with Moscow,” said Markovtsev, the former deputy mayor. 
“Putin says one thing when he makes his annual address … but on the ground they step on the brakes.”

TITLE: Special Zones May Herald New Chance for Investors
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A special status has placed the far-flung towns of Yelabuga and Lipetsk on the map, heralding what could be new opportunities for real estate investors.
Yelabuga, in the republic of Tatarstan, and Central Russia’s Lipetsk region won tenders last November to become special manufacturing zones, where corporate tenants will receive tax breaks and other benefits. Four locations for technology research and development — Dubna and Zelenograd, both close to Moscow, as well as St. Petersburg and the Siberian city of Tomsk — also won special-zone status last year. 
Created to boost investment in non-energy sectors, the zones should, theoretically, bring an influx of government subsidies and investment from quasi-governmental organizations and various corporations, said Azamat Kumykov, associate director of Colliers International’s capital advisory department.
While the incoming funds could spur demand for new offices, hotels, shops and housing, the majority of real estate investors prefer to watch from the sidelines to see whether the much-touted zones will live up to the hype.
“Within the last year, [foreign] investors have gotten more interested in what’s going on outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg,” mainly in the other large cities, said Christopher Peters, deputy head of research at Cushman & Wakefield Stiles & Riabokobylko.
Ever since several Moscow-based retail chains outlined plans to tap consumer spending in the regions, Russian developers have also been moving into the provinces, tackling the real estate markets of such cities as Kazan and Ufa. Places like Yelabuga, Lipetsk and Tomsk, however, are not yet on the radar of most foreign real estate investors.
“We’ve never had clients ask about these regions,” Peters said. This in itself is a sign that the special zones are not a priority for foreign developers, who gauge the success of local players before following in their footsteps, he said.
A lack of clarity and other risks are making investors stay put for now, Kumykov of Colliers said.
“It is unclear when actual government spending will occur, how significant it will be and whether regulatory incentives will have a dramatic influence on local business activity,” he said. The sustainability of local economic growth, should it occur, is also a big question, Kumykov said.
Some 8 billion rubles ($288.9 million) from the federal budget are earmarked for creating the special zones’ infrastructure, said Yury Zhdanov, chief of the Federal Agency for Economic Zones. Comparable resources will also be allocated from regional and municipal coffers, Zhdanov said earlier this month, according to the agency’s web site.
However, telecommunications networks, transportation and other infrastructure for the zones are unlikely to be completed until March 2008, a deadline set by Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref. Zhdanov has said he expects most of the zones’ residents to be fully operational by that date, according to the site.
A rapid transformation of the special zones’ real estate markets is not expected, however. If the zones are successful in attracting a large number of corporate residents, at least three to five years will need to pass before the first “ripple effects” of their success will be felt in the local real estate market, said Gerald Gaige, partner in Ernst & Young’s real estate practice.
Government officials have said that major companies, including carmakers General Motors and Hyundai, as well as electronics manufacturer Merloni, have petitioned to operate in the zones. President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that about 80 percent of all petitions were from foreign companies, according to the Kremlin’s web site. 
For now, it is too early to say whether the special zones will be successful, Gaige said, but the government’s attempts to create special economic zones in the past “have not been very impressive.”
Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad has failed to live up to the expectation that its special economic status would transform the region into the country’s economic powerhouse, creating a solid trade bridge to Europe. Many companies initially jumped at the opportunity to receive special breaks in Kaliningrad, Gaige said, but nine out of 10, if not more, then found that the disadvantages of coming to the region outweighed the benefits.
Investors who seek opportunities in Russia have objectives that go beyond tax incentives, he said. Other factors, like infrastructure and a qualified workforce, have to fall into place in the region in order to make a business’ move there worthwhile, Gaige said.
In addition to receiving benefits, investors also need to meet certain obligations. For example, manufacturing zone residents must invest 10 million euros ($12.27 million), while residents of R&D zones must invest at least 1 million euros to operate in the special location.
More than through tax breaks, the zones attract companies by aiming to provide an environment with lower administrative hurdles, allowing businesses to do their jobs faster, said Darrell Stanaford, managing director at Noble Gibbons.
“I think there is potential there,” Stanaford said, adding that businesses are keeping a close watch on special zones’ developments.
But while technology giants like Sun Microsystems may keep an eye on the zones, they have immediate needs for space. Real estate businesses work to meet these needs before considering getting involved in the zones, he said.
Even after the zones begin operating at full steam, they would be unlikely to generate demand for major office or retail-space construction outside the large cities, according to Heiko Davids, Knight Frank’s director of capital markets for Russia and the CIS.
Such commercial real estate would be an illiquid, risky investment in Yelabuga, with less than 100,000 residents, or in Lipetsk, with slightly more than 500,000 residents, Davids said.
Hotel and housing space have better potential, even in smaller towns, he said, but the demand for such real estate would be fully contingent on how active and successful the special zones become.
The first special zone for R&D is expected to open in Tomsk as early as next month, according to the Federal Agency for Economic Zones.
“I would imagine that most real estate investors would prefer to wait,” Kumykov of Colliers said.

TITLE: Foreign Funds Find Time For City’s Investors
AUTHOR: By Anna Scherbakova
TEXT: Long term credit is something of a dream for the Russian businessman. In a country where economic uncertainty is still the general rule, and which only a couple of years ago gained a positive credit rating, the horizon for investment rarely extends further than three to five years. Many investors lack the requisite patience to wait that long, the result being 30 percent profitability and very high risks. 
Is now the right time for foreign investment funds to launch themselves on the Russian real estate market? 
Some have already arrived, but they’re generally to be found in Moscow. 
While local businessmen talk up their chances, the global players themselves are less keen on disclosing any plans. Entrepreneurs boast of deals with foreign funds that are in the pipeline, then later report that negotiations fell through. 
To be honest, it’s no wonder. 
Our short-term investors possess other undesirable traits, like vague credit history and poor documentation. 
It’s true, why bother with paperwork when one can get the juicy assets for less through a take-over or bankruptcy. But foreign funds are keen on transparency and fairness. They also, according to the experts, prefer first-class property. It is very difficult to find objects for sale that meet both requirements. 
Last week we reported two deals which international participants modestly refuse to confirm. 
It turns out that the Fleming Family&Partners fund is an owner of a modern cargo terminal in the southern outskirts of the city. Another global player — Deutsche Bank Real Estate Opportunity Group — is going to invest at least $40 million in real estate projects in the city, together with local developer RBI. 
Though neither deal is that large, they may yet have significance for the local market. Sometimes I see businesses behaving like teenagers — they get easily jealous and are very sensitive to external signs. When they see someone else with a  tattoo or new sneakers, they immediately need the same. Perhaps funds will fear missing out on new opportunities for investment and will follow Fleming and Deutsche Bank to St. Petersburg. Or maybe those who spread these  rumors are looking for just such an effect. 
Several years ago, when hotel projects were en vogue,  developers boasted of the agreements they’d reached with global hotel-chains. 
I remember an entrepreneur who owned a plot for the construction of a hotel. He brought a Marriott franchisee from Florida to St. Petersburg and introduced him as his partner. The hotel has never been built. The guy sold his land for a large profit. 
‘Why do they need such famous names?’ I wondered, listening to negotiations with InterContinental, Holiday Inn or Marriott — the firms that were particular favorites with the boasters five years ago. And why don’t the giants deny these rumors if they’re so blatantly untrue. 
Not all negotiations end in agreement, but international brands are currently well represented among the several hotels under construction in the city. 

Anna Scherbakova is the St. Petersburg bureau chief of business daily Vedomosti.

TITLE: Vodka, Elixir of the Masses
AUTHOR: By Joseph Tartakovsky
TEXT: In fall 1977, the state vodka monopoly of the Polish People’s Republic filed suit in an international trade court claiming that vodka had first been distilled in Poland. For this reason, it argued, only Polish firms had the right to sell the clear alcohol in foreign markets under the name “vodka,” just as champagne produced outside France’s Champagne region usually must be labeled “sparkling wine.” 
An incredulous Soviet Ministry of Trade initially ignored this as a joke. Who doubted that vodka was as Russian as St. Basil’s Cathedral? But it was a particularly pernicious joke, touching the tender parts of the Russian soul, not to mention Warsaw Pact solidarity. 
The Soviet Trade Ministry grudgingly asked the Higher Scientific Research Institute of the Fermentation Products Division of the Central Department of Distilling of the Ministry of the Food Industry of the U.S.S.R. to investigate. When state archives revealed little about vodka’s Russian provenance, the task fell to a historian named William Pokhlebkin. After years of painstaking research, he concluded that vodka was probably first distilled in a Moscow monastery between 1440 and 1478, decades before its alleged appearance in Poland.
Etymologically, vodka in Russian means “little water.” And because the average Russian guzzles a world-best 20 some liters per year, a little water has gone a long way in damaging the collective body politic. A few years ago, the Finnish physician directing the Russian office of the World Health Organization explained: “If you did this in Finland, half the population would be dead in a year. This is clearly not normal.” 
The Russian people disagreed. “It’s our way of life. How can we stop drinking with a climate like ours?” said one. From another: “Our people are willing to live in poverty, but if the government tries to make them stop drinking, it might lead to social unrest. Nobody can make us stop drinking.” 
Not that the powers didn’t try. In 1917, the Bolsheviks banned vodka and condemned drunkenness as a “social evil irreconcilable with the proletarian ideology,” perhaps because they believed, as Friedrich Engels had stated, that drinking was the bane of the working classes. It is probably closer to the truth to say that work was the bane of the drinking classes. No vocation without intoxication, cried the workers, and in 1924, the ban was reversed — an early instance of Soviet utopianism succumbing to Russian reality. It was downhill from there. 
Alcohol consumption rose through the decades, and not until the 1980s did the government try again to limit it. Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika included a “war on drunkenness.” Alcohol consumption began to decline. At the same time, there emerged unusual shortages of cologne, mouthwash and other alcohol-containing substances, as well as sugar, which can be employed in home brewing. Ultimately, instead of defeating alcoholism, perestroika ended in history’s biggest hangover.
So, as Lenin asked: “What is to be done?” Pokhlebkin was not only a historian but a Soviet patriot, and when his research was published as a book (“A History of Vodka”), he added a chapter lamenting what he saw as Russia’s descent into alcoholism. Drunkenness, he argued, is incompatible with socialist principles; it undermines worker morale and productivity. 
Some of his proposals were radical by Russian standards — revoking the licenses of drunk drivers, encouraging people to attend clinics (Alcoholics Anonymous was banned under the Soviet Union)  but he did make one point that National Rifle Association members will recognize and all votaries of free will can endorse: Vodka doesn’t intoxicate people, people do. It follows that to avoid drunkenness, the people must simply drink properly. 
Today, working Russians have as much need as ever to know how Pokhlebkin’s principles might answer Lenin’s question. It might go something like this: A good proletarian doesn’t have a drinking problem, except when he can’t find a drink. Vodka, after all, is the oil that keeps Russia’s gears turning. Funerals, folk holidays and festivals all require it. 
The informed worker knows that vodka’s therapeutic merits far surpass those of the Soviet-Russian mental health system. Nor would he tempt fate by trekking out into the snow — best known for destroying invading armies — without a fortifying swig or three. This winter, during Moscow’s cold spell, one circus trainer served his elephant a bucket of vodka for warmth. The ungrateful pachyderm lost his sense of decorum and proceeded to destroy the circus’ only radiator.
Russia is a land that has stumbled fatefully from Third Rome to Third International to Third World, and vodka has always been there to help things along. In 1982, the tribunal appointed to decide the matter of vodka’s origin ruled in the Soviet Union’s favor, affirming that genuine vodka was Russian — or Russian vodka was genuine, whichever it was. A happy conclusion, followed shortly by the fall of communism in Europe, to which we can always raise a glass and say, as they do in Russia, not without a touch of irony: Na zdarovye — To your health! 

Joseph Tartakovsky is assistant editor of the Claremont Review of Books. This piece was contributed to the Los Angeles Times.

TITLE: U.K. Ministers Rattled by Gazprom’s Advances
AUTHOR: By Jean Eaglesham
PUBLISHER: Financial Times
TEXT: The news that Centrica, Britain’s largest energy supplier, could be the target for a bid by Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, caught the government on the hop when the story broke earlier this year.
Ministers and officials went into a series of hurriedly arranged meetings to agree a line. Eight meetings involving Department of Trade and Industry officials and  four attended by other departments were held to discuss the “possible consequences resulting from any takeover of a major GB energy supplier,” the DTI said in response to a Freedom of Information request by the FT.
The problem was no policy had been formulated to deal with a move by Gazprom into the U.K. market.
The standard policy on potential takeovers was clear – the government removed itself from mergers in 2003, when the Enterprise Act came into force, delegating decisions on almost all deals to independent competition authorities.
The UK has made a virtue of this lack of political interference, which has allowed several utilities to be taken over by European Union companies with no political discussion and barely a murmur of public dissent.
Alan Johnson, trade and industry secretary, used a speech to the British Chambers of Commerce this month to boast of Britain’s open energy market. “Downing Street’s electricity is supplied by a French company, the water is supplied by a German company and there is a choice of four gas suppliers, three of whom are foreign owned,” he said. 
But should this laissez faire approach to foreign takeovers extend to Gazprom? A takeover of Centrica, which owns British Gas, or Scottish Power, another rumoured potential target, could have competition implications.
Malcolm Wicks, the energy minister, warned this year that the U.K.’s liberalised market was “not about creating a big oligopoly.” It would look “a bit odd if, in a few years’ time, this market resembles a monolithic oligopoly with a few companies state-owned but not by Britain,” he told The Observer.
The government would leave such concerns for the Office of Fair Trading and Competition Commission to deal with, however. The official advice to ministers on a potential bid was that “the independent competition authorities would be expected to consider any competition matters,” the DTI told the FT.
Ministers’ concern focused instead on the implications of a Gazprom takeover for security of supply. The gas company’s decision earlier this year to temporarily cut off supplies to Ukraine was seen by some as politically motivated. The prospect – however seemingly remote – of Russia using ownership of a U.K. gas supplier to try to exert political influence rang alarm bells in Whitehall.
The U.K.’s increasing dependence on gas imports has moved such geopolitical threats to energy supplies sharply up the political agenda since 2003, when the government’s energy review largely ignored the issue. The review of energy policy now under way has put security of supply center stage. Asked by MPs this year about central issues for the review, Mr Johnson cited “this geopolitical question.” “Where are the oil reserves? Where are the gas reserves? Can we be sanguine about the future if ...? A large amount of our gas will come from countries which are perfectly stable . . . but these are issues which have grown in importance,” he said.
Such concerns explain the unusually strong nature of the DTI’s formal response to the putative Gazprom bid. Officials at the time warned a takeover would be subject to “robust scrutiny” and said security of supply to U.K. consumers was “paramount”.
This tough talk does not necessarily mean the government would change the law to allow itself to block such a bid. Competition experts warn such a move would be fraught with difficulties, not least as so many foreign takeovers of utilities have already been allowed.
The government may hope the simple fact it would consider such a measure will be sufficient to deter Gazprom from making a move. Chris Bright, a competition lawyer on the Competition Commission’s utilities panel, said: “Sometimes you just need to rattle a few sabres. It seems to work for the French.”

TITLE: Before the War
AUTHOR: By Sergei A. Karaganov
TEXT: It is unpopular now in most of Europe, including Russia, to cite with approval anything the American president says. In his recent national security strategy, though, he put forward an idea that many of us had thought about but very few of us had dared to pronounce openly. 
After including all the proper words of respect toward the civilization of Islam, George W. Bush stated: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century and finds the great powers all on the same side — opposing the terrorists.”
From now on, it will be harder to pretend that the clash of civilizations is not happening and could not get worse.
Russia finds itself in an especially awkward position. Physically, historically and geographically, it sits simultaneously over at least two divides — between the Christian and the Muslim civilizations, and between the affluent world and the poor world. 
In addition, we were the first country to take up arms in the struggle against the spread of militant Islamism. We achieved a victory in Chechnya at a horrible cost. It was a victory in a battle but not in the war.
We have a lot of experience to offer. But before making some recommendations, let me start with a few widely acknowledged facts and presumptions.
It is relatively obvious that most of the countries of the traditional “larger Middle East” are living through a period of economic and social degradation. The reason is a mixture of cultural, economic and social factors. This degradation has been slowed by the surge in oil prices, but it is there. 
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that most of the countries of the region feel vulnerable, threatened or suspicious of their neighbors and of the outside world. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is cited as the main source of these feelings, but there are many. The mistaken U.S. invasion of Iraq only made the suspicions worse.
Indeed, something like a Weimar syndrome is being formed in the larger Middle East. As a former Soviet citizen, I can understand this better than others, as we were also defeated in a competition between civilizations, though of a different kind. We are only now, after a period of conservative and economic consolidation, leaving that dangerous state of mind behind. 
Communism was a combination of a religion and a way of life. It should not be compared with the great Islamic civilization, which has been successful in many centuries and in many countries. Yet there is something to be learned from the containment of communism. This time, the struggle is for the success of the Islamic world, not for its demise.
To avoid the looming “war of civilizations,” we need to adopt a common strategy aimed at weakening the roots of radical Islam and terrorism, preventing a nuclear arms race in the region and helping countries in the larger Middle East to modernize and prosper. Washington is proposing a single method: democratization. This adherence to lofty principles should be admired, but when such a recipe is followed on the ground it is likely to bring disaster. I am saying this not because I come from a country that is suffering a backlash against the chaos of a half-baked democracy.
We also remember European history. One of the worst dictators of all time — Adolph Hitler — was brought to power by a democratic vote. Experience has made us wary of attempts to bring democracy to the larger Middle East. The day American and NATO troops leave Afghanistan, having proclaimed it democratic, the situation in the country will deteriorate into the chaos of the past, if not worse. The same will happen if U.S. and allied troops withdraw from Iraq. 
The first-ever municipal elections in Saudi Arabia were swept by Islamic radicals last year. The terrorist organization Hamas came to power legitimately through free elections. The “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan has brought mostly chaos and cleared the way for narcobarons and Islamic radicals. Do we want other countries of the region to follow the same path?
Instead, all influential and responsible countries of the world should unite behind a common strategy to help the larger Middle East. It could include:
• A meaningful and wide-ranging dialogue of civilizations, which has been proclaimed but is almost absent;
• Assistance in modernizing their societies, starting with the educational systems; 
• Steps to fill the existing security vacuum by helping to create a regional security system, or systems, guaranteed by the great powers;
• The creation of a nondiscriminatory system of a closed nuclear cycle, while helping willing states to build nuclear reactors under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
• A common commitment to deter the most extreme Islamic radicals and terrorists by all means available, with no policy of appeasement.
Only through such a common and comprehensive approach can we create the preconditions for the eventual democratization and modernization of the larger Middle East. This is a policy worthy of consideration by the larger Group of Eight (or G10 or G11), instead of the many secondary issues now on the agenda. Though at this juncture, I am not very optimistic they will find the will to unite.

Sergei A. Karaganov is chairman of the editorial board of Russia in Global Affairs.

TITLE: Land Title — The State of Play
AUTHOR: By Natalia Diatlova
TEXT: On April 5, 2006, the State Duma passed the third reading of two new legislative bills. The first was a bill on Amendments to the Land Code of the Russian Federation(RF), the Federal Law enforcing the Land Code of the RF, the Federal Law on State Registration of Rights to Real Estate and Transactions and recognition of some provisions of normative acts of the RF as invalid (simplification of the procedure of splitting state ownership to land between local, federal and regional authorities of the RF).
The purpose of the Law is to clarify the ownership of a particular land plot: whether federal, municipal, or under the ownership of a subject of the RF and to actuate registration of state ownership to land. However, it may produce lots of issues during its realization.
Starting from 2001, land which was not privately-owned was automatically treated as state-owned, without internal differentiation between land that is federal, municipal or belonging to a subject of the RF. Prior to the differentiation of state ownership of land in Russia, the right to dispose of the land was given to local authorities within the scope of their legal authority. However, without title registration, the right of ownership of land was always questionable in practice and provoked a lot of disputes and obstacles to transactions involving the acquisition or disposition of land.
In accordance with the government’s current plans, the process of differentiation of state-owned land must be completed by 1 January 2007. At the moment, the title of ownership is only registered for about 3 percent of state-owned lands. The deadline is quite optimistic, given the fact that this problem has been discussed since 1991 and the issue is not only of a technical nature — it’s also a political issue. 
The new law comes into force on July 1, 2006. The bill establishes a simplified procedure for registering state ownership of land upon application by executive state authorities or municipal authorities. However, half a year may not be enough for the differentiation of state ownership in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, where there is a great deal of federal property.
In accordance with the bill, the state authorities will be able to dispose of the land only in cases where the title to it is officially registered with the Real Estate Registrar. 
The second big change came with the Water Code of the Russian Federation, which was adopted for the purpose of developing regulations for usage, rehabilitation and protection of water resources, including formation of Basin Boards intended to better organize the procedure for the expressing of the opinions of the interested parties on usage and protection of water resources.
The Water Code differentiated ownership of water resources. As a general rule, water objects are federally-owned. There is an exception for ponds and reservoirs located within the boundaries of land plots owned by subjects of the Russian Federation, municipalities, legal entities or individuals, who correspondingly become owners of ponds and reservoirs. What does all this mean? It means that ponds and reservoirs can now be privatized. However, for example, a river, a part of a river, a stretch of riverside or a lake can only be held in federal ownership.
The new Water Code makes the situation clearer in cases where the owner of a plot of land has created a pond as, according to the former legislation, the new pond could be considered to be federally-owned. 
The privatization of a pond is only possible in conjunction with privately owned land, while a pond located within public land cannot be privatized.  Moreover, it is incorrect to speak of privatization of ponds alone. In reality, one is unable to acquire a pond without the land plot underlying it. 
Additionally, disposing of land plots surrounded by a pond (reservoir) which would be divided due to such a land disposition is prohibited.
Water objects can be leased. A maximum term of lease of water objects is limited to 20 years and must be registered by the State Water Resources Registrar. The adoption of the new Water Code has eliminated some conflicts between the laws and unified the laws related to water resources.

Natalia Diatlova is a Senior Associate and Head of Real Estate at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary.

TITLE: Crime Scene
AUTHOR: By Chris Floyd
TEXT: Of all the war crimes that have flowed from the originating crime of President George W. Bush’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant was the destruction of Fallujah in November 2004. Now, as ignominious defeat looms for Bush’s Babylonian folly, some of the key players in fomenting the war are urging that the “Fallujah Option” be applied to an even bigger target: Baghdad.
What these influential warmongers openly call for is the “pacification” of Baghdad: a brutal firestorm by U.S. forces, ravaging both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in a “horrific” operation that will inevitably lead to “skyrocketing body counts,” as warhawk Reuel Marc Gerecht cheerfully wrote last week in the ever-bloodthirsty editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal. Gerecht’s war whoop quickly ricocheted around the right-wing media echo chamber and gave public voice to the private counsels emanating from a group whose members now comprise the leadership of the U.S. government: The Project for the New American Century.
As oft noted here, PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Zalmay Khalilzad and the now-indicted Lewis Libby, among others. In September 2000, they publicly called for sending U.S. forces into Iraq — even if Saddam Hussein was already gone — as well as planting new bases in Central Asia, putting weapons in space, building new nukes and funding a vast militarization of American society. Being such savvy inside players and all, they recognized that this lunatic program would not be accepted by the American people — unless, of course, the nation was struck by a “catalyzing event” like “a new Pearl Harbor.” Who says dreams don’t come true?
 Gerecht, an ex-CIA man, is a senior fellow at PNAC. He was one of the many munchkins who laid the groundwork for the mass deception that led to the war by constantly undermining any CIA report that failed to conform to the warmongers’ highly profitable fantasies of America’s imminent destruction by the broken, toothless regime of Saddam Hussein. The intelligence services’ many caveats about this bogus threat were placed directly on Bush’s desk, as the National Journal reports, but the P-Nackers in the White House tossed them aside. They dreamed of war, and they got it.
But the natives failed to play their part in the imperial masque macabre. As noted here last week, they have churlishly failed to show proper appreciation for being slaughtered, looted, tortured and controlled. Even the Shiites, hailed by the Bushists just a few weeks ago as salt-of-the-earth lovers of moderate democracy, are now denounced as hate-filled sectarians, even worse than the Sunni insurgents — who are suddenly being courted by Bush’s man in Baghdad, the P-Nacker Khalilzad, the BBC reports. 
Not that the Shiite death squads — backed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government — have been all bad, mind you. Sure, they’ve been kidnapping Sunni civilians, drilling holes in their skulls, beheading them and then dumping the corpses on city streets or burying them in schoolyards. But all of this has been “healthy,” says Gerecht, because it has made the Sunnis and Kurds fear “Shiite power.” Or something. To be honest, Gerecht’s column is filled with so many canards, delusions and logical inconsistencies that it often leaves the plane of rational discourse altogether. But its import is clear: By daring to defy Washington’s edicts, the Shiites have gotten too big for their britches and must be brought to heel, along with the rest of the scum who are making the Dear Leader look bad back home.
You think that’s a joke, but it’s not. One of Gerecht’s main reasons for “pacifying” Baghdad in a hydra-headed war on every ethnic faction is because “the U.S. media will never write many optimistic stories about Iraq if journalists fear going outside” the city’s fortified Green Zone. There you have the Bushist vision in a nutshell. The war is not actually happening in the real world, where real people are dying by the tens of thousands; no, it’s really being fought on the monitors of Fox News, CNN and NBC, in the flimsy pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, and on the overheated airwaves of talk radio. Baghdad must be pacified — like Grozny, like Guernica — so that Americans can see a few more peppy stories on the tube on their way to the ballgame or the mall.
The fate of Fallujah provides a template of the grim fate awaiting Baghdad if Gerecht and the government P-Nackers have their way. Fallujah was encircled in a ring of iron; water, electricity and food supplies were cut off, a flagrant war crime. The city was bombed for eight weeks, then hit by an all-out ground attack with both conventional and chemical weapons — white phosphorous and napalm — that killed thousands of civilians and left more than 200,000 homeless. Among the first targets were Fallujah’s hospitals and clinics, another flagrant war crime. Some were destroyed, killing doctors and patients alike, others seized and closed, all in order to prevent any stories about civilian casualties from reaching the Western media, the Pentagon’s “information warfare” specialists told The New York Times. Once again, manufactured image trumped bloodstained reality.
Perhaps this cup will pass from Baghdad. Perhaps Bush and his P-Nackers will instead move forward with their frenzied plans for a nuclear strike on Iran, as The New Yorker reported last week. 
But Gerecht’s article is a perfect snapshot of the depraved minds that now rule America. Somewhere, somehow — and soon — another city is going to die.

TITLE: Ahead of Chernobyl’s 20th Anniversary
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV — Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov has pledged 20 million hryvna ($4 million) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the deadly explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the world’s worst-ever nuclear accident.
The money would be spent on awards for those involved in combating the consequences of the explosion, buying 1,000 cars for Chernobyl invalids, building two health centers and increasing pensions for those who helped respond to the disaster, government spokesman Valery Olefir said last week.
The money will also be used to fund requiems on the anniversary of the explosion, print commemorative coins, publish books, organize exhibitions and upgrade the Chernobyl museum in Kiev.
On April 26, Ukraine will commemorate 20 years since the deadly explosion in Reactor No. 4, which released a radioactive cloud. About 600,000 people were mobilized to fight the effects of the explosion, and more than 116,000 evacuated from their homes.
Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are still coping with the aftermath of the accident today, from skyrocketing rates of thyroid cancer to a marked increase in health concerns among the 5 million people whose land was dusted with radioactive particles.
Last Wednesday, Ukrainian artists performed a concert to honor Chernobyl victims in the village of Illintsi in the so-called exclusion zone, a highly contaminated area surrounding the plant.
Pripyat, a town of 47,000 and home to workers at Chernobyl, was evacuated three days after the explosion, followed later by dozens of villages.
Residents of some of the villages, like Illintsi, returned soon, ignoring official warnings not to do so. 
Chernobyl’s last operating reactor was closed forever in 2000.

TITLE: Pope Talks World Issues at Easter
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY — In his first Easter message as pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday urged nations to use diplomacy to defuse nuclear crises — a clear reference to worries over Iran — and prayed that Palestinians would one day have their own state alongside Israel. 
On Christianity’s most joyous day — which happened to fall on Benedict’s own 79th birthday — the pontiff also prayed for Iraq’s relentless violence to cease. 
From the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, Benedict reflected on the globe’s troubled regions shortly after he celebrated Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square, which was packed with 100,000 pilgrims and tourists on a breezy, hazy day.
“Today, even in this modern age marked by anxiety and uncertainty, we relive the event of the Resurrection, which changed the face of our life and changed the history of humanity,” Benedict said in the traditional papal “Urbi et Orbi” message — Latin for “to the city and to the world.”
On Easter, Christians celebrate a core belief of their faith — that Jesus rose from the dead following his crucifixion. Orthodox Christians in Russia and elsewhere will celebrate Easter on April 23.
Benedict made note of recent developments that have raised fears Iran might be working toward building a nuclear arsenal.
“Concerning the international crises linked to nuclear power, may an honorable solution be found for all parties, through serious and honest negotiations,” Benedict said without naming any country.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently said his country had successfully enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges, a significant step toward large-scale production of material that could be used to fuel nuclear reactors for generating electricity or to build atomic bombs.
Iran insists it only wants the peaceful use of nuclear power, but Western nations suspect Tehran wants to develop weapons and are demanding a halt to enrichment activities.
Pilgrims marking Easter also filled the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City. The alleys were more crowded than in recent years, reflecting a drop in Palestinian-Israeli violence.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, who is the leading Roman Catholic official in the Holy Land, celebrated Mass in the dark, incense-filled Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built on the spot where many Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross.
After leading black-robed priests into the church singing the Lord’s Prayer, the Palestinian-born patriarch lit worshippers’ candles, which gradually illuminated the painted dome ceiling erected in the Crusader era.
“This is like a dream come true for us to be here in the Holy Land,” said Rona Arida, 29, a Philippine worker in Israel, after praying with her friends at the church. “I prayed for all of my family back home.”
At theVatican, Benedict was interrupted by applause when he said of Iraq: “may peace finally prevail over the tragic violence that continues mercilessly to claim victims.” 
“I also pray sincerely that those caught up in the conflict in the Holy Land may find peace, and I invite all to patient and persevering dialogue, so as to remove both ancient and new obstacles,” the pontiff said.
There has been heavy pressure from abroad on the Hamas-led Palestinian government, which was elected in January, to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.
“May the international community, which reaffirms Israel’s just right to exist in peace, assist the Palestinian people to overcome the precarious conditions in which they live and to build their future, moving toward the constitution of a state which is truly their own,” Benedict said.
The pope lamented that the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region was “no longer sustainable.”

TITLE: South Asia Defenseless Against H5N1
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MUMBAI — Bird flu is spreading across one of the most crowded places on earth and, far from being brought under control, looks almost certain to remain a long-term menace in South Asian poultry, officials say.
Since February, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Myanmar have culled hundreds of thousands of chickens and shut poultry farms, yet the virus has kept spreading to new areas. 
Surprisingly, no humans are known to have been infected in South Asia, where hundreds of millions in the countryside live with their livestock. But fears over the H5N1 flu virus have slashed demand for chicken meat and eggs, ruining the livelihoods of countless workers in India’s $7.8 billion poultry industry and even leading to the suicides of nine Indian farmers, an industry group said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and some Indian officials say that once the virus takes hold in any country — developed or not — it is just about impossible to eradicate. Officials admit they face an uphill battle against bird flu, which experts fear could mutate and spread easily from person to person, triggering a pandemic.
While officials might feel a sense of crisis, the reaction of many ordinary people is slowly turning from panic to cautious resignation. In a region of more than 1.3 billion people, bird flu is just one of many threats they face as they try to overcome poverty, the danger of other illnesses, militancy and natural disasters.
“I hope bird flu does not become part of our lives,” said Faiz Qureshi, a young restaurant owner in New Delhi.
“There are car accidents in the streets everyday, but people don’t stop driving, do they?” he said, surveying his almost empty restaurant, known for chicken and mutton dishes.
“I am not convinced there is bird flu in Pakistan. It has all to do with the media,” said a Karachi housewife.

TITLE: Human Volunteers Step Up For HIV Vaccine Experiments
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATLANTA, Georgia — Human volunteers this week began signing up for an experimental HIV vaccine developed at Atlanta’s Emory University. 
Twelve people are expected to take part in the trial at four participating research centers — St. Louis University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Maryland and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Volunteers should begin getting shots any day now, said Don Hildebrand, the chief executive of GeoVax Inc., the Atlanta biotechnology firm that licensed the vaccine.
It’s a phase one trial, in which healthy, uninfected volunteers are given low doses in a check for safety and immune response, Hildebrand said Friday.
A second, higher-dose trial — with 36 people — is expected to begin in a few months.
If these trials are successful, future trials will be done to see if the vaccine actually prevents the virus from causing AIDS, he said. 
The GeoVax product is one of more than 30 preventive AIDS vaccines in early stages of human clinical trials in approximately two dozen countries, according to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a not-for-profit organization devoted to AIDS prevention.
One of the furthest along is a Merck & Co. vaccine, which tries to build immunity using a modified cold virus. About 3,000 people are being enrolled in Merck’s phase two trial of the vaccine.
The GeoVax vaccine is administered in four doses, spread over the course of about two months. The first two doses contain fragments of HIV DNA, which prime the patient’s immune response system. The second two doses contain an altered poxvirus designed to boost the immune system, Hildebrand said.
It was developed by a scientific team led by Harriet Robinson of Emory’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Emory researchers began working on the vaccine in 1997. It worked in rhesus macaques, protecting 22 of 23 vaccinated monkeys from AIDS for more than 3 1/2 years.

TITLE: "Sex For Fish" Pushes Up Number of AIDS Cases in Kenya
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: ASAT, Kenya — On the banks of Africa`s largest lake, a deadly cocktail of poverty, prostitution and tribal widow inheritance practices is fuelling a surge in HIV/AIDS even as progress is made in other areas. 
Here in western Kenya where the water and fish from Lake Victoria are lifelines, communities are struggling against an alarming new rise in HIV cases that has plunged residents into despair.
“HIV/AIDS is rampant,” says Pitanis Ogira Ochola, the chief of the 500-inhabitant Asat beach village, as fishermen unload their catches in view of several of the lake’s verdant islands.
“We buried four people today,” he tells a reporter on a recent visit to the area that has long held the dubious distinction of having one of Kenya’s highest HIV/AIDS rates despite intense campaigns to fight it.
In the nearby village of Bao, home to 200 people, chief Amos Were Ojuka has similar disturbing news.
“AIDS is increasing,” he says. “We have five deaths a month, many orphans and 50 widows because of HIV.”
While Kenya has succeeded in reducing its national HIV prevalence rate from an estimated 14 to seven percent over the past decade, the deadly disease has been stubbornly resistant and even surged around Lake Victoria.
In some lakeside villages, the rate stands at 30 and even 40 percent, according to Betty Okero, who co-ordinates the activities of aid agencies in western Kenya from the country’s third-largest city of Kisumu.
“Sixty percent of the beds in hospitals in the Kisumu region are occupied by HIV patients,” she says, adding that the devastation is compounded by the fact that one-in-three adults are unemployed.
Nearly half of the population — 48 percent, compared to 29 percent nationally — around Kisumu lives in absolute poverty, according to UN statistics that hint at why HIV/AIDS has tightened its grim grip here.
The lack of jobs and money has forced many women to sell themselves to feed their families in a trend known locally as “sex-for-fish” that along with the Luo tribal tradition of widow inheritance has had a profound health impact.
“When you have no money, you must look for what is there and have a partner to get fish,” says Ojuka, who along with other village leaders has unsuccessfully tried to stamp out such prostitution.

TITLE: Marketing Caters for Outsized Demand in the United States
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — From the cradle to the grave and most points between, obesity has found its niche in American marketing. Make that a wide berth. Baby seats, doorways and caskets are but a few examples from a long list of life’s accouterments that are getting much bigger to accommodate much bigger people. There are also vacation resorts for those embarrassed to be seen in a bathing suit. 
At Freedom Paradise on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, the chairs are wider and without arms, to prevent getting stuck; the beds are king-sized and reinforced, to prevent collapsing; and the beach is private and secluded, to prevent gawking and staring.
“You should not be embarrassed by how big you are,” said William Fabrey, whose online business “Amplestuff” offers larger versions of everyday things from umbrellas to footstools. “You can’t just yell at someone and tell them to lose weight. You’re already dealing with people who think they have no worth.”
Like others in this small but growing group of businesses, Fabrey started his company after discussions with an overweight friend. “She was a big woman, and she said, ‘There’s got to be an easier way to get through the day.’
“We don’t take any position on whether someone should lose weight,” Fabrey said. “That’s up to the person.”

TITLE: Experts Confirm Saddam’s Signature in Court Case
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Experts confirmed the authenticity of Saddam Hussein’s signature on documents connected to a crackdown on Shiites in the 1980s, prosecutors said Monday in a new session of the trial of the former Iraqi leader and seven co-defendants. 	
The report from handwriting experts said a signature on a document approving rewards for intelligence agents involved in the crackdown was Saddam’s, prosecutors said, reading from the report.
In an earlier session, Saddam had refused to confirm or deny his signature. Some of his co-defendants had said their alleged signatures on other documents were forgeries.
The defense immediately disputed the experts’ results and insisted the documents be analyzed by other experts not affiliated with the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
“We demand international experts with international expertise,” defense lawyer Khamis al-Obaidi said.
After hearing the report, the judge adjourned the court until Wednesday to give the experts time to look at more documents.
Saddam and the seven former members of his regime are on trial for the deaths of 148 Shiites and the imprisonment and torture of others after a 1982 assassination attempt against the former Iraqi leader in the Shiite town of Dujail. The defendants face possible execution by hanging if convicted.
Dressed in a black suit and white shirt, Saddam sat silently in the court Monday along with his co-defendants.
The report said Saddam and his top co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim — Saddam’s half brother and former head of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency — refused to give the experts samples of their handwriting for comparison. So the experts compared the signatures to other documents not related to the case, the report said.
The experts confirmed Ibrahim’s signatures on several documents connected to the crackdown, the report said. Among them was a memo requesting the rewards for six Mukhabarat officers involved in the crackdown, which Saddam allegedly approved. Another listed Dujail families whose farmlands were to be razed in retaliation for the incident.

TITLE: Suicide Attacker Kills Four in Tel Aviv Bombing
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEL AVIV, Israel — A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up outside a fast-food restaurant in a bustling commercial area of Tel Aviv during the Passover holiday Monday, killing eight other people and wounding at least 49, police said. Israeli Prime Minister-designate Ehud Olmert saidIsrael would respond “as necessary.” 
“We shall, of course, continue to use all means at our disposal to prevent every other attempt,” he said.
Israeli defense chiefs were to consult later Monday, but security officials said a possible reoccupation of Gaza, the base of the new Hamas government, was not being considered.
The White House strongly condemned the attack, calling it “a despicable act of terror for which there is no excuse or justification.”
A security guard posted outside the restaurant, the target of a suicide bombing in January, prevented Monday’s bomber from entering the building, police said.
It was the first suicide attack in Israel since the Hamas militant group took over the Palestinian government 2 1/2 weeks ago. Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in attacks, has largely observed a cease-fire since February 2005.

TITLE: Nationalism Raises Alarm In Britain
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Up to a quarter of voters in England may back the far-right British National Party (BNP) in local elections next month because they are tired of the country’s main political parties, a new study showed. 	
Feelings of “powerlessness and frustration” prompted the rise in support for the nationalistic group, according to the study by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which was revealed by the BBC on Monday.
It is due to be released officially next week, the British broadcaster said.
Professor Peter John of Manchester University, one of the report’s authors, said the research suggested many voters in white working-class areas felt their concerns were being ignored by the governing Labour Party and the main opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
“They think they have been let down by the main parties,” he told BBC radio.
“I think if I was in the main parties, I would be worried about this — that I have not talked about an issue which one of my core constituencies thinks is important,” John said.
But the professor stressed that the levels of underlying support for the BNP uncovered by his research would not necessarily translate into votes.
News of the research followed a warning by Employment Minister Margaret Hodge that disillusioned white, working class voters were deserting Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party for the BNP. 
She said as many as eight out of 10 white families in her Barking constituency in east London admitted that they were tempted to vote for the far-right group in forthcoming council elections on May 4.
“That’s something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now they are not,” Hodge told the Sunday Telegraph weekly in an interview.

TITLE: Chinese Spying Worries Canada
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OTTAWA, Canada — The Canadian government is very worried by the extent of Chinese industrial espionage inside Canada and will raise its concerns with Beijing, Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. 
MacKay said it was particularly important to protect such Canadian companies as Research in Motion, maker of the portable e-mail BlackBerry device.
“We’re very concerned about economic espionage and it would appear based on evidence and reporting that there is a fair bit of activity,” he told CTV.
“It’s something we want to signal we’re prepared to address and to continue to raise with the Chinese at the appropriate time. We’re very much a country that needs to protect its technology,” he said.
Research In Motion said last week it expected to launch its wireless e-mail service in China by mid-year. Canadian media reports say state-controlled China Unicom this month introduced its own version, nicknamed the Redberry.
MacKay is a member of the new Conservative government, which defeated the Liberals in a January 23 election. When in opposition, he accused the Liberals of doing little to prevent China from stealing Canadian industrial secrets.
Last June, amid a furor over allegations by a Chinese defector who said Beijing had more than 1,000 spies in Canada, the Liberals said they would tighten investment laws to give Ottawa the right to block the foreign takeover of any Canadian company for national security reasons.

TITLE: Final Playoff Spots Confirmed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: The Lakers, Bulls, Wizards and Kings claimed the four spots that were remaining entering Sunday, and all that’s left with three days to go in the regular season is figuring out the seedings. 
While none of the eight first-round matchups have been determined, Los Angeles and Sacramento will have the two bottom spots in the Western Conference — and they both could be dangerous. The Lakers have the scoring of Kobe Bryant, the Kings have the defensive play of Ron Artest, and both teams are surging down the stretch.
“We’re not finished,” Artest said after the Kings’ 96-79 victory over New Orleans. “We’ve got a long season ahead of us. We’re far from done. Our goal is to come out of this year No. 1, and win a championship.”
Bryant scored 43 points and the Lakers routed the Phoenix Suns 109-89. Those teams could meet again in the first round, or Los Angeles could end up playing San Antonio or Dallas, whichever gets the No. 1 seed. 
“Whoever we play, it’s going to be tough because it’s two great teams,” Bryant said. The East field is more complicated. Washington (40-40) is fifth, while Chicago, Indiana and Milwaukee are all one game behind. Victories on Sunday by the Bulls and Wizards eliminated Orlando and Philadelphia — which hoped to compete for the Atlantic Division title this season.
In other games, it was: Chicago 117, Miami 93; Detroit 103, New York 97; Washington 104, Cleveland 92; San Antonio 103, Minnesota 90; New Jersey 95, Boston 93; Dallas 111, Utah 95; and Seattle 114, the Los Angeles Clippers 98.

TITLE: Giants Strike Out Dodgers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Brad Hennessey would like to have one pitch back — the changeup that hit Jeff Kent in the head. Otherwise, his first start of the season for the San Francisco Giants was nearly flawless. Hennessey worked 6 1-3 strong innings, three relievers combined to finish a three-hit shutout, and the Giants beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 2-0 Sunday night despite another tough game at the plate for Barry Bonds. 
Hennessey (1-0) allowed three hits while walking three and striking out two before being relieved by Scott Munter with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh. Munter worked out of trouble by striking out pinch-hitter Ricky Ledee and retiring Dioner Navarro on a fly to right.
Tim Worrell, the fourth Giants pitcher, retired Ramon Martinez with two on and two out to end the eighth, and worked a perfect ninth for his fifth save in five chances.
“I felt confident in what I was doing, in control of myself. That made it easier,” said Hennessey, who found out Saturday he was being recalled from Triple-A Fresno to face the Dodgers.
“He came in and did exactly what anyone would ask for,” Giants catcher Mike Matheny said.
Hennessey, a 26-year-old right-hander, was making the 29th start of his career. He was 7-10 with a 4.72 ERA for the Giants in parts of the last two seasons, and 0-1 with a 2.53 ERA in two outings for Fresno earlier this month.
Kent came out of the game after being beaned in the seventh. He was hit on the helmet just behind his left temple on the first pitch from Hennessey with one on and nobody out.

TITLE: Petrova Secures Second Straight WTA Title
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Nadia Petrova battled stifling heat, sore legs and the temptation to retire Sunday to defeat Patty Schnyder 6-3, 4-6, 6-1 and win the Family Circle Cup for her second straight tournament victory. 
Petrova, who also won last week at Amelia Island, now has four tour victories, all in the last six months. Her first came last October at Linz, Austria, where she also defeated Schnyder. Petrova won last month at Doha but Sunday was her first top-tier tournament win. 
“I really had a difficult time today. Maybe it has to do with all the matches I have played. Energy-wise I wasn’t in the best of shape,’’ Petrova said after the two-hour match played in 88-degree heat. “At one stage in the match I wasn’t really sure if I was able to finish it.’’ 
By making the final at the Family Circle, Petrova will improve two spots to her highest ranking at No. 5 in the world. The Russian’s previous high was No. 6 last year. 
Schnyder, ranked ninth in the world, was making her 10th straight appearance at the Family Circle Cup. The 27-year-old from Switzerland was also the runner-up four years ago when she lost to Iva Majoli. 
Petrova broke Schnyder in the third game of the first set, then broke her at love in the ninth game to win the set. But Schnyder got up a break in the first game of the second set and made it stand. 
That’s when Petrova thought she might have to retire. 
During the 10-minute break between the second and third sets, a trainer massaged Petrova’s legs, rubbed her with ice and made her drink. 
“There were lots of things that went through my mind at that stage and it was extremely difficult for me,’’ she said. “I knew I had a good chance, I just needed to win one more set, and I could have actually retired at any time but I just didn’t want to give up.’’ 
In the third, Petrova broke Schnyder in the opening game and while Schnyder never really threatened after that, she didn’t concede anything. Trailing 5-1 in the set, she fought off five match points before sending a forehand wide and giving Petrova the victory. 
“I didn’t want to lose and I just stayed with her and made her win it. We’re competitors and we don’t want to lose until the end,’’ Schnyder said. 
“I was never really feeling my game. My serve was not really there. Also she struggled for two or three games but I could not really take advantage of it.’’ 
But Schnyder said the heat didn’t really bother her. 
“From the start I was feeling like my concentration was not on. I always had to tell myself ... watch the ball and then really focus,’’ she said. “That’s what takes a lot of energy.’’

TITLE: Swines Go Snout to Snout at Olympigs
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Hundreds of Russians gathered for the first day of the annual “pig Olympics” on Saturday, cheering a field of 12 piglets who competed in three events: pig-racing, pig-swimming and “pigball”.
Each pig was carried into the arena, squealing angrily and dressed in its own numbered bib, while Muscovites laid bets on challengers such as Mykola from Ukraine, Nelson — representing South Africa — and the home favorite, Kostik Russisch Schwein.
In pigball, contestants chase a sweet-tasting soccer ball around an enclosed arena with their snouts, scoring when the ball goes into the appropriate goal. The pig-admirers included ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who put 100 rubles ($3.5) on Borka to win the running race, in honor of one of his political rivals.
“I’ve always loved pigs, all my life. I had four or five when I was a kid,” he told Reuters.
Alexei Sharshkov, vice-president of the Sport-Pig Federation, which claims 100 members, said the competitors had a happy future ahead of them, win or lose.
“They go on to produce a new generation of sport pigs. They don’t get eaten,” he promised. 
“How could you eat a competitor who is known around the world?”

TITLE: Alenichev Listed
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Spartak Moscow midfielder Dmitry Alenichev has been transfer-listed for publicly criticising the team manager, the Russian side said on Friday.
“Alenichev put personal grievances and ambitions above the interests of the team,” Spartak said in a statement.
“He has been put up for transfer and moved to the reserve team.”
In an interview in Russia’s Sport-Express newspaper last week, Alenichev said that Spartak manager Alexander Starkov “messes with people’s brains” and was failing to take responsibility for his actions.

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: Ovechkin Record
NEW YORK (Reuters) — Alexander Ovechkin became only the fourth player in NHL history to score 50 goals in his rookie season, reaching the milestone in the Washington Capitals’ 5-3 loss to the Atlanta Thrashers on Thursday. 
Ovechkin collected the historic goal at 13:01 of the opening period when he rifled a shot past Atlanta netminder Mike Dunham. 
The 20-year-old Russian joined Teemu Selanne, Mike Bossy and Joe Nieuwendyk as the only players to reach the 50-goal mark in their first seasons in the league. 
Ovechkin is the favorite to win the Calder trophy as NHL rookie of the year.
Selanne holds the rookie goal scoring record with his tally of 76 for the Winnipeg Jets in 1992-93.
Bossy had 53 for the New York Islanders in 1977-78 and Nieuwendyk had 51 for the Calgary Flames in 1987-88. 
Ovechkin also picked up an assist on Dainius Zubrus’s second period tally to become only the second rookie to record 50 goals and 100 points in his rookie campaign.
Selanne also holds that record with 76 goals and 132 points.

Zenit Climb Table
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — FC Zenit St. Petersburg moved up to seventh spot in the Russian Premier League after a comfortable 3-1 victory over Vladivostok’s Luch-Energiya at the Petrovsky stadium on Saturday.
Alexander Kerzhakov started the scoring with a candidate for goal-of-the-season after an incisive pass by Andrei Arshavin in the 11th minute. The goal was his 100th in a Zenit shirt.
It took only 15 minutes for Luch to respond, however, as Ospeshinski eluded the Zenit defense to plant a header firmly in the corner of the net. 
Mid-way through the second half the St. Petersburg side restored their lead when Oleg Vlasov, on for injured captain Vladislav Radimov, chipped in, and five minutes later replacement captain Arshavin put the result beyond doubt with his 50th goal for the club.

Schlek Wins Amstel
VALKENBURG, Netherlands (AFP) — CSC rider Frank Schleck of Luxembourg won the 41st Amstel Gold Race, which counts towards the cycling ProTour series. 
Schleck attacked 10km from the finish line in the 253.1km race to cross the line alone in front of fellow breakaway rider Steffen Wesemann of Switzerland.
Dutch rider and pre-race favorite Michael Boogerd finished third.
It was an emotional first pro win of his career for Schleck, whose father Johnny was an integral part of the Bic team led by Luis Ocana in the 1960s.
Runner-up in last year’s Zurich Grand Prix, the Luxembourg rider fought back from a bad recent fall in the Tour of the Basque Country when he sustained injuries to his head that required him to spend a night in hospital for observation.
“I knew that it was only a matter of time for Franck,” said former Tour de France winner and CSC team manager Bjarne Riis.
“I can even see him one day finishing in the top 10 in the Tour de France.”
Schleck said that his family had been the motivating force behind him after his bad fall. 
“In cycling you must never give up. I think now I can achieve other things.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Iran Aids Hamas
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Iran announced that it was giving 50 million dollars in aid to the cash-strapped Hamas-led Palestinian government following a suspension of funding from the United States and European Union. 
“The government of the Islamic republic invites all countries to help the Palestinian government and nation, and announces the allocation of 50 million dollars to help the Palestinian government and people,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced.
He was speaking at the end of a regime-sponsored conference in Tehran on supporting the Palestinians. Top officials used the gathering to call for Islamic nations to fill the gap in Palestinian authority finances.

Pregnant Robot
VALLEJO, California (AP) — Noelle’s given birth in Afghanistan, California and dozens of points in between. She’s a lifelike, pregnant robot used in increasing numbers of medical schools and hospital maternity wards. 
The full-sized, blond, pale mannequin is in demand because medicine is rapidly abandoning centuries-old training methods that use patients as guinea pigs, turning instead to high-tech simulations. It’s better to make a mistake on a $20,000 robot than a live patient.
The Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that as many as 98,000 U.S. patients die annually from preventable medical errors.

Gamers Air On Cable
SAN JOSE, California (AP) — Professional video gaming is set to debut on cable television later this year, potentially paving the way for the kings and queens of game controllers to become as familiar to American households as the faces of Johnny Chan or Annie Duke in televised poker. 
Major League Gaming, the world’s largest organized video gaming league, on Monday will announce a programming deal in which USA Network will air seven one-hour episodes in the fall, featuring the pro circuit and its players.
Though video gaming fans have been able to follow competitions on game web sites for years already, MLG’s television deal marks the first time regular TV viewers will be able to track the ups and downs of a pro tournament, watching video gaming as a new kind of extreme sport.
“This is the sign that pro gaming has finally arrived to the mass market,” said Matthew Bromberg, MLG’s president and chief operating officer. “It’s like poker was two years ago, or NASCAR 15 years ago.”

Live Latin Aid
MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) — Colombian pop singer Shakira says she has teamed with a group of Latin artists to organize a Live Aid-style event that will help the poor people of her continent. 
“We want this to be an event that brings world attention to poverty in Latin America,” Shakira says, “which is virtually invisible to the rest of the world.”
Formal word of the event, which is tentatively slated for 2007, is not expected for several months. Sources say the artists involved will include Juanes, 
Alejandro Sanz and Miguel Bosa, who all have track records of working for worthy causes. 
For example, Juanes will play an acoustic show at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles on May 24 to raise money for young Colombian land mine victims. Guests will include Sanz and Carlos Vives.