SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1166 (32), Tuesday, May 2, 2006
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TITLE: Rally Calls For Release In Belarus
AUTHOR: By Andrei Makhovsky
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MINSK — More than 1,000 protesters carrying banned flags marched through Belarus’s capital on Monday to demand the release of jailed opposition leaders who had pledged to work for the removal of President Alexander Lukashenko. 
Marchers were nominally marking the May Day holiday and among their slogans was a call to end short-term labor contracts they say allow employers to intimidate workers. 
But the thrust of the protest, authorized by city officials, was to press for the release of Alexander Milinkevich, the opposition’s main leader, and other activists jailed for up to 15 days after a rally last week. 
Milinkevich had challenged Lukashenko’s landslide re-election victory in March, denounced by the opposition and in the West as blatantly rigged. 
“Freedom for Milinkevich!” marchers shouted as they passed along the approved route. Many carried the red-and-white national flag banned by Lukashenko in his 1990s drive to restore Soviet-style symbols. 
“Not all our friends are here today. Many are behind bars,” Alexander Dobrovolsky of the United Civic Party told protesters from a wooden rostrum in an outlying square surrounded by parkland. 
“We need solidarity to keep us together every day.” 
Milinkevich was summoned by police and taken to a courtroom after telling 7,000 protesters last Wednesday that the opposition intended to use civil disobedience to turf Lukashenko out of the office he has held since 1994 in two years or less. 
Last Wednesday’s campaign coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster over the border in Ukraine, traditionally the biggest opposition rally of the year. 
Also jailed on public order charges were veteran activist Vintsuk Vechorko, Communist opposition campaigner Sergei Kalyakin and trade unionist Alexander Bukhvostov. 
Stanislav Shushkevich, Belarus’s first post-Soviet leader and now a prominent opposition figure, said after the May Day protest that he had already been summoned to appear before police on Wednesday. 
Milinkevich’s wife, Inna Kulei, told Monday’s marchers that the jailed opposition figures had now been placed in separate cells after being initially confined together. 
“The authorities are afraid of us. They are afraid of our leaders even when they are in jail,” she said. “Now they’ve separated them because they are afraid they will prepare a coup if they serve their time together in one cell.” 
Lukashenko, who won 83 percent of the vote according to official tallies, has made clear he will stick to his policies. He is supported by many voters who say he has provided a measure of stability and prosperity absent in other ex-Soviet states.

TITLE: U.S.-Russia Chill Recalls Cold War Memories
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping thaw relations between Moscow and Washington. Now he is warning that the two countries could slide into a new Cold War. 
After over a decade when the relationship between Moscow and Washington was nearly always upbeat, the mood in the two capitals has turned “sour”, according to one Western diplomat. 
The adversarial attitudes of the Cold War have been resurfacing everywhere from the statements of politicians to the views of people on the streets and the choice of villains in Russian television dramas. 
“We have not yet left the past behind: its death grip can be felt everywhere,” Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, wrote last month in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily. 
“Calls to cool down or even toughen the relations between our countries have become everyday fare in Washington. 
“In our country we also have people who — some with alarm and others with relish — are bracing themselves for a renewal of the Cold War in some sort of new format.” 
The irony is that on the business front, the mood could not be further removed from the Cold War. 
Nearly every month, a new Russian company lists on a New York bourse, U.S. banks are putting up their signs on Moscow’s streets and investors are clambering over each other to get their hands on Russian stocks. 
The atmosphere is very different from the one five years ago when U.S. President George W. Bush first met President Vladimir Putin. They seemed to hit it off and their rapport set the tone for strong ties. 
“There is a sour mood that you will see in Washington about the relationship and you know that you will find the same view [in Moscow],” said the Western diplomat. 
That mood could make for an awkward few days in July when Putin hosts Bush and other world leaders for a summit of the Group of Eight industrialised countries in St. Petersburg. 
On April 18, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow William Burns was called to the Russian foreign ministry. Moscow was upset because, it said, a Washington think-tank had given Chechen separatists a platform to voice their violent philosophy. 
U.S. ambassadors in Moscow rarely get that treatment, and the incident illustrated the new tension. 
There is no shortage of irritants between Moscow and Washington. They range from stalled talks on Russia’s entry to the World Trade Organisation to differences about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Washington’s tough line on Moscow ally Belarus. 
Analysts say that behind all these issues there is a unifying theme: Russia, buoyed by record prices for the oil it exports, is no longer prepared to play the junior partner. 
“You get the impression Russia is getting stronger before your eyes and that it ... can pay a lot less heed to the reaction of Western partners than it did before,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs. 
The attitude is: “It is not us that need the rest of the world, it is them that need us,” Lukyanov said. 
“Bush and (U.S. Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice ... are ready to ignore quite a lot but there are more and more things that they believe are unfriendly and they cannot ignore.” 
Asked on a visit to Moscow last week if Russia was chafing at U.S. policy, the State Department’s No. 3 official Nicholas Burns, said: “I did not hear anything like that over the last two days from any Russian officials.” 
But late last year, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the United States to take steps to arrest what he said was its declining relationship with Moscow. 
More and more Russians see the United States as a rival. 
Russian screenwriters have tended to cast terrorists and gangsters as the villains in a nod to the end of the Cold War. 
But an episode this month of television action drama “Sea Devils” showed the heroes, a Russian special forces unit, rushing to stop the U.S. Navy stealing a strategic missile. 
In a survey conducted in December by pollster VTsIOM, 30 percent of those questioned named the United States as the main threat to Russia’s national security. China was second on 17 percent. 
“I think the United States — the state, not the people — is some sort of bandit group,” said Artur Saradzhyan, a businessman and former government official who lives near Moscow. 
“It wants to establish its power over everybody and turn every state, including Russia, into its vassal and a source of energy,” he said.

TITLE: NATO Plans Tighter Energy Security
AUTHOR: By Robert Wielaard
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS — NATO’s top general said Sunday that uncertainty over future supplies of oil and gas to western Europe shows a need for the alliance to plan for greater security for tankers, pipelines and terminals. 
Recent sniping between Moscow and the EU over Russian energy supplies points to the need for western nations to provide better security for energy supply routes and storage, said U.S. General James. L. Jones, NATO’s supreme allied commander. 
He said NATO will stage a major exercise in June off the Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic Ocean that “is very much oriented” to supply route safety “from the point of origin to receiving countries.” 
Also, Jones said, NATO can help provide security in areas that are unstable, but key links in the chain of energy supply, such as Nigeria’s lawless Niger Delta where armed groups siphon off close to $1 billion annually in crude oil from pipelines. He said providing security for energy storage and transportation facilities in unstable regions “is not a problem we can continue to walk away from much longer.” 
Jones addressed the Brussels Forum, a gathering at which 275 trans-Atlantic politicians, pundits, business leaders and others debated global security in military and other terms, including energy security. 
EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said Western Europe will continue to push Moscow to shed its oil and gas monopoly, saying market forces best serve the needs of suppliers and consumers of energy in the long term. 
Of late, Moscow has balked at that and threatened to shift its gas supplies to China. That option is “nonsense,” said Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, a Washington-based energy consultancy firm. 
“The Chinese are not going to pay as much for gas as the Europeans,” he told the conference. 
Piebalgs, speaking to reporters, later discounted the idea of a “new Cold War in energy.” The Russian government was hanging on to its energy monopoly “but it does not prevent us from discussing it.” 
Security of energy supplies from Russia are expected to top the agenda of an EU-Russia summit in June at the Black Sea resort of Sochi and at a July summit in St. Petersburg of the G8 group of the world’s most industrialized nations. 
Jones said NATO was looking at maritime and air support over oil and gas routes as well as more sharing of intelligence. 
“A terrorist attack against an (oil or gas) tanker in a port can cause devastating damage,” he said. 
The trans-Atlantic conference revealed lingering irritation in Poland with Germany’s decision to build a natural-gas pipeline running directly from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Poland. 
Polish Defense Minister Radek Sikorski said that at a recent event in Poland marking the 25th anniversary of the Solidarity movement, “the German President declared that never again would Germany make deals over Poland’s head.” 
Ten days later, he said, Germany announced the Black Sea pipeline project without consulting Poland. “Why would an ally and partner do such a thing?” asked Sikorski. 
The pipeline was championed by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who has since joined the board of Russia’s Gazprom monopoly, and whose successor, Angela Merkel, has stuck with the deal calling it “on the whole ... a responsible project.”

TITLE: Staff at French Embassy Go On Strike
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — An unexpected strike of French Embassy employees is jeopardizing the plans of many Russians to spend the May holidays in France, tourism officials said Thursday.
Two-thirds of the embassy’s consular section did not show up for work Thursday to accept visa applications and issue visas to tourists, the officials added.
“Right now, it’s unclear how they’re going to work at all tomorrow, but it is absolutely clear that at least 1,500 Russian citizens will not be able to go to France for the May holidays,” said Irina Tyurina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Tourist Industry Union.
French Embassy spokeswoman Isabelle Tourancheau confirmed the consulate was issuing only visas that had already been processed. She said all embassy staffers would resume work Friday.
Tourancheau added that the embassy was, in fact, processing visas for some travelers who had interviews scheduled for Thursday. 
Tourancheau said the striking employees included locally hired French and Russians and that they were protesting their working conditions. She did not elaborate, saying simply that of the 10 windows that normally handle visas, only two were operating Thursday.
According to Interfax, 40 to 45 employees went on strike to protest what they called a hectic work schedule, poor work benefits and the vague legal status of workers employed by the French government while working in Russia.
Major appointments at the embassy are handled by officials in Paris, but the embassy hires many of its administrative staff locally.
Tyurina said it was not the first time tourism officials had had trouble with the French Embassy. 
In spring 2004, the consulate was overwhelmed by the number of Russians seeking to travel to France. Roughly 2,000 tourists had to cancel their trips, and travel agencies lost 400,000 euros in revenue, she said. 
In another incident, the embassy stopped issuing visas and accepting visa applications for one day in July 2004. The move was meant to signal solidarity with an injured consular worker beaten by unknown attackers near her apartment building.
Tyurina said there had been growing interest in France among Russians. “That said, it’s impossible to imagine a bigger disservice to France as a tourist destination,” she said.
According to the State Statistics Service, 138,400 Russians traveled to France in 2004. Last year, that figure jumped to 174,060.
Vladimir Kantorovich, president of KMP Group, a tourism agency that operates many trips to France, said many of the Russian tourists denied visas Thursday might be out of luck. 
The unlikelihood of refunds from hotels and airlines will not be their only headache, he said. 
“This is happening at the height of the season, when airline flights are booked up and agencies will find it extremely difficult to rebook tourists who failed to get a visa on time on a plane the next day, since it will almost certainly be full,” Kantorovich said.
“It is a pity that our tourists fall victim to those trying to solve social problems,” Kantorovich said, adding that the embassy should have made an announcement about the strike much earlier than a day before it happened.

TITLE: Web Sites Under Scrutiny In Wake of Extremist Acts
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — It reads like a grade-school math problem: “If there’s five of you, you can jump two people. If there’s seven of you, then you can jump three.”
What follows, though, is not long division but advice on pummeling a “darky” or “slant-eyed monkey” into “porridge” in less than a minute:
“As a rule, one of them will inevitably run away. Typically, the main portion of Russian hate is reserved for only one savage out of several.”
The advice, for skinheads hunting dark-skinned people from Africa, Asia and the Caucasus, can be found in the “Manual of Street Terror,” a sort of “Dummy’s Guide to Hate Crimes” that has been bouncing around dozens of neo-Nazi web sites. 
Despite a criminal investigation by St. Petersburg prosecutors, no one has been charged in connection with the manual’s publication.
But there is no doubt the web sites where the manual is posted have come under closer scrutiny since Alexander Koptsev, 20, attacked worshippers in January in a Moscow synagogue with a hunting knife. Koptsev, sentenced last month to 13 years in prison, said anti-Semitic web sites influenced him.
“The Internet is increasingly being used by various terrorist and extremist organizations in order to promote racism, terrorism, extremism and religious separatism,” Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said last week at a conference on Internet crime.
Nurgaliyev said authorities were working to “identify and suppress the activities of such sites.” 
Along those lines, a man was sentenced to prison for an article he posted on his web site, Interfax reported earlier this week. It was the first such arrest in Russia.
The man, Konstantin Strokolsky, 21, is a student at Kemerovo State University and a member of the National Bolshevik Party. He was sentenced to one year of probation for posting “The Most Constructive Party” on his site.
The Sova think tank, which tracks extremist web sites as part of a project called “Against Hate on the Internet,” noted on its web site recently that several sites promoting racism and xenophobia had shut down under murky circumstances in the months since Koptsev’s conviction.
Some extremist sites have posted messages saying they have shut down for “technical reasons,” while others give no reason, Sova’s deputy director, Galina Kozhevnikova, said. Many site administrators worry about being charged with a hate crime, possibly because of the Koptsev conviction, she added.
Administrators of neo-Nazi and other racist web sites scoffed at that. 
“I don’t know a single serious, radical right-wing web site that would have been closed by the owners themselves,” Dmitry Rumyantsev, head of the National-Socialist Society, said by e-mail. “And those who were turned down by their host-providers moved to a new place and continued their activities as if nothing happened.”
Rumyantsev, who has penned admiring essays about Adolf Hitler for Nso-korpus.info, said his site had a foreign provider and was visited by 10,000 to 15,000 people monthly. 
Rumyantsev dismissed Nurgaliyev’s comments at the Internet conference, saying his group was not in violation of any Russian or international laws. “If someone tries to initiate legal proceedings against us, the case would fail completely, and it would be extra PR for us.”
Yury Belyayev, leader of the Party of Freedom, whose web site briefly posted the “Manual of Street Terror,” said by telephone from St. Petersburg that the authorities were virtually powerless to shutter xenophobic sites.
“All you have to do is move the page to some provider in the Baltics,” Belyayev said. “You can do it from your own apartment.”
Belyayev said his party’s web site, Svobodarus.ru, was currently hosted by a Russian provider but that he had two other versions of the site ready to put up somewhere else should the site be shut down. “I can get this site back up in six hours,” he boasted.
The Party of Freedom’s site has posted summaries of attacks on dark-skinned foreigners under the headline “The City Cleanup Continues.”
A recent posting on the site called for “members of the white patrol to take to the streets of Russia on April 20 and instill order in the courtyards and districts according to the instructions on hand.”
Belyayev declined to disclose the instructions over the phone.
In recent years, skinheads and other fascist groups have celebrated April 20, the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday, by attacking dark-skinned people.
At last week’s conference, Boris Miroshnikov, head of the Interior Ministry’s high-tech crimes department, said there were about 40 Russian-language web sites disseminating extremist and terrorist propaganda, a figure that extremist web site watchers call wildly low.
Kozhevnikova, from Sova, said it was unclear which sites Miroshnikov was referring to. She speculated that he was probably speaking only of terrorist sites that gave instructions on making bombs.
Dmitry Dubrovsky, head of ethnic studies at the European University at St. Petersburg, said ultranationalist Russian web sites probably numbered around 100 but stressed that the number of visitors to the sites was more important than the number of sites themselves. He said a popular site was far more dangerous than a marginal site with few visitors, but he added it was tough to gauge exactly how many people logged on to sites.
The real danger posed by extremist web sites is not necessarily that they serve as repositories of inflammatory literature but as forums and chat rooms for visitors to organize attacks, Dubrovsky said.
Belyayev disagreed, saying young men looking to organize attacks preferred to use Internet messaging services such as ICQ instead of public forums on web sites. “It’s just safer that way,” he said.
Alexander Tarasov, a sociologist who specializes in extremist youth groups, also questioned the role web sites played in fomenting or enabling racist violence.
While these sites certainly assist extremist groups in coordinating their activities, Tarasov said, their Internet presence should be of secondary concern to authorities.
“If you close, for example, the Party of Freedom web site but don’t liquidate the Party of Freedom, an openly fascist group, itself, then you’re dealing with the effects but not the causes,” Tarasov said. 
Tarasov added it was “comical” to think a web site alone could provoke someone into carrying out a hate crime.
“To push someone to do that, you have to work on him methodically and for a long time while taking into account specific aspects of his character,” Tarasov said. “Internet sites aren’t capable of doing that.”

TITLE: St. Petersburg Hosts Mrs World
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Eighteen-year-old Russian dancer Sofya Arzhakovskaya won the Mrs World contest held in the city on Saturday, beating off competitors from a total of 34 countries including Thailand, China, Kenia and Finland. The event, however, was not without its organizational hiccups.
Arzhakovskaya’s triumph was marred by an embarrassing element of confusion when the winner’s sash and crown were mistakenly presented to Mrs Costa Rica, who had in fact finished in second place. The audience at the Oktyabrsky concert hall burst into applause and dozens of cameras began snapping before the mistake was discovered and corrected.
The incident was the last in a series of technical hitches that plagued the event. The competition, which was being held in St. Petersburg for the first time, failed to assemble the full bevy of beauties planning to take part due to visa problems which meant only 34 out of the full 55 contestants managed to make it to St. Petersburg.
“Several participants were refused a Russian visa, and I myself spent several hours at passport control in St. Petersburg on arrival because my visa had been issued with mistakes,” said David Marmel, the president and founder of the Mrs America and Mrs World competitions, at a news conference last week.
A beauty competition for married women, Mrs World originally started out as a national beauty contest in the United States, where it was first held in 1938, and later evolved into a major international event. 
The competition sets no age limit on contestants who are judged solely on intelligence and looks. Many of the women have several children and successful careers are seen as an advantage.
In addition to the traditional elements of beauty contests, such as modeling evening gowns and swim suits, Mrs World features a dance contest and an interview aimed at assessing the intellect of competitors.
“This show is dedicated not just to physical beauty, but also to talented and successful women,” Marmel said. 
“This is a contest showcasing mature beauty. These women have already won the main prize in their lives, a happy family.”
It was not just the contestants that had difficulties entering Russia. The crown, made of white gold, decorated with precious stones and worth around $28,000 was confiscated by customs officials at Pulkovo international airport, citing incomplete documentation. 
The contest’s organizers commissioned a new crown from a jewelry firm in Moscow which they received a few days before the contest’s final, though the original was released by the customs officials a few hours before the awards ceremony. 
Prior to the competition final on Saturday, the contestants spent a week in St. Petersburg sightseeing, dancing, clubbing, bowling and even playing ice-hockey. 
Some of the ladies brought their children, parents or husbands to the city. Mrs Kenya, a mother of four, was nursing her newborn two-month-old daughter while making her third attempt to claim the crown.
Born in St. Petersburg, Arzhakovskaya graduated from a choreographic school in Ufa. She is married to a Moscow businessman.

TITLE: President Hogs News Coverage
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The main nationwide television channels devote about 90 percent of their news coverage to President Vladimir Putin, the Cabinet and the main pro-Kremlin United Russia party, portraying them almost exclusively in a positive light, according to a study released Thursday by a media freedom watchdog. 
The four-week study found that the percentage of the channels’ coverage of opposition parties was in the single digits. The channels monitored in the study were Rossia, NTV, Channel One and TV Center — all state-owned — and Ren-TV, which is controlled by Kremlin-friendly companies. 
“There cannot be any talk of any kind of freedom of speech, when there is such state television, from which 90 percent of Russians get their news,” said Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, which conducted the study. 
“People have fewer and fewer alternative sources to get information about what is happening in the country,” he said.

TITLE: Constructing a Roman Road to Russian Retail Salvation
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An Italian company has promised to brighten up the lives of local shoppers by building a Roman Coliseum to house an appropriately Mediterranean setting. Costruzioni Margheri’s plan to build a shopping center replica of the famous ancient monument was greeted with interest by local experts, who were nevertheless quick to point out the competitive nature of the shopping complex market. 
The 120 million euro ($100 million) Nevsky Coliseum complex will have no analogue anywhere in the world, company president Mario Margheri said at a press conference Thursday.
Construction of a two-storey, 100,000 square meter shopping and entertainment center, will start in June in Bugry in the Leningrad Oblast.
When it opens in March 2008, half the complex will house 220 mono-brand boutiques, as part of a zonal shopping area designed to resemble streets in Milan, Rome, Florence and Venice.
The project also includes: a 20,000 square meter artificial sea and beach called Riviera, which will offer year-round swimming; a 120-room hotel; a 5,000 square meter business center; 10 restaurants; a 10-screen cinema; and parking for 6,000 cars.
The project’s pay back period is set for eight years to nine years, the company said in a press release. With the company expecting around three million people a year to visit the complex, of which one million will visit Riviera, annual turnover is planned at 300 million euros ($243 million). 
“The popularity of the complex depends on its target audience. Interesting new brands and reasonable prices for goods and services – that’s what attracts clients,” said Yevgenia Vasilieva, marketing manager at Astera consultancy.
“An original entertainment facility imitating the sea could be a magnet drawing people to the complex,” she said, but recalled the rival aquaparks at the Rodeo Drive complex, Stremberg’s shopping and entertainment center in Primorsky district and newly-opened Waterville in Pribaltiiskaya hotel.
The Nevsky Coliseum’s catchment area will include densely populated Northern districts, Vasilieva said. 
“But shopping areas are popping up at exponential rates,” she said, alluding to the Grand Canyon, Rodeo Drive, Four Elements, PR 12, Mega and North Mall.
“The advantage of Nevsky Coliseum is that, like Mega and North Mall, it will create a large retail park able to attract a significant number of consumers,” Vasilieva said.
Arina Sender, director of retail at Colliers International in St. Petersburg, considered the complex’s location near the ring road to be advantageous.
She indicated three major innovations that “set this complex apart from the competition”: an artificial sea; interior zoning that logically divides the complex’s tenants; and the Italian cuisine offered in trattorias and take-away restaurants.
Nevsky Coliseum in itself would attract customers as the first “factory outlet mall” in Russia, while the hotel should attract tourists from Finland and Moscow, Sender said.
However, another expert gave a more wary assessment. As all shopping centers target mobile consumers, completion of the ring-road will increase competition between them, said Roman Yurevich, head of marketing department at the London Consulting and Management company.
Yurevich indicated Grand Canyon and the Leader super-regional entertainment center as the main competitors for Nevsky Coliseum.
By the end of 2006 the Mega shopping center will open at Bugry, and the Rodeo Drive shopping center and North Mall retail park on Prospekt Kultury. 
At the same time as Nevsky Coliseum, the Osinovaya Roshka shopping center will open on the Vyborgskoye highway, Yurevich said.
According to LCMC, 710,000 square meters of new shopping areas will appear in the city in 2006 and by 2008, 200,000 square meters of shopping center will be in excess of demand.
Nevsky Coliseum’s rivals will have anchors in their strong entertainment tenants, unique to the St. Petersburg market, Yurevich said. Mega will have a skating rink, Rodeo Drive — an aquapark.
“The entertainment area at Nevsky Coliseum is similar to an aquapark, which causes additional risks. Being a ‘multicomplex’ is in itself longer original and therefore no longer a competitive advantage,” he said.
In general Yurevich considered the concept, oriented on Italy, and fashion associations, interesting for St. Petersburg. 
“Organizing the shopping galleries as streets resembles the planning solution at Mall of America, where galleries lead to four large department stores,” he said.
The success will depend on the ability to house new retailers, and here the Peacocks and Next shops in Grand Canyon, C&A and the Boyner department stores at Mega represent serious competition to Nevsky Coliseum, Yurevich said.
Moreover, Yurevich doubted the rationality of building a hotel. 
“For a business hotel it has too many rooms. For a tourist hotel the location is rather strange.”
Parking takes up far too much space, Yurevich said, considering the size of the shopping area — parking for 4,200 cars would be enough.
The predicted turnover also looks somewhat suspicious, he added. “Donaucentrum, a 100,000 square meter shopping center on the outskirts of Vienna, has a turnover of 325 million euros ($263 million). 
Though Vienna’s population is 1.6 million people, per capita income is ten times higher than in St. Petersburg,” he said.
The payback period could also be longer than they expect, Yurevich said, because in 2008 the economy will be vulnerable to the results of the presidential elections, oil prices and the end of a cycle of national economic growth.

TITLE: General Motors Tipped To Apply for Petersburg Plant
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — General Motors has picked out a location for a new factory near St. Petersburg and is set to submit an application to the city government within the next two weeks, a local official said Thursday.
The U.S. carmaker looked at several sites but has chosen Shushary, just outside St. Petersburg, an official in the city’s economic development department said. The official requested anonymity, citing ongoing negotiations. 
“They are preparing an application,” he said. “They came to the conclusion that [Shushary] suited them.”
Mark Kempe, a spokesman for GM Europe, on Thursday confirmed that the company was interested in “extending, not replacing” its presence in the country, but said, “We have not taken a final decision to build anything anywhere.” 
The Financial Times on Thursday cited sources close to GM as saying the carmaker had already approved financing for its Russian factory, adding that its fate hinged on the future of GM’s troubled venture with AvtoVAZ.
The official declined to give any details of the project ahead of the official application, but said the U.S. carmaker’s plan was similar to that of Toyota, which is due to begin producing cars at a $140 million plant in Shushary next year. 
Nikolai Asaul, deputy chairman of St. Petersburg’s committee on investment and strategic projects, said Shushary offered “very convenient logistics” as it was close to a ring road and the highway to Moscow. 
Asaul also said GM “was close to making a decision.” 
While tax breaks had played a role, he said carmakers were drawn to the city by its “proximity to a sea port and mutual understanding with the authorities.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Finns Bank On
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A subsidiary of Finnish Sampo Bank, Sampo Plc, is acquiring the St. Petersburg-based Profibank, the company said Friday in a statement distributed by Helsinki Stock Exchange.
The agreement was signed Thursday, but the value of the deal was not revealed, Interfax reported Friday.
Profibank’s authorized capital is about $290,000. By March 31 its assets reached $1.5 million, its own capital — $550,000. As a result of the acquisition, Profibank will provide retail services for the residents of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. Corporate clients will mostly be comprised of Sampo’s Scandinavian clients operating in Russia.

Northwest Profits
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The region’s main landline operator, Northwest Telecom, almost tripled its net profit in the first quarter of 2006 compared to the last quarter of 2005, with earnings of $24.6 million, the company said Friday in a statement.
At the end of 2005 the company spent a lot on restructuring and on compensation to dismissed employees, the statement said.

TITLE: Atomic Proposal Still on Table
AUTHOR: By Parisa Hafezi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TEHRAN — Iran on Sunday said it would be willing to discuss Moscow’s proposal to move uranium enrichment to Russia if the UN Security Council were to send its case back to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“The Russian proposal is still on the table,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a news conference.
“Within this framework it is normal that we will review different proposals on when it is carried out and under what conditions,” he added.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is for energy not weapons, could face a new resolution at the UN Security Council after the IAEA reported on Friday Iran has hampered its checks and rebuffed requests to stop making nuclear fuel.
UN ambassadors from the United States, Britain and France were expected to begin drafting a resolution on Monday they hope to introduce within a week which would obligate Iran to comply with the council’s demands.
With the clock ticking towards possible Security Council action, Tehran has remained defiant and said it would continue to enrich uranium and develop its atomic energy program.
But in the past two days Iran has suggested steps to ease the crisis.
On Saturday Iran offered to allow spot checks by IAEA inspectors if the Security Council dropped the case. On Sunday, Iran said it would consider Moscow’s plan under which uranium for use in Iranian power stations would be enriched in Russia.
“Research enrichment has started and it is going on and it is irreversible,” Reza said. “We want to see to it that industrial enrichment and industrial production should come from the heart of negotiations,” he added.
All previous negotiations on the Russian plan broke down because Iran insisted nuclear fuel production should take place on its soil, although it would consider an additional joint venture in Russia.
There was no sign from Asefi that Iran was planning to make any concession on the crux issue of where the enrichment was to take place.
After the news conference, Asefi told Reuters this offer of a return to negotiations with Russia was contingent on Iran’s case being shipped back to the nuclear watchdog.
Western diplomats dismiss the idea that the Security Council could drop the case, arguing Iran must cool tensions by obeying UN demands that it stop enriching uranium. The United States, backed by Britain and France, support limited sanctions if Iran fails to back down. Russia and China have been far more guarded on this issue. 
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki on Saturday to suspend enriching uranium and ensure full-scale cooperation with the IAEA.
“The Russian side reiterated there is an urgent need for Iran to take concrete steps to restore trust in its nuclear program,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

TITLE: Kremlin Hopes PR Group Will Improve its G8 Image
AUTHOR: By Neil Buckley
PUBLISHER: Financial Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Kremlin, not renowned as one of the world’s most media-savvy organisations, is signing up western public relations advisers for the first time to improve the presentation of Russia’s presidency of the Group of Eight leading nations. 
Russia’s presidential administration has signed a multi-million dollar contract with Ketchum, a U.S.-based PR firm, to advise on communications with western media during its G8 term, which started on January 1 and lasts for 12 months, as well as the St. Petersburg summit in July.
The contract is a coup for Ketchum, which adds the Kremlin to clients including IBM, Kodak, FedEx and the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Work will be co-ordinated by Ketchum’s Washington DC office, and a sister company, GPlus Europe, a Brussels-based public affairs group founded by Peter Guilford and Nigel Gardner, two former European Commission trade spokesmen.
They face a unique PR challenge in trying to win recognition of Russia’s G8 work amid growing international suspicion of its record on democracy under Vladimir Putin and of how it plans to use its oil and gas might.
Moscow’s G8 presidency has been marred by the decision by Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas giant, to cut off supplies to Ukraine in a pricing dispute on January 1, undermining Russia’s decision to make energy security a top G8 theme.
It has also faced calls from John McCain, U.S. senator, for member countries to boycott the St. Petersburg summit over Russia’s authoritarian tendencies.
Dmitry Peskov, deputy press attachÎ to Putin, said the decision to hire international advisers had been taken last year. He denied that the presidency had got off to a bad start.
“Russia’s presidency started well and continues to go very successfully. All our partners recognise that,” Peskov said.
“But it didn’t get off to a good start on the communications front. And this is connected with the misinterpretation [in the west] of what happened with Gazprom and Ukraine.
“We set out our point of view, but apparently it wasn’t that effective. Perhaps if we had already been working then with some kind of communications company things would have been different.”
Peskov said Putin had approved the decision, but it had taken time to persuade all the necessary Kremlin officials. Observers said they did not expect to transform overnight western media coverage that Moscow believes is often excessively negative. However, the Kremlin does want to gain credit, where due, for the handling of its presidency and summit.

TITLE: EU Presses on With Energy
AUTHOR: By Paul Taylor
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRUSSELS — The European Union urged the United States on Saturday to join it in pressing for open energy markets and more democracy in Russia when the world’s leading industrial powers meet in St. Petersburg in July.
And a key U.S. senator said Washington should be tougher on what he called President Vladimir Putin’s autocratic rule and “some perverted vision of a restoration of the Soviet empire”.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told a transatlantic conference that the 25-nation EU and the United States should press Moscow to create free market conditions and legal certainty to guarantee predictable energy supplies.
“We need to enhance our external cooperation and create the necessary market conditions and legal framework in those producers or transit countries on which the world economies count for their energy supply,” he told the Brussels Forum.
“We can no longer afford, nor should we accept, the unpredictability of the energy market,” Barroso said. Moscow’s abrupt cut in supplies to and through Ukraine in January over a pricing dispute sparked alarm across Europe.
His comments capped a week in which Russia has threatened to divert gas supplies from Europe to Asia if EU countries shut its giant monopoly supplier Gazprom out of their retail markets.
Republican Senator John McCain, a possible presidential contender, said the United States and Europe were likely to face growing problems with Russia, which might forge an alliance with China on energy.
“In all the days of the Soviet Union, Russia never turned off the spigot of gas. Putin did,” McCain told an International Republican Institute lunch attended by Barroso.
The Commission president said Moscow had been a reliable energy supplier in the past and had an interest in secure demand from the EU and also in European investment, technology and know-how to get oil and gas out of the ground.
He criticised Moscow for refusing to ratify an international energy charter treaty that would force it to open its pipeline network to third-party suppliers.
It was up to Russians to decide whether they wanted “a real democracy or a half-democracy”, the head of the EU executive said. The quality of Europe’s relations with Moscow would depend on that choice.
Barroso highlighted European concern at perceived efforts by Putin to use energy as an instrument of power politics with its neighbors and partners.
“We are seeing more frequently the use of energy resources as an instrument of political coercion,” the Commission chief said, without explicitly naming Moscow.
“Together, the EU and the United States must send a clear signal on the need for a paradigm shift on energy.”
The EU, depending on Russia for a quarter of its gas, is concerned that Moscow is keeping its pipeline network closed to competition, extending its network control westwards through Ukraine and Belarus, and trying to monopolise pipeline access to Central Asian gas supplies, notably in Turkmenistan.
The Kremlin is also resisting moves by Brussels to apply its strict competition policy to long-term Russian gas supply contracts to EU countries.
Gazprom is seeking to enter the retail sector in Western Europe, eyeing the British supplier Centrica and investments in Germany, without relinquishing its domestic grip.

TITLE: Disney Looks to Reanimate Russian Cartoon Sector
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Walt Disney Studios and other foreign moviemakers are looking to breathe new life into Russia’s deflated cartoon industry. Their interest has been piqued by booming box-office receipts, a rise in new and renovated movie theaters and, more generally, economic growth, which has created more leisure time for the country’s nascent middle class.
Last year, box-office receipts throughout the former Soviet Union were about $350 million, according to industry estimates. That figure is likely to jump to $415 million this year.
While those numbers pale in comparison to the United States — the Motion Picture Association of America reports that Americans spent $9 billion at the box office in 2005 — they represent a new beginning for Russia.
Shortly after the Soviet collapse, the state’s animation studio, Soyuzmultfilm, more or less dissolved. Technically, Soyuzmultfilm still exists, but for all intents and purposes, it has been long dead.
Andrei Dobrunov, head of the animation studio Solnechny Dom, recalled that under the Soviets, Soyuzmultfilm had as many as 400 animators and other staff on its rolls. 
Today, said Akop Kirakosyan, Soyuzmultfilm’s director, the studio employs no full-time animators. Nowadays, everybody is a freelancer, he said. 
Dobrunov said it had been his dream since the late 1990s to make a movie about early Slavic history. But at the time, he said, finding the seed money and the people to make his movie a reality was an uphill battle.
He started Solnechny Dom in 1999 without much capital or many animators. Over the next few years, he cobbled together $5 million from a private investor whom he declined to name and 120 artists.
“Persuading people was colossal work,” he said. “I had to recruit people and went to Europe to meet our artists. Not everybody believed we’d get the financing.”
Eventually, Dobrunov was able to piece together a staff from the United States, Britain and Hungary. 
Six years later, after much blood, sweat and tears, he completed his first animated film: “Prince Vladimir.” 
The film has been a colossal success for a Russian-made animated production, reeling in more than $5 million since it was released in late February.
Today, “Prince Vladimir” is the most successful Russian-made animated film ever. In box-office receipts, it trails only “Madagascar,” the 2005 DreamWorks production that garnered $8 million throughout the former Soviet Union.
For now, Solnechny Dom is merely breaking even: Dobrunov expects his studio will garner $2.5 million to $3 million in revenue — not a lot, considering that it sank $5 million into the production.
But there are more opportunities on the horizon. Cascade, Solnechny Dom’s distributor, recently sold the rights to “Prince Vladimir” to Channel One; DVDs are selling briskly; and negotiations for international distribution are under way. 
Today, Dobrunov said, his studio is learning what animation giants like Pixar — which Disney is set to buy this year — learned long ago: Television, home videos, toys and related accessories are where the real money is made. 
Recently, Solnechny Dom won a contract to provide animation for “Quest for a Heart,” a film being produced by the Finnish company MRP Matila Rohr Productions. It is due out in 2007.
Pekka Lehtosaari, director of “Quest for a Heart,” said the production company had been scouring Europe for a studio that could produce a folklore-themed, animated film on a shoestring budget. Dobrunov estimated that to be $2 million.
Ultimately, Lehtosaari said, the production company turned to Solnechny Dom. “You have a long tradition of storytelling,” he said. “The way I’d put it, is there’s much more heart in these stories.”
Dobrunov said the popularity of “Prince Vladimir” was emblematic of a growing industry in Russia. “Nice things are happening to animation,” he said.
That includes, apparently, Mickey Mouse. Last month, Disney signaled that it had begun scoping out Russia for future filmmaking.
The Hollywood studio plans to “seek out local stories and local talent … that combine the Walt Disney Studios’ storytelling abilities with Russia’s rich history and culture,” said Carol Nicolau, a spokeswoman for Disney’s marketing and distribution arm, Buena Vista International.
Interestingly, Buena Vista’s distributor in Russia is Cascade, the same firm that works for Solnechny Dom.  
Nicolau added: “These stories would be developed for both the Disney and Touchstone banners and could take the form of either live action or animation.”
To this end, Disney has hired Marina Zhigalova-Ozkan to oversee its strategic planning in Russia. Zhigalova-Ozkan, formerly first deputy director at Prof-Media, started as managing director for Disney on April 1.
Sergei Lavrov, a box-office analyst with Russian Film Business Today, an industry magazine, said that cartoons took more time to pay off for investors but in the long run delivered solid revenues.
“You get a new audience every six or seven years,” Lehtosaari explained. “Disney is still releasing Pinocchio and Cinderella.” Plus, he said, “animated characters don’t want a raise and are never involved in sex scandals.”
A few Russian studios are working on 10 or so animated, feature-length films, Dobrunov said. 
Alexander Semyonov, editor of Russian Film Business Today, was skeptical of the industry’s prospects, saying that until Russians embraced computer-generated animation, they would not be on Hollywood’s radar screen.
But that may come sooner than expected. In August, London-based United International Pictures plans to release Russia’s first homegrown computer-animated film, Krakatuk, a modern version of the Nutcracker, said Yevgeny Beginin, head of UIP Russia.
Beginin is also trying to develop ties with another local studio working with computer-generated animation and has recently sent samples of its work to DreamWorks. 
Dobrunov is also optimistic. He hopes to move from his current studio, in a tool factory in northern Moscow that boasts a statue of Lenin in front, to a state-of-the-art facility. And he’d like to build a theme park like Disneyland.
For now, he’s focused on a sequel to “Prince Vladimir.”

TITLE: Standing Up to Rosneft
AUTHOR: By George Soros
TEXT: The ethical issues are relatively straightforward. The main asset of Rosneft is the Yugansk oilfield that was acquired from Yukos when that company was assessed for back taxes and its assets were auctioned off. But it was not acquired directly. The auction was won by an unknown Russian company that sold itself within days to Rosneft.
The transaction was widely believed to have been engineered by President Vladimir Putin’s powerful aide, Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin, and it was financed by compliant Russian banks. The unknown owners made an unknown amount of money on the transaction. Part of the IPO proceeds would go to repay the Russian banks.
The question is, should an IPO be allowed to go forward without disclosing the pertinent information; indeed, should it be allowed to go forward at all? To argue that it will improve transparency ignores the fact that Rosneft is an instrument of state that will always serve the political objectives of Russia in preference to the interests of the shareholders. Is Rosneft willing to put this into the prospectus?
The energy security issue is more complicated and requires some explanation. When the Soviet system disintegrated, the energy sector was privatised in a chaotic fashion. Devious transactions were perpetrated, such as the loan for shares scheme, and enormous fortunes were made. When Putin became president, he used the power of the state to regain control of the energy industry. He put the president of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in jail and bankrupted the company.
Putin put his own man, Alexei Miller, in charge of Gazprom and pushed out the previous management that had built a private fiefdom out of Gazprom’s properties. The president did not dissolve the fiefdom, however, but used it to assert control over the production and transportation of gas in the neighboring countries.
This led to the formation of a network of untransparent companies that served the dual purpose of extending Russian influence and creating private wealth. Billions of dollars were siphoned off over the years. The most valuable asset was the gas of Turkmenistan, part of which was resold by a company registered in Hungary at a multiple of the price at which it was bought. While the ownership of Eural Trans Gas was never disclosed, the decisions to give it contracts were made jointly by Putin and the then president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma. I believe that was one reason why Putin exposed himself so publicly in backing Kuchma’s nominee, Viktor Yanukovych, for president of Ukraine in 2004. After the Orange Revolution, the contract with Turkmenistan passed into the hands of RosUkrEnergo, a company with obscure ownership set up by Raiffeisenbank of Austria.
At the start of 2006, Russia cut off the gas supply to Ukraine. Ukraine, in turn, tapped into the gas that was passing through Ukraine on its way to the rest of Europe. This caused an uproar in Europe and forced Russia to restore supplies to Ukraine; but in the subsequent settlement Russia gained the upper hand. It promised gas supplies at reduced prices through RosUkrEnergo for six months, but Ukraine committed itself to fixing the transit fees for five years. After six months, Russia will be able to exert political pressure on Ukraine by threatening to raise gas prices. Russia already exercises considerable influence over Belarus.
The result is that Europe is relying for a large portion of energy supplies on a country that does not hesitate to use its monopoly power in devious and arbitrary ways. Until now, European countries have been competing with one another to obtain supplies from Russia. This has put them at Russia’s mercy. Energy dependence is having a major influence on the attitude and policies of the European Union toward Russia and its neighbors.
It will serve the national interests of the member states to develop a European energy policy. Acting together, they can improve the balance of power. In the short run, Russia is in the driver’s seat: an interruption of gas supplies disrupts European economies immediately while an interruption of gas revenues would affect Russia only with a delay. In the long run, the situation is reversed. Russia needs a market for its gas and few alternatives exist as long as Europe sticks together.
Europe could tell Russia that if it wants to maintain and increase its market in Europe, it must agree to a change in conditions by ratifying the European Energy Charter and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. This would turn the pipelines into highways, break up the Russian gas monopoly and inhibit the currently prevailing devious arrangements.
Energy security is on the agenda of the forthcoming Group of Eight meeting in St. Petersburg. If the Rosneft IPO went forward, it would consolidate and legitimize a state of affairs that is detrimental to Europe’s energy security and weaken the EU’s hand in negotiating better conditions with Russia.

George Soros is the author of The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror to be published by PublicAffairs in the United States in June. He contributed this piece to the Financial Times, where it first appeared.

TITLE: An Assembly Line Future
AUTHOR: By Anna Scherbakova
TEXT: St. Petersburg, 
May, 2012.

Dear Friend, 

How nice to hear from you, after six years of silence! So many things have changed since you left for the U.S. in 2006. I’m working in GM Corporate Communications; the kids are learning Japanese at school and already dream of working with Toyota or Nissan. 
Actually 2006 was a year when several foreign carmakers announced plans to set up plants in St. Petersburg. They hurried because preferential terms for car-assembly plants were soon to expire; they also wanted to take advantage of the local government’s additional tax-exemptions. This latter was reserved for companies that invest more than $100 million in the local economy, while preferential terms required that a minimum of 50 percent of their production should be localized in the city. Some of them brought their own supplier, who also started to produce here. Another bought up local plants, especially those that were anyway half defunct, using them to launch the production of components. 
Cars produced in St. Petersburg are not only sold in Russia but Europe-wide, so our port needed expansion. Now ferries and cranes crowd into the view from your old apartment on Vassilievsky Island. 
Several new bridges and tunnels were built to improve the circulation of traffic. But the streets are nevertheless filled with cars — I often prefer to walk rather than drive into the city-center, despite the fact that we have two cars in our garage at home. 
In general the roads and communication lines are better than six years ago, even though the famous car makers did not have to contribute to improvements in infrastructure, or very little, — they also got a five years grace-period from local taxes. This was revealed during the recent election campaign and caused a big scandal. But the multinationals launched a number of charity funds, made donations and their reputations were quickly restored. They also made use of several officials, who, after this scandal, are set to retire. 
Our old dacha, where we used to spend the school holidays, no longer exists. The entire village was destroyed to make way for a new 12-lane highway to connect an industrial zone on the city’s northern outskirts with a car terminal in Kronstadt. Obviously we got compensation — it was enough for a small cottage in Finland, which is cheaper and ecologically much more sound. 
With hundreds of foreign managers and executives coming to St. Petersburg, real estate prices rocketed, especially in older districts, where nice properties are in short supply. 
Salaries are also crawling up to European levels. New factories require thousands of new, intelligent workers; the older ones can’t cope with all the modern equipment. Our colleges are trying to train blue-collar workers, but there are still serious shortfalls. 
Your ex-boyfriend, Mike, moved to Nissan’s assembly line and gets double what he got as an engineer in the shipbuilding research institute. His new job is not as exciting, but he’s always been narrow-minded, you know. 
The lack of qualified workers means that trade unions are extremely strong, and social packages are fantastic…and for white collars too, I have to admit. For instance, the last holidays we spent in Australia and I visit the U.S. at least once every few months. Unfortunately though, only now do I have your contact details.  
How are you indeed? 
Dear Friend, I still think it was a bad idea for you to go to Detroit. 

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

TITLE: A Summit Scant Remembered
AUTHOR: By Rose Gottemoeller
TEXT: The world’s attention, and deservedly so, has been focused this April on the 20th anniversary of the accident at Chernobyl, when a nuclear power reactor exploded in flames and contaminated an enormous swath of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Since 1986, the nuclear-power establishment in this part of the world has been dealing with the consequences of this disaster, and many brave men and women have lost their lives or their health in doing so.
April brought another anniversary worth noting, though: 10 years since the Group of Seven industrialized countries gathered in Moscow to discuss the safety and security of weapons-usable nuclear materials. In April 1996, Russia was not yet a full member of the group, but the G7 leaders nevertheless wanted to give Boris Yeltsin his own G7 summit. It was a vital election year for him, and they all wanted to see him win. 
And they had other worries: The danger that nuclear materials would be stolen out of Russian facilities and sold on the black market was a terrifying possibility in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s breakup. The economy was in chaos; nuclear scientists and rocket forces officers were not being paid. Nuclear facilities were going without electricity, and their physical infrastructure was breaking down. In that environment, Yeltsin and the G7 leaders agreed that safe and effective management of weapons materials was a vital topic.
Soon after, Russia joined the group as a full member, and the process rolled on, producing annual summits in every G8 country like clockwork. This year is Russia’s turn, with a grand summit planned in St. Petersburg in July. Sadly, however, Russia and the other G8 members are disappointed in each other. Moscow complains that it hasn’t been accepted as a full club member; the others complain that Russia hasn’t stepped up to the standards of the club, particularly on matters of democratic and economic reform. 
There is certainly truth on both sides in this argument, but the fact is that the St. Petersburg summit and Russia’s G8 presidency do not seem slated, at the moment, for success. For that reason, it’s a good time to look back on the 1996 summit in Moscow and consider the record on nuclear cooperation. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve come farther than we think in Russia’s relationship with its G8 partners. 
To be honest, the Moscow nuclear summit was a bit of what we used to call a “nothing-burger” in Washington slang. It produced a grand summit statement, exhorting all to reaffirm their commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and recognizing various steps they had already taken, such as blending down highly enriched uranium so that it could no longer be used in weapons. But the meeting did not launch any new programs or nail down ongoing activities with specific deadlines. Most importantly, nobody put any new money on the table, which is always the hallmark of a summit’s success.
What the Moscow summit did do, however, was begin to meld a highly effective focus on proliferation threats within the G8. By 2002, this produced a brand new Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, launched at the Kananaskis G8 meeting in Canada. This was a successful summit: The partners pledged $20 billion over a 10-year period, $10 billion from the United States to be matched by $10 billion from the rest of the G8 countries.
Under the G8 leadership, the Global Partnership has expanded to become an international team of countries cooperating to solve nuclear security and other proliferation problems throughout Russia, and it is now also being applied in Ukraine. Interestingly, Russia has taken the clear role of a partner in this effort, bringing its own resources to the table — $2 billion over the 10-year span of the program — and leading in certain project areas such as submarine dismantlement. 
The 1996 Moscow summit also gave a boost to U.S.-Russian bilateral efforts. For much of the 1990s they had drifted, plagued by a significant confidence gap between two nuclear complexes used to operating as enemies. The Russians in particular were loath to admit they had a problem with the security of their weapons or nuclear materials. At the 1996 Moscow meeting, Yeltsin finally agreed that the nuclear security problems in Russia were serious and could exacerbate the threat of nuclear terrorism. 
This shared threat assessment in turn helped to create a coherent and intensive program to protect, control and account for nuclear weapons and materials. Although the effort suffered serious fits and starts for the next decade, by 1998, Washington and Moscow had signed an agreement to implement nuclear material protection programs. It was followed in a few years by cooperative projects to protect warheads. And at the Bratislava meeting between President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin in 2005, the two sides agreed to speed up these programs, finishing them by 2008 instead of 2012.
So although the Moscow nuclear summit was not a glory unto itself, it produced a significant change in attitude among the G8 countries. They became willing to work on the threat of nuclear proliferation in a significant partnership — including with the country where the threat is most vivid, the Russian Federation. 
Now that a grand malaise has set in and doubts are being raised about whether it’s worth continuing the G8 relationship with Russia, it’s good to remember the nonproliferation experience. Whether it’s protecting nuclear materials, cutting up submarines, stopping plutonium production, or destroying chemical weapons, the G8 partners have had a significant success. 
Russia, most importantly, has been willing to play the role of a partner. That means it has brought money to the table and taken the responsibility for doing projects right. Russia does not have to be a grumbling recipient of assistance or a corrupt manipulator of its environment. It has proven itself a pragmatic and capable partner in the nonproliferation arena. Now, the G8 countries just have to figure out whether this experience will work anywhere else in their relationship with Moscow.

Rose Gottemoeller is the director of Carnegie Moscow Center. During the Clinton administration, she was assistant secretary of energy responsible for nonproliferation programs.

TITLE: The Great Post-Soviet Wine Debate
AUTHOR: By Masha Gessen
TEXT: I don’t make a habit of reading transcripts of State Duma sessions, but perhaps I should check in once every few months, for a dose of reality on the ways and means by which my reality is increasingly shaped. Take, for example, the ban on Georgian and Moldovan wines and other Georgian products. The why doesn’t much interest me: The reasons for the bans are transparently political. But I found it instructive to read the how: the discussion that preceded the Duma’s vote on the ban the week before last.
In case you missed the great post-Soviet wine debate, here is the gist. Russia’s head hygienist, Gennady Onishchenko, declared that wines originating in Moldova and Georgia contained traces of harmful pesticides and could no longer be sold in Russia. The discovery of the pesticides came at a convenient time to punish Georgia and Moldova for recent political actions and statements that Moscow views as disloyal or hostile. The ban on wine imports, instituted last month and later extended to include brandies and sparkling wines, dealt a huge blow to both countries’ economies as well as to Russian wine importers.
Last week a resolution supporting the ban came up for discussion in the Duma. It was introduced by a United Russia deputy, who made the following statements. Many Russians deaths — roughly 13 percent of the total number — are caused by poisoning by low-quality alcohol. Onishchenko has checked Georgian and Moldovan wines and decided that they are the culprit. The Duma should support Onishchenko.
None of the study results cited by the United Russia representative were distributed among the deputies. And if I were a Duma member, I’d be surprised that relatively expensive imported wines are the cause of alcohol poisoning, which, common sense would suggest, is far more likely to stem from cheap vodka. One of the deputies was surprised, and did ask for documents. The United Russia presenter responded that the Duma had no reason to doubt Onishchenko’s word. It was, then, a matter of trust and loyalty.
Several deputies immediately affirmed their loyalty to and trust in the country’s top hygienist. Then another deputy, an agronomist by training, stood up and, in a roundabout way, suggested that Onishchenko may not be entirely trustworthy, since he claims to have found traces of pesticides that haven’t been used in decades, and indeed have never been used on grape plantations. He got no response at all.
A short while later, a deputy representing the Rodina faction took the floor. “The executive branch made decisions on Georgia and Moldova at the same time,” he noted. “It’s as if the stuff of winemaking went bad in both countries at the same time. And at the same time brandies and mineral water went bad as well. Isn’t that strange? Of course it’s strange. Why are we voting on a resolution that’s all made up of strangeness? ... And no one is even asking us to do this.” This was an important point. There was no indication that the consumer protection service or customs service actually needed a Duma resolution to maintain the ban. But the Duma seemed to need to prove its loyalty and trust to the executive branch.
You have probably noticed I didn’t cite any of these people by name. Their names would not be familiar to anyone. These men are virtually anonymous, themselves perfectly aware of the fact that their names, faces and words mean nothing: No one even really needs their resolution. Still, 349 of them voted in favor of the resolution; only two voted against it. That may or may not have anything to do with why you and I are no longer going to be able to buy Georgian wine or mineral water, or — it now seems likely — fruit and vegetables, or why a number of Russian importers are now hemorrhaging money, or why we pay taxes to keep the parliament in business, whatever its business is.

Masha Gessen is a Moscow-based journalist.

TITLE: Chelsea Retain Title, Midlands Despair
AUTHOR: By Martyn Herman
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Chelsea staged a Premier League title-winning party after a 3-0 rout of Manchester United on Saturday but it was doom and gloom for Midlands clubs Birmingham City and West Bromwich Albion who were relegated.
Goals from William Gallas, Joe Cole and Ricardo Carvalho sealed a second successive title for Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and United’s misery was complete when England striker Wayne Rooney was carried off on a stretcher with a foot injury.
Liverpool kept alive their hopes of pipping United for second place, moving level on points with their rivals after Steven Gerrard scored twice in a 3-1 defeat of Aston Villa.
United and Liverpool have 79 points to Chelsea’s 91, although United are still favorites to finish second as they have an extra game remaining.
There were emotional scenes after Charlton Athletic’s 2-0 home defeat by Blackburn Rovers following the announcement that Alan Curbishley, the second-longest serving top flight manager, was quitting at the end of the season.
Chelsea’s joy was mirrored by Portsmouth’s fans at Wigan Athletic’s JJB Stadium where a 2-1 victory for the south coast side completed a remarkable escape from the drop.
For the second week running Pompey, who looked destined for relegation two months ago, came from a goal behind to clinch victory with a Matt Taylor penalty.
Portsmouth’s victory condemned Birmingham, who could only draw 0-0 at home to Newcastle United, and West Brom, who play West Ham United on Monday. They will join Sunderland in the second division next season.
“I had to throw a team together at Christmas,” said Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp, who returned for a second spell at the club in December to replace Frenchman Alain Perrin.
“I took over a poor squad, with many players who were nowhere near good enough to play for Pompey.
“I shipped the ones out who weren’t interested in playing for us and brought in players who wanted to play for this club. We’ve got a great spirit here.”
Birmingham boss Steve Bruce congratulated Redknapp on a run of six wins and two draws in their last nine games.
“Of course we are very disappointed but I want to congratulate Harry on an unbelievable run,” said Bruce on the club’s web site.
“Their form has been championship winning form not relegation form and was too good for any of us to catch.
“One point from our first seven games is what killed us.”
Rooney’s foot injury, which will be scanned on Sunday, cast a shadow over England’s World Cup hopes.
The sight of Newcastle striker Michael Owen limping on his return as a substitute at Birmingham after a four-month layoff with a broken foot has added to Sven-Goran Eriksson’s worries.
“There is a little bit of a dull ache there, so he (Owen) is being honest, as he always is,” Newcastle manager Glenn Roeder told the club’s website.
“He is not saying he is feeling a sharp pain or an excessive pain but he just doesn’t feel 100 percent right.”
Two days after an astonishing 4-3 aggregate win over Steaua Bucharest in the UEFA Cup semi-final, Middlesbrough made nine changes and lost 1-0 at home to a late goal by Everton.
Fulham ended a 12-month wait for an away league victory with a 2-1 win at Manchester City.
Sadly for Curbishley, who has been in charge of Charlton since 1991 and is still seen as a contender for the England coaching job, there was to be no glorious farewell.
Goals by Steven Reid and an own goal from Chris Powell wrapped up the points for Rovers to keep them firmly in the hunt for a place in next season’s UEFA Cup. Curbishley received a standing ovation from both sets of fans and the Rovers coaching staff.
The battle for fourth spot continues on Sunday when Tottenham Hotspur welcome Bolton Wanderers looking to consolidate the final Champions League qualification spot.
Fifth-placed Arsenal, who are four points behind Spurs with a game in hand, play at bottom club Sunderland on Monday.

TITLE: Dramatic Chip In Couched In Victory
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — Unheralded American Chris Couch produced one of the PGA Tour’s most unlikely wins with a dramatic one-shot victory at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans Sunday.
The 32-year-old from Florida, who has played mainly on the minor Nationwide Tour, chipped in from 50 feet at the last for an unlikely par-four and a seven-under-par 65.
That left Couch on 19-under 269, just ahead of playing partner Charles Howell III whose 65 earned him a tie for second with PGA Tour veteran Fred Funk, after a best-of-the-week 62.
“This means so much,” a beaming Couch told reporters after receiving a winner’s cheque for $1.08 million, more than triple his previous career earnings on the PGA Tour.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet, but for a guy who has come from nothing to now have a million dollars is absolutely incredible.
“I would have liked to have made it a little easier, I will tell you that,” added Couch, a five-times winner on the Nationwide Tour. “My heart can’t take many of those.
“It couldn’t have been a better finish. I’m sure the crowd loved it.”
One stroke clear overnight, Couch covered the front nine at English Turn Golf & Country Club in a blistering six-under 30 to forge three ahead of the chasing pack.
Hardly surprisingly, the final round featured plenty of low-scoring on receptive greens softened by an overnight thunderstorm.
Despite feeling the pressure down the stretch, the twice All-America selection from the University of Florida appeared to have the title firmly within his grasp after a three-foot birdie putt at the 16th put him two ahead.
However, the tobacco-chewing American dropped his only shot of the day after finding damp sand in a greenside bunker off the tee at the par-three 17th and did well to avoid a double-bogey there by holing a 10-footer.
Against the odds, he avoided another error on 18, despite finding a poor lie in the back of another bunker after overhitting the green with his wedge approach and underhitting his third shot into a collar of rough.
“I had two chip-ins today, which is unbelievable for me,” said Couch, who uses an unconventional cross-handed grip for chipping. “I don’t remember the last time I did that.
“When I was over that last shot. I was thinking this would be a great way to win the golf tournament, chip this thing in here. It would be something to remember always.”
Australia’s Stuart Appleby, hunting his third PGA Tour title this year, holed his approach at the sixth for an eagle-three on his way to a 64 and a share of fourth at 15 under with Americans Brett Wetterich (66) and Joe Durant (68).
American Lucas Gover was a further stroke back in a four-way tie for seventh, a run of six birdies in seven holes helping him to a 63.

TITLE: Nadal’s Thoughts Turn Toward Defence of French Open Title
AUTHOR: By Simon Cambers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BARCELONA — Rafael Nadal, in sight of Argentine Guillermo Vilas’s record claycourt streak of 53 successive victories, is dreaming of a successful French Open title defence later this month.
The 19-year-old Spaniard overtook Swede Bjorn Borg in the Open Era list on Sunday, claiming his 47th consecutive win on clay by beating compatriot Tommy Robredo 6-4 6-4 6-0 to capture the Barcelona Open for the second year in a row.
Victory in next week’s Rome Masters Series event would put Nadal level with Vilas on 53, although he said the record was not his main goal.
“I’ve achieved my main objective (taking the title) here and I’ve overtaken Borg’s number of wins,” the world number two told reporters. 
“I guess I could try to go for Vilas’s total in Rome but I have my sights set on Roland Garros.”
Borg achieved his run of 46 wins between October 1977 and May 1979 while Vilas’s mark of 53 was set in 1977.
“It is a generation ago and perhaps the competition was not as great as it is now,” said Nadal. “I am not understating their records at all, they are great, but it is hard to compare.”
Borg sent a message of congratulations to Nadal after he passed the former world number one on the list.
The Spaniard said: “Borg is one of the greatest players of all time. I have only seen bits of his play on video but he won six French Opens and five Wimbledons, I don’t know if I can do that.”
Victories over Roger Federer in the finals of Dubai and Monte Carlo this year, in an era when the Swiss is all but unbeatable, have extended Nadal’s winning record against the world number one to 4-1.
Nadal will go into the French Open, which starts on May 29, as the favorite, having won in Monte Carlo and Barcelona.

TITLE: Sun Setting on Phoenix Hopes
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LOS ANGELES, California — Kobe Bryant’s jumper at the buzzer propelled the Los Angeles Lakers to a pulsating 99-98 overtime win over the Phoenix Suns on Sunday to highlight a day of shock results in the National Basketball Association playoffs. 
Bryant’s dramatic buzzer-beater put the underdog Lakers up 3-1 in the best-of-seven Western Conference quarter-final to leave the second-seeded Suns facing a must-win situation in Game Five in Phoenix on Tuesday.
The Sacramento Kings, Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards also posted wins to even their series at 2-2 as the NBA post-season continued to take unexpected twists and turns.
After taking a 2-0 series lead, the San Antonio Spurs return home for Game Five on Tuesday all-square after the Kings cruised to a 102-84 win handing the defending champions one of their worst beatings of the season.
Second-seeded Miami is also feeling heat after falling 93-87 to the Bulls who leveled their Eastern quarter-final at 2-2 while the Wizards eased past LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers 106-96 to square that series at two each. 	     
Bryant, who has tried to use his team mates and resist the temptation to try and do it all himself throughout the series, stepped forward when he had to by nailing two clutch buckets, the game winner and a last-gasp basket with under a second remaining in regulation to level the game at 90-90.
“It was the most fun shot I’ve ever hit,” Bryant told reporters. “Just because it’s us as a unit enjoying this moment together with the entire city of L.A.”
Bryant finished with 24 points despite sitting out large parts of the contest due to foul trouble while Lamar Odom had a game high 25.
Nash led the Suns with 22 points and 11 assists.
“I’ve been in a lot of playoff battles but never had one quite like this,” Bryant said. “We had our backs against the wall and we were seemingly out of it.” 
In Sacramento, Bonzi Wells had 25 points and pulled down a career high 17 rebounds as the eighth-seeded Kings stunned the top-seeded Spurs with some aggressive play to post their second consecutive home win.
To the delight of their home crowd, the Kings administered an old-fashioned beating to the reigning NBA champions as they stormed to a 26-point lead in the fourth quarter, the biggest deficit the Spurs have faced this season.
Brad Miller contributed 19 points to the Kings cause while Mike Bibby added 16. Tony Parker had 22 points to lead the Spurs while Tim Duncan was the only other San Antonio player to hit double figures with 17.
In Chicago, Kirk Hinrich hit a 27-foot jump shot with just over a minute left and the Bulls converted five-of-six free throw attempts in the final 26 seconds to hold off Miami.