SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1169 (35), Tuesday, May 16, 2006
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TITLE: Torture Claim Made Against City Official
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Several members of Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party, who had been arrested on April 27 for disrupting the festivities marking the 100th anniversary of the State Russian Duma, say they were tortured by the police and a City Hall official.
While the city prosecutor’s office is investigating the incident, the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly has supported an appeal prepared by lawmaker Sergei Gulyayev asking Governor Valentina Matviyenko to comment on the matter.
“They ripped my clothes off except for my underpants, put a bag over my head to suffocate me, pressed my eyes and beat me,” said National Bolshevik member Sergei Chekunov, one of the protesters detained by the police. 
“The beatings were professional: the pain was excruciating but the kicks left very few marks,” Chekunov said. 
After their release the protesters went to a state-run first aid clinic to have their injuries documented. 
When the State Duma legislators approached the Tavrichesky Palace to celebrate the 100th anniversary of parliamentarism in Russia on April 27, they were confronted by a group of National Bolsheviks. Gathered around the palace, the protestors held posters that read “This Duma is a shame on Russia” and “The worst parliament in the history of Russia”, and called for the resignation of Russia’s leaders. 
Between 1906 and 1917 the palace hosted the first four sessions of Russia’s Duma.
A group of National Bolsheviks also gathered on the roof of a nearby building holding posters and yelling out slogans. Four activists, who chained themselves to the fence that surrounds the Tavrichesky Palace were detained and taken to Police Station No. 76. 
An official statement posted on the National Bolshevik Party website said pressure was put on the activists by Sergei Barkan, an official with City Hall’s Committee For Youth Affairs, and the police, who wanted Chekunov and his comrades to give them the names of the organizers of the protest. 
As yet, Smolny has not commented on the allegations.
Andrei Milyuk, another National Bolshevik activist detained during the incident, said the police not only tortured the detainees physically but also sought to humiliate them. 
Gulyayev’s appeal to Matviyenko, supported by the Legislative  Assembly last Thursday, asks the governor “to assess Sergei Barkan’s actions and determine whether these actions are compatible with his status as a civil servant and an official with the St. Petersburg administration.”
Yuly Rybakov, a prominent human rights advocate and formerly a member of the State Russian Duma, described the appeal as one-sided.
“The appeal seems to have been sent primarily because the incident involves an administrative official, as if police torture has become so commonplace that it hardly shocks anymore, as if society is resigned to it,” Rybakov said on Monday in a telephone interview.
Rybakov is the author of a proposed amendment to Russia’s Criminal Code in 2002 that suggested a stiffening of sentences for any official caught using torture or physical abuse, with sentences of up to 20 years. 
The Duma supported the amendment during its first reading but the process then stalled and it was not passed.
“After the parliament overwhelmingly supported the amendment, the Interior Affairs Ministry and the Prosecutor’s Office went mad and used all their influence to shut down this initiative,” Rybakov said. “And no wonder they expressed such concern: beating and torture have long been their preferred — if not their only — method to get confessions, evidence or moral submission,” Rybakov said.

TITLE: Abbas Calls for Talks To Be Held With Israel
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expressed hope Monday for a swift renewal of peace talks with Israel and prodded the new Hamas government to forgo violence against the Jewish state. 
Abbas said he had come to Russia — a member of the so-called “Quartet” of international Mideast peace makers — to discuss ways to move the political process forward. 
The meeting took place at Putin’s residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. 
Putin, who has sought to boost Russia’s Mideast role, called Russia “a friend of the Palestinian people” in televised comments and praised Abbas for “big efforts to normalize the atmosphere in the Palestinian territories.”
While appealing to both sides of the conflict on a day Palestinians set aside to mourn Israel’s creation, Abbas expressed concern that the economic crisis in the Palestinian territories would deepen if not resolved soon. 
“We expect the new Israeli government to enter into talks with us, as we are its partner and believe in a peaceful resolution,” the ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies quoted Abbas as saying during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. 
In a separate speech broadcast on Palestinian radio and television, Abbas told Israel, “we want to make a just and lasting peace with you.” 
“Let’s sit at the negotiating table, away from the dictates and the unilateral policies, and let’s stop the pretext that there’s no Palestinian partner,” he added. 
“The partner exists, and we extend our hand to you to make peace.” 
Abbas also signaled to the rival Hamas party that it, too, must pursue the path of diplomacy. 
“The PLO, which led our people in its most difficult times, would not have survived until now, or received international recognition, had it not been forthcoming in formulating courageous political initiatives,” he said. 
He also called on Palestinian militants in Gaza to halt rocket attacks on Israel that have prompted harsh reprisals. 
“The futile ‘missiles’ fired from Gaza should be stopped, as they only justify Israel’s aggression against our people,” he said. 
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said his government wanted peace, but he dismissed the notion of bypassing Hamas and negotiating with Abbas. 
“No one can ignore the reality following the Palestinian election; substantive political power has moved to Hamas,” Regev said. 
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hopes to win international support for his plans to withdraw from much of the West Bank and will be presenting the program to U.S. officials in Washington next week. 
Olmert is expected to meet with Abbas after the Washington trip, though formal peace talks appear unlikely. Olmert says he would prefer a negotiated accord but will act unilaterally if Hamas does not soften its line within months. 
“The only way is talks that would lead to a resolution on the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and at which a solution would be found that satisfies both sides and puts an end to unresolved problems,” he said, according to the news agencies. 
Abbas thanked Putin for transferring $10 million to an account controlled by Abbas earlier this month, calling Russia a “friendly state that invariably supports the Palestinian people.” 
The decision to send the aid came before the Quartet — which also includes the United States, the European Union and the United Nations — decided last week to set up a temporary trust fund to funnel aid directly to the Palestinian people, bypassing the Hamas government. 
At a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said she hoped the fund would be operating by June. 
The West cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid after Hamas was elected to power earlier this year. Israel also stopped transferring hundreds of millions of dollars in tax and customs revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. 
As a result, salaries for 165,000 Palestinian government workers are two months late. The Palestinians need $116 million a month to pay salaries. 
Israel now has agreed to release an unspecified amount of humanitarian aid. 
Putin invited Hamas leaders to Moscow for a March meeting that provoked anger in Israel and surprise among the other Quartet members. But Russia has made no apparent headway in persuading Hamas to renounce violence and recognize Israel. 
Olmert’s plan to dismantle dozens of isolated Jewish settlements while strengthening settlement blocs would involve a significant pullback. But it still falls short of the Palestinian claim to all the West Bank and east Jerusalem — territories Israel captured in 1967 along with the recently evacuated Gaza Strip. 
Olmert believes the pullback is needed to ensure Israel’s status as a democracy with a Jewish majority. 
Abbas’ broadcast speech marked “the Naqba,” or “catastrophe” — the term Palestinians use to describe Israel’s creation on May 15, 1948. Some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during the war that followed the declaration of the Jewish state. 
About 2,000 Palestinians from rival factions joined a commemoration outside the parliament building in Gaza City, waving banners, Palestinian flags and models of keys symbolizing lost homes in what is now Israel. Ambulance sirens wailed for one minute to mark the occasion. 
“Refugees are the cause of the conflict, and their return is the solution,” a large billboard said. 
In previous years, Naqba crowds numbered hundreds of thousands. 
The low turnout this year appeared to be related to economic hardship in Palestinian territories, which has made travel difficult, and to rivalry between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah. 
Hamas planned its own event later in the day in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

TITLE: Prosecutors To Appeal Ruling in Murder Case
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prosecutors on Monday asked Russia’s Supreme Court to retry two men who were acquitted of murdering Paul Klebnikov, the American editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian edition. 
The Prosecutor General’s Office filed a complaint asking the high court to throw out the verdict reached at a closed-door jury trial earlier this month, and order a new trial, its press office said. 
Ethnic Chechens Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev were cleared in the killing of Klebnikov, a well-known journalist and author who was fatally shot on a Moscow street outside the magazine’s office in July 2004. 
Prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin had vowed immediately after the Moscow City Court trial that he would appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court, claiming that unspecified “flagrant procedural violations” influenced the jury’s decision. Acquittals can be appealed in Russia. 
The killing deepened concerns about media freedom in Russia and sparked speculation about who might have been behind the slaying of Klebnikov, who investigated corruption and sought to shed light on the closed, sometimes violent world of Russian business and its ties to government officials. 
Prosecutors claimed the defendants killed Klebnikov on behalf of Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, a Chechen separatist figure who was the subject of a critical book written by Klebnikov titled “Conversations with a Barbarian.” Nukhayev, who is also sought in connection with the case, remains at large. 
The U.S. government and Klebnikov’s family, whose roots are in Russia, have urged prosecutors to thoroughly investigate all angles and stressed the need to bring those behind the killing to justice — not just those who carried it out. After the trial, his family urged Russia to investigate with “renewed vigor.” 
Critics of Russia’s justice system, widely seen as lacking independence from the Kremlin, have said prosecutors failed to properly pursue other lines of investigation in the case. 
Lawyers for the defendants also criticized the prosecution’s investigation, saying it was riddled with legal violations. Defense lawyers said Monday that witnesses were physically abused and subjected to threats to force them to support the prosecution’s case. 
One of the lawyers, who represented a third defendant tried alongside the Chechens on separate charges, said several witnesses in the trial retracted testimony they provided to interrogators during the investigation. 
“In my 15 years as a lawyer, I’ve never seen such falsifications,” said the attorney, Ruslan Koblev. 
A man employed as a driver by his client also told reporters that he was beaten to try to force him to testify in the case. 
The level of pressure against witnesses was “unprecedented for our legal system,” Koblev said. 
The defense lawyers also said that the prosecution ignored evidence, including the conclusion of forensic and ballistic tests that Klebnikov had been shot from two different types of guns and from two distances — contradicting the prosecution’s case that said Dukuzov was the only gunman.

TITLE: Chief Prosecutor Says Organized Crime Now Key Security Threat
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s top prosecutor urged law enforcement authorities to do a better job fighting organized crime, saying it is becoming a national security threat. 
Vladimir Ustinov’s remarks Monday followed a series of high-level dismissals that President Vladimir Putin said were part of an effort to curb corruption. 
“Today we are forced to acknowledge that the spread and scale of organized crime in Russia is taking on the character of a national threat,” Ustinov told representatives of law enforcement agencies in televised comments. 
Organized crime groups are active “in all large cities without exception, and have penetrated into most towns,” he said, reading from a report. He said police and prosecutors must take strong action to bring organized crime leaders to justice, lamenting that convictions of such criminals are rare. 
To count such convictions, he said, “You don’t have to take off your shoes, the fingers on two hands are enough.” 
Ustinov said that the shake-up last week, in which senior officials in the Federal Customs Service were among those dismissed, shows that organized crime groups have established a firm presence in the customs system and “feel at home there.” 
The firings in the Customs Service, the Federal Security Service, Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor General’s Office were announced Friday, two days after Putin called for a stronger anti-corruption effort in his annual state of the nation speech. 
Analysts and the media said the ousters indicated a strike against what may have been a ring of corrupt officials linked to illegal customs schemes, and Putin said Saturday the shake-up followed a long investigation by internal security organs at customs and the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency. 
Putin said that the level of graft in Russia was “unacceptably” high and promised to continue his anti-corruption crusade. While Putin stressed that officials are making money through corruption, Ustinov made no specific mention of government officials, referring repeatedly to organized crime groups.

TITLE: Heads Roll in New Drive Against State Corruption
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreckand Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ten senior law enforcement officials were fired Friday as part of President Vladimir Putin’s anti-corruption pledge.
Major Generals Yevgeny Kolesnikov and Alexander Plotnikov, both Federal Security Service deputy heads, were let go Friday, Interfax said. A third Federal Security Service officer, Lieutenant General Sergei Fomenko, was also fired.
Kolesnikov and Plotnikov dealt with counterterrorism and anti-constitutional activities. Fomenko was the head of the department responsible for fighting drug trafficking. 
Other terminations included those of Mikhail Nikonov, first deputy prosecutor at the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office, and six senior Interior Ministry officials. One of those was Sergei Minasyan, the transport police chief of Adler airport.
The airport, which serves Sochi, was the destination of an Armenian plane that crashed earlier this month in the Black Sea, killing all 113 on board.
Separately, Alexander Zherikhov, head of the Federal Customs Service, was fired Friday, one day after Putin moved the service from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and put it under the direct control of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov. Andrei Belyaninov, one of Putin’s KGB colleagues from his days in East Germany and the current head of the Federal Service for Defense Contracts, replaces Zherikhov.
More people are likely to be fired, Putin suggested. “The work is not over, and not only within customs,” Putin said in televised remarks.
Putin said the dismissals were not meant to coincide with his state-of-the-nation address, in which he touched on corruption. “When I was working on the address, I knew that work [related to the dismissals] was under way,” Putin said.
The president suggested the Federal Security Service, or FSB, played a central role in all of the terminations.
Spokespersons for the affected agencies who could be reached by telephone declined to comment.
Pro-Kremlin political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky said the shake-up showed Putin was serious about tackling corruption.
Georgy Satarov, head of Indem, a think tank that deals with corruption-related issues, was skeptical of what the shake-up would bring. “It’s battling corrupt individuals, not corruption,” Satarov told Interfax. “The system needs to be changed.”
Andrei Soldatov, an independent security analyst, said the terminations reflected, above all, the FSB’s mounting influence and internal changes at the security agency.
A counterterrorism law signed by Putin in March made the National Anti-Terrorist Committee the top panel for coordinating anti-terrorism activities. The panel is headed by FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev. 
The new law also put regional FSB chiefs in charge of anti-terrorism efforts, meaning that in the event of a terrorist incident, all security operations would be run by FSB officials. 
The FSB’s growing influence was also reflected in the choice of Belyaninov as head of the Federal Customs Service, given that Belyaninov worked with Putin in the KGB’s Dresden office in the 1980s.
Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, called Belyaninov a “cashier” who paid Putin his monthly salary. 
Belyaninov’s tenure at Rosoboronexport, the state arms-trading monopoly, from November 2000 to April 2004, “undoubtedly” played a role in his appointment, Pukhov said. His record at the Federal Service for Defense Contracts, which he has headed since leaving Rosoboronexport, also helped him, Pukhov said. 
“His task there was to act as a watchdog over how the military brass spent money,” Pukhov said of Belyaninov’s work at the Federal Service for Defense Contracts. “He was partially successful with this, but not as successful as his work with Rosoboronexport.”
The appointment solidifies the control of the clan of current and former security officials, many of whom come from St. Petersburg, known as the siloviki, said political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank. 
Pribylovsky said the appointment would do nothing to curb corruption. “The corruption will remain, but the money will be going to a different clan,” Pribylovsky said.
In a related move, Sergei Mironov, speaker of the Federation Council, has taken steps to remove from power Boris Gutin, the representative of the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district legislature; Igor Ivanov, of Primorye region; Arkady Sarkisyan, of the republic of Khakasia; and Alexander Sabadash of the Nenets autonomous district.
Stanislav Belkovsky, director of the Council for National Strategy think tank, said Gutin and Ivanov were involved in customs-related “schemes.” Sarkisyan and Sabadash, he said, are being punished for carving out their own power bases within the security agencies.

TITLE: Fans Bowled Over by New Cup
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A cricket tournament for international students played from Thursday to Sunday was the first of its kind in St. Petersburg.
The pitch was not exactly as clipped as Lord’s, the ball was borrowed from another sport and the British team crashed out early, but participants in the The St. Petersburg Cricket Cup 2006 brought to the city the passion of one of the world’s most popular and perplexing sports.
The tournament, which took place at the Polytechnic Institute Stadium near Ploshchad Muzhestva, gathered eight teams from four continents. 
A team of Indian players, India 11, won the tournament Sunday, beating team Diamond, a combined team of Indian and Pakistani students. 
The traditional cricketing rivalry between India and Pakistan is often seen as a peaceful alternative to political conflict between the two nations. But on Sunday, politics was present anyway.
“The political discussions will always be there, but it is everywhere — also in football,” organizer Lanson George, an Indian, said.
A team from the British Council fell in the first knockout round to a World 11 made up of engineering students from all over the world.
Cricket, played between two teams of eleven players on a oval grass field with a 20.12 meter flat pitch in the middle, is a bat-and-ball sport from the same family as baseball and softball.
Orginating in England, the sport is wildly popular in countries of the former British Empire and its complex rules and rich folklore often make it baffling to spectators not steeped in its traditions.
A professional cricket match can last up to five days, but at the St. Petersburg Cricket Cup, matches were shortened to wrap up the tournament in one weekend. 
The equipment used was not exactly up to regulation standard either.
“We have the bats from home, because we cannot buy the proper equipment in Russia,” organizer Zahid Ahmid said as he dribbled the tennis ball that substituted for a proper cricket ball, which is a hard leather ball about the size of a fist. 
Without the correct protective equipment, playing with a real cricket ball can be lethal. 
Approximately 40 cricket fans, mainly medical students from South Asian countries, cheered loudly when the final began.
Umpires, who followed tradition and wore ties and hats, kept the match moving as the young students bowled, batted and ran as best they could.
Whenever the ball was in play, the attacking team was ever eager to destroy its opponent’s wicket. 
When the tennis ball hit the wicket, putting out the batsman defending it, the attacking team celebrated as if they had scored a goal in soccer.
The final was a four-hour thriller in which India 11 trailed to the Diamonds for the most of the game, but recovered and won by a single run to take home the inaugural St. Petersburg Cricket Cup. 
The spectators also enjoyed the sporting spectacle.
“I never thought I was going to see this game in this country,” a thrilled fan said during the match.

TITLE: World Jewish Congress Gathers in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Oliver Bullough
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Jews, who for decades have been encouraged to leave for Israel, are changing tack with a new movement to develop their distinctive culture at home. 
But the moves to boost Russian Jews’ self-confidence risk colliding with a resurgence of nationalists, who have already staged several anti-Semitic attacks this year. 
Leaders of the World Jewish Congress flew into Moscow last week for a Limmud — talks with community leaders from all over the former Soviet Union — in an attempt to support efforts to encourage cultural and educational renewal. 
“This is a kind of grassroots movement. After a half-century of ‘let my people go’ in the Soviet Union, this is a chance to say let my people know,” said Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress’ policy council. 
“This is a way of responding to the needs of the Jews of the former Soviet Union and particularly the needs of the Jews outside Moscow,” he said, speaking in a Moscow cultural center where little children ran from room to room, giggling to each other in Hebrew. 
The Limmud, an institution that started in Britain and is spreading to other countries, features dance, cinema, language and other aspects of traditional culture. Organizers hope it will lead to young Jews rediscovering their heritage. 
“In my opinion, next year there will not just be a Limmud for the former Soviet Union, but one for Russia, one for Ukraine, one for Belarus,” said Alexander Pyatigogsky, 25, who organized the forum.

TITLE: Putin Hosts Karimov on Andijan Anniversary
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin praised blossoming ties with Uzbekistan during warm talks with Uzbek President Islam Karimov in Sochi on the eve of the first anniversary of the bloody crackdown in Andijan.
The timing of Friday’s meeting rankled human rights activists, who accused Putin, at best, of tacitly supporting the May 13, 2005, violence. 
The European Union and the United States reiterated calls for Uzbekistan to provide a full account of what happened in Andijan, where witnesses and activists say Uzbek troops abruptly opened fire on a mostly unarmed crowd, killing hundreds of people.
Karimov has drawn his country closer to Russia amid Western criticism over Andijan, and Putin was visibly annoyed Friday when a reporter asked him why the Kremlin supported the Uzbek government.
“We know better than you what happened in Andijan,” he snapped back.
Russia’s long-held position is that criminals with the aid of terrorists attempted to stage an uprising.
Neither the Kremlin press service nor the Uzbek Embassy could say whether it was a coincidence that Friday’s talks coincided with the Andijan anniversary. A Kremlin spokeswoman said she was unaware of how the date had been picked, while Uzbek Embassy spokesman Muzafar Zakhidov could not be reached for comment. Other embassy officials, reached by telephone, declined to comment.
 The Kremlin web site said only that Karimov had arrived “for a working visit at the invitation of the Russian side.”
Putin arrived at his Bocharov Ruchei summer residence on the Black Sea on Thursday, a day after delivering his annual state-of-the-nation address. He is to host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday and participate in a Russia-EU meeting on May 25, said a statement posted on Kremlin.ru.
As he welcomed Karimov, Putin hailed a recently ratified treaty between their two countries that aims to strengthen political, economic, security and humanitarian ties.
“This is ... a step toward creating qualitatively new cooperation,” Putin said in televised remarks as his black labrador Connie played nearby. “We must also note the positive trend in our trade and economic cooperation.” 
Putin said the talks would focus on the treaty and the situation in Central Asia, which Russia considers part of its sphere of influence. “We are not at all indifferent about this because it is our home,” he said. 
Karimov took a swipe at the United States, which was evicted from its military base in Uzbekistan after criticizing Andijan. “We are seeing very serious challenges and attempts by powers from outside the region to establish a presence,” he said, Itar-Tass reported. 
Putin and Karimov also discussed energy cooperation, and Karimov invited Russian companies to participate in privatization auctions for Uzbek enterprises, RIA-Novosti reported. 
“There are great prospects for developing relations, not only with LUKoil and Gazprom but with other big Russian companies,” Karimov said.
Russia strengthened its gas partnership with Uzbekistan in January, when Gazprom signed a deal to buy more gas this year from Uzbekistan, helping to secure gas supplies for Ukraine under a controversial deal with trader RosUkrEnergo.
Vitaly Ponomaryov, head of the Central Asia program for rights group Memorial, sharply criticized the meeting and likened Andijan to tsarist Russia’s Bloody Sunday, when palace guards opened fire on a peaceful procession of about 140,000 workers in St. Petersburg on Jan. 22, 1905, killing and wounding some 4,600 people.
“This is a symbolic gesture by Russia and Putin to show support for Karimov despite the fact that the [Andijan] massacre can be compared to the 1905 Bloody Sunday,” Ponomaryov said.
Human Rights Watch on Friday urged the United States to impose visa bans against Karimov and other senior officials to mirror EU sanctions imposed last fall. 
It also called on both the EU and the United States to freeze the foreign assets of all officials on the visa ban list. 
“This was a disproportionate use of force against unarmed civilians, and for Russia to support it is shocking and very telling about Russia’s relation to human rights,” said Allison Gill, head of the Human Rights Watch Moscow office.
Gill noted that Russia had assisted the Uzbek government in hunting down Uzbeks abroad. 
Fourteen Uzbeks wanted in connection with Andijan are waiting in Ivanovo for a final court decision on their extradition to Uzbekistan, she said.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana issued a statement condemning “the continuing refusal of the Uzbek authorities to heed the calls of the EU and others for a credible investigation into those events.”
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said in a statement that no internationally accepted account of the Andijan events had been established. 
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Uzbek government “still owes the victims and survivors a full accounting of what took place,” The Associated Press reported.
McCormack said the U.S. administration would not rule out support for sanctions against Uzbekistan. Two Republican lawmakers introduced sanctions legislation earlier in the week. 
 Rights activists urged the Ukrainian government on Saturday to ensure that 11 Uzbeks who were deported in February amid widespread international criticism receive fair treatment by Uzbek authorities, the AP reported. 
Ukraine says those deported were members of an al-Qaida-linked terror group and had been trying to spread radical propaganda in Ukraine. 
 Plainclothes security officers on Friday broke up a small demonstration of activists in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, demanding an independent probe into the Andijan crackdown, the AP reported. 
Nine activists gathered at a memorial to victims of a 1966 earthquake that leveled the city, placing red carnations and a stuffed toy bear on the monument. They then unfurled banners reading, “Shame on Uzbekistan, shame on Islam Karimov,” and calling for “an independent investigation into the Andijan events” — prompting plainclothes officers to rush from across the street to grab the posters and take them away after a brief struggle. 
The demonstrators remained for about half an hour before dispersing.

TITLE: Rice, Lavrov Cross Swords
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: NEW YORK — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traded angry words when they met last week at a summit in New York on Iran’s nuclear program, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
At a private meeting with Rice and other foreign ministers in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Lavrov repeatedly complained about comments made by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney about Russia, the paper said. He also complained about comments made by Nicholas Burns, the State Department’s number three, that criticized Russia’s involvement in Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, the Telegraph said.
“This meeting isn’t going anywhere,” Rice told Lavrov.  The meeting, planned for 30 minutes, stretched to 2 hours.

TITLE: Finns Looking to Carve Out Opening in Market
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Finnish entrepreneurs in the Koli region have confirmed their intention to attract both Russian investors and tourists through a series of large-scale developments.
The Koli mountain region of Finland is 520 km from St. Petersburg and 70 km from Joensuu airport. The area’s main attraction is as a forest reserve.
In late 2004 a group of Finnish businessmen started promoting tourism through the acquisition of real estate objects and land within the framework of the “Koe se Kollila!” (Feel the beauty of Koli!) project.
This fall they are starting construction of an aquapark — a golf course is to follow soon — that should contribute to the region’s pull, the entrepreneurs said.
Construction of the aquapark, as part of a sanatorium, will be funded by Finnish investors, said Jukka Suninen, a project participant and head of the Kolikeskus Oy company.
“It will be a small aquapark for families,” Suninen said. He estimated the project to be worth over 11 million euros ($14 million).
To stimulate the foreign purchase of regional real estate, the city of Lieksa, in cooperation with local businesspeople, is organizing a real estate fair from June 16 till July 19. At the fair they will present both property, such as cottages, and construction materials.
Suninen, who will present wooden and concrete houses at the fair, said that a typical cottage costs between 140,000 euros and 300,000 euros. Prices start from 1000 euros per square meter.
Suninen has invested about four million euros into land and cottage development. He said that lots of Russians come for skiing in Lapenranta, where his company is based, and rent or buy cottages, something that stimulated him to develop the same business in Koli.
According to Suninen, Russians have some specific demands when buying cottages. They prefer “lots of bedrooms and privacy.” 
In rented cottages Russians stay longer than Europeans — for 10 to 14 days.
St. Petersburg-based real estate agencies confirmed that Finnish property is attracting high levels of interest from Russian buyers.
Natalia Ivanova, executive director of Estate Tour Consult, said that Russians buy both middle class and expensive property in Finland.
“It all depends on the buyer we work with. Some of them are looking for a $100,000 cottage, some of them are ready to buy a $1 million to $1.5 million house,” she said.
Any area in Finland might satisfy the demands of the Russian buyer, Ivanova said, because of its developed infrastructure and stable economy.
Vladimir Berdnikov, head of commercial real estate department at Russky Fond Nedvizhimosti agency, named Imatra, Lapenranta and Kouvola as the most popular regions among Russian buyers.
According to him, the main advantages of Finnish real estate are cheap land and a complete “infrastructure package,” which means existing electricity and networks of communication.
Another reason why well-off Russians prefer foreign property comes down to security. 
“Even Finland’s expensive cottages do not need security guards, as opposed to somewhere like Vyborg, just across the border,” Berdnikov said.
Most of the buyers who have partners or businesses in Finland prefer to deal with Finnish agencies rather than Russian firms, Berdnikov said, because they possess precise knowledge of national legislation and other specific features.
The “Koe se Kollila!” project tackles this issue in part by providing consulting services for potential property buyers.
At the moment about 30 land plots in Koli have been reserved by Russians, said Jani Karjalainen, manager of the “Koe se Kollila!” project.
A few months ago two Russians from Moscow established a limited company in Finland, Zander Post, to construct and lease cottages, Karjalainen said. At the moment this company has reserved 12 places, but later they could increase this up to 27.
Several land plots are reserved for private buyers.
The land was provided by the city of Lieksa, but Karjalainen did not indicate its exact cost.
He said the cheapest land plot of about 500 square meters could cost around 8,000 euros, while an 800 square meter land plot could cost between 12,000 euros and 30,000 euros. In (high) areas land could cost up to 50,000 euros.
Another part of the project is concerned with promoting the Sokos hotel in Koli through a Russian language web site and internet bookings.
The hotel has 75 rooms. Nearby mountains provide 110 kilometers of serviced trails, 28 km of which are illuminated.
In the high season, from December till April, the Sokos hotel in Koli enjoys a 90 percent occupancy, said Jan-Erik Hagfors, general manager of Sokos Hotel Koli. 
Apart from skiing, tourists can take advantage of the hotel’s location near the Pielinen lake to go fishing. Although Russians used to come mostly in winter, Hagfors said that last year for the first time Russians stayed at the hotel throughout the year.
“Our strategic goal is to attract St. Petersburg residents,” Karjalainen said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Capital Complex
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Capital Auto closed joint-stock company, part of the Strategiya Rost holding, has acquired a plot of 31,000 square meters at the junction of the city’s ring road and Prospekt Engelsa, the company said Friday in a statement.
In the first half of 2007 Capital Auto will start construction of three car dealerships, investing $25 million into the project. The complex will create about 400 new jobs.
In 2007 Strategiya Rost will also construct a multi-brand car complex at the junction of the ring road and Murmanskoye highway, with a total area of over 3.5 hectares.

Sibneft Move
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Shareholders in Sibneft, the Russian oil company Gazprom bought last year, voted to change its name to Gazprom Neft and move its corporate address to St. Petersburg.
Shareholders approved the proposals, originally made by Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller, at an extraordinary shareholders meeting in Moscow on Saturday, Sibneft said in a statement Monday. Sibneft is currently registered in the western Siberian city of Omsk.
“Gazprom Neft will continue to provide maximum support to the regions in which our core production and refining assets are located and where thousands of our employees work,” Gazprom Neft President Alexander Ryazanov said in the statement. Ryazanov is also deputy CEO of Gazprom.
St. Petersburg is the hometown of Miller, Gazprom Chairman Dmitry Medvedev and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

TITLE: Paper: Menatep Boss Tried to Smear Putin
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: LONDON — Stephen Curtis, the British lawyer who died in a helicopter crash shortly after being appointed director of Menatep, headed a security company that aimed to smear President Vladimir Putin, Britain’s Sunday Times reported, citing the contents of a “confidential dossier.”
The paper said Curtis chaired a security firm, ISC Global, that was funded by Russian oligarchs, among them Mikhail Khodorkovsky lieutenant Leonid Nevzlin, and was run by former Scotland Yard police officers. It cited the dossier as saying the company was to “discredit [Putin] and those around him.” ISC was to target 11 senior officials, including Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and former Sibneft owner Roman Abramovich, the paper said Sunday. The firm was also to customize a luxury yacht so that a “SWAT team” of guards could defend oligarchs taking refuge on board from armed assault, the paper said.
A British court last year ruled that the crash that killed Curtis and his pilot, Max Radford, near the south coast of England in March 2004 was an accident. 
But speculation has continued about the possible causes of the crash. At the inquest, the coroner conceded that Curtis’ death had “all the ingredients of an espionage thriller.” Radford’s parents have rejected the inquest’s findings.
Curtis specialized in creating offshore networks for some of Russia’s richest tycoons, including jailed former Yukos boss Khodorkovsky and arch-Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky. His clients also included the ruling family of Dubai, the Makhtoums. Shortly before his death, he met with officials from Britain’s National Crime Intelligence Squad, a former law enforcement officer with knowledge of the matter has said.
In an interview posted on Newsru.co.il Sunday, Nevzlin said he hired ISC only to tend to his security needs and that he believed Curtis owned the firm. He denied he had asked Curtis to create it and then leak a dossier of compromising material on Putin and his closest allies. Curtis offered this himself, Nevzlin said. 	 “Stephen really did on several occasions offer to use information received from various sources about the accounts and foreign property of senior officials,” Nevzlin said. “I asked him not to get involved in all this because we are defending our interests and not waging total war against the Putin regime.”
Curtis “had fairly good relations with the secret services, at least by his own account,” Nevzlin said. He denied the Sunday Times report that he had transferred $37 million for the first phase of “the biggest investigation ever” into Putin and his inner circle, adding that the sums he paid for regular security services were “considerably smaller.”
The paper cited an unnamed ISC insider as saying the firm drafted a 12-page document that was presented to Nevzlin in Israel. 
The aim, the paper said, was to launch an operation to feed false or compromising material to journalists and governments about Putin in an effort to remove him from power. It said the firm also was pursuing a more realistic aim of securing Khodorkovsky’s release and reducing the back tax bill against Yukos.
A London-based security expert confirmed that the firm was connected to Curtis and Menatep.

TITLE: Rosneft IPO Date on the Move
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KRASNOYARSK — Russia may delay the initial public offering of state oil firm Rosneft to the fourth quarter from the third quarter, which would force the company to repay a multibillion-dollar loan and push it further into debt.
Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Kirill Androsov said Friday that the dates of the IPO, Russia’s biggest ever, were shifting. Any delay beyond the third quarter would break the covenants of a $7.5 billion loan and force Rosneft to refinance it. 
“It is true that the dates are being shifted, but we still believe that the IPO can take place before the end of the year. Roughly in the third to fourth quarters,” Androsov told reporters Friday. 
Androsov, who is also a Rosneft board director, gave no reason for the shift. He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an economic development forum in Krasnoyarsk. 
A Rosneft spokesman declined to comment. “It is not up to us but to the state as our only shareholder to take a final decision,” he said. 
A source close to the company said, however, the plans had not changed, adding, “We know them best.” 
Proceeds from the IPO will go towards paying back the $7.5 billion loan that Rosneft’s state holding company, Rosneftegaz, had borrowed from a consortium of leading Western banks last year.

TITLE: Ruble Hits 6-Year High Against the U.S. Dollar
AUTHOR: By Douglas Busvine
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The ruble broke through 27 to the dollar on Friday to reach its highest level since January 2000 as the U.S. currency slumped to a one-year low against the euro.
Rubles for “tomorrow” delivery rose 0.6 percent on the MICEX exchange to trade at 26.9275 to the dollar, leading dealers to speculate that the Central Bank may step into the market to stem its rise. 
Upward pressure on the ruble/dollar rate has increased since President Vladimir Putin instructed officials to make the Russian currency freely convertible by July 1 — six months ahead of plan. 
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, speaking in Yekaterinburg on Friday, confirmed that schedule, which would make it cheaper for foreign investors to buy Russian government bonds and easier for Russians in turn to invest abroad. 
But, dealers noted, the ruble was rock-steady at 30.04 to the dollar/euro currency basket used by the Central Bank to guide its day-to-day market operations, reflecting its fall of 0.8 percent against the euro. 
“We are now exactly at the level where the Central Bank may support the dollar — but that depends on whether or not the dual currency basket changes from where it has been in recent days,” said one foreign-exchange trader. 
The Central Bank’s currency basket, comprised of 60 U.S. cents and 40 euro cents, has ironed out much of the volatility in the ruble, which has held flat against the basket for several weeks.
The Central Bank buys oil export dollars on the currency market to curb excessive ruble appreciation, which might undermine Russia’s economic competitiveness. As a result, its reserves have risen by one-third this year to over $230 billion. 
The Central Bank has allowed the ruble to rise by three percent this year against the dollar/euro basket, but has signaled that further appreciation is unlikely over the next few months.
But, following Putin’s order to fast-track ruble convertibility, upward pressure on the Russian currency may persist as Central Bank dollar-buying intervention floods the economy with ruble liquidity, analysts say. 
“We expect the growth in the reserves to persist in the short-term — indeed the Central Bank has continued to intervene heavily in the forex market this week in order to reduce upward pressure on the ruble,” Deutsche UFG commented in a note.
Kudrin said that, despite the imminent abolition of capital controls, the ruble would only become a genuine reserve currency once Russia had beaten inflation.
“The ruble will only become a real convertible currency when inflation does not exceed 2 to 3 percent,” he told a seminar in Yekaterinburg.

TITLE: Financier Finds Change the Source of Satisfaction
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Olga Chebotkova, managing partner at the St. Petersburg branch of TOPHUNT International, is not afraid of making changes to her life. After eight successful years in finance, she took the decision to start everything from scratch and moved to the new and, for her, more interesting field of executive search. As she said, she has never regretted the move. 
Born in Leningrad, Chebotkova graduated from music and then art school and dreamed of entering the Academy of Arts to become an artist. These plans were somewhat hindered by her parents who saw their daughter as an economist and made her apply to the St. Petersburg Institute of Trade and Commerce at the department of accounting and economics.
 “It was my father who insisted that I become an accountant,” Chebotkova said. “And now I understand that he was right — as a result of this education, even in the hardest of times, I worked a lot and was able to earn lots of money and support my family.”
Having graduated from the institute, Chebotkova worked at one of the first Russian –Western joint ventures, Baltic Communications Ltd (BCL), and then was recruited by Pepsi Cola International, where she worked as the head of the credit control department for four years. 
 Chebotkova was twenty-nine when she realized that her interest in this particular profession was waning. 
“I understood that accounting had become boring for me, I was just sitting out time at work, did not read the professional literature, and was not trying to develop as an economist,” she said. “Although it was evidently time to move on, I didn’t know which direction to choose.”
In 1997, she entered the International Management Institute of St. Petersburg (IMISP) to study for an MBA degree. According to Chebotkova, the MBA course gave her a chance to learn about different business fields to find out what was really interesting for her. 
“It was at the first lecture on Human Resources, given by a distinguished expert, a real HR “guru” Stanislav Shekshnya, that I understood what I was looking for,” said Chebotkova. 
However, having made the right choice and started looking for a job in Human Resources, at first Chebotkova struggled to find success. With no work experience in the field, she was ready to start from scratch but she heard nothing from recruiting agencies, nor the companies’ HR departments she applied to.
“Lots of recruiting agencies were eager to offer me positions in the finance and accounting sectors but, as soon as I told them that I wanted to work in HR, they immediately lost interest,” she said.
Now, having worked in HR for eight years, Chebotkova often uses this experience to help others who have lost interest in their professions and want to try themselves in other fields. 
“It is a real tragedy when a thirty-year old specialist gets disappointed in their work. I remember how hard it was for me and I was very grateful to people who supported me at that time. I always try to do the same, give advice and provide all the necessary information for those who want to change their professional life.”
It took her a year of active job hunting to get a position as an executive search consultant in the finance and accounting sphere. 
“It was not easy to make a final decision, it was a turning point in my life but I thought “now or never” and finally quit Pepsi Cola,” said Chebotkova. 
“Many people thought I had just gone mad — from a “good” job in a big international company I moved to a small executive search agency that paid half of what Pepsi Cola paid.”
By 2002, four years after Chebotkova started work in recruitment, she had gained enough work experience and, together with business partner Stanislav Alekseev, set up TOPHUNT International, an executive search company, and THI Selection recruiting agency with two offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where in 2005 she became a managing partner.
Never having regretted her change of profession, Chebotkova said that the HR business is both hard and interesting. The tremendous potential for self-fulfillment as well as the no less motivating factor of earning decent money are what she appreciates in her work most of all. 
“I love to communicate with people, at work I have a unique opportunity to meet lots of talented professionals.”
Among the biggest difficulties in her work she cites the management of the independent process. “The problem is that the decision depends on both the employer and applicant but not on me,” she said. 
Chebotkova said that it is a combination of life experience and the complex knowledge she acquired while doing her MBA course that help her to solve many of the problems she faces every day at work. 
According to Chebotkova, many applicants have inadequate means for self-assessment and a non-progressive approach to work. In her opinion, only the specialists who really like their work, think about it most of the time, always try to develop, keep abreast of new ideas and read new books on their profession will sooner or later succeed and earn lots of money.

TITLE: Warming Up Your Hotspot? Help is at Hand
AUTHOR: By Natasha Rotstein
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When Pavel Suvorov decided to set up Wi-Fi in his apartment six months ago, he devoted a full day to fiddling with the modem between posting questions on an internet forum and trying to figure out how to connect the system.
But still Suvorov, a designer at a men’s glossy magazine, said setting up Wi-Fi — a term used to describe a wireless connection to the internet — wasn’t hard.
“It just took a long time because every time I had a question I had to post it on the forum and wait for answers,” he said, adding that since setting up Wi-Fi he had had no problems with it. 
Even though his internet provider, Stream, offers technical support to its customers, they do not offer support for Macintosh computers, which Suvorov has.
Consumers in Russia often find a lack of technical support when they want to install Wi-Fi in their homes — and many appear to be unaware of the dangers if they fail to secure their network. 
Even though internet companies offer customer support, it is sometimes not enough because — as in the case with Stream — they offer help only to PC users. For this service Stream charges 820 rubles (about $30).
As one person seeking advice from a forum on setting up Wi-Fi put it: Who do you scream at when your Stream doesn’t work?
In Moscow, and much of the rest of Russia, people are turning to internet forums such as Streamclub.ru or Expat.ru for help. At the same time, internet providers are recognizing the need for customer support services.
CPMS, or the Center of Support for Youth and Students, offers services such as internet setup and web site support from its location near Moscow’s Taganskaya metro station.
Vadim, a head specialist at the company who declined to give his last name, said the customer service department received three to five calls a day asking for assistance setting up Wi-Fi.
He said that if a customer had D-Link software, company staff could give step-by-step Wi-Fi set-up instructions over the phone or install the equipment in person. With other equipment, they give suggestions on where to get help. It costs 150 rubles for a home visit when the problem is the customer’s fault, and the service is free for CPMS customers when the provider is at fault.
He said it was easier to help customers who owned PCs, although Macintosh help is also available.
Stream customers who have PCs can also get help from the provider.
A technical support specialist at Stream who declined to give his name said customers could call and make an appointment for an engineer to come set up internet access and Wi-Fi in their home. He said that when someone bought a modem from Stream they received a disk with detailed set-up instructions. Also, they can access the same information on the internet before buying the equipment.
But for people like John Heisel, an international equities sales manager, buying a modem from Stream was not something he wanted to do. He liked the look of the Apple AirPort Hub, which matched his Apple iBook, and purchased it when he set up his Wi-Fi in the fall of 2005.
“I bought one and basically plugged it in,” he said. “It only took a couple of hours.”
At the same time, Heisel, who had a job in information technology while in college, said he needed to go online to find information on setting up the equipment. The only problem he encountered was that the Wi-Fi occasionally turned off. He figured out his signal was too weak and increased it, which solved the problem.
Heisel admitted that had he been a novice with computers, it might have been much harder to do the work.
And of course, setting up Wi-Fi is not the only problem that users encounter.
Once your system is in place, other people — foremost among them, neighbors — within range of your Wi-Fi hotspot can “steal” Wi-Fi from you. Providers usually advise customers to set up a secure password to solve the problem — although many ignore this advice, apparently unconcerned about others piggybacking on their Wi-Fi connection or unaware of the potential problems.
While Suvorov said he had set up a password to keep people from plugging into his Wi-Fi, Heisel said he did not worry about Wi-Fi theft and that he had not set up a password because he lived in a small building where he though few people would have personal computers
Vadim, of CPMS, said his company insisted its customers establish a password to keep people from stealing Wi-Fi and hacking into their computers.
“It’s a popular technology,” he said. “And if you do not have a password, if the computer is not protected, you can have problems.”
A recent report in The New York Times quoted David Cole, director of product management for Symantec Security Response, a unit of computer security software maker Symantec, as saying an open wireless network invited greater vulnerabilities than just Wi-Fi theft.
Unauthorized users with the know-how could also piggyback into unprotected computers, look into files containing personal information, release malicious viruses and worms, or use the computer as a launching pad for identity theft or the uploading and downloading of child pornography.
“The best case is that you end up giving a neighbor a free ride,” Cole said in the New York Times report. “The worst case is that someone can destroy your computer, take your files and do some really nefarious things with your network that gets you dragged into court.”

TITLE: Luxury As A Russian Sign Of Solvency
AUTHOR: By Anna Shcherbakova
TEXT: “…And I had my Prada bag, do you remember it, the brown one?” For years I have not been able to forget the conversation of two girls I overheard while watching a fashion show. Obviously a Prada handbag is something one buys to last forever, a ready topic to bring up in conversation when feeling low on confidence. 
In other words it is a good investment despite the fact that you can’t convert it back into money. I’m not sure why a market for second-hand designer bags doesn’t exist yet in the city. The market for new designer clothes and accessories is flourishing. 
Tens of new boutiques and multibrand stores have been opened over the last couple of years in a geographically limited part of the city center. With wealth and buying power on the rise, retailers are providing us with more and more opportunities to spend more and more of our money. Rare luxury brands are not represented in St. Petersburg, while some of them are important enough to have several dealers at once. This should help people feel exclusivity in exchange for cash. 
But in the final analysis, what is luxury? Something that is purchased at several times its true value and that makes you happy indeed. It makes you a special person, with your Vuitton bag, Prada shoes and Gucci outfit, a special person who leads a glamorous life and fits seamlessly into high society. There is no better and faster way to show it. And Russian wealth is too young and impatient to wait long to get it.  
Things make of people what people make of them, according to the Russian writer Viktor Shklovsky. For Russians today expensive things are signs of their solvency in all senses. Most American millionaires spend no more than $140 on shoes and up to $250 for a watch; they drive a car that costs no more than $25,000, according to the research “Millionaire Next Door” by Stanley and Danko. 
Prada bags are for those who want to look like a millionaire. But in Russia it’s difficult to imagine the rich in a small car or without an expensive watch. Maybe it is still too early to wait for these things, after only 15 years of a free market economy. 
One rich man in an inexpensive jacket I’ve met in St. Petersburg was Pierre Berger, who founded the legendary fashion house together with his friend Yves Saint Laurent in 1962 and sold it to Gucci 40 years ago. He drives a Smart instead of a limousine now because it is better in traffic. “For me, luxury is silence and free time, maybe caviar and good wine, but not expensive things and certainly not fashion,” he said. 
Luxury means doing (and buying) what you like, I would add. Times and habits are changing. Ten years ago having a mobile phone was a luxury, then big cheeses carried two or more phones. Soon, I suppose, superior taste will mean one does not have a mobile phone at all. 

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

TITLE: What to do with the Stabilization Fund?
AUTHOR: By Robert Skidelsky and Pavel Erochkine
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin used the bulk of his state-of-the-nation address to spell out measures aimed at improving the living standards of ordinary Russians. The measures will cost money — lots of money — but Russia can afford to spend as it is sitting on an ever-growing pile of cash thanks to high oil prices.
Billions of dollars of that cash are being held in the oil stabilization fund, which only recently has emerged as a key instrument to strengthen the economy and improve living standards. 
This new role is quite controversial. The fund was set up in 2004 for two reasons: to balance the budget over the business cycle and to restrain inflation by sterilizing inflows of oil money. The way it works is this: The fund receives all oil tax proceeds above the base price of $27 per barrel. That is to say, it accumulates a surplus when the price of oil is above $27 per barrel, and incurs a deficit when it falls below this. It is an elegant way of protecting the budget against fluctuations in oil prices and thus maintaining confidence in the financial system.
However, since the fund was set up, the price of oil has steadily risen way above the base price. It now stands at $70 per barrel and is expected to go on rising as world demand continues to outstrip world supply. This means that the fund’s surplus has grown far beyond the $18 billion that was estimated to be sufficient for stabilization purposes. It now stands at $61 billion, or about 7 percent of gross domestic product at market exchange rates. World Bank chief economist John Litwark expects it to reach $2.3 trillion by 2030. So the question is, what is to be done with the ‘excess’ surplus?
On the one side is the liberal camp headed by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. He has so far successfully resisted calls to spend any money from the fund, arguing that it would be inflationary and undermine hard-won structural reforms. However, pressure to spend it has been growing as 2007 parliamentary and 2008 presidential elections approach.
The Communists want it to finance higher welfare spending. Nationalists call for demographic programs to reverse Russia’s population decline. The military argues for more investment on weapons. Big business lobbies for investment in infrastructure, special economic zones, and lower taxes.
From the macro point of view, the spenders are right and Kudrin is wrong.  First, Russia already has more than enough cash to protect itself from economic shocks, and the fund is rapidly growing. The European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact is based on the idea that an annual budget deficit of no higher than 3 percent of GDP and a public debt of lower than 60 percent are sufficient to guarantee budgetary stability. According to this criterion, Russia, with its stabilization fund surplus at  7 percent of GDP, Central Bank reserves of $200 billion (or 25 percent of GDP),  a budget surplus of 2 percent of GDP and a foreign debt of $81.5 billion (or 11 percent of GDP), would the most economically stable country in Europe.  
More important, the main problem in Russia today is not inflation, but highly unbalanced growth. While the oil economy has been overheating, much of the rest, based on Soviet-era heavy industry and agriculture, has been seriously underheating. A 12 percent inflation rate coexists with 10 percent unemployment, and much higher under-employment.  In technical terms, there is a large and growing “output gap.” The growth rate of the economy is much lower than it could be. In this situation, to concentrate on fighting inflation is like trying to cool down an already freezing room. What this situation means is that the restrictive fiscal policy proposed by Kudrin is too restrictive for most of the economy. 
The economy requires more spending, not more saving. The task is to find a way of slowing down, or even reversing the growth of the fund. This could be done in one of two ways. 
The most elegant solution would be to raise the balance point of the fund to, say, $50 per barrel. This would raise no new principle —  it has already been raised from $20 to $27.
An alternative would be to split the fund into two parts. The first part could be invested in triple A rated foreign bonds as Kudrin wants. The second part would be used to stimulate economic development in the languishing sectors and regions of the economy.
It does not really matter which of the two solutions is adopted. The crucial debate should be about the proportions to be spent on “social” as against “economic” projects, and the role of tax cuts against increases in public spending. The benefits of tax cuts would depend on who gets the money. It will not help the economy if it simply swells capital flight. Therefore any tax cuts should be targeted on the poor, preferably in the form of tax credits to supplement low wages. This could be combined with a pro-natalist policy as Putin wants, with extra money going for extra children. Given Russia’s record of corruption, the state should not spend as little as possible of the excess surpluses of the fund itself, but use them, wherever possible,  to stimulate  private spending.  
Kudrin’s dilemma arises from the fact that fiscal policy is virtually his only weapon to fight inflation. But this need not be so. In most economies today, it is monetary, not fiscal, policy that has the task of controlling inflation. This has not been the case in Russia, where interest rate policy is chiefly geared to maintaining a fixed exchange rate with the dollar. What will be the effect of switching the goal of monetary policy to fighting inflation?  With inflation running at more than 10 percent, any loosening of fiscal policy would require a  compensating  tightening of monetary policy. But with real interest rates at zero percent a small tightening of monetary policy should not do significant harm. In so far as it deflated the “bubble” elements of the economy (such as real estate) it might even do good.  The basic point is that there is so much spare capacity in the economy that if fiscal policy were well-targeted the net result would still be  beneficial. 

Lord Skidelsky is chairman of the Center for Global Studies and professor of political economy at the University of Warwick. Pavel Erochkine is research officer at the Center for Global Studies and a director of Transnational Insights Ltd. 
This comment was contributed to The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: The Two Sides of U.S. Vice President Cheney
AUTHOR: By E.J. Dionne Jr.
TEXT: It came as something of a shock to have to agree with U.S. Vice President Cheney, but what he said last week about human rights in Vladimir Putin’s Russia was accurate, even laudable. Then Cheney went to Kazakhstan, and you wondered if it was the same guy talking.
Speaking to Eastern European leaders in Lithuania, Cheney made the essential point about Putin’s government: that “opponents of reform are seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade.”
If Cheney had left matters there, he might have won the gratitude of human rights advocates everywhere. But just one day later, he went to Kazakhstan, whose president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, won reelection in December with 91 percent of the vote. Call me judgmental, but national elections in which incumbents get 91 percent are rarely honest. The U.S. State Department’s report on Kazakhstan released in March noted that “observers criticized that election as falling short of a number of international standards.” More ominously, the report noted that “members of the security forces committed human rights abuses” and that the “government’s human rights record remained poor.” Recent legislation, the report added, “seriously eroded legal protections for human rights and expanded the powers of the executive branch to regulate and control civil society.”
Sounds like Putin, doesn’t it? 
But did Cheney challenge the Kazakh government? On the contrary, he said of Nazarbayev that “we met some years ago and I consider him my friend.” How nice. Kazakhstan itself, Cheney said, “has become a good friend and strategic partner of the U.S.” for help in Afghanistan and Iraq and “cooperating with us in the global war on terror.”
When pressed by reporters about Kazakhstan’s record on democratic reform, Cheney replied: “Well, I have previously expressed my admiration for what has transpired here in Kazakhstan over the last 15 years. Both in terms of economic development, as well as political development, I think the record speaks for itself.” Indeed it does. 
OK, foreign relations is a complicated business and the United States often has to work with unsavory regimes. Kazakhstan has energy we need and could provide a way of bypassing Russia in shipping gas to the West. But this administration has made the large claim that promoting democracy is a central element of its foreign policy. Did Cheney have to offer his “friend” Nazarbayev such a warm embrace? Did anyone in our government consider that what Cheney said in Kazakhstan could undercut what he said about Russia?

E.J. Dionne Jr. is a columnist for The Washington Post.

TITLE: A New Season Opens Aboard The Shtandart
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Shtandart, a recreation of Peter the Great’s flagship, celebrated the opening of the sailing season on Friday with a short voyage out into the Finnish Gulf and the unveiling of its plans for the coming year.
The ship is crewed by local youths, with new sailors selected for long-distance voyages each year. In order to take part, crew members must undergo an intensive training program and pass a specially developed exam.
This summer, the Shtandart will be setting off on its seventh major voyage, which will comprise three stages, with a different crew of twenty sailing the ship on each stage. 
The first stage will be sailed in the Gulf of Finland, from where the ship will proceed to yachting festivals in Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. 
This year also sees the creation of a careers center within the project which intends to create 60 working places for youngsters aged between 14 and 18 within half a year.

TITLE: A City That Time Forgot
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gill
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It is 6:30 in the morning and my train, which has been laboring westwards all night from Kiev, Ukraine, is approaching the suburbs of Lviv, just 70 kilometers from the Polish border. 
I peer sleepily through the rain-streaked windows: wooded hills, cobbled streets, backyards and filthy, half-ruined baroque facades are running by. It could almost be Transylvania — which of course is not so very far from here. Soon the train is sliding into a cavernous hall and I disembark to face a damp Carpathian morning.
Lviv (population 800,000) lies in the ancient but little-known region of Galicia, which was once a principality of Kievan Rus, the original Russian state. 
The area has been contested for centuries by various powers, leaving it with a wonderfully diverse cultural and architectural inheritance which is now easily accessible, after Ukraine abolished visa requirements for U.S. and EU citizens in 2005.

KING OF THE CASTLE
I start my tour by hiking up Lviv’s Castle Hill to get my bearings. The hill is the highest point in the city (409 meters), although no castle has stood here since the 18th century. 
Today the summit is marked only by the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag, proudly marking Ukrainian independence since 1991, when the country formally seceded from the Soviet Union. 
The hill offers a marvellous view of the spires and roofs of the old city, nestling between the forested Carpathian foothills.
A friend from Kiev has provided me with a contact in Lviv, Andriy, a local politician, and we have agreed to meet in front of Lviv’s Opera House. 
While I wait, I admire the exquisite building, ostentatiously adorned with columns, balustrades and sculptures, and considered one of the finest examples of its kind in Europe.
Andriy turns out to be a genial, neatly-dressed man in his late thirties, and after brief introductions he is soon steering me down Prospekt Svobody, a broad, tree-lined pedestrian avenue. He gestures to the wide, paved area in front of the opera house.
“A statue of Lenin used to stand here,” he says. “It was the first Soviet monument to be pulled down when Ukraine declared its independence.” 
I glance at the empty space; there is nothing to indicate that any such monument ever existed. We stroll beneath the trees, past groups of men transfixed by games of chess and girls gossiping on benches. 
Andriy explains that in medieval times this avenue marked the edge of the city, and the ramparts were encircled by a moat which once ran beneath our feet. 

UKRAINIAN REPUBLIC
After passing a monument to Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko, we wander beyond the line of the vanished ramparts into the heart of old Lviv, along streets where parts of Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film “Schindler’s List” were shot. As we walk, Andriy gives me a synopsis of the city’s history. 
Lviv (‘Leopolis’ in Latin) was founded in the 13th century by Prince Danylo of Galicia, who named it after his son Lev (Leo). Although the city quickly grew as a result of its location on major trade routes, Galicia was not able to muster enough strength to fend off aggressors. 
Poland conquered it in the 14th century, and the city flourished as one of the principal cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Duchy. Austria-Hungary took over Lviv in 1772, and it remained a Hapsburg city until the end of World War I. 
By then Lviv was a cosmopolitan city of Poles, Jews, Ukrainians and other nationalities, and had become the crucible of the Ukrainian national movement, whose leaders had been biding their time waiting for the moment to rise. 
With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, they declared an independent Republic of West Ukraine, but the fledgling country was promptly annexed by re-emergent Poland, then fell under Soviet control in 1939 when Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland. 
Nazi occupation swiftly followed, resulting in the deportation and execution of most of Lviv’s 100,000 Jews. The end of the war brought renewed hope to Lviv’s inhabitants, but the city came again under Soviet control, and it was to be another 46 years before Ukraine finally gained independence.
By now we have arrived at Rynok (Market) Square, the heart of old Lviv, adorned with lines of marzipan Renaissance facades competing to outdo one another despite their decrepitude. There is a curious calm here that belies the city’s size. 
I look around for the usual brash banners of the tourist industry which clutter old squares throughout Europe, but there is nothing. Not a sunshade or postcard rack in sight. Apart from a few Polish tourists, the beautiful square is almost empty.
Andriy points out the curious individual features visible on many of the facades. The building in the north-east corner, besides being the city’s oldest functioning apothecary, is also an Apteka Museum and the building in which the kerosene lamp was invented in 1853. 
Nearby, building No. 4, known as the “black house,” boasts a fabulous 16th century Renaissance faÍade; as does No. 6, which houses the Lviv History Museum, and also hides a beautiful inner courtyard with a cafÎ and a three-tiered gallery which is pure Italian Renaissance. 
We enjoy a black, unfiltered coffee, Lviv-style, before continuing our tour with a visit to the Armenian Cathedral, once the spiritual centre of Lviv’s large Armenian merchant community; then the elegant baroque Dominican Monastery nearby. 
FOLK TALES
We end the day by visiting the Lviv book market, appropriately dominated by an imposing statue of a bearded man clutching an enormous tome. Andriy explains that this is Ivan Fyodorov, a Muscovite responsible for the printing in 1564 of The Apostle, the first book in Russia and Ukraine, and who died in Lviv. The market itself is a collection of stalls selling second-hand books, paintings, antiques and Soviet era bric-a-brac.
On my second day in Lviv, Andriy has arranged for his colleague Rostislav to show me the Museum of Folk Architecture. Having been shown a photograph of the man, I have to identify him at the Shevchenko monument. 
I spot him quickly, a big-boned, bespectacled character in a jacket and trousers. Having introduced ourselves, the first thing Rostik does is to show me the same invisible Lenin of the previous day in front of the Opera House.
However, there is a surprising twist to the story: Rostik himself was one of those responsible for dethroning Lenin, and was imprisoned along with his co-conspirators. 
“They threw me in jail for a few days,” he chuckles, and furnishes me with the details on our way to the museum.
The Lviv Museum of Folk Architecture is a charming outdoor museum (or skansen) hidden away in a forested part of the city known as Kaiserwald. Timber houses, churches and even a school have been erected in leafy glades and clearings, and show the diversity of styles in traditional Ukrainian folk architecture. 
The beautifully-preserved buildings are original habitations, and were sought out in villages across Galicia and Carpathia, then taken apart and painstakingly put together again after transportation to Lviv. 
Rostik proves to be quite an authority on folk culture and architecture, and we spend a pleasant few hours exploring the museum before I catch a tram back to the city.
I get off at Pidvalna Street, outside a still-intact portion of the city’s medieval fortified wall, complete with a tent-roofed gate tower. 
This wall forms part of the defensive fortifications of the 17th century Bernadine Church and Monastery, whose tower is a distinctive Lviv landmark. The church’s interior is a dark, heavy Catholic excess of golden ornamentation, gilt edging, and a menagerie of cherubim clambering over the columns. 
Outside again, I go in search of the Boyim chapel, named after the wealthy 17th century Hungarian merchant who constructed it. The exterior of the chapel is made up of a stunning two-tiered fascia of stone carvings of various scenes in the life of Christ (curiously represented by figures in 17th century dress), broken up by pilasters and two double-arched leaded windows. 

VANISHED WORLD
Turning the corner, I find myself back on wide Prospekt Svobody. After all this walking, a coffee is called for, and I find it nearby at the Videnska Kaviarnia (Vienna cafÎ). I sit down at one of the outdoor tables, order a coffee, and then grin upon noticing my bronze neighbor.
Sitting at the next table, pipe in one hand and beer mug in the other, is a familiar figure in uniform. One of the more colorful characters in Central European literature, the irreverent Czech soldier Svejk has his very own corner of Lviv here. 
In Hasek’s “The Good Soldier Svejk,” Svejk arrives in Lviv on his way to the front in World War I, shortly before misguidedly donning a Russian uniform and comically being captured by his own troops.
I return to Rynok Square. Women are leaning from windows; people are boarding a tram on their way home from work; a man is walking his dog beneath the trees.
I am reminded of provincial cities in the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania during the early 1990s, when I first explored the region. 
And suddenly, with wistful nostalgia, I realise what has captivated me since my arrival. Not only is Lviv a truly beautiful city, but it is a city that still belongs to its residents, saved from the assault of mass tourism by a quirk of history which placed it outside the Central European orbit which it had occupied for centuries. 
Come to Lviv for a precious glimpse of a vanished world, and come before it is too late.

TITLE: My 10-Day Ordeal in a Belarus Prison Cell
AUTHOR: By Weronika Samolinska
TEXT: U.S. Vice President Cheney assailed Belarus in late April as “Europe’s last dictatorship.’’ In March, Weronika Samolinska, a Polish journalist, joined thousands protesting in Belarus against the reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko. She and scores of other demonstrators were rounded up by police and jailed. Here is her account of what followed:
In jail, the guards did body searches of everyone. They took everything from me, including my glasses and tampons. Finally they escorted us — 14 young women — into one cell, where for the first time we were able to smoke a cigarette.
We introduced ourselves and helped calm one another. One girl, who had sneaked in her cell phone, called her sister. “Masha, tell everybody that I am attending an academic conference in Polock,’’ she whispered. “Don’t tell anybody that I am in jail.’’
After a while we began to sing, and the men in the neighboring cell joined in. They shouted out “Long live Belarus,’’ nearly screaming, and we replied just as ferociously. Before long at least half of those who’d been arrested joined in.
An enraged guard began to threaten us, but by then we felt comfortable in our solidarity. Soon, they took away all the Belarussians for trial, while the journalists — the Ukrainians, Russians, one Canadian and I — were led from room to room. They evidently did not know what to do with us. In the end, they left me alone in a cell.
The Polish consul came to see me. He had been waiting in front of the jail since 4 a.m., but they would not let him in. He had been told that no Polish citizens were being held. There were actually three of us, including Mariusz Maszkiewicz, a former Polish ambassador to Minsk, who also had been arrested on the main square. I received my first glass of water when the consul came in. He promised that he would take care of us and bring anything we needed. Then they took me to have another body search, during which I was able to retrieve my tampons, cigarettes and glasses.
They locked me up in a cell with a relative of Maszkiewicz’s. She is a Belarussian citizen who is a permanent resident of Poland, but the authorities identified her as Polish. She had been horribly beaten and seemed to have suffered a concussion.
Late at night, we were joined by a Georgian freelance journalist who had been arrested while taking pictures of the inmates’ relatives around the jail. They arrested her for not having her official government registration card with her. She told the militia that her card was at her hotel, and they replied, “Then let us go to the hotel.’’ The cab that picked them up then drove them straight to jail.
Three days later, during her trial, she discovered that she was being sentenced for hooliganism. She smiled, recounting her judge’s post-sentencing comment: “They could not have thought up something more unlikely, could they?’’
The three of us sat in our cell. The lights remained on throughout our stay and we were forbidden to open the windows, so I began to confuse day and night. There were always crowds of supporters outside, singing, waiting, and some even getting arrested, if only to offer hope for the imprisoned. Random bits of information reached us about what was happening in the city.
Our cell was a small room, outfitted with solid tables on which we slept, ate and sat. There was a toilet in the open. We had no soap, no toilet paper; just ice-cold water from a tap. There was a terrible stench. A dirty room, mold on the walls, holes in the windows.
The food consisted mainly of some form of gruel and the odd cutlet, which we were given only at the end of the day. We could scarcely touch this repulsive stuff, even though we were very hungry. The tea was awful as well. A broth with cabbage in it would follow. We could not eat that, either, because of its strong odor. Only the bread was edible — good, fresh and dark.
The first night in jail was unbearable, since it was very cold. We huddled together. The next day the consul brought us sleeping bags. I also received warm sweaters, socks, basic hygienic goods and — most important — bread, meat, cheese.
After three days, Maszkiewicz’s relative was released. Two days later, another cellmate got out. By this time, two Belarussians had been added to my cell, arrested for participating in a public meeting. They told me about their farce of a trial. No counsel was present.
Those inmates who knew their rights called out: “I would like legal representation’’ or “I ask for witnesses’’ or “I wish to submit a complaint.’’ Every plea was ignored. They entered the courtroom. They listened to the charges read to them. Ten days’ sentence. End of story.
My own trial was attended by the Polish consul, a lawyer, and even a witness — the militiaman who arrested me. At least that is what he claimed (every militiaman at the demonstration was masked). He told the courtroom that he had heard me scream anti-statist slogans such as “Out with Lukashenko,’’ “Out with the powers’’ and “We cannot live like this.’’ He claimed to have stood within a few feet of me, an outrageous fabrication. I was sentenced to 10 days.
My new cellmates and I mainly spent our time reading aloud from
Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “Quo Vadis’’ in Belarussian. We sang as well. When the guard told us to stop, we merely sang louder. By then the two women had stopped feeling afraid; the 10-day sentence had become bearable. “If they throw us out of university, so be it,’’ they said. “But we are no longer afraid.’’
One day the guards led me to the warden’s office, where I saw a lieutenant. He introduced himself as a KGB man who was leading an investigation against an illegal group called the Young Front. I asked that the Polish consul be present for the discussion, but was reprimanded for my request. This was a secret criminal matter, I was told, and I could not refuse to answer any questions.
I became frightened and decided to play stupid: I did not know anybody in Minsk, and if I was near the protesters’ tents it was because they were giving out cups of tea. I also made sure to emphasize that I knew nothing about politics, and that I knew of no political organizations whatsoever. At first the lieutenant was very sweet, but the facade eventually fell. He did not get any information out of me, and sent me back to the cell.
I was transferred to a cell for “nonpolitical’’ inmates. I was put in with two so-called bums, women without passports, documents or a designated residence. One was an illegal Uzbek, and the other a young woman arrested for alleged thefts. The cell was filthy, and the women smoked cheap unfiltered cigarettes.
I had difficulty understanding them. They spoke poorly, every other word a profanity. Before meeting them I thought I understood more or less every Belarussian curse; now I know better. But I began to grasp their language a little, and they went out of their way to care for me. They made sure that I stayed warm, that I ate my rations. In such circumstances we got to know one another.
Finally, one night at 3:15 a.m., I was released with several others. As we walked outside, throngs of people greeted us with flowers, champagne and cheers.
I am happy to have glimpsed a free Belarus, for what I saw on the protesters’ square was a brief yet definitive moment of Belarussian freedom. And despite the loathsome discomforts and deplorable realities of jail life, sitting in there with those people was an honor for me. They are heroes.

Weronika Samolinska is a reporter for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, where this article first appeared. It was translated by Jakub Krolczyk for The Washington Post.

TITLE: Russia’s Anti-American Majority
AUTHOR: By Nikolas K. Gvosdev
TEXT: The rhetorical war between Moscow and Washington over democracy has escalated. President Vladimir Putin responded to Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks in Vilnius earlier this month by sarcastically noting that the American “need to fight for human rights and democracy is laid aside” once it comes into conflict with “one’s own interests.” But while pundits argue about the extent to which Russia has embarked upon an authoritarian path — toward a system of unchecked executive power — no one is asking the more fundamental question: Does it matter?
If not for Putin, Cheney and his supporters argue, Washington could push a tough resolution on Iran through the United Nations Security Council, Russia would allow U.S. firms full access to its energy sector to get more oil and gas out to market at cheaper prices, and Moscow would be much more accommodating of U.S. preferences on a whole host of issues.
If only this were true.
We underestimate at our peril the enormous degree of support for the direction Putin has taken Russia. Among 18- to 24-year-olds — the demographic that supplied the foot soldiers for the democratic “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine — the Putin administration has a 57 percent approval rating — about twice as high, one might add, than what the Bush administration receives from that age group in the United States. 
Three-quarters of Russians reported increases in their disposable income over the last year. There are stirrings of dissatisfaction — most notably with corruption and an inefficient, overbearing bureaucracy — but little desire for any radical overthrow of a system that many believe has brought stability and prosperity after the collapse of the 1990s.
And would a more democratic Russia be more amenable to U.S. interests? Opinion polls suggest that more than 60 percent of Russians see the United States as having a negative influence in the world; more than half believe that the United States is unfriendly to Russia. And although many Americans comfort themselves with the illusion that these figures must be weighted in favor of the elderly with Cold War hang-ups, the reality is that it is the young, college-educated elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg — Russia’s wealthiest and most liberal cities — who are the bastion of anti-U.S. sentiment in the country.
And what about Russian attitudes toward Iran? Survey data indicate that by a 2-1 margin, Russians believe the economic benefits of selling arms to Iran outweigh preserving good relations with the United States. More than 60 percent do not share the view that Iran endangers the security of Russia, and more than 80 percent agree with the proposition that Iran has drawn American ire not because Tehran poses a general threat to global peace and security but because Iran frustrates American ambitions for the region.
None of this suggests that the Russian masses want to join a U.S.-led coalition of the willing to confront the Iranian mullahs, if but for authoritarian tyrants suppressing the will of the people. Instead, any Russian government prepared to endorse and take part in any forceful action against Iran would have to defy public opinion — not the most democratic of outcomes.
In fact, it is difficult to conceive of any Putin foreign policy decision of the last several years that would have been reversed by a more democratically accountable Russian government. Eighty-nine percent of the people, for example, opposed any participation of Russian forces in an American-led coalition in Iraq.
Perhaps the U.S. vice president and others have confused Russia’s deference to the United States during the 1990s as proof that a democratizing Russia would be more pro-American. But Russia yielded to the West on a variety of issues — from NATO expansion to intervention in the Balkans — because of its weakness, not its liberalism. 
The Russia that was utterly dependent on the largesse of the International Monetary Fund in 1996 is far different from the Russia of today, with currency reserves of $225 billion and a stabilization fund that has $60 billion in the bank.
Shared democratic values can enhance a relationship, but it cannot substitute for joint interests. If the Bush administration cannot find common ground with Putin — the man jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky once described as being more liberal than 70 percent of the Russian population — what makes them think a more democratic Russia would be a better partner?

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is editor of the National Interest. He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.

TITLE: Ossetian-Ingush Tinderbox
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: In late April there was a minor shoot-out between the security forces of Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov and President Alu Alkhanov’s men. All the free mass media in Russia reported this incident, which was actually nothing out of the ordinary. But not long ago, Bibo Dzutsev, considered a hero in Abkhazia and South Ossetia for fighting for their separatist causes, was killed in North Ossetia, and his death went unmarked in the national media. 
This is a telling example: The mass media typically pay attention to Dagestan and Chechnya — that is, to the East Caucasus. But the tinderbox in the Caucasus is moving to the West Caucasus.
Moscow has already committed a number of errors in the West Caucasus, all the more vexing since they were acts of idiocy, not conspiracy. Without any cause whatsoever, the Moscow authorities “cleaned up” peaceful Adygeya, threatened to oust President Khazret Sovmen and merge the republic with the Krasnodar region. They drove a small number of Wahhabis up against the wall in peaceful Kabardino-Balkaria and essentially provoked their uprising.
Ingushetia and North Ossetia are perhaps becoming Russia’s two most serious problems in the Caucasus. In Ingushetia, the number of people who have been kidnapped and not found is increasing as real control is decreasing. Shamil Basayev gave an interview to Andrei Babitsky with impunity, and the camp of the Beslan terrorists was a few hundred meters from the Ingush village of Psedakh. The kidnapping of the elderly father-in-law of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov had the same impact as the kidnappings of General Gennady Shpigun or presidential envoy Valentin Vlasov in the late 1990s. How could this happen on “controlled” territory? 
The situation in North Ossetia is as grave. Ossetia is doomed to be the Russian outpost in the Caucasus forever — although Beslan, the “350 hostages” and the grenade launcher that, according to the version of events established by Ella Kesayeva’s Voice of Beslan organization, hit the roof of the gymnasium just before it was stormed may change that.
It appears that President Vladimir Putin has not forgiven either the women of Beslan for their harsh words during their 2005 meeting or the Ossetian men for their reluctance to shut their women up. Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov, sent to investigate the Beslan terrorist act, has for some reason been detaining Ossetian officials who don’t want to hush up the investigation. 
Today armed policemen fill North Ossetia, and Kolesnikov is as popular in Ossetia as the notoriously brutal 19th-century General Alexei Yermolov is in Chechnya. 
In these circumstances, a number of Kremlin actions seem like direct provocations, especially the arrest of the North Ossetian leader’s respected chief of staff Sergei Takoyev; the repressions against the Alania football club (yet another blow to national pride); and Valery Gizoyev’s call for Putin’s re-election to a third term on behalf of a previously unknown nongovernmental organization. 
Other actions may have been taken by the Kremlin with the best intentions (for example, returning Ingush refugees to the Prigorodny region), but turned into provocations. Most dangerously, even actions not arranged by the Kremlin (as Dzutsev’s death seems not to have been) are believed to be provocations anyway. 
Just a couple of lit matches would redirect the Ingush and Ossetians’ hostility away from the Kremlin and toward each other. Then Moscow would be able to justify additional troops in Ingushetia or a change of power in North Ossetia.
The most horrifying thing is that such a decision might not by made at a high level. As the experience of Karbadino-Balkaria has shown, decisions about the Caucasus are made not by the Kremlin, but by local cops. But the fire of a new Ossetian-Ingush conflict would blaze so strongly that no one would be able to tell if the lit match was arson or an accident. 

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

TITLE: Shotgun Wedding
AUTHOR: By Chris Floyd
TEXT: They say that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but these days, fearmongering invocations of “Islamofascism” perform the same rump-covering function just as well.
Defenders of U.S. President George W. Bush’s war crime in Iraq — particularly those super-tough “liberal hawks” who have cast their lot with the crony conquistadors — trot out the term at every opportunity. What else can they do? All the other excuses for their pet war have been exploded as bare-faced, deliberately concocted lies. So they’ve been reduced to the ludicrous claim that Bush’s murderous plunder is actually a noble defense of civilization against black hordes of “Islamofascists.” In this way, these desk-bound warriors seek to identify themselves with the sainted figures of old, like George Orwell, who actually put their bodies on the line against real fascists.
Yet it is painfully obvious that the forces which come closest to matching this ignorant propaganda term have in fact been empowered by Bush’s war. Obscurantist clerics and deadly sectarian groups backed by Bush now rule in Iraq, while his war of aggression there — and his global gulag of torture and unlawful detention — are swelling the ranks of violent extremists around the world, as his own State Department acknowledges in its latest report on international terrorism.
For example, last month, 14-year-old Ahmed Khalil was shot dead by the Bush-backed Iraqi police on the doorstep of his home, the Independent reports. His crime? Homosexuality. He was just one of scores of homosexuals — or suspected homosexuals — systematically slaughtered by the sectarian militias that Bush is arming and training to serve as Iraq’s official “security” forces. Ironically, Ahmed might not even have been gay; he was having sex with men in the neighborhood for money to help his poverty-stricken family, which has been completely wiped out in the economic meltdown wrought by Bush’s “liberation.”
The “sexual cleansing” campaign by the death squads Bush has unleashed is just part of the ongoing slaughter in Iraq, where — by conservative, “tip-of-the-iceberg” estimates — almost 4,000 civilians have been murdered in Baghdad alone so far this year, many of them “hogtied and shot execution-style,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “Others were strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, garroted or hanged. ... Many bore signs of torture such as bruises, drill holes, burn marks, gouged eyes or severed limbs.” Most such killings are now being carried out by the government-backed militias and their infiltrated agents in the Bushist police brigades, as Bush’s ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, openly admits.
Keep in mind why this is happening. Iraq’s bloody “regime change” was engineered in order to implement a thorough-going economic rapine plan drawn up for the Bush administration in early 2003 by the corporate consulting group BearingPoint, as Antonia Juhasz reports in her new book, “The Bush Agenda.” BearingPoint, headquartered in the CIA company town of Maclean, Virginia, provided a detailed blueprint for opening up Iraq to predatory foreign “investment” on terms that allowed the wholesale looting of the nation’s wealth while acing Iraqi companies out of the action.
Bush’s appointed satrap, Paul Bremer, executed the blueprint faithfully during his dictatorial rule in Baghdad. His edicts were then incorporated wholesale, hugger-mugger and without negotiation into the new Iraqi constitution. They are now the law of the land. The dark heart of the scam is, of course, the oil laws. Now that a “sovereign” government has been established, these can be finalized at last. The plan is for 40-year “production-sharing agreements” that will give Bush’s oil cronies a vast slice of Iraq’s oil output at rock-bottom prices (“at cost”), as Chris Cook reports in the Asia Times. This windfall will make today’s record-breaking oil company profits look like chump change.
Last week, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced that it is dispatching a “petroleum adviser” to Baghdad to help the new Iraqi government complete its “critical petroleum law,” Dow Jones Newswires reports. The adviser is being sent at the request of the U.S. State Department, headed by former oil exec Condoleezza Rice. And the company contracted to supply the adviser is — oh, you already guessed! — BearingPoint Inc.
So that’s why Ahmad Khalil had to die, along with thousands of others, gay and straight, Sunni and Shiite, religious and secular, Iraqi and American. It has nothing to do with any of the grand abstractions employed by the apologists for empire to mask their complicity with the immoral dictates of raw power: national security, humanitarian intervention, the war on terror, Islamofascism, and so on. No, it’s just a crude, brutal — and no doubt temporary — marriage of convenience between old-fashioned religious extremism and old-fashioned elitist greed. Both are committed to the destruction of Iraqi society in order to impose their own form of bondage in place of Saddam’s tyranny. 
As long as the Iraqi sectarians are willing to give away their nation’s wealth in exchange for some of the temporal power now in the gift of the money-grubbing Bush elite, the suffering of the Iraqi people will only increase day by day. Yet the inevitable break-up of this unholy union — when the sectarians decide to throw off their vassalage, or when Bush’s looming attempt to secure the Iraqi conquest by eliminating its greatest threat, Iran, results in a horrendous revolt by the Iranian-backed extremists he has enthroned in Baghdad — this suffering will reach a new pitch of agony.
There is no good solution to the hell Bush has wrought in his arrogance and folly. There is only blood and horror all the way down.

TITLE: Blockbusters Take Center Stage at Cannes
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Last year it was the final installment of “Star Wars.” This year it is “The Da Vinci Code.” 
With an eye on the international box office, Hollywood studios are choosing the film festival in Cannes to launch some of their biggest blockbusters, and 2006 is no exception.
The studios want in, and, whatever the French may think of U.S. cultural exports, Cannes these days is happy to comply in a bid to get the “A-listers” on its famed red carpet.
“The Da Vinci Code,” starring Tom Hanks and France’s Audrey Tautou, is one of the most eagerly awaited films for years, both because of the success of Dan Brown’s novel and the outcry from Christians over the plot. 
It will be joined by animated movie “Over the Hedge” featuring the voice of Bruce Willis, adventure “X-Men: The Last Stand” with Halle Berry, and the 9/11 movie “United 93.” 
“There are not that many events that put the attention on entertainment all over the world. This is certainly one of them — if not the premiere event,” said Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment which is releasing “Da Vinci.”
Around 4,000 journalists cover the annual extravaganza of film, glamour and non-stop parties that draws 30,000 industry executives and thousands of tourists who line the red carpet for a glimpse of their on-screen idols.
Blake said that within 48 hours of the movie’s opening night, it would be playing at theatres in around 90 percent of the world.
“These types of releases make the need to do something global even more important than in years before,” he added.
DreamWorks Animation marketing chief Terry Press said that being chosen to screen at Cannes implies artistic merit for a film, which helps attract audiences. The company premiered its “Shrek” movies at Cannes in past years.
“Everybody is trying to be heard above the din these days, and Cannes can make a very loud noise,” she said.

TITLE: ‘Da Vinci Code’ Movie Set to Enthrall, Appall
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: It may be the last mystery left about “The Da Vinci Code” — how did a work by a near unknown author and sneered at by some of literature’s leading lights become one of the best-selling novels of all time? 
With well over 40 million copies sold worldwide and the film version of the novel set to open the prestigious Cannes film festival on Wednesday, it is a question that scores of authors and would-be ones would love an answer to.
To hear some people tell it, author Dan Brown stumbled on the literary equivalent of turning lead into gold.
They say his was a formula that mixed clumsy, forgettable sentences with breakneck pacing, lectures on art, history and religion, sinister conspiracies, evil villains, puzzles and cliffhanger chapter endings to produce literary gold.
While some, such as novelist Salman Rushdie, called the book “typewriting” and others, like critic Laura Miller, called it “cheesy,” book industry professionals refuse to sneer, saying this was far from a case of good things happening to a bad book.
It was instead a case, they said, of all a reader’s wants appearing to be conveniently located in a single book, especially the desire to learn something.
In this case, the teaching was about a highly debatable thesis that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and their descendants continue through the present day.
Nick Owchar, deputy editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, said:
“My theory is that non-fiction sells better than fiction and this book has a heavy concentration of history and purported facts that people have taken to. It doesn’t read well as a novel but it reads well as an encyclopedia.
“The book challenges the familiar story of Jesus’s life but it also challenges ideas that for a vast number of Americans are a familiar part of their faith and people enjoy toying with things that are subversive.”
That is a subject much discussed this week in the Catholic world.
Philippine Catholic bishops gave priests and parishioners guidelines on Friday on how to refute the plot of the religious novel as the Asian country gears up for its cinema release. 
The thriller has whipped up controversy around the world with its central premise about Christ’s marriage and fatherhood.
In their pastoral statement, the Philippines’ powerful bishops reminded parishioners that the book was fictitious.
The bishops also issued a guide on how to deal with questions on the book, including a point-by-point rebuttal of each of the novel’s claims.
“In the face of the confusion the novel has generated, we invite the Catholic faithful to serenely affirm the fundamental truths of our faith,” the statement said.
The bishops, whose words are closely followed in the predominantly Catholic country, did not, however, call for the blocking of the film, starring Hollywood star Tom Hanks. 
A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said he had read four of Dan Brown’s books, including “The Da Vinci Code.”
“It’s like reading a Frederick Forsyth book. It’s entertaining,” Monsignor Pedro Quitorio, spokesman of the CBCP, told Reuters.
A senior government official said this week that the movie should be banned because of its blasphemy, but a spokesman for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a devout Catholic, said the government had no official policy on the film.
But the bishops might have got help from other truth seekers, a group of students in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  
Bible Professor Dwayne Adams was having a meal with young people when someone mentioned Jesus Christ was married and fathered a child, the Grand Rapids Press reports.
“[The student] was just enthralled,” recalled Adams, whose reaction was very different. 
The bible professor decided to turn the moment into a semester-long class at Cornerstone University.
Adams challenged his students to test Brown’s book through research and a road trip to the New York headquarters of Opus Dei, a devout Catholic group linked to murder in the book.
“Da Vinci” is a fictional thriller. But, as Adams learned at the meal, the distinction between what is real and what is not is blurry these days. 

(Reuters/SPT)

TITLE: Metallica Singer: ‘Sex, Drugs, And Rock ‘n’ Roll are Horrible’
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Metallica frontman James Hetfield fought back tears on Friday as he recounted his public battle with addiction, and labeled the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll ethos as a “horrible myth.” 
The 42-year-old singer/guitarist was being honored at a Hollywood fundraiser for the MusiCares MAP Fund, which provides access to addiction recovery for members of the music community.
The event, which also honored concert promoter Bill Silva, culminated in a three-song set by Hetfield and Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, along with Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney. 
They dusted off the Alice in Chains songs “Would?” and “Them Bones,” and finished with the Metallica ballad “Nothing Else Matters.” 
Other performers included Tom Waits, Velvet Revolver,Jason Mraz and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. 
Guests included rock legend Ozzy Osbourne and his wife Sharon, Motorhead frontman Lemmy, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and guitarist Kirk Hammett, and Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis. 
They reclined on couches scattered throughout the Music Box @ Fonda and imbibed alcohol-free refreshments, thus avoiding the risk of any public relapses.
Hetfield began his speech asking for a moment of silence “for the people who didn’t make it, that aren’t with us, who could be and I think should be.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Wailer Loses Lawsuit
LONDON (Reuters) — Aston “Familyman” Barrett, the bass player for Bob Marley and the Wailers, has lost a $113.6 million lawsuit over royalties and song-writing credits that pitted him against Island Records and the Marley family. 
Barrett, who received his nickname for fathering 52 children, testified that he and his brother Carlton “Carly” Barrett, a drummer for the reggae band who was murdered in 1985, did not receive the money they were due following Marley’s death from cancer in 1981.
But judge Kim Lewison dismissed the suit in a ruling at London’s High Court on Monday, a move welcomed by Marley’s widow Rita and her family.
“We always felt this would be the outcome, and it was hard to listen to Aston Barrett reduce his friend Bob to someone who was more interested in playing football than making music,” the family said in a statement.

OutKast Movie Due
NEW YORK (Reuters) — After numerous delays, the OutKast film “Idlewild” is now slated to arrive August 25 in theaters, three days after the release of its soundtrack. 
The first single from the LaFace album, “Mighty O,” leaked online earlier this week. The cut features OutKast’s take on Cab Calloway’s famous scatting from “Minnie the Moocher.”
Andre 3000’s verse finds him resisting easy categorization: 
“The damsels in distress but they a mess / They only like my armor and that I’m a performer/ They read one magazine and want to think they’re getting warmer / They’re only getting colder.”
Big Boi, meanwhile, reasserts his dominance over other rappers with lines like “Intended for anyone filling out this application / An estimate is needed for your underestimation / I’m firing on the spot, go back and check your calculations.”
Written and directed by Bryan Barber, “Idlewild” is set in the 1930s around the music and business of running a speakeasy.

Howard Stern to Settle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A CBS lawyer told a judge an agreement is near to settle a lawsuit against its popular former radio host Howard Stern over his move to Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., a CBS official said last Thursday. 
CBS Radio sued Stern, his company One Twelve Inc., his agent, Don Buchwald, and Sirius in February, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment and misuse of CBS broadcast time.
Stern, famous for his raunchy on-air antics, left CBS in January to join Sirius, where U.S. regulations that bar indecent and obscene material do not apply.
“We have an agreement but there are details that have to be worked out,” CBS lawyer Irvin Nathan told Manhattan Supreme Court Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman, according to a report in the New York Daily News on Thursday.

TITLE: Gang Rebellion Erupts in Brazil, 52 Dead
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAO PAULO, Brazil — A notorious criminal gang unleashed a second wave of attacks against police Sunday, bringing to at least 52 the number of people killed in what one official said was the deadliest assault of its kind in Brazil’s history. 
Meanwhile, another 33 related prison rebellions also broke out on Sunday, bringing the number of penitentiary revolts across Sao Paulo state to 51 at the peak of the two-day uprising — more than one-third of Brazil’s 144 prisons. By late Sunday, rebellions continued at 41 prisons, and inmates were holding 229 prison guards hostage.
The inmates have not made any demands nor have they harmed any of their hostages, said Jorge de Souza a spokesman for the Sao Paulo Prison Affairs Department.
He said visiting relatives were inside several of the prisons but “we don’t consider them hostages because they are there to show solidarity with their jailed relatives.”
Enio Lucciola, spokesman for the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department said the attacks and prison rebellions, planned by the First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, “were the most vicious and deadliest attacks on public security forces that have ever taken place in Brazil.”
The attacks were in response to the transfer of eight imprisoned PCC leaders, a practice authorities use to sever prisoners’ ties to gang members outside prison.
Lucciola said authorities were prepared for some kind of PCC attack after the transfer “but we never imagined it would be so big or ferocious.”
Late Sunday evening, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper’s web site reported the death toll had risen to 55 and that at least 10 public buses had been burned by bandits in the city of Sao Paulo. Television images showed the buses engulfed in flames, while Folha Online said passengers were ordered out of the vehicles before bandits set them ablaze.
The Sao Paulo state government said the PCC carried out at least 100 separate attacks on Friday, Saturday and Sunday that killed at least 35 police officers, the girlfriend of one of them and two passers-by. Fourteen suspected gang members were killed in gunbattles with police.
At least 72 people were arrested, “all of them with long criminal records,” Lucciola said.
On Sunday morning, policemen were notably absent on Avenida Paulista, one of Sao Paulo’s most important thoroughfares.
“To tell you the truth I prefer it that way,” said Cristiane Teixeira, a 30-year-old newsstand employee. “After what I read in the newspaper, I don’t think it’s very safe to be near a policeman, because you may end up getting shot by people wanting to kill him.”
Witnesses to the killing of one policeman told the Folha on Line news service that two men wearing face masks approached the officer, Jose Antonio Martinez, as he was dining with his wife, shot him several times in the head and then fled. His wife was unhurt.
Witnesses a few miles away said two groups of men began shooting at random in front of a fire station, killing a firefighter. In Brazil, the fire department falls under the jurisdiction of the state police.
During a 10-day period in November 2003, the PCC attacked more than 50 police stations with machine guns, homemade bombs, shotguns and pistols, killing three officers and injuring 12. Those attacks apparently were planned by jailed PCC leaders trying to pressure authorities to improve prison conditions.

TITLE: Pipeline Explodes in Nigeria Killing Up To 200 Villagers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ILADO, Nigeria — Workers have buried at least 165 people killed in a pipeline explosion, and four bodies were still floating Sunday in tidal mangrove swamps a few miles from the blast site in southern Nigeria, officials said. 
Up to 200 people were killed Friday when gasoline seeping out of a ruptured pipeline burst into flames in the fishing village of Ilado about 30 miles east of Nigeria’s main city, Lagos. Police suspect that impoverished villagers punctured the pipeline to steal fuel.
According to police estimates, 100 of the dead were buried on Friday and about 65 on Saturday in mass, unmarked graves. But there was no exact count and it is possible more may have been buried, local officials said.
Authorities have said they had rushed to bury the dead without identifying them because they were concerned about health risks.
On Sunday, an Associated Press reporter saw four bodies floating in swamps about three miles from the site of the explosion. That raised the possibility that more corpses may be drifting or lost in a labyrinth of waterways and creeks leading to a network of lagoons surrounding Lagos.
Lagos, on the western edge of Nigeria’s southern coast, is about 125 miles from the Niger Delta, the country’s main oil producing region.
Nigeria, which normally pumps 2.5 million barrels of crude a day, is Africa’s largest producer and the fifth-largest source of imports to the United States.
Despite Nigeria’s wealth of natural resources, most of the country’s 130 million people remain deeply poor. This inequity, blamed on official corruption or mismanagement, motivates militant attacks as well as villagers’ stealing of fuel they consider their birthright.

TITLE: Northern Irish Legislature Reconvenes
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Northern Ireland’s legislature, shut down for more than three years, sprang back to life Monday as a first step toward forming a Roman Catholic-Protestant administration, the elusive goal of the Good Friday peace accord eight years ago. 
But assembly members took their seats inside the Stormont Parliamentary Building for barely an hour before adjourning for the day. The crucial vote to elect a cross-community coalition was scheduled for next Monday — and nobody expects it to succeed. The 108 members demonstrated one minute of unity when, in their first act, they stood in silence and prayer over the latest victim of intercommunal hatred, a Catholic teenager clubbed to death last week by a Protestant gang.
But moments later, they wrote their immutable political divisions into the public record. Party by party, members signed their names into registration books: one for the British Protestant side of the house, another for the smaller Irish Catholic side. A handful of members instead signed a book for “others,” a neutral designation rendering their votes worthless in any power-sharing vote.
Power-sharing was supposed to form the centerpiece of a new, conciliatory Northern Ireland. But the last four-party administration collapsed in October 2002 over an Irish Republican Army spying scandal. Since then, voters have dumped the moderates who oversaw that breakdown-prone coalition and turned to the political extremes: the Rev. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists and Gerry Adams’ Sinn Fein.

TITLE: Zenit Bounces Back With Stand-In Coach
AUTHOR: By Martin Burlund
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: FC Zenit St. Petersburg won its first match since firing its coach Vlastimil Petrzela with a 1-0 defeat of top-of-the-table Rubin Kazan at Petrovsky Stadium on Sunday in the Russian Premier League.
The win was a welcome break for acting coach Vladimir Borovicka who as assistant coach replaced Petrzela two weeks ago and then saw Zenit lose its next two games.
“We controlled the game and we won — that’s all I have to say,” Borovicka said at a news conference after Sunday’s match. Igor Denisov scored the game’s only goal in the 42nd minute on the counter attack.
Prior to the match, an announcement was made at Petrovsky Stadium that “football is for everybody” in an effort to combat the kind of racial abuse that marred the season’s first game in February against Saturn Moscow Region.
The message seemed to have been understood on the stands and there was no repeat Sunday of the mass monkey calls directed at February’s match toward Rubin’s Brazilian No. 3 Orlando Kalisto. 
But a group of about 10 Zenit fans next to the press box abused Kalisto with the epithet “pedophile.” 
Another foreign player however, Yun Min Hyun, who is from Korea and plays for Zenit, received a standing ovation from home fans as he left the field in the 80th minute.
According to Zenit fan Fyodor, who declined to give his last name, foreign players such as Hyun and Norwegian defender Erik Hagen have a different approach to football than Russian players that wins supporters’ approval.
“The Russians often play like they are in Hollywood, but the team’s foreign players are far more disciplined and that is why the fans love them,” Fyodor said after the game.
Zenit jumped three places to 9th in the Russian League as a result of Sunday’s action. On Wednesday the team faces 10th placed FC Moscow in Moscow.

TITLE: Petrova Beats Henin-Hardenne, Raises Grand Slam Hopes
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BERLIN — Nadia Petrova announced herself as a serious contender for the French Open on Sunday when she scored a shock win over Justine Henin-Hardenne, the Roland Garros champion, to secure her fourth title of the year at the German Open. 
Petrova, the daughter of two Olympic athletes in the former U.S.S.R., showed great concentration and stamina in winning 4-6, 6-4, 7-5, relieving her Belgian opponent of her German Open title two weeks before her attempt to do the same to her French Open title. 
It was Petrova’s 15th successive win on clay and extended her total of wins for the year to 33, more than any other player on the WTA Tour.
“There was more pressure in this match,” Petrova said. “I think I won because I showed good concentration and at the end all I could do was fight.”
She should also become the number one Russian, almost certainly overtaking Maria Sharapova for the world number three slot in the next rankings.
“That’s a great feeling,” Petrova said. “But I want to go on from this and achieve many more things. My greatest dream is a Grand Slam [title].”
Her improvement has come from self-belief after starting to win titles, and a greater willingness to come to the net, increasing her tactical options greatly. 
Although it was a clay court match, both players were prepared to come to the net in the first half of the contest, and the majority of the games were won by the server.
But Henin-Hardenne did not start with the ferocity she had summoned in her semi-final with Amelie Mauresmo. She was forced onto the defensive several times as the tall Russian made frequent net approaches, reaching 2-0 in forthright style.
However Petrova played a disappointing second service game, missing a smash and two ground strokes, dropping it to love, and relinquishing the initiative.
Henin then held serve, and stepped up a gear by breaking for 3-2, finishing with a brilliant inside out forehand winner. Two aces followed in the next Henin service game. But just when it seemed Henin might push on to victory in the second set she was not able to break through.

TITLE: Russia Stays Unbeaten At Worlds
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RIGA, Latvia — Russia beat Switzerland 6-3 and Finland maintained its unbeaten record with a 3-0 win over Norway at the World Ice Hockey Championship.
Danis Zaripov, Denis Arkhipov, Dmitry Bykov, Ilya Nikulin, Nikolai Kulemin and Yevgeny Malkin scored for Russia, which ran its winning streak to five games to stay top of its qualifying group.
Thierry Paterlini, Beat Forster and Goran Bezina scored for Switzerland (1-1-2). 
Russia was due to play Sweden in its last Group F game on Monday. Russia is on top of the group with eight points and has clinched first place. Sweden has five, Belarus and Switzerland four each, and Slovakia has three. 
Washington Capitals rookie forward Alexander Ovechkin said the teams played evenly through two periods, but that Russia’s defense in the third made the difference. 
“It was a good win for our team,” Ovechkin said. “In the second period, we didn’t play that well when they scored two goals. But in the third, we played more defensively and tried to attack.” 
Finland got goals from Jukka Hentonen, Jussi Jokinen and Esa Pirnes, and goalie Fredrik Norrena saved 19 shots to earn player of the game honors. 
Finland, with seven points in its qualifying group, plays Canada on Monday with first place in Group E at stake. Canada and the Czech Republic both have six points. The United States has four.
Sweden played Russia late Monday, and Slovakia was due to face Ukraine on Tuesday in its last game.
Olympic champion Sweden lost for the first time, falling 5-2 to Slovakia, which needed the win to keep its chances alive for a quarterfinal spot from Group F.

TITLE: Liverpool Wins Cup Classic In Penalty Shootout Drama
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: CARDIFF, Wales — Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez has set his sights on Chelsea’s Premier League crown after their thrilling FA Cup triumph over West Ham United.
Liverpool needed a stunning stoppage time equalizer by captain Steven Gerrard to avoid a 3-2 defeat in Saturday’s heart-thumping final and went on to win a penalty shootout 3-1 after three saves by Spanish keeper Jose Reina. 
The twists and turns of a game which underdogs West Ham had led 2-0 ensured it will live long in the memory of the 71,140 fans who sang for nearly three hours at the Millennium Stadium. 
The 125th FA Cup final also gripped a television audience of countless millions around the world and could not have given a better advertisement for the passion and excitement of the English game. 
For Benitez, though, Liverpool’s second consecutive cup triumph on penalties — after last year’s even more dramatic Champions League victory over AC Milan — could have bigger implications than earning a seventh FA Cup. 
Pleased with a league season in which his side won 50 percent more games than in 2004-05, the Spaniard believes the never-say-die attitude which Liverpool needed in Istanbul and Cardiff will be vital in improving on their third place finish. 
“I was really happy with the progression of the team, we reduced the gap on the top sides and the ideal would be to be [title] contenders,” he said.
“At the final, you could see the character of the players. That can be a key factor for the future, when we have difficult games — to know that we can win them.”
Tens of thousands of jubilant fans jammed the streets of Liverpool on Monday for the second time in 12 months to welcome home their triumphant team.
Just a day after claiming the FA Cup, the players took off for a 10-mile tour of the city in an open-topped bus.
Dressed all in matching club tracksuits, the Liverpool team set off in the bus flanked by mounted policemen while children ran alongside their heroes.
Although there were fewer supporters there to see the team than had been the case when an estimated 750,000 turned out when the Reds brought home the Champions League trophy last May, that did not seem to affect the atmosphere.
Children were lifted onto their parents’ shoulders as the crowds grew thicker with others perched on top of bus shelters, lamp-posts and street signs.
Man of the match Steven Gerrard, who was due to fly out to England’s World Cup training camp in Portugal on Monday, was one of the calmest figures on the top deck, preferring to stay seated unlike many of the other players.
Benitez, with his family beside him, looked relaxed and happy as he waved to the crowd, which was estimated to number 100,000 along the route.

(Reuters/AFP)

TITLE: Alonso Deroutes Schumi At Home
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BARCELONA — Renault’s Fernando Alonso capped one majestic drive with another on Sunday to become the first Spaniard to win his home Formula One grand prix on an unforgettable afternoon. 
The 24-year-old world champion warmed up the 130,000 strong crowd, the biggest yet at the Circuit de Catalunya, by giving King Juan Carlos a passenger ride around the Barcelona track in a road car before the race.
A few hours later the monarch joined him on the podium to present his happy subject with the winner’s trophy as the national anthem played.

TITLE: Chelsea Signs Ballack For 3 Years
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Germany captain Michael Ballack has signed a three-year deal to play for English champions Chelsea. 
Ballack, who has signed on a free transfer from Bayern Munich, was set to be unveiled at a Stamford Bridge press conference.
The 29-year-old midfielder’s arrival had been confirmed by Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho on Sunday.
“He believes in us, he believes in Chelsea, he believes we can have success,” Mourinho said. “He chose Chelsea and we are very happy, and I think also English football should be happy to have such a player playing in the Premiership.”
Ballack is expected to be the first of three big signings by Chelsea this summer. The Germany captain is expected to be followed by AC Milan’s Ukrainian striker Shevchenko. Inter Milan’s Adriano and Corinthians star Carlos Tevez have also been heavily linked with moves to Stamford Bridge.
Ballack will reportedly become the highest-paid player in the Premiership on a deal said to be worth $200,000 per week.
The move to London will be Ballack’s first footballing foray outside his native Germany, something he announced he wished to experience.
Born in the former East Germany, he began his professional career at division two side Chemnitz.
He then went on to play for Kaiserslautern and Bayer Leverkusen before moving to Bayern Munich in 2002.

TITLE: Basso Snatches Pink At Giro
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: PASSO LANCIANO, Italy — Italy’s Ivan Basso took a firm grip of the Tour of Italy after claiming victory in the eighth stage which featured the first summit finish of the race.
CSC’s Italian team captain, who this year hopes to become just the 13th rider to win both the Tour of Italy and the Tour de France in the same year, also took the race leader’s pink jersey from T-Mobile rider Serguei Gonchar.
Basso was among a small group of stage contenders on the day’s main climb but attacked four kilometres from the summit and came over the finish line with room to spare.
Former Giro d’Italia winner Damiano Cunego came in second around thirty seconds later, just ahead of Spaniard Jose Enrique Gutierrez.
The stage proved a nightmare for Basso’s other rivals for overall victory: defending champion Paolo Savoldelli lost over two minutes to his fellow Italian while former two-time winner Gilberto Simoni lost just over a minute.
In the general classification Basso now has a 1min 34sec lead on Gutierrez, with Cunego third at 1:48.
Savoldelli is a significant 2:35 adrift with Gonchar, the overnight leader, at 2:43. Basso is keen to have carried his pink jersey to the 10th stage, as the ninth stage Monday was a flat 127-kilometer fare from Francavilla al Mare to Termoli.
(AFP/SPT)

TITLE: Clippers Bounce Back At Suns, As Heat Consolidates Lead over Nets
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Sam Cassell drove the Los Angeles Clippers to a 114-107 victory over the Phoenix Suns on Sunday, leveling their best-of-seven playoff series at 2-2. Cassell said before the game he would be more aggressive against the taller, heavier Shawn Marion, who shut down the Clippers guard in the Suns’ victory on Friday. Cassell was good to his word, scoring 28 points overall and 11 straight during one stretch in the third quarter.
The Suns recovered from a 13-point deficit by scoring 10 straight points to pull to 106-105 with 1:14 left.
The 6-foot-3 Cassell flirted with a triple-double, collecting 11 rebounds and dishing nine assists. Brand led the Clippers in scoring with 30 points, and grabbed nine rebounds and dished out eight assists.
A dominant display from Dwyane Wade guided the Miami Heat to a 102-92 victory over the New Jersey Nets and put his team on the verge of the Eastern Conference finals in National Basketball Association play Sunday.
Wade had 31 points, eight assists and seven rebounds in East Rutherford for the Heat, which leads the best-of-seven series 3-1, with a chance to close out the series with a win in Game Four Tuesday in Miami.