SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1200 (66), Friday, September 1, 2006
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TITLE: Priests Blame Cathedral Fire on Act Of Arson
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As St. Petersburg’s prosecutor’s office investigates the circumstances of the fire that destroyed two of the five cupolas of the historic Troitse-Izmailovsky Cathedral, sometimes known as Trinity Cathedral, on Aug. 25, local clergymen say the tragic accident is likely to have been an act of arson.
“Photographs taken by parishioners at the scene — before the central dome perished in the blaze — show that there were several sources of fire and smoke,” said Father Konstantin, who serves at the cathedral and who was leading a mass when the fire broke. “Witnesses recall that the central dome was engulfed in fire instantly, as if poured by petrol.”
Metropolitan Vladimir of St. Petersburg and Ladoga, who visited the cathedral on Wednesday, said the scenario suggested an act of arson, Konstantin said.
The priest said clergymen at the cathedral have received numerous threats.
“We were often approached by strangers, possibly nationalists, who said clearly and openly that our cathedral, with hexagram stars on its domes, is at a high risk of being blown up one day,” he said.
But Leonid Belyayev, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, countered this version by saying that the investigation had already established major violations in fire safety regulations that could have directly led to the fire.
“We found out that the restorers did welding work at 30 meters above the ground, next to the wooden domes clad in wooden scaffolding, without taking the necessary precautions,” Belyayev said. “We found at least one exploded gas balloon. I’m 80 percent certain that it was careless welding that caused the fire.”
A fire fighting team should have been called upon to be on duty at all times anywhere where welding is done at such a height, he added.
Government officials admitted that traffic jams significantly slowed down the arrival of most fire fighting crews. Use of helicopters is deemed expensive and not considered unless the situation is critical. Even then it can be delayed by excessive bureaucracy, officials said.
Vera Dementyeva, head of City Hall’s Committee for the Preservation and Protection of Architectural Monuments, suggested that a special unit be created within the St. Petersburg branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry to deal with fires involving historical buildings and architectural monuments.
She criticized the local unit for excessive use of water as a fire fighting tool. “Most developed countries use other methods which are less damaging to the interiors,” she said. “Throwing three or more tons of water on a historical monument from a helicopter could be lethal for the building.”
On Monday, Nikolai Burov, head of City Hall’s Culture Committee, ordered that fire safety conditions be checked in all architectural monuments that are being restored with the use of wooden scaffolding in the city. He called, in particular, for the Peter and Paul Fortress, the city’s highest building, to be closely examined. 
Fire inspectors claim to have found what they called “widespread and blatant ignorance of and open disregard for fire safety rules.”
“None of the eight sites that we checked fully conforms to the regulations,” Belyayev said, adding that the Armenian Orthodox Church is in a particularly alarming condition.
Vitaly Kalinin, an expert with Russia’s Board for the Preservation of Cultural Valuables, said his office is scrutinizing the operations of the Stroitekhuslugi company responsible for the renovations at the cathedral.
The company, which has been instrumental in the cathedral’s restoration over the past 8 years, may be stripped off its license, he added. The firm’s head Sergei Blinov has been at a hospital in an emergency care ward for the past few days, which has slowed down the investigation, the expert said. A decision on the firm’s license is expected next week.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko said on Thursday that City Hall has already allocated 50 million rubles ($1,872,659) for the first stages in the cathedral’s restoration. The preliminary costs of the cathedral’s renovation are expected to amount to at least 160 million rubles, though the total may rise following assessments of the current condition of the building by experts. 
The blue-domed cathedral, St. Petersburg’s fourth-highest building, boasted what is arguably Europe’s largest wooden cupolas. The central dome — the only one to be entirely made of wood — collapsed and one of the four smaller cupolas surrounding it was also destroyed by the blaze. 
The cupola’s history has been marked by disaster.
Architect Vasily Stasov, who designed the church in 1835, originally made the cupola with a metal carcass but it fell down, earning the architect a three-day jail sentence. Upon his release, Stasov created a second, entirely wooden version which burnt down last week.
Matviyenko ordered that the cathedral be renovated by fall 2007. 
One of the cathedral’s wings continues to be used for religious services. The clergy said they expect to keep it running and receive the parishioners throughout the reconstruction period, despite the harsh and challenging conditions.

TITLE: Deripaska, Abramovich to Create Metals Giant
AUTHOR: By Yuriy Humber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Oleg Deripaska and Roman Abramovich, the original founders of Russian Aluminum, could be on track to rejoin forces, this time as partners in a diversified metals and mining giant.
As two sources confirmed Wednesday that RusAl was moving to merge with SUAL and Glencore to create the world’s biggest aluminum producer, an official close to the negotiations said the combined company would not stop there.
The official said RusAl would float shares in London within three years and use the cash to diversify into a metals and mining leader much like Australia’s BHP Billiton.
“Seeing Roman Arkadyevich [Abramovich] come in at Evraz, we see great possibilities for future cooperation,” said the official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak about the issue with the media.
Abramovich and his partners bought 41.2 percent of Evraz, the country’s top steelmaker, in June, prompting many industry players to predict a looming Kremlin-backed consolidation of national steel assets.
While any plans for a Russian-style BHP Billiton are clearly in the early stages at best, the creation of such a metals powerhouse would be in line with a Kremlin drive to form corporate giants out of the ashes of former Soviet state assets that were broken up and privatized in the 1990s. The Kremlin has blessed the creation or expansion of several national giants, including in oil (Rosneft), gas (Gazprom), aviation (United Aircraft Corporation), banking (Vneshtorgbank), cars (AvtoVAZ) and telecommunications (Rostelecom).
Deripaska, the sole owner of RusAl, will announce a merger with domestic aluminum-making rival SUAL and the alumina assets of Swiss commodity trader Glencore in about a month, the official close to the deal said.
A Kremlin spokesman confirmed Wednesday that the tripartite deal had been approved by President Vladimir Putin, Bloomberg reported.
The three parties signed a nonbinding agreement on the deal last week, under which RusAl would take 64.5 percent in the new company, while SUAL would get 21.5 percent and Glencore 14 percent, the official said.
RusAl would have the option of buying out Glencore’s stake in three years, the Financial Times reported.
The deal would create a $30 billion company, the world’s leading caster of aluminum and the world’s second-largest producer of alumina, the raw material from which the metal is made.
The company would produce 4 million tons of aluminum and 11 million tons of alumina. RusAl CEO Alexander Bulygin would remain CEO in the new company, while SUAL CEO Brian Gilbertson would become chairman, the official said. Gilbertson is the former CEO of BHP Billiton. The company would look to float on the London Stock Exchange within three years.
Officials at RusAl, SUAL and Glencore declined to comment. Basic Element and Renova, the holding companies through which Deripaska and SUAL’s majority shareholder, Viktor Vekselberg, own their aluminum assets, also declined to comment.
RusAl is the world’s third-largest producer of aluminum, after U.S.-based Alcoa and Canada’s Alcan. SUAL is the world’s sixth-largest aluminum producer. Glencore is a long-time partner of RusAl and has worked with SUAL as a commodity trader.
Glencore also is growing to be one of the country’s largest oil traders, and it played a key role in building up the oil company Russneft.
Glencore owns four alumina refineries in the West Indies, Italy and Ireland. Earlier this month, a 35-member delegation from RusAl visited Glencore’s Jamaican refineries for about two weeks.
Glencore’s and SUAL’s alumina would satisfy a 30 percent deficit at RusAl and allow RusAl to expand its aluminum casting capacities even further.
“It gives them a guarantee for future growth,” said Igor Prokopov, head of NP Aluminum, an industry consultancy.
Still, overtaking Alcoa as the leading smelter of primary aluminum — rather than aluminum products, which Alcoa and Alcan would continue to dominate — could be just the start.
After the IPO, “the next logical step for RusAl would not be to expand in the aluminum sector, but to acquire a diversified metals portfolio, starting with copper and zinc,” the official said.
The “second round” of consolidation could see the emergence of a precious and ferrous metals holding that would act as a “world champion” in the sector, the official said, naming Evraz under Abramovich as an attractive merger target.
Abramovich, the Chukotka governor and owner of the Chelsea football club, parted ways with Deripaska in 2003 after he sold his stake in RusAl.
Last year, Abramovich, Russia’s richest man with an estimated $18 billion fortune, sold the oil company Sibneft to state-controlled Gazprom for $13.1 billion and maintained only small business interests in the country until his company Millhouse bought into Evraz in June.
With Abramovich back in metals and known to be eager to consolidate the domestic steel industry, a path could be opening up for a reunion with Deripaska.
Millhouse spokesman John Mann said any talk about a tie-up was “pure speculation.” Evraz vice president Irina Kibina said, “I have only one thing to say: Evraz is steel.”
A major international firm has economic leverage worldwide, which — once the state has a direct stake in the company — can translate into political leverage for the Kremlin.
“The government is busy creating its national champion companies,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist with Alfa Bank. “The Kremlin will want to see them as big and global as quickly as possible. That suits the Kremlin’s economic and political objectives very well.”
While the state has a “champion” in almost every key economic sector, it noticeably lacks on in the metals and mining sector.
A person close to RusAl suggested the advantages of drawing various domestic metals and mining assets into one holding included national pride about being a world leader and ease in raising large funds through loans or capital markets.
Several Russian metals firms are looking to diversify, noted a senior executive with an international diversified metals and mining firm. “We’ve found it to be a big boon. With a diversified set of commodities, you’re better placed during the price cycle,” the executive said.
A diversified company would not be reliant on the price of any one metal, and would benefit from a more stable revenue outlook and the ability to transfer skills between operations.
A RusAl rival, Norway’s Norsk Hydro, works in oil, gas and electricity and runs a hydro aluminum unit.
Nonetheless, a combined RusAl-SUAL-Glencore is not really comparable to BHP Billiton or British-Australian Rio Tinto, some industry insiders said.
BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto focus on upstream operation — the extraction of ore — not on metal production. Their aluminum casting is relatively minor, while RusAl’s bigger rivals Alcoa and Alcan have built up a vertically integrated company that touches mainly on aluminum-related business.
“Perhaps, other metals assets could be collected by BasEl,” Prokopov said. BasEl’s assets include Batu Mining, a precious metals miner in Mongolia, and Zhany-Zhyldyz Gold Limited, a miner, in Kyrgyzstan.

TITLE: U.S. Secret Services to Help Find Diplomat Killers
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. spy agencies will provide Moscow with intelligence to help find the killers of four Russian diplomats who were kidnapped in Baghdad in June, it was reported.
During talks this week in the U.S. state of Alaska, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov “that the U.S. secret services were prepared to help their Russian colleagues in the search for those who took part in killing Russian diplomats in Iraq,” the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted a high-placed defense ministry source as saying.
“Any information received by the U.S. secret services that may lead to the location of the killers will immediately be brought to the attention of the Russian side,” the source said.
Four employees of Baghdad’s Russian embassy were abducted on June 3 when gunmen attacked their vehicle in the west Baghdad neighborhood of Mansur. A fifth Russian diplomat was killed during the kidnapping. An Iraqi insurgent group led by Al-qaida claimed responsibility for the killings.
The group had previously demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian secret services to “find and destroy” the diplomats’ killers in late June, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin also said during a meeting in the Kremlin with Saudi Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud at the time that Russia would be “grateful to all its friends for any information on the criminals who killed our citizens in Iraq.”

TITLE: Japanese Officials Welcome Release of Two Fishermen
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: TOKYO — Officials on Wednesday released two Japanese fishermen held since their boat was seized for purportedly fishing in Russian waters.
The officials handed over the fishermen — Akiyoshi Kawamura and Haruki Kamiya — on Wednesday afternoon, said Shunji Yamada, an official in the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
The handover took place after Russian and Japanese officials met aboard a Japanese fisheries patrol boat near Kunashiri Island, Yamada said. The two arrived at Nemuro port on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido later in the day.
“I’m very sorry to have caused a fuss,” Kawamura said on a nationally televised news conference.
The captain, Noboru Sakashita, 59, who has reportedly assumed all blame for his boat’s purported violation into Russian territory, will remain in Russian custody for the time being, he said.
A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman said he welcomed the return of the two fishermen but urged Russia to return Sakashita.
On Aug. 16, a Sakhalin coast guard boat fired at a Japanese vessel off Hokkaido, killing a Japanese crab fisherman. Authorities seized the boat along with its captain and two crew members.
In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demanded that Japan take measures to ensure Japanese ships stop poaching in Russian waters.

TITLE: Brutality in Chechnya Raises Doubts About Kadyrov’s Rule
AUTHOR: By C.J. Chivers
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: ARGUN, Chechnya — The humiliation of Malika Soltayeva, a pregnant Chechen woman suspected of adultery, was ferocious and swift.
Soltayeva, 23, had been away from home for a month and was reported missing by her family. When she returned, her husband accused her of infidelity and banished her from their apartment. The local authorities found her at her aunt’s residence. They said they had a few questions.
What followed was no investigation. In a law enforcement compound in this town in east-central Chechnya, the men who served as Argun’s police sheared away her hair and her eyebrows and painted her scalp green, the color associated with Islam. A thumb-thick cross was smeared on her brow.
Soltayeva, a Muslim, had slept with a Christian federal serviceman, they said. Her scarlet letter would be an emerald cross. She was forced to confess, ordered to strip, and beaten with wooden rods and hoses on her buttocks, arms, legs, hands, stomach and back.
“Turn and be condemned by Allah,” one of her tormentors said, demanding that she position herself so he could strike her more squarely.
The torture of Soltayeva, recorded on a video obtained by The New York Times, and other recent brutish acts and instances of religious policing, raise questions about Chechnya’s direction.
Since 2004, the war in Chechnya has tilted sharply in the Kremlin’s favor, as open combat with separatists has declined in intensity and frequency. Moscow now administers the republic and fights the remaining insurgency largely through paramilitary forces led by Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov.
Kadyrov’s public persona is flamboyantly pro-Russian. He praises President Vladimir Putin and has pledged to rebuild Chechnya and lead it back to the Kremlin’s fold. “I cannot tell you how great my love for Russia is,” he said in an interview this year.
But beneath this publicly professed loyalty, some of Chechnya’s indigenous security forces — with their evident anti-Slavic racism, institutionalized brutality, culture of impunity and intolerant interpretation of a pre-medieval Islamic code — have demonstrated the vicious behavior that Russia has said its latest invasion of Chechnya, in 1999, was supposed to stop.
Human rights groups and Chechen civilians say these security forces’ ambitions and loyalties are uncertain and that their actions are unchecked. The republic’s course, they say, is dangerous for Russians and Chechens alike.
Few people have yet compared the current disorder with the end of the brief period of Chechen autonomy, in the late 1990s, when rebels and foreign Islamic mercenaries operated terrorist training camps in the forests, and when Islamic courts sentenced criminals to execution by firing squads, which were broadcast on Chechen television news. But Kadyrov’s police and security forces, known as kadyrovtsy, are staffed mostly with uneducated young men, some of whom have been fighting for years, including many former rebels who have changed sides.
Recent videos of their conduct, provided to The New York Times by outraged Chechens, show an unsettling pattern.
One shows a man and a woman in the town of Shali, each married to someone else, who were suspected of flirting in a car this summer. The police swarmed around the couple, jeering at them, and directed the man to kick the woman. The couple was then forced to dance a brief lezginka, a traditional and often sexually charged dance. The police kicked the woman, too, and pulled her scarf and hair.
Although the faces of several of the officers are clear, they have yet to come under investigation by higher authorities.
Another instance of unrestrained behavior occurred in late July in Kurchaloi, when one of Kadyrov’s units killed a rebel, Akhmad Dushayev, and beheaded his body. The severed head was displayed on a pipe in the town’s center, residents said in interviews.
Videos show that later the kadyrovtsy, many in police uniforms, casually amused themselves with the head, joking as they displayed it in a garage. Another video shows the head adorned with a cap and with a cigarette in its mouth.
Residents said the police justified the beheading by saying that Dushayev had previously cut off the head of a pro-Kremlin Chechen fighter, and that the vengeance was fair play.
On Aug. 29, the Times provided Kadyrov’s office with four videos of Soltayeva’s torture. Kadyrov said through a spokeswoman that upon viewing them he had ordered the Chechen Interior Ministry to investigate. “Criminal charges will be brought against all responsible for this,” said the spokeswoman, Tatyana Georgiyeva.
Estemirova said the unit in Argun that seized Soltayeva had been formally disbanded in the spring, but that its members were simply transferred into new “professional” battalions, known as Sever and Yug, or North and South.
“They were assimilated into Sever and Yug and never checked by prosecutors,” she said. “Now they are more difficult to arrest.”

TITLE: 3 Parties Set Sites on United Russia
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Party of Life, the Rodina party and the Pensioners’ Party announced Tuesday that they would merge, forming a left-wing alternative to United Russia.
The announcement cemented what had been expected for several weeks.
“We consider the practice of controlled and regulated elections unacceptable,” Sergei Mironov, leader of the Party of Life and speaker of the Federation Council, said at an unusually packed news conference.
“In opposing United Russia, we are opposing the idea of a monopolizing political force.”
The announcement of the merger and Mironov’s comments were greeted with skepticism tinged with anger by United Russia officials.
“Declaring a merger does not mean anything,” United Russia spokesman Leonid Goryainov said. “It only makes sense when parties merge around a certain program or ideology.”
United Russia has itself been accused of lacking a clear ideology and serving as little more than a political vehicle for the Kremlin.
Goryainov added: “I’d like to ask why Mr. Mironov, who is now suddenly in opposition to United Russia, has been rubber-stamping all of the bills United Russia passed in the Duma for the past three years.”
Mironov dismissed Goryainov’s remarks. Contrary to Goryainov’s suggestion that the Party of Life is controlled by the Kremlin, Mironov said, the fact that the party’s candidates were removed from the ballot in the Sverdlovsk region shows it is, in fact, an independent force.
The new party is likely to be called Rodina, Life and Pensioners — the Union of Trust, because all three parties wanted some part of their old names in the new party’s name, said Igor Zotov, head of the Pensioners’ Party.
During the news conference, the three leaders sat against a backdrop emblazoned with the new party’s name on a mock ballot and, beside that, a check signaling support.
Mironov voiced hope the new party would pass bills “in the interests of the people.”
Zotov added that the party would protect Russians from what he dubbed the harmful policies pushed by United Russia. The new party will have 1.5 million supporters nationwide, Mironov predicted. The leader of the party and the presidential candidates to be backed in 2008 have yet to be determined.
The Party of Life and Rodina last month announced plans to merge. The Pensioners’ Party joined the mix earlier this month, after President Vladimir Putin met with Zotov at his Sochi residence — an unusual move given that the Pensioners’ Party has no seats in the Duma.
Rodina, which has appealed to nationalist sentiment across the country, was created with Kremlin support in fall 2003 to capture votes from the Communists. That year, it won 9 percent of the vote. Earlier this year, Kremlin officials, apparently worried about the popularity of Rodina’s leader, Dmitry Rogozin, replaced him with loyalist Alexander Babakov.
The Pensioners’ Party won just 3 percent of the vote in 2003. In subsequent elections, the party did better and, at times, outperformed Rodina. Political analysts attributed that to the party leader Valery Gartung’s harsh criticism of the state. Gartung was eventually replaced by the Kremlin-friendly Zotov.
The Party of Life enjoys the least support of all three parties and, analysts said, has the most to gain from the merger.

TITLE: Concerns Over Gazprom Plans for France, Belgium
AUTHOR: By William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Gazprom is looking at assets in France and Belgium as it continues its powerful push into the gas markets of Western Europe.
Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said Gazprom would consider buying up assets left out of a contentious merger between Paris-based utilities Gaz de France and Suez, French newspaper La Tribune reported Wednesday.
The companies may be forced to spin off the assets as a part of their pending merger, announced earlier this year, which has attracted the attention of European competition authorities.
Yet, Gazprom’s interest in the assets is prompting concerns that the gas behemoth would exercise undue influence in France, where it is already the biggest gas supplier.
Gazprom has made no secret of its plans to expand in Western Europe, home to some of the world’s biggest gas consumers. Target markets for gas delivery, investment, or acquisitions include Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy.
Meanwhile, this week Gazprom finalized a deal with German energy firm E.On to supply a total of 400 billion cubic meters of gas through 2035, as well as additional cooperation on the North European Gas Pipeline, which is planned to run under the Baltic Sea to northern Germany.
“They’re very interested in picking up assets downstream in Europe to further consolidate their market,” said Daniel Simmons, a gas supply expert with the Paris-based International Energy Agency. “Gazprom currently supplies France with gas, so there is some potential logic to a potential bid,” he said, referring to the Suez and Gaz de France assets.
The French government is currently considering lowering its stake in state-controlled Gaz de France. Suez, a French-Dutch company, owns a stake in Belgium’s Fluxys gas company through its Tractebel unit.
Gaz de France is in talks with Gazprom on the prolongation of a long-term supply contract.
Gazprom did not immediately reply to a request for comment on its Western European strategy.
Christel des Royeries, a Gaz de France spokeswoman, said it was “much too early” to talk about possible asset sales in the wake of the merger with Suez.
Des Royeries said the French parliament was working on legislation to allow the state’s share in the gas company to fall to 33 percent. Currently, under French law the state has to own at least 70 percent of the utility, and the state now owns 80 percent.
The European Commission has listed its anti-monopoly concerns in a letter to Suez and Gaz de France, a preliminary step to granting approval to the merger, she said.
“The competition authorities have said they cannot own virtually the whole of the French and the whole Belgian gas monopoly,” said Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
Stern said it was too early to say exactly what assets Suez and Gaz de France would spin off, but that attention had focused recently on the gas distribution and marketing network in Belgium. If the Belgian property were put up for sale, Gazprom would not be the only bidder.
“When we see the assets announced, you’ll just see a huge number of very large utilities descend,” Stern said. “Literally every one of the actors on the European gas scene will be in on it.”
Stern said these wealthy European utilities could quite possibly outbid Gazprom, since a gas network in their backyard means more to them than to Russia. But Gazprom could acquire the network through an asset swap: trading the network for access to Gazprom’s gas deliveries or upstream production.
Earlier this year, Gazprom agreed to swap stakes in its vast Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field near Tomsk in return for assets held by Germany’s E.On and BASF, which with Wintershall are Gazprom’s partners in building the Baltic pipeline.
E.On took a stake of 25 percent minus one share Yuzhno-Russkoye and gave Gazprom stakes of 50 percent minus one share in its Hungarian gas companies. BASF took a 35 percent minus one share in Yuzhno-Russkoye. In return, Gazprom increased its stake in BASF’s gas distribution firm, Wingas, from 35 percent to 50 percent minus one share, and also won a stake in a BASF production subsidiary in Libya. 
Stern said that with gas-related assets trading at sky-high prices, Gazprom would probably use swaps to get its hands on more European assets.
Outright purchases require spending cash or issuing debt. In 2005, Gazprom borrowed more money abroad than any other Russian company, with $4.3 billion issued in foreign-currency denominated debt, not including debt issued by Gazprombank, according to data from Dealogic. Trading assets helps Gazprom develop partners and integrate itself into Western energy markets, an important step for future deals, including liquefied natural gas, or LNG.
But Adam Landes, an oil and gas analyst at Renaissance Capital, said that because of the relatively small size of the Gaz de France and Suez assets compared with Gazprom, an outright acquisition might make more sense.
Recently, Gazprom has bartered for and purchased LNG for small shipments to Britain and the United States. Currently Gazprom cannot process its own gas into LNG, but starting 2010 it hopes to send LNG from its Shtokman fields to the United States and Western Europe.
Gazprom is in talks with the Netherlands on entering the Dutch energy market, and Dutch firm Gasunie in June agreed to take a stake in the North European Gas Pipeline, which may be extended to the Netherlands and on to Britain.
In Italy, Gazprom has approached Eni subsidiary Italgas about swapping some of its assets for a stake in Russian exploration and production. Medvedev has said Gazprom is considering supplying spot LNG deliveries to Spain through swap deals. Meanwhile, the Spanish gas company Repsol has expressed interest in Gazprom’s LNG plant at the Baltic port of Ust-Luga.
Simmons said that if Gazprom acquired more assets in Western Europe, competition regulators might want to look at the consequences, since it already supplied more than one-quarter of the continent’s gas.
“The worry has been in the past that if they’re buying all these downstream assets, what are they doing upstream in order to make sure Europe is getting all the gas it needs in future?” Simmons said. “Whenever a company is diversifying, you worry about its core business.”

TITLE: City Dwellers Encouraged To Find Country Bargain
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The skyrocketing price of city real estate is forcing buyers’ attention  to Leningrad Oblast — but even there supply is already struggling to meet demand, experts said at a round table at Interfax Northwest on Tuesday. 
By offering clients country cottages as a substitute for a regular city apartment, construction companies are hoping to cash in on the anxiety of house-hunters desperate to make a purchase.
As well as switching their attention to out-of town cottages, buyers now have to consider previously unattractive areas, the experts said.
 “City residents are increasingly looking for real estate in the suburbs,” said Leonid Teleguzov, chairman of Zagorodnaya Nedvizhimost association.
“Previously 40 kilometers from the city was considered too far away, but at the moment 80 to 100 kilometers has become quite acceptable,” he said.
Apart from the Kurortny district, which has always attracted the well-off, Vsevolozhsk, Karelian Isthmus and Priozersk are gaining popularity as areas of elite construction, Teleguzov indicated.
“Southern areas are developing, though previously this region was considered unattractive. The Vyritsa region benefits from picturesque places and proximity to the ring-road,” he said. “For a long time buyers ignored the Kirovsky district and Shlisselburg. Now they have become dynamic areas of low and mid-price construction,” Teleguzov said.
In the Kirovsky district several hundred agreements are signed a month, while three years ago such agreements were quite unusual.
Country housing is also becoming more expensive, following the city trend. At the moment a one room apartment in Shlisselburg costs $50,000, a two room apartment — $70,000, Teleguzov said.
The average wait to sell a house has recently decreased from six months to three months, he said, and seasonal variations in sales became less distinct.
Another expert agreed that the country market is soon likely to take off. “Usually the market for cottages reacts to variations in the city real estate price within a year. Thus we can expect a rapid increase in the price of country real estate next spring,” Oleg Karzov, director for country real estate at Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost, commented via e-mail Thursday.
“Leningrad Oblast, surely, is desperately short of new cottages for sale, especially in the South. Demand for cottages started growing two years ago, and now it exceeds the number of cottages put up for sale. They are snapped up like hot cakes,” Karzov said.
Comfort class and business class cottages are the most popular. As for location, Karzov indicated the Karelian Isthmus as the most attractive area. “Kurortny and Vsevolozhsky districts follow it in popularity. The most expensive cottages are located there,” he said.
Karzov predicted that Southern Leningrad Oblast would soon gain popularity. According to his forecast, over the next year five to six new construction projects will start every month — the same rate can be seen at the moment. So by the next spring over 100 cottage settlements will be available, while at the moment they are limited to about 60.
To increase the number of potential buyers the round table proposed using cheaper construction technologies. Alexander Portnov, CEO of Russian Real Estate Fund, suggested the frame and panel type of housing widely used in North European countries.
“Such houses are warmer and cheaper. They cost $650-750 per square meters while one square meter costs over $2,000 in many market segments in the city,” Portnov said.
He predicted that this cheaper technology will command a considerable part of the residential market. Two plants that will produce such construction materials are currently being built in Leningrad Oblast. One such plant could produce materials for 1,000 houses a year. A total of 14 such plants will be launched across Russia, Portnov said.
Ivan Kuzmitsky, CEO of City Stroi Service, said that the basic set of materials costs $300 per square meter, not including the basement and roof. Among the advantages of this technology he indicated savings on energy, flexible architectural solutions and the opportunity to assemble a cottage throughout the year.

TITLE: Usmanov Snaps Up Newspaper
AUTHOR: By Patrick Henry, Yuriy Humber and William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Metals magnate Alisher Usmanov said Wednesday night that he was buying the Kommersant business daily for about $200 million.
Usmanov said the editorial policy and the newspaper’s management would remain unchanged.
“I won’t interfere with the editorial policy. I think some things need to be strengthened, definitely some improvements, but I don’t believe fundamental changes are needed,” he said by telephone.
He said one of the changes might be to add some color.
Boris Berezovsky, the newspaper’s former owner, called Usmanov a level-headed businessman who “doesn’t let political passions get the better of him.”
“The authorities will try to influence the company’s policies by leaning on Usmanov, of course, but I know that he is also very protective of his personal reputation,” Berezovsky said by telephone. “He will try to find a reasonable compromise in the interest of Kommersant allowing him to maintain as much independence as is possible in Russia today while not spoiling his relationship with the authorities.”
Kommersant is one of the last strongholds of independent media in Russia. Usmanov said the final details of the deal were being worked out, and his private offshore Mediaholding company would acquire Kommersant and its publishing house in a day or two.
Usmanov, 52, has a personal fortune of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Usmanov and his partners hold the country’s largest iron-ore assets via the Metalloinvest holding company. He works as a troubleshooter for Gazprom.
Usmanov stressed that Mediaholding was his own company and not connected to Metalloinvest or Gazprom in any way.
Asked whether he had faced any pressure from the Kremlin in clinching the deal, he said: “There was no pressure. This was purely a business deal.”

TITLE: German Plasterer Reveals Ambitious Russian Plans
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Knauf, the German producer of construction materials, launched a new plasterboard plant in St. Petersburg this week, investing 60 million euros ($77 million) into the project. New large-scale investments are forthcoming all across the country, Prime-TASS reported Wednesday.
“By opening this plant we will be able to deliver plasterboard to the Russian market without resorting to imports,” Prime-TASS cited Nikolaus Knauf, co-owner and managing companion of the company as saying Wednesday.
“In the next few years we will develop our production facilities. The total volume of investment into this plant will increase to $90 million,” he said.
The plant will produce standard, waterproof and fire-resistant Knauf boards and dry construction mixes. Production is planned at 30 million square meters of plasterboard a year.
The Knauf Group operates around 120 plants in over 30 countries in Europe, Asia, United States and South America. Nine plants are located in Russia.
Next spring Knauf will launch a glass fiber plant in the Moscow region, investing over $100 million into the project.
“Furthermore, in 2007 we will start construction of a plasterboard plant in Irkutsk and in the middle of next year we will start mining plaster stone in Arkhangelsk region,” Prime-TASS quoted Knauf as saying.
Haints Yurkovich, CEO of the Knauf Group in Russia and CIS, said that the company invested $700 million into construction and modernization of its Russian production sites in 1993-2006. “In the future Knauf will annually invest $200 million into Russian plants,” Prime-TASS cited Yurkovich as saying.
Experts saw the replacement of imports with local production as an advantageous step for Knauf.
“Companies importing goods into Russia are obliged to pay custom fees for the privilege (between five percent and 15 percent of the product cost), VAT (18 percent) and custom fees for documents processing, goods storage and diligence,” said Alexander Yevstigneyev, lawyer at Linia Prava law firm.
“By localizing the production process the company will avoid paying all these fees and taxes,” he said.
At the moment foreign producers in Russia are subject to the same laws as national companies, however, Yevstigneyev indicated, “Russian legislation, especially tax and custom laws, is not particularly stable or clear.”
“Every other year, or several times a year amendments are made, and sublegal acts introduced. However, at the moment the laws are much more stable and consistent than in the 1990s,” he said. 
“For a company that operates production sites all across Russia the main challenge is to coordinate management. It does not only concern foreign producers,” said Valentina Tilimonchik, leading lawyer of Competence Consulting.
“For Knauf there are also investment risks related to registering land rent agreements, environmental legislation and working with subcontractors,” she said. In St. Petersburg Knauf benefits from local tax concessions, Tilimonchik said. For example, the profit tax paid to St. Petersburg budget is 13.5 percent instead of 17.5 percent.
Alexander Shtokolov, deputy director of Regional Center for Pricing in Construction, said that the new Knauf plant would have a positive impact on the construction market. “Previously plasterboard was mainly imported from Finland, but construction materials should be produced near the large cities where they are consumed,” he said.
Knauf holds most of the market, Shtokolov said. “Russian firms have been producing such materials for the last twenty years but they are of lower quality,” Shtokolov said.

TITLE: AvtoVAZ Doesn’t Need the State’s Help
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — When Vladimir Artyakov took over AvtoVAZ in December, he pledged the state would pump billions of dollars into the ailing carmaker. On Wednesday, Artyakov said AvtoVAZ didn’t need any state money.
Now, the AvtoVAZ chairman indicated, the nation’s No. 1 carmaker is set to continue construction of its transmission plant in Tolyatti, reported by Interfax to cost $500 million.
“We looked at our internal resources,” Artyakov said, speaking to reporters at the Moscow Auto Show. “We won’t have to borrow from the state.”
It was unclear whether Artyakov was referring to the construction of the Tolyatti plant or whether he was speaking more generally about the financial state of the company.
The chairman said in an interview that AvtoVAZ came to the conclusion that it would not need state aid after meeting with representatives from Renault, Porsche and Munich-based consulting firm Roland Berger.
Oddly, Artyakov said later in the interview that the carmaker did indeed need help. “We do need support from the state,” he said. The chairman did not specify how much money AvtoVAZ needed or what that money would be used for.
The carmaker is in the midst of scaling back expansion plans. On Wednesday, Artyakov confirmed that AvtoVAZ would not be building an assembly plant, but would possibly invest in an existing facility.
Artyakov said Renault was seeking “technical cooperation” between the two companies and a stake in the Russian carmaker. AvtoVAZ, he said, would respond to Renault’s offers by late September, adding it was “unlikely” that AvtoVAZ would sell a stake to Renault.
AvtoVAZ also would like to bury the hatchet with General Motors, Artyakov indicated. Officials from both companies met last week. 
Earlier this year, AvtoVAZ reported it was losing money from its partnership with the U.S. car giant. Together, the two carmakers are producing the Chevrolet Niva sport utility vehicle and Viva sedans.
“We’ve removed all the problems and misunderstandings between us,” Artyakov said. “The only problem is the question of production output.” AvtoVAZ wants output to increase to 75,000 cars produced annually, from 46,000. 
Warren Browne, head of GM in Russia, said Tuesday that “the future has never looked brighter” for the GM-AvtoVAZ partnership.
Elena Sakhnova, an analyst with Deutsche UFG, a Moscow-based investment bank, said the GM-AvtoVAZ partnership was important for GM because the carmaker planned to open its own plant in St. Petersburg in 2009.
On Wednesday, Artyakov confirmed reports that AvtoVAZ had been in talks with the SOK Group, which owns carmaker IzhAvto. The talks have centered around the possible acquisition of one of SOK Group’s car-production plants.

TITLE: New Motor Fuel Taxes Would Begin In 2008
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Economic Development and Trade Ministry is planning to bring in new motor fuel taxes from 2008, Vedomosti reported Wednesday, with a method of categorizing fuels that one analyst said would keep refining margins high.
Vedomosti said the ministry planned to submit the bill to the government by the end of the year and that it hoped it would pass through the parliament in the spring of next year in order to become law in 2008.
The new rules would bring in four tax rates for gasoline and diesel based on their sulfur, benzene, aromatics and lead content, as well as octane level.
The ministry wants to ban fuels in the lowest-quality class in 2009 and the second-lowest in 2010.
Analysts at Aton Capital said the new rules would have a profound effect on the refining sector, since only major players could afford the technology required to reduce levels of benzene and aromatics.
Small players — who might otherwise reduce refining profits — would be shut out.
“We therefore believe that Russia’s high refining margins will remain for the foreseeable future,” Aton analysts said in written research.
“While we do not expect a short-term market reaction, the new rules would have a positive effect on Russian oil majors.”

TITLE: U.S. WTO Stance a Thing of the Past
AUTHOR: By Stuart S. Malawer
TEXT: One important issue from July’s G8 summit in St. Petersburg has significant implications for the United States and the global trading system, but received little play in the Western media: Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization. The United States has glaringly politicized this issue for domestic purposes, while its actions in St. Petersburg provided many important lessons for U.S. trade and foreign policy.
The Russian government approached the summit as a major milestone. President Vladimir Putin highlighted his great domestic popularity and Russia’s economic revitalization as a result of its oil and gas exports and booming commodity markets. The summit also cast a spotlight on St. Petersburg — Putin’s hometown — itself.
Putin wanted the summit to focus on energy security, but in the lead up to the event the U.S. side looked more interested in raising questions involving Russian domestic politics. Ultimately the outbreak of hostilities in Lebanon and Israel hijacked the conference. While this may have obscured the issue of Russia and the WTO, it is still an issue that deserves examination.
Russia is the world’s largest economy not within the WTO. Its application for membership has been pending for more than a decade. During this period, countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, Armenia and Croatia have become members and Vietnam is expected to join this year. Russia possesses the second largest oil reserves in the world and many of its corporations (state-owned natural gas monopoly Gazprom, for example) are now involved in global transactions, mergers and acquisitions. Some of the largest IPO’s in the world this year have involved Russian companies, such as Rosneft.
Russia is clearly in a state of economic and diplomatic ascendancy after the disastrous 1990s. The RTS stock index has been reaching new heights, foreign currency reserves are the third-highest in the world and the economy is growing at an annual clip of 6 percent. Announcements of plans for new foreign direct investment have accelerated.
WTO accession agreements have been concluded between Russia and all of the WTO member states except the United States. This agreement is required before Russia can join the WTO.
On the eve of the summit, the Russian delegation announced a trade breakthrough with the United States. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin was quoted by Russian media as saying the accession protocol would be signed at the beginning of the summit. But what seemed like a sure thing quickly dissolved.
The United States immediately declared that some unresolved issues remained, primarily involving market access and lingering concerns over intellectual property rights. At this point the Russians belatedly raised the minor issue of meat imports from the United States. The Russian delegation demanded the right to inspect U.S. farms in order to protect against mad cow disease (there have been two cases reported in the United States). It was clearly a face-saving measure.
The G8 states then mumbled something about resuscitating the moribund Doha Round and the United States and Russia said they hoped to move forward on Russian accession in the fall. (WTO chief Pascal Lamy subsequently declared a suspension of the Doha Round negotiations.)
U.S. President George W. Bush indicated at the summit that more concessions would be required to get congressional approval. Just prior to the summit, Senate Democrats had urged Bush not to enter into an agreement. They had doubts about Russia’s reliability as a trading partner and its willingness to comply with WTO obligations. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also raised its long-standing concerns over corruption and the defense of intellectual property rights in Russia.
Partly as a result of this stalemate, several major transactions involving U.S. and Russian firms remain stalled, including Boeing’s effort to sell aircraft to Aeroflot and Chevron and ConocoPhillips’ proposal to partner with Gazprom partners in the Barents Sea gas project.
The situation clearly demonstrates that trade has become a secondary policy objective for the United States. Susan Schwab, the newly installed U.S. trade representative, and her leadership team are simply not senior or experienced enough to create new political realities. The default inclination of anti-Russian and protectionist forces within Congress and the Bush administration are surfacing, as they often do, at exactly the worst moment. The United States needs a strong global economy, a viable multilateral trade organization and a partner on a host of diplomatic and national security issues, including Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, global terrorism, secure energy supplies and global economic development.
The breakdown of the Russia-U.S. accession discussions speaks volumes. Russia thought it had an agreement, so much so that it made the announcement. The agreement would have been the crowning achievement of the G8 summit for all of the members. But the United States refused to allow this to happen, for the same old reasons: congressional pressure, business lobbying and, most importantly, presidential administration officials who still just don’t get it.
By standing in the way, administration officials demonstrated that they did not understand the folly of pressuring a country that spans 11 time zones into adopting domestic policies stemming from U.S. political and cultural ideological perspectives developed during the United States’ own unique political history. Russia has its own political and cultural history spanning 1,000 years. Yes, corruption is a problem. But that is true in many other countries. There is significant pressure in Russia already to sign the UN Convention Against Corruption. Is corruption in Russia any more of a problem than in a large number of other countries? Clearly, many in Congress and the Bush administration still view Russia through a latent Cold War prism.
The integration of Russia into the global economy is essential. The WTO is the only major multilateral organization that really works. Its goal is the creation of a rule-based trading system and its dispute-resolution system is extraordinarily effective. Global trade has expanded exponentially since the organization’s founding in 1995. The underlying premise of the WTO is that, as a rule-based system developed to govern global trade, it will help foster rules and institutions within the civil society of member states, making them more democratic and wed to the free market. This system is the critical link between global trade, economic prosperity and political development — as envisioned by the United States as the architects of the WTO.
The goal of Russian accession should not be sacrificed on the altar of atavistic perceptions. The United States should modify its trade and foreign policy. It must develop a comprehensive national security policy, integrating global trade and foreign policy concerns without domestic political intrusions, to enhance trade relations and to give political development a boost — both in Russia and around the globe.

Stuart S. Malawer is a professor of law and international trade at the George Mason University School of Public Policy.

TITLE: Who Gets Charged and Why
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The mayors of the town of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol Region have been about as lucky as the inhabitants of the cursed apartment No. 50 in Bulgakov’s classic novel “The Master and Margarita”.
The first mayor, Yury Vasilyev, was almost killed when his car was blown up in August 2003. His successor, Vladimir Shestopalov, was also the target of bombers, and was later indicted for corruption.
On July 31, Pyatigorsk’s City Duma elected a third mayor, Igor Tarasov — only for Tarasov’s SUV to crash into a car in the oncoming lane on a highway, killing the driver and four passengers. Regional prosecutors arrested him on suspicion that he was behind the wheel at the time.
The mettle on the part of the prosecutors is simply amazing. After all, there are lots of voters, but only one mayor. They probably would have charged Alexander Ivanov, the son of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, with the death of an elderly pedestrian who was killed when struck by the younger Ivanov’s car in May 2005. No charges were filed.
In this context, the fact that Tarasov was taken into custody following what was, by Russian political standards, an insignificant little traffic accident that left just five people dead, might seem strange.
The arrest of Tarasov is not the first story involving prosecutors and the town of Pyatigorsk.
Just four months after Vasilyev’s car was blown up, regional prosecutors announced they were closing the investigation “due to a failure to establish the identity of any person who could be questioned as a suspect.”
With the second mayor, Shestopalov, it was even funnier. Having gotten himself elected, he tried to set up a model mountain resort at Mashuk with help from German investors. Unfortunately for Shestopalov, the land had already been handed out under the previous mayor. In May 2004, Shestopalov found a powerful homemade explosive device in a flowerbed in his yard. The assassination attempt failed, but just two months later the corruption charges against him were filed. Shestopalov was ultimately fired, and shortly thereafter 37 hectares of the Mashuk property was sold to some little-known company for 347,000 rubles ($13,000).
It’s enough to make you wonder at the apparent coincidence of interests between the would-be assassins and the regional prosecutors.
Tarasov’s luck hasn’t been any better. The regional authorities showed interest in him even before his involvement in the fatal accident. On Aug. 21, he was temporarily stripped of his powers while the regional government investigated suspected irregularities in his nomination as mayor. At least that was the official accusation. The unofficial one was that Tarasov had been an adviser to Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov and deputy to Kadyrov’s predecessor, Sergei Abramov, meaning that his election put a Kadyrov man in the mayor’s office. Why would the people running the resort capital of the North Caucasus want it under the control of the man who effectively runs Chechnya?
Pyatigorsk has long been in the process of being carved up, but it’s becoming harder and harder to work out who is the mayor, who is the killer, and who is the prosecutor. You think it was only the investigation into the attempt on Vasilyev’s life that regional prosecutors closed with the convincing explanation that they had failed to even find a suspect? Wrong — the exact same formula was trotted out when the investigation into the attempt on Shestopalov’s life was closed three months later.
I don’t know who will finally end up with control of the resort capital of the Caucasus. My point is that, if prosecutors close the investigation into the attempts on the life of Mayor Shestopalov and swiftly detain Mayor Tarasov for a fatal traffic accident, the whole thing starts to look a little one-sided.
In this kingdom of crooked mirrors, the death of the five motorists starts to look more like the pretext for Tarasov’s arrest, and not the reason.

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

TITLE: A fistful of Rotterdam
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dutch Punch, a contemporary arts event, brings cutting-edge acts from Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second city, to provide an intriguing glimpse into European urban culture.
Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second-biggest city, is famous for having Europe’s largest port, daring modern architecture, Erasmus University and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, whose musical director is Valery Gergiev of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater. But there’s also a dark side to it.
“Rotterdam is also notorious for being the most criminal, grungiest and most dangerous city in Holland, and it’s so full of immigrants that it’s not so often you meet a Dutch person there,” admitted Belarus-born Natasha Padabed, the driving force behind Dutch Punch, a festival that brings the city’s alternative music scene to Russia.
Run by the Rotterdam-based Padabed and her partner, Stefan van der Burg, Dutch Punch was launched last year in St. Petersburg as a mini-festival within the now-defunct Window on The Netherlands, a major presentation of the country’s culture and business that was held annually in the city between 1996 and 2005.
To promote the event Padabed and Van der Burg set up Kultprom, a non-profit cultural agency. The pair is also behind More Zvukov, another agency which is responsible for the European tour schedule of local bands La Minor, Iva Nova and Messer Chups, while Padabed is also a program director of SKIF, the biggest local festival of left-field music and arts. 
This year’s Dutch Punch opens Thursday and will be held simultaneously in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Pskov. It is focused on Rotterdam, because “it’s a city where we, Kultprom, live, because it’s an interesting multicultural modern city with a very rich culture, and it’s a sister city of St. Petersburg,” said the agency’s news release.
Of the four acts taking part in this year’s event, Elle Bandita is possibly the ultimate Rotterdam artist, according to Padabed. “She grew up in a conservative, homophobic, almost fascist suburb of Rotterdam, that’s why she writes such angry songs,” the promoter said.
The singer and guitarist, who describes her style as “lo-fi electro queer rock and roll,” felt like an outcast when mocked by her teenage peers for “looking like a boy” and later came with what she calls her “counter-attack,” she writes on her web site.
“An Elle Bandita performance is very chaotic, and never the same. People either like it or they absolutely don’t,” she wrote in an e-mail this week.
It’s not easy to appreciate Rotterdam, she said.
“It’s a very ugly city. … It looks very industrial, since a lot of buildings were destroyed after World War II, and ‘modern’ buildings were built to fill up the gaps. Dark and gray. 
But if you look beyond the main streets, there are some beautiful places to hang out too.”
Bandita admitted the influence of the Rotterdam electronic scene but stated that she “could write lyrics about assholes anywhere else, I guess.”
“Unfortunately, lots of venues are closing down because of money problems,” she wrote. 
“Since the arrival of a right-wing city council, less and less money is going to culture, and now it’s going to the police instead. So now there’s not so many stages for musicians to play anymore, but the underground movement is growing bigger because of this.”
The city indeed boasts a burgeoning alt-music scene, echoed Rene van Lien, the singer and guitarist for Feverdream, another band taking part in Dutch Punch.
“The cool thing about Rotterdam is that all those people interact and … cheer when someone does something different [instead of] when someone makes a copy of somebody else’s work,” he wrote in an e-mail this week.
“I see Rotterdam mainly as my home,” wrote Van Lien about his city, once described as an “ugly collection of  nice modern buildings.”
“I love the view of the bridges across de Maas River after a long night making music. The city is alive and still leaves you alone. We have a lot of extremes here. Many cultures, but also a lot of right-wing folks. We were or are murder city number one, but I never had any trouble here.”
While Feverdream’s music has been described by Dutch radio presenter Jaap Boots as “experimental emo-core of the highest rate,” another band — the Rotterdam Ska-Jazz Foundation — is coming to St. Petersburg with a more traditional sound, mixing ska, jazz, rocksteady, reggae and soul.
“One advantage is that there will be no language barrier in our music, since we are an instrumental band,” wrote drummer Dimitrov Jeltsema. “As a famous musician once said: ‘Music speaks louder than words.’”
The fourth act in Dutch Punch is actually a DJ who was born Tommy de Roos but plays under the moniker FFF. Specializing in electronic hardcore, De Roos, who did a stint with the noise band FCKN’BSTRDS, is also known for his production work and underground comic art. Bandita thinks that the city’s music scene reflects its diverse social landscape.
“There are loads of cultural differences in Rotterdam, so there are also a lot of weird mix-ups,” she wrote. “It’s cool to collaborate with artists from different styles, so that’s why Rotterdam has a very renewing sound.”

Dutch Punch opens with Elle Bandita and Feverdream performing at Red Club on Thursday. See next week’s listings for more events.
www.kultprom.org, www.ellebandita.com, feverdream.nl, www.rsjf.nl, www.myspace.com/fff

TITLE: Till death do us part
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: He was a vicious dictator. She was just a teenager when they fell in love. An upcoming television series turns Stalin’s marriage into a soap opera.
Josef Stalin is depicted as a passionate lover who missed the October Revolution because he was in bed with his teenage lover, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, in a period drama titled “His Wife” that is due to air on Russian television in November.
The four-part drama series, which may also be released as a feature film, has been sold to the Rossia television network, said producer and co-director Mira Todorovskaya in a Tuesday interview. 
A preliminary DVD of the film (which is still in post-production) shows Georgian actor Duta Skhirtladze in the role of Stalin and Olga Budina in the role of Alliluyeva meeting at her parents’ house when the Bolshevik returned from exile, and swiftly beginning a romantic relationship, despite their 22-year age gap. “I love you, Nadya,” Stalin confesses. “All this is serious and for a long time.”
In one scene, Stalin helps a nervous Alliluyeva take off her camisole; in another, he pulls her into the water while she is washing him in a bath. According to the film’s version of history, the reason he was absent during the storming of the Winter Palace was because he was in bed with his lover. “The Bolsheviks have taken power — or haven’t,” he tells her, as they hear the sound of shooting outside.
The film is based on a novel called “The Only Woman” by Olga Trifonova, which came out in 2001 and presented a semi-factual account of Stalin and Alliluyeva’s relationship based on archival research. “The material for a literary screenplay could only have been taken from this book. No one before Trifonova wrote in such detail about the life of Nadezhda Alliluyeva,” Todorovskaya said. 
The script for “His Wife,” written by Todorovskaya, was also inspired by a 2004 documentary shot by her Mirabel film studio that covered the same story: “Stalin’s Wife” by Slava Tsukerman. Influenced by the documentary’s findings, Todorovskaya’s drama portrays Alliluyeva’s death in 1932 as suicide, rather than murder by her husband, as some have suggested.
“Having studied a large quantity of material, we didn’t come to the conclusion that he could have killed her,” the producer said. “I’m sure she committed suicide.”
In the film, the parts leading up to Allilyueva’s death reveal her husband’s sadistic tendencies — at one point, he tells her that she could be his daughter, since he had an affair with her mother — but there is no suggestion that Stalin killed her. Her death is not shown on screen: After Stalin insults her at a banquet, she is shown walking through the Kremlin alone, and then a shot is heard.
Stalin was a “devil” and “monster,” Todorovskaya said, but “in our film you can’t see that.” She believes that while Alliluyeva was alive, she helped keep Stalin’s behavior in check. “She was like his second conscience. When she was no longer there, it was as if he was released from a chain.”
One episode that Todorovskaya took from “The Only Woman,” rather than from real life, was a tentative love affair between Alliluyeva and a psychiatrist in the Czech spa resort of Marienbad, where she went to be treated for gynecological problems. There is no record of such an affair, the producer said. In the film, the psychiatrist is killed after Alliluyeva departs.
The producer expects the film to provoke controversy for its multifaceted portrayal of Stalin. People who see him as inhuman “will say that we have beautified Stalin and made him not as he was in real life,” she said. Which is not to say that Stalin’s supporters will like it: “I think my film will have opponents from both sides.”
The lead role went to Georgian stage actor Skhirtladze, who in 2003 acted in a Cesar-winning French film,”Since Otar Left.” An earlier plan was to cast Vladimir Mashkov, a Russian actor who has played tough-guy roles in Hollywood, but he was unable to do it for contractual reasons, Todorovskaya said, adding, “I don’t regret it at all.”
She brushed off a suggestion that the handsome, clear-skinned Skhirtladze could be too attractive for the role of a man who had smallpox scars and a withered arm. Stalin “was pockmarked and had freckles, but he was very charming all the same,” she said.
Todorovskaya hopes to sell the film, made on a budget of around $3 million, to English-speaking countries, where she feels there will be more interest. In Russia, she has not yet secured an agreement on cinema showings, she said, and distributors are reluctant to buy the film. “They say that young people aren’t interested in this — they don’t even know who Stalin is. Why would they want to go to see this film?”

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: A leading alternative band and St. Petersburg’s oldest surviving alternative club will celebrate their anniversaries with a joint party and concert this week, albeit invitation-only.
Tequilajazzz, which played its first concert at the legendary TaMtAm club in Sept. 1993, and Fish Fabrique, which opened at a different location a year later, have added up their ages and come up with a number to play around with. This year, it is 25.
The band and the club have kept the tradition alive for a few years but skipped last year for some reason.
“I think we went to some other city to play, I don’t remember,” said Fyodorov this week, confirming that Tequilajazzz will be performing at the festivities, even if is to a limited number of fans.
“It will be for friends only, no tickets will be sold,” said Fyodorov.
Platforma, a venue that was launched in Sept. 2004 and which grew into a leading local club that now holds some of the finest concerts in the city, will celebrate its second anniversary with a concert on Monday.
“Whereas last year we put the stress on the stars, such as Khoronko Orkestr, La Minor and Dobranotch, this year we want to have bands that are, so to speak, ‘young’ for our club, and invite well-known musicians simply as guests,” said art director Denis Rubin.
Klever, Rtut, MonoStereo and, possibly, Skafandr are due to take part in the anniversary concert that starts at 7 p.m. Although many invitations will be issued, tickets will be also available for 250 rubles in advance  and 300 rubles at the door.
The director of Moloko, the venue that closed late last year and is expected to reopen at a new location, dismissed rumors about the club’s much-anticipated “soft opening” this week. 
According to Yury Ugryumov, the event under question turned out to be a birthday party for Seraphin Makangila, Markscheider Kunst’s former vocalist who now fronts his new band Simba Vibration.
“We won’t won’t open for another month, though we will probably throw small parties for friends now and then, amid the construction.”
Dutch Punch, a festival of Dutch alternative music, brings four alternative acts from Rotterdam to perform at Red Club, Platforma and Manhattan this and next week (see article, pages i and ii), while St. Petersburg’s own veteran art-rockers Auktsyon will perform its last local concert at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture on Thursday before flying to the U.S.
Starting Sept. 11, the band will spend ten days at Kaleidoscope Sound Studios in New York recording its first American album.
Watch out also for the garage-rock band Kacheli at Fish Fabrique on Friday, the Afro-rock collective Markscheider Kunst at Platforma on Friday and the politically-minded “glam-punk” band PTVP launching its first live DVD called “Prava Cheloveka” (“Human Rights”) at Orlandina on Saturday.

TITLE: The rhythm of the sea
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — New Scandinavian and Nordic music took center stage at the Fourth Baltic Sea Festival that concluded in Stockholm on Sunday.
One of the main goals of this classical music festival with an environmental bent — the musicians campaign to save the Baltic Sea from dangerous levels of pollution — is to nurture emerging talent in contemporary Baltic classical music. The event’s co-creators — Finnish-born conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and St. Petersburg’s Valery Gergiev, the Mariinsky Theater’s artistic director — have expressed the intention to take a closer look at contemporary composers in Russia at coming festivals.
“The orchestras simply need to play this music, otherwise there will never be the audience for it,” Salonen said. “The human soul is curious; we people are curious animals, that is why we have got to where we are.” 
Salonen noted that the situation for young composers is particularly problematic in Russia: major orchestras show little enthusiasm in new music because general audiences express little interest in the contemporary repertoire, which makes it hard to sell these concerts; listeners, in turn, do not have enough exposure to this repertoire to be able to develop a taste for it.
“St. Petersburg was always a leading new music city from the days of Tchaikovsky and during the experimental period back in the 1920s, until Stalin strangled the experiments,” Salonen said, referring to the Soviet dictator. “After so many years of persecution and fear — not the fear of bad reviews but fear for one’s life — it must be still difficult for Russian composers to return to an open and unrestricted state of mind. But when I am in St. Petersburg, overall creativity is tangible in the air, and if we support up-and-coming young talent, it will win through.”
The Mariinsky Theater’s orchestra performed Dmitry Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony and a version of Verdi’s “Falstaff” at the Baltic Sea Festival.
Two new works that premiered this year were commissioned by Salonen:     “Maro,” an instrumental piece inspired by the sea by the mysterious Helsinki composer Kimmo Hakala, and “Open Ground,”  an orchestral work by Russian-born Swedish composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas. 
Salonen achieved an impressive contrast by juxtaposing Sibelius’s intense and solemn Seventh Symphony with Anders Hillborg’s cerebral new piece “Eleven Gates,” which enjoyed its European premiere at the festival on Aug. 24 in Stockholm’s Berwald Concert Hall. 
Hillborg’s surreal, tongue-in-cheek work is divided into 11 sections with unorthodox names, like “Suddenly in the Room with Floating Mirrors,” “Waves, Pulse and Elastic Seabirds” and “Meadow of Sadsongs” and features, among other things, three percussionists making wine glasses sing. The bill on that night included Wilhelm Stenhammar 1913 aristocratic “Serenade,” exuding Chekhovian drama and lyrical charm, and Hakala’s  “Maro,” inspired by the sights and sounds of the Baltic Sea.
Distinguished world-renowned percussionist Evelyn Glennie received a standing ovation on Aug. 25 in the  Berwald for her vigorous and ecstatic performance of Erkki-Sven Tuur’s galvanizing Fourth Symphony, “Magma.” 
In an interview Glennie said she believes a piece of music does not have to be always “enjoyable” in the usual sense of the word. 
“It could be the most squeaky gig on the planet but there could be something really exciting about, say, the use of percussion or the orchestration,” she said. “It is just that the composer must hang on to his own unique voice. For performers, it is equally important to be able to listen to their own inner voices. Whatever the bad reviews, or the overwhelming ovation, you are always your own best confidante.”
One of the festival’s most captivating performances was a late-night candle-lit concert by the Latvian Radio Choir at the Gustav Vasa Church on Aug. 24 in a sophisticated program that fused the quintessential European choral tradition — represented by a selection of Clytus Gottwald’s adaptations of spiritual vocal pieces of Debussy, Ravel and Olivier Messiaen — with atonal, mystical works by modern Baltic composers Arvo Part and Peteris Vasks.
Tuur’s “Magma” was commissioned by Glennie.
“I like the real colour and the forcefulness of ‘Magma’,” Glennie told The St. Petersburg Times. “It is a sort of piece that you need to delve into for more than once because there are so many things happening — in this respect I look at it as both a symphony and a concerto — and I enjoy the masculinity of it as well as the feminine side. The composer seems to strike that balance very well.”
Glennie gained international fame as one of the world’s leading solo percussionists with her exquisite technique and unique tactile approach to music: deaf since the age of 12, she has learnt to “hear” music through vibrations. Low sounds can be sensed through the floor — Glennie is always barefoot on stage — while high notes may be “heard” by one’s chest and neck. 
Glennie is teaching the self-learnt method to hearing-impaired children  at the Beethoven Fund, a London-based charity.
“But there is no method really, it is simply listening,” she said. “It is a choice that you make, whether you want to learn it or not. In the same way if I decided tomorrow that I wanted to learn to play cello: mechanically I could learn over a period of time. But you need to have a flair for the things that you do.”
Glennie’s repertoire consists primarily of new music. 
“I have to play the new music, otherwise I won’t survive as a solo percussion player, because Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky did not write for solo percussionists,” she smiles. “I try to get a balance between written pieces and improvised works. I love to give concerts when I am fully improvising because it asks the audiences to listen in a completely different way. And it gets much more of me as a musician because I can explore all sorts of colors and moods, which is not always possible in a concerto.”
Although the Salonen/Gergiev initiative receives an impressive avalanche of verbal praise from across the Baltic, not all the Baltic governments are willing to make financial commitments to the event. The festival has to improvise.
“This is yet another reason why it is so good to do this festival together with Gergiev as he is perhaps world’s best improviser,” Salonen said. 
The festival ended with Salonen conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in Mahler’s titanic Eighth Symphony. Its light and sublime rendition,  with thrilling and nuanced work by the Swedish Radio Choir and the Latvian Radio Choir, was a striking contrast to the Mariinsky’s treatment of the same symphony, generous with dark, vibrant color and rich in deep, low sound that it last played in January in St. Petersburg. 
While the Mariinsky thrives in the exuberance and flaring passion of the intensely-scored parts, the Helsinki Philharmonic under Salonen excelled in the crystal-clear melancholy of the delicate chamber passages. Mahler’s romanticism received a subtle Sibelius-like flair at the Baltic Sea Festival in the sense that Mahler’s color-rich palette was slightly cooled down.
Last year the festival featured a series of concerts in Helsinki, Turku and Tallinn. While his ultimate goal is to see all countries on the Baltic coast involved, Salonen stressed that he wouldn’t like the festival to spread its resources too thinly. 
“Many festivals fail due to the capitalist fundamentalist notion that the only way to grow is to get bigger,” he said. “What we need to develop is the satellite part: we need to increase the number of concerts in other countries.”

TITLE: Banished thoughts
AUTHOR: By Oliver Ready
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What is to be done with intellectual rivals in a revolution of ideas? Lesley Chamberlain’s book grippingly recounts how Lenin cleared the way for a new social order.
The persecution of free-spirited intellectuals and artists in the Soviet era has become, in many respects, a familiar tale. Numberless novels and memoirs have described, in nightmarish detail, the varied forms of coercion and punishment it adopted — whether in Josef Stalin’s prison camps or Leonid Brezhnev’s psychiatric hospitals, through public shaming or private harassment. Yet there is an episode in this chronicle which is less widely known, even though it occurred at the very beginning. With her new book, “The Philosophy Steamer,” Lesley Chamberlain makes an irrefutable case for its significance in the intellectual history of 20th-century Europe.
In the autumn of 1922, the Haken and the Preussen, two modestly sized ships equipped with every amenity, cast off from Petrograd for Germany bearing an improbable cargo of some 60 philosophers, historians, theologians and economists, together with their wives and families. These expulsions marked the climax of a campaign, carried through by Vladimir Lenin himself with obsessive determination (even in the face of his own infirmity), to cleanse Soviet Russia of leading members of the old intelligentsia who had long been voicing their criticisms of Marxism and Bolshevism in the press. The deportees were largely university professors, men of limited political clout in the new social order. But to Lenin, they were anathema: They were, he thought, bourgeois, and they tended to believe in God. He execrated them in a letter to Maxim Gorky as “the intellectuals, the lackeys of capital, who think they’re the brains of the nation. In fact, they’re not the brains, they’re the shit.” By the logic of Bolshevism, with its cult of atheist rationalism, these spiritually inclined thinkers were the new society’s madmen; the boats on which they sailed were its ships of fools. In the minds of the passengers, however, it was Lenin himself who was beyond understanding. “What have they expelled us for?” asked Boris Odintsov, an agronomist and former aristocrat. “What is it? Stupidity or fright?” Chamberlain’s account suggests that the answer must be sought, above all, in Lenin’s limitless suspicion toward his own class (the intelligentsia), a paranoia which set a fateful pattern in Soviet leadership.
Nevertheless, the expulsions were, as Chamberlain notes, “a relatively mild act in vicious times.” The professors might have been executed (as the poet Nikolai Gumilyov had been in 1921, along with 60 others charged with anti-Bolshevik conspiracy). Lenin, she posits, was cautious of a Western backlash, and may also have wished to show some restraint to his own class. This relative clemency is perhaps one reason why the expulsions are not better known. Yet, as Chamberlain discusses with subtlety and depth, the events expressed a less tangible catastrophe — the tragedy of a culture unable to reconcile its conflicting urges toward reason and faith, toward secular justice and spiritual truth; and of a culture quite prepared to sacrifice the values it most needed, of humanity and ethical awareness, to ensure the victory of dogma. Of course, many brilliant intellectuals remained in Soviet Russia, and briefly flourished in the 1920s before Stalinism hit its stride. But the history of the deportations reveals, with particular clarity, the internal conflicts that plagued Russia’s past and that would recur, with more brutal consequences, in the future. 
As for the deportees themselves, they got by, more or less, in the great centers of the Russian emigration — Berlin, Prague and Paris. They were helped by their hosts (notably, the Czech president Tomas Masaryk) and they helped one another. The anguish of permanent exile was compensated to some degree by the opportunity to exploit the wealth of learning and culture which they brought with them and shared with fellow emigres. A few, notably the free-thinking religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev, attained major international reputations that might otherwise have eluded them. Others continued to work quietly in their chosen disciplines and reduced circumstances. Chamberlain’s wandering eye alights, at irregular intervals, on their understated and largely uncelebrated achievements, such as Boris Vysheslavtsev’s perceptive reflections on the Russian mind and the flaws of Marxism, or the “principled impressionism” of the literary critic Yuly Aikhenvald, who was much admired by Vladimir Nabokov. The deportees were a disparate group (some even retained pro-Soviet sympathies), but the majority shared roots in Christian interpretations of the value of freedom and of the individual. They cultivated, according to Chamberlain, “what would become after the 1939-45 war the politics of human rights, but they did so in a religious rather than a legal framework.” The most important among them, she argues, “should be appreciated and criticized alongside Weil, Buber and Levinas — religious thinkers who worked on the margins of philosophy.”
Chamberlain is not the only writer in recent years to have addressed the 1922 expulsions; indeed, her title alludes to an important source, Mikhail Glavatsky’s recent history in Russian on the same topic. Her approach, however, is thoroughly individual, both in method and scope (the second half of the book is entirely devoted to life in emigration). Throughout, Chamberlain steers a highly unpredictable course between history, biography and philosophy. In her previous book, “Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia,” a similarly fluid and fragmentary approach proved ill-suited, in some important respects, to the scale of the subject. In “The Philosophy Steamer,” it works superbly, being tied to a well-structured central narrative that has been comprehensively and imaginatively researched. Chamberlain makes particularly good use of a wide array of memoirs, allowing us to feel, at very close quarters, the mixture of astonishment, irony and, finally, dignified resignation with which the deportees faced their interrogators and their punishment. In the second half of the book, by contrast, the narrative evokes a sense of distance from individual lives, as if mirroring the alienation experienced by the deportees themselves.
A further unpredictable element is the presence of the author herself, now retreating behind the mask of historian or novelist, now engaging openly in polemics and evaluations. A few years ago the novelist Viktor Yerofeyev wrote, with a characteristic show of philistinism, that his first reaction to reading any work by a foreigner on Russian culture was to ask: What does he or she want from us? Chamberlain’s personal approach in “The Philosophy Steamer” makes such questions productive, prompting the reader to explore the paradox of why Russian religious philosophy should hold such fascination for its English chronicler, a self-avowed secularist steeped in Nietzsche and Freud. Chamberlain gives no final answers, but neither does she hide her ambivalence toward her subjects, admiring their moral integrity on the one hand and sharing Lenin’s skepticism toward their “mysticism” on the other. She cannot accept their faith, yet she is also critical of their philosophical adversaries, be they Marxist-Leninist materialism or the mainstream of 20th-century Western thought, with its “atheist, rational and anti-inward course in pursuit of the good society.” “There is a need for guidance,” she concedes, somewhat surprisingly, “from a source outside ourselves”; yet “all secular guidance ... is open to manipulation.” The unresolved tensions inherent in Chamberlain’s own outlook add one further subplot to an already fascinating book. 

Oliver Ready is completing his doctoral thesis at Oxford on aspects of Russian prose since the 1960s.

TITLE: Mexican Coast Hit By John
AUTHOR: By Olga Rodriguez
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico — Hurricane John pummeled Mexico’s resort-studded Pacific Coast with wind and rain Thursday, plotting a course that could take its eye close to land before nicking the tip of Baja California.
Authorities in Puerto Vallarta, among Mexico’s most-visited resorts, scrambled to prepare emergency shelters while sending patrols to hunt for possible damage from John. But tourists and residents stayed calm even as the powerful hurricane rumbled closer.
John grew into a Category 4 storm Wednesday but later weakened to a Category 3. Still, it had maximum sustained winds of 125 mph and stronger gusts capable of ripping off roofs.
The storm was expected to strengthen Thursday, and Mexico issued hurricane warnings for about 400 miles of coast from the port of Lazaro Cardenas to the fishing and shipping community of San Blas, an area encompassing the bay where Puerto Vallarta is located.
While the center of John was forecast to remain just offshore, hurricane-force winds were expected to begin raking beaches near Puerto Vallarta by Thursday, the hurricane center said.
Forecasters said John wasn’t likely to affect the United States — cooler Pacific waters tend to diminish the storms before they reach California. Instead, it was expected to skirt close to Mexico’s Pacific Coast and head for the Baja California Peninsula by Friday.
Parts of the southern Baja Peninsula, including the resort city of Cabo San Lucas, were also under a hurricane warning.
At 8 a.m. EDT, the hurricane was 95 miles southwest of port city of Manzanillo, moving west-northwest at 14 mph.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm could drop up to 18 inches of rain in some places and create up to a 5-foot storm surge on the coast. The center warned of “life-threatening flash floods and mudslides” in mountain areas.
William Rousseau, vacationing with his family from Oregon, said Puerto Vallarta hotel officials warned about the storm, “but we’re calm because they say it’s not going to hit this city.”
“We’re continuing to enjoy the city,” he said Wednesday. “They just asked us not to go into the ocean or on any bay tours.”
Officials postponed the arrival of a Carnival cruise ship, prohibited customary tours of the bay and announced public schools would be closed Thursday. Puerto Vallarta Mayor Gustavo Gonzales said 50 shelters had been readied, and emergency crews prepared to patrol throughout the night.
Some coastal communities in Jalisco state, where Puerto Vallarta is located, were being evacuated because of their proximity to two dams, state authorities said.
The sense of urgency was higher in Cabo San Lucas, where fishermen and authorities were hurriedly preparing for John’s arrival. 
The city’s port captain, Everardo Jimenez, said he had instructed the operators of a tourist boat to come back to dock.
“We are preparing shelters for the evacuation of civilians, if that becomes necessary,” said Luis Armando Diaz, mayor of Los Cabos, on Baja’s southern tip. 
“According to the information we have, the storm is coming right toward Los Cabos,” Diaz said.

TITLE: Iran Welcomes Showdown on Deadline Day
AUTHOR: By Nasser Karimi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — U.S. and European officials appeared ready to push for low-level sanctions against Iran like travel bans Thursday as country’s president made clear he would not compromise on the day of a UN deadline.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not directly address the deadline but maintained Iran’s right to nuclear technology in a speech to a cheering crowd of thousands in Orumiyeh in northwestern Iran.
“The Iranian nation will not succumb to bullying, invasion and the violation of its rights,” Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi shrugged off the possibility of sanctions, telling state-run television that Iran “will find a way to avoid pressure eventually,”
The deadline was widely reported on the front pages of major Iranian newspapers. The daily Aftab said the showdown offers “the enemies” a chance to ratchet up pressure on Iran.
Another newspaper, Kargozaran, expressed doubt that the U.S. would muster enough support within the Security Council for punitive sanctions.
Washington also continues to hold open the possibility that it and its allies — as the next step — might pursue a course outside the UN Security Council and impose penalties of their own against Iran.
Iran could theoretically still announce a full stop to uranium enrichment before a late Thursday deadline to do so, set by the Security Council. But that appeared unlikely, given Ahmadinejad’s speech and new findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran was enriching small quantities of uranium as late as Tuesday.
In a speech devoted mostly to local issues, Ahmadinejad said enemies of the country were trying to stir up differences among the Iranian people, but “I tell them: you are wrong. The Iranian nation is united.”
“They claim to be supporting freedom but they support the most tyrannical governments in the world to pursue their own interests,” he said, referring to the United States.
“They talk about human rights while maintaining the most notorious prisons,” he said. “Those powers that do not abide by God and follow evil are the main source of all the current problems of mankind.”
Iran’s refusal to heed the Security Council demand to stop enrichment will be detailed in a confidential IAEA report to be completed Thursday and given to the Security Council. That is likely to trigger council members — by mid-September — to begin considering economic or political sanctions.
The U.S. State Department has not said publicly what economic or political sanctions it might seek. But U.S. and European officials have indicated they might push for travel restrictions on Iranian officials or a ban on sale of dual-use technology to Iran.
The hope is to start with relatively low-level punishments in a bid to attract Russian and Chinese support, the officials have signaled.
More extreme would be a freeze on Iranian assets or a broader trade ban — although opposition to that by Russia, China and perhaps others would be strong, particularly since it could cut off badly needed oil exports from Iran.
Russia and China seem likely, in any case, to resist U.S.-led efforts for a quick response, which likely means sanctions do not loom immediately.
That has prompted the Bush administration to consider rallying allies to impose sanctions or financial restrictions of their own, independent of the Security Council.
Tehran insists it wants to enrich uranium as fuel solely for civilian nuclear power stations. However, the U.S. and other Western countries suspect it wants to use it in nuclear warheads.

TITLE: Annan Again Urges Israel to Lift Blockade
AUTHOR: By Suleiman al-Khalidi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DEAD SEA, Jordan — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday renewed his calls on Israel to lift a blockade on Lebanon swiftly and withdraw fully from the country as soon as 5,000 UN peacekeepers are in the south.
Annan, who was due to travel to Syria later in the day, is trying to bolster a truce ushered in by a UN resolution to halt a 34-day war between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas.
“I expect — and I did make this clear to the Israeli authorities — that when the international forces have reached 5,000 and are deployed to the south with the Lebanese (army), it is time for them to withdraw and withdraw completely,” Annan told a news conference after talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
He described Israel’s 7-week-old blockade of Lebanon as “unsustainable,” saying: “It is important that it is lifted and not be seen as collective punishment of the Lebanese people.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rebuffed both demands on Wednesday, telling Annan Israel would keep the blockade and stay in Lebanon until all other parts of the UN resolution that halted hostilities on August 14 are fulfilled.
Israel says the sea and air embargo is designed to prevent Hizbollah from getting new arms supplies from Iran or Syria.
Annan has had little to show for his mission so far, but a senior Israeli political source said Israel would discuss freeing Lebanese prisoners for two soldiers held by Hizbollah if the two are handed over to the Lebanese government.
Their capture in a July 12 raid sparked the war. Hizbollah offered at the outset to swap them for Lebanese prisoners.
Any negotiations would be with the Beirut government, via a mediator, not with Hizbollah, the source said. Israel has previously said the soldiers must be freed unconditionally.
Annan said he hoped to double very quickly the 2,500 UN peacekeepers already in south Lebanon, where the first big contingent of 800 Italian troops is due at the weekend.
The UN resolution envisages sending a force of up to 15,000 to south Lebanon by November 4 to help a similar number of Lebanese troops police a weapons-free border zone.
German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said he expected Germany to contribute more than 1,200 troops to the UN force.
The German newspaper Handelsblatt cited government sources as saying that more than 1,500 German troops and two naval frigates could be sent to patrol the coast.
After his talks with King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Abdelelah al-Khatib on the shores of the Dead Sea, Annan also called for the revival of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops killed a militant commander, while Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza Strip renewed rocket attacks that had largely stopped during the Lebanon war.
Israel also ended a deadly six-day incursion into a militant stronghold in Gaza.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers shot dead Fadi Khafisha of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group, Palestinian security sources said.
More than 200 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in a two-month-old offensive that Israel launched after militants captured a soldier.
Annan was due to start talks in Damascus in the evening with Syrian leaders angered by an Israeli demand for international troops to deploy on the Lebanese-Syrian border.

TITLE: China Imprisons Reporter as Spy
AUTHOR: By Donny Kwok
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HONG KONG — A Chinese court jailed a reporter for a Singapore newspaper for five years on Thursday on a charge of spying, the latest in a series of high-profile cases underscoring China’s curbs on the media and dissent.
Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based China correspondent for the Straits Times who has been detained in China since April 2005, was also deprived of his political rights for a year and had personal property worth 300,000 yuan ($37,700) confiscated.
Ching, 56, was charged with spying for Taiwan, the self-ruled island over which Beijing claims sovereignty. He was detained in the southern province of Guangdong where, his wife has said, he had traveled to collect documents related to disgraced former Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang.
Court officials in Beijing reached by telephone declined to comment on the verdict or sentencing in the closed-door trial.
Ching’s lawyer, He Peihua, said the family had asked him not to reveal details of the case. Instead, it issued a statement that called the sentence “extremely regrettable.”
“The verdict has serious biases and only considered the views of the prosecution,” it said.
Singapore Press Holdings Ltd., the parent of the Straits Times, urged China to consider freeing Ching on medical parole.

TITLE: On the Question of Schumacher’s Retirement
AUTHOR: By Alan Baldwin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Michael Schumacher’s manager Willi Weber has given up talking to the Ferrari driver about his plans for next year.
For the rest of Formula One, however, it has become an obsession.
Barely a day goes by without another twist to the speculation about the most successful, if not the greatest, driver the sport has seen and whether he plans to retire or carry on next year.
The question is on everyone’s lips but, even now, nobody knows the answer.
Ferrari say they will announce their 2007 lineup next week at Monza, temple of Italian motor racing and a home race that could become Schumacher’s European farewell to the Ferrari faithful.
Some words of warning, however. Even then, there may not be a definitive statement on the 37-year-old’s future.
It could be that Ferrari simply trumpet the signing of Kimi Raikkonen from McLaren, a done deal for most of the paddock, with Schumacher and Brazilian Felipe Massa remaining under contract.
That would take the heat off Schumacher at a key point in the season, with the German just 12 points adrift of Renault’s Fernando Alonso and four races remaining, while giving him more time to decide.
If Schumacher takes the title, he could then walk away and Massa would simply slot in alongside Raikkonen.
A month or two ago, the prevailing view was that Schumacher, who turns 38 in January, would probably continue. He was winning again and clearly enjoying his racing after a dismal 2005.
The pendulum has now swung the other way, just as Schumacher’s title hopes have strengthened.
Weber, so instrumental in guiding Schumacher into Formula One 15 years ago, has urged him to go if he wins an eighth title but otherwise appears to have washed his hands of the matter.
“I don’t want to make any comments any more because I think everything is talked about and all is said,” he told Reuters in Turkey last weekend.
“I have no idea (what he will do), I don’t speak with him any more about this question.”
Former champion Niki Lauda has made his mind up: “For me, the chances of Schumi carrying on are only about five percent,” he told Austria’s Kleine Zeitung newspaper.“He’s had enough of racing, I know what I am talking about.”
Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone told Germany’s Premier television at the weekend that he too thinks Schumacher will go, drawing a withering reply from the driver and team boss Jean Todt.
“I tell you something, Bernie Ecclestone does not have a single element to judge what Michael has decided,” Todt told reporters. 
“Bernie does not have any idea whether Michael will be driving in the future or not.”
There is evidence to support both sides.
There can never be a better time to go than as champion, particularly if Schumacher senses he is unlikely to repeat the feat with Raikkonen as his team mate and Alonso at McLaren next year.
Raikkonen is not a driver to accept anything less than equal treatment and that could prove unpalatable for Schumacher, who has grown used to ruling the roost.
Massa, a race winner for the first time in Turkey last weekend, seems remarkably upbeat for a man who could be facing a year on the sidelines — suggesting that he knows he has a good chance of retaining his race seat.
Finally, there are the voices that insist Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn, who has overseen all of Schumacher’s titles including two at Benetton, will be taking a year out.

TITLE: Rivals See Glimmer Of Hope in U.S. Win
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAITAMA, Japan, — No one at the FIBA World Championship has figured out how to counter Team USA’s superior skills, athleticism and depth. Germany provided a clue Wednesday night. 
The Germans packed the paint and forced the Americans to fire from afar. The strategy worked for a half before the United States pulled away for an 85-65 victory.
It may have been the scariest 20-point win in team history. The Americans struggled against the zone and were out of sync for much of the night.
The Americans’ performance provided a glimmer of hope for defense-oriented Greece, which faces the United States in the semifinals Friday. Spain and Argentina, which meet in the other semifinal, also will take note.
“I’m sure we’re going to see a lot of zone,” U.S. guard Kirk Hinrich said. “We’ve got guys who can make shots, and for whatever reason we just didn’t do that tonight.”
Indeed, the Americans struggled through their worst shooting performance — 38 percent from the field and 25 percent from three-point range — in seven games.
The only worse shooting came from German star Dirk Nowitzki, who finished with more turnovers (five) than baskets. He was 3 for 12 and finished with 15 points, tied for the team high with Ademola Okulaja.
The Americans’ leading scorer was Carmelo Anthony, who scored 19 points but was 2 for 12 in the first half.
“My shot wasn’t falling, but we’re going to have nights like that when shots don’t fall,” said Anthony, who went 5 for 7 after halftime. “We keep shooting. We know we’re capable of making those shots. Coach [Mike Krzyzewski] told us to keep shooting. That’s what we did.”
The United States is at its most potent when it is running the floor and attacking the basket. But it launched 40 of its 85 shots from beyond the three-point arc.
At halftime, this looked like the nightmare scenario envisioned by skeptics who have questioned the Americans’ shooting touch. German Coach Dirk Bauermann packed the lane with a zone defense and dared the U.S. players to fire away from outside.
Others have tried to do the same thing, but this time the strategy worked.
“We switched our defense and played a lot of zone in the first half,” Bauermann said. 
“In the second half, they turned up the heat and played a great defensive game, and when you play like that you can beat anyone and win the gold.”
The United States pulled away with defense and rebounding. It pressured the Germans into 24 turnovers and hammered them 48-34 on the boards, including a 22-6 advantage on the offensive glass.
“They turned us over and killed us on the offensive glass,” Bauermann said.
With three steals in the second half, Anthony was among the most active defenders. In a dazzling one-minute sequence in the third quarter, the Denver star dunked on a fast break, nailed a three-pointer and then stole a pass and cruised in for a breakaway dunk.
“You’ve got to do little things to try to find your rhythm,” Anthony said.

TITLE: Chavez To Resist Golf Land Grab
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CARACAS, Venezuela — The government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has promised a socialist revolution for the poor, on Wednesday criticized an ally’s move to seize two golf courses to build affordable housing.
Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the “national government does not agree with” the move by Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto, a Chavez loyalist, to take over the golf courses and two plots of land for the low-income housing plan.
Chavez, a former paratrooper who has promised a revolution to end poverty in the world’s No. 5 oil exporter, has harshly criticized wealthy Venezuelans for their lavish lifestyles.
But despite his revolutionary vitriol causing jitters over possible Cuba-style expropriations, and a high-profile land reform initiative, Chavez has also promised to respect private property to draw investment.
“The national government respects and ensures the respect for legal structures and rejects any attempt to stifle the rule of law,” Rangel said in a harshly worded statement.
Rangel is the highest-ranking government official currently in Venezuela, as Chavez is visiting Syria as part of a tour of Asia and Africa. The government rarely admonishes allies through public statements.
Barreto had issued decrees calling for the “forced acquisition” of two golf courses in neighborhoods of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.
Critics said Barreto had not adequately demonstrated the city’s intentions for the land as legally required in expropriation cases.
Caracas suffers from an acute housing shortage which has been one of the principal complaints about the Chavez government — even among his supporters.
Only 100,000 houses have been built in the last seven years despite demand of 1.75 million.

TITLE: Stage Win Gives Di Luca Outright Lead in Vuelta
AUTHOR: By Alasdair Fotheringham
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LA COVATILLA, Spain — Italian Danilo Di Luca’s victory on the Tour of Spain’s first summit finish unexpectedly propelled him into the overall lead on Wednesday. The Liquigas rider showed surprisingly strong form when he outgunned Slovenian Janez Brajkovic at the top of the 18 km Covatilla climb.
Andrey Kashechkin of Kazakhstan was third, seven seconds behind.
“I came here for stage wins, not to do well in the overall classification.” said Di Luca, who was not among the pre-race favorites for final victory.
“My real objective is to get in top condition for the world championships in Salzburg (Sept. 24).”
After attacking with Brajkovic three km from the summit, Di Luca leads him in the overall standings by four seconds. Kashechkin is third 18 seconds behind, Di Luca was one of just eight riders able to stay in touch when race favorite Carlos Sastre’s CSC team upped the pace on the final climb of the fifth stage.
Spaniard Oscar Pereiro -- expected to be named Tour de France winner after American Floyd Landis failed a dope test -- Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov, last year’s Vuelta champion Denis Menchov and Iban Mayo were all dropped.
Despite taking time on all the top contenders, Di Luca said he considered Spaniards Sastre and Alejandro Valverde, fifth and sixth on the stage, the most likely to win overall.
“This is only the first mountaintop finish and we’re only in the first week,” he told reporters.
“I expect them to come into top form towards the end of the race.
“Sastre and Valverde remain my favorites for the overall classification.”
Best known as a Classics rider, Di Luca was due to lead his Liquigas team in the 2006 Tour de France but a urine infection forced the 30-year-old to quit the race after two days.

TITLE: Top Seeds Advance in U.S. Open Openers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Amelie Mauresmo played like champs and former winners Serena Williams and Martina Hingis also advanced during a hectic afternoon at the US Open. 
A day after rain prevented any matches from being completed for the first time since 1987, virtually the whole tennis world was on display at Flushing Meadows yesterday. 
Former Open champions Lleyton Hewitt, Marat Safin, and Andy Roddick won in straight sets. 
Roddick’s 6-3, 7-6 (3), 6-3 win over Kristian Pless of Denmark was yesterday’s only second-round match. 
Maria Sharapova, the 2004 Wimbledon champion, and Roddick have been the subject of gossip. He turned 24 and she was asked whether she’d bought him a present. “Is it his birthday?” Sharapova responded. “I had no idea.” 
With 80 matches across the grounds, the upsets were quite limited, with the biggest probably 2004 French Open champion Anastasia Myskina’s 6-4, 6-2 loss to Victoria Azarenka of Belarus. 
The top-seeded Federer rebounded from a startling loss two weeks ago to overwhelm Wang Yeu-tzuoo of Taiwan 6-4, 6-1, 6-0. Aiming at his third straight Open title, Federer had won 55 straight matches on North American hard courts before Andy Murray beat him at the Cincinnati Masters. 
“I thought I was always in control, obviously,” Federer said after his victory. “I always said I prefer to be the favorite rather than the underdog. That’s worked out for me since I became No. 1.” 
The No. 1 Mauresmo seemed to benefit most from the rainout. 
Trying for her first U.S. Open championship, the Australian Open and Wimbledon winner led No. 131 Kristina Barrois of Germany 6-1, 2-5 when their match was suspended on Tuesday. 
Mauresmo was sharp when they returned, winning all five games to close out a 6-1, 7-5 victory.  
“Even if I was going to lose the second set, I would have made myself right in the third,” she said. “But it didn’t happen. “Yesterday, I think she was hitting some unbelievable shots,” Mauresmo added. “I wanted to try to be a little bit more aggressive.” 
Williams cruised, beating Lourdes Dominguez Lino of Spain 6-1, 6-2 and drawing a big ovation at Arthur Ashe Stadium. “I love you guys, too,” she told the crowd. 
Sharapova compiled 33 winners to only 13 unforced errors and breezed to a 6-3, 6-0 victory over Michaella Krajicek, the younger sister of 1996 Wimbledon champion Richard Krajicek. 
Beset by injuries for several years, Hingis drew a warm reception in her first Open appearance since 2002. She switched to her left hand to win a point at the net, then did a little hop when Peng Shuai’s lob landed wide for a 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 victory. 
“It’s good to be back,” the 1997 champion said. “The energy of New York itself is absolutely great.” 
Known for his success on clay, the second-seeded Nadal had an easy time on the hard court. He won the first eight points and beat 1998 Open runner-up Mark Philippoussis 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 in the first round.

TITLE: England Look For Thrashing
AUTHOR: By Trevor Huggins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — England should celebrate their first competitive match under Steve McClaren with a goal bonanza against Andorra in their opening Euro 2008 qualifier on Saturday.
England beat European champions Greece 4-0 less than three weeks ago in McClaren’s first game since replacing his former boss Sven-Goran Eriksson and the new manager will expect more of the same at Old Trafford.
Faced with a tiny principality team ranked 132nd in the world, England’s winning margin for their opening Group E game will be the main item of interest for fans who have yet to fully digest their team’s World Cup exit.
The biggest change of the McClaren era is the exclusion of former captain David Beckham, whose place on the right flank against Greece was successfully given to Steven Gerrard and whose armband went to John Terry, who celebrated with a goal.
Gerrard revelled in a role he has occupied for Liverpool, having previously been made to share the central midfield duties with Frank Lampard in an unconvincing tandem under Eriksson.
The Greece game signalled a goalscoring return to form for Lampard, who was given a free rein to get forward with Owen Hargreaves providing cover in the holding role.
Chelsea’s top scorer for the past two seasons, Lampard was probably England’s most disappointing performer at the World Cup and will be out to make amends in a qualifying campaign that continues on Wednesday in Macedonia.
With Joe Cole out through injury, there should again be room for Stewart Downing on the left flank, while Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe should lead the attack in the absence of the injured Michael Owen and suspended Wayne Rooney.
Now becoming a crowd favourite, Crouch scored twice against the Greeks to extend a remarkable scoring record to eight goals in his last eight games for his country. Fellow strikers Andy Johnson and Darren Bent could make second half appearances.
Only one change is expected in defense, where right back Gary Neville has been sidelined by injury and his brother Phil is likely to take over.
Terry should partner Rio Ferdinand in central defense after the latter’s toe injury scare, though he may be saved for Macedonia, while Ashley Cole will look after the left side.
Andorra are probably the softest possible introduction to competitive football for McClaren, but England will still need to do more than simply turn up on Saturday.
“Andorra is a potential banana skin for us because we are expected to win comfortably but we still need to put in a decent performance,” Gerrard told the FA’s Web site.
“Football is only easy after the game. Hopefully we will get a few goals and say it was an easy win afterwards.”
Probable team: Paul Robinson; Phil Neville, Rio Ferdinand or Jamie Carragher, John Terry, Ashley Cole; Steven Gerrard, Owen Hargreaves, Frank Lampard, Stewart Downing; Peter Crouch, Jermain Defoe.

TITLE: Barry Zito Helps A’s to Series Sweep of Red Sox in Oakland
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Barry Zito pitched 6-1/3 strong innings as the Oakland A’s completed a three-game series sweep of the fading Boston Red Sox with a 7-2 win in Oakland on Wednesday.
Bobby Kielty and Mark Ellis homered for the AL West leading A’s, who have won a season-high nine straight home games and 15 of 19 overall.
“This streak has been about pitching,” Oakland manager Ken Macha told reporters. “Barry went out there and gave us another solid game.”
Oakland completed the month with a 21-6 record, the best mark in the major leagues, while Boston has been in a free fall.
The injury-riddled Red Sox have lost six straight games and are falling out of contention in both the AL East and AL wild card races with just 29 games left to play.
Curt Schilling provided one bright spot for the Red Sox, recording his 3,000th career strikeout in the first inning. His strikeout of Nick Swisher made him the 14th pitcher to reach that milestone.
But Zito got the better of Schilling in the game, as the Oakland ace won his third straight start.
Zito (15-8) allowed one run on eight hits before leaving after 112 pitches in the seventh inning. He struck out eight and walked two.
The A’s backed him with a 15-hit attack and broke a 1-1 tie with a pair of third inning runs and never trailed after that.
Jason Kendall had three hits, scored a pair of runs and drove in another for the A’s, while Ellis also wound up with three hits, two runs scored and an RBI.
Mark Kotsay and Frank Thomas both added two hits and an RBI to the Oakland offense, as all nine Oakland starters had at least one hit each.
Schilling (14-7) has lost his last three decisions and went just 5 1/3 innings, allowing six runs on 11 hits with four strikeouts and one walk while surrendering both Oakland home runs.
Eric Hinske had two hits and drove in a run for the Red Sox, who were told before the game that slugger David Ortiz would remain in hospital until Thursday for further tests on his heart.
In New York, Craig Monroe hit a three-run homer off Scott Proctor with two outs in the ninth inning, to lift the Detroit Tigers to a 5-3 win over the Yankees to avoid a doubleheader sweep.
The Yankees led 3-2 in the ninth but Monroe’s homer gave the Tigers a vital win as they look to fend off the Minnesota Twins and Chicago White Sox in the NL Central.
Carlos Guillen also homered for the Tigers while reliever Jason Grilli (2-2) got one out for the win. Todd Jones pitched a scoreless ninth for his 35th save.
New York starter Jaret Wright pitched a solid and season-high 6 1/3 innings, but Proctor (5-4) took the loss as he failed to pick up his first save of the season.

TITLE: Champion Loeb Eyes Record
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Japan is one of the few rallies that Sebastien Loeb has yet to win. The Citroen driver can rectify that this weekend in record-breaking fashion.
If he does take a 27th world rally victory, France’s double champion will stand alone as the sport’s most successful driver in terms of race wins.
It is not his main target, however.
“Sure I think about the record,” Loeb told a news conference before Friday’s start near Obihiro on the northern island of Hokkaido.
“But it doesn’t need to be immediate. For me, the most important thing is the championship. I hope that, one day, I will get this 27th victory.”
The Frenchman, who shares the record of 26 wins with retired Spaniard Carlos Sainz, leads Finland’s Marcus Gronholm by 31 points with six rounds remaining.
Loeb’s Kronos team lead Gronholm’s Ford by 15 points in the manufacturers’ championship, with Subaru a distant third and 57 adrift of the leaders.
There is little doubt that Loeb will win the title before the end of the season but Gronholm will do his best to put up a fight after winning two of the last three rallies including his home event in Finland.
Japan is a relative newcomer, making its championship debut only two seasons ago and the tall Finn won there last year.
“I’m excited about all these last six gravel events,” said the former champion, contemplating the tail-end of the season. “I will start each of those believing I can win.
“I had absolutely no problems with the car in Finland and that’s really encouraging.”
The rally is Subaru’s home rally and Norwegian Petter Solberg won the inaugural event in 2004 and last year led before hitting a rock and retiring on the penultimate stage.
“We had more pressure last year,” said the former champion, who has scored just 20 points in 10 races.
“After a disappointing start to the season, it’s not so bad...the plan to start with is to go for a podium finish and take it from there.
“We need to start from scratch again, it’s been a very long season,” he told the pre-event news conference.
“I like the rally. It’s very tricky and easy to be caught out by loose rocks on the side of the road. I hope we can come through with no problems,” said Solberg.
Many of the stages in Japan are narrow but fast and run through natural forest, leaving the surface damp and treacherous with deep ruts developing.
Drivers face 345.72 km of competitive action over 27 stages in a route of 1,586 km.