SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1206 (72), Friday, September 22, 2006
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TITLE: 1.75 Billion Rubles Eyed By Gazprom
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city will allocate 1.755 billion rubles ($660,000) this year to the construction of an administration and business center for Russia’s energy giant Gazprom, according to a draft law which passed its first reading in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday, despite criticism from many of its members. 
“The draft implies that it’s planned that 1,755 billion rubles will be spent on building housing for Gazprom’s top management, which is relocating to St. Petersburg,” one of the Legislative Assembly’s members Sergei Gulyayev told the St. Petersburg Times on Thursday. 
Gulyayev described Gazprom’s growing appetite as “bare-faced cynicism.”  
“We don’t build housing for teachers, medical workers or veterans of the Great Patriotic War,” Gulyayev said. “In that context, to invest 1.755 billion rubles in building apartments for the employees of the richest company in Russia is cynicism, pure and simple, and a disgrace to the government.” 
Although according to the Legislative Assembly’s website “the construction of the business center has to be accompanied by the…construction of residential housing and engineering, transport and social infrastructure sites,” Vice Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky said Thursday that the city isn’t planning to build any residential housing for Gazprom, with the exception of temporary accommodation for construction workers.
“The information about some residential construction for Gazprom employees does not correspond to reality. It’s only cottages for builders that are to be built, not housing for the top management,” he said.
“We allocate the money from the budget, and they decide themselves what they want to build,” he told St. Petersburg-based Fontanka.ru news portal.
Vladimir Yeremenko, another member of the Legislative Assembly, also confirmed that “the draft provides for the construction of Gazprom facilities, including housing for Gazprom’s workers, which will be financed by the city using tax payments from Gazprom.”  
He disagreed with the project’s critics and said that from an economic point of view, the deal is highly beneficial to the city. 
“As the construction is financed from taxes, it won’t constitute a burden to the city’s budget and it has to be considered as some sort of a loan,” Yeremenko said Thursday. 
Asked if other ways of spending taxes would be more beneficial to the city, he said that the local government “not only has to help people that need support, but also has to develop grounds for the arrival of large taxpayers on the city’s business scene.”
Yeremenko described the deal as a compromise that St. Petersburg could ill afford to miss out on.
 “There’s no doubt that the draft law that we passed yesterday is something of a compromise, as the city could have put all the tax resources received from the Gazprom into social programs, but then a question arises as to whether such a plan would suit Gazprom, ” he said Thursday. 
“The fact that we make concessions to Gazprom now will mean that, in the future, St. Petersburg will have a large and reliable taxpayer. Not only a taxpayer, but also a business bringing jobs [to the city] and developing the city’s infrastructure,” he said.
Gazprom was not available for comment Thursday.

TITLE: Fifty-Two Dead in Blasts at Two Coal Mines
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Fifty-four miners in Kazakhstan and Ukraine were killed in twin blasts Wednesday, providing further evidence of the dangerous state of decades-old mines in former Soviet republics.
In Kazakhstan, at least 41 people were killed when an underground explosion tore through a coal mine belonging to Mittal Steel, a senior company official said.
The Lenin mine, where the blast occurred just before 9 a.m. local time, is one of eight mines supplying coal to Mittal’s Temirtau factory, one of the world’s biggest steel plants and Kazakhstan’s largest.
“According to preliminary but almost certain data, 41 people have perished,” Grigory Prezent, deputy coal department director of Mittal Steel Temirtau, told reporters at the scene.
“Thirty-two bodies have been found. They are being recovered at the moment,” he said.
The steel plant in the central region of Karaganda, 200 kilometers south of the capital, Astana, continues to work as normal, a company source said, and the accident would not affect customers.
“The head of state, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has expressed his condolences to the families of the ... miners who died as a result of an accident in the Mittal Steel Temirtau mine,” Akorda.kz, the presidential web site, said in a posted statement.
The blast occurred at a depth of 500 meters, and 324 miners working underground were able to scramble to safety, local media reports said. The ensuing fire continued to blaze.
The Lenin mine, a labyrinth of seven shafts, was commissioned in 1964 and was the scene of a November 2002 gas explosion in which 13 miners were killed.
The Temirtau steel plant accounts for some 4 percent of Kazakh gross domestic product and is the nation’s single largest corporate employer, with its 55,000-strong workforce.
Mittal’s Indian-born billionaire owner, Lakshmi Mittal, paid about $400 million for the steel plant, formerly known as Karmet, in 1995. By 2007, it plans to have invested around $1.4 billion modernizing the site, which ships around 40 percent of its production to China.
Temirtau has an annual design capacity of 6 million tons of steel, while the plant’s coal-mining units can extract up to 12 million tons of coal annually.
In Ukraine, meanwhile, a methane gas leak killed 13 coal miners and injured at least 61 at a mine in eastern Ukraine, officials said. That was the fourth major accident to hit the Zasyadko mine in the Donetsk region in seven years, and again focused attention on the dangers of Ukraine’s poorly funded and outdated mining sector.
Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Ihor Krol said “an unexpected eruption of a coal-and-gas mixture” — later identified as methane — occurred early on Wednesday morning at a depth of 1,078 meters when 400 miners were working underground. Forty-nine miners were trapped.
Rescuers working through the morning managed to save 36 of them, bringing the injured men to the surface for medical treatment. The bodies of 13 others were found, Krol said. Another 351 miners were evacuated from safer areas of the mine, but 25 of them also sought medical help, Krol said.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuev, who rushed to the site to take charge of the rescue efforts and official investigation, said there had been no explosion and no fire, and the victims died from methane poisoning.
“The methane probably emanated from rocks,” he said in televised remarks.
He said the rescued miners all showed signs of methane poisoning.
Initially, Krol said 400 other miners who were also working in the mine at the time of the blast had been evacuated. But later, he said 150 remained underground in a different part of the mine not affected by the blast. Krol said they were not considered not to be in danger and that crews were working to bring them to the surface.
Relatives and friends of the miners gathered around the central entrance to the mine, which was crowded with emergency vehicles.
Ukraine has some of the world’s most dangerous mines, due to outdated equipment and poor safety standards. Since the 1991 Soviet collapse, nearly 4,300 miners have been killed in accidents. Officials say that for every million-ton of coal brought to the surface in Ukraine, three miners lose their lives.
The Zasyadko mine has earned a reputation as one of the most deadly. In 2002, a methane explosion killed 20 miners. A year earlier, 54 died, also in an explosion of methane gas. In May 1999, 50 miners were killed in a methane and coal-dust blast at Zasyadko.
The Zasyadko mine is reportedly linked to Ukraine’s richest man, steel-and-coal magnate Rinat Akhmetov.
(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: Recriminations Fly Over Violence
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As victims of Sunday’s clash between the nationalist Movement Against Illegal Migration (DPNI) and Antifa, an anti-Fascist movement, recover in local hospitals, the fight’s participants blame the authorities for their “hands-off” approach and predict that such incidents will be repeated in the near future.
Violence broke out on Sunday, Sept. 17, when a gathering of members of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration was disrupted by a group of masked attackers on Pionerskaya Ploshchad outside the Theater For Young Spectators. 
The meeting’s participants discussed the recent events in the Karelian town of Kondopoga, which they saw as “deserved justice” for the town’s non-Slavic population.  The movement is campaigning for the immediate deportation of immigrants from CIS countries.
DPNI described the Antifa disruption of their gathering as an extremist act. Antifa members, in turn, accuse DPNI of nationalist and racist propaganda and say the government has been lax in not having banned the organization. 
“Yes, we did come there to disrupt their meeting, and yes we were prepared to fight — after the murder of our fellow antifascist Timur Kacharava last fall we have learned that fascists and nationalists understand only one language, the language of force — but we definitely did not come there to kill; this is against our principles,” said Andrei, 
a local student and Antifa member who asked that his last name be withheld.
Timur Kacharava, an anti-fascist student activist, was killed on Ligovsky Prospekt on Nov. 13 of last year in an attack carried out by an unidentified group. 
“If the authorities do nothing, we have nothing left to do but fight,” Andrei added. “We are aware of the fact that this makes us more vulnerable, but there doesn’t seem to be any other way of drawing attention to the problem. Verbal methods do not work.”
St. Petersburg authorities and law enforcement agencies have been reluctant to admit the existence of fascist groups in the city and tend to diminish the scale of nationalism and hate-crimes, according to Antifa members. 
At a news conference earlier this year city prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev acknowledged that the city has problems with extremist groups, but said they should not be exaggerated. 
Zaitsev said that he finds it difficult to distinguish between extremism and simpler cases of “hooliganism.”
“One scenario is all too common here: teenagers with no occupation and a great love of booze get together looking for some kind of entertainment,” he said. “They get drunk and beat up or rob people on the street. ”
According to the scenario painted by Alexander Belov, DPNI spokesman, the meeting on Sunday began peacefully and then was suddenly attacked by about two dozen masked people wrapped in black clothes, shouting “Antifa!” 
Antifa member Andrei, who was present at the incident, tells a different story. He said they carried no knives or weapons and maintain that the meeting’s participants immediately took out their weapons when they saw the antifascists approaching.
“It’s our word against theirs, but compare our ideologies: we do not divide nationalities into worthy and unworthy,” Andrei said.
The Sunday fight resulted in three people being hospitalized — one with a severe injury to the head and two with knife wounds — and twenty-one people being detained by the police. 
Belov said his organization is becoming increasingly popular, and that causes envy in other groups.
“Public support for our movement is growing at a strikingly high pace and, of course, our political rivals — including the Nashi movement — are unhappy about it, which explains all the dirty rhetoric being used against us,” Belov said.
Ruslan Linkov, head of the Democratic Russia organization, accused the police of being deliberately aloof, turning a blind eye to the problem.
“DPNI is an extremist organization, openly calling for ethnic cleansing, and its every public action is bound to attract extra police attention and an increased police presence,” Linkov said. “It shows that the police must sympathize with the nationalists and agree with their “ethnic cleansing” ideas.”
Linkov believes the police are interested in portraying antifascists as extremists, playing to growing feelings of xenophobia among the general public. “They think the city would look better if it’s seen as a problem of youngsters drinking too much, rather than a problem of nationalist groups getting strong,” he said. “They seem to be trying to spread the responsibility for street violence more evenly between various political forces.”
Meetings and demonstrations require careful preparation, according to DPNI.
A lengthy memo published on the DPNI website recommends bringing a lawyer to any meeting or demonstration. Umbrellas, scarves and neckties, jewelry, heels and loose long hair are not recommended. It would be smart to have a handful of coins, according to the memo, to throw into assailants’ faces during a fast retreat. 
Those who opt to take to the streets are also advised to bring some sliced lemon and goggles to protect themselves against tear-gas. The memo also suggests carrying first-aid kits and a chocolate bar which will come in handy in the event of being detained by the police, where access to food and drink is often restricted.

TITLE: Russia Says Kosovo Sets Precedent
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW —  The Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that the resolution of the Kosovo conflict should serve as a precedent of nations’ right to self-determination.
Wednesday’s statement appeared to be intended to pre-empt criticism at the United Nations General Assembly about Russia’s tacit support for separatists in a number of frozen conflict zones in former Soviet regions, including Transdnestr, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
“It is a matter of principal importance that the decision on Kosovo be universal in nature. It will set a precedent,” the ministry said in a statement.
UN-mediated talks between Kosovo’s Albanian majority and Serbia are deadlocked, and most experts predict a referendum will be held on the region’s independence, which they expect the Albanian separatists to win.
The United Nations has administered Kosovo since 1999, when NATO air strikes drove out Serb troops that had carried out a crackdown against the local Albanian population.
Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova — which have formed a pro-Western political alliance called GUAM — managed to put the issue of frozen conflicts on the agenda for the current session of the General Assembly, defeating Russia and its allies by one vote in a ballot earlier this month.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is expected to call on the assembly to pass a resolution condemning the separatist regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia as well as the countries  backing them.
Saakashvili may also accuse Russia specifically of plotting to annex the regions, of waging a trade war against Georgia and even of attempting to overthrow his government, Gazeta.ru reported Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who will address the General Assembly on Thursday, dismissed the frozen-conflicts initiative as a “propaganda ploy.”
“This discussion will not produce positive results,” Lavrov told Interfax in New York on Wednesday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk responded to Lavrov, saying Russia should respect the territorial integrity of its neighbors, and referred to Moscow’s handling of Chechnya’s bid for independence, Georgia’s Imedi television channel reported Wednesday.
In the past, the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry have at least paid lip service to the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova, but of late top officials have begun talking up the right to self-determination of breakaway regions in these countries. They have said the Kosovo referendum would set a precedent for such situations.
The Foreign Ministry reiterated this position in Wednesday’s statement. “Any speculation about the singularity of the Kosovo case is nothing more than an attempt to circumvent international law,” the ministry said.
“This creates the impression that a double standard is being applied to the resolution of crises in different regions of the world, and that rules are being enforced arbitrarily.”
The UN discussion will increase awareness of the frozen conflicts in the former Soviet republics, but it will have no practical impact, said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine.
Bogged down in Iraq and confronting the nuclear proliferation threat posed by Iran and North Korea, the United States and Western Europe will not risk alienating Russia over the issue of separatism, Lukyanov said.

TITLE: Capsule, Tourist Dock With Space Station
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KOROLYOV, Moscow Region — The space capsule carrying a new U.S.-Russian crew and the first paying female space tourist docked smoothly at the international space station Wednesday.
Officials at Mission Control applauded as the ship carrying Iranian-born U.S. telecommunications entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria hooked up with the orbiting station in a trouble-free automatic docking following a two-day journey.
“Somehow, our Russian friends and partners are able to make these operations look routine, but those of us in the space business know that these matters are not routine and in fact very difficult, and so it’s a testament to their skills that they can make it appear to be routine,” said NASA associate administrator Rex Geveden, who was on hand to watch the docking with other U.S., Russian and European space officials.
A couple of hours after the docking, the new crew floated into the space station, welcomed by its current residents, who treated them to a festive lunch. Ansari, who smiled broadly, was clad in a bright yellow polo shirt and baseball cap.
Ansari’s family and relatives of other astronauts were at Mission Control to witness the mooring over a video link.
“All of us feel proud, excited and happy,” said Ansari’s husband, Hamid.
“I am very excited and happy for her,” echoed her sister, Atousa Raissyan. “I knew she was going to do it sooner or later. She has made her dream come true.”
Ansari is the fourth private astronaut to pay a reported $20 million for a space station visit. The paying tourists have become an important source of funding for Russia’s space industry.
Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian-born billionaire who helped Microsoft create Word and Excel, is to blast off for the station next spring and a Malaysian astronaut will follow in the fall, said Alexei Krasnov, deputy head of the Federal Space Agency.
Krasnov hailed Ansari’s courage and skills and added that, in theory, she could fly to the station again in 2008 — the time when she had initially been scheduled to make the journey. Ansari was added to the current crew roster just last month after Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto failed a medical test.
Ansari, Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria blasted off for the station in the TMA-9 capsule from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday. 
The three are joining German astronaut Thomas Reiter and the two outgoing crew members, Russian Pavel Vinogradov and American Jeff Williams, who are due to return to Earth with Ansari on Sept. 29.
During Tyurin and Lopez-Alegria’s six-month stay, four space walks are planned, with as many as three to be conducted in January to help set up the station’s permanent cooling system. Another will take place earlier to retrieve and install experiments on the station’s exterior.
Krasnov played down Monday’s problem with the station’s Russian-made Elektron oxygen generator that overheated, spreading a burned-rubber smell and leaking potassium hydroxide, a compound that is used to power batteries. NASA said the leak was not life-threatening, and the crew quickly cleaned up the spill.

TITLE: State Duma Puts Draft Law On Piracy Over First Hurdle
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova and Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma on Wednesday tentatively approved a bill overhauling legislation on intellectual property rights and toughening penalties for piracy to six years in prison.
The bill, Part 4 of the Civil Code, is part of a Kremlin bid to squash Western criticism over the widespread piracy of DVDs, software and other goods as it seeks to bring Russia into the World Trade Organization.
But legal experts and lobby groups criticized the 400-page bill as messy, incomplete and against the interests of copyright holders.
Presenting the bill before the vote, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said its main accomplishment was to strengthen the rights of authors.
He said it did so by, among other things, specifying for the first time which intellectual property would be protected, including works of art and literature, scientific research, patents, trademarks, computer programs and electronic databases.
The bill also grants rights for know-how and to brands that are not used in Russia. It would forbid newspapers and magazines from publishing photographs of people without their consent, in an attempt to shield celebrities from paparazzi. And special protection would be extended to software and scientific research ordered by the federal and municipal authorities.
“This is being done for the first time, and I think it is very important because it will allow the most important work made for the state to be separated from all others,” Medvedev said.
In addition to the new maximum prison term of six years, tougher penalties would allow authorities to confiscate equipment used to produce fake goods and close down the businesses that allowed pirates to operate on their premises. Current penalties carry prison terms of up to five years and the confiscation of fake goods, not the equipment.
Critics said better enforcement of intellectual property rights was needed, but that the bill was not the answer. The bill, designed to replace all existing laws on intellectual ownership and to bring order to the largely disorganized copyright arena, would lead to separate federal laws governing copyrights and related rights, patents and trademarks being concentrated in a single document.
Peter Necarsulmer, president of the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights, said it was “extremely disappointing” that Medvedev rejected a Duma deputy’s suggestion to send the bill for review to the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization, of which Russia is a member.
“If the authors are so certain that their document is good, they should have no fear of this review,” he said.
“I am not aware of any single respectable international intellectual property rights organization that has endorsed this,” he added.
Another representative of the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights, Olga Barannikova, warned that small changes in terminology set in the bill would translate into the transformation of the entire law enforcement system.
Nikolai Belousov, a lawyer who helped draft the bill, said the end result failed to take into account the interests of copyright holders. The bill appears to favor the rights of authors over those of copyright holders.

TITLE: Personal Wealth Up 12 Percent
AUTHOR: By William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — In the next few years, Russia can expect to see personal financial wealth grow faster than anywhere else on the planet, save India, a Boston Consulting Group report finds.
Buoyed by a flood of cash from oil and gas exports, the value of stock, bonds and other financial assets held by Russians will grow at 12 percent yearly through 2010.
Personal financial wealth in India, meanwhile, will grow at 13 percent; in China, 11 percent; and in Brazil, 6 percent, according to the report, released Tuesday.
To be sure, Russia and the other so-called BRIC countries are still playing catch-up: In 2005, Russians boasted just $558 billion in financial assets, versus $31 trillion in the United States and $12 trillion in Japan. The report only measures investors’ financial assets and not cash tied up in a business or home.
For the source of Russia’s growing wealth, economists don’t have to look any farther than the nearest oil tanker or gas pipeline.
“Commodities are what’s created the super-wealthy class in this country,” said Rory MacFarquhar, an economist at Goldman Sachs in Moscow.
But MacFarquhar said more rich Russians in the future will probably rely on other lines of work.
“If Russia grows the way our long-term projections say it will, you’re going to get plenty of entrepreneurs accumulating wealth in sectors that have nothing to do with oil and gas,” he said.
The growing wealth has attracted European private banks and other financial services that cater to the wealthy. On Tuesday, Credit Suisse announced it would offer private banking services in Moscow. Deutsche Bank and UBS already offer private banking, essentially a one-stop shop that combines personalized banking services with a full-service international brokerage.
According to a Merrill Lynch report released in June, the number of millionaires in Russia grew 17 percent in 2005, a rate that ranked third in the world after South Korea’s and India’s. But the absolute number of millionaires is small: just 103,000 in 2005, according to Merrill Lynch. In the same year, the United States had nearly 2.7 million millionaires; Germany had almost 770,000.
More than half of Russia’s millionaires live in or around Moscow, according to the Boston Consulting Group. Indeed, Moscow has more billionaires than any other city in the world, according to Forbes.
But with average monthly wages of 10,900 rubles ($407), most ordinary Russians aren’t feeling the benefits of expanding wealth. At the predicted rate, it would take about 205 years to become a millionaire.
Paul Ostling, global chief operating officer at Ernst & Young, said it was not surprising that few people controlled most of the wealth in emerging markets such as Russia. He compared the distribution of wealth here to that in the United States when Rockefellers and Vanderbilts held a large part of the cash, at the beginning of the 20th century.
“Other societies have had similar evolutions,” Ostling said. “The key is to have an evolution.”

TITLE: Total’s Oil Field Gets Ministerial Review
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder and Tim Wall
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — State pressure on foreign oil companies intensified Wednesday as the Natural Resources Ministry said it was reviewing whether to revoke Total’s production sharing agreement for its Arctic Khoryaga oil field.
The announcement came just two days after the ministry revoked Shell’s environmental license at its Sakhalin-2 gas fields, calling into question the future of the country’s largest foreign investment project.
The review of Total’s project could sour a trip by President Vladimir Putin to Paris on Friday. Energy talks there are also likely to focus on Total’s bid for a place in Gazprom’s Shtokman gas field in the Arctic.
Some government officials have been calling for a renegotiation of decade-old production sharing agreements for oil and gas projects by Total, Shell and ExxonMobil.
The calls are being seen as a way for state-controlled energy companies to shoehorn their way into some of the country’s most lucrative fields.
Also Wednesday, Russia’s ambassador to Japan, Alexander Losyukov, touted Gazprom as a reliable partner at Shell’s Sakhalin project, telling reporters in Tokyo that the project would make quicker progress if a state-run company like Gazprom were to take a stake.
Natural Resources Ministry spokesman Rinat Gizatulin said late Wednesday that Total had failed to develop its field sufficiently, and that this had prompted the ministry to consider canceling the field’s production-sharing agreement, or PSA.
The case has been referred to the Federal Agency for Subsoil Use, which will look into the issue next week, Gizatulin said. “The investigation can result in one of two decisions — either the PSA will be rejected or we can negotiate to change the PSA,” he said.
Total owns 50 percent of the Kharyaga field in the Nenets autonomous district, and it has a current output of 20,000 barrels per day. Local authorities own 10 percent, and the remaining 40 percent belongs to Norway’s Norsk Hydro.
Total spokeswoman Patricia Marie declined to comment on the review late Wednesday. Earlier in the day she stressed that Total respected “every regulation in the PSA.”
So far, only Total’s PSA is under official review. PSAs are legally structured such that any change to them — including cancellation — must be done with mutual consent, leaving no room for unilateral action, said Stephen O’Sullivan, co-head of research at Deutsche UFG.
“PSAs were obviously going to be next in the firing line,” he said.
“PSAs are not seen as appropriate by this government for today’s Russia,” he said. “This is not going to lead to a cancellation of these projects, but the pressure is slowly being ratcheted up.”
Daniel Simmons, energy adviser at the Paris-based International Energy Agency, said it was “not so unusual” for the government to consider revoking an operating license over lack of progress with drilling.
“It’s a fairly standard reason for revoking acreage,” he said. “There’s nothing so sinister in that.”
Simmons said the signs in the country’s energy sector, however, were not looking good for investors.
“It’s all bad news for foreign investment coming out of Russia. It’s tough to know how much of this is justified.”

TITLE: EPAM Merges With Local Firm
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The global software services company EPAM Systems has announced a merger with one of the largest Russian software outsourcing vendors — Vested Development Inc (VDI). The move is expected to solidify EPAM’s leadership in the Central and Eastern Europe, the company said Tuesday in a statement.
The combined company will operate under the EPAM Systems name, employing over 2,200 software professionals across eight countries and earning over $70 million in revenue annually.
“This merger allows EPAM to offer the strongest alternative to the current mainstream outsourcing destinations,” said Arkadiy Dobkin, EPAM Chairman and CEO.
By combining operations, the companies hope to benefit in client facing and delivery capabilities, as well as in senior management capacity across North America, Europe, and the former Soviet Union region.
EPAM maintains North American headquarters in Lawrenceville, NJ, and European headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, as well as support and delivery operations in the UK and Germany. Its software development centers are located in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Hungary.
VDI operates over 400 development resources across North America, Russia and Ukraine, taking advantage of multiple time zones to compress delivery cycles, reduce costs and improve flexibility.
“The addition of VDI’s multiple Russian development locations combined with the rapidly growing Ukrainian operations represents not only the largest resource pool available to European clients, but far and away the most balanced distribution of resources across CEE countries,” said Karl Robb, Executive VP of EPAM Systems.
Robb described the merger as “the most effective risk mitigation against potential localized inflation, resource shortages or geo-political risks.”
Anatoly Gaverdovsky, VDI CEO, also praised the mutual enhancement of capabilities.
“By combining our areas of specialization and by broadening the geo-diverse talent pools, the merged company will significantly boost scalability for delivering complex software engineering projects, enhance expertise in vertical and horizontal solutions, and grant greater access to the entire regional resource pool for all our clients worldwide,” Gaverdovsky said.
Michael Zaitsev, CEO of DataArt software outsourcing company, was enthusiastic about the merger and its likely benefits, despite some of the risks involved in mergers.
“There are estimates by leading management consulting firms that about 70 percent of mergers do not bring the expected benefits. Among large-scale outsourcing giants in India, benefits of “outsourcing” mergers mostly reside on the marketing and distribution side rather than in efficiency of delivery platforms,” Zaitsev said.
However he listed a number of reasons for the EPAM-VDI merger, geographic diversification being one of them.
“Hungary, Belarus and Ukraine are not the places to mitigate political risks and local inflation. At the moment, Russia is the only place in Eastern Europe that provides such mitigation,” he said.
Larger scale makes the company a more effective generic outsourcing vendor, he said.
“The merger adds significantly to their ‘off-shore’ technical expertise and platform, especially in Tver, Ryazan, and Saratov, along with tech management capabilities,” Zaitsev said.

TITLE: Cement Production in LenOblast Gets Boost
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The world’s fourth largest producer of building materials, HeiderlbergCement, is investing 140 million euros ($179 million) in cement production in Leningrad Oblast. The German concern is aiming to carve out a niche not only in local production but also in local use of the produced materials.
HeidelbergCement will launch the new production line at its subsidiary, Cesla plant, in the Slantsy district, by 2008. In addition, HeidelbergCement will invest 20 million euros into modernization of existing production facilities.
“This investment will allow us to increase our market share, hopefully to 40 percent to 50 percent,” Silvio Thiede, CEO of Cesla, said at a press conference Thursday.
At the moment Cesla holds 22.5 percent of the cement market in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, according to the company’s own statistics.
The new production line, with a capacity of two million tons per year, will draw new raw material sources. Cesla has already conducted geological exploration and has submitted an application for the registration of a deposit at Borovnya in the Leningrad Oblast — a part of the Slantsevsky limestone deposit. About 14 million euros will be spent on exploration, Thiede said.
“At the moment the Leningrad Oblast faces a difficult situation in the cement market because of Eurocement’s monopoly,” said Helen Teplitskaya, president of the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
“A large shortage of cement, combined with the rapid construction of residential real estate, creates a problem. Construction of the new plant will defuse the market tension,” she said.
Thiede estimated demand for cement in the Northwest at about 3.5 million tons per year, with annual increases of about 12 percent to 15 percent.
Earlier this year the press service for the Leningrad Oblast government announced that LSR construction group was proposing the construction of a cement plant in the Slantsy district by 2009 and offering to invest 160 million euros in the project.
The planned capacity of the LSR plant is between one million and two million tons of cement a year.
“The wastes produced through peach stone extraction and processing by the Leningradslanets and Slantsy companies, which have built up over many years, are the most suitable raw materials for cement production,” the government press service said in a statement on Sept. 13.
Thiede said he is not afraid of competition because demand for cement is steadily growing and the company has positive experience of operating in Russia and the CIS, as well as technological and management know-how.
Due to technology and management improvements, Cesla increased earnings before taxes from 55.4 million rubles ($2 million) last year to a forecasted target of185.8 million rubles this year, Thiede said.
At the same time, production increased at a less spectacular pace — from 613,000 tons of cement last year to just 717,000 tons this year.
As an obvious advantage of the project for the local environment, Teplitskaya indicated that it will reduce the high level of unemployment in the Slantsy district.
Cesla itself will offer about 120 new jobs while many more people will be provided with employment in support and service companies, Thiede said.
Artur Bruno, vice-consul of the German consulate, praised the project as “the largest investment in the region provided by German companies.” For comparison, Knauf is investing just 90 million euros into its plasterboard plant in St. Petersburg.
Thiede also said that HeidelbergCement plans to launch cement plants of the same capacity as its Slantsy facility in Tula and Saratov.
By doing so, the company will increase its production capacity in Russia to about seven million tons, which would amount to a significant share of the Russian concrete market.
According to the affordable housing expert and analytical center at the State Duma, from Junuary to July of this year, 29.18 million tons of cement were produced in Russia — an 11.3 percent increase on the same period last year.
HeidelbergCement group owns 94 factories employing over 43,000 workers in 50 countries. It holds a leading position in the production of cement and concrete in Central and Eastern Europe.

TITLE: Aeroflot To Split Order For Aircraft
AUTHOR: By Vlasta Demyanenko
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: IRKUTSK — Aeroflot said Wednesday that it would buy long-range airliners from both Boeing and Airbus, a decision that will keep open Russia’s options on international aerospace cooperation.
The decision to buy U.S. Boeing’s hot-selling 787 Dreamliner will meet Aeroflot’s need to strengthen its 90-plane fleet, while an extra order for Airbus’ A350 XWB will support Russia’s push to cooperate with Europe’s EADS.
“What we are talking about is buying both Boeing and Airbus. From 2010 to 2012, 22 Boeings, and from 2012 to 2016, 22 Airbuses,” Aeroflot chief executive Valery Okulov told reporters at an economic forum in Irkutsk.
Okulov said state-controlled Aeroflot had already closed tender talks with Boeing to buy 22 Dreamliners, while negotiations on buying the A350s would continue.
“We proposed to Boeing and Airbus that we proceed to preparing contract documents — but with Airbus we will have to rework the terms,” Okulov said.
Okulov’s comments came after Alexander Lebedev, who owns 30 percent of Aeroflot through his National Reserve Corporation, said Tuesday that he had reserved the Boeings on behalf of Aeroflot to avert the collapse of the $3 billion purchase.
Okulov declined to comment on the combined cost of the order, which has been estimated at up to $6 billion.
Analysts say the business case to buy Boeing is compelling — the Dreamliner has already got 377 firm orders and Aeroflot risked losing its place in line by delaying its decision any longer.
But, without backing from the Kremlin to opt exclusively for Boeing, Aeroflot has also committed to buy from Airbus even though the A350 is still at the design stage and has yet to receive a single firm order.
Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Kirill Androsov said the orders should soon get the all-clear from the agency which oversees state-controlled companies.
“The Federal Property Management Agency has completed its evaluation, and on the basis of it a directive should be issued and the [Aeroflot] board of directors will make a decision,” Androsov told reporters.
Aeroflot’s dilemma comes as the Kremlin seeks to build on a 5 percent stake in EADS, amassed by state-controlled Vneshtorgbank, into a strategic holding entitling Moscow to a say in running the European aerospace group.
EADS’ French and German management team has rebuffed Russia’s approach. Analysts say a strategic alliance with Russia could stymie EADS’ pitch for a major contract to sell cargo aircraft to the U.S. military.
Russian officials say the EADS minority stake may be moved to the United Aircraft Corporation, a national champion that will group warplane makers such as state-owned MiG, Sukhoi and listed Irkut, in which EADS owns 10 percent.
The Kremlin’s EADS push is likely to feature at talks in France on Friday between Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

TITLE: Gazprom to Supply Gas to UES
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom, the country’s natural gas monopoly, will supply the gas the country’s power plants need this winter, the company’s chief executive officer said.
Alexei Miller, the head of the gas company, met with Anatoly Chubais, chief executive officer of national power utility Unified Energy Systems, after Chubais warned that the country could face power cuts as the weather turned colder.
UES should still stock up on fuel oil and coal in case of emergencies, Miller said, Gazprom noted in an e-mail it sent after the meeting on Tuesday. Supplies to new power plants will be decided case by case, the e-mail said.
Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin on Monday asked UES to make greater use of coal instead of gas amid worries that Gazprom would not be able to produce enough gas this winter to meet surging demand at home and abroad, Kommersant reported Tuesday.
UES needs 150 billion cubic meters of gas for its power generators in coming years, Kommersant said Wednesday. 
(Bloomberg, SPT)

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Secret Budget 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The government’s secret budget spending has almost tripled in the last four years, Vedomosti said, citing the Institute for Economies in Transition.
The classified portion of the 2007 budget is 12.2 percent of the total, or 666.1 billion rubles ($24.9 billion), versus 9.5 percent, or 225.3 billion rubles, in 2003, the newspaper reported.
Classified spending exists in ministries overseeing culture, sport, education and housing, Vedomosti said. 

Debt for Next Year
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The government will be unable to complete repayment of its Soviet-era debt before the end of the year, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak said, Interfax reported.
The country has been too busy completing repayment of its debt to the Paris Club and has also been occupied with its presidency of the Group of Eight summit this year, the news agency cited Storchak as saying, speaking to reporters in Singapore. 

Consumer Prices Up
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The State Statistics Service expects consumer prices to rise 0.2 percent in September, Interfax reported, citing Central Bank Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev.
Prices had risen 7.2 percent between Jan. 1 and Sept. 18, Ulyukayev told the State Duma’s Budget and Taxes Committee, the news agency reported.
The government is trying to meet its 9 percent annual inflation target after failing to keep inflation in single figures for the past two years. 

First Sakhalin Bought
TOKYO (Bloomberg) — Showa Shell Sekiyu, the Japanese refining unit of Royal Dutch Shell, bought a cargo of crude oil from ExxonMobil’s $13 billion Sakhalin-1 project for the first time.
Showa Shell bought 700,000 barrels of the light, low-sulfur Sokol oil from Japan Petroleum Exploration, which has a stake in the project, a company official said, asking not to be identified, in keeping with company policy, and declining to give the price. The shipment is expected to be loaded in November. 

Yukos Trading 
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Yukos shares plunged as much as 40 percent and its capitalization dropped below $1 billion for the first time in seven years Wednesday as the Russian Trading System considered ending trading of the bankrupt company’s stock.
Yukos stock closed at 50 cents on the RTS. Shares fell as low as 40 cents earlier in the day, valuing the company at $950 million, the lowest since June 1999. 

Azerbaijan Oil High
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Azerbaijan will produce a record 30 million tons (600,000 barrels per day) of oil in 2006, 35 percent more than last year, Interfax reported.
Output in the former Soviet state should rise to 47 million tons next year and to 65 million tons per year by 2010, the news agency said, citing Rovnag Abdullayev, the chief executive officer of the state oil producer, SOCAR. 

Gazprom in Tonkin
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom will start drilling for oil and gas at block 112 in Vietnam’s Tonkin Gulf in November, as the state-run company seeks to expand abroad.
Gazprom and Vietnam Oil & Gas, also known as PetroVietnam, discussed the project Tuesday in Moscow, Gazprom said Tuesday in a statement.

TITLE: A Place Where They’ll Kill A Central Banker
TEXT: Would it be possible for someone in the United States to kill Alan Greenspan to prevent a review of mortgage rates on his or her private home? Of course not. This would be incompatible with the structure of the state.
In Russia, however, it was possible for someone to kill Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov, quite likely in revenge for the closure of problematic banks (read: minor clearing-houses for money laundering). The question is why those involved ultimately chose murder as the best way to solve their problems.
I have a pretty good idea why.
Recall, if you will, the case of Sodbiznesbank. The bank came unglued not only as a result of money laundering, but also because it was the institution used by the Tagiryanovskaya criminal group to transfer money for the kidnapping and murder of Kamaz director Viktor Faber. What did the prosecutors do to the bankers? They ultimately let them out on bail, on the condition that they not flee the country. After all, it’s not like they were Yukos shareholders.
Following this, the bank — which had managed to retain its license — started to lure private depositors with high interest rates. It was Kozlov who stripped the bank of its license. Demonstrations by investors the bank had deceived nearly led to a banking crisis that threatened to destabilize the economy.
Despite his proximity not only to money laundering but also to criminals with blood on their hands, investigators had no particular questions to ask the bank’s owner, Alexander Slesarev. Other people, though, did have questions. Apparently feeling invincible, Slesarev had refused to return money to the bank’s most serious clients, and he was subsequently gunned down, along with his wife and daughter.
The Sodbiznesbank story is not just a story about criminal business — it’s about the complete disintegration of law enforcement bodies, and it is this that leads financial conflicts to be resolved using weapons. But unlike Hollywood films, those who take up weapons first are not the heroic avengers come to slay the bad guys, but the bad guys themselves come to solve their personal problems.
The murders of Kozlov and Slesarev may be connected — it is not often that so much blood is spilled among money-launderers. But whatever the case, we can say with some certainty that Kozlov’s killers were not oligarchs and not financiers, but people among the latest candidates to have their license revoked. The order for the hit was probably issued in a bar where whoever ordered it, complete with a third-class education and 10 years in prison behind him (or 10 years in the armed forces), sat drowning his sorrows in a bottle of vodka.
Unfortunately, Kozlov’s killers’ animal instincts — because they probably have no others — told them one thing. There is no real state in Russia. There is only the “power vertical” — a toothless State Duma, cowed television and helpless government. In other words, all we have is a set of instruments fully subordinated to the Kremlin to control reality.
But the Kremlin cannot actually control reality. To solve crimes, you have to have law enforcement agencies. But Russia’s agencies have more in common with gangs, when they are not doing the state’s bidding onYukos, stealing wholesale and retail cellular phones, providing freelance protection services to businesses and even high-profile murders, or being used as instruments for business redistribution. They can put anyone behind bars, but they can’t actually solve crimes.

Yulia Latynina is the host of a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Some Shaky Stability
AUTHOR: By Jim Hoagland
TEXT: Democracy does not march very long or very far. It lunges forward into vacuums created by the collapse of colonial, communist or imperial systems. Democratic reforms must then often creep or ooze or simply abide until the next turn of the political wheel makes new progress possible.
That frustrating zigzag pattern is at work today in Russia as President Vladimir Putin deepens an authoritarian transformation underwritten by surging oil and gas revenue that buys him public calm. But the political and economic centralization he manages may carry the seeds of its own demise.
This transformation — as dispiriting as it has seemed recently to many in the West and in Russia — is not carved in stone. The deep concern that the Kremlin’s rulers show for the opinion of their relatively well-educated public is one sign that not even they believe democracy is totally dead here.
“They have created a political theater in which they write the script and set the stage,” says a Western diplomat. “But the interesting thing is that they still care what the spectators think of the show.”
That reflex surfaces in the already visible efforts being tested by the Kremlin to stage-manage the 2008 presidential elections. “Reformers” inside the Kremlin are said to be grouping around First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, while “conservatives” cluster with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. Who says the voters won’t have a choice?
Issues for the campaign are also being shaped. The Kremlin team is building up the image of a Communist Party resurgence that must be turned back at the polls, even though most independent analysts fail to detect signs of any such comeback.
Meanwhile, Western governments are being subtly advised that they should do nothing to undermine Putin’s ability to choose his successor. That would play into the hands of a newly threatening left. Dead as a tactic in the West, the Red Scare is being resurrected in a land where communism was decisively rejected 15 years ago.
Not even Putin pretends that the managed democracy he has imposed on Russia is true democracy. He is too smart for that. He acknowledged last week while meeting with foreign visitors that Russia “lacks a real multiparty system.” While declaring a hope to create such a system at an undetermined future moment, Putin offered no clues as to how he would do this.
His vagueness on the political future contrasted sharply with the detailed specifics he offered on the country’s economic outlook; he expects growth to reach 7 percent again this year. Windfall profits from the energy industry will be used to establish “high-technology zones” for new industry and increase social welfare spending, he claimed.
Economic power is also being concentrated in the hands of the state and of a small circle of Putin’s advisers who sit on the boards of the nation’s key natural gas and oil companies. His devotion to centralization also surfaced in his insistence on the need for long-term government-to-government contracts to cut out “intermediaries and speculators” who drive up world energy prices.
Putin’s confidence and his competence in the art of control are impressive when seen at close range. But will his highly centralized system be responsive when Russia has to face up to the pervasive “disease” of energy-exporting countries, which invariably fail to develop financial infrastructure, labor-intensive industries and the skills to run them?
“This is the Russian disease, which is even worse: We export our resources, our capital and our best people,” economist Leonid Grigoriyev said.
His comment is actually an understatement. The population is shrinking not only because of emigration, but because of a staggering mortality rate (double that of the United States) and a sharply declining birthrate. The population has fallen from 150 million to 142 million over the past decade, and the public health system is widely acknowledged to be a continuing disaster.
Putin is a successful manager of a Russia benefiting from good times. But it is far from clear that he, or the stand-in he hopes to name to succeed him, could muster the public support that would be needed to lead the country through crises that may lie ahead. It may take leaders with real democratic legitimacy.
An ambitious U.S. effort to spread democracy into Russia under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s faltered and was stalemated when Putin came to power. But seen from today, it did help create a reference point and toehold for future advances. This should offer some solace to Clinton, and perhaps for U.S. President George W. Bush’s beleaguered push for democracy in the Middle East as well.

Jim Hoagland is a columnist for The Washington Post, where this comment was published.

TITLE: A Policy Shift With Risks
AUTHOR: Editorial
TEXT: Finding the right balance in its reaction to Sunday’s referendum in Transdnestr must have been tricky for the Foreign Ministry. For years, Russia has pledged to respect Moldova’s territorial integrity. But Russian diplomats have recently asserted publicly that the right to self-determination should be a factor in the resolution of frozen conflicts in the former Soviet Union. Ahead of the Transdnestr referendum, this translated into significant unofficial support for the separatist regime.
This balancing act is not only tricky but also hypocritical and potentially dangerous. The hypocrisy stems from the fact that even tacit involvement in Transdnestr’s campaign for independence clashes with Russia’s promise to respect territorial integrity. This is the argument that the Russian side has regularly advanced in opposing individual statehood in places such as Kosovo.
But it is hard to reconcile the territorial integrity defense of Serbia’s position on Kosovo with activities in support of national self-determination in Transdnestr.
To be fair, the European Union and the United States appear to suffer from the same kind of schizophrenia, but in a mirror image of the Russian condition. Backing Moldova and Georgia in the cases of South Ossetia and Abkhazia hardly jibes with Western support for Kosovar independence.
Neither the United States nor Europe, however, stands to lose as much as Russia if its support backfires. Russia has fought two wars to ensure that Chechnya remains within Russia, but its ultimate presence as a stable part of the federation is still far from guaranteed. An outflow of ethnic Russians as a result of the fighting has left the republic’s population almost homogeneously Chechen. The situation is much the same with the Ingush population in neighboring Ingushetia. This population trend continues to provide fertile ground for possible independence movements.
The Kremlin has steadfastly rejected the notion of any region leaving the federation. The message is simple: The country will continue to exist within its current borders. Period.
But abandoning the principle of integrity when it comes to other countries will make this position a much harder sell at home. And therein lies the problem: Regardless of how quietly you tell the people of Transdnestr, South Ossetia and Abkhazia that national self-determination is in their interests, there’s always the danger that the Chechens and Ingush will overhear.

TITLE: Slav to the rhythm
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Musician Goran Bregovic brings his blend of gypsy folk and rock to St. Petersburg.
Composer and guitarist Goran Bregovic, who spearheads a Balkan music craze that adds a rock slant to South-Slavic and gypsy folk traditions, has hardly been out of the limelight for the past three decades. 
Before making it big internationally as a soundtrack composer for his fellow native of Sarajevo, the film director Emir Kusturica, he led Bijelo Dugme, the top rock band in former Yugoslavia, which he formed in 1974.
Born to a Serbian mother and a Croatian father in Sarajevo (now in Bosnia and Herzegovina) in 1950, Bregovic, who comes to St. Petersburg with his brass-driven Wedding and Funeral Band with musicians from Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria this week, epitomizes — both personally and musically — communist dictator Josip Broz Tito’s multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, a country he fled to Paris when civil war broke out in 1989. 
But although he hosts his web site on the .co.yu internet domain, Bregovic said he formed a rock band primarily to express his dissent against Yugoslavia’s communist regime.
“In those times, rock had a capital role in our lives,” wrote Bregovic in a recent email interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
“It was the only way we could make our voice heard, and publicly express our discontent without risking jail (or just about)... I am now too old and too far from the times when  — out of vanity — I imagined that music could change the order of things. But I am still too young not to lose hope!”
Eastern European rock bands saw touring the Soviet Union as a dull job and jumped at the slightest opportunity to travel the West, but Bijelo Dugme was different and repeatedly expressed its wish to tour the U.S.S.R. 
“I always thought that the house of my music is a Slavic house,” wrote Bregovic.
“And I always thought it natural to first show it to us [Slavs] and then to strangers.”
Such requests were routinely turned down by the Soviet Embassy, and even when the band finally made it to Moscow in 1985, its concert was canceled just minutes before the band could mount the stage.
“My rock n’ roll group always benefited from the negative opinion of the Russian Cultural Attache in Belgrade,” wrote Bregovic.
“We were finally given an opportunity to play in Moscow in 1985 but the police stopped the concert before we even came on stage,  while the [support] group was playing,  because the concert presented a danger to public order.”
Yugoslavia’s version of communism was less harsh than that found in the Soviet Union, and 1970s Soviet rock fans enviously saw the country as “semi-Western,” where rock music and even erotic magazines were acceptable.
“History is like the Kama Sutra: who was down comes up, who was up goes down,” wrote Bregovic. 
“I am glad to see times are now better in Russia and sad to see that it’s worse in Serbia. Communist pressure was gentler in Yugoslavia than in the Soviet Union, but just as unpleasant.”
Bregovic sees the move to his current Balkan folk style with a rock accent as natural.
“I was always impressed by traditional music,” he wrote. “At fifteen years old, I played traditional music as a professional musician. The success of my rock group was so great precisely because my music was always inspired by traditional music and the inevitable gypsies. But whether I write simple things for children’s instruments or more complicated ones for a choir and orchestra, I must always have fun. That’s something that’s in me from my rock-and-roll period — a bit of hedonism.”
Bijelo Dugme split in 1985 and Bregovic was propelled to international fame after composing the soundtrack to Kusturica’s 1988 film, “Time of the Gypsies.” The film caused a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival the following year. The collaboration, which also yielded “Arizona Dream” in 1993 and “Underground” in 1995, gave Bregovic the chance to meet rock legend Iggy Pop in New York. “Iggy came to a casting with Johnny Depp when we were preparing ‘Arizona Dream’ and there he sung the American [national anthem] with a pumpkin on his head,” wrote Bregovic.
“The producers did not put that scene into the film but we got to know each other and it turned out he was a fan of my record ‘Time of the Gypsies.’ ... I proposed that he sing three songs in the film.  He said he would do it because that morning in a cafe in [Greenwich] Village he had asked his Serbian waiter, who always served him coffee, if he knew of Goran Bregovic  — the waiter said ‘he’s a God.’ Iggy must have taken the waiter for a bright guy.
“Those few days of work with him were very unusual because Iggy was going through a period of no drugs, no alcohol, only vegetarian food and he asked to record in a studio where the technicians did not smoke joints all day. So we recorded in [Philip] Glass’ studio where they only record serious music. You will find one of those three songs, ‘In the Death Car,’ on a ‘best of’ that Iggy released this year.”
Bregovic is now in the finishing stages of the recording of a gypsy opera, “Goran Bregovic’s Carmen with a Happy Ending,” which he hopes will come out later this year. He will go on to work on a commission from the European Concert Hall Organization under the working title “Forgive, Is This the Way to the Future?” in early 2007.
This piece is scheduled to tour in Europe in April 2007, and later at Carnegie Hall in New York. It will be performed by Bregovic’s own Wedding and Funeral Band and the Absolute Ensemble, which he described as one of the most interesting contemporary music ensembles based in New York, and directed by an “extraordinarily dynamic” young conductor of Estonian origin, Kristjan Jarvi.
In St. Petersburg, Bregovic and His Wedding and Funeral Band will perform “Tales & Songs from Weddings & Funerals,” a concert of music he composed for the movies and containing material from his last record of the same title.
“I truly hope the audience will like it,” wrote Bregovic. “This is different music than what they hear on MTV but I am always happy to learn that in all parts of the world I seem to come across curious people who seem to appreciate weird composers whose music doesn’t sound like the usual mainstream.”

Goran Bregovic and His Wedding and Funeral Band performs at Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Thursday. 
www.goranbregovic.co.yu

TITLE: Musical moaning
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In a unique art project, members of the public are asked to complain and set their grumbles to music.
Complaining can be fun, complaining can be art and complaining can be a very entertaining and enlightening experience. Confused? An interactive art project taking place in St. Petersburg this weekend has the answers.
Finnish-German duo Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen have found an original outlet for everyone who wants to complain about life’s problems, big and small: to turn the grumbles into a song and have the “moaning minnies” sing it in public as part of a “complaints choir.” Energy expended expressing dissatisfaction, anger and other negative emotions is transformed into something productive, cathartic and entertaining.
The artists have already run the complaining choirs in Birmingham in the U.K., Helsinki and Hamburg.
The project invites people to submit complaints which are reworked during a series of workshops with help from  professional musicians. No singing skills are required. The result is a song performed live by a choir made up of local enthusiasts, and the performance is videotaped. 
In St. Petersburg, the workshops have been running this week and performances take place on Saturday and Sunday in the city center (see program below) as part of the “Contemporary Art in The Traditional Museum” festival run by the Pro Arte institute.
The artists behind the choir are very excited about the the project taking place in Russia. 
“Russia is undergoing quite dramatic changes. It is interesting to see what will happen there with the choir after the fairly stable welfare society of Finland,” Kochta-Kalleinen said in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
But why bring the choir to St. Petersburg? 
“Actually St. Petersburg chose us. Pro Arte wanted to organize the choir, but for us this was perfect, since we expect a great tradition of lamenting in song in this town,” Kochta-Kalleinen said. 
Although the act of complaining is something that everyone can relate to, the complaints of those living in Birmingham seemed to differ from those expressed by people of Helsinki or in Hamburg judging by the results of the previous complaining choir events. 
In Finland, people complained a great deal about mobile phones. 
“My friend is more interested in his phone than in me, ring-tones are irritating, and people only tell their opinions via sms chatrooms,” ran one grumble that made it into song.
Another big issue was working life. 
“The boss has much better shoes!” was another Finnish lament. Interestingly, 90 percent of all the participants of the Finnish choir were women. 
“It seems that Finnish men have nothing to complain about — except that their wives always complain,” the artists noted.
“In Birmingham, we had mostly very personal complaints, e.g. some young man complaining that his beard doesn’t grow, even though he wanted to be a captain; and a captain without a full beard is not taken seriously,” Kochta-Kalleinen said.
Low sex drive, dead-end jobs, expensive beer and silent bus drivers: Brummies, the nickname for inhabitants of the U.K.’s unglamorous second city, said they “couldn’t complain enough.” 
“In Hamburg the choir became very political, because it took place in a so-called problem suburb; people saw the chance to address very burning political issues to the city government. One woman even left the choir because for her it was not political enough,” Kochta-Kalleinen said.
Do the complaints from Petersburgers differ very much from those from people of Western Europe or do people complain about the same things no matter where they live and what their life circumstances are?
Problems associated with transport of all kinds have been one of the most common sources for complaints, it was discovered this week.
High heels stuck in metro escalators, bicycles that struggle on the cobbled streets, jammed roads, advertising on bus windows that get in the way of looking at the city, and minibus drivers that smoke while driving, have all cropped up as sources of woe. 
Drunken workmen, “mysteriously occuring spontaneous trash dumps,” grumpy and ignorant shop assistants and ugly new architecture also worry locals.
Another burning issue is misfortunes in love. Perhaps this is not suprising: in Russian the words “to complain” (zhalovatsya) and “to feel compassion” (zhalet) come from the same root, with the latter meaning “to love” (lyubit) in Old Church Slavonic. 
www.ykon.org/kochta-kalleinen/

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Tsokol, the new name for Moloko club after its move to a new location close to Ploshchad Vosstaniya, has postponed its formal opening until October. 
The club, which is now still under construction, proved to be smaller but better-organized than its former premises when it hosted a pre-opening concert by the New York-based band Melomane late last week.
The Russian word tsokol stems from the Italian zoccolo and basically means “a basement,” which is where the club is now located.
Meanwhile, the newest addition on the indie club scene is called Mod. The brainchild of Novus founder Denis Cherevichny, the new club is located on Konyushennya Ploshchad, 10 minutes walk from Nevsky, and has been described as a “bigger, two-level” Novus, with a stage and P.A. system. 
Due to be launched at 10 p.m. on Saturday, Mod will host soul-funk band J.D. and the Blenders and a previously unheard-of, classic-rock band called Sweat on its opening night. 
The music repertoire to be played by DJs at Mod will be similar to that of Novus, but the new club is reported to have enough space to host art exhibitions, theater performances and film screenings.
Mod is located at 2G Konyushennaya Ploshchad, right next to Club Arena. For those who pass the “face control,” entrance is free.
Meanwhile, at least two DJs that are regulars at Novus will demonstrate other skills elsewhere in the city.
DJ Pablo Diablo whose repertoire is largely based on punk and post-punk music from the U.K. and the U.S. will perform as a punk vocalist with his band Dottie Danger at Griboyedov at 7 p.m. on Monday.  
The band, whose style is alternatively described on the web as either “death rock” or “suicide surf,” appears to have borrowed its name from Belinda Carlisle’s early, punk nickname and will perform alongside Polish metal-hardcore band In Twilight’s Embrace. The local punk  band Next Round will also perform.
New York photographer Sara Lafleur-Vetter, who now lives in St. Petersburg and spins funk and hip-hop records at Novus as DJ Lafleur, is mounting an exhibition of photographs taken in various locations including New York, St. Petersburg, Italy and Alaska. Called “How To Make Friends,” the exhibition will open at the Jam Hall (Metro Petrogradskaya) film theater at 7 p.m. on Thursday (see page x.).
Datscha is set to continue its series of “Datscha goes Reeperbahn” series of events bringing DJs from Hamburg, the city from which the bar’s owner Anna-Christin Albers  hails. Friday will see M.M. Turner perform his set of modern soul, deep funk and boogaloo at 10 p.m. 
The following night Turner is scheduled to perform at Mod’s opening party.

TITLE: A facelift for the Philharmonic
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Ruin and devastastion were the words used by Ilya Cherkasov, executive director of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, when he spoke about the state of the interior of the Shostakovich Philharmonic Grand Hall currently undergoing restoration. 
With this tongue-in-cheek statement made to reporters this week, the director meant that the repairs are going ahead at full steam. 
The Shostakovich Philharmonic Grand Hall is due to reopen in May, while the Glinka Philharmonic Chamber Hall is scheduled to welcome audiences as early as January.
“Of course, before renovating anything you need to strip off the old paint, break the old furniture and so forth,” Cherkasov said. The large-scale renovation, which began in August, marks the first major facelift for the famous concert hall in almost half a century.
When the Shostakovich Philharmonic Orchestra opens its new concert season on Monday, with a program of Dmitry Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Sergei Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible Oratorio under the baton of Yury Temirkanov at the State Academic Capella, it will be the first time that the first performance of the season by the orchestra has been held at a host venue.
On Sept. 30, the orchestra will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 — a reference to the work’s Russian premiere in September 1906 — conducted by U.S. maestro Gilbert Kaplan. 
Kaplan, nicknamed the “one-symphony conductor,” took the international spotlight in the early 1990s after hearing Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and quitting a career as a broker to devote himself to classical music. Now Kaplan travels the world lecturing on Mahler and conducting almost exclusively Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 on the best stages in the world, including at the Salzburg Festival. 
The Philharmonic’s schedule of performances will shrink significantly in the coming months. Most of the performances will take place at the Capella, the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, Zazerkalye Theater and other venues. The Philharmonic’s ticket office is functioning at the Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall on Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa unaffected by the reconstruction.
Temirkanov is scheduled to conduct nine concerts during the season.
“Because of the repairs our orchestras will give less concerts than usual,” said Irina Rodionova, deputy artistic director of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. “With the reopening of the Chamber Hall in January things will get back on track but the difference from a normal schedule will remain noticeable. Without our main venue, we also decided against organizing the annual International Arts Square Winter Festival [in December and January].”
As a substitute for the festival, which has grown into the top arts event in St. Petersburg during the winter months and has become an international attraction in its own right, this winter the Philharmonic is putting on a different event.  Called “Farewell to the Year of Mozart,” the festival will start on Dec. 5 — the day of composer’s death in 1791 — and continue until New Year’s Eve. Mozart will not be the only composer featured during the festival: works by other Viennese classical composers will also be performed. One of the performances will be devoted to compositions created by the Mozart family, including the composer himself, his father Leopold and his youngest son Wolfgang Amadeus Jr.
The renovation means both orchestras of the Philharmonic will be touring more extensively both in Russia and abroad during this period. This week, the musicians returned from an extensive tour of Siberia, with concerts in Irkutsk, Khanty-Mansiisk and Surgut.
Later this year Temirkanov is organizing a Shostakovich festival — packed with concerts, exhibitions and lectures celebrating the centenery of the St. Petersburg composer — in  the U.S. city of Baltimore, Maryland, where the conductor has served as principal conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Cherkasov said the renovation of the concert hall will incorporate elements of restoration. 
“Oak floorboards will be replaced by oak floorboards and nothing else,” he said. “Similarly, wall paint and other original materials used in decorating the interiors will be examined, and we will be sure to find adequate replacements.” 
The last renovation of the Shostakovich Philharmonic took place in 1957, and that was only partial. This time around, both halls will undergo an overhaul. Igor Naumov, director of the Shostakovich Grand Hall, said the reconstruction is not only aimed at renewing the seats, chandeliers, pillars and the rest of the interior but goes well beyond this level. 
“New sound engineering equipment will be installed, and we are now consulting acoustic engineers,” Naumov said. “We will be updating the lighting system, as well as heating, electricity and water pipes.”
The 1957 repairs were widely slammed for allegedly worsening acoustics in the Grand Hall. The critics are hoping that this year’s reconstruction will bring improvements.
Snezhana Zamaliyeva, development director of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, said the management has invited a respected French acoustics expert who had already visited the halls and offered some recommendations but refused to disclose his name or the company he represents because a contract with them is yet to be signed. 
 www.philharmonia.spb.ru

TITLE: Moving stories
AUTHOR: By Jenna Rudo-Stern
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This past week brought St. Petersburg’s third annual world physical theater festival, “Vertical: Stop in Time,” to the Music-Hall.
Running Friday through Wednesday, its most publicized attraction was the classical Indian dancer Sanjay Bhattacharya and his Srabosti Theatre, which performed in the first four programs of the festival. On each of these evenings, the Indian dance theater troupe was followed by western contemporary dancers.
Monday night’s program offered a two-hour performance by Srabosti Theatre, which was followed by Julyen Hamilton’s solo piece “Cell.” The evening was strong in performance, but weak in choreography.
What Sanjay Bhattacharya may lack in technical precision, he makes up for with oodles of stage presence. His beauty is striking, all the more so as such feminine poise is rarely seen from a balding man. 
Bhattacharya’s femininity expresses itself in the tilt of his head, the sparkle of his necklace, the ornamental agility of his hands, the gracious warmth of his smile.
He dances Khatak, a classical Indian form of storytelling through gesture. His style is strong and expressive, reminiscent of Edith Piaf’s force and Charlie Chaplin’s delicacy. Indeed, watching Bhattacharya perform is a bit like watching an early silent film, with exaggerated yet delicate movements.
While Bhattacharya’s performance tended toward the maudlin, he possesses that particular integrity that allows even the most clichÎd of movements to appear fresh and sincere.
In contrast, the frenetic lighting design recalled over-produced rock concerts. And someone made the very unfortunate choice of adopting the current fad for video projection in the final piece. This particular specimen of video production included photographs of butterflies, fields of poppies, and planet Earth captured from space. Very “cosmic.”
The ensemble in Sanjay Bhattacharya’s troupe was without spirit. The dancers were technically weak and had little stage presence. They were going through the motions, and the motions weren’t very interesting.  
The first part of the evening’s program was at least half an hour too long and the ensemble pieces were unnecessary fillers. Live musicians, on sitar and tabla, provided a welcome musical interlude, but begged the question of why all the dances were performed to recorded music.
An entirely different type of soundscape emerged in the second part of the program. Julyen Hamilton, a British dancer based in Spain, incorporated abstract vocalization and a clever, albeit fragmented, monologue into his solo dance piece “Cell.”
Rambling and often inarticulate, the piece, which premiered in Barcelona in 2004, could be viewed as self-indulgent. Hamilton’s clarity of movement, persuasive timing, and tender humor, however, endowed the performance with substance.
There were numerous occasions when Hamilton tickled his audience with sympathetic comedy.  At one moment, Hamilton addressed a pair of hiking boots on stage with a commanding “Jump!” then proceeded to carry the shoes up over a can downstage, setting them down gently yet firmly.  At another point, he announced his plan to build a “house,” moving to place a book spine-up on the floor.  It fell and he declared, “House not work!” and threw the book to the side. Dismissed.
The piece referred often to the universal needs for sleep and food and comfort. Hamilton brought in a few unexplained bits of text of a more personal nature, such as “Albert, you can’t see me. And I can’t see you. But I know.”  But the majority of his speech was more esoteric or overly simple; “Life is invisible” and “I am sweeping poems for you, love poems of philosophy.” The piece would do better with a personal punch line.
The structure of the piece is quite cyclical, formed around a repetition of verbal cues and movement patterns. The lighting design for the piece is itself cyclical, moving from the stark to the sculptural and back around. At the same time, objects used on stage are gradually gathered until they are left in a circle that has tightened to contain them centerstage and within the borders of a spotlight.
This rich, raw material could be used to create a more focused and cohesive piece. On the other hand, perhaps this piece must remain inexplicit. As Hamilton himself tells us, “Shhh. It’s secret.”

TITLE: Modern art matters
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: “Ya lyublyu iskusstvo i dengi,” Harry Lybke, director of the legendary Gallery Eigen+Art of Berlin and Leipzig said in an amusing accent, encapsulating in a phrase (“I love art and money”) the upshot of a two-day international symposium on contemporary art held at the State Hermitage Museum last week. 
“The Museum and the Art Market” was the first of its kind held in St. Petersburg and attracted an impressive roster of international experts from all branches of the contemporary art industry — museums, galleries, dealers, auction houses, critics and senior researchers and curators. 
In hosting such a symposium at this time, the Hermitage is establishing theoretical ground for its recently announced plans to acquire a permanent collection of 20th century international art as well as to hold exhibitions of such art. 
“The 20th century has come to an end, so it is surely in our perview,” the museum’s director Mikhail Piotrovsky told Kommersant newspaper regarding his grandiose plans for the General Staff Building opposite the Winter Palace, where the Hermitage’s classical collection is displayed. 
This timely and eclectic conference exposed the fact that problems in Russia’s museum culture date from somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, and tackled the problems that Western museums face in the 21st.
For decades in Russia there has been a strange imbalance between St. Petersburg and Moscow regarding contemporary art. 
While Moscow can be proud of a highly developed infrastructure that circulates cutting-edge art (galleries, collectors, art fairs and the international biennale), St Petersburg, owing to the Hermitage’s enthusiasm, leads in presenting 20th century international art icons through either big retrospectives (recent example include retrospectives of Louise Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Ilya Kabakov, De Kooning and so on) or one-picture shows (Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst and others).
Nevertheless, these sporadic attempts do not replace a systematic accumulation of 20th century art — unfortunately, the tradition of wealthy Russians collecting contemporary art ended with the Shchukin and Morozov collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
Piotrovsky and Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, moderated a discussion at the symposium on “Museums and Biennales” which raised a number of issues both specific to Russia and the museum world in general.
One of them was how to adequately represent contemporary art, which radically confronts traditional schemes and classifications such as “painting,” “drawing,” and “sculpture.”
For example, installations made by the New York-based Russian artist Ilya Kabakov, which were shown at the General Staff Building last year, obviously didn’t fit into any of these traditional genres and such exhibitions require a radically different approach, said Andrei Yerofeyev, chief curator of contemporary art at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery. 
Another Soviet habit is the rough division of Russian museums along national, regional or time-specific lines (i.e. 19th century art), which is  often misleading in art historical terms. 
The border between Russian and Western art is artificial, as if Russian art was not part of European trends and schools. Art loses its explanatory context thanks to this violent seperation, said Aidan Salakhova, director of Moscow’s Aidan Gallery.
Another problem for curators in Russia is how to present both Soviet-era unofficial art and post-Soviet art. 
“Why is there no Timur Novikov  exposition hall in the Russian Museum?” Yerofeyev wondered, referrring to the late leader of St. Petersburg’s Neo-Academic school.
And in today’s age of aggressive visual culture, art has to compete as entertainment, and exhibitions tend to become spectacular multimedia shows with celebrities and scandals, said Olga Sviblova, the director of the Moscow multimedia center for contemporary arts. 
These problems were aired in parallel with the general issue of the contemporary status of the museum and its unclear role and function in the art market. 
“The museum should offere to the public what, for economical reasons, can only be possessed by a few,” Jean-Jacques Aillagon, director of the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, which holds the famous Pinault collection, said. 
“The museum is one of the steps in the legitimization of contemporary art,” as Joseph Bakshtein, commissioner of the Moscow International Biennale, put it.
Museums should “follow rather than lead,” Norman Rosenthal, Exhibitions Secretary of London’s Royal Academy of Arts, said. According to Rosenthal, London’s Tate gallery has made some mistakes in its approach to its collection, a criticism which inspired lively responses at the symposium. 
Aillagon’s remark: “I believe in the dialectical value of the mistake,” was just one of them. 
“The aim of the museum is ultimately the exact opposite of the market,” Robert Storr, commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale and dean of the Yale School of Art, said.
“The market would like to sell and sell for ever the same thing. The aim of the museum is to buy something definitively and take it out of circulation for ever… One of the greatest problems museums confront now is to make people forget the economic history of the object. All people see a price tag and don’t see the work of art at all,” Storr added.
“I do not think that museums should be temples, I do not think they should be lecture halls, but the noise in the museum should be the noise of the street … it should be the noise of… people walking around and disputing things... they disagree with the artists and disagree with each other,” Storr continued.
“And what you are entering when you enter an exhibition is the serious, more and more articulate ‘disagreement about what is art and what art should be’.”
Many of the Russian speakers unanimously agreed that the government has lost any interest in contemporary art, though paradoxically they noted that it gives a good portion of money to the Moscow International Biennale. The dramatic absence of purchases of contemporary art by Russia’s big museums as well as the weak or non-existant promotion of it in the provinces, is what holds back contemporary art in the country. 
“In Russia, there is no government where there is no electorate,” Vasily Bychkov, director of the Moscow Art Fair, said. 
International biennales and art fairs share with museums the similar function of exhibiting current art. According to Joseph Bakshtein, commissioner of the Moscow International Biennale, there are around 66 biennales around the world, and around 70 percent of them have appeared in the last two decades. 
This trend is considered by some a form of globalization and Western cultural colonization. Identical art fairs springing up around the world, regardless of any regional specificity, can be compared to the spread of McDonald’s, according to New York-based curator and art dealer Jeffrey Hoffeld’s logic.

TITLE: Political Tensions Rise In Hungarian Street Protests
AUTHOR: By Pablo Gorondi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BUDAPEST, Hungary — The street violence that gripped the Hungarian capital appeared to be ebbing Thursday after three nights of unrest but political tensions rose as the main opposition party refused the prime minister’s offer to meet.
Fewer than 100 protesters milled around Kossuth Square, the plaza abutting parliament, by early morning, out of a crowd of about 15,000 that crowded it hours earlier.
The unrest and calls for Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany’s resignation began after leaks of his taped comments that he had “lied morning, evening and night” about the economy.
Gyurcsany has stood his ground since the protests began Sunday evening, insisting that his government intended to press ahead with economic reforms.
“The policy of raw emotions and radicalism are in no way a viable path,” he said Wednesday, adding: “The government doesn’t want to change its policy.”
He called for talks Thursday with parliamentary leaders in what would be his first face-to-face meeting with the opposition since the rioting began.
But the overture was unlikely to defuse tensions: Only the Hungarian Democratic Forum, with 11 parliamentary deputies, accepted. The two larger center-right opposition groups, which together account for 163 of the 386 seats in the legislature, said they would not attend.
“It makes no sense to hold talks with the government,” said Peter Szijjarto, spokesman of Fidesz, the biggest opposition party. “Ferenc Gyurcsany is not the solution but the problem.”
Police, outfitted with stronger riot gear after previous clashes left over 100 officers injured, mobilized to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who taunted police for several hours early Thursday. Fifteen protesters were injured, including two seriously hurt by tear gas canisters, authorities said.
While worrying, that unrest was considerably less than the riots and looting that left hundreds hurt and caused damage valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The tape that started the crisis was made at a closed-door meeting in late May, weeks after Gyurcsany’s government became the first in post-communist Hungary to win re-election.
Fidesz leader Viktor Orban, who served as prime minister between 1998-2002, has been among Gyurcsany’s harshest critics and at the forefront of demands that Gyurcsany and his Cabinet resign.
Orban has proposed setting up a temporary “government of experts,” including economists and other professionals, to put the country’s economy back in order.
Gyurcsany’s refusal to step down sparked violence unrivaled since the anti-Soviet revolution 50 years ago. For several days, police battled thousands of radicals trying to storm strategic or symbolic buildings.
Close to 200 people have been taken into custody since the riots erupted early Tuesday.

TITLE: Thai Political Meetings Banned
AUTHOR: By Sutin Wannabovorn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BANGKOK — Thailand’s new ruling junta on Thursday announced a ban on meetings of political parties and barred the establishment of new parties. The announcement, made on all Thai television stations, said the action was taken to maintain peace and order.
The bans were the latest moves by the junta to maintain control, even though no open opposition has surfaced to its Tuesday night takeover. Other moves include limitations on public meetings and restrictions on the media.
Ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra lay low in London as the junta purged his followers and also took steps to possibly go after the vast assets of the tycoon turned politician.
Thaksin said in a statement released in London that he will take a “deserved rest” and he urged the military to quickly arrange for new national elections. He also urged “all parties to find ways and means to reconcile and work toward national reconciliation for the sake of our king and country.”
Less than 48 hours after tanks rolled into the streets to overthrow Thaksin’s regime, the Thai capital appeared to have returned to normalcy, with all businesses reopening and Bangkok’s notorious traffic jams returning with a vengeance.
And despite condemnation of the coup by Western and some Asian governments, hope emerged on the homefront that the new government might have a chance to resolve a bloody Muslim insurgency that has led to the deaths of more than 1,700 people.
An exiled rebel leader welcomed the military coup, saying that it could help resolve the country’s bloody Muslim insurgency.
Lukman B. Lima, an exiled leader of one of several groups fighting the central government for a separate Muslim state, said coup leader Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, a Muslim, was the “only one who knows the real problems” of the Muslim-dominated provinces of southern Thailand.
“We hope that the political (situation) can be resolved under Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin as the new leader,” Lukman wrote in an e-mailed response to questions from The Associated Press. Lukman, vice president of the Pattani United Liberation Organization, or PULO, is in exile in Sweden.
Thaksin arrived Wednesday in London from New York, where he had been attending the UN General Assembly.
“I left Thailand as the prime minister and now I am a jobless man,” the official Thai News Agency quoted Thaksin as telling reporters on the flight from New York. “Never mind, I can still keep in touch with my family. Everyone is fine.” However, the agency said Thaksin was “grim-faced” as he spoke.
In his statement, Thaksin said he was planning to work on research and development and possible charitable work for the country.
“The event in Thailand during the past two days should not detract from my main aim of national reconciliation,” Thaksin said.
It was not known whether he would seek to stay in London, where he has a residence, or return to Thailand, where he could face prosecution for corruption.

TITLE: Malkin Suffers Nightmare Injury on Debut
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MONCTON, New Brunswick — Yevgeny Malkin put on a brave face at the end of a nighmarish evening, smiling and kidding around with a few teammates before the Penguins left for Pittsburgh on Wednesday night.
“He’s trying to stay in good spirits,” said star defenceman and Malkin’s mentor Sergei Gonchar. The 20-year-old Russian center suffered what the team called an “upper body injury,” possibly his left shoulder, after a violent collision with teammate John LeClair. Penguins general manager Ray Shero said Malkin was due to be re-evaluated Thursday in Pittsburgh, but could not be more specific on his injury.
“At this point anything else would be speculation,” Shero said after Pittsburgh’s 5-4 pre-season win over Philadelphia. “We’ll see how he feels tomorrow. Frankly I was happy he got up considering the way he went down.”
Malkin was not available for comment, but was seen leaving the Moncton Coliseum on his own and was not sporting a sling.
His much-anticipated NHL debut turned into a hospital visit after he was crunched by LeClair in a freak play. He had just finished making a dazzling pass to LeClair when the veteran winger, after missing a great scoring chance, crashed into the boards behind the net and took out Malkin in the process. The Russian catapulted over LeClair and landed hard on the ice. 
A hush came over the crowd as Malkin, the second overall pick behind Alexander Ovechkin in the 2004 NHL entry draft, lay sprawled on the ice for 3-4 minutes.
He got up and was helped off the ice while favoring his left arm and never returned. 
“Malkin made a great pass but I caught an edge and lost my balance,” explained LeClair. “It’s disappointing to see a rising star get hurt like that. Hopefully it won’t be too serious.”
Malkin had been enjoying a strong game, garnering an assist on Gonchar’s first-period goal and also displaying a pair of sensational inside-out moves later in the opening period.
“It’s never fun to see that happen, especially in his first game,” said superstar center Sidney Crosby. “Hopefully we’ll get him back soon. He looked good out there, even on the play he got hurt. He looked real comfortable playing at this level.”
Generally considered the best player outside the NHL last year, Malkin was playing in his first NHL game after his controversial departure from Russia, a matter that remains in the hands of lawyers on both sides of the ocean because he signed a contract with Russian club Metallurg Magnitogorsk before also signing a three-year deal with the Penguins.
After leading Metallurg to the league title last season while posting 47 points (21-26) in 46 games, he’s considered the favorite for the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year this season. He was one of the better players on the ice Wednesday before getting hurt, playing on a line with Mark Recchi and Ryan Malone.
“I felt so bad when he went down,” said Gonchar, who took Malkin into his apartment upon his arrival in Pittsburgh earlier this month and also acts as his occasional translator. “He worked so hard to get to this point. He’s trying to stay positive.”
Recchi was also sent to hospital after a separate incident. He sported a fairly serious gash to the face after being high-sticked.
Gonchar had two goals while Crosby, Malone and Colby Armstrong — with the winner — also tallied for Pittsburgh, which evened its pre-season record at 1-1-0.
Crosby looked good while playing in back-to-back games, also picking a pair of assists while playing on a line with 18-year-old rookie Jordan Staal and Armstrong. Crosby’s third-period goal drew the loudest cheers of the night from the crowd of about 5,000, not surprising giving his Nova Scotia roots.
Mike Richards scored twice while Jeff Carter also had a goal in Philadelphia’s pre-season debut while playing on a line with newly acquired Kyle Calder, who chipped in three assists.
Flyers head coach Ken Hitchcock wants to see what Carter, a natural center, can do on the wing for a few pre-season games before deciding whether to keep him with Richards and Calder.

TITLE: Davydenko Dropped Ahead Of Davis Cup
AUTHOR: By Simon Tudhope
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Marat Safin was picked ahead of fifth-ranked Nikolai Davydenko and will open against Andy Roddick on Friday when Russia plays the United States in the Davis Cup semifinals, the Associated Press reported.
Davydenko, a U.S. Open semifinalist, was left out of Thursday’s draw by Russia captain Shamil Tarpishchev. Safin, a two-time Grand Slam champion and former top-ranked player, is ranked 72nd. 
In the other singles, Mikhail Yuzhny will play James Blake. Yuzhny lost to Roddick in the semis at this month’s U.S. Open, and Blake made the quarterfinals. 
On Saturday, the top-ranked U.S. doubles team of twins Mike and Bob Bryan will play Yuzhny and Dmitry Tursunov. Sunday’s reverse singles should feature a rematch between Yuzhny and Roddick while Safin takes on Blake. 
Home advantage, a heavy clay surface and, most importantly, a strong team have made Russia favorite to beat the U.S. at Moscow’s Olimpiisky Sports Complex.
Should the Russian team prevail, the finals in December will also be held in Moscow against either Australia or Argentina.
Russia last lifted the Davis Cup trophy in Paris in 2002 with Safin and Yuzhny on the team. Safin, a former world No. 1 whose year has been blighted by injury, showed signs of resurgence by reaching the fourth round of the U.S. Open earlier this month.
“It [the Davis Cup] is my only hope this year,” Safin said after practice Tuesday. “With the team we have right now, we should be pretty confident we can beat any team out there.”
Yuzhny also had a fine U.S. Open, reaching the semifinals before going out to Roddick. But he is confident he can turn the tables.
“It was on his terms, because it was played on a hard court in New York. Now we’re going to meet on clay in Moscow,” Yuzhny said Monday, Reuters reported.
Roddick will not be relishing the prospect. Playing on the slow clay will take some of the sting out of the huge first serve that is his most potent weapon.
“Obviously we would like the court to be a little harder,” U.S. captain Patrick McEnroe told reporters Tuesday.
“It’s a new court, and it is a bit slow, but I think it will get better in the next couple of days,” he added.
Roddick must certainly hope so. “Great court,” he quipped as an awkward bounce left him sprawling in practice on Tuesday.
The omens are not all bad for the U.S. team, however. In 1995, in the same imposing arena, Pete Sampras’ shotgun serve fired the U.S. to a 3-2 Davis Cup final win over Russia. 
Some say on a quiet night you can still hear the echoes of those thunderous deliveries. 
They’re echoes Roddick will be desperate to tune in to.
“We played an exhibition match last week and we just had a nice chat about the Davis Cup,” Roddick said.
“I asked what the stadium was like and what the atmosphere was. It wasn’t a long conversation, just a small talk, but I appreciated all the help I could get.”
The fact remains, however, that the Sampras-inspired 1995 victory was the last time the United States won the Davis Cup, and none of that team will be playing this weekend. 
Alongside Roddick, world No. 9 James Blake and top doubles pair, brothers Bob and Mike Bryan, shoulder U.S. hopes.

TITLE: Ryder Cup Under a Cloud As Rain Threatens to Pour
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: STRAFFAN, Ireland — Ryder Cup organizers have made contingency plans for an unprecedented Monday finish at the K Club because of this week’s poor weather. 
Although the torrential rain and strong winds that have swept across the course are expected to clear over the next 48 hours, every precaution is being taken for golf’s premier team event. 
“We’ve looked at the contingencies and we’ve always had them to go into Monday if we had to,” European Tour executive director George O’Grady told a news conference. 
“We don’t visit that at the moment at all. We havetime up our sleeve when Sunday comes. 
“We take one session of play at a time and we get through that. As much as we can fill the day’s play, we’ll play. 
“We want to play if the course is playable and by that we mean balls stationary on the greens and not moving.” 
Dry, partially cloudy weather is forecast for the 12 singles matches on Sunday when the 36th Ryder Cup is scheduled to finish. 
The last time the biennial competition was significantly interrupted by weather was at Valderrama, Spain in 1997 when heavy rain wiped out play on the first morning. However that year’s contest was completed on time. 
O’Grady added that a decision would be taken before Friday’s opening fourball matches on whether to allow players to lift, clean and replace their golf balls on the fairway. 
“The fairways are immaculate at the moment but very, very wet,” he said. “We are monitoring how much mud the ball picks up. It’s only really mud we are talking about, not casual water. 
“We resist the temptation of playing preferred lies as far as we possibly can but I think, if both teams, both captains, wish to do it, we would. I don’t think it can demean the tournament.”