SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1213 (79), Monday, October 16, 2006
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TITLE: Petersburg Launches National Cancer Hotline
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A children's cancer telephone hotline was launched in St. Petersburg this week to provide up-to-date information about new treatments, drug availability, the best-equipped clinics, patients' rights, psychological counseling, legal advice and charitable organizations both in Russia and abroad that can help raise funds when the treatment cannot be covered by the state or private insurance at home.Information and advice is provided free of charge, and relatives of children suffering from cancer can call the hotline toll free from any part of Russia by dialling 8-800-200-0609.
The initiative, funded jointly by the Moscow-based charity Happy World and several medical institutions in St. Petersburg, is part of a nationwide project "We Are With You," incorporating, besides the hotline, a large-scale plan to set up a nationwide network of psychological support consultancies for cancer-stricken children, their parents and relatives.
The call center is headquartered at St. Petersburg's Hospital No. 31.
Margarita Belogurova, head of the hospital's children's oncology ward, said more than 70 percent of local children diagnosed with cancer can survive if diagnosed early and if the required treatment is available.
In January 2005, St. Petersburg had 595 cancer cases in children, and the Leningrad oblast had 44 cases.
Each year, approximately 100 children in the city and its oblast are diagnosed with cancer, and most of them can survive, Belogurova said. The hotline is aimed at helping parents obtain as much information as possible about the illness.
"With an illness like cancer, it is crucially important that society does not turn its back on the patient, that the ill do not become isolated," she said. "If people around the patients believe in success, if they know how to help and and they do help in every way, the chances increase of more of them surviving. It is crucially important that people stop seeing cancer as a fatal disease. They would then invest much more in combatting it, both financially and emotionally."
Despite the progress that has been made in cancer treatment in Russia and the arrival of more efficient new medicines, some treatments and technologies are still not available in the country. Russia's charities cannot cope with the volume of cases, while the state-run health service remains under strain, resulting in a far greater number of fatal cases than in developed countries. Relatives of cancer-stricken people have been known to use the internet for information on foreign charities and even launch individual fund-raising campaigns, sometimes successfully.
In Russia, cancer statistics differ drastically depending on the type of cancer and the clinic where the patient is treated. In the renowned Moscow-based Pediatric Institute for Oncology and Hematology, over 80 percent of the patients survive. But the picture differs in the poverty-hit Russian provinces (see story, pages 12-13).

TITLE: 286 Cadets Hit by Food Poisoning
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sixty-seven cadets from St. Petersburg's Mozhaisky Military Space Academy have been diagnosed with typhoid fever, after 286 in total were hospitalized with food poisoning, Interfax reported Monday.
All the patients are in a stable condition, and the Defense Ministry is in control of the situation, Alexei Kuznetsov, a spokesman for Russia's Space Forces told Interfax on Monday.Kuznetsov said that 286 cadets of the Academy were admitted to the 442nd District Military Hospital a few days ago with a suspected "infectious disease." Salmonella poisoning had been confirmed in 57 cases, he said.
Last week, one of the cadets felt unwell and was immediately hospitalized.Shortly after, 166 of the Academy students were rushed to hospital, also with a suspected "infectious disease."
All the cadets eat in the same in-house canteen, which has been established as the source of the poisoning, the St. Petersburg-based Fontanka.ru news portal reported. "[The mass poisoning] is an extreme case for all [Russia's] military, not only for the Academy, or the Space Forces," general Igor Puzanov, the commander of Leningrad military district said Monday, Interfax reported.
The Academy has ended its contract with Business-Torg, the company which had recently won the tender and was providing catering to the academy at the time of the incident, Kuznetsov said, the web site reported. Puzanov said the idea to have a commercial company supply food to the Russian military was correct, but "in this case, bad violations were allowed to occur."
Meanwhile, a market in northern Moscow was closed Monday after a Tajik worker there was diagnosed with Typhoid fever, Interfax reported. The unnamed worker, who called emergency services Sept. 28, was diagnosed Wednesday with the disease, which is transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with feces from an infected person and can be fatal.Twelve people who had come into contact with the man have also been hospitalized with similar symptoms.

TITLE: Politkovskaya's Legacy of Courage Lives On
AUTHOR: By Anastasiya Lebedev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Osman Boliyev met Anna Politkovskaya just twice, but he credits the late investigative journalist with saving his life.In February of this year, Politkovskaya wrote an article about Boliyev, a Dagestani human rights activist. She described how police had tortured him and how prosecutors had fabricated the case against him.
Boliyev believes the publicity generated by the article influenced public opinion and helped secure his release.
Politkovskaya, an internationally recognized journalist who wrote impassioned articles about human rights abuses for Novaya Gazeta newspaper, was murdered Oct. 7 in the elevator of her apartment building. Prosecutors and Novaya Gazeta believe the killing resulted from Politkovskaya's professional activities.
"By saving my life, Anna Politkovskaya gave up her own," Boliyev said. "Her death puts us one step closer to a totalitarian regime, to true dictatorship."
Boliyev, the head of Romashka, a human rights organization in Dagestan, was detained on a weapons possession charge in November 2005, after he had helped two Dagestani families file lawsuits with the European Court of Human Rights. One family had lost a member to kidnapping, the other to murder.
Boliyev was acquitted in February, and the case against him was found to have been fabricated.
Boliyev said three judges who refused to find him guilty had been dismissed during the trial.
A fourth judge finally acquitted Boliyev, allowing him to get treatment for the injuries he had suffered in jail.
"I was close to having a heart attack," Boliyev said. "They had damaged my spine, heart, kidneys and head."
"After Anna Politkovskaya's article appeared, there was a public outcry and things changed very quickly," he said.
This past summer, Boliyev learned new charges had been filed against him: He was suspected of aiding the terrorists who seized Moscow's Dubrovka Theater in October 2002.
Boliyev and his family fled to Ukraine and appealed to the United Nations for political asylum. The family now lives in Sweden.
Many refugees from the conflict in the North Caucasus share Boliyev's sense of indebtedness to Politkovskaya. On its web site, Novaya Gazeta created a forum for condolences after her death. The forum contains a number of postings from refugees now living in Europe.
Even if she didn't help a family directly, Politkovskaya greatly improved Chechen refugees' chances of receiving political asylum in the Netherlands, said Islam Bashirov, who previously headed the local Chechen community there.
At a 2003 photo exhibition in Amsterdam devoted to Chechnya, Politkovskaya delivered a talk about the persecution Chechens faced across Russia. Refugees were able to introduce her speech in court as expert testimony to back up their asylum claims, Bashirov said.
"The Dutch government was trying to close its eyes and force refugees out by saying they could live elsewhere in Russia," Bashirov said. "Many courts were closing people's [asylum application] cases by saying that the situation in Russia was normal, when in fact people faced open discrimination."
Bashirov himself received asylum after his arrest on a trumped-up weapons charge in 1999.
Nina Levurda sobbed as she talked about Politkovskaya last week. Levurda sued the Defense Ministry when the army refused for six months to provide her with information about the death of her son, Lieutenant Pavel Levurda.
"I'm certain I won the case thanks to her," said Levurda, a resident of Ivanovo. "She wrote an article about my son and how the trial was conducted improperly. She helped me out financially, too, and I'll remember that for the rest of my life — that someone I saw for the first time was so gracious toward me."
Pavel Finogenov, whose brother died in the Dubrovka hostage crisis, said that Politkovskaya played a leading role in exposing irregularities during the trials that followed.
The crisis ended when Special Forces commandos pumped a knockout gas into the theater and then stormed it. Most of the victims among the hostages died as a result of the gas. Many relatives of the victims filed suit against the government.
"Anna was the only reason the public found out what was going on in the courtroom," Finogenov said.
Politkovskaya also offered her services as a negotiator during the Dubrovka crisis.
"She was the thread that connected the hostages to the people outside the police cordon," said Finogenov, who himself waited outside the theater while his brother with his fiancee languished inside.
The people Politkovskaya wrote about generally remember her as being honest, open and compassionate to the point of neglecting her own needs.
Levurda remembered Politkovskaya giving her a ride to the Novaya Gazeta office. "We were in her old Zhiguli, and she was wearing dress shoes — in November. I said, 'Why are you wearing dress shoes, it's cold!' To which she replied, 'I don't have time to think about shoes.'"

TITLE: WWII Guerillas Gather in Kiev
AUTHOR: By Ron Popeski
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV — Fighters from a Ukrainian World War Two guerrilla movement and their backers gathered on Saturday to demand official recognition as war combatants despite resistance from pro-Russian groups and Red Army veterans.Riot police halted several hundred leftists who had intended to march down Kiev's main street to confront veterans marking the 64th anniversary of the founding of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought both Nazi invaders and Soviet forces.
Minor scuffles erupted, but there was no repeat of the running street battles that marked commemorations a year ago.
A handful of elderly UPA fighters, surrounded by 3,000 sympathizers, filed through the city center holding aloft a giant blue and yellow national flag and massing by the 11th century St. Sofia Cathedral, one of Orthodoxy's most sacred shrines.
"Glory to the nation!" marchers shouted, recalling UPA's wartime slogan. Comrades echoed back: "Death to our Enemies!"
Unhealed wartime wounds expose gaps pitting Ukraine's nationalist west, more prone to seek inspiration in the West, against the Russian-speaking east, more sympathetic to Moscow.
Nationalists want authorities to grant the dwindling number of UPA fighters status as war combatants with veterans' pensions. Leftists denounce any such notion as an affront to the memory of more than 27 million Soviet war dead.
"We don't expect this government or president to solve this issue," said UPA veteran Teodor Yachun, 79, medals gleaming on his green uniform. "We see no light at the end of the tunnel, only darkness."
President Viktor Yushchenko, brought to power with the help of nationalists in the 2004 "Orange Revolution", is cautious on recognition. Veterans are wary of his calls for reconciliation, citing postwar Germany and Spain following its civil war.
"How can you possibly reconcile a victim with his hangman?" Yachun said.
Nationalists repressed when Moscow seized western Ukraine from Poland in 1939 under the Nazi-Soviet pact joined the UPA en masse under Nazi occupation to try to win an independent state. At its peak in 1943, UPA had 100,000 men in its ranks. The very mention of UPA and its leader Stepan Bandera was virtually a post-war criminal offence as its fighters continued to resist Soviet rule well into the 1950s.
Tens of thousands of other Ukrainians donned Nazi uniforms and fought the Red Army in a unit known as the SS Galicia.
Soviet Ukraine suffered huge losses in what many Russians and Ukrainians still refer to as the Great Patriotic War.

TITLE: Paper Reports Abramovich to Divorce
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich on Monday denied a newspaper report his wife had been talking to divorce lawyers, calling it "hurtful."Britain's News of the World newspaper reported on Sunday the wife of Chelsea soccer club owner Abramovich had meetings with two sets of divorce lawyers, including London firm Sears Tooth which has a reputation for handling high-profile breakups.
"A series of incorrect and hurtful reports have recently appeared in the media regarding the Abramovich family and we feel compelled to set the record straight," said a spokesman for Abramovich, Russia's richest man.
"No member of the Abramovich family has filed for divorce nor have they retained law firm Sears Tooth or any other law firm with regards to a possible divorce."
The News of the World reported that Abramovich had a close friendship with 23-year-old Russian Daria Zhukova and that the two had regular meetings.
"Suggestions that the Abramoviches are facing serious difficulties are similarly untrue. We regret these unwelcome intrusions into the Abramoviches' personal life and ask that the media respect the family's privacy," said the spokesman.
Partners from Sears Tooth were not immediately available for comment.
The Russian edition of Forbes magazine this year estimated Abramovich's wealth — mostly from oil and aluminum assets — at $18.3 billion.
Abramovich is also governor of Chukotka, a remote and bitterly cold region in Russia's far east across the Bering Strait from Alaska.

TITLE: City's Top Narcologist Killed By Gang in Violent Attack
PUBLISHER: THE ST.PETERSBURG TIMES
TEXT: St. Petersburg's chief child narcologist Vyacheslav Revzin died on Monday following a brutal attack and having spent three days in a coma at the city's Alexandrovskaya hospital.Revzin, 35, did not recover from a series of severe wounds he sustained on Friday when he was attacked by what the police believe was a gang of young men armed with metal sticks.
Revzin was leaving his apartment building at 26 Ulitsa Kollontai in the Nevsky district to go to work, at around 10 a.m., when he was assaulted.
"Unknown assailants beat him with metal sticks and ran away,"
Interfax news agency quotes an official at the St. Petersburg's Prosecutor's Office as saying.
The substance-abuse specialist was found, unconscious, on the staircase, by his neighbors, who contacted the police.
The attackers escaped from the scene. They are still at large and none have been identified.
The Prosecutor's Office has opened a criminal case but following the doctor's death on Monday, the case will now be reclassified from attempted murder to murder.
The attack on Revzin was not the only case of violence directed against local substance-abuse specialists during the past three years. In February, 2003, Leonid Shpilenya, then chief narcologist of the Northwestern region, was attacked by a group of youngsters armed with metal sticks, and taken to a hospital with heavy bruises. Shpilenya resigned from his post. His successor in the job, Sergei Tikhomirov, ended up in prison.
Earlier this month, Tikhomirov, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for orchestrating the murder of his deputy, Larisa Astrakhanskaya, who was killed by an explosion in her apartment building in August 2004.
Statistics on the number of drug addicts in Russia vary significantly.
While there are just under 400,000 registered intravenous drug users in Russia, independent experts suggest the real figure may be ten times higher.
Researchers claim there are 1.7 million drug addicts in Russia.

TITLE: Itar-Tass Exec Murdered in Moscow Apartment
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The business chief of Russian state news agency Itar-Tass was found knifed to death at his flat in central Moscow on Monday, but prosecutors said the killing could be linked to a personal dispute.Anatoly Voronin, 55, Tass's business manager, died "from stab and slash wounds", a spokeswoman for the Moscow prosecutor's office said.
"The investigation is looking at various motives but for the time being investigators do not have grounds to say the killing was connected to the dead man's work," said Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman for Moscow city prosecutor's office.
Deputy Moscow prosecutor Alexei Grigoryev went to the scene of the murder at Voronin's flat in central Moscow.
"Most likely, Grigoryev believes, is that the killing was linked to a personal dispute and therefore investigators are studying a group of the deceased's acquaintances. This version is being looked at very closely," Petrenko said.
Tass sources told Reuters that Voronin was supposed to return to work on Monday from holiday and his driver waited three hours for him outside his block of flats in Moscow this morning before returning to Tass to report him missing.
With Tass officials, the driver went up to his flat and found the door open with all of his things scattered all over the flat and saw Voronin's body, the sources told Reuters.
"It is a colossal loss for Tass," said Ludmila Perkina, an editorial official at Tass's main news centre in Moscow.
"He did so much for Tass. He tried to do everything so that we — the journalists — could work. Our hearts are very heavy today."
Voronin had worked at Tass for 23 years.

TITLE: Court Approves Arrest of Kozlov Murder Suspects
AUTHOR: By Oleg Shchedrov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Moscow court approved the arrest of three people suspected of involvement in the murder of Russian deputy central bank chief Andrei Kozlov, a court spokeswoman said on Monday.Kozlov, deputy chairman of the central bank, was gunned down on September 13 outside a sports stadium in Moscow in the highest-profile assassination in Moscow since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.
"A decision has been taken to arrest three suspects in the investigation into the murder of Andrei Kozlov," said Moscow City Court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova. She gave no details.
The Prosecutor General's office on Monday issued a statement saying that it had identified "people linked to organizing and carrying out the crime."
Russian police and prosecutors had earlier denied media reports that Kozlov's murderers had been detained and that they had confessed to taking part in the murder.
The Kommersant business daily said three men from the Ukrainian city of Luhansk had been hired by an unidentified middleman to track Kozlov's movements and received an order to shoot him and his driver with only a few minutes' notice.
The paper said that at least one of the three had turned himself in to the police, fearing that those who ordered the murder could kill him as well.
Kommersant said the three suspects had not given investigators any clues about who hired them.

TITLE: 40 Georgians Deported Amid Crackdown
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: About 40 Georgians detained in St. Petersburg for alleged immigration law violations were due to be deported Tuesday, the Georgian Consulate in Russia was reported as saying on Monday."There are about 50 Georgian nationals in a temporary detention center who have been arrested over the past few days," a Consulate spokesperson was reported by RIA Novosti as saying Monday. "Their visas expired, and consequently they have been residing in Russia illegally."
State-run news agency RIA Novosti quoted the source as saying that Georgian Consul Zurab Pataradze arrived in St. Petersburg last week to resolve the issue, and that documents have been prepared to deport 40 Georgians.
"The Russian side promised us that the remaining citizens would be deported from Moscow by Tuesday. We have already asked the migration service to organize the immediate transportation of the detainees to Moscow, in order to deport them all on one plane," Pataradze was quoted as saying by the Georgian English-language daily The Messenger on its website Monday.
The detainees will be sent to Moscow by bus on Tuesday, and from there flown on to Georgia, RIA Novosti reported on its website Monday.
Since a diplomatic crisis with Russia errupted in recent weeks, Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has called the deportation of hundreds of Georgian nationals "ethnic cleansing."
Earlier, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Friday to extend a UN observer mission in Georgia for six months and urge the country to refrain from provocative actions toward its breakaway region of Abkhazia.
Abkhazia claims close ties with Russia and on Monday renewed calls for its independence on Monday, following the UN vote, Russian state news agency Itar-TASS reported.
The resolution "once again urges the Georgian side to address seriously legitimate Abkhaz security concerns, to avoid steps which could be seen as threatening and to refrain from militant rhetoric and provocative actions."
The 15-member council's resolution also reaffirmed a commitment to the former Soviet republic's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
"It is mostly a resolution calling all the parties to the conflict to go back to the negotiating table," Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said. "This is the centerpiece of efforts of the Russian Federation, playing an important part in trying to settle that long-standing conflict."
Relations between Russia and Georgia are tense. Moscow cut transportation and post links with the smaller Caucasian nation after Georgia briefly detained four Russian army officers on spying charges last month.
Russia also has been irked by Georgia's pursuit of NATO and European Union membership, while Georgia accuses Russia of backing Abkhaz separatists.
Georgia's UN Ambassador Irakli Alasania welcomed the extension of the UN mission but said he was concerned the resolution "ignores the reports of increased militarization in Abkhazia" and does not acknowledge that Russian peacekeepers have not fulfilled their duty in the region.
Alasania said the Russian force was no longer impartial and that the peacekeeping operation should be multinational.
The UN resolution went through many versions, starting with a toughly worded draft by Russia after the detention of the army officers. It was somewhat softened by the advisory group but the United States held off supporting it until the last minute, arguing that the text was unbalanced.
(SPT, Reuters)

TITLE: Police Widen Bank Chief Killing Probe
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The head of security at Moscow's Spartak sports complex on Oct. 12 confirmed media reports that investigators had conducted a reenactment of the murder of Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov outside the facility.National media reported last week that a suspect detained in the Kozlov murder was taken to the crime scene last week.
Police still have not officially confirmed that a suspect has been detained in the case.
The security chief, who refused to give his name, said prosecutors had ordered the complex to be evacuated for the duration of the reenactment, but declined to provide further details, citing the ongoing investigation.
Kozlov, who was 41, and his driver, Alexander Semyonov, 54, were gunned down by two assailants last month as Kozlov was exiting the Spartak sports complex.
Kozlov had been at the complex, in northeast Moscow, to take part in a friendly football match with other members of the banking community. Kozlov was rushed to hospital, where he died hours later.
Three Ukrainian citizens were arrested earlier this month in connection with the crime, Vremya Novostei reported last Thursday, citing a police source.

TITLE: Defense Ministry To Cut Military By 10 Percent in 3 Years, Students Told
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The country will cut its military personnel by 130,000, or 10 percent, over the next three years, Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov said late last week. The armed forces now have 1,340,000 personnel, Pankov said.The navy's submarine fleet will be manned by professional soldiers beginning next year, Pankov said. The rest of the military will become professional in 2008, Interfax reported. For now, the military relies on conscripts, but the number of conscripts is expected to decrease as so-called permanent combat readiness units are staffed with professional soldiers.
These professional soldiers would be required to serve for three years. The term of compulsory service for conscripts will drop to one year from two years in 2008.
Pankov's comments came while addressing Moscow students.

TITLE: Kramnik Takes World Chess Title
AUTHOR: By Dylan Loeb McClain
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: In a finale without precedent in world chess championship history, Vladimir Kramnik clinched the title in a playoff when Veselin Topalov made a terrible blunder on his final move of the fourth and last playoff game.The final score was 81-71.
There had never been a playoff for the world championship because previous championship matches featured a champion and a challenger. In those matches, a tie left the champion in possession of the title.
Going into this match, which was held in Elista, the capital of the Russian republic of Kalmykiya, both players claimed the title because of a 13-year-old schism in the chess world.
Topalov, a Bulgarian, was the official champion of FIDE, the traditional world governing body of chess, which organized the match. Kramnik, a Russian, based his claim on having defeated Garry Kasparov of Russia in a match in 2000. Kasparov, the last undisputed champion, had broken away from FIDE in 1993.
The playoff was like the final rounds of a brutal heavyweight boxing fight. After a draw in the first game, first Kramnik and then Topalov landed round house blows by winning a game before Kramnik delivered the knockout punch.
Mikhail Savinov, a freelance journalist who covered the match for The Associated Press and Chessbase.com, a chess news web site, said that afterward Topalov blamed "bad luck" for his loss and was philosophical, pointing out that he was only 31 and saying that he would compete for the championship again.
Even before the playoff, the match was already memorable. It had been marred with protests and accusations of cheating, locked bathrooms and a forfeit of a game in Topalov's favor.
Kramnik had threatened to sue FIDE over the forfeit. Savinov said that Kramnik was asked after his victory if he still intended to sue but declined to give a definite answer.
The $1 million prize will be split by the players.
In the playoff, both players stuck to their favorite defenses throughout the match.
Neither ventured anything new to surprise the opponent, perhaps because each player wanted to get past the opening into a position that he was familiar with and would know how to handle.
That also prevented both from inadvertently stumbling on any opening surprises that might have been prepared by the opponent before the match.
Topalov may still be the top ranked player in the world despite the loss because he has such a commanding lead on the No. 2 player, Viswanathan Anand of India.

TITLE: New Baby Money Proposed for '07
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Cabinet announced legislation late last week giving women 250,000 rubles ($9,200) for having a second child.The money would be kept in the State Pension Fund and used exclusively for housing, education or retirement savings, Channel One television reported.
The measure would apply to women who give birth to or adopt a second child after Jan. 1, 2007.
Women would be eligible to use the funds three years after their second child was born, meaning the first recipients could receive help beginning in 2010.
Heath and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov linked the timing of the measure with President Vladimir Putin's May 9 state-of-the-nation speech, in which he called for subsidies.
"If a woman decided to have a second child as a result of the initiatives laid out by the president last May, then, according to our calculations, the child should be born in 2007," Zurabov said in televised comments.

TITLE: Calls For Improved Roads
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Friday that poor roads shave as much as six percentage points off economic growth each year."We need to significantly increase the volume of building and reconstruction of roads," Putin told members of a state commission on road-building in Yaroslavl, RIA-Novosti reported.
Roads littered with giant potholes have been the bane of Russians for centuries. One of the country's most famous sayings is that Russia suffers from two misfortunes: fools and bad roads.
The road network, starved of funds since the fall of the Soviet Union, is coming under pressure as car sales soar and an expanding economy drives freight travel.
The economy will grow by 6.6 percent to nearly $1 trillion this year, according to government forecasts. But some investors have raised concerns that the eight-year economic boom could begin to falter in the face of limitations such as overloaded roads and soaring electricity consumption.
Putin said nearly one-third of major roads were overloaded and just one in five local roads was of an adequate standard. Putin also said road safety should be improved. Nearly 34,000 people died on the country's roads in 2005.

TITLE: Drunk Driver Kills 6, Injures 19 in Ryazan
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW— Six cadets were killed and 19 others were injured when a drunk driver plowed into a column of marching cadets late Saturday in the Ryazan region.Anatoly Klimkin, 21, rammed a VAZ-2105 sedan into the column of 190 cadets at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour, Airborne Troops spokesman Alexander Cherednik said, Interfax reported.
Klimkin did not have a driver's license, and he was accompanied by five other young men, also drunk, Cherednik said.
The accident occurred at 11:15 p.m. , about 10 kilometers north of the city of Ryazan, where the cadets attended the Higher Airborne School.
The third-year cadets were participating in a 55-kilometer march as they wrapped up a two-week military exercise.
One cadet died instantly, two died in ambulances and the other three died in the hospital, said Colonel Alexander Sakharov, chief surgeon of the Moscow Military District, who traveled to Ryazan with a team of military doctors and performed 10 operations on the injured cadets early Sunday, Interfax reported.
Fifteen cadets remained hospitalized Sunday afternoon, two in serious condition, Sakharov said.
Ages for the cadets were not available. Third-year cadets tend to be 19 or 20 years old.
Three passengers in the car were also injured.
Klimkin was detained as he tried to flee the scene of the accident, Defense Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Sedov told RIA-Novosti. It was not immediately clear whose car he was driving.
Klimkin faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of traffic violations that resulted in the deaths of two or more people.
Russia has one of the worst road fatalities records in Europe, with 30,000 to 35,000 people dying every year. Over the past decade there have been 312,000 deaths, more than the Russian death toll in the Afghan and Chechen wars combined.
President Vladimir Putin drew attention to the high number of road deaths in his state-of-the-nation address. In the May 9 speech, the president said that an average of 100 people were killed in traffic accidents every day.
Last month, Putin ordered Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to present a plan on how to reduce traffic accidents.

TITLE: EU Questions Politkovskaya Investigation
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Moscow's credibility is on the line over its ability to prosecute those responsible for the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Sunday.Politkovskaya, an ardent critic of Putin and of Kremlin policies in Chechnya, was shot on the staircase of her apartment building on Oct. 7.
Investigators say her murder was linked to her reporting and her supporters said it showed Russia was failing to safeguard free speech.
Barroso said he would raise Politkovskaya's murder with Russian President Vladimir Putin in person, adding he would be "frank" in his discussions.
"We want those who have assassinated Mrs. Politkovskaya, great fighter for freedom of expression, we want them to be brought to justice," Barroso told BBC Television.
"It is a question of the credibility of the Russian government and Russian authorities to show they are able to bring to justice those who commit those hideous crimes," he added.
Barroso said the European Union wanted close ties with Russia and that he believed it was in Moscow's interests to keep close relations with an expanding and increasingly influential EU.
"After this enlargement to Bulgaria and Romania [the EU] will be half a billion people, the biggest trade bloc in the world ... size matters," he added.
Politkovskaya's murder drew international condemnation. It also re-focussed attention on Chechnya, where human rights groups say Russian forces and their local allies are conducting a campaign of indiscriminate violence.

TITLE: Court Shuts Down Chechen Human Rights Organization
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW— The highest court in the Nizhny Novgorod region on Friday ordered the closure of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, a human rights group that has exposed abuses against civilians in Chechnya.Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, director of the group, denounced the ruling as part of an effort to silence critics of the government's conduct in Chechnya.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement Saturday that the court's decision was a "blatant attempt to silence a strong critic of human rights abuses in Chechnya."
"Russia's actions to quash the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society fly in the face of international standards protecting civil society," Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in the statement.
"The Russian government has moved to systematically eviscerate all checks on its power and civil society is its latest target."
Other rights groups said the decision displayed the government's ability to use new legislation on extremism and nongovernmental organizations — signed this year by President Vladimir Putin despite opposition at home and abroad — to rein in civil rights.
Dmitriyevsky said the organization would appeal to the Supreme Court but that a reversal was unlikely. He called the ruling a politically motivated decision and part of "a campaign to prohibit people to talk about what is happening in Chechnya." His NGO has campaigned against the conflict against separatists in Chechnya and published reports alleging torture, abductions and murder of civilians by federal forces and their pro-Moscow Chechen allies.

TITLE: Army Drops Sychyov Cases
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW—Military prosecutors in Chelyabinsk have dropped their investigation of three officers and a sergeant accused of failing to stop the hazing of Private Andrei Sychyov, Gazeta.ru news reported.Prosecutors have identified the four servicemen who had been under investigation only by their rank and surname. They are Lieutenant Shemetov, the duty officer in Sychyov's battalion on the night of the crime; Captains Bogomolov and Khasanov, the commanders of the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy's tank training and maintenance companies; and Sergeant Ulyanov, who was on duty during the attack.
The hazing incident at the academy, in which Sergeant Alexander Sivyakov forced Sychyov to squat for several hours while beating him, left Sychyov without his legs and genitals.
Sivyakov, who has maintained his innocence, was convicted Sept. 26 by a military court.
He was sentenced to four years and stripped of his rank.

TITLE: 19 LUKoil Licenses Under Serious Threat
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — LUKoil on Friday became the latest oil major to face pressure from the government over purported environmental violations and development delays.The company may lose 19 licenses in the northern Komi republic and Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous district, the Natural Resources Ministry's environmental regulator said.
Federal inspectors found LUKoil was behind schedule in prospecting for oil, drilling and starting production at 11 fields in Komi, said Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the regulator, the Federal Service for the Inspection of Natural Resources Use.
Other violations at these and the other fields included heavy pollution and illegal cutting of trees to make way for oil pipelines, Mitvol, who headed the group of inspectors, said in a statement from the area.
"It is clear now that at some of the deposits, the company will not be able to eliminate the violations, so the threat for the licenses to be withdrawn is quite serious," said Natural Resources Ministry spokesman Yevgeny Snegiryov, Reuters reported.
LUKoil said it was told to deal with the violations in August and September and that it was given up to six months to comply. The company promised in a statement to "do its best" to keep the licenses.
Part of the reason for the state's demands is that it wants state-owned Rosneft to consolidate assets in the region, said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank.
A Rosneft subsidiary, Severnaya Neft, has the license to develop the Val Gamburtseva field just north of Komi — in the Nenets autonomous district — and has said it wants to bid for other fields in the region. It is likely to spar with LUKoil in the biddings. "It is certainly possible that LUKoil may lose some of its licenses to Rosneft," Weafer said by e-mail Sunday.
After Rosneft — and Gazprom — end the consolidation of their asset base, the two national champions will focus on development of new projects, he said.
Valery Nesterov, an oil and gas analyst at Troika Dialog, suggested the government was pushing for more oil from the companies that in the 1990s obtained more reserves than they could handle.
"They work at the most profitable reserves and they simply put the others on hold," he said, Kommersant reported Friday. "As a result, the country is not getting a serious amount of oil."
President Vladimir Putin, in a meeting with Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev at the end of September, told the government to take appropriate measures against companies that did not fulfill their license agreements. He spoke after Trutnev complained that oil companies were leaving too many wells inactive.
In Komi, LUKoil improperly set up oil rigs in state-owned woodland, Mitvol said in a separate statement from his trip. The company also illegally cut trees along its pipelines, he said, citing unidentified environmentalists.
LUKoil also failed to clean up oil spills at some of its facilities despite reporting that it had, Mitvol said.
He immediately pointed to "companies that work in close contact with LUKoil" as the likeliest source of pollution. LUKoil vice president Leonid Fedun said his company was striving to do all it could to preserve nature. "Any activity causes some kind of damage to nature, just like cars in Moscow also damage nature," Fedun said Friday on Vesti 24 television.
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Russia's Natural Resources Ministry asked tax authorities for information on 398 licenses belonging to Lukoil. The data Lukoil supplied to the tax authorities will be compared with information the company supplied to the ministry, the ministry said Monday in an e-mailed statement.

TITLE: Raiffeisen Makes New Acquisition
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Raiffeisen International will complete its acquisition of Impexbank next year. The group decided to reorganize Impexbank as part of its subsidiary, Raiffeisenbank Austria, and use the Raiffesen brand for the combined bank, the company said Friday in a statement.According to a prior agreement, Raiffeisen International will pay the purchase price in two tranches — of $500 million and $50 million — due upon presentation of the audited financial results for 2005 and 2006.
"The next steps in the integration process have been taken on schedule, by the end of 2006, as planned. The brand of the future bank, Raiffeisen, has been determined and announced," Heinz Wiedner, board member of Raiffeisen International, said in the statement.
"The managing board of the integrated bank includes all the key members of the managing boards of both banks, which is very important, because the professionalism of Impexbank's employees and managers was one of the main factors in our decision to purchase the bank," Wiedner said.
This is Raiffeisen International's ninth acquisition in Russia since 2000. By 2006 Impexbank had a sales network of 189 offices, branches, mini-offices and over 350 lending outlets all over Russia.
By June 30, 2005, Impexbank assets totaled 1.2 billion euros, net profit totaled 9 million euros, while Raiffeisenbank Austria operated 23 branches reporting total assets of three billion euros.
As a result of the deal, Raiffeisen International will become the largest western bank group in the CIS, said Yelena Radchenko, financial analyst of Competenz Consulting.
"The new bank will offer a universal set of services — Raiffeisen's strong point in the deal — while having a wide regional sales network and extensive coverage of small and medium business segment, was a strong point of Impexbank," she said.
Despite the said intention to retain all managers and resources of Impexbank, Radchenko suggested that foreign standards of management will be introduced leading to managers' retraining and operational reorganization.
Raiffeisen is likely to retain its range of services, she said. "The decision to introduce Raiffeisen as a single brand is indicative in this regard," Radchenko said.
"The union is beneficial considering standardization and the introduction of general principles for business processes in similar operations (mainly in retail), which is especially important in regional development," said Igor Zhigunov, director for Northwest branch at Gorodskoi Mortgage Bank. "Unifying their creative efforts, holding joint information and marketing events, advertisement campaigns, while using a known brand, they will optimize expenses and increase efficiency," Zhigunov said.
"The completion of the legal integration is planned for 2007," said Johann Jonach, Chairman of the Board of Raiffeisenbank Austria.
Until then, Impexbank and Raiffeisenbank Austria will operate separately. However the banks' ATM networks have already been integrated, some Impexbank branches offer products of Raiffeisen Asset Management Company and Non-State Pension Fund Raiffeisen. Customers of Raiffeisenbank can make their monthly payments for ruble denominated loans at Impexbank branches.
On the business side, both banks have already joined forces for operations on financial markets and management of credit and financial risks.
Radchenko of Compatenz Consulting said that, according to local media, Impexbank has rejected some borrowers — small and medium enterprises — that had previously used its loans. "It is a result of single standards for risk assessment," she said. Radchenko indicated economizing on IT expenses and increasing profitability through expanding market segments as the main reasons for consolidation in the banking industry.
At the moment foreigners own about 10 percent of the Russian bank industry, and this share is expected to increase to 20 percent, she said.
"The advantages of this deal are obvious. Former Impexbank owners earned serious money and focused on other projects, while Raiffeisenbank expanded its client base and presence in Russia," said Yuriy Korolyov, general director of Credit and Finance Consultant company.
Korolyov said that operational costs would decrease when the banks eliminate similar departments. However, he suggested that for the time being some Impexbank services will be retained, "because they have their own clients."
"The difference in the cost of money in Russia and in the West allows foreign banks to earn enormous profits here. Buying existing banks is the fastest way to enter the Russian market," Korolyov said.

TITLE: Pirates No Longer An Issue at WTO Talks
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Friday that piracy worries were no longer holding up U.S. talks on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization and expressed hope for a deal by the end of October."I think that in the coming two weeks we will reach a final agreement," Gref told his Latvian counterpart, Aygar Shtokenbergs, on Friday.
He said the sanitary review was nearing completion and that the question of Russia's record on enforcing intellectual property legislation was no longer an impediment to signing the bilateral agreement.
The top U.S. negotiator, Trade Representative Susan Schwab, said earlier this month that piracy was a major barrier. A spokesman for Schwab expressed hope Friday that talks would be wrapped up this month — a deadline set by the two sides last summer.
Some lawmakers in Washington urged the White House in a letter earlier in the week not to strike a deal until Russia showed it was serious about fighting piracy. "We strongly believe that concluding bilateral negotiations with Russia in spite of the Kremlin's continuing unwillingness to protect intellectual property rights will send a harmful message … and set a terrible precedent," they wrote.
Gref on Friday expressed frustration that the question of food inspections had delayed an agreement, and said politics played a role.
"This is not exactly a pragmatic position, rather a politicized one. And our American colleagues acknowledge this. But in Congress, there is a big agrarian lobby and for them this trivia is of great significance," he said.
(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: Shell Fixes Most Sakhalin Violations
AUTHOR: By Dmitry Zhdannikov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MAKAROV, Sakhalin — Royal Dutch Shell said it had taken less than one month to sort out most of the environmental violations identified at its Sakhalin oil and gas project, but a federal investigation continues."We have addressed the violations very quickly, but we had to divert resources from pipeline construction," Wayne Harris, Shell's health and risk assurance manager at the pipeline, told reporters last week visiting a 30-kilometer section 220 kilometers north of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the region's capital.
"We had issues with sub-contractors, and it is generally a very challenging project. But we have addressed 90 percent of the violations ... raised by RPN last month," Harris said, referring to the Natural Resources Ministry's environmental regulator by its acronym.
The pipeline stretch was portrayed on state television as an environmental disaster zone when the regulator — the Federal Service for the Inspection of Natural Resources Use — opened its investigation last month. But Shell said the violations were minimal, otherwise it could not have rectified them so quickly.
The regulator has threatened to withdraw permits from the $20 billion project and force Shell to reroute pipelines, which Shell has said may further delay the program.
Many analysts have interpreted the environmental complaints as a Kremlin ploy to win for a state-owned firm a portion of the Sakhalin-2 production sharing project, which will ultimately supply gas to U.S. and Japanese customers. Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev will visit Sakhalin from Oct. 24 to 26 to hear what his inspectors have found.
David Greer, deputy chief executive of project operator Sakhalin Energy, said he was looking forward to seeing Trutnev and discussing the project, which he said was on track to make its first shipment of liquefied natural gas next summer.
"I think it could be earlier than September. We're sticking to our deadline of mid-2008," he said.
"There are factors in Russia which go into the category of 'unknown.' There is an element of float in our schedule but our customers should consider the summer of 2008 as the date of delivery of the first cargo and we have come to an agreement with them to work under this schedule."
Greer said if Russia stopped the project, it would do great harm to its reputation and cause much more environmental damage than Sakhalin Energy has been accused of, as well as causing yet more costs.
"If the project was put on ice for a year and contractors magically resumed work from where they had finished, the loss would amount to tens of billions of dollars," he said.
The pipelines, some 850 kilometers long, will cross the entire island and pass under 1,100 rivers to bring offshore oil and gas from north Sakhalin to the island's south, where an oil terminal and the world's largest LNG plant are being built.
As the pipeline gets closer to the south it crosses difficult, hilly terrain. "We have rearranged the storage area, protected river crossings and made sure there would be no mudslides," said Michael Franley, a construction manager.
The pipeline is being built by StarStroi, a venture of Italy's Saipem and Russian firms, which has hired many Russian sub-contractors.
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Russia will penalize Royal Dutch Shell's Sakhalin-2 project for environmental violations, Interfax said, citing Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev.

TITLE: Gazprom, Egypt Sign MOU
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom and the Egyptian government have signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in Egypt's gas sector, Egypt's trade and industry minister said Friday.Rachid Mohammed Rachid said Gazprom could help Egypt develop its natural gas production and exports. The memorandum covered exploration, sharing technology, and cooperation in marketing gas, he said.
He was speaking after a meeting with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller at the end of a three-day visit to Russia aimed at improving trade ties.
He also said the Egyptian and Russian governments signed a separate memorandum of understanding to begin talks on a free-trade agreement.
Meanwhile, Gazprom and Hungary's Mol are drafting a plan to extend the Blue Stream gas pipeline, which ends in Turkey, to Austria, Hungarian Economy Minister Janos Koka said Friday. The draft plan will be ready in six months.
(Reuters, Bloomberg)

TITLE: Foreign Owner Plan Submitted
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Industry and Energy Ministry has submitted to the government amendments to rules on foreign ownership of strategic sectors of industry.The amendments limit foreign participation in seven industry sectors and set out the size of deposits that will be declared "strategic," according to ministry documents. "The sectors include production of special equipment, arms and military equipment, aerospace, space, atomic energy, activities involving monopolies and developing deposits of federal significance," the documents said.
Foreign participation in the sectors will be limited to 50 percent unless a potential investor has special permission to get a bigger share.
The amendments will change the existing subsoil law to declare as "strategic" oil deposits of more than 70 million tons, gas of 50 billion cubic meters, copper of 500,000 tons and gold of 50 tons.

TITLE: How to Orchestrate the Whole Sweet Dream
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yelena Streltsova, director of the confectionary factory Lubimy Kray, has always been creative. She played in a band, conducted a choir and then moved into business, where she successfully applies her creative approaches to the top levels of management.Streltsova was exposed to creative influences from an early age. Born into an artistic family in Leningrad, she studied ballet, played the piano and joined a music club at school. Boat racing and shooting were also early interests.
"My mother was a ballet dancer and all the members of our family played different musical instruments, so I was not exactly an exception," she said.
In 1988, Streltsova graduated from the academy of music where she studied in the faculty of choral conducting, following it with a diploma from the same faculty of the Leningrad Institute of Culture.
As a student, Streltsova played guitar and bass guitar in a band and toured on the provincial club circuit.
"It was an interesting time. Not only did I perform as a musician but also composed poems, led a music club and taught music to children. We had lots of fun," she said.
After taking a year out to give birth to her son, Streltsova found it difficult to relaunch her musical career.
"At that time our music director emmigrated to the U.S., our band split, I divorced from my husband and faced financial difficulties. I had to take charge of my family and changed jobs lots of times just to earn money for our basic needs," Streltsova said. She worked as a kindergarten nurse, a cleaner, a seller at a booth in Moskovsky railway station and a weaver until she was hired to sell milk from a street booth. "I had sold milk for only three days when suddenly I was promoted to the position of office manager," she said.
"Business in Russia was just beginning — no one had any idea how to run it in a civilized way. Apart from office administration, I also did accounting and tried to optimize all the business processes. For four months my working days lasted from 6 a. m. to 2 a. m, but it was a good experience," she said.
Having been started from scratch, the milk business gradually grew and soon became a large holding company called "Kolibri" that, besides diary products, produced bread, juices, ravioli and ketchup, and owned several plants and a printing office.
As a chief financial officer and shareholder, Streltsova worked at "Kalibri" from 1992 to 1996, when she left to give birth to her second son.
"Although I sold all my shares and did not need any more money for living expenses, I still wanted to work and found a job as chief accountant at a small company. I could work at home and keep my professional skills up to date," she said.
Streltsova took another step up the career ladder when she joined "Petrosoyuz" as an auditor in 1998. She stayed there two years.
Although she'd already taken a number of courses in accounting and finance and gained decent experience in top management, Streltsova still had a thirst for knowledge and started an MBA program at the Faculty of Management at St. Petersburg State University. Looking back, she sees this as the right move at the right time.
"In my opinion, management courses are only useful for people with enough work experience. For students who start them just after high school, such knowledge can be even harmful," she said.
In 2002, Streltsova applied her academic and professional skills as director of the Lenta supermarket on Pulkovskoye Shosse, before moving, two years later, to the confectionary factory Lubimy Kray where she again worked as director.
"I came to the company when it was in deep crisis. The whole company needed overhauling to meet high management standards," she said. "It was a success and now we are among the leading confectioners in the Northwest."
So how did Streltsova get to head a company with 420 staff?
"You just need to take responsibility and responsibility for the risks you take," she said. "Business is the endless search for new, effective ways of doing business," Streltsova said. She keeps a close eye on new books about business, generally preferring Western authors. As an experienced top manager, Streltsova also wants to share her experience with others. In the future she plans to write a business novel.
Her friends say that for her it makes no difference whether she is conducting a choir or running a company. She agreed.
"A conductor has a score and gives a sign to the musicians when it is time to play, and a manager does absolutely the same. I need to make each instrument of the company's orchestra play in time and make the different sounds come together as a symphony," she said.
Streltsova no longer has much time for music, but she is often asked by her friends to perform at parties.
When not at work she likes to spend time with her family, go to the country or somewhere hot to get a tan, but never takes a long vacation.
"I just feel uneasy when I don't work for more than two weeks," she said.

TITLE: Corporate Mobile Communication - Gain and Retain
AUTHOR: By Yuri Maltsev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The corporate market has always been a priority for mobile phone operators to put it simply, corporate customers usually spend more money on communication than private individuals.Mobile providers, therefore, make every effort to attract these clients with offers in the form of special tariffs and programs to prospective or existing clients.
A recent tendency is for providers to focus on Small and Medium-size Enterprises (SMEs), where they give a test run of various options before offering them on a more widespread scale. Moreover, particular attention is being paid to various loyalty programs.
St. Petersburg's mobile communications market in general, and that of corporate subscribers in particular, differs considerably from those of Russia's regions. By virtue of the fact that MegaFon Northwest (former Northwestern GSM) was the original market player, this company was able to gain a majority of subscribers from both segments (50 percent of all corporate clients in St. Petersburg use MegaFon's services).
Nevertheless, two other large GSM providers, the other members of the "Great Three," are not ignoring the corporate market. And although the largest clients have already been won, constant market growth and the orientation of providers towards SMEs keeps things interesting.
It's important to note that providers set themselves two different goals — if MegaFon and MTS (which, according to some estimations occupies around 30-35 percent of the market) pay considerable attention to the retention of existing subscribers, then Beeline has concentrated, for the time being, on simply increasing its share of corporate clients.
Specialists have noticed clear changes to the corporate market in recent years.
"The high rate of corporate market growth is an important trend. Already our number of corporate subscribers has been increasing several years in a row, from 40 percent to 50 percent a year. Hence the corporate market grows at a rate comparable to the mass market," said Margarita Gorbachova, the head of MegaFon press service.
"At the same time the APRU of a corporate subscriber is much higher than that of an ordinary subscriber and it is that which accounts for a considerable proportion of a company's proceeds.
"Representatives of SMEs account for an increasing proportion of corporate clients and today our offer in this segment is meant for businesses of any size and number of employees. The fact that even small companies have begun to pay for their employees' mobile calls is suggestive of a more civilized business in general a large number of companies are beginning to pay legal salaries," she continued.
Another tendency, according to Gorbachova, is the increasingly important role of state companies in the corporate market. "If before, there were no more than 10 of them a year, now there are tens of them. But here providers are chosen by way of tenders.
We have also noted a rapid increase in the proportion of regional corporate clients. Today the ratio of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast is 50:50," she said.
Thus the development and optimization of tariff-related offers, and the fight for clients' loyalty are the two main corporate battlegrounds for city providers.
According to Ruslan Gurdzhiyan, Marketing director of MTS Northwest, "For MTS's corporate clients we have developed special tariffs and created special service conditions which take into account the specific character of business, the accounting systems of organizations and companies. The main principal in our work with corporate clients is to be as flexible as possible, to create the most advantageous and convenient conditions for each individual company."
MTS gives the status of "national client" to companies with regional branches across the country. "Small companies appreciate the efficiency and mobility of their employees and react quickly to market changes," Gurdzhiyan said.
The tariff plan "Team" is among the latest offers of MTS for small enterprises. Its main feature — free phone calls, starting from the second minute, to other MTS subscribers within the company.
Moreover the tariffs designed for SMEs known as "Corporate Mobile" and "Corporate network" have recently been updated, replacing the monthly fee with new services.
Apart from launching new and updating existing tariffs, MTS has paid special attention to campaigns aimed at retaining existing corporate clients. The latest effort was quite original. Representatives from the company's corporate clients were invited to a meeting with MTS specialists on board one of Russia's largest catamarans. And the provider has, for some time, run "Business breakfasts" with its subscribers. The first series of "Business breakfasts with MTS" took place in St. Petersburg as part of a federal initiative in Sept. 2005. At that time, 10 such meetings were held at the Palkin restaurant, also a corporate client of MTS, and about 10 corporate representatives were invited to each meeting. Such events now take place all over the Northwest, in particular, in Arkhangelsk and Petrozavodsk.
Apart from meetings with its corporate subscribers, the provider has changed and broadened the structure of its work with key clients.
The company has replaced its corporate center on Tverskaya Ulitsa, with specialists at three offices on Nekrasov Ulitsa, Sampsonievsky and Moskovsky Prospekts.
The company hopes this reorganization will make access to specialists easier and increase its presence across several districts. Apart from basic services such as voice transmission, the provider actively promotes additional services to the corporate market, such as FMC, "Mobile office," and access to the corporate network through APN.
The provider MegaFon Northwest, the local market leader, started updating its corporate tariffs not long before MTS. From the beginning of autumn this provider has offered the tariff "Company universal" together with additional options, which lowers the cost of communication depending on the needs of subscribers. "Priorities" (discounts on a particular range of phone calls) and "Discount on traffic" (packages of minutes which are purchased wholesale) are among such options.
It's interesting that both new tariffs, MTS's "Team" and MegaFon's "Company universal" have the same key feature, namely the options through which one can optimize expenses on communication.
At the same time MegaFon Northwest also carries out a policy of retaining existing subscribers. The provider has recently started the campaign "MegaFon gathers friends" in Petrozavodsk, which it will take to all large towns in the Northwest over the next two months. Informal meetings with corporate subscribers will be held as part of this campaign, with members of the group 'Chai v dvoyem' the special guests.
It will be the third year in a row that the meetings have been held and traditionally they involve evenings with celebrity guests.
As regards the company Beeline, along with a basic tariff offer, a variety of additional options are aimed at roaming services and high technologic solutions (Mobile budget, Mobile post, Corporate GPRS access).
"At the moment we work with the corporate sector according to the principle of offers tailored to individuals.
However, in a market with such high penetration, taking steps to ensure customer loyalty is becoming increasingly important and the next stage in our development, starting from next year, will involve campaigns to achieve that end," said Andrey Vasilyev, Commerical Director at Vympelcom (trade mark Beeline).
The company Sky Link occupies a separate niche in the St. Petersburg market. Its distinctive feature is that it works in CDMA-450 standard, involving high data transmission (in basic variant up to 153 kbit/sec and for EV-DO up to 2.4 Mbit/sec (service Sky Turbo).
Therefore, since its arrival in St. Petersburg at the end of 2002, the company has staked a lot on talkative business-subscribers. The provider offers a program called Business-effect through which tailored offers related to needs, traffic consumption etc. are developed for corporate clients.
According to Kyrill Voloshin, the head of PR at Delta Telecom (Sky Link St. Petersburg), "Business-effect allows our subscribers to increase the efficiency of their business. A personal manager is assigned to each client. A manager "guides" this company, knows the peculiarities of its work, knows the specific character of the business and can react flexibly to the individual requirements of the client.

TITLE: Flatlands On The Banking Horizon
AUTHOR: By Anna Shcherbakova
TEXT: They can't live without me; they wouldn't survive without my money and the money of thousands like me — this I often think to myself when I see a new bank opening in the city.Last year their number grew by at least 25 percent according to industry experts. Financial institutions are surviving the era of retail expansion —a lot of time and money goes into attracting more private depositors and borrowers.
Russian banks have known better times, one should admit. In the mid-nineties they possessed important parts of the oligarchs' empires. Then they started to develop regional chains whose only goal was to suck money out of the regions and into Moscow. No loans and very few credit cards were then available to the public. The 1998 financial crisis and default sapped the resources of many big banks whose assets were invested in governmental bonds (GKO).
St. Petersburg's banking system was healthy enough to survive the crisis. As usual our city has its own strength and exclusivity (and which region doesn't, I wonder).
The city's banks grew until the banking sector underwent active consolidation. We started receiving several proposals for the acquisition of smaller banks, one bank head told me five years ago.
According to him, banks would merge or become niche players with a very modest economic role. This prediction came true. After a series of acquisitions the banking landscape is looking a lot flatter. And most significant St. Petersburg banks have changed their owners, some of them more than once, or moved their activities to Moscow. Those institutions that remain are being flattered by mystery investors, presumably foreign ones that are desperate to purchase a controlling stake.
But the most important sign is that banks are battling for private depositors. Corporations remain an important part of their clientele, but are no longer important enough to attract investors. Even the richest and laziest of banks, those with a governmental share, are seeking to develop their retail services. Competition is pushing them to serve private customers. So banks extend their networks everywhere in order to reach the public in restaurants, malls and department stores. The internet, that is, according to the experts, is the latest stage of networking.
And in retail, banks are even more indistinguishable from each other. Obviously, one might have more money to lend or to promote their services than another. But such services always need to be competitive. If a customer doesn't like them they can just switch over to a competitor. And the tricks that might work with corporate services do not work here. Because even if you can persuade a top-manager to transfer their company's business to you, it is impossible to bribe thousands of depositors.
There are exceptions. In some cases banks are able to get retail clients for a wholesale price, for example, when, for certain companies, they open accounts and issue cards for each employee. Two factors weaken this method. The number of big employers without such a scheme is limited. And many Russian people still have the habit of withdrawing their entire salary with by card.

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

TITLE: Clustering on the Hi-Tech Bandwagon
AUTHOR: By Robert Skidelsky and Pavel Erochkine
TEXT: Economists have started to become interested in the economics of clusters. Why do many industries concentrate in one or two locations? Why do some countries, regions and districts grow much faster than others? In the past the answer was obvious: What determined industrial location was climate or proximity to natural resources. But most modern economies are not like this. You do not need to have a particular climate or be near a steel plant to make computer chips or develop software. Location is much more likely to be the result of accidents or deliberate government policies.The U.S. economist Paul Krugman asks: "Where do you live if you work in the film industry? Probably in Los Angeles. Why? Because the other film industry people you need to work with are there. But they are there because they need to be near people like you." Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas makes the same point: "What can people be paying Manhattan or downtown Chicago rents for, if not for being near other people?"
Economic clusters aggregate complementary skills, capital, services and ideas so that they work together in the same place to produce value that would not be produced if they were widely scattered. These clusters illustrate the importance of increasing returns to scale and external economies of scale (effects accruing to clusters rather than to individual firms). The crucial importance of clusters is that through them human capital (knowledge) develops and spreads, and the accumulation of human capital is the main engine of growth.
Virtuous circles get started for all kinds of reasons, but then persist through self-reinforcing mechanisms or "positive feedback." And the same is true of vicious circles. That's why we have long cycles of rise and fall rather than instantaneous rearrangement of the pieces, as classical economists assume.
Why is this relevant for Russia? Because policy can start history moving. The United States' technological supremacy is built on an ecosystem of interrelated companies, universities, government institutions, bankers and lawyers set in motion by the needs of the defense industry after World War II.
The key to unlocking Russia's growth potential is to develop these high-tech clusters. Russia is an economy to which geography has given minerals and a history of a high level of science and technology. But this human capital remains scattered: The aim of policy must be to unite science, technology and products in "creative communities."
Parts of Russia are well suited to follow in the footsteps of Bangalore, the home to India's main high-tech clusters, where high-tech companies sprang up around old and cash-rich heavy industry and turned the area into the Silicon Valley of the East. Russia has also inherited a very large and also geographically concentrated industrial base from the Soviet Union. Numerous universities, laboratories, large energy-related companies and state-controlled strategic enterprises could provide the backbone around which high-tech industries could develop. But this process needs to be sped up by creating an encouraging environment for knowledge-based businesses and by facilitating access to seed capital. Russia is already moving in this direction.
First, IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman has already created the legislative framework for development of "techno-parks" (or what the British call "science parks"). The British model is for the science parks to provide accommodation, links to universities and proactive business support services for start-ups. This is aimed at generating the right environment for development of the knowledge-based businesses and stimulating interactions between these, universities and regional communities. In fact, support services for start-ups and professional networks are often more important than cheap rent or easy access to seed capital, and this is the area where Russia lacks experience and should learn how to establish this supporting infrastructure from other countries.
Second, the so-called Russian Venture Company, or RVC, which will have authorized capital of 15 billion rubles, or almost $500 million, has been set up. It will act as a fund of funds, investing in privately managed funds that invest in IT, telecommunications, biotechnology, medicine, nanotechnology, environmentally friendly energy and other "innovative" areas. There are private initiatives as well — the Skolkovo Business School, due to be launched in 2012, aims to have 20 percent to 25 percent of its graduates open their own business within five years of graduation and will establish a 1 billion ruble ($40 million) venture fund to achieve this aim. The Russian government should think about setting up a Russia-wide scheme of this kind in addition to the RVC. This could be a way of linking the development of IT and other innovative sectors to President Vladimir Putin's national projects.
The two best-known European models of state-controlled provision of seed money are Britain's National Endowment for Sciences, Technology and the Arts, or NESTA, and Germany's Reconstruction Credit Institute, widely known by its German acronym, KfW.
NESTA has been provided with an endowment of ?300 million ($561.2 million, about the same as the 15 billion rubles provided for Russia's RVC) by Prime Minister Tony Blair's government. The British fund is managed independently of the government in order to protect innovation policy from short-term political influence. It invests its income in early-stage businesses and in programs that investigate the educational and cultural side of innovation. KfW, on the other hand, behaves like a commercial bank, buying funds wholesale on world capital markets without having to pay dividends to shareholders. It then lends money to small firms, through retail banks, at a mere 0.5 percent above base rates. Many Russian small businesses, carrying the risk they do, regularly pay 10 percent to 15 percent above the base interest rate. These are working models that could be adjusted to Russian conditions, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
An important point to keep in mind is that high-tech is inherently non-linear, and so tiny insights can yield huge outputs. Russia already has a massive knowledge base, skilled labor and most of the basic infrastructure. Carefully targeted support from the state could quickly take it over the tipping point and turn it into a global leader. This is what happened to Bangalore less than a decade ago.
All this sounds exciting — and it is. But the decision makers should not get carried away about what can be achieved. Even in Britain, GDP accounts show that sales of Indian food are bigger than those of its high-tech industry.Lord Skidelsky is chairman of the Centre for Global Studies, or CGS, and executive secretary of The UK/Russia Round Table. Pavel Erochkine is researcher at the CGS and co-author of "Russia's Oil Industry," which was published by the CGS in June 2006.

TITLE: Societe Generale Branches Out
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Societe Generale, the second-largest French bank by market value, plans to open more branches in Russia to gain clients in an economy growing five times faster than France's.Societe Generale aims to open 40 branches annually at its Vostok retail bank starting next year, Chairman Daniel Bouton said in an interview. Russia's Rosbank, in which the Paris-based bank has agreed to double its stake to 20 percent, also plans to open about 100 more branches in the coming years.
"We have the possibility to increase significantly our market share in a market that's booming globally,'' Bouton said on Friday in Moscow.
Bouton is keen on expanding in a country with 145 million inhabitants and an economy that grew 6.4 percent last year compared with France's 1.2 percent. Societe Generale has historic links with Russia, where it began operating in 1872 and was the leading private lender before the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. The bank may pay $1.7 billion to take control of Rosbank, Russia's second-largest branch network with 705 branches, by the end of 2008.
The French lender has 6,700 employees in Russia, where it also owns Rusfinance, a consumer credit and car financing unit, and mortgage lender DeltaCredit. At the end of September, its Vostok unit had 46 branches that were open or under construction, company documents given to reporters last week in Moscow showed.
Bouton, who is 56 and speaks Russian, ruled out further acquisitions in Russia for the time being. Societe Generale has found "no opportunities'' for other acquisitions in countries close to Russia but may consider purchases to expand its consumer finance business in countries such as Kazakhstan, he said.
European and U.S. banks are moving into Russia as higher oil prices buoy the economy. Vienna-based Raiffeisen International Bank AG agreed in February to buy Russia's Impexbank to become the largest foreign bank in the country. Hungary's OTP Bank Nyrt. In July agreed to buy Moscow-based Investsberbank.
Societe Generale has spent almost 8.5 billion euros ($10.6 billion) on acquisitions abroad since 1999, including Croatia's Splitska Banka earlier this year. It's also looking at opportunities in Algeria and leading a group of bidders for 85 percent of Guangdong Development Bank, China's 11th-biggest lender.
The shares have risen 28 percent this year.

TITLE: Chronicle of a Death Foretold
AUTHOR: By Anna Politkovskaya
TEXT: Anna Politkovskaya imagined her own death long before it arrived. For years, she was one of Russia's most fearless journalists, reporting for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta from the killing fields of Chechnya and exposing the brutality of the Kremlin's war under President Vladimir Putin. She received one death threat after another, and was detained and beaten by federal troops who threw her into a pit, threatened to rape her and performed a mock execution. "If it were up to me," an officer told her, "I'd shoot you." Someone finally decided it was up to him.
Politkovskaya's body was discovered in her Moscow apartment building on Oct. 7 with bullets in her head and chest, a Makarov pistol tossed at her feet. Her killing at age 48 came two months after she wrote this previously unpublished essay for "Another Sky," an English-language PEN book forthcoming from Profile Books in 2007.I am a pariah.That is the result of my journalism throughout the years of the second war in Chechnya, and of publishing books abroad about life in Russia and the Chechen war. In Moscow, I am not invited to press conferences or gatherings that Kremlin officials might attend, lest the organizers be suspected of harboring sympathies toward me. Despite this, all the top officials talk to me, at my request, when I am writing articles or conducting investigations — but only in secret, where they can't be observed, in the open air, in squares, in secret houses that we approach by different routes, like spies.You don't get used to this, but you learn to live with it.
It is the way I have had to work throughout the second war in Chechnya. First I was hiding from the federal troops, but always able to make contact clandestinely with individuals through trusted intermediaries, so that my informants would not be denounced to the top generals.
When President Vladimir Putin's plan of Chechenization succeeded (sending "good" Chechens loyal to the Kremlin to kill "bad" Chechens who opposed it), the same subterfuge extended to talking to "good" Chechen officials, many of whom before they were "good" officials had sheltered me in their homes in the most trying months of the war. Now we can meet only in secret because I am an incorrigible enemy, not amenable to reeducation.
I'm not joking. Some time ago, Vladislav Surkov, Putin's deputy chief of staff, explained that there were people who were enemies but whom you could talk sense into, and there were incorrigible enemies who simply needed to be "cleansed" from the political arena.
So they are trying to cleanse politics of me and others like me.
A few days ago, on Aug. 5, I was standing in crowd of women in the central square of Kurchaloi, a dusty village in Chechnya. I was wearing a headscarf folded and tied in the manner favored by many women my age in Chechnya, not covering the head completely, but not leaving it uncovered, either. This was essential if I was not to be identified, in which case nobody could say what might happen.
To one side of the crowd a man's tracksuit pants were draped over the gas pipeline that runs the length of Kurchaloi. They were caked with blood. His severed head had been taken away. On the night of July 27, two Chechen fighters had been ambushed on the outskirts of Kurchaloi by units of the Kremlin's anointed leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. One, Adam Badayev, was captured and the other, Hoj-Ahmed Dushayev, a native of Kurchaloi, was killed. Toward dawn, no fewer than 20 Zhiguli cars full of armed people drove into the center of the village and up to the district police station. They had Dushayev's head with them. Two of the men suspended it in the center of the village from the pipeline, and beneath it they hung the blood-stained pants I was now seeing. This display of medieval barbarity was orchestrated by Kadyrov's deputy prime minister, Idris Gaibov, who was heard phoning Kadyrov to report that they had killed "Devil No. 1" and hung his head up as a warning to the rest of the village.
The armed men spent the next two hours photographing the head with their mobile phones. The head remained there for 24 hours, after which police officers removed it. Agents of the Prosecutor General's Office began investigating the scene and local people heard one officer ask a subordinate: "Have they finished sewing the head back on yet?" Dushayev's body, with its head now sewn back on, was later brought back to the scene of the ambush.
I wrote about this in my newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Gaibov, a Chechen state official, had given orders to members of the security forces who were not subordinate to him to decapitate a body. Kadyrov, the prime minister, had been informed, but did not intervene. Those carrying out the decapitation were also agents of the state and had desecrated a dead body, which is a criminal act. The agents of the Prosecutor General's Office, which is charged with ensuring observance of the law, merely told those who had carried out the order to hurry up sewing the head back on. And all this in full view of the adults and children who live in Kurchaloi.
I reached Chechnya at exactly the same time as the issue of our newspaper with the article. The women in the crowd tried to conceal me because they were sure the Kadyrov people would shoot me on the spot if they knew I was there. They reminded me that Kadyrov had publicly vowed to murder me. He said during a meeting of his government that he had had enough, and that Politkovskaya was a condemned woman. I was told about it by members of the government.
What for? For not writing the way Kadyrov wanted? "Anybody who is not one of us is an enemy." Surkov said so, and Surkov is Ramzan Kadyrov's main supporter within Putin's entourage.
"Ramzan told me: 'She is so stupid she doesn't know the value of money. I offered her money but she didn't take it,'" my old acquaintance Buvadi Dakiyev told me that same day. He is the deputy commanding officer of the pro-Kremlin Chechen OMON special police force. I met Buvadi secretly. He would face difficulties if we were caught conferring. When it was time for me to leave it was already evening, and Buvadi urged me to stay in this secure location.
He was afraid I would be killed. "You mustn't go out," he told me. "Ramzan is very angry with you."
I decided to leave nevertheless. Someone was waiting for me in Grozny and we needed to talk through the night, also in secret. Buvadi offered to have me taken there in an OMON car, but that struck me as even more risky. I would be a target for Chechen fighters.
"Do they at least have guns in the house you are going to?" he asked. During the whole war I have been caught in the middle. When some threaten to kill you their enemies protect you, but tomorrow the threat will come from somebody else.
Why am I going on at such length about Buvadi? Only to explain that people in Chechnya are afraid for me, and I find that very touching. They fear for me more than I fear for myself and that is how I survive.
Why has Kadyrov vowed to kill me? I once interviewed him, and then printed the interview just as he gave it, complete with all his characteristic moronic stupidity, ignorance and satanic inclinations.
Kadyrov was sure I would completely rewrite the interview and present him as intelligent and honorable. That is, after all, how the majority of journalists behave now, those who are "on our side."
Is that enough to make someone vow to kill you? The answer is as simple as the morality encouraged by Putin. We are merciless to enemies of the Reich. Who is not with us is against us. "Those who are against us must be destroyed.»
"Why have you got such a bee in your bonnet about this severed head?" Vasily Panchenkov asks me back in Moscow. He is the director of the Interior Ministry troops' press office, but a decent man. "Have you nothing better to worry about?" I am asking him to comment on the events in Kurchaloi.
"Just forget it. Pretend it never happened. I'm asking you for your own good!" But how can I forget it when it did happen?
I loathe the Kremlin's line, elaborated by Surkov, dividing people into those who are "on our side," "not on our side," or even "on the other side." If a journalist is "on our side," he or she will get awards, respect and perhaps be invited to become a deputy in the State Duma.
If a journalist is "not on our side," however, he or she will be deemed a supporter of the European democracies, of European values, and automatically become a pariah. That is the fate of all who oppose our "sovereign democracy," our "traditional Russian democracy." (What on earth that is supposed to be, nobody knows; but they swear allegiance to it nevertheless: "We are for sovereign democracy!") I am not really a political animal. I have never joined any party and would consider it a mistake for a journalist, in Russia at least, to do so. I have never felt the urge to run for a seat for the Duma, although there were years when I was invited to.
So what is the crime that has earned me this label of not being "one of us?" I have merely reported what I have witnessed, no more than that.
I have written and, less frequently, I have spoken. I am even reluctant to comment, because it reminds me too much of the imposed opinions of my Soviet childhood and youth. It seems to me that our readers are capable of interpreting what they read for themselves. That is why my principal genre is reportage, sometimes, admittedly, with my own interjections. I am not an investigating magistrate but somebody who describes the life around us for those who cannot see it for themselves, because what is shown on television and written about in the overwhelming majority of newspapers is emasculated and doused with ideology.
People know very little about life in other parts of their own country, and sometimes even in their own region. The Kremlin responds by trying to block my access to information, its ideologists supposing that this is the best way to make my writing ineffectual.
It is impossible, however, to stop someone fanatically dedicated to this profession of reporting about the world around us. My life can be difficult; more often, humiliating. I am not, after all, so young at 47 that it is easy to go on encountering rejection and having my own pariah status rubbed in my face. But I can live with it.
I will not go into the other joys of the path I have chosen, the poisoning, the arrests, the threats in letters and over the Internet, the telephoned death threats and the weekly summons to the prosecutor's office to sign statements about practically every article I write (the first question being: "How and where did you obtain this information?").
Of course I don't like the constant derisive articles about me that appear in other newspapers and on Internet sites presenting me as the madwoman of Moscow. I find it disgusting to live this way. I would like a bit more understanding.
The main thing, however, is to get on with my job, to describe the life I see, to receive visitors every day in our editorial office who have nowhere else to bring their troubles because the Kremlin finds their stories off-message, so that the only place they can be aired is in our newspaper, No-vaya Gazeta.

This essay was translated from Russian by Arch Tait and published in The Washington Post.

TITLE: The Injustices of an Unprovoked Onslaught
AUTHOR: By Mikheil Saakashvili
TEXT: The past week was a trying one for Georgia. Air, rail, sea, land and postal links were severed unilaterally by our largest neighbor, the Russian Federation.Immediately thereafter, Georgians living in Russia were subjected to a form of ethnic targeting not seen in Europe since the Balkans in the 1990s — and the harassment is tinged with even more sinister historical over-tones. Hundreds are being deported; business owners are being harassed; schoolchildren are being forcibly registered with local police; women are being gratuitously tested for sexually transmitted diseases; and children are being torn from families.
It is easy, amids these bleak headlines, to lose sight of an even more important story: In just three short years, my country has been transformed from a gangster-run economic and political basket case into a budding democracy with one of the world's fastest-growing economies. The World Bank recently lauded Georgia as the No. 1 reformer in the world and the least corrupt transitional democracy. Last month, NATO admitted Georgia into a new stage of membership talks, recognizing our political, economic and military progress.
And just last week, we completed an action plan with the European Union that charts our irrevocable course toward a fully Western future.
It is this remarkable metamorphosis — capped last week by full-fledged, free and fair local elections, hailed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for their "professional and inclusive manner" — that gives us strength in this moment of crisis. All of our gains have been hard-won. Our citizens have long suffered privations and only now are tasting the sweetness of liberty: the opportunity to vote, to lead fruitful lives, to speak their voice and to chart future for their children untrammeled by poverty, mafias or discrimination.
We will not jeopardize the progress we have made by any rash acts. It is not inconceivable that Moscow is trying to taunt us into a self-destructive response, one that would provide an excuse for Russia to smite the success story to its south. After all, democracy can be contagious. But there is no risk of our acting irresponsibly, despite the caricatures of our government, spread by ill-wishers, of being impetuous. Our actions in recent weeks fly in the face of this. We are constrained by democratic instincts and our responsibility to citizens and allies.
In fact, the most puzzling aspect of Russia's latest onslaught is that it was unprovoked. One week ago, after holding a group of Russian intelligence officers for just 72 hours after they were caught red-handed spying on Georgia, my government re leased them. Regrettably, this was not the first instance when individuals involved in similar — even lethal — acts were detained and handed over to Russian authorities.
We believed this latest gesture of goodwill, magnanimous by any measure, would mark a hopeful turning point in our troubled relations with the current Russian government. For far too long, we have been subjected to Moscow's economic sanctions, its mortal meddling in our breakaway provinces, and its contempt for our democratic institutions. We wanted to mark a break from this history of distrust. Little could we have imagined that, instead, Moscow would unleash a wave of retribution that many in Russia have labeled ethnic cleansing.
Still, even while Russian police were hunting down Georgians, I have been heartened by the courage of many ethnic Russians who have taken to the streets wearing a yellow star with the words: "I am Georgian." Despite this downward spiral, conditions exist for a peaceful resolution to the present impasse. Georgia poses no physical threat to Russia. But for us to stand tall, our friends must stand tall beside us. If any one of us gives in to bullying or tolerates the politics of ethnic hatred, we are all at risk. The values that hold together the international order are like a chain — only as strong as its weakest link.
Today, Georgia has become an integral part of the Western security fabric. The essential question confronting the international community is this: Is Moscow reacting to a specific, unique threat it perceives from Georgia? Or is Georgia a target of opportunity, a chimerical foil created by some politicians for domestic purposes? Put another way, does the malignancy reside in Georgia or Russia? A misdiagnosis could have dire consequences for Western security. Because if the international community downplays the current rift — or worse, if it pressures Georgia to back down on all counts, shunting aside its hard-earned principles and values — then the problem will simply metastasize to another place.
Russia's vital place in the international order is secure. It is a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council. Its natural resources fuel the European and global economies. It owns a fierce nuclear force. No one, let alone Georgia, should ever call for isolating Russia in the manner of a North Korea or Zimbabwe. At the same time, however, we must not turn a blind eye to what is happening to human rights and the norms of international behavior.

Mikheil Saakashvili is president of Georgia. This comment first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

TITLE: Dying Young In the Regions
AUTHOR: By Kim Murphy
PUBLISHER: LOS ANGELES TIMES
TEXT: Welcome to Kstinovo, population one.	Antonina Makarova, 78, spends her days watching news and soap operas in her peeling wooden dacha, the only inhabited structure in two lanes of sagging cottages that once were a village. Her nearest neighbor, 80-year-old Maria Belkova, lives in adjacent Sosnovitsy, population two. But she can't hear anymore, and all in all, Makarova finds the television better company."All the houses here were filled with people. There was a cheese factory. But now everyone else has died. God has taken care of them, and he's still making me suffer," Makarova said. "Even the thieves have disappeared."
The Tver region, along the upper reaches of the Volga River 209 kilometers north of Moscow, is dotted with more than 1,400 villages, such as Kstinovo, labeled nezhiloye — depopulated. Since 1989, the number of people here has shrunk by about 250,000 to about 1.4 million, with deaths outnumbering births more than two to one.
The Tver region is far from unusual in this country.
Russia is rapidly losing population. Its people are succumbing to one of the world's fastest-growing AIDS epidemics, resurgent tuberculosis, rampant cardiovascular disease, alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, suicide and the lethal effects of unchecked industrial pollution.
In addition, abortions outpaced births last year by more than 100,000. An estimated 10 million Russians of reproductive age are sterile because of botched abortions or poor health. The public health care system is collapsing. And many parents in more prosperous urban areas say they can't afford homes large enough for the number of children they'd like to have.
The former Soviet Union, with almost 300 million people, was the world's third-most populous country, behind China and India. Slightly more than half of its citizens lived in Russia. This country has lost the equivalent of a city of 700,000 people every year since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, only partially offset by an influx of people from other former Soviet republics.
A country that sprawls across one-eighth of the globe is now home to only 142 million people.
The losses have been disproportionately male. At the height of its power, the Soviet Union's people lived almost as long as Americans. But now, the average Russian man can expect to live about 59 years — 16 years less than an American man and 14 less than a Russian woman.
Sergei Mironov, chairman of the Federation Council, said last year that if the trend didn't change, the population would fall to 52 million by 2080.
"There will no longer be a great Russia," he said. "It will be torn apart piece by piece, and finally cease to exist."
That may be an overstatement, but there are serious questions about whether Russia will be able to hold on to its lands along the border with China or field an army, let alone a workforce to support the ill and the elderly.
The government, flush with revenue from record prices for the country's oil exports, has started to respond. President Vladimir Putin this year pledged payments of $111 per month to mothers who elected to have a second child, plus a nest egg of $9,260 to be used for education, a mortgage or pensions. He also called for renewed efforts to attract ethnic Russians still living in the former Soviet republics.
"Russia has a huge territory, the largest territory in the world," Putin said. "If the situation remains unchanged, there will simply be no one to protect it."'This Infection in Us'
The economic earthquake of this country's transition from communism to capitalism plunged tens of millions into poverty overnight and changed the value systems upon which many had planned their lives.A small minority, mostly in urban centers such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, were able to exploit the absence of rules in the chaotic 1990s to become fabulously wealthy. But such a profound social transition, coming at the end of a century of war, revolution and ruthless social experimentation, condemned a great many more to a deep malaise.
Those who lost out have proved susceptible to drinking, smoking and other habits that killed millions of Russians even in the best of times. In more extreme cases, they kill themselves.
The suicide rate jumped nearly 50 percent during the 1990s; half a million people killed themselves from 1995 through 2003. Russians fling themselves from balconies, slash their wrists or simply walk out in the snow on a bitter night.
This country's suicide rate, at about 36 per 100,000 people, is second only to that of Lithuania, according to the Serbsky National Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry. In some remote areas of Russia, the rate exceeds 100 per 100,000.
Nikolai Zavada, 21, a musician who goes by the name Serial Self-Killer, posted a song on Mysuicide.ru , a well-known web site that was later shut down because of public pressure:
"I'm going out.
And it doesn't matter whether it's up or down.
Or who's holding your hand, an angel or otherwise….
The cold has worn me out."
"People have a lack of hope," Zavada said in an interview. They feel "that all their efforts are in vain. And also, they have a feeling of eternal emptiness."
Russia's transformation from a society that guaranteed employment means that millions of people, especially in the provinces, "have become surplus; they do not have a place in the current economy," said Andrei Demin, president of the Russian Public Health Association, a nongovernmental advocacy group.
"They do not protest openly. They protest inside," he said. "And the most extreme form of protest is just dying."
Others tried to adapt, and still failed. Birthrates declined, not only because couples, like those elsewhere in Europe, elected to have fewer children, but because they couldn't afford to have large families.
Roman Kiptenko, 35, has a family, his health and two university degrees, but his life is turning out far differently than he had imagined. The national-parks institute where he worked disintegrated in the Soviet collapse. He now works as a technical director in a friend's advertising company in Moscow. But the firm is small and its future uncertain. His wife was laid off last spring from her job as a dental office manager.
Kiptenko has begun to realize that they might never do better than the $330-per-month apartment — a cramped living room adjoining a tiny kitchen — where they live with their 10-year-old daughter. Kiptenko and his wife sleep on a pullout sofa. Their daughter's bed in the corner seats guests by day, her toys stacked neatly to one side. Clothing is placed in cupboards next to Kiptenko's computer.
"At first, situations would come up when my wife would talk about wanting another child," he said. "But gradually, she stopped raising those questions."
Alexei Chaika, another Moscow resident, blamed the heart attack he suffered at 27 on stress from his job as a transportation manager for a construction company. Recovering at a clinic in the capital, he said he had worked every day until 11 p.m., and every weekend for months on end, all for a salary of $525 per month.
"At work, the tension is very high, and you have to quarrel with people," he said. "Somebody hits me on the back of my head; I hit someone lower than me; he hits somebody else."
Although the problems are surfacing in the post-Soviet period, some argue that their cause can be found in communism's willful destruction of generations of the country's most capable and adaptable people.
"Seventy-five years of Bolshevik life in this country led to the formation of a tribe of people which was cultivated to listen to orders, and fulfill them," said Alexander Gorelik, a St. Petersburg physician. Stalinism, he said, aimed for "the planned and gradual physical destruction of the most moral, the most creative group of the population."
"There is such a thing as a will for life. And the whole trouble is that the Russian public in general, and especially the male population, has a big deficiency in this area."
Vyacheslav Pushkarev, a Russian Orthodox priest who oversees several congregations in Siberian villages now too small to have a full-time cleric, said the Soviet system destroyed bodies and spirits in equal proportion.
"We are left with this infection in us, this sickness of degradation in everything around us because we were all part of it," he said. "We're living in a huge bowl here, and we're all getting boiled together."Drowning in Alcohol
Many a Russian village that once might have been the subject of an idyllic painting of ruddy-cheeked peasants leading tired horses through the fields are now part of a twilight world of illness, drunkenness and stunning lethargy.Moscow has the second-largest concentration of billionaires in the world. But one-fifth of all Russians live on less than $38 per month, many of them in the countryside. The collapse of collective farming and the failure to replace it with viable private agriculture has left thousands of villages in limbo, their residents living on minuscule government stipends, odd jobs, kitchen gardens — and vodka.
There is a long history of alcohol abuse in Russia. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tried to tackle the problem 20 years ago by limiting the production and distribution of liquor. Male life expectancy increased three years.
But consumption levels shot back up as soon as the controls were eased. The average Russian drinks five gallons of pure alcohol per year, causing an estimated 900,000 deaths over the last decade from acute alcohol poisoning, fights and accidents, according to figures released by Tatyana Yakovleva, head of the Duma Committee on Public Health. Others suffer permanent brain damage or liver damage from homemade alcohol.
"People drink, and they drink a lot, and they drink for a long time, because they can't help but drink," said Yuliya Kovgan, 25, her voice trembling as she struggled to sit without falling over in a potato field on the edge of Ryazanovshchina, an eastern Siberian village northeast of Irkutsk.
She was surrounded by a few dozen seed potatoes, an empty shot glass, a bottle of industrial-grade alcohol and her reeling brother, an unemployed roofer. Standing to the side in an old housecoat was Larisa Berezhnaya, her 53-year-old mother, tapping a grimy foot and affecting a disdainful air; it became apparent that she was drunk too.
"This is our life; we call it normal. We plant potatoes, we dig them out, and that's it," Berezhnaya shrugged. "There's nothing for people here."
A few decades ago, Ryazanovshchina was a collective farm center with thriving livestock operations and about twice its current population. Men would go into the forests to fell timber all summer and the women would celebrate their homecoming with samovars of tea in the street. But without the support of the Soviet state, one by one, the farms failed.
Last winter, villagers say, someone burned down a neighbor's hay shed when she wouldn't give a bottle on credit. In a nearby town, a drunk grandmother threw a crying infant out the window of her fifth-floor apartment. Pushkarev, the regional archpriest, confided that the church in nearby Tikhonovka was not functioning because "the priest is on a drunken rampage."
Olga Kolotygina, 36, one of several women who have assumed leadership of the Ryazanovshchina town council, estimates that no more than half a dozen men among the village's 160 people are sober and "trying to improve their lives."
Much more typical is the filthy two-room shack at the end of a street where Lyudmila Borisova, 16, is looking after her three younger siblings. Her mother moved to the next town with her boyfriend, leaving the children behind.
While Borisova earns money by tending cattle in a pasture outside town, her siblings wander the village gathering handouts. They retire each night to a pair of bare mattresses. Borisova says she doesn't blame her mother for leaving, and she'll do the same when she can.
"There's nothing good here," she said.AIDS Strikes the Young
It has been five years since Svetlana Glukhova was diagnosed as HIV-positive, but she says she still has no idea whether she needs drug therapy. Doctors at the only AIDS center in her city do not have the necessary laboratory equipment to decide that.She does know that even when she took her first AIDS test, the sores on the fingers she once used to inject heroin were already failing to heal.
The United Nations says Russia has more people infected with HIV than any other country in Europe, due in part to "extraordinarily large numbers of young people who inject drugs."
But the disease has spread widely through the population, and more than half of all new cases result from heterosexual intercourse. Officially, more than 300,000 Russians are infected with HIV or have AIDS, but the UN says the number could easily be much higher.
The problem is not as serious as Africa's. The difference, experts say, is that African birthrates are high enough to replace those who die. Not so in this country.
Compounding the problem, the prevalence of AIDS among young people threatens to add to the population decline by killing them before they can bring a new generation into the world.
Murray Feshbach of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, one of the world's leading experts on Russian health and demographics, said in a study that 80 percent of this country's AIDS patients are younger than 30. In the West, it's nearly the reverse: 70 percent are older than 30.
That means 5 million to 10 million Russian teenagers could contract the disease within a few years, federal health officials say. The Russian Military Medical Commission has recorded a 25-fold increase in the number of HIV-positive military conscripts in the last five years, Feshbach said.
"Even optimistically, you're looking at 250,000 deaths a year from AIDS alone in 2020, and pessimistically, we're talking about 650,000 a year," Feshbach said.
Deaths among adults between the ages of 25 and 49 would be particularly devastating, he said.
The Russian government pledged in 1995 to provide free AIDS treatment. But more than a decade later, only about 5,000 people are getting antiretroviral drug therapy.
Putin announced a twentyfold increase in funding this year, providing $120 million for the treatment of perhaps 15,000 AIDS patients.
A coalition of nongovernmental organizations known as the Global Fund is allocating another $120 million to treat as many as 50,000 additional patients through 2010.
But the World Health Organization said in June that shortages in AIDS drugs had developed in several regions, apparently resulting in interruptions in treatment and possibly some deaths.
Akrom Eltom, the agency's AIDS program leader in Moscow, said patients who had been coaxed with great difficulty into a health care system that strongly stigmatized them might not return, endangering their health and encouraging the development of drug-resistant strains of the disease.
Glukhova said AIDS patients in the city of Tula, the arms manufacturing center 180 kilometers southwest of Moscow where she lives, would be ostracized if they went public. She said she wouldn't dare talk to Russian news media without covering her face.
"If I uncover my face, I will be eaten alive at the bus stop tomorrow," she said in an interview. "I will lose my job, without any doubt."
Glukhova headed a support network of fellow HIV patients in Tula until international funds ran out in 2004. She said doctors told her they estimated that 1,000 people in Tula — population 600,000 — needed drug therapy for AIDS, but only 10 were getting it — and only partial treatment at that.
"When I asked the doctors in the AIDS center about this therapy, they just shrugged their shoulders. Because when I told them I heard there are three drugs you're supposed to take, they had a notion of what I was talking about, but they don't have access to it. The maximum they can offer you is just one drug," Glukhova said.
Sitting in a dimly lit cafe that doubles as a dance hall on Saturday nights, Glukhova wiped away tears and said she was watching her friends slowly die.
"One person I know, he was trying to stifle all his pangs by injecting and injecting himself with drugs. He couldn't even get up from his bed anymore, but he continued to call his friends and ask for more drugs," she said.
"When I said to him, 'Let me take you to the hospital, let me try to get something for you,' he waved me away.
"Some people have such moments of despair that they just don't have the guts to struggle for their life anymore."

Yakov Ryzhak of the Los Angeles Times' Moscow bureau contributed to this report.

TITLE: Sorenstam Defeat Symbolic
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PALM DESERT, California — Lorena Ochoa was kicking herself for making a mistake at a time when she couldn't afford any.Two shots behind the best player in women's golf, with Annika Sorenstam in a bunker on the 10th hole at Bighorn, Ochoa hit an 8-iron some 60 feet left of the flag to seemingly lose her advantage. Only when she started pacing the putt did her attitude change.
"I bet you 100 pesos I make this," she told her caddie.
The ball streaked across the green, banged into the back of the hole and hopped out for the briefest second before disappearing for a birdie that changed everything in Samsung World Championship.
Ochoa walked off the green in a tie, birdied the next hole to take her first lead, then pulled away from Sorenstam down the stretch to close with a 7-under 65 and win by two shots Sunday for her fifth victory of the year.
"Luck, it's important to have," Ochoa said. "When you play Annika, you got to do all those things. Make a long putt, good driving, get lucky bounces. And I did that."
Ochoa said it was her biggest win of the year, a strong statement considering she won in her native Mexico last week, which felt like a major championship with so much pressure playing at home.
This certainly had more riding on the outcome.
Sorenstam is a member at Bighorn, was unbeaten on the desert course, had a three-shot lead going into the final round and was trying to set an LPGA Tour record by winning the same tournament for the sixth time.
"Being three shots back is not an easy thing," Ochoa said. "To overcome and win the tournament, and it's my fifth win in the season, and player-of-the-year points are very important ... for sure, my biggest 18 holes."
Sorenstam has been the LPGA Player of the Year the last five years, but that could be about to change.
Ochoa now has a comfortable lead in the points-based race, and Sorenstam will have to win her last two tournaments to have any chance. The 24-year-old Mexican also has a big lead on the money list at more than $2.3 million, $434,646 ahead of Sorenstam. The Swede will have to win the season-ending ADT Championship, a new gimmick this year that pays $1 million to the winner.
But the biggest prize for Ochoa was beating Sorenstam in a fascinating duel in the desert.
"I really don't know what to say other than just to congratulate Lorena on a great performance and a great week and a great year," Sorenstam said after closing with a 70 that featured three bogeys. "I'm probably as disappointed as you can be. It just doesn't get any worse than this. I gave it all I had this week. She just played very, very well."
They had played in the final group only two previous times. Ochoa stumbled badly in losing at Phoenix last year, and Sorenstam got her again when they played this summer in Sweden.
All signs pointed to another victory for Sorenstam at Bighorn, but Ochoa had other ideas.
One of the most dynamic players on the LPGA Tour, a superior putter, Ochoa was a mixture of calm and confidence. She started by making a 25-foot birdie putt on No. 1, then nearly holed a putt from 70 feet on No. 2. Then came the par-5 third, when Ochoa knocked in a 45-foot eagle putt to peck away at the lead.
Ochoa caught her with a two-shot swing on No. 5, making an 18-foot birdie putt as Sorenstam three-putted for bogey from 50 feet. The Swede showed some resiliency with birdies on the seventh and ninth to restore her lead.
Then came the sudden shift at No. 10.
"I was upset with myself," Ochoa said of her miss with the 8-iron. "I was walking and pacing the ball and I thought, 'I can make this one. Just turn it around.' It was a really long putt, and that probably was the biggest turn of the day."
The final turn came on the 15th.
Both players laid up on the par 5, but Sorenstam's sand wedge from 61 yards came up short below a ridge, and she three-putted for another bogey. Ochoa holed a 15-foot birdie, and suddenly had a three-shot lead with three holes to play.
"I knew it was about time," Ochoa said. "I knew I could do it. We're breaking a barrier today. It's very important to me. It has extra meaning, for sure. I'll go home next week and celebrate it."
Ochoa and Juli Inkster had the lowest score of the tournament.
Inkster was 10 shots better than her playing partner, 17-year-old Michelle Wie, who closed with a 75 for her worst score on the LPGA Tour this year and her eighth consecutive round against women without breaking par.
Wie finished 17th in the 20-player field.
"Obviously, I'm not feeling as wonderful as I did," Wie said. "Like I said before, sometimes we have to take a step back in order to move forward. This is the time of year you don't play that great, your best, and all of a sudden you play good. I feel that's coming in me."
Her final event of the year is the Casio World Open on the Japanese tour the week of Thanksgiving.
For Ochoa, it was a huge step forward.
She is in great shape to dethrone Sorenstam as player of the year, with the Vare Trophy for the lowest scoring average, and perhaps with the money title. And it might signal a new era on the LPGA Tour.

TITLE: China Begins Checks On North Korean Shipments
AUTHOR: By William Foreman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea appeared to slip further into isolation on Monday, as China — under intense pressure to enforce new UN sanctions — inspected cargo trucks bound for its communist ally and stepped up construction of a border fence.Japan — once a major trading partner with North Korea — said it was considering further sanctions, and Australia banned the North's ships from its ports.
In Washington, U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's office said that air samples have confirmed that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test.
The Chinese inspections at a border crossing with the North came amid concerns that Beijing would ignore the new UN sanctions leveled against the reclusive communist country for its proclaimed nuclear test. China is a major trader with North Korea and its support is key to the success of the new UN measures, which call for nations to check cargo leaving and arriving from North Korea.
Meanwhile, South Korea called Monday for Russia to play an active role in resolving the nuclear standoff with North Korea. "Efforts to resolve the issue through dialogue should not be abandoned in difficult situations," South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in a telephone conversation, according to Roh's office.
China's customs agency and its commerce and foreign ministries refused to say whether the cargo checks were prompted by UN sanctions, but a top U.S. diplomat said the inspections were promising.
Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said there will be "enormous pressure on China to live up to their responsibility" in enforcing United Nations punishment of its ally, North Korea. "We are all banking on that."
North Korea remained defiant, with its No. 2 ranking leader, Kim Yong Nam, saying the country would strengthen its military and "achieve a final victory in the historic standoff with the U.S." His televised remarks didn't touch directly on the sanctions.
U.S. officials were preparing a diplomatic swing through Asia to address divisions over how to impose the new sanctions. The measures, approved Saturday, also include an embargo on major weapons to Pyongyang and the freezing of the assets of businesses linked to the North's weapons programs.
The top U.S. envoy on North Korea's nuclear program, Christopher Hill, met on Monday with his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae, and said the two agreed to implement the sanctions swiftly.
Hill told reporters in Tokyo that the common threat from North Korea has helped unite the regional powers, particularly China.
"I feel that we have a great deal of similar thinking with China. I think this nuclear test has brought China much closer to us," Hill said.
The U.S. diplomatic campaign was to continue Wednesday when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to arrive in Japan before traveling to South Korea and China. She was expected to have a three-way meeting with the Japanese and South Korean foreign ministers Thursday in Seoul, Japanese officials said.
Amid the diplomacy, Iran — which has also attracted global criticism for its nuclear program — issued its first official reaction to the UN sanctions. The country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rejected the American-initiated measures, accusing the U.S. of using the UN Security Council as a "weapon to impose its hegemony."
Japan has taken the hardest line against the North. On Friday, the Cabinet approved closing ports to North Korean ships and banning trade with the North.

TITLE: Suicide Bomb Kills 92 in Sri Lanka
AUTHOR: By Ranga Sirilal
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: COLOMBO — Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels rammed a truck loaded with explosives into a Sri Lankan naval convoy on Monday, killing at least 92 people and deepening pessimism over this month's planned peace talks.The attack near the town of Habarana, about 190 kilometers northeast of the capital Colombo, was one of the worst suicide bombings in the troubled Indian Ocean island.
It came at the start of a week of hectic international diplomacy aimed at ending a rash of fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ahead of planned peace talks in Geneva on October 28-29.
The victims were mostly navy sailors going home on vacation, but some civilians in the area were also killed, military officers at Colombo's media center for national security said. More than 100 people were wounded.
"This inhuman act is clear revenge by the terrorists on the navy which inflicted successive defeats on the LTTE against their attempts to smuggle arms and explosives in the recent past," the center said in a statement.
Officers said the attack took place near a transit camp where the navy gathers its men heading to or returning from the eastern naval base of Trincomalee.
"There were about 15 buses and 13 were damaged in the explosion," one navy officer in Colombo told Reuters.
The convoy had stopped near the town and many sailors had stepped out of their buses when the truck rammed into the vehicles, he said.
There were some small shops in the area and civilians were also caught in the blast, he said, adding that the toll could go up as bodies had been blown to bits and a count was still on.
Tiger military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said he had to check with a regional commander if the LTTE was responsible.
But he said the bombing could be justified if it was indeed the rebels who had carried it out as government forces also launched attacks outside the war zone and on civilians.
Sri Lankan air force jets bombed a village near the northeastern town of Mullaithivu late on Monday and several civilians were feared killed, he added.
Monday's attack came as Yasushi Akashi, the peace envoy of the island's chief financial donor, Japan, began talks with government leaders to push a four-year peace process that has been battered by mounting violence.
Hundreds of people have been killed in spiraling violence in Sri Lanka since late July, and a truce brokered in 2002 now exists only on paper.
Last week, dozens of troops and rebels were killed and hundreds wounded in one of the deadliest battles since the truce.
On Sunday, the Sri Lankan navy shot and sunk a suspected rebel trawler off the country's northwestern coast, killing six suspected Tamil Tigers.
More than 65,000 people have been killed since 1983 when the rebels began fighting for an independent Tamil homeland.
Diplomats said Monday's attack was a setback to the Geneva talks, about which hope was already low.

TITLE: Russian Sweep at Kremlin Cup
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Top seed Nikolay Davydenko beat Davis Cup team mate Marat Safin 6-4 5-7 6-4 in the all-Russian Kremlin Cup final on Sunday to complete a unique double for the host country.Earlier, in another all-Russian affair unseeded Anna Chakvetadze upset fifth seed Nadia Petrova 6-4 6-4 in the women's final to win her second title in a month.
Davydenko broke the former world number one twice at the start of the third set to build a 3-0 lead before completing victory in the first all-Russian men's final in the 16-year history of the Moscow indoor event.
"I was hoping to play Marat in the final," said Davydenko, who is a step closer to securing a place in next month's season-ending Masters Cup in Shanghai.
"Although I lost to Safin twice this year, I beat him in our last meeting in Estoril and with this win I've proved that I'm playing better than him for the time being," added the world number five, who also won here in 2004.
Safin, who was bidding for his first title since winning the Australian Open in January, 2005, was left to rue missed chances.
"If I'd held my serve in the third set I'd have had a good chance to win," he said.
"It has been a very tough year for me," added Safin, who returned to the tour in February after six months out with a knee injury.
"I've suffered a lot of painful defeats this year, matches I think I should have won because my confidence was low. And today was one of those unlucky days for me."
Chakvetadze, who earned her maiden WTA title in Guangzhou, China two weeks ago, outplayed the more experienced Petrova thanks to an excellent all-round game and greater court coverage.
Petrova, chasing her sixth title of the year, was playing with both thighs heavily strapped and was also nursing a chest injury.
"I was a little bit lucky today because Nadia was obviously not 100 percent fit," said Chakvetadze, who beat Petrova in both of their previous matches this year.
"But still I'm very happy to win in here in Moscow," added the 19-year-old Muscovite, who will take home $196,900 for her efforts.
She reached the last four without hitting a ball after U.S. Open champion and second seed Maria Sharapova pulled out with a foot injury on Friday.
Chakvetadze broke the world number five in the ninth game to clinch the first set then twice more to take a 4-1 lead in the second.
Although, Petrova pulled one break back the 24th-ranked Chakvetadze held on to record the biggest victory of her career.
She converted her first match point when Petrova netted a forehand.
Chakvetadze will now move into the top 20 for the first time. She is projected to reach number 16 when the new rankings are released on Monday.

TITLE: Euro League Leaders March On
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — After a two-week international break, domestic soccer returned to Europe this weekend with normal service being resumed at the top of the major leagues.None of the league leaders were beaten but Werder Bremen went top of the Bundesliga on goal difference after winning 6-0 at VfL Bochum, the perfect warm-up for their Champions League meeting with Bulgarians Levski Sofia on Wednesday.
ENGLAND
Manchester United stayed top of the Premier League after coming from behind to win 3-1 at Wigan Athletic while champions Chelsea stayed level on 19 points with them after eight matches following their dramatic 1-0 win at Reading.
Bolton moved up to third place on Sunday with a 2-1 win at Newcastle where El Hadji Diouf scored twice in two minutes midway through the second half.
GERMANY
Werder Bremen displaced Bayern Munich at the top of the table after a thumping 6-0 win at VfL Bochum, although Bayern had a good weekend with a 4-2 home win over Hertha Berlin.
With Schalke also winning, 2-1 at Hamburg SV, the top of the table is close with Bremen, Bayern and Schalke all on 13 points followed by Alemannia Aachen and Borussia Moenchengladbach on 12.
FRANCE
Olympique Lyon's march towards a sixth successive title continued with a 2-1 win over St. Etienne, although for once Gerard Houllier's men did not have things all their own way and needed a late goal from Juninho to collect three points.
They have now won eight of their opening nine matches and drawn the other and already seem out of sight at this early stage.
ITALY
Dejan Stankovic scored a goal in each half to send Inter Milan back to the top of Serie A with a 2-1 win over Catania on Sunday.
The result gave the Italian champions 14 points from six matches, two points ahead of AS Roma, who lacked their usual fluency in a 1-0 defeat at Reggina.
Inter also climbed above Palermo, who lost 3-2 at home to Atalanta.
AC Milan's form showed no real signs of improvement in a 1-1 draw at Sampdoria, and they remain in the lower reaches of the table after starting the season with an eight point reduction.
SPAIN
Barcelona warmed up for their Champions League match with Chelsea by moving three points clear at the top after a Ronaldinho double and virtuoso solo goal from Lionel Messi earned a 3-1 home win against high-flying Sevilla.
The win avenged their defeat to Sevilla in the European Supercup in Monaco in August with a brilliant individual goal 10 minutes from time.
Barca, who are the only unbeaten side in the division, have 16 points from six games, three clear of Valencia and Atletico Madrid.
Valencia slipped to their first defeat of the season when they lost 3-2 at Celta Vigo, while Atletico snatched a 2-1 victory at home to Recreativo Huelva.

TITLE: Israeli President Skips Duties After Rape Allegations Arise
AUTHOR: By Mark Lavie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM — Israel's president canceled his appearance at the opening session of parliament Monday, succumbing to intense pressure after police recommended indicting him on rape charges.Attending the opening of parliament's winter session is one of President Moshe Katsav's most important and visible duties. The president, whose post is largely ceremonial, traditionally enters the Knesset's chamber to the chorus of trumpets, and lawmakers stand at attention until he takes his seat.
Several lawmakers, including all members of the liberal Meretz party, had threatened to boycott the ceremony if Katsav attended.
Katsav's brother, Lior, said the president decided to stay home to protect the dignity of the Knesset.
"There are apparently some members of Knesset who want to hover like vultures over carcasses and create provocations and to harm the image of the Knesset and symbols of power in Israel," Lior Katsav told Army Radio. "The president will not be part of this charade."
In Katsav's absence, Parliament Speaker Dalia Itzik was to preside over Monday's ceremony. Police recommended Sunday that Katsav be indicted on charges including rape and aggravated sexual assault, wrapping up a month-long investigation into complaints by women who worked for him. Katsav has denied any wrongdoing.
Attorney General Meni Mazuz must make the final decision on whether to indict. Although a decision is likely weeks away, calls on Katsav to temporarily step aside or resign are growing.
Katsav's lawyer, Zion Amir, said the president has no plans to step down, though a formal indictment would "be a turning point that the president will have to take into consideration."
While Israel has a long history of political scandals, the charges against Katsav would be the most serious ever brought against a serving official. A previous president and several prime ministers were suspected of financial misdeeds, and a former defense minister was convicted of sexual harassment.

TITLE: Ban Ki-moon Calls for Talks Over North Korean Bomb
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — The next secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, said there was still room for dialogue with North Korea and he was prepared to travel to Pyongyang for talks.In an interview with a French newspaper published on Monday, Ban, who will take over from Kofi Annan on Jan. 1, also urged North Korea to avoid doing anything that would further isolate it from the international community.
The UN Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to impose financial and arms sanctions on North Korea to punish the reclusive nation for its claimed nuclear weapon test.
"Depending on the circumstances, and after having had consultations with the relevant countries, in particular those in the six-party talks ... I am ready to take my own initiatives, including a visit to North Korea, of course," he said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper.
He said he would like to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and explain to the North Koreans what they must do to be "responsible members of the international community."
"They should think about the future of their people and their country," Ban said. "Much better opportunities await them if they give up their program and their nuclear weapons."
Ban, who is currently South Korea's foreign minister, said North Korea must not take any "new negative action" that would further isolate it.
North Korea has boycotted talks with the South, the United States, China, Japan and Russia since last year because of a U.S. crackdown on firms it suspects of aiding Pyongyang in illicit activities such as counterfeiting.
In a concession to China, the UN resolution specifically excludes the use of force, but allows economic sanctions and a restriction on naval and air transport.
Ban said China had played a "very constructive" role in trying to resolve the crisis with North Korea.
He said he was also concerned about Iran's nuclear standoff with the international community.
"Confidence is at the heart of the problem," he said.
"The Iranian government has not convinced the international community that its intentions are peaceful. I hope it will stop its enrichment activities."
Ban comfortably beat six rivals to win the nomination to take over from Annan who has led the world body since 1997.
Asked if weapons proliferation would be a big issue during his mandate, he said: "Of course. It's one of the biggest threats for the international community to manage."
He also urged the Sudanese government to accept a United Nation's peacekeeping force in the Darfur region.
"I'm disappointed by its (the government's) lack of cooperation," he said.

TITLE: Younis Hopeful Despite Doping Scandal
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JAIPUR, India — Pakistan skipper Younis Khan is confident his team can overcome the loss of strike bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif at the Champions Trophy after the pair were withdrawn following positive drug tests.The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) withdrew the players from the squad on Monday after the anabolic steroid nandrolone was found in their samples from tests conducted before the event.
"It is very tough when you are without two of your important players," Younis told reporters on the eve of their opening match. "But I'm still positive."
Pakistan will be left with only 12 players for Tuesday's Group B fixture against Sri Lanka in Jaipur.
Team manager Talat Ali said the PCB was discussing replacements with the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer said the series of crises in the side in the last few months had left him dazed.
"It is difficult to understand why it is happening, but it is happening," he said. "We have to get on with it.
"I'm pretty confident the team will take any adversity in its stride and rise to the occasion.
"Unfortunately the timing is not right," he added. "But it happens, it happens."
Woolmer said he initiated the tests before coming into the tournament to avoid any such problems during the event.
Under the ICC anti-doping policy, two players from each of the 10 participating teams will be randomly tested during seven of the 21 games at the tournament ending on November 5.
Any player found guilty could be suspended up to two years for a first-time offence and a life ban could be imposed for a second violation.
The Pakistan team was embroiled in a ball-tampering row after they forfeited the Oval test against England in August, leading to captain Inzamam-ul-Haq being banned for four matches for bringing the game into disrepute.
Younis Khan was reinstated as interim skipper only hours before the team landed in India after he resigned in a huff, refusing to be "dummy captain".
Younis said everyone, including the board, coach and players were responsible for the situation, adding: "We have only one plan.
"Win or lose, we would play good cricket. The way the wickets have played and the general atmosphere, all teams look the same."

nEngland captain Andrew Flintoff said he had faith in his side after a shoddy batting display led to their four-wicket defeat against hosts India in the Champions Trophy on Sunday.
England were skittled for 125, their lowest total against India, in the group A opener, leaving the 2004 finalists with the prospect of needing victories over world champions Australia and holders West Indies to keep alive their semi-final hopes.
"It was the first game of the tournament, and we started badly both with bat and ball," he told reporters. "I'm not disillusioned, I know ours is a talented side and we can come back strong over the weekend."
England play Australia at the same venue on Saturday. "There still are two games left in the league stage," he said. "The beauty of this tournament is the games are spread out. It gives us time to reflect and go forward."
Flintoff was dismissed for a duck after promoting himself to number three on his comeback having undergone ankle surgery in July. He has decided not to resume bowling to avoid another breakdown before England defend the Ashes they won last year after an 18-year gap. Flintoff praised young Indian seamers Munaf Patel and Irfan Pathan, who together reduced the innings to 55 for five before off spinner Ramesh Powar's triple strikes killed it off.

TITLE: Cech Faces Extended Lay-Off
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech has been told he must take an extended break from football after surgery on a depressed fracture of his skull and warned that a premature return could be fatal.The Czech International was still in hospital on Monday after undergoing surgery to repair damage caused in a collision with Reading's Stephen Hunt during an English Premiership match on Saturday. Hunt's knee connected with the goalkeeper in the first minute of the match after Cech had come out of his goalmouth to gather the ball at the feet of an opponent moving at full pace. Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho claimed after the match that Hunt had gone into the challenge "with intent," and the London club have voiced their concerns over the challenge in a letter to the Football Association.
But Hunt insisted again on Monday that the contact with Cech had been accidental. "I can guarantee that I did not attempt to injure Petr, and I'm very upset that the collision has resulted in such a bad injury," the Irishman said.
The FA was reviewing video footage of the incident but any action against Hunt is unlikely because of the difficulty of proving intent and the fact that most observors have judged that the clash was made inevitable by the momentum of the two players.
Mike Riley, the referee at the match, could however find himself in the disciplinary spotlight. The official appeared to under-estimate the seriousness of the injury suffered by Cech, 24, and ordered him to crawl off the pitch before he could receive treatment.
According to an account in Monday's Daily Mirror, Chelsea's medical staff were concerned for Cech's life as they treated the goalkeeper in the dressing room and waited for an ambulance to come. "Before it arrived Petr was unconscious," a Chelsea source told the newspaper. "The big fear was his brain was swelling. In these sorts of situations, the problem worsens as the brain reacts to the blow it received."
After a brief visit to a local hospital, Cech was transferred to a specialist brain-injury unit at Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary, where he underwent surgery.

TITLE: Election in Ecuador Ends in Tie
AUTHOR: By Patrick Markey
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: QUITO, Ecuador — After a tight weekend election, the battle for Ecuador's presidency was headed for a November run-off between a conservative tycoon who favors close links to the United States and a leftist ally of Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela.Magnate Alvaro Noboa, one of Ecuador's wealthiest men with holdings in bananas, coffee and banking, led former finance minister Rafael Correa after Sunday's vote, but neither had won an outright victory, according to preliminary results.
The market-friendly Noboa won about 27 percent of votes and the leftist Correa 22 percent, according to preliminary results from more than 70 percent of ballot boxes. Both were far short of the percentage needed to avoid a second round.
The standoff between the left-winger and market-friendly billionaire reflected the ideological battle in Latin America, where Chavez is seeking allies for his socialist campaign to counter Washington's influence.
Correa's calls for debt restructuring, disbanding Congress and the ouster of U.S. troops based in Ecuador have stoked concerns on Wall Street and in Washington that Ecuador could face more economic and political instability.
Reacting to Noboa's surprise victory, Ecuador's dollar-denominated sovereign bonds surged on Monday to a one-month high after weeks of sell off due to investor concerns a Correa victory would force them into a debt restructuring.
Ecuadoreans have turned away their traditional politicians after years of turmoil and corruption in the Congress. Three presidents have been forced out in popular unrest in the last decade, the latest in April 2005.
But Noboa, on his third presidential run, lured voters with promises of jobs and housing.
He successfully played up fears Correa would guide Ecuador to socialism, roll back economic freedoms and drop the U.S. dollar as the currency.
"Two positions have been clearly defined: Correa's position of communism, dictatorship, of Cuba ... and my proposal which is that of Spain, Chile, the U.S. and Italy, where there is liberty," Noboa said after the preliminary results.
Under Ecuadorean law, candidates need more than 50 percent of the votes or 40 percent of votes with a 10-percentage point advantage over the nearest rival to win the presidency in the first round.
The run-off will be held on Nov. 26.

TITLE: Muhammad Yunus Wins Nobel Peace Prize
AUTHOR: By Alister Doyle
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OSLO — Perhaps only once in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize has a secret been as well kept as Friday's 2006 award to Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank for lending to the poor.In a room at the Nobel Institute where white plaster doves adorn the ceiling, journalists' jaws dropped when Ole Danbolt Mjoes, head of the five-member Nobel Committee, named the newest laureates and praised their loans to the poorest of the poor.
It was about as big a surprise as the 1995 award to British ban-the-bomb scientist Joseph Rotblat and his Pugwash Conferences.
The 1995 Nobel thunderbolt has gone into the lore of the award, first made in 1901, as a source of delight for the prize guardians who do not like their secret to leak, and of nightmares for reporters who try to read the runes.
"I think it's hard to rival the Rotblat year but I think back on it with some fondness. I have never seen so many jaws drop as in 1995," Geir Lundestad, head of the Nobel Institute, told my colleague John Acher and myself earlier this week.
Perhaps we should have known a shock was brewing when we handed him a bookmakers' list of some 60 candidates during the interview, topped by Finland's former President Martti Ahtisaari for brokering peace in Indonesia's Aceh province.
Lundestad scanned it and handed it back, remarking: "That's a good list". Neither Yunus nor Grameen Bank were on it.
Committee members say they do not even tell their spouses who has won the award, worth $1.36 million and set up by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish philanthropist who invented dynamite. They usually make their decision in late September.
Yet maybe they talk in their sleep because almost every year the frenzy of leaks, media speculation, bookmakers' lists and experts' predictions turns up the right names.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, won in 2005. They were bookmakers' favorites.
Historians say there was less secrecy in the early years — news agency reporters were routinely told the name of the winner in advance until the late 1980s to make their lives easier.
"Get a reporter to Calcutta," Reuters was told in 1979 a few days before the prize went to Mother Teresa in the Indian city.
No longer.
This year we and others were wrongly preparing to write about Ahtisaari, human rights activists from China to Russia and Australian ex-Foreign Minister Gareth Evans.
Apologies to all of them and to Reuters colleagues who were sent on wild goose chases to stake out their homes and offices.
Still, in 2004 the committee tightened its secrecy — refusing now even to give the dates of its meetings — after Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai told Reuters in Nairobi she had just got a phone call telling her she had won.
The head of the committee even referred to that scoop in a speech at the prize ceremony in Oslo.
"Maathai ... bubbled over with joy, and the news was all over the world in an instant — a good twenty minutes before the official announcement in Oslo!" Mjoes said.

TITLE: Madonna Baby Leaves Malawi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LILONGWE — A small private jet carrying the one-year-old Malawian boy pop star Madonna hopes to adopt took off from the southern African country on Monday, a Reuters witness said.The child, David Banda, was whisked out of his native Malawi with one of Madonna's bodyguards and her personal assistant on a flight which is believed to be headed for Johannesburg.
Malawian law prohibits adoptions by non-residents, but officials are granting an exemption or waiver to Madonna, who has confirmed her intention to adopt the child who has lived in a dilapidated orphanage near the Zambian border since shortly after his birth.
A lawyer for human rights groups who had planned to file an application on Monday asking the court to block the adoption said it was technically legal for Madonna to take Banda out of the country.
But rights groups reiterated their anger that the pop diva was being allowed to circumvent Malawian laws.
"The rich shouldn't get preferential treatment. I am fine with the idea of the adoption but I want people to go through the system," said Emmie Chanika, director of the Civil Liberties Committee.
Madonna is the mother of two children.