SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1218 (84), Friday, November 3, 2006
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TITLE: Russia Plans to Double Gas Prices for Georgia
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia's state-controlled natural gas monopoly said Thursday that it would more than double the price it charges Georgia, further heightening tensions between the ex-Soviet neighbors.The Georgian foreign minister said the price hike was the cost of his nation's turning away from Moscow and toward the West.
OAO Gazprom said in a statement that it will charge $230 per 35,314 cubic feet of gas, compared with the $110 that it charges now. The announcement signaled Russia's continued recalcitrant stance even as Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili visited Moscow in the hope of easing relations between Moscow and Tbilisi.
The relationship has steadily deteriorated since the 2004 election of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who has sought to take the Caucasus nation out of the Russian orbit, bolster ties with the West and join NATO in 2008.
Tensions rose between the two countries after Georgia briefly detained four purported Russian spies in late September. Moscow responded with a transport and postal blockade on Georgia and a crackdown on Georgian migrants living in Russia, whose financial remittances help sustain their homeland's economy.
Moscow has shrugged off Western calls for lifting the sanctions against Georgia, saying it was acting because the Georgian government is plotting to bring the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia back into the fold by force — allegations Georgia denies.
Bezhuashvili said he was not surprised by the announcement because Russia had been warning that it would put Georgia on the same payment terms as other European nations, and that he had received assurances that Moscow would not cut off gas or electricity supplies to his country.
But, he said: "They present it as a commercial deal, but there is a big portion of politics."
Bezhuashvili told reporters in Moscow that the new arrangement was "the price we pay for our choice" of setting pro-Western policies.
He said gas prices were the only tool Russia had to influence Georgia, "but we won't be pressured."
Bezhuashvili said his country had worked to diversify its energy sources away from Russia, which has been virtually the only supplier. It is counting on negotiations with Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iran, which can cover Georgia's 56-63.5 billion cubic meter annual demand, he said.
Gazprom has consistently argued that price increases for former Soviet neighbors are a long overdue recalibration toward market pricing. However, the increases have been widely seen in the West as part of the Kremlin's attempts to rein in ex-Soviet neighbors.
Gazprom temporarily switched off the gas it supplies to Ukraine at the start of this year after Kiev refused to accept an abrupt price hike that was seen as a calculated blow to its Western-leaning government.
Since the appointment of Kremlin-friendly Prime Minister Vikor Yanukovich, however, Ukraine has been able to negotiate a much more gentle price rise for 2007.
Georgia's economy already is struggling. Tbilisi was left freezing for a week this year after a pipeline explosion in southern Russia cut supplies. Saakashvili blamed Moscow for the interruption, charges Russian officials angrily denied.
Cuts would also deal a blow to Georgia's landlocked neighbor, Armenia, which receives its gas from Russia via Georgia.
Armenian businesses already have been forced to organize costly new export routes to Russia due to the transport blockade.

TITLE: Banned Marchers Resort To The Metro
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Moscow and St. Petersburg have banned street marches planned for this holiday weekend, sending ultranationalists underground — to the metro."I decided to ban the so-called Russian March," Mayor Yury Luzhkov said in a televised interview Tuesday night.
"I understand that these outcasts might make an appearance somewhere in the city, but we should not allow these kinds of actions to destroy the unity of our society," he said.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko announced a ban in her city Wednesday.
Moscow came under fierce criticism after it allowed thousands of young people to march downtown during the Nov. 4 Unity Day holiday last year. Many nationalists carried signs displaying swastikas and yelled "Heil Hitler."
Police on Wednesday searched the Moscow studio of painter Alexei Kanurin, who filed the latest march request on behalf of the ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration. He said police seized a flag with the organization's emblem.
Before Kanurin, several initiative groups had filed multiple requests with the Moscow Central Administrative District to hold the march, but they were all denied.
That did not seem to discourage leaders of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration and other groups that participated in last year's march. Vladimir Tor, a coordinator at the Moscow headquarters of "Russian March-2006," said he expected 10,000 people to participate Saturday.
"Participants of the march will gather from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Komsomolskaya metro station, and from there we will move to the place where the march will start," he said.
He said the starting place was being kept secret for now.
About 2,000 people are expected to march in St. Petersburg, said Dmitry Kirillov, a coordinator there.
By law, authorities cannot ban a public march but only deny it a specified route. In Moscow, the nationalists initially planned to gather at Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad and then walk to Teatralnaya Ploshchad, where a rally was to be held.
Among organizers of the march are State Duma deputies Andrei Saveliyev, Boris Vinogradov and Dmitry Rogozin of the nationalist Rodina faction; Communist Viktor Alksnis; and Nikolai Kuryanovich, who was expelled from the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party on Tuesday "for breaching party discipline."
"It will be an action of civil disobedience," Rogozin told journalists about the march Wednesday.
"It will be a great strategic provocation because it boosts xenophobia and facilitates the disintegration of the multi-ethnic Russia," said economist Mikhail Delyagin, a former Rodina member.
Tor stressed that marchers would not carry posters with swastikas, shout Nazi slogans or make Nazi salutes.
"We have agreed on twelve slogans, none of them using Nazi rhetoric," he said. "If anyone draws a poster with a swastika at the march, we will first ask them to hide it, and if they do not comply, we will ask the police to take action against such provocateurs."
The approved slogans include "Russia is a land of Russians," "Russian order on Russian soil," and "Kondopoga is a hero city" — a reference to the Karelian town shaken by ethnic riots in September. Other slogans incorporate rights rhetoric, such as "For freedom of speech," "Down with corruption" and "For free elections."
Yabloko urged Moscow authorities to allow the march if it were free of Nazi insignia. "The ban ... pushes its organizers to act in ways that could destabilize the situation in Moscow and threaten the lives of Muscovites, particularly in the metro," the liberal party said in a statement.
The official march web site, www.rusmarch.org, provides elaborate guidelines on how to avoid a police crackdown while gathering for the march. It says the metro is a good place to gather due to an Interior Ministry ban on the use of gas, water cannons and stun grenades by police in the metro.
Metro chief Dmitri Gayev said no march would be allowed in the metro and anyone who obstructed the normal work of the metro would be ejected to the street.
Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of Russia's oldest rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group, said Wednesday that liberal politicians and rights activists would hold a rally of their own Saturday, near the Udarnik movie theater in central Moscow.
Some 6,500 police officers will be dispatched to maintain order in Moscow on Saturday, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Chechen Soldiers Relish Tour of Duty in Lebanon
AUTHOR: By Pavel Davydov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SIDON, Lebanon — Not so long ago, the Russian camp was a war zone.Today, the biggest bang most of the 250 military engineers here encounter is the 5 a.m. wake-up call at the sandy settlement of 50 or so tents nestled against the Mediterranean.
The relative calm is largely due to the end of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. But it's also because two platoons of elite soldiers plucked from the Army's 42nd Division's East and West battalions, based in Chechnya, are standing guard.
"Everything is calm here," says Rasud Baimuratov, commander of one of the platoons. An ethnic Chechen with a towering figure, Baimuratov and his comrades have been welcomed by locals who say they trust Russians more than Western forces. Bilyal Adzhami, a store owner in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatia, explained that many locals see the Russian troops as a counterbalance to the French, Italian and Spanish forces, among others, helping maintain a UN-imposed peace.
"People don't trust the NATO countries that sent peacekeepers here under the UN mission," Adzhami said. "The local populations think their goal here is to protect Israel. And Moscow has always stood up for fair negotiations of the Middle East crisis and for keeping the peace in Lebanon."
What's more, as Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has noted, sending soldiers who are mostly Muslim to patrol a Muslim country has its benefits.
"We get along great with the local population," said Malgobek Khamurzayev, one of the Russian soldiers deployed to southern Lebanon.
Russia declined to take part in the United Nations' peacekeeping operation. But it did send engineers to rebuild bridges in an area hard hit by 34 days of aerial bombings and intense ground combat.
The decision to send the Chechen battalions has been widely viewed as a move by the Kremlin to show the republic as stable after years of war.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has called the move "entirely logical," saying military operations in Chechnya have long since come to an end.
Still, the Chechen battalions, which report to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, are composed of an unusual bunch.
The East battalion includes former Chechen separatists who once battled Russian Army troops but later switched sides. Human rights groups have accused the battalion of atrocities against civilians in Chechnya during regular search-and-destroy missions.
Anatoly Tsyganok, head of the Center for Military Forecasting, voiced confidence that the Army engineers would fulfill their mission but had doubts about their Chechen protectors, who he said were not trained in peacekeeping.
"Conducting negotiations, coordinating with local police — these are difficult things," Tsyganok said.
The East and West battalions were formed during the second Chechen war, which began in late 1999, in an effort to rely more heavily on local recruits in operations against Chechen rebels.
The Lebanon mission appears to have proven popular with the Chechen troops.
Ruslan Musayev, an officer with the Interior Ministry's Chechnya branch, said soldiers vied for a handful of sought-after spots in the Lebanon contingent.
"Word had it that for three months in Lebanon, each soldier would get $5,000," Musayev said. "For that kind of money, a lot of people would agree to be sent to even more distant places."
Yusup Satuyev, a West battalion soldier now in Chechnya, suggested he and his comrades would like to take part in future missions abroad.
"We're one of the bravest peoples in the world," Satuyev said. "And we have tremendous experience in military actions, which we should share with others, but only in the interests of defense."Timur Aliev contributed to this report from Grozny, and Carl Schreck contributed from Moscow.

TITLE: Milepost UES Sale Brings in $459 Million
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Unified Energy Systems said Tuesday that it collected $459 million in the landmark sale of a stake in a power generation company and that no single buyer obtained more than 1.1 percent.The sale of 14.4 percent of OGK-5 is a key first step toward raising billions of dollars in desperately needed investment to upgrade the national power grid.
"Today was a strategic step in electricity reform that has proven that what we have done for the last few years is correct," UES CEO Anatoly Chubais said at a news conference.
Shares in OGK-5 sold at 9 cents each, near the high end of estimates of 7.6 cents to 9.5 cents. UES sold 5.1 billion shares through an additional share offering.
Chubais said no individual investor would get more than 1.1 percent, apparently putting to rest fears that state-run Gazprom would take on a large stake in OGK-5.
Rival bidders said earlier that Gazprombank had bid for the entire 14.4 percent and expressed concern that Chubais might sell out on the key plank of his reform program — to place generation companies in private hands in an effort to boost competition and efficiency.
Chubais said a group of strategic investors would together get no more than 5 percent and the remaining 9.4 percent would go to a group of financial and portfolio investors.
The sale has been closely watched to see if private investors or state-connected companies would grab the largest stake.
Chubais declined to name the bidders and said the buyers would be announced after the shares began trading on the RTS and MICEX on Nov. 10.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or EBRD, was the only buyer to step forward publicly.
"The bank is proud of this commitment to the most far-reaching reform undertaken so far in the new Russia," EBRD chief Jean Lemierre said in a statement.
EBRD spokesman Richard Wallis said the EBRD had gotten about 1 percent, adding that "we did ask for more, but it wasn't an enormous amount."
David Herne, managing director of Halcyon Advisors and a member of the UES board, said the sale had attracted some unexpected buyers.
Halcyon, which already held a minority stake in OGK-5, bid for a further 300 million shares, he said.
Herne said he believed Gazprombank, Vneshekonombank and Italy's ENEL had also bid and that Gazprombank had indeed tried to buy the entire 14.4 percent.
Spokespeople at the three companies declined to comment.
"We are very pleased that Chubais has won this battle to make sure it was a transparent and fair process," the EBRD's Wallis said in response to the Gazprombank bid.
"This is very good for the investment climate," Wallis said.
OGK-5 is the first in a series of sales planned by UES to raise $81 billion to restructure the company.
UES urgently needs the funds to upgrade its aging infrastructure and improve efficiency at power plants, as capacity and fuel supplies run dangerously low.
"Russia's electricity is in a deficit," Chubais said Tuesday. "This is the only path — reform and investment. This problem can only be resolved strategically."
Investors hailed the share sale as highly successful, bringing in enough offers to be 8.6 times oversubscribed.
"It clearly looks like a success," Herne said.
"We believe the investment projects which OGK-5 is now likely to undertake should deliver satisfactory results," Aton said in a research note, adding that the company's projects were "among the best in the market."
Chubais said the offering was "absolutely fundamental" if the country is to overcome what have become chronic fears of wintertime electricity shortages.
"If there was no reform of the kind we saw today, this country would be taking a huge step toward catastrophe," he said.
"Imagine if we didn't have this offering, imagine if we didn't carry out reforms — where would the money come from?"
Chubais has said the country could face power cuts this winter, with gas supplies and electricity capacity running dangerously low.
Last week, Gazprom — which supplies the bulk of UES' gas — acknowledged fuel supplies were running low and called on the government to act quickly to avert cutbacks.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Fair on the SquarenST. PETERSBURG (SPT) City Hall is to launch a Christmas Fair, Interfax reported on Wednesday. The first annual event will be held between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15 on Arts Square.
"The fair will offer its help to Petersburgers and guests of the city in buying Christmas presents, and there also will be traditional Russian food and drinks at the fair," said Alexey Sergeyev, the chairman of the city's committee on economic development, Interfax reported.Cathedral RestorationnST. PETERSBURG (SPT) City Hall plans to restore Troitsky Cathedral, the main dome and cupola of which were largely destroyed in a fire in August.
The decision on what material to use will be announced on Thursday, Vera Dementyeva, chairwoman of the committee on monuments and heritage protection said, Interfax reported.
"The conditions allow us to restore the dome using either wood or metal," Dementyeva said. "But if wood — the original material used — is chosen, then the restoration will be considered a heroic deed," she said.Road Tender to OpennST. PETERSBURG (SPT) The tender for the construction of the Western High-speed Diameter road is to open on Thursday, Fontanka.ru reported.
This will be the first tender of its kind in Russia and the largest in Europe, St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko told Fontanka.ru on Thursday.
The estimated cost of building the Diameter is between 80 and 85 billion rubles. The toll road will connect the Northern and Southern districts of St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Mayoral Elections May Be Abolished by Bill
AUTHOR: By Christian Lowe
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Russia's faction in the State Duma unveiled a bill Tuesday that would allow the abolition of elected mayors in big cities — the only powerful officials still outside the Kremlin's direct control.The bill's author, Vladimir Mokry, said the Duma would vote on the bill in the first of three readings within the next two weeks.
A parliamentary source said the initiative for the draft came from the Kremlin.
"Public officials answer to the public for providing services," Mokry, chairman of the Duma's Local Administration Committee, said at a news conference. "If that is not being done, then the state has an obligation ... to take the responsibility onto itself."
Mokry said his proposal left it up to regional governors to decide if they wanted to abolish the post of mayor. They would need to hold a referendum before going ahead.
He said if the mayor was axed, local government would be devolved to lower-level district councils within the city. A bureaucrat would take over some of the mayor's functions.
"This draft has one aim: to improve the effectiveness of running local government," Mokry said.
Critics of President Vladimir Putin say the proposal, introduced two years after direct elections for regional governors were also abolished, is new proof of a Kremlin campaign to dismantle democracy.
The proposal will for the first time give governors the right to abolish the post of mayor in nearly 90 regional capitals and take over some of the mayors' powers. It would not apply to Moscow and St. Petersburg, which have special status, but would open the way for mayors to be phased out in cities which have populations of over 1 million.
"This is the latest — and completely unconstitutional — act to dismantle the institutions of Russian democracy on a par with ... the abolition of gubernatorial elections," the liberal Yabloko opposition party said in a statement.
During Putin's six-year rule, the Kremlin has consolidated its control over key sectors of the economy, opposition parties have been sidelined and big television stations and newspapers have been taken over by Kremlin-linked companies.
In an increasingly monotone political landscape, the more outspoken big-city mayors often provide a flash of color.
In Samara, former Mayor Georgy Limansky fought a public turf war with Governor Konstantin Titov that involved corruption charges against the mayor.
Nizhny Novgorod mayor Vadim Bulavinov has complained about the Kremlin's centralization of power, an unusually bold statement for any official. Arkhangelsk Mayor Alexander Donskoi announced last week that he plans to run for president in 2008.
But local government in big cities is often paralyzed by squabbling between the mayor and the regional governor over who controls the tax revenues, and voters hold many mayors in low esteem.

TITLE: Policemen Jailed for Beating Boy
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — In a shock to everyone involved in the case, three policemen were sentenced to three years in prison by a Moscow judge on Tuesday for abusing their power when they beat an innocent 12-year-old boy.Prosecutors had asked Monday for four-year suspended sentences for Sergeants Sergei Ryabov and Rashid Starkov and patrol officer Dmitry Pervushin.
Judges rarely mete out punishments that exceed those sought by prosecutors.
In this case, Judge Olga Dubrovina of the Basmanny District Court apparently felt the sentencing request did not go far enough.
"Of course, it is a surprise," said Sergei Nasonov of the Moscow-based Independent Council for Legal Expertise. "It is completely absurd."
The media frenzy surrounding the case of the beating and arrest of Nikita Gladyshev may have led to the tougher than expected sentence, Nasonov said.
That the incident took place in Moscow, as opposed to the less visible regions, thrust it into the national spotlight, said Oleg Novikov of Public Verdict, a nongovernmental organization that advises victims of police-related crime. The NGO provided Gladyshev with a lawyer.
Still, Novikov said, "No one expected such a sentence."
Gladyshev's mother, Kira Gladysheva, a court marshal, added: "We all know how the law really works in this country. That is why this is a surprise. Cases involving authorities like these policemen usually just disappear."
The facts pertaining to the April 6 case are well known.
On his way out of his apartment building to play football, Gladyshev encountered the officers, who were following up a false burglary alarm.
The officers found the boy suspicious because, they said, he did not answer their questions and tried to flee. Gladyshev said he was scared.
The officers then handcuffed the boy and took him to the Basmanny district police station without a parent or guardian. Both these actions violated the law, Novikov said.
The whole incident left Gladyshev with several cuts and bruises and a possible concussion. His mother said he spent two weeks in the hospital.
Gladysheva was also awarded 100,000 rubles ($3,740) for emotional damage. She had sought 205,000 rubles in total for emotional damage and financial and physical damages. She can seek the remaining sum, for financial and physical damages, in another court.
Defense lawyers called the sentence unjust and illegal. "The judge took the side of the prosecution straight away," defense lawyer Alexei Tevsunin said. He added that the judge had "ignored" defense arguments.
Ryabov, Starkov and Pervushin have 10 days to appeal the ruling, which they plan to do, Tevsunin said. "If that doesn't work, we will go straight to the European Court of Human Rights," he said.
Moscow attorney Oleg Krysanov said judges usually hand down sentences lying somewhere between what the defense and prosecution had wanted.
But he added that he was not surprised by Dubrovina's sentence. "But then," he said, "nothing surprises me about our judicial system. It lives by its own set of internal rules."
Kira Gladysheva said she would tell her son about the sentence when she picked him up from school late Tuesday. "I don't know if you can say that he will be happy with the news as such," she said, referring to her son. "Three years in prison is a serious sentence."

TITLE: Minister Says Sanctions Would Isolate Iran
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that a European draft resolution imposing sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program would isolate Iran, suggesting that Moscow would not support approval of the measure in its current form, news agencies reported."We cannot support measures that in essence are aimed at isolating Iran from the outside world, including isolating people who are called upon to conduct negotiations on the nuclear program, Interfax quoted Lavrov as saying.
Lavrov also reiterated his claim that the draft resolution, meant to punish Iran for its persistent refusal to halt uranium enrichment activities that have heightened fears it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, goes beyond existing agreements among nations seeking to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
"The draft ... goes far outside the framework of agreements," he said.
The European draft orders all countries to prevent the sale and supply of material and technology that could contribute to Iran's nuclear and missile programs. It orders countries to freeze the assets of companies and organizations involved in Iran's nuclear and missile programs.

TITLE: Water Touted as Eye 'Elixir'
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — It was a scam that would have made Ostap Bender proud.City police are investigating a company that obtained the medical records of people suffering from eye maladies and used the information to market therapeutic eye drops that contained nothing but distilled water.
Officers from the economic crimes department last week raided an office on Nizhnyaya Syromyatnicheskaya Ulitsa, near the Kurskaya metro station, and seized more than 300 packages of eye drops, police spokeswoman Yelena Perfilova said.
Last month, a 46-year-old woman filed a complaint about repeated phone calls from people who introduced themselves as physicians and attempted to sell her a brand of eye drops called Eye Doctor Informational Elixir.
According to an Internet advertisement for the product, the "elixir" is based on an "energy-informational matrix of health directed at the cells of the eye. When applied to the eyes, the healthy structure of the matrix replaces dead and damaged cells and helps restore sick cells to their original state."
When police raided the company's offices, they found 20 people working on the phones using an illegally obtained database of eye patients, to whom they pitched the "elixir" at the tidy price of 16,000 rubles ($600) per 10-milliliter bottle, Perfilova said.
When police analyzed the confiscated eyedrops, they discovered that Eye Doctor Informational Elixir was nothing more than distilled water, Perfilova said.
Perfilova declined to release the name of the company, citing the ongoing investigation, and said it was unclear whether the company was legally registered.
The drops were sold exclusively via the shady direct-marketing scheme, not in pharmacies, Perfilova said.
In all, police say they confiscated 319 bottles of eyedrops and 765 packages of capsules containing unidentified substances.

TITLE: New Law Poisoning The Minds of Many
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although alcohol quality in St. Petersburg seems to compare favorably with those regions where dozens of people have died from alcohol poisoning, still local authorities confess to knowing little about the scale of counterfeit production in the city.Speaking at a press conference Wednesday, Nikolai Archipov, deputy chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial policy and Trade (CEDIPT), said that a new law had made the spate of mass alcohol poisonings "predictable."
The law in question is 'On alcohol turnover' (N202) introduced in January 2006.
"When this law was being considered, we appealed to various bodies, we spoke out against it at regional conferences. We warned that the law was in a "raw, underdeveloped" state and should not be adopted. But we were ignored," Archipov said.
The most frequent violations found in St. Petersburg are trademark falsification, alcohol sales in violation of Law N202 and selling alcohol of over 15 percent after 11 p.m., violating local legislation.
More revealing is the fact that alcohol plants work at just 45 percent of their capacity, yet, according to official statistics quoted by Archipov, alcohol turnover increased by 60 percent — implying that illegally produced alcohol is widely distributed.
"Law N202 deprived the regions of control over alcohol production. Previously we tested samples, and illegal products were barred from the market. Now we can't do this," he said.
Instead of checking 154 warehouses, now authorities have to monitor around 4,500 retail outlets, and they simply do not have the resources to do so, Archipov said.
The new approach is also financially ineffective. Last year the federal budget earned 30 billion rubles from alcohol excise. Instead of doubling this figure, the new law resulted in a 15 billion rubles deficit, Archipov said.
This year in St. Petersburg around 2 billion rubles were collected from excise. In the same period last year the figure was 1.9 billion rubles.
In terms of solutions to the problem, Archipov suggested consolidating the retail industry and introducing serious punishments for illegal activities. At the moment the maximum penalty given out to a retailer does not usually exceed 5,000 rubles.
Yuriy Shesterikov, head of the department of alcohol market regulation at CEDIPT added that, following the introduction of the new law, local authorities could no longer compare data on production, excise and alcohol sales nor find out the precise share of counterfeit alcohol.
"Fortunately, we have not seen as many poisonings as other cities. However, the law is organized in such a way that to sue producers is practically impossible," Shesterikov said.
Alexander German, director of the Center for quality control at St. Petersburg State University, said that between January and September this year 900 samples were tested. Out of them, 200 samples were found to be defective. By way of comparison, last year 18,000 samples were tested, and 1,200 samples rejected.
German suggested introducing an alcohol certification system.
Shesterikov said that the city had already introduced local laws on alcohol turnover and licensing. At the moment laws are being developed concerned with alcohol certification and the limiting of areas where it can be sold.
Archipov held up several examples of confiscated products. Some of them had the new type of excise, but without corresponding correctly to the type of product. He suggested putting excises and trademarks right on the neck of the bottle and making them in the regions.
Some suggested an even more radical solution. This week State Duma chairman Boris Gryzlov spoke in favor of a state monopoly on the distribution of alcohol products.
Last year over 30,000 people died of alcohol poisoning. By October of this year, 17,000 people had died, Interfax cited Gryzlov as saying Tuesday.
Recently poisonings due to low-quality alcohol were reported in 16 regions. Hundreds of people were hospitalized and diagnosed with toxic hepatitis, many of whom died.
13 criminal cases have currently been launched in connection to the poisonings.

TITLE: Forest Bill Prompts Confusion
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A forest bill transferring oversight from federal to regional officials and barring private ownership of forests sailed through a second reading Wednesday in the State Duma, outraging environmentalists and opposition leaders and leaving many confused about government policy.The Forestry Code, which was drafted by officials from at least two federal ministries and enjoyed the support of the pro-Kremlin United Russia faction, passed 347-59, with no abstentions. Debate was minimal.
The code permits private tenants to lease forest plots for up to 49 years, either from regional authorities or through a middle man. If tenants are found to be in compliance at the end of the 49-year period, they would be eligible for an extension. The measure's backers, including Natalya Komarova, the Natural Resources Committee chair, insist the long-awaited bill would force businesses to compensate the government for damage done to forests.
But critics say the code does not ban logging in natural preserves, lacks clarity and makes tenants, with their long-term leases and power to block access to forests, "effective owners," as Communist Deputy Vladimir Kashin put it.
Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev, whose ministry contributed to the bill, conceded that given its complexity, the bill would be impossible to enforce anytime soon. Still, he insisted that the measure would "help relations in the forestry sphere."
The Economic Development and Trade Ministry is also known to have contributed to the bill.
Trutnev, addressing Duma deputies, cautioned the parliament against ramming the bill through a third and final reading, saying 60 new regulations would be needed to insure smooth implementation of the code. That would take six months, he said.
The minister added that the state should adopt a new tax regime for the export of wood and wood products to discourage the export of timber to neighboring countries such as China and Finland and encourage wood processing in Russia.
"If wood processing is profitable in Finland and in China, then why should it not be profitable in Russia?" Trutnev said. "There should be an incremental but steady increase in taxation on exports of round timber."
Russia accounts for one-fourth of the world's forests, but it still has to import paper because most of the logged wood is exported without being processed first.
Preservationists decried the Forestry Code, arguing it would endanger forests across the country and lead to possible disaster.
"With just this law, there will be a very serious crisis in our country's forests by as soon as next year," warned Alexei Yaroshenko of Greenpeace Russia.
The environmental group WWF-Russia issued a statement Tuesday saying the bill threatened "uncontrolled activities in suburban forests and in forests of especially valuable natural preserves." What's more, the WWF-Russia statement contended, the measure offers "unlimited access" to foreign companies that export timber.
On top of this, environmentalists are worried about a possible loophole in the bill that would enable private ownership of forests.
The loophole, as they see it, is found in a controversial provision that distinguishes between "forests" and "forest plots."
While "forests" are off-limits to ownership, "forest plots" are not.
"If our president put on a pair of really strong glasses, he would see that the issue of property has not been spelled out," WWF-Russia's Vladimir Dmitriyev said.
Yaroshenko agreed. "This is one of the most unclear codes passed by the Duma in the last 10 years," he said. "In principle, there are good things, but most of it is incomprehensible."
The code is in keeping with President Vladimir Putin's wish to ban private ownership of forests.
It passed a first reading in April 2005. Since then, some 1,800 amendments have been introduced — many backed by nongovernmental organizations and opposition deputies — but most have been rejected.
On Wednesday, senior Communist Party deputies held a news conference ahead of the evening session that included the second reading of the bill.
Kashin, the Communist deputy, called the measure complex and, like the environmentalists, bemoaned what he called the bill's lack of clear definitions.
Fellow Communist Deputy Sergei Sobko attacked the code for carving out exceptions for Moscow and St. Petersburg, which retain the right to manage surrounding forests.
Sobko said that by granting local oversight, the code would be effectively ensuring an explosion in new homes — and the further degradation of forests — in the mostly green beltways encircling the cities.
And Communist Deputy Nikolai Kondratenko, a former governor of the Krasnodarsky region who has repeatedly praised Josef Stalin's management of the Soviet Union's forests, said the bill lacked a certain toughness.
"Under Stalin," Kondratenko reminisced, somewhat enigmatically, "one would be executed and a thousand would understand."Staff Writer Miriam Elder contributed to this report.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Rosneft CommitmentsnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Rosneft, Russia's state-run oil producer, received commitments for $24.5 billion of loans to finance a bid to buy all of bankrupt Yukos, three bankers involved in the transaction said Thursday.
The loan would be the biggest-ever to a Russian company and the fourth largest for Europe, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Rosneft, which has said it wants to acquire Yukos's remaining assets, has yet to make any decision on borrowing the money, said spokesman Nikolai Manvelov in Moscow. ABN Amro Holding NV, Barclays Plc, Calyon, Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley have offered to provide $3.5 billion each to Rosneft, said the bankers.Rating KazakhsnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Kazakhstan's foreign and local currency debt ratings were raised one step by Standard & Poor's to the highest ever as the former Soviet state benefits from high oil prices.
S&P lifted Kazakhstan's foreign currency rating to BBB, the second-lowest investment grade and the same as Croatia, the rating company said in a statement Thursday. It raised the long-term local currency rating one step to BBB+ from BBB. The outlook is stable.TMK SharesnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — TMK, the world's second-largest producer of steel pipes for the oil and gas industry, said its main investor sold another $97 million worth of shares, taking the total to $1.07 billion.
Billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky sold another 18 million shares at $5.40 apiece, adding to 180 million sold in an initial public offering announced Oct. 31, the Moscow-based company said Thursday in a regulatory filing. The total is equal to about a 23 percent stake in the pipemaker.Russian SpendingnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia's government approved boosting spending 3.8 percent this year as budget revenue rises faster than expected, Interfax said Thursday. The government approved a Finance Ministry proposal to raise spending by 160.3 billion rubles ($6 billion) this year to 4.43 trillion rubles, the news service said today, citing Deputy Finance Minister Tatiana Golkiov.
The government expects budget revenue to surge 23 percent this year to 6.17 trillion rubles, providing for a record surplus of about $65 billion, Interfax said.Telenor SuitnMOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Federal Arbitration Court in Moscow Thursday upheld earlier rulings by two other courts in Moscow rejecting the suit by Telenor ASA against OAO VimpelCom over its expansion in Ukraine, Interfax reported.
Norway's Telenor, which is a shareholder in VimpelCom, is disputing in court the acquisition by the Russian cellular operator of Ukrainian Radio Systems last year.

TITLE: Market Manifestly Split On Sistema Asset Swap
AUTHOR: By Douglas Busvine and Marie-Louise Moller
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW —An asset swap between Deutsche Telekom and services conglomerate Sistema would make business sense but looks politically risky and may be unworkable, analysts said Wednesday.Earlier, the Financial Times Deutschland reported that Sistema had proposed acquiring 10 percent to 20 percent of Deutsche Telekom in return for control of its telecoms arm, whose core asset is Russia's top mobile phone firm Mobile TeleSystems.
A German government spokesman said no official offer had been made. "I cannot comment on it as there is no official offer from Sistema."
Deutsche Telekom declined comment, and Sistema Telecom refused to confirm the report, which was attributed to unidentified sources.
Deutsche Telekom shares rose 0.7 percent to $17.44. The global depositary receipts of Sistema, the listed parent of Sistema Telecom, eased 1.3 percent in London to $26.20.
Analysts said the FTD story, which said talks were at an early stage and might yet fail, looked like a trial balloon to gauge political and investor reaction to a possible asset swap.
"My view is that it's a credible idea, it could happen and it makes sense," said Barry Shumaker, a telecoms sector analyst at Alfa Bank.
They also noted that Ron Sommer, Deutsche Telekom's former CEO, was an adviser to Sistema. Sommer advised private equity group Blackstone on its purchase of a 4.5 percent stake in Deutsche Telekom earlier this year.
"Deutsche Telekom would win an additional growth area to the United States, therefore it would make sense," said Frank Rothauge, an analyst at Sal. Oppenheim in Germany.
Deutsche Telekom has come under pressure after slashing its earnings and sales forecasts for this year and next in August, citing tough domestic price competition in Germany, particularly in the fixed-line telephony and broadband Internet markets.
Poor second-quarter results showed that Deutsche Telekom was no longer growing in its home market, making its international business crucial.
The Times said the asset swap idea was discussed during President Vladimir Putin's October visit to Germany, when he was accompanied by Sistema's main owner, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, and IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman. That, analysts said, suggested there might be support from the Kremlin for a deal, which would allow Yevtushenkov to diversify his business risks.
The German government spokesman said, however, that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Putin had not discussed the issue.
There is likely to be greater skepticism on the German side, which has already rebuffed Russia's bid to parley a 5 percent stake in EADS into a greater strategic role in the aerospace giant.
"We think that the chance of this happening is unlikely, because the state is afraid of Russia having too much power over key German industries," said Joeri Sels, an analyst at Germany's DZ Bank.
A return by Deutsche Telekom to the Russian market would also raise eyebrows. Only last year it completed the disposal of the 40 percent stake it once held in MTS after writing it off as a non-strategic investment.
The pull out was partly driven by the need for CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke to repair the company's balance sheet after an earlier acquisition spree by Sommer, but also because Telekom had been unable to get control of MTS.

TITLE: Crude Export Tax Cut by 24%
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government on Wednesday slashed the export tax on crude oil for December and January, meaning companies may save a combined $2.6 billion amid an industry-wide investment drive to boost output.The tax will fall by $7.76 per barrel, or 24 percent, to $24.65 per barrel ($180.70 per ton) from a record $32.41 now, said Alexander Sakovich, deputy head of the customs department at the Finance Ministry. The cut may be worth more than $450 million each for state-run Rosneft and TNK-BP, based on their average daily exports in the first half.
LUKoil would save more than $400 million and Gazprom more than $150 million, according to Bloomberg calculations.

TITLE: Auto Insurance Law Cleans Up Roads
AUTHOR: By William Mauldin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma on Wednesday approved in a second reading a bill that would change the way mandatory auto insurance works.Currently, the country's drivers are forced to pay for mandatory car insurance for each car they buy. The more accidents that the car is involved in, the higher the insurance premiums. The new law would change insurance records so that they follow the driver, which means an accident-prone driver could no longer clean his record by getting a new car.
"Generally, I think it was a great step," said Ilya Solomatin, vice president at state insurer Ingosstrakh. "Big insurance companies worked together to implement this new law."
Solomatin said he could not comment in detail on the bill until Ingosstrakh had fully analyzed its provisions. The bill has to pass a third reading and be approved by the Federation Council and President Vladimir Putin before becoming law.
"Now, if you switch cars, regardless of whether you had any accidents, the insurance company has to apply a lower premium multiplier to the new policy, and the driver ends up paying less," said State Duma Deputy Viktor Pokhmelkin, who is also chairman of the Russian Motorists Movement, which promotes drivers' interests.
Sergei Abalakin, head of auto insurance at Rosno, said little good would come out of the law, partly because it failed to take into account insurance companies' recommendations on the data systems that keep track of accidents.
Many well-to-do drivers settle in cash on the spot when they have minor accidents, but those who cannot afford this make use of the mandatory insurance they purchase each year.
Abalakin said mandatory insurance costs a Moscow resident at least 4,000 rubles ($150) per year, but that many clients pay much more to get a higher level of coverage.
Each year in Russia, 30,000 to 35,000 people die in road accidents.
Accidents have steadily grown by 8 percent per year for the past three years, fueled in part by a surge in the number of cars on the roads.
The economic cost is enormous, shaving 1 percent to 2 percent off the gross domestic product every year.
In theory, targeting risky drivers — not risky cars — would be good for public safety, since drivers would avoid having accidents to save money.
But Solomatin said it would take more than a change in the law to make a dramatic impact on road safety.
"I don't think that the problems on Moscow's streets will be solved by this law," Solomatin said.

TITLE: Bureaucracy Backs Pluralism
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: Russia today has a two-party system. People have a choice between United Russia and the new party headed by Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, which opted for the name A Just Russia over the weekend. Until then people had mostly been calling it the Party of Life — one of the parties that united to form it.Some months ago, when Mironov had just embarked on his party building, I was skeptical about its prospects. But the party — not yet A Just Russia, mind you — won the mayoral election in Samara and took a hefty chunk of the vote in Tuva. Not bad.
The problem is that I was assessing Mironov's prospects from a sociopolitical standpoint. But political and social considerations have little influence on the success of Russian political parties. The real struggle takes place within the bureaucratic apparatus, and here the appearance of a second party changes much.
Sure, the party is still indistinct, devoid of ideas and principles, and has no social base, activists or allies. In fact, it has no policies at all. But its suitability as an ideal vehicle for bureaucratic intrigues seems to be underpinning its growing success.
There is nothing worse than pluralism within a bureaucratic apparatus. Bureaucrats are prone to widespread dislikes and rivalries. But the appearance of unity within this hierarchy requires that all of this remain behind closed doors. Orders from above have to be executed and any open resistance is seen as breaching the basic principles of state service.
Bureaucrats can clandestinely sabotage orders from above, especially when everyone acknowledges how stupid an order is. But the image of unity has to be maintained with the dedication of a well-drilled guards unit on the parade ground.
But differences are part of life in political discussion, even if there is little or no difference between rivals. Two candidates for the same office have to convince voters that they differ in more than just name.
Unfortunately, the public and bureaucratic spheres have become so intertwined that it now looks like they have swapped places. Politicians, regardless of their party, understand clearly that they are really state servants who for some reason are formally elected.
Any spat between a department head and his deputy is much more important than a debate between faction leaders in the State Duma, let alone regional assemblies. But these skirmishes could take political shape at some point and kick-start a standoff at the ballot box.
A real choice has arrived with the appearance of A Just Russia beside United Russia. Not for voters, of course, but for officials. In recent mayoral elections in Samara, the incumbent, Georgy Limansky, was sunk by the fact that a large number of his underlings were fed up with him. When he demanded their full mobilization he did not understand that most of their efforts would be against him. Mironov's creation had official blessing, so the bureaucrats were free to choose. Liberty!
The Samara example points to a mistake by the United Russia tacticians as well — they made it clear that they will no longer always support the regional incumbent, but may switch to a "stronger candidate." Where this will lead is not hard to predict: A war of all against all within the bureaucratic apparatus, where there is the option to support A Just Russia only to spite your boss.
In short, the 2007 State Duma election could end up being adversarial and free in its own way. We might have some problems with civil society, but we also have the most pluralistic bureaucracy in Europe!

Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.

TITLE: No Model Houses
AUTHOR: By DeAnne Julius and John Gault
TEXT: On November 7, U.S. voters will go to the polls to elect all 435 members of their House of Representatives and one-third of their senators. If Americans believe that these midterm elections represent a model of democracy for the rest of the world, they should think again.Despite an unpopular war and some indiscreet e-mails from a Republican congressman, the Democrats' hopes of winning a majority in either house face a very undemocratic obstacle: the overwhelming power of incumbency in the United States. During the past 50 years, more than 95 percent of congressmen who have stood for re-election have won. In 2004 only five incumbent congressmen were defeated; in 2002, the total was four.
There are two main reasons challengers find the odds stacked against them. The first is the need to raise enormous amounts of campaign funding and the second is the politically motivated redrawing of voting district boundaries. Average spending per candidate in the 2004 election exceeded $1 million for House seats and $7 million for the Senate. Popular candidates can raise and spend much more: New York Senator Hillary Clinton has already spent $25 million in this year's campaign.
An unfortunate financial dynamic is at work. Because incumbents win elections, business and political donors who seek influence give more to them and, with bigger war chests, they get re-elected. In the House, incumbents on average receive five times more in contributions than challengers. In the Senate, the multiple is closer to nine times.
Much of this money goes to advertising. The Campaign Media Analysis Group has estimated that campaign spending on advertising this year is up 150 percent compared with the last midterm elections and that television advertising already exceeded $311 million by mid-August. No wonder television networks give so little airtime to those arguing for spending limits or election reform.
The other big hurdle is the incumbents' control over redistricting. In most state legislatures, the majority party is able to redraw congressional district boundaries, thereby providing safe seats for its members in Congress and forcing minority incumbents to fight each other for the rest. "We know democracy is not promoted if we end up with partisan politicians selecting their constituents rather than the other way around," said one congressman thus deprived of his seat.
U.S. voters understand the redistricting game and many choose not to vote at all, since the outcome is so often predetermined. According to data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, voter turnout for midterm congressional elections is consistently below 40 percent. Nearly one-third of the electorate does not even register to vote, a worse record than in Iraq.
What can be done? If the United States wants to regain legitimacy in advocating democratic reform around the world, it needs to put its own house in order. Three simple reforms would help.
First, set term limits for senators and congressmen. This would ensure that contested elections without incumbents happen more often. It might also encourage "citizen-politicians" from all walks of life to replace the current class of widely disparaged professional politicians. The president is limited to two terms (eight years). Senators should also be limited to two terms (12 years) and congressmen to four terms (eight years).
Second, apply nationwide the redistricting procedure used in the state of Iowa. There, a Legislative Service Bureau, directed by a bipartisan appointee, uses non-political guidelines to recommend boundary changes based on the new national census data once per decade. If its recommendations are turned down by the legislature, the matter goes to the state Supreme Court. This process has worked well for 25 years and is generally praised for producing competitive districts where election debates are substantive and participatory.
John Tanner, a Democratic representative from Tennessee, has proposed a "Fairness and Independence in Redistricting Act," which would mandate independent commissions similar to Iowa's in each state. Tanner's bill has attracted 47 co-sponsors, but only two are Republicans and the bill is unlikely to go anywhere while the Republicans are the majority party in the House.
Third, broadcasters should be required to provide free airtime during the final weeks of a general election campaign, but only to those candidates who accept public funding with its accompanying limits on spending. This would greatly relieve the pressure to raise money and it would encourage more candidates to sign up for public campaign funding. In Britain, where the BBC has long provided equal and free airtime to parties for political broadcasts during the campaign period, viewer figures have been high.
We believe that U.S. democracy needs reform if it is to serve as an example to others. Term limits, non-political redistricting and free airtime in exchange for limits on campaign spending would break the unholy trinity of money, media and politics that has corroded the American model and tarnished its reputation abroad.

DeAnne Julius is chairperson of Chatham House, a London-based think-tank. John Gault is on the associate faculty of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. This comment was published in the Financial Times.

TITLE: A Monopoly On Alcohol
TEXT: Alcohol poisoning is back in the spotlight after dozens of people died and more than 1,000 were hospitalized after drinking non-potable spirits in recent days. The problem is not a new one; about 42,000 Russians die every year from alcohol poisoning, according to figures from the Federation Council. Unfortunately, chances are high that once the current furor dies down, nothing will change and alcohol poisoning will return to its place in the litany of Russia's social ills.The rash of poisonings seems to be linked in part to the government's decision to tackle another social ill: corruption. The state cracked down on alcohol over the summer with a new labeling system that has made it difficult for retailers to sell alcohol without paying taxes. This has led to a drop in cheap, mass-produced vodka on the shelves.
But the crackdown does not explain why 42,000 people are dying every year.
Contributing to the problem is a societal addiction to drink and the fact that a large percentage of the population lives in poverty.
As such, any approach to solving the problem will have to be complex and comprehensive.
Presumably, continued growth in average incomes — where progress is being made — and a less skewed distribution of the benefits from strong economic growth — where progress has been less than impressive — will save lives, as people are able to afford safer options. But this will take time.
A proposal to lower taxation levels on legally produced liquor, and vodka in particular, might have some effect, but it is unlikely to lower prices enough. Another suggestion, to reinstate the state monopoly on vodka production, is unlikely to be particularly effective. This will not stop people from drinking perfume or cleaning fluids, as is often the case. The state also has a monopoly on granting driver's licenses, but the roads are filled with drivers who attained theirs illegally.
Clearly some kind of public education program will have to be part of the solution.
Social mores are central to the problem, as a large part of the cases of alcohol poisoning are due not to what the person drank, but how much. Although many remember the anti-alcohol campaign under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev with disdain, the simple fact is that it saved lives. The regular references in the media to the fact that President Vladimir Putin himself drinks only in moderation has probably itself done something to help.
Improving the situation significantly will likely take generations. But the time to start educating society, and the young in particular, is now. Greater efforts to stigmatize the behavior need to be made to prevent future generations from living — and dying — with this problem.

This comment first appeared in The Moscow Times.

TITLE: Major maestro
AUTHOR: By George Loomis
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Teodor Currentzis is making waves in the classical music world as music direcor of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater, demonstrating a taste for more difficult works.There can't be many times when a performance of "Das Lied von der Erde" has waited more than two hours after the start of a concert before it got underway. But conductor Teodor Currentzis had other things on the agenda besides Gustav Mahler's hour-long orchestral song cycle when he performed it in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall two weeks ago: namely, four knotty — and sizeable — contemporary works by French, German, Russian and Ukrainian composers. By the time "Das Lied" rolled around, it gave new meaning to Tom Lehrer's mordant reference to Mahler as the "composer of 'Das Lied von der Erde' and other light classics." The piece really did seem like easy listening compared to what had come before.Not that Currentzis, who is music director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater and a rising star on the Russian classical scene, made light of it. But he did seem to hold it out as a reward. "Some may have come for the Mahler, some may have come to see me," he said in an interview at the Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya apartment where he stays during his increasingly frequent Moscow appearances. "But when they see me, they will find my program."
The concert was part of the Territoriya Festival, of which Currentzis was an organizer, and he made it clear that he took seriously the cross-disciplinary festival's objective of bringing avant-garde works to Russia. It was just one instance in which Currentzis has shown himself to be a man with a mission.
"When a new movie comes out in America, pirated copies turn up in Moscow two weeks later. This is what happens with pop culture, like junk food. The good stuff may have to wait for 20 years. It is possible to make money on new music, but people don't want to run the risk or educate the audience." Instead, what does come to Russia, Currentzis notes with frustration, are aging opera singers. "Famous singers who lose their voices know to come to Moscow, where their names alone sell out halls. Russians have an intellectual love of culture — they don't need to create heroes like these."
Russia's contribution to the West is often no better. "It sends touring orchestras that don't play very well. Yekaterina Gubanova [a Russian mezzo-soprano with an active Western career who sang in 'Das Lied'] has just sung for the first time in her own country. Why should it be that way? What is imported and what is exported is a problem — it's part of the mainstream mess that needs to be straightened out."
Currentzis speaks about his art from so firm a Russian perspective it is easy to overlook that he is Greek. Indeed, he himself is an unusual commodity in the export-import market. Where, at least until the last few years, economic forces have driven top musicians to seek careers in the West, Currentzis is the unusual example of a gifted foreign artist who has elected to forge his career in Russia. Born in Athens in 1972, he came to Russia in the early 1990s to study conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with the legendary Ilya Musin, whose students included Valery Gergiev, Yury Temirkanov and Semyon Bychkov.
"Musin was very important for me. He was a great psychologist but very strict on technical points. He concentrated not on what you wanted to say — 'Develop your fantasy,' he told us — but on how to show what you want to say. Most conductors conduct themselves, not the orchestra. Conductors need to share the music and have the fantasy to keep it alive."
While continuing in St. Petersburg for post-graduate studies, Currentzis became Temirkanov's assistant at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. His initial Moscow appearances were at the Helikon Opera in 2001. The widespread interest he has attracted stems not just from his skills on the podium but also from the breadth of his musical pursuits. His devotion to new music is balanced by a flair for the Baroque, and he has shown an aptitude for most styles in between. For Currentzis, familiarity with one style helps inform another. "Human beings live at different times and lead different lives, but they have the same feelings. This is very important. The 'Puritans' who do just early music can't do Debussy. But I can do Debussy." He can also do Mozart, as recent concert performances of the latter's operas have demonstrated. On Nov. 15, he will have a go at Rossini as "Cinderella" is performed in concert form in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
One quickly appreciates Currentzis' concern for serious artistic issues and his confidence in addressing them. But his manner is reflective, even soft-spoken, rather than pompous. He seeks to persuade as he looks directly at you, his long hair tied back in a ponytail, just as it was in Tchaikovsky Concert Hall for the contemporary works (for the Mahler he allowed it to flow to his shoulders). He tends to frame issues in terms of their Russian implication, for his commitment to Russia seems unshakeable. He even shrugs off with apparent lack of interest questions about future Western engagements, although he did mention "Don Carlo" at the Paris Opera in 2008. "I could have a very good career in the West if I weren't so serious about Russia. But one beautiful morning, I woke up in Greece and understood that I couldn't live without Russia. I've even said I want to take Russian citizenship, but everybody laughs." With a reputation as one with an eye for women, he is forthright in recognizing Russia's lure in this regard. "Russian women really are something extraordinary."
He also prefers Russian orchestras to foreign ones. "Foreign orchestras have better pitch, better winds and are more precise. But they don't put as much heart into the music; they're more like robots. Russians are lazier and have lower standards of music education, but they're more talented. They can do things that good European orchestras can't.
European orchestras may play Tchaikovsky more cleanly, but it's dead. My task is to build an orchestra that plays with better pitch, that plays with precision and is spontaneous at the same time — an orchestra that can represent Russia with honor in the worldwide market."
He may be well on his way with the Musica Aeterna Ensemble, which he founded in Novosibirsk and speaks about with pride. "The players came from many different places to be part of this orchestra." Not surprisingly, the music they play reflects his own broad tastes, including a preference for period instruments. "In the Mahler we use Viennese trumpets, a reduced amount of vibrato and special bowing techniques." He also relishes having a working atmosphere in which the players don't have their eyes on the clock. "If a piece isn't ready, we will rehearse until it is."
However the ensemble's rendition of that piece turns out, Currentzis is conscious that it will somehow be part of Russia's cultural tradition. "The best things in Russia are often individual adaptations of European ideas. Look at the development of ballet. [The choreographer and balletmaster] Marius Petipa was French, but his presence in Russia led to 'Swan Lake' and the Russian ballet school. Russians take something that is not Russian and transform it into something better. You can't imagine Shostakovich without Mahler — Soviet composers on their own were not very high class." As an outsider working in Russia, Currentzis stands ready to supply the formula's Western ingredient, and the results could be exciting.

Teodor Currentzis' next conducting engagements in Moscow are Nov. 15 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, with a concert performance of Rossini's "Cinderella" (Zolushka), and Nov. 20 in the Svetlanov Hall of MMDM, with performances of works by Strauss and Schubert.

TITLE: Chernov's choice
TEXT: The Plastic People of the Universe, the Czech Republic's psychedelic legends, will come to St. Petersburg on very short notice this week. On its first visit to Russia, the band was to perform at Platforma when the place abruptly closed (see article, page iii), so their concert was moved to Mod, where the band will perform on Saturday. They can also be seen at Fish Fabrique on Sunday.Influenced by such artists as Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and the Velvet Underground, the band formed in Prague in Sept. 1968, soon after the Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring, the liberal reforms initiated by Czechoslovakian leader Alexander Dubcek.
Unlike many other bands, The Plastic People of the Universe, whose name was inspired by the song "Plastic People" by Zappa's Mothers of Invention, never conformed to the Soviet-backed communist hard-liners who replaced Dubcek, remaining in the political opposition, with its followers including the dissident playwright and future president Vaclav Havel.
Banned from playing official concerts in 1973, the band only performed at friends' homes, often at Havel's cottage, where it also recorded. In Feb. 1976 The Plastic People were arrested at a concert, sent to court for organized disturbance of the peace and sentenced to terms in prison ranging between 8 and 18 months.
The event directly inspired Charter 77, the human-rights manifesto and movement led by Havel and other dissidents. The band's musical and extra-musical activities eventually helped to bring about the Velvet Revolution and Havel's presidency in 1989.
Described as "one of the strongest symbols of … dissent in the 1970s and 1980s" by Radio Praha, the band's founder and bass player Milan Hlavsa was invited to the White House to perform, alongside his friend Lou Reed, to an audience that included Havel, Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright.
"Historians see the Plastics' arrest and sentence in direct relation to the origins of Charter 77, and historians are known to make few mistakes," said Hlavsa, who died after an illness in 2001, in an interview with author Richie Unterberger.
"Of course, I also see the relations, but only in that the trial brought together people concerned about the fate of our country, so Vaclav Havel was the engine of the efforts. The band itself had no political ambition and we did not intend to destroy communism [with] our music, but if we helped we are only glad."
The Plastic People of the Universe that was featured in Tom Stoppard's play "Rock 'n' Roll" came to Russia earlier this year for the first time for several concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg backed by the Czech Center in Moscow.
Babyshambles' one-off Russian concert that was due in Moscow on Nov. 26 cancelled, the reason being "the fault of the band's leader Pete Doherty," the B2 club said in a written statement as this paper went to press.— By Sergey Chernov

TITLE: Is this the end?
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Platforma, the popular club that had grown into one of the city's leading venues since opening in September 2004, abruptly closed last Sunday. Art director Denis Rubin, who is now busy arranging new venues for a host of visiting artists, said he was informed about the actual closing only shortly before it happened."Actually, it could have happened at any moment, because the general management changed over a year ago, and Platforma started to be managed by people who hadn't the slightest idea about the club's format or the business of running a club," said Rubin this week about the club owned by Metronom, a local company specializing in advertising and publishing.
Rubin said there was permanent conflict — sometimes hidden but often evident to the audience — a gap between the program's organizers and the general management.
"The artistic program was thought out according to one idea/philosophy while everything done by the management contradicted the club's style, from design, service [at the club's bar and restaurant], price policy, choice of staff, to a style of management that made the club unprofitable to its owners," he said.
"Otherwise, the club might have been as successful commercially as it was culturally. The way the management works was made perfectly clear when I learned of the club's closure just three days before it happened."
Modeled on Moscow's intellectual-oriented cafes, such as Project OGI, Platforma was conceived by the author and literary critic Vyacheslav Kuritsyn who moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 2004. Having designed the club, Kuritsyn and his team of Moscow promoters left in unclear circumstances last year.
Opened in late 1998 in Moscow, Project OGI, a club comprising a stage, book store and bar, was oriented toward artists and intellectuals and featured rock, jazz and experimental concerts, literary readings, performances and film screenings. The club took its name from OGI Publishers, which became a partner in the venture.
The concept proved so successful that Project OGI was followed by similar venues such as Bilingua, Klub Na Brestskoi, Apshu and Gogol, but remained without an equivalent in St. Petersburg.
The Muscovites who visited St. Petersburg noticed that the city was desperately in need of a "certain intellectual/cultural place based on drinking and musical/literary entertainment," as Moscow's Nikolai Okhotin, once one of Platforma's artistic programmers told this newspaper before the club opened in 2004.
Following Project OGI-like clubs in Moscow, it also hosted cult film screenings, theater performances and literary readings by authors such as Irvine Welsh and Michel Houellebecq.
Though the club published its program for November last month and even booked some acts for December, Rubin said all artists would simply perform at other venues in the city.
Los Banditos, the eclectic German band that was supposed to perform at Platforma this week, was moved to local bars Fidel and Mod, while the Czech Republic's psychedelic-rock legends The Plastic People of the Universe will perform at Mod on Saturday and Fish Fabrique on Sunday.
"I was pleasantly surprised that all the artists were very understanding when told the news," said Rubin.
"They understand the situation — we got messages from almost everybody, saying we shouldn't worry, that they'd come and perform. Some bands suffered financially because they put some money into advertising or turned down bigger concerts to perform at Platforma, but I've heard no complaints from anybody."
Over the past two years, Platforma, with a capacity of between 250 and 350 people, became one of the city's leading live music venues, holding over 500 concerts by such artists as Arto Lindsay, Chumbawamba and dEUS as well as leading local rock and folk bands.
Rubin said that Platforma's rooms, located in the city center and comprising a concert hall, cafe, bar and bookstore, will be closed. "I heard a rumor that it will be replaced by a Pyatyorochka [supermarket], but there definitely won't be any other kind of club there."
According to Rubin, Kuritsyn, who once promoted literary events at Platforma, had spoken to the club's owners about renting the rooms starting from October, but the talks had gone nowhere.
"The owners could not guarantee us a prolonged period of rental, but we didn't want to invest our and other people's money without being sure that the club will be ours for at least the next three or four years."
There's a fear that, as the venue for some of the finest local and visiting bands, Platforma's demise could adversely affect the local scene.
"The city's music scene has suffered because there are not that many clubs here, and Platforma was a unique club for St. Petersburg, because there are many clubs like it in Moscow, but in St. Petersburg it was one of a kind," said Rubin.
He expressed hope that some time next year he and Kuritsyn would reopen Platforma at a new, central location using the same name. At the same time, Rubin and his associates will also use the name "Platforma" for promoting concerts and publishing.
Musician Seva Gakkel, who ran the legendary, now-defunct club TaMtAm in the 1990s, said he started to visit Platforma because of his young daughter.
"I liked the place for a number of reasons. Firstly, almost as soon as it opened they hosted great children's matinees on Sundays and we didn't miss a Sunday performance for the whole of the club's first year," said Gakkel, who helped to promote impromptu concerts by Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier and the New York-based duo The Snow at Platforma. "Because of this, I felt sympathy for these people, for Denis Rubin, and even if I don't go out much, I could frequently be seen at Platforma over the last two years. It was nice in every respect. I also liked the fact that you could go and meet with people in the afternoon or go to a friend's birthday party, it was universal."http://denisrubin.livejournal.com

TITLE: Arts impressario
AUTHOR: By Katya Madrid
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Meet Lyudmila Lipeiko, a woman of vision and a colorful character who is not afraid to take risks. As the founding director of the Bereg Art Center, Lupeiko has brought us Vertical and Open Cinema, two formidable international festivals that happen here in St. Petersburg annually. In a recent interview taken in her mansard flat, she revealed what motivates her to fly half way around the world in search of undiscovered human treasures.A Tarot deck based on the work of Leonardo de Vinci on a kitchen table littered with documents and newspapers typical of a jet setting executive, and a longhaired Tabby on her lap, Lipeiko pours the tea at her apartment on the Petrograd Side. Past the potted plants, opens a view onto rooftops, pipes and small windows, evoking the magical world of the chimneysweep in Mary Poppins. Lipeiko has much in common with this character. Like the chimneysweep, she strives to shatter our illusions about ourselves and the world around us, to make us stretch our imaginations and make room for a deeper, more mystical reality.
"I am only interested in those projects that require thought on the part of the audience, that change people and thus the world," said Lipeiko. "Projects that change me." She goes on to say, "The intention is to show that the world is bigger than our own little world. We [Lipeiko and the incredibly diverse group of artists and performers that she assembles] do this by creating positive shocks and distractions through art."
Indeed the events put on by Bereg usually have those elements. One of Lipeiko's long time collaborators are members of Derevo, a performance troupe led by Anton Adassinski that describes itself as Russian Butoh. (Though many of the members now live in Germany.) They have been an integral part of the Vertical festival since its debut in St. Petersburg in September 2004. As Lipeiko teasingly described it, in that first performance "…naked people crawled around in puddles… The public did not know how to react. People said that they didn't understand, but," she points out, "they understood that they didn't understand." This was all-important.
Derevo often incorporates improvisational elements in their work, an aspect of performance that Lipeiko holds in high regard because it focuses on the fleeting present. It is the "whole universe in one moment," she says passionately. This is particularly poignant when two worlds collide, as happened at Vertical 2006 a few weeks ago. As part of her ongoing effort to bring together the traditional and the avant garde, Lipeiko invited a master of the traditions of Indian dance of the Kathak style, Sri Sanjay Bhattacharya, and several key dancers from Derevo to do an improvisational piece together. With a childlike innocence, an exploration of "the other" occurred that was outside of anything familiar to either half of the equation. Lipeiko describes this performance as "a moment of agreement, including agreement with the world," noting that "reaching or making an agreement is the single most important thing that we do as human beings. It is what our entire civilization is based on."
The theme of returning to a childlike mindset in order to shift our perceptions is a critical one in Lipeiko's personal philosophy. Moving along a well-traveled ideological path, she admires the psychological state that exists before we are acclimatized into the "adult" way of thinking in western society. In order to have a world where miracles are possible, we must believe in miracles, she postulates. In the west, only children truly believe that we live in such a world. Rocks do not speak to us. Gods do not walk down our streets. We cannot conceive of a magical reality in which we can play a role in creation. Thus, there forms a strong separation between us and the world around us. This, in turn, makes it difficult to accept that which is different from us as equally valuable. It is a question of, as Lipeiko puts it, "that awful, overused word — tolerance."
The situation is very different in India. "Without doubt," Lipeiko proclaims, "what [Indian people] have to give to the world is … the ability to be on good terms with neighbors that are of different faiths." She quickly followed up with a disclaimer that excluded the Kashmir province. Being mindful that every place has its problems, Lipeiko chooses to focus on the positive aspects. She describes India as being a land of childhood, where fancy creates reality; one harmonious world of living gods and man; a place that achieves "wholeness"; a place where gratitude is still a daily occurrence.
With the hopes of "bringing magical thinking to Russia", come December, Lipeiko is off to India for the third time, this time with a small film crew, for the purpose of shooting a documentary film for Russian television on the Kumbh Mela, a gathering of holy people that occurs four times every twelve years. She strives to show the "energy of the people, not the tricks that they perform," she says, talking about the gurus.
Yet, Lyudmila Ivanovna Lipeiko is a complex woman, full of contradictions. Her spiritual leanings aside, she is a hardened poker player, and a sharp businesswoman. She jokingly calls the game "God's first gift". It teaches us to "to know one's opponents, to conquer oneself and one's physiology," she says. "Life is always a game."For more information visit www.artbereg.ru

TITLE: Panama Destined For Security Council Seat
AUTHOR: By Paul Burkhardt
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — A diplomatic proxy battle between the Bush administration and Venezuela's anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez neared an end, with Panama chosen as the consensus candidate for a Latin American seat on the UN Security Council.Venezuela and U.S.-backed Guatemala agreed Wednesday to withdraw from the race and support Panama, a compromise reached after voting in the General Assembly dragged through 47 rounds of balloting.
Ecuador's UN Ambassador Diego Cordovez, who hosted two meetings Wednesday between the Guatemalan and Venezuelan foreign ministers, made the announcement at Ecuador's UN Mission.
"The two candidates reached an agreement to step down and they came up with Panama as a consensus candidate," Cordovez said.
The race for a seat on the UN's most powerful body became highly politicized because the United States supported Guatemala over Venezuela, whose president referred to Bush as "the devil" in his speech last month to the General Assembly.
Guatemala led Venezuela in all but one ballot, on which they tied, but could not muster the two-thirds majority in the 192-member General Assembly to win the seat designated for a Latin American or Caribbean candidate.
Cordovez said Guatemala and Venezuela will present Panama to the 34 Latin American and Caribbean nations as a consensus candidate at a meeting Thursday, and approval is virtually certain.
With the backing of the two countries and the Latin American group, Panama's election by the General Assembly for a two-year term on the Security Council is also virtually assured.
"We are recognizing today this role of Panama as a political and geographical meeting point and we are very happy to reach this consensus," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said. "Many people will give their opinion about this, but I think what matters today is that a sister nation has obtained our agreement."
The Dominican Republic had emerged as the leading compromise candidate, so the choice of Panama was a surprise.
Panama's Foreign Ministry expressed its gratitude for being chosen.
"It wasn't in our foreign policy plans to be a part of the Security Council in the near future," the Foreign Ministry said, adding that Panama would do its best to support policies on the council that promote "peace and justice in the world."
The ministry said Panama accepted the offer because the country "is the only candidate that can contribute to the unity of the region and prevent the prolongation of voting in the General Assembly."
Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Gert Rosenthal, said Guatemala was persuaded to withdraw because it could not find the 15 votes needed to win. He said Guatemala would try again in the future.
"We would've preferred for our competitors to step down, so that we can take the seat," Rosenthal said. "They didn't offer that solution. So instead of dragging this on for another month or two, we felt the time had come to step down and let a sister state take the role of the Latin American group."
Although Chavez depicted the standoff as a battle between Venezuela and the United States, Rosenthal insisted the U.S. campaign was not pivotal to the outcome.
"We feel that it was not a major element in this campaign — our colleagues from Venezuela do," Rosenthal said. "We believe that this was a contest between two Latin American states for one vacancy. We would like it to be perceived as such. This is not about United States."

TITLE: Berdych, Davydenko Speed into Last Eight
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: PARIS — Defending champion Tomas Berdych and Nikolai Davydenko, the highest ranked player in the tournament, wasted little time in reaching the Paris Masters quarter-finals.Berdych, the eighth-seeded Czech, cruised past America's Robby Ginepri 6-3, 6-3 in just 65 minutes while Davydenko, the Russian fourth seed, took just six minutes longer to reach the last eight with a 6-2, 6-2 win over compatriot Dimitri Tursunov on Thursday.
Their no-nonsense, express trip to the next stage was in stark contrast to Wednesday's action at the Bercy arena when the day's program did not end until 1 a.m on Thursday morning.
Davydenko's impressive win should also have guaranteed him a place in the Davis Cup final.
He had been edged out of the singles line-up by the America-based Tursunov in the semi-final victory over the United States.
But his run to a second consecutive last eight place here should see him line up alongside Marat Safin for this year's final against Argentina in Moscow in December.
Davydenko will now face either Croatian ninth seed Mario Ancic or unseeded Frenchman Julien Benneteau for a place in the semi-finals.
"It's not difficult to play against a Davis Cup colleague because this is singles and that is the consideration," said the 25-year-old Russian who is chasing his fifth title of 2006.
In two matches so far here, he has dropped just four games and has spent less than two hours on court.
Later Thursday the fight to grab the three remaining places at the season-ending Masters Cup in Shanghai continues.
Spanish sixth seed Tommy Robredo faces France's Paul-Henri Mathieu while James Blake, the American seventh seed, takes on German 10th seed Tommy Haas.
Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Ivan Ljubicic, Andy Roddick, who are not playing this week, and Davydenko have already made sure of their places in the China event which starts on November 12.
Argentina's David Nalbandian, currently sitting sixth in the race to grab one of the places in the eight-man field, is sitting out Paris with a stomach injury.

TITLE: Els Relaxed Ahead Of Depleted Tour Finale
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATLANTA — For all the talk of a black cloud hanging over a Tour Championship missing the PGA Tour's two biggest stars, Ernie Els saw nothing but sunshine as he worked quietly on the practice green late Wednesday afternoon.Not many were happier to be at East Lake for the season-ending event for the top 30 on the money list. Els squeaked in three days ago by saving par from 50 yards short of the 18th green, giving him one last chance to salvage his year with a victory.
And that's when the light came on.
"At least I've got a chance," he said. "And it's a lot better when you only have to beat 26 guys."
He doesn't have to beat Tiger Woods, the No. 1 player in the world who decided to end his PGA Tour season a month ago by skipping the tour's version of the all-star game for the first time.
He doesn't have to worry about Phil Mickelson, who stuck to his strategy of calling it quits after the majors.
Also missing is Calgary's Stephen Ames, winner of The Players Championship, who is nursing a sore back.
Reaction from the 27 players at East Lake competing for $6.5 million in prize money has been mixed.
Some believe Woods and Mickelson owe it to the PGA Tour to show up at the Tour Championship.
"I think the biggest players have a responsibility to the tour to play in these," golfer Arron Oberholser said.
"Tiger might not want to hear that and Phil might not want to hear that but they don't write my paycheque, so I don't care.
"I think it's about having a responsibility to your place in the game."
On the other hand, Woods indirectly writes plenty of paycheques.
It is his star power in the game that has caused exponential growth in prize money over the last three years.
When Woods first played in the Tour Championship, the purse was $3 million. This year, the winner gets $1.17 million.
"You could say Tiger and Phil are hurting the tour by not coming to the Tour Championship," U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy said.
"But where would the tour be without Tiger and Phil?
"We'd be playing for $2.5 million this week.
"We'd have 20 tournaments."

TITLE: U.S. Circumcision Jailing Sparks Debate Across Africa
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ADDIS ABABA — The jailing of an Ethiopian in the United States for circumcising his daughter with scissors has fueled a passionate debate across Africa, with many approving the punishment but some urging understanding.In what is believed to be the first such case in the United States, Khalid Adem on Wednesday was sentenced to 10 years in prison for removing his 2-year-old daughter's clitoris in 2001.
The practice arouses horror in the West, but is still widespread in many of Africa's traditional societies. "The punishment is appropriate because what he did is a violation of child rights," Bulti Gueteema, an official in Ethiopia's Ministry of Women's Affairs, told Reuters.
Ethiopian mother Elizabeth Gorge said it was "revolting" for a father to circumcise his own daughter by himself. "Even the uneducated parents in rural areas do not do such practices on their own, they always seek assistance of women who specialize in this," she said in Addis Ababa.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said the practice was outlawed but still common in his Horn of Africa nation. "If a whole community is involved in this practice, you cannot jail an entire community. You have to change the mindset, and that takes time," he said last week.
An estimated 3 million girls and women are mutilated or cut each year on the African continent, the United Nations' children's agency UNICEF says, in a custom viewed in many traditional cultures as a necessary rite of passage.
Circumcision is also used to control or reduce women's sexual desire to lessen the chance of promiscuity in marriage.
Opponents say it disfigures and sometimes kills, causes psychological harm, complicates childbirth later in life and reduces sexual pleasure for women.
The practice, also known as female circumcision, usually involves cutting off the clitoris and other genitalia parts.
It is often carried out by an older woman with no medical training, using anything from scissors to pieces of glass under no anaesthetic or antiseptic treatment.
As populations move West, the custom has followed in immigrant communities. "As long as this happens in a civilised society in the United States, it means our effort to eradicate this practice has failed," said Bjorn Ljungqvist, of UNICEF in Ethiopia.

TITLE: Kiwis Lose Points In 'Grannygate'
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — New Zealand have been stripped of the points they earned for beating Britain in a recent Tri-Nations match after the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) ruled they had used an ineligible player.The RLIF also banned New Zealand's Australian-born hooker Nathan Fien from playing in the remainder of the tournament following a two-day investigation into the "grannygate" scandal that has rocked the sport.
Fien was picked to play for the Kiwis on the basis he had a New Zealand-born great-grandmother, although the rules stipulate that to represent another country your parents or grandparents must have been born there.
The RLIF said New Zealand was aware of the rule and had tried to conceal Fien's connections with the country when quizzed by Australian officials at the start of the series.
"It's just terribly disappointing. The game is based on trust between the nations and we've acted accordingly," RLIF chairman Colin Love, who is also chairman of the Australian Rugby League, told a news conference on Thursday.
"We're told they acted in good faith, but it was never communicated to us that it was Fien's great-grandmother and not his grandmother who was born in New Zealand.
"I don't know whether it's deceit. We're told that it was an honest mistake that this information wasn't communicated to us, but we're certainly disappointed."
The New Zealand Rugby League issued a statement confirming it had made a mistake and would accept the decision.
"The NZRL accepts it made an error," NZRL general manager Peter Cordtz said in a statement, and confirmed the NZRL would not challenge the decision.
While the RLIF stripped New Zealand of the two points, they did not award them to Britain, who were beaten 18-14, leaving both teams without a point and guaranteeing Australia a place in the final.

TITLE: Rebels Kill 17 Police in Colombia
AUTHOR: By Frank Bajak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BOGOTA — After a bombing injured 23 people at a Bogota military base last month, President Alvaro Uribe decided to halt peace overtures to Latin America's oldest and most potent insurgency.Uribe discarded efforts to attain a prisoner swap with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, instead ordering the military to rescue the 60-odd people held by the group.
On Wednesday, the peasant-based rebel band launched its bloodiest attack since Uribe was re-elected in May by voters endorsing his hard line against the group known as the FARC. The FARC killed 17 police officers at a remote outpost in an attack that appeared to be part of a coordinated national offensive.
Analysts called the apparently well-coordinated attack a rebuke to Colombia's military and its U.S. backers, who contended that they had weakened the FARC to the point where it was down to about 12,000 fighters and was no longer able to launch such large-scale assaults.
"The government is put in a rather uncomfortable position when, after announcing a devastating military offensive against the FARC, it ends up being the FARC that strikes the first blows," Alfredo Rangel, Colombia's top military analyst, told The Associated Press after Wednesday's pre-dawn attack.
Authorities say Wednesday's assault happened like this:
Rebels bombarded the police station in Tierradentro, 230 miles northwest of Bogota, with makeshift mortar shells fired from propane gas cylinders, killing three officers. Then they ambushed a column of police reinforcements, killing 14 officers and a female civilian.
"There's a calm around Tierradentro, but underneath people remain very worried," said Jairo Lopez, the top security official in Cordoba state, where the attack occurred. "Many houses were damaged and a few were totally destroyed."
The FARC campaign since the Oct. 19 Bogota base attack has included bombings of military bases and the downing of power lines in contested regions.
"The FARC is looking to reclaim territory that was once held by the (far-right) paramilitaries," said political analyst Leon Valencia. Tierradentro is in rugged mountains into which the landowner-backed paramilitaries had moved in the late 1990s.
Lopez said about 450 rebels took part in Wednesday's attack, with the rebels splitting their forces into three separate units of about 150 fighters to hit the station from every side.
National police director Gen. Daniel Castro said 11 rebels were killed in the fighting, though the Defense Ministry reported recovering the bodies of just five guerrillas.
Rangel, the military analyst, called Wednesday's attacks one of the FARC's most significant actions in the past few years, as Uribe, backed by some $600 million in U.S. military aid annually, has put the rebel group on the defensive.
"They need to demonstrate their power, that (Uribe's) policy hasn't defeated them," he said.
The FARC, which has been fighting the government for more than four decades, reaffirmed in a statement Tuesday its desire for a prisoner swap and accused Uribe of being a U.S. puppet who is trying to pull neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador into the conflict by alleging that FARC commanders are hiding out in the neighboring nations.
Cordoba state, where Wednesday's attack occurred, is a traditional stronghold of the paramilitary militias that emerged in the 1980s, in part to protect drug traffickers from rebel kidnappers in search of ransoms.

TITLE: Malkin Ties 89-Year Record
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Pittsburgh's Russian rookie Yevgeni Malkin became the first player in 89 years to score in his first six games, then went on to tally the game winner as the Penguins beat the Los Angeles Kings 4-3 in overtime on Wednesday.Malkin fired a shot past Kings goalie Dan Cloutier at 8:29 of the first period to match the mark held by Joe Malone, Newsy Lalonde and Cy Denneny. That trio accomplished the feat in their first six games of the 1917-18 season, the NHL's first.
Then in overtime, Malkin scored the game-winner on the powerplay to give Pittsburgh its fifth straight win.
The 20-year-old Malkin, the second pick of the 2004 draft behind compatriot Alexander Ovechkin, left his Russian club Metallurg Magnitogorsk to sign a deal with the Penguins.
Malkin missed the first four games of the regular season after picking up a shoulder injury in the pre-season but is now living up to the hype that surrounded his arrival in the NHL.
Another Pittsburgh rookie, 18-year-old Jordan Staal, added his fifth goal of the season for the Penguins, who are an impressive 7-3 to start the season.
The Penguins have been building a team around a series of high draft picks, including Malkin (2nd 2004), Staal (2nd 2006), Sydney Crosby (1st 2005) and goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury (1st 2003).

TITLE: Real, Lyon Progress, Arsenal Misfire Again
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Lyon and Real Madrid made it to the second round of the Champions League with 1-0 wins Wednesday. Kaka's hat trick in a 4-1 win over Anderlecht put AC Milan within a point of the knockout phase.Lyon edged Dynamo Kiev, and Real Madrid needed an own-goal against visiting Steaua Bucharest for their 1-0 victories in Group E.
Lyon and nine-time champion Madrid joined Bayern Munich, Liverpool, PSV Eindhoven and Valencia in the last 16 with two more games to go.
Karim Benzema scored the winning goal in the 14th minute to keep Lyon in first place in the group, the only team in the competition with the maximum 12 points from four games.
It was not so easy for Madrid, however. Ruud van Nistelrooy missed a penalty, and Steaua provided the only goal in the 70th when a back pass from Benal Nicolita found goalkeeper Cornel Cernea out of position and rolled into the net.
"I think they gave us a gift with the goal," Madrid coach Fabio Capello said. "We had five incredible chances to score goals. It was a balanced game."
Madrid has nine points, while Steaua has three and Dynamo has none.
"Now we must beat Bucharest, and then play in Madrid to see who wins the group," Lyon coach Gerard Houllier said.
Kaka scored Milan's first three goals and Alberto Gilardino added the other in the 88th at San Siro. Roland Juhasz scored in the 61st for Anderlecht, which still has a chance to advance.
"In my opinion, he's the best player in the world at the moment," Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti said of Kaka. "He keeps it very simple and is very determined."
AEK Athens edged Lille 1-0, with Nikos Lymberopolous scoring in the 74th. Milan now has 10 points, followed by Lille with five, AEK with four and Anderlecht with two.
Manchester United and Arsenal both unexpectedly dropped points and still haven't qualified for the second round.
United, which won its first three matches, lost 1-0 at FC Copenhagen with Marcus Allback scoring in the 73rd.
"It's our first three points in the Champions League," said Allback, who played in the English Premier League for Aston Villa and Everton. "We were a bit lucky, but you need it sometimes."
Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, who celebrates 20 years at Old Trafford next Tuesday, said his team wasted many chances.
"I think we had enough possession and opportunities to win the match, but you do have to take your chances," Ferguson said. "We have really thrown it away. Maybe we were careless in our finishing but I think it was a comfortable performance up until the goal."
Celtic was outplayed 3-0 by Benfica — the opposite of their meeting in Glasgow two weeks ago.
A 14th-minute own-goal by Gary Caldwell and goals by Nuno Gomes and Andrei Karyaka gave Benfica a comfortable victory. The results mean that both Benfica and Copenhagen are back in contention for places in the next round.
United remains in first place with nine points, while Celtic has six and Benfica and Copenhagen have four each.
Thierry Henry, Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie and Tomasz Rosicky all missed close-range chances in Arsenal's 0-0 draw against Group G leader CSKA Moscow. The result means three clubs are in contention for the two qualifying spots for the second round.
"It was one of those days, I don't even know what to say," Henry said. "I don't know how many chances we had, I lost count."
CSKA still leads the group with eight points, while Arsenal and third-place FC Porto have seven each.
Everything is still open," Henry said. "We have to go to Porto and not make too many stupid mistakes."

TITLE: 2012 Chiefs Hit Back At Lemley
AUTHOR: By Martyn Herman
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — London 2012 organizers have defended their "strong start" towards delivering the Games after criticism from Jack Lemley who quit as chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) last month.American Lemley was quoted as saying in the Idaho Statesman newspaper that he resigned because of fears that political rows would delay projects and raise costs, so spoiling his reputation of being able to deliver projects on time and on budget.
"I went there to build things, not to sit and talk about it. So I felt it best to leave the post and come home," said the 71-year-old Lemley, who originally said he left to focus on his business interests in the United States.
"I felt it was better to come home now than face that in five or six years."
However the ODA and London Organising Commitee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) played down the impact of Lemley's comments on Wednesday.
"Jack Lemley set out the reasons for his resignation when he left the Olympic Delivery Authority," an ODA spokesman said.
"This project has been defined by strong political co-operation from the outset and that remains the case.
"It is a strength of the project that we have been having a debate about long term legacy use of 2012 facilities now, rather than years in the future.
"That is what makes London 2012 unique. By any analysis we have made a strong start and hit all our major milestones."
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) were encouraged by London's early progress during a two-day visit in April and last week the government said the IOC believed London was far ahead of any other host city at a similar stage in the process.
"It's absolutety right and proper that we have the debate now on what will be the legacy for the next 100 years," a LOCOG spokeswoman told Reuters on Wednesday.
"The time for debate is now and that's what we are doing...It's the first time an Olympics hosting city has had these debates so early in the project, nearly six years before the start of the Games."
The future of the 80,000-seat Olympic stadium has provoked plenty of debate, especially after sports minister Richard Caborn said last month that Premier League football club West Ham United were in negotiations about moving there.

TITLE: Tergat, Ramaala Return For New York Marathon Show
AUTHOR: By Larry Fine
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Kenyan Paul Tergat and Hendrick Ramaala of South Africa are inked into New York City Marathon history after their sprint finish in 2005, yet neither runner wants to repeat that dramatic climax in Sunday's race.Tergat, the world marathon record holder, won last year's shoulder-to-shoulder dash for the tape in the 26.2-mile race by three-tenths of a second in two hours nine minutes 30 seconds. "I don't want to see what we had to see last year," 37-year-old Tergat told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday. "What we saw last year was great stress!"
Ramaala, winner of the 2004 event, wants to taste victory again but in a different scenario. "The best thing would be for the winner to have that last 100 meters to himself to enjoy, to raise his arms and wave to the crowd," Ramaala, 34, said. "Last year was very hard, very painful physically and emotionally. It was good for Paul, but for me it was very difficult."
The marathon is by no means a two-man race.
Elite men among the 37,000-runner field include Olympic champion Stefano Baldini of Italy, the 2002 New York and Boston marathon winner Rodgers Rop of Kenya, and U.S. Olympic silver medalist Meb Keflezighi, the 2004 NYC runner-up.
Yet the dynamic duo of Tergat and Ramaala drew the spotlight.
"I'm here again to try to win," said Tergat. "I want to say it was a painful win. The most painful win I have ever witnessed in my life."
Tergat, the marathon world record holder and five-times world cross-country champion, has had a difficult racing year, limited at first by injury and then by family concerns.
He was forced to scratch the week before April's London Marathon because of a calf injury. In August, he withdrew from the New York City half-marathon due to the premature birth of his fourth child. Happily, both mother and daughter are fine.
"The problem I had in London is gone and I'm in high spirits and good health," said Tergat, who ran the fastest marathon ever, 2:04:55, in winning the 2003 Berlin Marathon.

TITLE: Mets' Mota Banned For 50 Games
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK — Free agent reliever Guillermo Mota, who ended the season with the New York Mets, was suspended for 50 games on Wednesday for violating Major League Baseball's (MLB) drug policy. In keeping with the league's policy, the nature of Mota's violation was not revealed when his punishment was announced by the MLB commissioner's office. "I have no-one to blame but myself," Mota said in a statement. "I take full responsibility for my actions and accept MLB's suspension."I used extremely poor judgment and deserve to be held accountable. To my teammates and the entire Mets organization, I am sorry. I truly regret what I did and hope that you can forgive me. To baseball fans everywhere, I understand that you are disappointed in me, and I don't blame you."
Mota, who came to New York in August in a trade with the Cleveland Indians, was an effective set-up man for the Mets, posting a 3-0 record with a 1.00 ERA in 18 innings pitched over 18 games.

TITLE: ICC Commends PCB Handling Of Doping Trial
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MUMBAI, India — The International Cricket Council on Thursday praised the Pakistan Cricket Board for their handling of the doping trial involving fast bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif.A PCB drugs tribunal banned Akhtar for two years and Asif for one on Wednesday after finding them guilty of doping offences. "It is a tragedy that the careers of two cricketers have been tarnished in this way but, at the same time, the judgement emphasises that cricket has a zero tolerance of drug use," ICC president Percy Sonn said in a statement. "I have read the judgement handed down by the PCB Anti-Doping Commission and feel I must commend the group for its work."
Akhtar and Asif had been called back from the Champions Trophy in India after the board got the results of out-of-competitionn tests carried out in Pakistan before the tournament.
Sonn said that from an ICC perspective, the judgement was very satisfactory and that it made constant reference to guidelines laid down in the PCB's anti-doping code.