SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1219 (85), Tuesday, November 7, 2006
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TITLE: Extremists Defy Bans for 'Russian March'
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck and Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Some 2,000 ultranationalist activists took to the streets on Saturday in defiance of a ban to protest against illegal immigration and what they called the persecution of ethnic Russians.The so-called Russian March-2006, timed to coincide with National Unity Day, was banned by Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who said that such demonstrations "could destroy the unity of our society."
A few hours after the ultranationalist event ended, some 1,000 anti-fascist activists gathered on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in a meeting organized by a coalition of political parties and civil rights groups.
Organizers of Russian March-2006 estimated that 7,000 ultranationalist activists had participated in the event city-wide, and that a total of 3,000 had been detained by police.
"They were all released later because there were no grounds for holding them, said Vladimir Tor, a coordinator at the Moscow headquarters of Russian March-2006.
But Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the Sova think tank, which tracks xenophobia and hate crimes, said Tor's estimate of 7,000 was "laughable."
City police could not be reached for comment, but an unidentified police source told Interfax that just 200 demonstrators had been detained.
Despite the arrests, Saturday's events were far less tendentious than last year's, when thousands of young people marched through central Moscow, shouting "Heil Hitler" and carrying Nazi regalia. Organizers expressly warned participants not to use Nazi symbols or chant Nazi slogans, though some demonstrators ignored this directive.
The ultranationalist Movement Against Illegal Immigration, or DPNI, which helped to organize the event, said thousands had rallied in more than 20 cities across the country, including St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Blagoveshchensk and Novosibirsk.
In St. Petersburg, Governor Valentina Matviyenko banned the ultranationalist march. Some 200 demonstrators ignored the ban and clashed with 40 anti-fascist activists in the city center that continued until police dispersed the crowd with tear gas, Interfax reported.
Saturday's march once again demonstrated DPNI's ability to mobilize large numbers of activists nationwide at a moment's notice.
Using Internet sites and text messaging, DPNI kept march participants abreast in real time of where riot police were congregating and sent out phone numbers for police precincts where demonstrators had been detained.
Sova's Verkhovsky said, however, that this year's Russian March signified "no progress" for the ultranationalist cause.
"There were fewer participants this year than in last year's march, and city authorities overall did a good job controlling the situation," Verkhovsky said.
In Moscow, organizers of the demonstration avoided Luzhkov's ban by calling on activists to meet at Komsomolskaya metro station. By 10 a.m. on Saturday, roughly 1,000 people had gathered on the platform. Several hundred then piled into a train and rode to Belorusskaya station, where they met Dmitry Rogozin, former head of the Rodina party and a leader of the event.
The activists then boarded a train and made their way to Park Kultury station. On the way, a pensioner remarked that she had joined in because "the world community is trying to kill off the Russian people."
"The fact that Luzhkov banned the march is a direct challenge to us Russians," said the woman, who declined to give her name.
Emerging from the metro, the activists were greeted by several hundred riot police, who allowed the crowd to make its way along the Garden Ring to a sanctioned rally at Devichye Polye. They chanted slogans such as "Russia for the Russians" and "Kondopoga is a hero-city," a reference to the Karelian town torn apart by ethnic riots in September.
"I came to support the Russian people," said Alexander, 26, a march participant who declined to give his last name for fear of reprisals. "Everybody has rights here in Russia except Russians themselves."
State Duma Deputy Sergei Baburin told the crowd at Devichye Polye that the "future of Europe and the future of the world depends on Russians."
"Glory to Russia!" Baburin said.
At the smaller anti-fascist meeting on Bolotnaya Ploshchad, Nikita Belykh, head of the liberal Union of Right Forces, said: "This is not a day of unity. It is a day of xenophobia and anti-xenophobia."
A series of speakers blamed the government for exacerbating racial tensions. The crowd was made up of young liberals and old-style democrats, a number of whom wore homemade labels that read, "I am a Georgian." Others carried pictures of murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
"It is a national holiday for fascists," said Alexei, an activist from the International Workers Party, saying he didn't want to give his last name because the FSB had called his institute and told them to expel troublemakers.
Numbers were much lower than an anti-fascist march last year that was held in response to the original Russian March.
"There aren't many of us. If there are 4,000 fascists then there should be a minimum of 400,000 anti-fascists in a city of 12 million," said Anatoly Rekant, 72, from Civil Society, a civil rights group.
The small numbers created a sense of unease among the demonstrators, who were warned not to walk to the metro alone after the meeting.

TITLE: Homeless Seek Help In Charity
AUTHOR: By Denis Pinchuk
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Mikhail might not seem to have a lot going for him — he's living rough in St Petersburg and facing another harsh winter in a rich city where most are oblivious to his plight. But today he is happy.His favorite soccer team — Zenit St. Petersburg — won a recent match and he has found out where to get a bowl of soup and slice of bread every night.
"I've been told a bus will be bringing food to the same place and at the same time every evening. I also need some clothes, they've made a note of my size," said the 53-year-old, who did not want to give his last name.
It might not sound like much but in a country with few facilities for the homeless and where scores of street dwellers died during the coldest winter in a generation last year, any offer of help is welcome.
In this affluent and beautiful city the winter cold sets in as early as October and lasts until April. More than 8,000 homeless people live here, out of a population of around 5 million.
Life as a homeless person is especially difficult in Russia as the country has preserved a unique remnant of the Soviet police system — registration at the place of residence, without which access to a job, pension, medical care or any state benefits is impossible.
There are few charities to help the homeless and those that do operate are small and underfunded.
So it is little wonder that Mikhail is excited about the arrival of a "canteen on wheels" run by local non governmental organization Nochlezhka.
"A timely bowl of soup in winter time can save lives," said Maxim Egorov, head of Nochlezhka.
The new night bus made its first trip in early October.
"Everyone who comes to the bus gets hot soup, bread, tea, help from a nurse and a chat with a social adviser. But we are limited in what we can do: we can feed only 150 people a night," said Mikhail Kovalenko, who works at Nochlezhka.
Medical help is available on site. Sometimes Nochlezhka's activists drive people with sores, wounds or heavy colds to hospital, and then argue for them to be accepted.
Almost a fifth of Russia's 142 million people live below the poverty line — their lives increasingly and painfully at odds with the huge wealth accumulated by an elite tier of "New Russians", grown rich on high world oil and metal prices.
This new world flaunts its wealth in the department stores, expensive cafes and exclusive bars of Moscow, which boasts more billionaires than London and is second only to New York.
But last winter, scores of people died in the same city as temperatures plunged to around minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit): the victims succumbed to heart attacks, hypothermia, excessive alcohol consumption and breathing problems.
Nochlezhka says about a third of the homeless in St. Petersburg end up on the streets after being released from prison, a quarter are migrants and the rest are victims of housing conmen or have been thrown out of their homes by relatives.
St. Petersburg has nine official hostels, or "night-stay homes" for the homeless, with beds for just 189 people.
Nochlezhka, which was set up in 1990, can offer shelter to another 40. The new night bus is the group's second "canteen on wheels" and was bought with money collected by authorities, residents and a church in Hamburg, Germany.
Coping with homelessness in Russia is exacerbated by an ingrained suspicion of aid agencies, and a reluctance to donate, Nochlezhka's workers say.
"Businessmen think that everything they give will be stolen. It's easier for them to throw away left-over food than give it to us," said Egorov, who spends hours trying to persuade restaurant owners to donate stale bread for the homeless.
Authorities have also recently introduced a new law which Nochlezhka says makes it harder for NGOs to receive foreign donations. Transfers from abroad make up more than 90 percent of Nochlezhka's funds.
"The new law on NGOs makes it difficult to receive private donations because every money transfer has to be accompanied by a document showing the specific purpose of the funds. Before, people abroad just collected the money and transferred it to a bank account advertised on the Internet," Egorov said.
Despite these obstacles, Nochlezhka has notched up some successes: some of the visitors to its "canteen on wheels" have now got jobs as street cleaners, giving them a roof over their heads and a small salary.

TITLE: Alcohol Poisonings Hit Poor in Pskov
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: PSKOV — Sergei Morshchinin's face had turned a sickly yellow. So had the whites of his eyes. His head and arms were bandaged. His bedsheets were splattered with blood.Morshchinin, 46, had been in room No. 6 on the fourth floor of the Pskov city hospital since Sept. 22. Nurses expect his bed, one of six in the room, to free up in a matter of days.
"The sooner the better," said Sveta, the 26-year-old duty nurse. "We have patients lining up in the hallway."
The former construction worker, his liver irreparably damaged, had been diagnosed with toxic hepatitis from bad alcohol, Sveta said. The yellow discoloration, or jaundice, was just one of his symptons. Others included vomiting, weight loss, fatigue and urine dark with blood.
"Seryozha will be gone soon," she said. "He can't possibly recover."
From mid-September through the end of October, 530 people poisoned with bad alcohol have been hospitalized in the Pskov region.
Of those, 326 are men, and 204 are women, according to Rospotrebnadzor, the regional government's consumer protection agency. About 10 percent of the victims are homeless.
Another 10 percent have homes and jobs. Eighty percent are unemployed.
The region has been one of the hardest hit by a nationwide, toxic hepatitis epidemic that has left thousands hospitalized and scores dead. The epidemic was spawned by a state crackdown on illegal alcohol, which drove up the price of legal booze and led many to buy black market vodka and other spirits with industrial alcohol unfit for drinking. Now federal officials are calling for a state monopoly on the sale and distribution of alcohol.
In Pskov, there are mixed signs of what's to come.
"We are hoping this is the peak, but the last three days have seen an increase in hospitalized victims," the region's vice governor, Yury Demyanenko, said at a recent news conference at Pskov's central government building.
Nikolai Merkushev, head of Rospotrebnadzor, said tough policing had helped bring the epidemic under control. Health officials say the 10-day incubation period of toxic hepatitis has also helped.
But the reek of sickness and death, the gloominess, the sense of helplessness that permeates the Pskov city hospital is not encouraging.
Valentina Trofimova, a nurse whose job it is to admit patients, could hardly muster the energy to register yet another case of toxic hepatitis on a recent evening.
"There, that's 28 cases today," Trofimova said, resting her pen on a pile of forms and cracking a wan smile. "Can I go home now?"
But just as she was about to end her 31-hour shift, another "yellow person," as they're now dubbed, stumbled into her office.
"Not you, too," Trofimova said to the homeless man known simply as Slava. Trofimova told Slava to come back in three days, after the weekend and the national holiday on Monday.
"I know he needs treatment sooner rather than later, but I don't have any patience for these drunks," she said.
With that, she packed her stethoscope into her bag and left.
The hospital is, quite literally, running out of compassion.
As Trofimova exited the building, she nearly ran into a homelsss woman splayed on the frozen ground outside, her face and hands covered in blood.
"Help me up, please, I fell," the woman slurred. Trofimova walked off.
Another older nurse indicated that passers-by shouldn't worry about the bleeding woman. "It's okay," the nurse said. "She doesn't need help because she's not poisoned. She's just drunk. Leave her."
The tips of the woman's fingers had turned black from the cold. Local weather reports said the temperature had dropped to minus 10 degrees Celsius. The wind was merciless.
"Yes, she could die," the nurse conceded. "But where can we put her? We have no space. The hospital is full of yellow people."
Merkushev, head of Rospotrebnadzor, believes the number of yellow people has peaked and will gradually begin to ebb. Local authorities credit a state of emergency declared last month with restoring order. The state of emergency gave police more power to check private property without warning, deputy police chief Gennady Afanasev said.
A series of coordinated raids on apartments, market stalls, grocery stores and kiosks had led police to confiscate 6,564 liters of hazardous liquids, Merkushev and other officials said. Almost all the seized liquids either contained or were totally composed of industrial alcohol.
But as the police have unearthed networks of illegal alcohol coursing through the Pskov region, they have also discovered the problem may be more complex than expected.
While industrial solvents are 96 percent ethanol — which is also used in legal alcoholic beverages — the remaining 4 percent that is added by bootleggers to the illegal cocktails remains a mystery, said Yelena Petrova, who works in the city police department's laboratory.
Critically, Petrova said, "we believe that whatever they're adding to the ethanol is really harmful and probably to blame for the poisonings."
Further complicating matters is the easy access locals have to illegal alcohol, said Boris Osipov of the city police department's consumer markets division.
As Osipov explained, large factories in the St. Petersburg area produce alcohol for any number of industrial or commercial purposes — household cleaning goods, antifreeze and other items. The alcohol is then sold to suppliers legally, who make the roughly 250-kilometer trek from Pskov regularly to buy their wares. The suppliers then illegally sell it to an array of middlemen working out of private apartments in the city. The suppliers get 90 percent of the profit from these illicit sales; the middlemen get 10 percent.
Sometimes suppliers sell their wares to kiosks and small grocery stores, Osipov said.
Suppliers, Osipov said, have gone to great lengths to mask the provenance of their alcohol — for instance, using empty bottles of legitimate brands such as Prestige vodka, and including water or cheap wine to alter the taste and look of the alcohol.
"It's so simple," Osipov said, half grinning. "We are used to working withcounterfeit goods, but not deadly poison."
Situated about 20 kilometers east of Russia's border with Estonia, Pskov was until the 1950s a largely agrarian area. In recent years, machine-building factories, food-processing plants and lumber production facilities, among other private, public and joint-stock companies, have supplied many regional jobs.
But low public-sector wages have prompted many teachers, doctors and research scientists to flee the area for Moscow or St. Petersburg. In some cases, driving cabs has proven more lucrative than teaching schoolchildren. Vladimir Zhurkov, 40, a former schoolteacher, said he used to make $80 per month; now he shuttles people around town, making up to $40 daily.
Health officials here say the region's depressed economy provides a natural culture medium for alcoholism, homelessness and the recent outbreak of toxic hepatitis.
Irina, 32, a homeless woman who often found shelter in warmer months under a tree near the railroad station, said she used to drink a half-liter bottle of anything alcoholic she could get her hands on every day. Each bottle went for 20 rubles, Irina said, and could be bought at one of any number of apartments not far from the tracks.
Now, with the government shutting down illegal alcohol outfits, she has a harder time getting cheap alcohol.
Irina, who declined to give her last name, had spent the better part of the day drinking. With evening setting in, she set out on the 10-minute walk across snow-covered train tracks to the bungalow where the alcohol used to be sold. As a slowly moving train neared, Irina tripped and fell, only to push on.
Several barking dogs could be heard guarding the bungalow. "When you really need a drink, that barking sounds like pleasant music," Irina said. Then she ducked into the bungalow, emerging empty-handed five minutes later. Her supplier, Igor, she said, had been raided by police the day before.
With illegal sellers like Igor on their way out, Irina has been forced to find alcohol elsewhere.
"We just drink this stuff," she said, holding aloft a 100-milliliter bottle of Boyarshnika, an over-the-counter medicine for correcting arrhythmic heart beats.
Those who take Boyarshnika, which is 70 percent pure alcohol, are advised to consume just 15 drops per day, barely a half-teaspoon. Irina ingests 150 milliliters, or 1 1/2 bottles, on a daily average. Each bottle costs 9 rubles (34 cents).
Like Irina, Sergei Morshchinin didn't care much where his alcohol came from.
On the evening of Sept. 10, two friends paid him a visit at his two-room apartment on the southern fringe of the city. They came bearing gifts, including a bottle of fake cognac called "Konyak," which they had bought at a nearby grocery store. The alcohol ran for 119 rubles ($4.45). Everyone knew full well that it wasn't for real.
For the next two hours, the trio chatted and drank and chatted and drank. After his friends left, Morshchinin kept drinking.
The next week, Morshchinin said, he felt a bit weak at his construction job, which used to bring in $150 monthly. He didn't think too much of it, having shaken off numerous hangovers.
Then on Sept. 22, Morshchinin awoke with a terrible, mind-numbing headache. "I was in agony," he said. He got out of bed, planning to walk to the hospital. He didn't make it to the front door.
Now he sits in room No. 6, sharing his last few days alive with five other men. The room is small and dimly lit. An IV drip stands between two beds.
A nurse rings a bell, and those patients who are able to get out of bed traipse down the hall for their third meal of the day of curd cheese and nothing else. Sometimes, they also get fruit.
Morshchinin is in no position to get out of bed. Struggling to speak, he said: "Would I drink that rubbish again? Probably not."

TITLE: Witness to Receive Bodyguards
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Witnesses whose testimony in court could cost them their lives will get bodyguards and possibly plastic surgery under a witness protection program approved by the Cabinet.Other protective measures include relocation and bulletproof vests.
The $35.5 million program is meant to shore up the country's shaky criminal justice system, the government said this week on its web site.
Legislators have wanted a witness protection program for years. The State Duma passed measures in 1995 and 1997 that would have created one, but President Boris Yeltsin vetoed both bills.
Then, in 2004, President Vladimir Putin signed the law on government defense of participants in legal proceedings.

TITLE: Cabinet Backs $6 Billion In Extra State Spending
AUTHOR: By Gleb Bryanski
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government on Thursday approved a 161 billion-ruble ($6 billion) hike in 2006 spending, as it seeks to allocate windfall revenue generated by sky-high oil prices.Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Golikova said ministers had approved budget amendments that foresaw an overshoot in revenues this year by 1.12 trillion rubles ($41.8 billion).
"The amendments have been approved and we expect the revised budget to land in the State Duma on Nov. 4," Golikova told reporters after the Cabinet session.
Even with additional spending plans, the government still expects to run a 1.7 trillion-ruble surplus, equivalent to 6.2 percent of gross domestic product, according to figures released by the government before the Cabinet met.
"This kind of budget slippage is to be expected, given the high oil prices and large overshoot in budget revenues," said Rory MacFarquhar, an analyst at Goldman Sachs.
Of this year's total overshoot, 307 billion rubles ($7.8 billion) will not be absorbed by the $77 billion budget stabilization fund, which collects taxes levied on oil priced above $27 per barrel.
Unspent money will be sent to the fund at the start of 2007. The government plans to spend the windfall on building houses for army servicemen, repairing the country's potholed roads and on airports, as well as on education and health projects.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, the government's most prominent fiscal hawk, discussed the increase this week with President Vladimir Putin, who asked him to ensure the spike did not stoke inflation.
The government is close to meeting a 9 percent 2006 inflation target, economists polled in October said, but an injection of extra budget cash could spur prices next year.
Golikova dismissed inflation worries: "We believe this spending will not have any consequences for inflation."
Public institutions have a tendency to hold back budget funds throughout the year and frantically spend them in December. This spending spree traditionally results in a spike in consumer prices in January.
MacFarquhar said the government had only spent 2.8 trillion rubles ($105 billion) as of the end of September, implying that 35 percent of annual primary spending will come in the last quarter of 2006.
Russia has been reaping the benefits of the oil bonanza in 2006, but most recently the price of Urals crude, its main export blend, has fallen by 38 percent since its July highs.

TITLE: Moscow Open to Iran 'Measures'
AUTHOR: By Paul Ames
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium — Russia's foreign minister said Friday that Moscow was still open to international "measures" against Iran for its nuclear program, but that a European draft resolution to impose UN sanctions goes too far.The proposal that has drawn opposition from Russia and China calls for a UN ban on the supply of material and technology that could contribute to Iran's nuclear and missile programs and impose a travel ban and asset freeze on companies, individuals and organizations involved in those programs.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declined to say what changes Russia would like to see to the draft resolution, drawn up by Britain, France and Germany.
"Measures which we would introduce would have to be reasonable, take account of the real situation, should be proportional to the actual situation with regards to the nuclear program in Iran and should also be in stages," Lavrov told a news conference at European Union headquarters.
"What the EU troika drew up went way beyond what was agreed" in talks between the Europeans, Russians, Chinese and Americans on how to rein in Iran's uranium enrichment program, Lavrov said.
EU diplomats had hoped Lavrov would spell out what changes Moscow wanted to the draft at a meeting Friday with the EU foreign policy chief and the Finnish foreign minister, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency. But officials who attended, and spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks, said they had not heard Lavrov offering any such clarification.
Previously, Lavrov has cautioned that the proposed sanctions would isolate Iran and hinder efforts to find a negotiated solution to the nuclear standoff.
China, which like Russia has strong commercial ties to Tehran, has also signaled opposition to the draft. The United States has complained the European plan is too weak.
In his public comments, Lavrov made no mention of the nuclear power plant being built with Russian help in Iran.

TITLE: Moscow Fumes at U.S. Warning
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Foreign Ministry on Thursday angrily criticized a U.S. diplomat's warning to the European Union that a prospective natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea could further increase its energy dependence on Russia, saying Washington wanted global energy routes to bypass Russia.The ministry said the European Union's energy security hinged on Russian gas supplies.
"Let's refrain from discussing whether it was a proper thing for a U.S. official to do to take responsibility to tell Germany how it should develop cooperation with Russia," the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said the United States had previously criticized the Blue Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea delivering Russian gas to Turkey.
"Unfortunately, one could get the impression that the U.S. opposition to the Blue Stream project and now to the North European gas pipeline is driven not by its concern about Europe's energy security, but by some U.S. officials' belief that good gas pipelines are those which bypass Russia," the Foreign Ministry said.
(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: $19 Million Later, Russian Tea Room to Reopen
AUTHOR: By Verena Dobnik
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Madonna once worked the coat check there. And everyone from Michael Douglas and Mikhail Baryshnikov to Woody Allen and Henry Kissinger patronized the Russian Tea Room for their tete-a-tetes and trysts. It was the ultimate power meal, spiced with romance — until it closed in 1995. Then reopened. Then closed again.On Friday, the Russian Tea Room is set to open to the public yet again, after a more than $19 million takeover and makeover. The new owner is real estate developer Gerald Lieblich.
No one knows how this third reincarnation of an iconic meeting place will do, but one thing is for sure: The name Russian Tea Room evokes New York's celebrity force field — "an anteroom to all the glamor and gifts, sizzle and pulse, art, intelligence and determination of New York," as folk singer Judy Collins, a past-Tea Room regular, described it in an essay after its 2002 closing.
Today, the 2,520-square-meter town house is filled with decor that mimics early 20th-century Russia, with 28 antique samovars, crimson leather banquettes and vivid green walls. The menu still offers borshch and blinis with butter, caviar and sour cream.
A new chef, Gary Robins, is crafting dishes to satisfy nostalgic clients, creating his own borshch while "bringing in a more vibrant, more contemporary palate," he said. Translation: healthier, less buttery fare. Cheese blintzes are now "blinchiki," Russian-style crepes served with goat cheese, wild mushrooms and duck confit.
Also on the menu is an Iranian caviar appetizer, at $350 per ounce. But dinner can still be had for about $75, plus tip and tax.
The standards are high. Before its opening, one sous chef was heard in the kitchen saying a large pot of cauliflower flan should be discarded because the consistency was wrong; it was adjusted and saved.
Whether memories and new menu will mix in the right way to bring back the magic is culinary Russian roulette.
On the dog-eat-dog restaurant scene, said Tea Room spokesman Ken Biberaj, "it is a lot of pressure."
In the Tea Room's heyday in the 1980s, the focus was not on the food.
Lunchtime at this midtown Manhattan institution next to Carnegie Hall brought together theater, movie and book agents who made important deals happen over meals.
Collins first visited the Tea Room after her Carnegie solo debut in 1962. And then, like so many others, she returned for holidays, birthdays, everyday meals — even takeout (lamb, bulgur wheat and a Caesar salad served on a plastic plate covered with foil).
In the early 1980s, Dustin Hoffman came for lunch with his wife and agent while preparing to shoot "Tootsie." The actor decided to turn up in his drag costume. Even his agent did not recognize him. The scene was repeated in the 1982 film with Hoffman as dowdy, middle-aged Dorothy accosting Sydney Pollack's character in the Russian Tea Room.
The many stories started in 1926, when a chocolate shop and tearoom for Russian expatriates was opened by former dancers of the Imperial Russian Ballet who had fled the Bolsheviks. Even now, the restaurant offers a house vodka whose Russian inscription on the bottle translates to "The Tsar's Gold."
The Russian Tea Room's golden era began in 1955, when it was acquired by Sidney Kaye, an exuberant man of Russian descent. His perky, name-dropping wife, Faith Stewart-Gordon, became a friend and confidante to some of the greatest names in the entertainment industry.
Leonard Bernstein composed the opening bars of his "Fancy Free" dance at the Tea Room. When actor Yul Brynner died, friends gathering to mourn him at the restaurant included Raquel Welch, Sylvester Stallone and Robert Mitchum.
Stewart-Gordon sold the property in 1996 for $6.5 million to Warner LeRoy, who closed it — a stomach-wrenching affair for regulars who canceled other commitments to come for farewell meals.
LeRoy spent three years and $36 million redoing the interior, adding what Stewart-Gordon called "these wild, Ringling Bros. circus effects." They are still there: a 4.5-meter acrylic bear filled with parrot fish and a private dining room featuring a mechanical diorama of what is now Red Square at the turn of the 20th century, complete with miniature soldiers and a tsar.
The costs drove the restaurant into bankruptcy, and LeRoy died in February 2001. The Sept. 11 attacks put an additional squeeze on the local economy, forcing the Russian Tea Room to shut down in July 2002.
The restaurant was sold to the U.S. Golf Association, which failed to turn it into a golf museum as planned. Lieblich bought the property for $19 million but would not say what it cost to reopen it.
Days before the opening, workers were buffing a shiny ceiling painted in a color called security red.
The cliche "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" does not apply at the Russian Tea Room, whose red and green colors make the restaurant look like Christmas year-round.
There are only a few truly original items behind the revolving entrance door at 150 West 57th Street — including the old wooden door itself. Hand-etched on its glass panels are the letters that have greeted Russian Tea Room guests for many decades: "RTR."."

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Ruling IgnorednKIEV (AP) — Moscow will ignore a Ukrainian court order to return Crimean lighthouses used by the Russian naval fleet to Ukraine, Russian Ambassador Viktor Chernomyrdin said Thursday.
A court in Sevastopol ruled in September that 22 lighthouses and other navigational devices held by the Russian Black Sea fleet must be returned to the control of Ukraine's Transport Ministry.NBP Cases Flood CourtnMOSCOW (SPT) — Lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky said Thursday that 49 cases involving members of the unregistered National Bolshevik Party were pending in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, Interfax reported.
In March, the court ordered the Russian government to pay NBP member Valentina Dolgova 5,000 euros for emotional suffering, ruling that Dolgova had been unjustly held in jail for a year.

TITLE: Russo-Finnish Team Targets Logistical Lack
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Real estate fund EPI Russia, a subsidiary of Evli Property Investments, and Finnish construction group YIT are to launch two projects worth a combined 100 million euros ($127 million), the companies said Friday in a statement.The agreement includes construction of a nine-floor office building on Primorsky Prospekt and a logistics center at Gorelovo, south of the city.
Petteri Nurminen, managing director of Evli Property Investments, described the projects as "corresponding perfectly to the fund's investment strategy."
Established in June 2006, EPI Russia focuses on the domestic real estate market, acquiring and developing commercial properties in St. Petersburg and Moscow with the aim of establishing a portfolio of 300 million to 400 million euros.
Nurminen said EPI Russia aims to "build modern business facilities corresponding to the unsatisfied needs of western operators."
"In St. Petersburg, construction has recently been more focused on retail space, and the supply of logistics premises has clearly lagged behind this growth. With the market as it is we will most probably be focusing, now and in the future, on logistical and office space," Nurminen said.
The combined value of the projects is about 100 million euros, and it could rise to 180 million euros.
Construction of the office block will begin in 2006 and is due for completion by the end of 2007. Overall, a total of 10,130 square meters of premium-class office space will be built.
YIT will lease about half of the building from EPI Russia under a ten-year agreement, with the rest of the premises leased on the open market.
The 75,000 square meter logistics center will be located near the airport and ring road. Construction will begin in spring 2007 and is due for completion in the first half of 2008.
EPI Russia also reserves the right to expand the logistics center by approximately 100,000 square meters.
"These projects, to be implemented together with Evli, are in line with YIT's strategy to expand its business in Russia. Our objective is to increase the amount of housing construction as well as commercial and business developments," said Timo Lehmus, senior vice president for international operations at YIT Construction.
Yekaterina Koda, PR manager at YIT Lentek, a local subsidiary of YIT, said that the projects would be realized on plots of land belonging to YIT — YIT Lentek acquired the land from individual owners, meaning the company does not have any liabilities to the regional government.
At the moment YIT Lentek is negotiating with a number of foreign industrial companies for the renting out of areas in the new logistics center.
Nikolai Vecher, vice president of the Managers and Developers' Guild, said that demand for logistic facilities, including those located in the Leningrad Oblast, is rather high.
"At the moment, a number of large projects are being realized in Leningrad Oblast, including the International Logistic Partnership near the ringroad and the second and the third parts of Astros Logistic complex (75,000 square meters). It shows that this market segment has a lot of potential for investment," Vecher said.
Over the next few years he forecast a big increase in the number of logistic sites, "which would significantly decrease existing market pressures and bridge the gap between demand and supply."
According to Becar real estate agency, premium class office centers are also constantly in demand, something evident from high occupancy rates and the high share of A-class office areas among the total number of business centers that are being constructed.
The average occupancy rate in A-class business centers is 99 percent. During the first half of 2006, seven new business centers of 45,000 square meters total area were completed, two of them of A-class and five of B and B+ class.
"In terms of their technical characteristics, those business centers do not differ a lot. B-class centers are inferior to A-class centers only in terms of location," said Oleg Spivak, director for consulting at Becar.

TITLE: Experts Still Laboring Over a Familiar Deficit
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A growing deficit of qualified labor is hampering the city's economic development and putting strategic projects at risk, experts said at a round table at Rosbalt news agency last week.According to the Federal Service for Employment, there are 69,000 unfilled vacancies in the city. Taking into account unregistered vacancies, the total varies between 350,000 and 400,000 jobs, the experts said, and the figure keeps growing. The city's ten strategic projects would require 6,500 new employees.
"Several potential investment projects in the Northwest have not come to fruition simply because investors were not sure whether they could find the required labor force," said Alexei Sergeyev, chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade.
The labor shortage is reinforced by structural imbalance: The number of specialists with higher education is 4.5 times more than the market requires; the number of workers with specialist technical training is 6.7 times less than is necessary.
Technical colleges decreased in number from 148 in 1990 to around 69 currently. At the same time, 75 percent of vacancies are technical jobs (engineers, drivers, workers, welders).
Sergeyev suggested the city's unfavorable demographic situation as the main cause for concern. This year 50,000 people died in St. Petersburg, while only 30,000 children were born. By 2015, the number of economically active residents will decrease from a current level of 2.5 million people to 2.1 million.
An imbalance is produced by the education system, Sergeyev said. "Educational institutions design programs that take into account the demands of students, but not economic demand," he said.
Alexei Churkin, chairman of the Northwest branch of Recruiting Consultants Association, estimated the labor deficit at between 200,000 to 250,000 people.
"The demographic situation is not going to change in the near future. Today's measures will only deliver results 20 years to 30 years down the line," Churkin said.
He suggested coordinating education programs and promoting St. Petersburg as a center of employment.
Sergeyev agreed. "Labor migrants are an instrument which we could use right now, and they could make up half the existing shortage," he said.
The recently introduced Law No. 110 simplifies registering labor migrants from the CIS. The federal government is designing a law allowing labor migrants to register by sending notification by post to the relevant authorities.
So far local authorities have failed to control labor migration. For each officially registered migrant, five to ten people come to the city and work illegally, said Andrei Romanov, deputy chairman of the committee for law, order and security.
In the construction industry, 100,000 to 120,000 illegal migrants are currently being employed. Sergeyev blamed a number of recent accidents — bus crashes, collapses of buildings under construction and mass food poisoning in the Mozhaisky Academy — on illegal migration.
While authorities struggle to develop long-term programs, some of the city's enterprises have found their own ways of dealing with the deficit in labor.
Proletarsky Plant and its shareholder, Eastern European Financial Corporation, have designed a credit program. The corporation grants eight year loans with 12 percent interest to students. Proletarsky plant covers up to 90 percent of the loan to specialists who keep working for the company after graduation. 70 people have taken part in the program, said personnel director Nikolai Konovalenko.
Admiralteiskiye Shipyards trains students in its own education center.
"However, there is the problem of retaining specialists. We can't compete with the high, unofficial salaries offered by some local companies," said Natalia Zhdanova, deputy head of HR department at Admiralteiskiye Shipyards.
Alexei Lukianov, head of HR department at Northern Shipyards, also indicated the uncompetitive salary as the main hurdle to hiring young specialists. He suggested active lobbying to win large contracts and decrease the industry's overheads.
"We are not focused on attracting employees from the CIS. We've had bad experiences in the past with such immigrants. We are mainly focused on attracting employees from other regions of Russia," Lukianov said.
However, he added, there is a lack of communal apartment blocks in the city, and the company cannot afford to organize new ones.

TITLE: VimpelCom Snaps Up Armentel
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — VimpelCom, Russia's second-largest cellular company, said Friday it agreed to buy 90 percent of an Armenian phone company for 341.9 million euros ($434.2 million), as it looks to expand beyond the saturated Russian market.VimpelCom has signed an agreement with Greece's Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA, the Moscow-based company said Friday in a PRNewswire statement. The company will also assume about 40 million euros in net debt and obligations.
"With approximately 40 percent of the mobile market share, Armentel occupies a strong position in the Armenian market and we will work to enhance this position,'' VimpelCom Chief Executive Officer Alexander Izosimov said in the statement.
VimpelCom, and its domestic competitors Mobile TeleSystems, Russia's biggest cellular operator, and MegaFon, the third-largest wireless company, are looking to expand beyond Russia, a country with 143 million people and more than 146 million mobile phones. Buying Armentel will make Armenia the sixth former Soviet country aside from Russia where VimpelCom will have operations.
Armentel has about 600,000 fixed-line subscribers and 400,000 GSM subscribers, the statement said.

TITLE: Duma Moves to Regulate Share of Pawnshop Power
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW —Need cash fast? A bank loan may be the first thing that comes to mind, but for many people banks are not an option.People who are working in this country illegally, as well as those who receive all or part of their income under the table, have little access to the banking system. For others, a small income makes them nearly invisible to the banks.
"A huge number of people still don't have access to banks," said Natalya Orlova, an analyst with Alfa Bank.
This is where pawnbrokers come in.
Some 3,000 pawnshops nationwide make around 500,000 small loans each year, some charging upwards of 100 percent in annual interest, according to Nikolai Bobrov, president of the St. Petersburg-based Transregional Association of Pawnbrokers.
These kind of numbers have caught the interest of the State Duma, which is expected to take up a new law on pawnbroking this fall in an attempt to tighten regulation of the industry and to promote the image of pawnshops as legitimate lending institutions.
That may take some doing, since pawnshops are often perceived as shady lenders and a last resort.
Bobrov, who is also chairman of the board of Obyedinyonny Lombard, or United Pawnbrokers, a chain of pawnshops in St. Petersburg and Moscow, paints a rather stark picture of his industry's clientele.
"In the center of Moscow, everyone wants the beautiful life — expensive cars and nice clothes. But go take a look at how people live in Tekstilshchiki," he said, referring to a working-class district in southwest Moscow.
People who live in areas like Tekstilshchiki often have to pawn their wedding rings to get money for groceries and to tide them over until payday, Bobrov said.
The volume of retail loans given by the country's banks is expected to reach $80 billion by the end of this year, Alfa's Orlova said. Yet some small towns and villages have no banks, and when banks are available, many people cannot make use of their services.
Low-income applicants, such as pensioners, often find it difficult to obtain a bank loan, Orlova said. The average pensioner receives just 3,100 rubles ($116) per month. The average monthly wage in September, the last month for which figures are available, was 11,070 rubles ($414), according to the Federal Statistics Service.
Applicants whose incomes cannot be verified are also routinely turned down, Orlova said.
While it is on the wane, under-the-table salaries are generally considered to account for roughly one-fifth of all earned income.
Given the transaction costs and the risks, Orlova said, it is more profitable for banks to give a single large loan to one dependable customer than to provide smaller loans to a number of borrowers.
Such low-income borrowers are the pawnbroker's bread and butter.
"What's a pawnbroker? It's the best barometer of our life," said Svetlana Limberova, deputy general director of Mosgorlombard, a Moscow-run pawnshop on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Ulitsa.
Limberova's shop first opened its doors in 1905 and operated throughout the Soviet era.
Apart from friends and family, state-run pawnshops were the only legal place to get a loan in the Soviet Union.
In the 1990s, soldiers and professionals frequented pawnshops as wage delays and runaway inflation left them in need of ready cash, Limberova said. Tragedies and other dire situations, such as emergency surgery, still send people to pawnshops, of course, but on the whole, Mosgorlombard's clients seem more cheerful these days, she said.
"People are feistier today, more willing to join the rat race and to borrow, [so as] not to miss a good opportunity," she said, adjusting the dragonfly brooch on her sweater.
At a monthly interest rate of 6 percent, some people pawn their cars to raise startup capital for small business ventures.
Others use the shop to store furs or electronics when going on vacation, Limberova said, while also borrowing extra cash for the trip.
With the exception of state-run pawnshops, most accept only gold and diamond jewelry as collateral because it is cheaper to appraise and store.
"Given today's real estate prices, storing anything that's larger than an ashtray for more than a day makes no financial sense," Bobrov said.
Alexander Dyomin, a staffer on the State Duma's Credit Organizations and Financial Markets Committee, said the proposed law on pawnbroking was intended to protect the rights of people who pawn their valuables.
Pawnshops are currently regulated by the Civil Code, which spells out their right to lend money in exchange for collateral.
The Code also refers to the law on pawnbroking, which has yet to be passed. This creates confusion, Dyomin said.
The proposed law imposes a ceiling of 180 days on pawnbrokers' loans, and it requires pawnbrokers to notify defaulting clients in writing before they simply put their pledges up for sale.
The bill also protects clients from fraud by requiring pawnshops to pay clients the difference between the appraisal value of pledges and the sale price, if the sale price is higher.
The law will lend credibility to pawnshops by emphasizing their role as financial institutions, pawnbrokers said.
Pawnbrokers in this country are still thought of as "tattooed men sitting in metal kiosks and dangling gold rings from their pinkies," Bobrov said.
But pawnbrokers expressed concern that some of the law's provisions could make giving small loans unprofitable.
A pawnbroker's typical loan is less than 1,000 rubles ($37), Bobrov said. "The Bangladeshi banker [Mohammed Yunus] just got a Nobel Prize for making small loans," he said.
The law also retains a current requirement for pawnbrokers to notarize all documents involved in transactions.
Notaries' fees, plus the cost of paper and printing, exceeded the value of the transactions themselves in the case of very small loans, meaning that loans under 100 rubles would be discontinued, Bobrov said.
Limberova said legislators should consult with pawnbrokers before proposing wide-ranging regulations that might very well need to be amended in the future.
The contentious provisions requiring written notices and notarized slips would most likely remain in the final version of the bill, Dyomin said. "These requirements are essential to enforcing private property rights and protecting the clients of pawnshops," he said.

TITLE: Tents Form Impromtu Suburbs of Mongolia's Capital
AUTHOR: By Lucy Hornby
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ULAN BATOR, Mongolia — Creeping up over the dry hills, the shantytowns of Ulan Bator mark the ever-spreading line where the city meets the Mongolian steppes.Known as ger-towns, these impromptu suburbs of dirt roads and stockade fences get their name from gers, the traditional white tents of the nomadic Mongol people, which newcomers to Ulan Batur pitch on land plots around the capital.
The tents are a sign that Mongolia's nomadic heritage has a modern use. They are also daily evidence that Ulan Bator's creaky infrastructure is struggling to keep up with the expanding city.
Flush from a boom in coal and copper prices, the government is seeking to extend utility services to the ger-towns, home to about half of Ulan Bator's 1 million people.
Oyunchimeg's home in a ger-town on a steep hill is only about a 10-minute drive from the apartment blocks and power plants of Ulan Bator. But until recently Oyunchimeg and her neighbors had to fend for themselves.
"Even the road here we paid for by ourselves, the people who run the mini-mart put that in," said Oyunchimeg, whose family runs a trucking business from their plot, where they have lived for two decades.
"We'd like piped water. It's been promised for 10 years, but where is it?" she asked.
A ger-town is born as a small string of traditional ger tents on a grassy hillside. Fences are gradually built to surround each tent. Then a latrine is erected, then a wooden house. Convenience stores and schools follow.
Water trucks roam the streets. When they stop, children run up to the trucks to fill jerrycans that they carry home.
The homes are heated with small coal burners, adding to the thick smog that blankets Ulan Bator in the winter.
City dwellers blame vagrancy, night crimes and well-stocked shelves of vodka in local stores for ger-towns' high rate of unemployment.
But in a country where the average age is 25, ger-towns are also the only place where many young couples can afford a home of their own.
"We moved out here because we wanted more room to build a bigger house," said one young mother, as her 7-year-old daughter sold soda from a stand in a bare dirt yard.
Booming prices for Mongolia's exports — such as copper and coal — have ended years of economic stagnation in the landlocked country of 2.8 million people.
Electricity use has only this year returned to its record 1989 level, according to figures from the Fuel and Energy Ministry, as residential consumption growth slowly makes up for the collapse of industrial demand.
The country's industrial sector was hit hard when many state-owned enterprises failed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
More recently, Chinese competition has wiped out the textile sector.
Mongolia's government plans to use some of the cash to fund a broad housing initiative. Under the plan, it would build 15,000 new homes, renovate 15,000 existing apartments and extend city services — including heat and water — to 10,000 residences in the ger-towns.
The central bank is also trying to develop a secondary mortgage market to stimulate the financial sector and bring down high interest rates that often force young couples to start out living in tents.
Interest rates are now well over 20 percent per year. Individuals and small businesses find it hard to get loans.
"Right now, down payments are 25 percent to 30 percent and a five- to seven-year mortgage is the maximum. But the system could look very different in two to three years," central bank chief Chuluunbat said in a recent interview.
Most of Ulan Bator could use the facelift.
Worn but elegant Russian buildings near the central square quickly give way to apartment blocks and high rises of varying modernity, many run-down and some abandoned.
On a sunny autumn day, the more established ger-towns give an impression of order and respectability.
"When I first came here I too was dismayed by the dust and the dirt roads," said a woman who lives in the ger-town. "But it's actually not that bad."

TITLE: Lithuania Gets a Refined Taste of Kremlin Crude Control
AUTHOR: By Andrew E. Kramer
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: VILNIUS —The Kremlin has never been straightforward about its plans to take control of the oil and gas business.So, Lithuanians were suspicious when Russia said it shut its pipeline — the only one supplying Russian crude oil — in late July because of a leak.
In fact, it was not so much the pipeline the Russians were concerned about, Lithuanian officials, analysts and company executives said. It was what the pipeline was connected to: Lithuania's sole refinery.
And because Russia often gets what it wants, it may not matter that the Lithuanian government had signed an agreement in June to sell the refinery to a Polish company, PKN Orlen, for much more than Russia had offered.
"The goal was to force Lithuania to reconsider the sale," Tomas Janeliunas, who has followed the sale closely as the deputy director of the Center for Strategic Studies, said in an interview. "They wanted a Russian company to buy the refinery, but for cheaper than a market price."
Lithuania's brush with Kremlin oil politics, critics of Russian business practices say, is a case study of what U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney called Moscow's use of energy exports as "tools for intimidation and blackmail" in relations with its neighbors.
That characterization angered Russian officials, who say they are being discriminated against in the business world as many Russian companies expand their operations into Europe.
"What is all the hysteria about?" President Vladimir Putin asked at a meeting with German business executives earlier this month, Interfax reported. "We cannot understand why the media is nervous about Russia's possible investments in Germany."
Russian companies, their accounts padded by high commodity prices, are on a buying spree overseas. A steel mill in Michigan, a pipeline in Germany and a mine in Australia have recently been sold to Severstal, Gazprom and Russian Aluminum, respectively.
In Lithuania, the government and Yukos, very much out of favor with the Kremlin, were trying to sell the Mazeikiu Nafta refinery in a sale organized by Lehman Brothers of New York.
Four companies bid: two from Russia, one from Kazakhstan and one from Poland. The Russian companies, LUKoil and TNK-BP, lost after entering bids lower than the others. When asked to match the competing prices, the Russians declined, Nerijus Eidukevicius, chairman of the board of Mazeikiu refinery, said in an interview in Vilnius.
In June, Orlen won the refinery with a bid of $1.49 billion for Yukos' 53.7 percent stake and $850 million for the 30.6 percent owned by the Lithuanian government.
"They weren't showing interest," Eidukevicius said of the Russian companies. "It was strange."
In fact, analysts say, Moscow was pursuing strategies to win the refinery for a Russian company outside the sale process — and at a knockdown price.
At the time of the sale, Yukos was heading into a politically tinged bankruptcy proceeding in Russia. State-owned Rosneft, whose chairman, Igor Sechin, is also Putin's deputy chief of staff, had already acquired most of Yukos in a forced auction in 2004, and had its sights on the rest.
To get to the front of the line for Yukos assets, Rosneft signed a confidential agreement with Western creditor banks in December 2005 to assume Yukos' debt if the banks forced that company into liquidation, which happened in March. This made Rosneft a creditor in the bankruptcy filing.
The bankruptcy receiver representing Rosneft's claim, Eduard Rebgun, then sued in federal bankruptcy courts in New York and the Netherlands to block the refinery sale, but lost both cases. That ended the legal attempts to win title to the refinery outside the sale run by Lehman Brothers.
In what Yukos executives say was a sign of the Kremlin's deep displeasure at these rulings, Russian prosecutors opened criminal fraud investigations against four Yukos executives. The announcement of these investigations came less than an hour after the decision in Amsterdam on Aug. 17.
Former Yukos CEO Steven Theede called the Russian criminal case against him a "vendetta" that reflected the depth of frustration of Russian authorities at the collapse of their six-month effort to buy the Lithuanian refinery and other smaller Yukos assets in Slovakia and Switzerland. "When anybody stops them from doing anything it makes them angry," Theede said.
Russia, meanwhile, suffered a setback of a different nature inside Lithuania, political analysts in that country say. In the midst of the sale process, a pro-Russian politician in the Lithuanian government whose ministry was responsible for overseeing the refinery sale was ousted in a campaign finance scandal. The minister, Viktor Uspaskich, fled to Moscow and is now wanted by Interpol.
His replacement, Kestutis Dauksys, said he was invited to a Kremlin meeting on May 23 with First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The message, Dauksys said, was that the Russians truly wanted the refinery.
"He said the Russian government was interested in who buys Mazeikiu Nafta," Dauksys said by telephone. "He said Russian companies are interested in buying it."
"They thought they could buy it at low cost, but that is not possible today," Dauksys said of the Russians. He returned to Vilnius.
Alexander Temerko, a former vice president of Yukos, said the company interpreted Dauksys' account of the meeting as a threat to Mazeikiu's Russian-controlled oil supply through the Druzhba pipeline.
The refinery immediately retooled for tanker oil, a decision that proved prescient; the first shipment arrived a week before the pipeline was shut.
The sales contract with Orlen had an escape clause if the market value of the refinery dropped significantly before the sale closed. Lithuanian analysts and politicians said forcing Orlen to exercise this escape clause, thus reopening the sale for Russian companies, was one motive for the pipeline shutdown.
Then, on Oct. 12, a fire at the Mazeikiu refinery caused about $75 million in damage and lost profit for 2006, according to the Lithuanian government and Fitch. The fire is expected to reduce output by 50 percent until early next year. Orlen, shortly after the fire, said it would discuss with its lenders whether the sale could go forward.
With his country's largest asset tied up in business negotiations, Lithuania's president has hinted at possible reciprocation in kind. President Valdas Adamkus suggested on Aug. 19 that the only Russian railway supplying the Kaliningrad region, which passes through Lithuania, could be shut for what the Lithuanian news media called "political repairs."

TITLE: Confidence Vote Delayed
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: VILNIUS — Shareholders of AB Mazeikiu Nafta, the sole refinery in the Baltic states, postponed a confidence vote on Chief Executive Officer Nelson English until next week, seeking to have all directors present at the meeting.One board member of the Lithuanian refiner that's being sold by OAO Yukos Oil Co. couldn't make the board meeting today and so the vote was postponed until Nov. 9, said Mazeikiu spokesman Giedrius Karsokas in a telephone interview Monday.
Four members of the Mazeikiu Nafta board representing Yukos told shareholders on Oct. 28 they had lost confidence in English, a Texan oil executive who was hired to run Mazeikiu in December 2002. They didn't give a reason.
Lithuania's government, which holds 40.7 percent of Mazeikiu and the other three seats on the board, decided yesterday to back English. Managers of Yukos International UK BV, the major shareholder with a 53.7 percent stake, also backed him on Nov. 3.
PKN Orlen, Poland's biggest oil refiner and fuel retailer, is buying Mazeikiu for $2.34 billion. Yukos was forced to sell Mazeikiu after Russia filed claims for $30 billion in back taxes against the Russian oil company.

TITLE: Top 3 to Cut Gas Output
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW —The country's three largest oil companies agreed to join a project that aims to cut the country's carbon-dioxide output by 100 million metric tons, curbing natural gas flaring and potentially earning Kyoto emission credits worth $1 billion.LUKoil, state-controlled Rosneft and TNK-BP pledged support for the Kyoto Neftegas Program, Sergei Roginko, head of JI Committee, the program operator, said Thursday.
Low prices available for remote gas mean plans for projects to curb flaring "are lying around on the shelves of the oil companies,'' Roginko said.
Revenue from credits created under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol's joint implementation mechanism will make many of these plans viable, he said.

TITLE: Oil Output Falls Amid Exxon's Sakhalin Setback
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW —The country's oil output fell for a second month in a row in October partly because the government and ExxonMobil failed to solve differences over the Sakhalin-1 venture holding back the start up of full-scale production.Industry and Energy Ministry data showed late Wednesday that output fell to 9.71 million barrels per day in October from 9.75 million in September and an all-time high of 9.76 million bpd in August.
"This is a major disappointment given seasonal additions of around 30,000 bpd on average in October over recent years," said Adam Landes of Renaissance Capital brokerage.

TITLE: Pipelines in Critical Condition
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW —The government's technical standards watchdog warned on Thursday that almost all the country's oil and gas pipelines were in critical condition, a possible sign of more shutdowns after the closure of a link to Lithuania. "Russia's pipeline transport is in an unsatisfactory state. Environmental damage caused by oil and gas pipelines is inexcusable," said Konstantin Pulikovsky, the head of the Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Atomic Inspection.

TITLE: The Budget Process Hits Homes
AUTHOR: By Valery Zubov
TEXT: There is a looming crisis in the country's residential services and maintenance sector, and the government knows it. At least Vladimir Yakovlev, who is responsible for the matter as regional development minister, seems to understand. Yakovlev's answer to a deputy's question during government hour in the State Duma on Oct. 11 regarding the sector's needs was as follows:"We've worked out the level of funding that is needed, but if we were to show it to everyone we would end up with nothing to give," Yakovlev said. "Given the amounts needed and the level of debt that already exists, nobody's going to provide the funding because they won't believe we'll be able to solve the problems no matter what happens. Of the 27,000 municipal administrations in the country, 20,000 are seriously in debt. The hidden underfunding of local budgets, which are responsible by law for residential services and maintenance, presently stands at 300 billion rubles [$42 billion]."
Clearly there is a need for more funding. Can this money be found?
The 11 percent rise in residential — as opposed to industrial — prices for natural gas in 2006 will add up to about 30 billion rubles over the year, or one-third of what Gazprom paid for the oil company Sibneft. Why a state-controlled company made such a deal makes no sense. What interest or profit could the state gain? Given that natural gas accounts for 60 percent of the energy cost for generation at monopoly heat and electricity producer Unified Energy Systems, or UES, and that this accounts for much more than 50 percent of residential-services spending, the purchase of Sibneft cost the government the equivalent of three years of increases in residential services charges. So the money is obviously there — it is just not being used where it is most needed, which is why the situation continues to deteriorate.
And it looks like things will only get worse. According to the federal budget for 2007, the share of total state revenues going to municipal governments will fall. Even worse, debate continues over whether gas prices should be liberalized completely. The fact that the debate at present only concerns industrial consumers, and not residential, is of little comfort. Deregulation of gas prices for industry historically means cross-subsidizing of the residential sector by the industrial sector (this is actually planned for 2007). Ultimately, pressure rises for this compensation to be phased out. With Gazprom's decision to eschew the participation of foreign investors in developing the Shtokman gas field — at a likely cost of about $20 billion — it is going to be much more difficult for the company to continue subsidizing residential prices, meaning that pressure to do away with all subsidies will increase.
So either residential services charges will rise or the degradation will accelerate.
Who will come up with the money to cover the increases? As Yakovlev pointed out, the majority of municipal budgets are already running deficits. The UES request for an additional 30 billion rubles could only come at the further expense of municipal governments.
So the only place left to look for the money is the residents themselves. This won't solve the problem either. Teachers' salaries and housing subsidies, for example, come from the same pool of funds. In September, I toured six village schools in the Astrakhan region. When I asked who received housing subsidies, at five of the schools all of the teachers raised their hands. At the sixth, only a few did not receive subsidies.
What this all means is that it might simply be impossible simultaneously to solve the country's two main residential problems: the lack of affordable housing and the need to find investment to upgrade the provision of heat and electricity. There is only so much money to go around and the balance right now is not in the favor of residential services.
Crisis situations often serve as catalysts for making important decisions, even if only for the short term. The State Duma held a plenary session the day after an apartment building in Vyborg collapsed on Oct. 9, killing seven people. There were, understandably, impassioned calls for action, but a mere two hours later the Duma voted down a proposed increase of 100 billion rubles ($3.7 billion) for residential repairs in the 2007 federal budget. This is the same sum that was cut from the residential services portion of the budget in 2006 in conjunction with a new law putting a cap on utilities prices. The latest move would merely have been compensation for revenues lost in 2006. This amount is also, coincidently, the same as the figure for spending from the federal investment fund for 2007. Why shouldn't residential maintenance be a job for the investment fund?
Whatever the case, there is clearly a need to freeze prices for gas and electricity for 2007. Only this will allow municipalities to use what revenues they have to improve living conditions. The money should not go toward paying energy monopolists higher prices.
This will leave these energy providers in the lurch as well. How will they cover their costs?
In the case of Gazprom, the available information suggests that the government has already looked at the company's investment program for 2007, at least giving the impression that it is trying to find a way to improve its finances. Simply put, according to already published figures, all Gazprom has to do is divest itself of non-core activities that incur losses — and it can afford to freeze prices for two years.
The same kind of "inventory" approach can be taken at UES. For example, there is no reason for UES to be helping finance the completion of construction of the Boguchansk hydroelectric station, a facility that will provide power exclusively for newly built aluminum and timber-processing factories along the lower reaches of the Angar River. It would make more sense to have the owners of the plants in question fund the work and operate the finished station as part of their business. If, on the other hand, UES finishes construction but work is not completed on the aluminum and lumber facilities, there will be considerable generating capacity sitting idle in the middle of nowhere.
Although there might be resistance at UES and Gazprom, the existence of such options means that there is still hope for dealing with the country's residential services and maintenance problems. As it becomes more evident how critical the current situation is, we will have no choice but to deal with it.

Valery Zubov is a State Duma deputy and the former governor of Krasnoyarsk.

TITLE: Paying Attention to the Issue of Tax
AUTHOR: By Ruslan Vasutin and Sergei Etdzaev
TEXT: Part I of the Russian Tax Code was amended by Federal Law #137 of 27 July 2006 and establishes new rules regulating the procedural rules for tax audits and the review of tax violations. Although the majority of these new rules come into effect from 1 January 2007, there are certain important matters that may already require the attention of Russian businesses.Re-audit following the filing of an adjusted tax return
The Tax Code currently permits the tax authorities to review prior audited tax periods only in the case of: (i) re-organization or liquidation of a taxpayer and/or (ii) review of the prior audit of a particular tax payer by a superior tax body.From 1 January 2007, the tax authorities will be able to perform repeat field tax audits at the taxpayer's offices if an adjusted tax return is submitted reporting a reduced tax liability from the original declaration (the current legislation only permits the tax authorities to perform an off-premises tax audit in connection with a re-filed return).
Vesting the tax authorities with the right to perform repeat on site field audits involves the risk that the authorities may revisit already closed tax periods, using the most recent court precedents that change the previous treatment of tax issues.
If amended returns need to be filed to correct prior tax periods, it is advisable to do so before 1 January 2007 to avoid the risk of facing potential repeat field tax audits for already closed tax periods.Submission of tax returns in 2007 in electronic form
Starting 1 January 2007, electronic tax returns (computations) are mandatory for all taxpayers if their average employee numbers exceed 100 (250 in 2007) at 1 January of the current calendar year. The average employee number is calculated in compliance with the formula established by the Statistic Committee;s Decision #50, dated 3 November 2004. The procedure for submitting electronic tax returns is to be established by the Ministry of Finance.The new law does not address the issue of whether the submission of electronic tax returns may be supplemented or supported by duplicate returns prepared and submitted in paper form. Needless to say, the IT infrastructure of many tax inspectorates is far from ideal; hence, filing tax returns solely in electronic form with no further documentary evidence may create practical risks for taxpayers trying to prove a timely filing.
Interestingly, and in contrast to existing court practice, a literal interpretation of the new law seems to suggest that a paper tax return filing shall not constitute a proper submission and will not release taxpayers from tax penalties under the Tax Code for non-filing of tax declarations. Furthermore, the tax authorities may in theory "freeze" the bank accounts of taxpayers who they consider have not filed their tax return. It is not known how the authorities will approach this issue in the coming year. Details of filing tax returns in electronic form must be confirmed by taxpayers with the authorities (to the extent that this new requirement is applicable), and new corporate procedures need to be introduced to effectively comply with new rules and ensure the company can prove it has submitted its electronic filing on time.Claim for the provision of documents
Starting 1 January 2010, the tax authorities will be prohibited from requesting documents in the course of tax audits (both desk and field audits) which they have previously requested. Documenting what documentation has been previously provided will be a useful tool in managing tax risks and minimizing the administrative burden that any tax audit entails. It will be important to begin this inventorization of what documentation has been provided early on, as documentary records for the three year period of limitations from 2007-2009 shall be fully covered by the new "one time only" documentary review rule.The new law also allows tax authorities to demand documents relating to a specific transaction not only from the taxpayer under audit, but also other parties to a transaction (through so-called tax cross checks), as well as from unrelated third parties (e.g. advisors, translating agencies, outsourcing companies, etc) who may have information regarding the transaction. This is a rather long arm discovery process and may be subject to abuse.
If such a documentary demand is received by a company relating to the audit of another company, the demand should be reviewed closely to determine whether it is properly motivated or outside the remit of authorities' review, and therefore challengeable.Payment of taxes in Rubles
From 2007, payment of taxes may only be made in rubles. While not really a change for local taxpayers, this is an important change for entities executing withholding obligations as tax agents on cross border payments. At present, tax agents may choose to withhold and pay the respective tax in the foreign currency of settlement of the underlying contract.
However, under the new rules, this will no longer be permitted and a hard currency settlement will be treated as a non-settlement. Care will also need to be taken in ensuring that the equivalent Ruble amount withholding remittance is made at the correct Central Bank exchange rate on the date of payment. Interestingly, despite this change, Article 310 of the Tax Code remains unchanged, allowing for the possibility for a Russian tax agent to wire Russian sourced income either in rubles or in hard currency. In spite of this contradiction, the prudent option would be to settle foreign currency contract withholding obligations in rubles.Ruslan Vasutin is a partner, and Sergei Etdzaev an Associate, at DLA Piper in St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Kicking the Vodka Habit
AUTHOR: By M. Lawrence Schrad
TEXT: Soviet dissident Mikhail Baitalsky once quipped: "Fighting against the increasing consumption of alcohol is like Don Quixote's campaign against the windmills. Sensible people don't engage in such tomfoolery."Yet this week, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov initiated another round of tomfoolery with his suggestion that the proper remedy for the recent spate of alcohol poisonings lies in the state monopolization of the liquor trade. History suggests that such centralization is not a sustainable remedy for Russia's vodka woes and has ultimately led to deleterious long-term consequences. Indeed, it is this long history of failed liquor centralization initiatives that has led to the current situation where Russia's leaders continue to grapple daily with the "liquor question" decades after the issue had been put to bed in virtually every other country on the globe.
Russia's first vodka monopoly, instituted under Ivan III in 1472, proved to be unsustainable, given the ease of shirking and corrupting local officials far from Moscow. Similar liquor monopolies were attempted in 1545 and 1754 with the same results. Sergei Witte began the last imperial vodka monopoly in 1894 with the noble aim of reigning in alcohol consumption, and making a pretty penny for the state on the side. By the outbreak of World War I, the monopoly had actually facilitated the rise of vodka consumption to around 14 liters per capita from roughly 8 liters when the monopoly began. The monopoly's only benefit was to the treasury: contributing over 800 million rubles per year — or roughly 30 percent of total imperial revenues. A similar, and even more disastrous top-down temperance measure came with Nicholas II's prohibition decree at the outbreak of World War I, which blew an enormous hole in the state budget at a time of crisis. The state tried to remedy this shortfall by printing more money, ultimately increasing inflation and the popular discontent that in part contributed to the downfall of the imperial regime.
In 1924, citing the very same public health and revenue issues raised recently by Gryzlov, Liberal Democratic Party Leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and other Duma leaders, Josef Stalin decreed the reinstitution of the vodka monopoly. Did the Soviet monopoly solve the problem? From 1962 to 1982, per capita alcohol consumption in the Soviet Union rose by 5.6 percent per year, while the government reaped 15 percent to 25 percent of its budget revenues from the sale of alcohol. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's well-meaning, top-down anti-alcohol campaign, like its imperial predecessor, blew an enormous hole in the state budget, which the state tried to remedy by printing more money, ultimately increasing inflation and popular discontent with perestroika that in part contributed to the downfall of the Soviet regime.
So why would a state liquor monopoly introduced under President Vladimir Putin succeed where Ivan III, Witte, Nicholas II, Stalin and Gorbachev all failed? Ultimately, it won't. This is not to say that there wouldn't be some short-term benefits of centralization: Even Gorbachev's doomed anti-alcohol campaign led to noticeable improvements in public health indicators — increasing life expectancy for men by almost three years (62 to 65) in as many years (1984 to 1987) — before the widespread availability of surrogates and illegal production brought these indicators, and the campaign itself, crashing down.
The simple lesson is that the state cannot decree that people be sober. Top-down solutions to the alcohol problem simply do not work. The failure of prohibition in North America and Europe suggests that this is the case. The experiences of different autocratic Russian leaders over the past five centuries confirm it.
Historically, this kind of talk about concern for public health by key decision makers often masks a political power play to control the extremely lucrative liquor-revenue stream. While the recent epidemic of alcohol poisonings is deplorable, it bears mention that alcohol-related deaths this year remain lower than in recent years. What is more deplorable is the lack of concern as alcohol poisonings have claimed 20,000 to 40,000 Russian lives per year since the end of the Soviet regime and that the only political response is a proposed centralization or monopolization scheme — a suggestion floated every couple of years since the mid-1990s.
Ultimately, the solution of the Russian liquor problem — if indeed there is one — lies in localization and municipalization rather than centralization and monopolization. While there is truth in the usual assertion that the alcohol situation will not improve until the material conditions of the middle and lower classes improve, this does not suggest a concrete course of political action. Moreover, it overlooks international experience where increased grass-roots temperance activity and municipal control of liquor traffic were promoted as effective means of reducing the harmful social and demographic impacts of widespread alcohol abuse. While the government cannot decree effective grass-roots temperance organization — having failed miserably in the 1890s, 1960s and 1980s — it can grant issues of alcohol control to local administrative bodies.
Here, the example of the Swedish Gothenburg System of municipal liquor control provides a possible alternative: local bodies were entrusted with conducting the liquor trade, while the enormous (and corrupting) liquor revenues formerly claimed by the state or private liquor interests were earmarked for the promotion of local charities and agricultural concerns. This system produced positive results throughout Scandinavia both in terms of dramatic decreases in alcohol-related morbidity, mortality, and crime produced by alcohol, and in the flowering of local civic associations.
In the contemporary Russian context, such a system would require trustworthy local administrators, but could provide a tremendous stimulus to the development of civil society in confronting Russia's current demographic catastrophe by giving local health care facilities, charities and other social organizations a much-needed infusion of resources to battle the frightening array of diseases and social ills that are at the root of the country's unprecedented demographic implosion.
The main obstacle to such an alternative is not the people's traditional addiction to vodka, but rather the chronic (and stronger) addiction of the state to the revenues produced by the vodka trade itself. The current economic windfall resulting from the rise of world energy prices provides a unique opportunity for Putin to kick the habit and foreswear the lure of state alcohol revenues. The first step in Russia's recovery begins with the realization that the proper place for the vodka revenue is with neither the treasury nor private alcohol producers and retailers, but rather with local health care organizations, self-help groups, charities and nongovernmental organizations that are on the front lines of the demographic war.
If Putin, Gryzlov and their supporters in the Duma are serious about confronting the country's alcohol woes, they stand at a unique moment to actually do something meaningful about it. Russia can either remonopolize, recentralize and repeat the Quixotic legacy of the past 500 years, or achieve a genuine breakthrough by turning its greatest vice into an instrument in confronting its greatest challenge. Such optimism must be tempered, however, by the realization that the state has been even more chronically addicted to alcohol than the society it governs. Like any addiction, a dependence on alcohol is notoriously difficult to break.

M. Lawrence Schrad is a lecturer and doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

TITLE: Cherkesov Turns to Chemicals
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Russians know Viktor Cherkesov's Federal Drug Control Service principally for its war on veterinarians who inject cats with the anesthetic ketamine.But on Oct. 19, the service announced its latest stunning success: The service had broken up a gang that "over seven years had been carrying out illegal activity in the sphere of trafficking powerful substances on the territory of the Russian Federation."
But the evil drug traffickers were not some unregistered mob. It was a whole group of companies, known as Sofeks, and the substance they were selling was ethyl ether. The companies' two co-owners and managers are now in jail, Yana Yakovleva since July and Alexei Protsky since September
So what can we make of the drug police's work?
Sofeks sells a whole heap of chemical raw materials, over 300 substances in all, and has a turnover of some 800 million rubles ($29.9 million) annually.
Sales of ethyl ether accounted for roughly 0.3 percent of Sofeks' revenues over the last four years. Those who bought it included some 150 companies and organizations with military units, oil refineries and scientific institutes among the number.
An organic solvent, ethyl ether is a Table II precursor under the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. In other words, it can be used in narcotics production. Other precursors include acetone, toluene, sulfuric and hydrochloric acid, and two fairly popular liquids by the names of alcohol and gasoline.
In principle, then, this idea has legs. All you have to do is arrest a methadone dealer who cuts his stuff with gasoline, and then you can go after LUKoil, who sold the stuff at their gas stations in the first place.
Sofeks had been bringing the ethyl ether in from abroad. This requires a license, which Sofeks had. It was selling the substance to legal entities, for which no license is needed, but accounts must be kept — ethyl ether is, after all, a precursor. And accounts had been duly kept.
Besides, even a mediocre linguist like myself, who finds it hard to differentiate an acid from a base, can see that Cherkesov should certainly be nominated for a Nobel Prize for chemistry. Under his leadership, the service has become a major scientific institute that has made two fundamental chemical discoveries. A Service press release reads: "From eight tons of the stated substance ... roughly one ton of various synthetic narcotics can be made, which is equal to approximately 10 million doses."
This is genuinely revolutionary — narcotics can be prepared from a solvent! This, however, pales in comparison to another discovery in the same press release: The company was selling ethyl ether, from which the synthetic drug methadone can be derived.
There are two obvious interpretations of all this.
First, Cherkesov's boys seriously think that narcotics can be made from solvents and that the heads of a group of companies with a turnover of 800 million rubles per year that supplies 300 different products constructed the whole shebang just to sell drug addicts raw materials for their fix. (It is unclear, however, why Sofeks was charged. As I said, charges could have been brought against any filling station, distillery or even any supermarket where a junkie has bought a bottle of acetone.)
Second, instead of a war on real drug traffickers, which is difficult and dangerous, the service is actually just playing at the job while offering enterprises "protection." The Sofeks case, which they have tried to put through on the quiet — Yakovleva has been in prison since July! — is an attempt to establish a precedent.
It's pretty clever. Given the range and line of goods in modern industry, there is not a single chemical, petrochemical, or oil-refining enterprise that does not produce substances that could be used to produce drugs.
But never mind chemistry. Foundries are pumping out coke! Tons of it! And without licenses!

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

TITLE: The Deficit of Values Behind a Crisis in Goals
AUTHOR: By Fyodor Lukyanov
TEXT: Although books have been written about the transition from capitalism to socialism for over a century, titles focusing on the path back to capitalism are a much more recent phenomenon.It is 17 years since the fall of the Berlin wall and 15 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Current events in the former "socialist world" show that the scale of difficulties involved in the transition was seriously underestimated. Moreover, economic reforms are not the most difficult part; changing people's attitudes is much harder.
When communism fell, countries on the periphery of the former Soviet empire had no doubts about where to turn — from Moscow to the West and the Euro-Atlantic community. There were no alternatives to this approach, which determined policy for the next 15 years and during which opposing political groups cooperated with each other, painful reforms were pushed through and the public tightened their belts. Now that success has been achieved, with the European Union and NATO throwing open their doors, we have a crisis of goals.
The recent riots in Hungary, political crises in Poland, unexpected electoral results in Slovakia and a nationalist making it to the second round of presidential elections in Bulgaria seem to indicate a backlash. The appearance of nationalism, populism and anti-European sentiment threatens to undo all the hard work of the transition period. Political, economic and social backwardness are making themselves felt. As soon as the common goal and psychological pressure disappeared, it turned out that meeting the Copenhagen criteria for membership in the EU was one thing, but getting rid of the heritage of the "accursed past" was quite another. This is because the values of democracy cannot take root to order, but are acquired as society evolves.
Everyone seems to agree Russia is not going the same way as other countries. The illusions of the early 1990s that Russia could become a "giant Poland" have been left in the past. Popular wisdom now underscores the unique nature of the Russian path, as distinct from the Central European way.
Yet the processes taking place here are not that far removed from what other post-communist states have lived and are still living through in terms of psychological mechanisms.
The Russian democratic movement of the 1980s and early 1990s, led by Boris Yeltsin, adopted the same slogans that national-democratic movements in Eastern Europe and other Soviet republics seized on — liberation from the communist empire. But whereas anti-imperial zeal was the goal elsewhere, for Russian politicians it was a means to an end. For them the point was not the liquidation of a great power but getting rid of the communist regime. When the result was achieved, it turned out that the country that remained was unfamiliar and unnatural. At the time, this was the cause more for bewilderment than bitterness: It was tough to conceptualize what had just happened.
As for Russia's foreign policy orientation, this seemed like a no-brainer. This would coincide with the aims of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe — toward the West. It was the general trend. Since no one was talking about European Union membership for Russia even during the most rose-tinted period of our democracy, there was no concrete goal. Meanwhile, reforms were much more difficult than had been naively imagined.
From the outset, Moscow's pro-Western course — and we will assume here that the leaders of the day sincerely believed in it — ran into the problem of post-imperial transformation. The tragedy was not that Russian society could not come to terms with the fall of empire. Most people at that stage were focused on basic survival, and great-power status was absolutely irrelevant. Rather, the elite in Russia, the legal successor state to the Soviet Union, could not decide whether it was ready to wave goodbye to the former great power. Even today it has still not made up its mind, although the actions it has taken are objectively destroying Russia's position in its traditional sphere of influence.
In the 1990s, while the former Soviet satellites in Central Europe passed difficult examinations to prove they met European standards, Russia was following a chaotic path, overcoming one crisis after another. A broad range of immensely difficult, important, but tactical problems were solved. The path was so complex and tortuous that the question of aims never arose.
Today, the economic and political situation is radically different, but the question of aims remains unanswered. No one can articulate distinctly what Russia wants to be. There is not even a clear answer to the question of whether it should be a nation-state or turn once again to the imperial multinational model. Two contradictory tendencies exist happily side by side in the public consciousness: On the one hand, increasing xenophobic sentiment and popularity of the slogan "Russia for the Russians"; on the other hand, a lingering nostalgia for what has been lost and an inability to accept the former Soviet republics as foreign countries.
Strange as it may seem, the upsurge in nationalism is bringing Russia close to the genesis of the other countries that have been liberated from communist regimes. A nationalist rebirth, sometimes in very unpleasant form, lay at the core of revolutionary events everywhere — from the Baltic states to Poland to Tajikistan. In Central and Eastern Europe, nationalism was aimed at the West, while in modern Russia it is the other way round. All the same, the mechanisms are similar.
The problem of contemporary Russian politics is that it is based on no ideological or axiological base. Even the currently fashionable rejection of the 1990s is not a thought-out position or a fundamental reconceptualization of the country's place. If this were the case, then some alternative would have been proposed to the liberal-democratic values that we so dislike and that are associated with the Yeltsin period. But this is not happening.
All the attempts to formulate an alternative come down to two options. In one, we hear shrill, vaguely worded declarations appealing to some bygone age and assertions that foreign recipes are unsuitable for Russia (without, of course, suggesting which recipes are). With the other, we see attempts to provide an ideological foundation for the rather contradictory course currently followed in practice based on an aggregate of immediate interests.
These interests, we should note, are not national — although the elite insists that they are — but are group, corporate or personal interests. Added together they do not add up to the same thing as national interests.
What, in fact, are Russia's national interests? No one can say, since there is no mechanism for synthesizing the interests of the state, society, business and various groups and regions. This mechanism is impossible without democratic institutions.
Russia and other countries of the former Soviet bloc are united principally by these difficulties. Western political and economic forms consolidate much faster than they can be filled with the appropriate content. The difference is that in Central and Eastern Europe they have at least declared their intention to produce this content. Russia, on the other hand, is doing everything possible to show that it has no need of it. The problem, as we have seen, is that without any values it is impossible to set goals.

Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs.

TITLE: The Hounds of Moscow
AUTHOR: By Anastasiya Lebedev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Feral dogs have become a common sight in Moscow. They sleep in packs in empty lots and underground passages; they are fed by the kindhearted and abused by the cruel.The latest study commissioned by the city puts the number of stray and feral dogs on the street at a minimum of 23,000.
Despite an effort in recent years to reduce the stray population through sterilization, their numbers have not come down in part because people are increasingly abandoning their pets, city officials and animal rights activists say.
Such neglect has been accompanied by a number of gruesome attacks against homeless animals.
In August, a 22-year-old Muscovite, Nikita Golovkin, was sentenced to one year of corrective labor for setting his American Staffordshire terrier upon a group of stray puppies.
When asked by a building supervisor to call off his dog, Golovkin reacted by grabbing two of the puppies, slamming one to the pavement and throwing another against a metal window frame. Four puppies died in the incident.
In 2002, a model, 22, stabbed a stray dog to death in an undergound passage. A court declared her mentally incompetent and confined her to a hospital for the criminally insane in the Tver region.
Such horror stories highlight the need for the city to come to grips with the problem of stray animals and to adopt adequate animal protection laws, activists say.
At present, Moscow's four animal shelters can only handle 1,000 dogs per year, said Marite Arent, head of the city's Wild Animal Collection Service, which is in charge of finding private companies to run the shelters and the sterilization program.
Arent said the Northern Administrative District was operating an additional seven shelters, with a total capacity of 2,300 dogs per year, at its own expense, and that a Vneshtorgbank-sponsored shelter in southern Moscow was scheduled to open in December.
The city's other administrative districts have been reluctant to open new shelters, however, because local officials prefer to reserve land for more profitable enterprises, Arent said.
Charitable organizations have attempted to step in and fill the void left by inadequate city services for animals.
The Bim Charity Fund runs four animal shelters, including one in the village of Khoteichi, 100 kilometers southeast of Moscow, that houses some 600 dogs and more than 200 cats.
Nurik Turakolov, a caretaker at the Khoteichi shelter, said 10 percent of the animals in his charge were not mongrels, but purebred animals abandoned by their owners.
Fund director Darya Taraskina said purebreds often end up in the street when a breed goes out of style.
Many of the Doberman pinschers, Rottweilers, Staffordshire terriers and bulldogs that wind up at Bim's shelters have been poorly trained by their owners, Turakolov said. The shelter's caretakers retrain the dogs and attempt to place them in new homes.
Anyone who wants to adopt a pet from Bim must undergo a thorough evaluation, promise to care for the animal properly and to bring it back if he or she can't manage, Turakolov said. The shelter, in turn, provides free veterinary care and boards the animal for free when the owner is away from home.
Turakolov added that the shelter regularly takes in animals that have been abused, a crime that goes largely unpunished.
At present, cruelty to animals is only punishable when it is carried out for material gain, in the presence of minors or in cases of hooliganism. The Criminal Code provides for a maximum sentence of six months in jail or one year of corrective labor.
"It may seem that there is a legal basis [for protecting animals], but in reality it's nothing," said Irina Novozhilova, head of Vita, an animal rights organization. The Criminal Code allows for prosecution "only if the animal was maimed or killed," she said. "But what about depriving it of normal living conditions?"
The environmental crimes division of the Moscow police department received more than 270 complaints about cruelty to animals in 2005 and 2006, but only five cases made it to court, division head Grigory Kibak said at an animal rights conference last month.
The environmental police, an experimental force that has existed in Moscow, the Moscow region and Tatarstan for nearly 10 years, ends up responding to such complaints, which are outside their jurisdiction, because the regular police rarely do.
"When you call the local precinct to file a complaint, they say things like: 'I've got two murders and three rapes, and you expect me to deal with a bunch of kittens?'" veteran animal rights activist Ilya Bluvshtein said.
A bill that would have expanded the definition of cruelty to animals to include beating or unlawfully killing animals, abandoning pets and failing to care for them properly nearly became law in 2000.
The bill would also have banned the killing of animals with certain poisons currently used in the fur industry and the breeding of fighting dogs; and it would have introduced tougher regulations for the handling of animals across the board.
The bill was approved by both houses of the parliament but was vetoed by President Vladimir Putin, who insisted that most of its provisions were covered by or contradicted existing laws. The bill was returned to the State Duma for reworking and it is still there six years later.
A powerful lobby made up of dog and cattle breeders, furriers and others who profit from the current regulations fought the bill and won, Bluvshtein said.
Yevgeny Tsigelnitsky, a spokesman for the Russian Dog Breeders Federation, said his organization had opposed the bill because it would have banned fighting breeds. He said the federation would also fight a bill coming up for a vote in the Moscow State Duma this fall.
The bill, which has been debated for years, would beef up the ban on killing stray animals and create a register of domestic animals, among other measures. City Duma Deputy Ivan Novitsky of the Yabloko party, who supports the bill drawn up by Moscow's Housing and Communal Services Department, is also a proponent of banning fighting dogs.

Photos by Igor Tabakov / MT
All photos were taken at the Bim Charity Fund's animal shelter in Khoteichi.

TITLE: Davydenko Wins Paris Masters
AUTHOR: By Jerome Pugmire
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — Nikolay Davydenko routed Dominik Hrbaty 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 Sunday to win the Paris Masters for his fifth title of the season.The fourth-seeded Russian dropped only one set in the tournament — to Tommy Robredo in the semifinals — in winning his 10th career title.
"It's amazing to win my first Masters title here in Paris. I played very well, with good control," Davydenko said. "Hrbaty's service was not so good today — it was easy to break him every time."
Davydenko's ability to hit both sides of the court from the baseline with accuracy and power overwhelmed Hrbaty from the start. The first set took only 21 minutes with Davydenko winning 92 percent of points on first serve and 80 percent on second serve.
"I don't think I've played against a guy who played a better match than he did," Hrbaty said. "I didn't have any chances. It would be tough even for (Roger) Federer to beat him when he plays like this."
Hrbaty saved two second-set points at 5-1 down to bring sympathetic cheers from the crowd at the Bercy indoor arena. He had a glimmer of hope in the sixth game of the third set, but Davydenko saved two breakpoints and held to take a 4-2 lead.
Davydenko then broke and served out the match. He kissed his necklace before throwing a sweatband into the crowd as he improved to 4-1 against the Slovakian.
"He just played so fast, I was always one step behind," Hrbaty said. "Even if I tried to move him, he was always in the right place."
Davydenko has won 67 matches this season, second to Roger Federer's 87. He also won titles at Poertschach, Austria; Sopot, Poland; New Haven; and Moscow.
He did not drop a set at Poertschach or New Haven and only lost one in the Moscow final to two-time Grand Slam champion Marat Safin.
It was the second time the 17th-seeded Slovakian had lost a Masters final. He lost to Cedric Pioline at Monte Carlo in 2000.

TITLE: Rallies Continue after Saddam Sentencing
AUTHOR: By Christopher Bodeen
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — Jubilant Shiites marched by the hundreds Monday, celebrating Saddam Hussein's conviction and death sentence as Sunnis held defiant counter-demonstrations.The surge in violence expected after the Sunday verdict on Saddam's trial for crimes against humanity still did not materialize. An Interior Ministry spokesman credited a round-the-clock curfew in Baghdad, which has a mixed Shiite-Sunni population, and two restive Sunni provinces. Checkpoints were closed along Iraq's border with Jordan and Syria, a standard precaution taken during domestic emergencies.
Officials said the clampdown, which brought additional patrols and checkpoints in the capital, would likely be lifted by Tuesday morning. On Monday, Baghdad was largely quiet, with offices and the international airport closed and few cars or pedestrians on the streets.
"We need to keep on guard over any kind of response from Saddam supporters," Brig. Abdel-Karim Khalaf said.
In mainly Shiite Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, around 500 people marched carrying placards and shouting slogans denouncing the former dictator, who is accused of killing tens of thousands of Shiites following a 1991 uprising.
"Yes, yes for the verdict, which we have long been waiting for!" chanted the crowd, largely made up of students and government workers.
At least three people were wounded after gunfire broke out at a Shiite rally in the southwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Amil, a mixed Shiite-Sunni area, police Lt. Maithem Abdel-Razaq said.
Ethnic Kurds, who like Iraq's majority Shiites suffered brutal persecution under Saddam, abandoned plans for a celebration rally in the northern city of Mosul over security concerns, said Ghayath al-Sorchi, an official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which is led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
Al-Sorchi said PUK activists instead distributed gifts to families who lost relatives in crackdowns under Saddam. Saddam is scheduled to appear in court again on Tuesday, when proceedings resume against him and six co-defendants in a separate trial over a crackdown against Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s — the so-called Anfal case.
Underscoring the widening divide between Shiite and Sunni, about 250 pro-Saddam demonstrators took to the streets in the Sunni city of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. They were dispersed by Iraqi soldiers for breaking the curfew. Another 400 pro-Saddam protesters marched through Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.
The curfew was temporarily lifted in Tikrit to allow residents to shop and run errands. Angry crowds had gathered in the city on Sunday, holding aloft Saddam portraits, firing guns and chanting slogans vowing to avenge his execution.
Saddam was sentenced by the Iraqi High Tribunal for ordering the execution of nearly 150 Shiites from the city of Dujail following a 1982 attempt on his life.
Iraq's president, whose office must ratify the death penalty sentence against Saddam if it is upheld on appeal, said from Paris Sunday that the trial of the ousted Iraqi leader was fair.
Jalal Talabani would not comment on the guilty verdict or death sentence for fear it could inflame tensions in his volatile nation.
If the appeals court upholds the sentences, they must be ratified by Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, and his two vice presidents, one a Sunni Arab.
Talabani has opposed the death penalty in the past, but found a way around it by deputizing a vice president to sign an execution order on his behalf — a substitute that has been legally accepted.
Saddam was found hiding with an unfired pistol in a hole in the ground near his home village north of Baghdad in December 2003, eight months after he fled the capital ahead of advancing American troops.
Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, was sentenced to join him on the gallows, as was Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, which issued the death sentences against the Dujail residents.
Former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison, while three other defendants were given up to 15 years in prison for torture and premeditated murder. A local Baath Party official was acquitted for lack of evidence.
A nine-judge appeals panel has unlimited time to review the case. If the verdicts and sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.
A court official said that the appeals process was likely to take three to four weeks once the formal paperwork was submitted. If the verdicts are upheld, those sentenced to death would be hanged despite Saddam's second, ongoing trial on charges of murdering thousands of Iraq's Kurdish minority.

TITLE: Scott Grabs First Victory In Season-Ending Event
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATLANTA — Moving his potential closer to promise, Adam Scott had his best year in golf. He wound up third on the PGA Tour money list, and can move as high as No. 3 in the world ranking over the next two months.None of that would have mattered without a PGA Tour victory.
Scott took care of that missing piece Sunday in the Tour Championship by holding off every challenge that came his way, closing with a 4-under 66 to win the season finale by three shots over Jim Furyk.
"You can't be that (No.) 3 or 4 player in the world without winning tournaments," Scott said. "That shouldn't happen. I feel more comfortable in that position seeing I've won an event."
He won convincingly at the PGA Tour's version of an All-Star game.
Staked to a three-shot lead on a cool, colorful afternoon of autumn at East Lake, he sank a slick, 15-foot birdie putt on No. 3 to turn back an early threat from Vijay Singh. When he saw Furyk and Joe Durant make a move, Scott responded with three birdies in a four-hole stretch around the turn.
For good measure, he turned bogey into birdie by holing a bunker shot on the 13th.
"That was a chance for us to pick up a shot, and we ended up losing a shot," Furyk said. "A guy gets a three- or four-shot lead and he keeps making birdies, he's tough to catch."
Scott finished at 11-under 269 and earned $1.17 million to finish his PGA Tour season with nearly $5 million. With tournaments coming up in Australia, he will have a chance to surpass Phil Mickelson at No. 3 in the world ranking by the end of the year.
Furyk shot a 65 to match low round of the week, but never got closer than two strokes and trailed by as many as five on the back nine.
He played bogey-free golf over his final 31 holes, and it was meaningful. Furyk captured the Vardon Trophy for the first time with the lowest adjusted scoring average on tour at 68.86.
Scott was second at 68.95.
Tiger Woods had the lowest average (68.11), but failed to play the required 60 rounds. Woods skipped the Tour Championship for the first time, although he still would have come up one round short even if he had played.
"I'm wondering if anyone is going to put an asterisk on it because Tiger didn't play enough rounds," Furyk said. "But it's a nice honor. It's icing on the cake for a good year and a consistent year."
Durant closed with a 67 to finish third at 273.

TITLE: British PM Tightlipped On Ruling
AUTHOR: By Michael Thurston
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he is against the death penalty for "Saddam or anybody else", but remained otherwise tightlipped on the sentence passed on the former Iraqi dictator.In a sometimes tetchy press conference, he insisted that the year-long trial of Saddam Hussein, which climaxed Sunday with the hanging sentence, had been "a very clear reminder of the total and barbaric brutality of that regime."
"The trial of Saddam gives us a chance to see again what the past in Iraq was: the brutality, the tyranny, the hundreds of thousands of people that he killed, the wars in which there were a million casualties.
"It also then helps point the way to the only future which ... is the one that Iraqi people want and is worth fighting for, which is a non-sectarian Iraq," said Blair on Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush's main ally in the 2003 invasion.
Saddam was sentenced to be hanged by the Iraqi High Tribunal, which found him guilty of crimes against humanity in the case of 148 Shiite civilians killed in revenge for a 1982 attempt on his life.
On Monday, Saddam's lawyers launched his appeal. Under Iraqi law, if it fails he must be executed within 30 days.
But the verdict served only to deepen Iraq's bitter religious divide, with Shiites celebrating it as a victory against their former oppressor and some Sunnis protesting at this latest humiliation to the ousted regime.
And critics including the European Union have voiced their opposition to the death penalty.
Speaking at his monthly Downing Street press conference, Blair was pressed several times on what he thought about the death sentence handed down on Saddam — and repeatedly refused to comment.
"We are against the death penalty whether it's Saddam or anybody else," was the furthest he went, declining to add anything more specific on the significance of a ruling which some hoped would be a turning point for Iraq.
On Sunday, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett issued a statement saying Saddam and his co-defendants had been "held to account" for their crimes — but also shied away from publicly backing the death sentences.
"Appalling crimes were committed by Saddam Hussein's regime. It is right that those accused of such crimes against the Iraqi people should face Iraqi justice," she said.
On Monday she said the death sentence is unlikely to bolster his role as a martyr for ordinary Iraqis.
"I find it quite hard to believe that people who previously recognized the terrible crimes he committed .... will feel he has been a martyr," she told BBC radio.
Blair meanwhile reiterated the U.S. and British tactics in Iraq.
"Our strategy is to withdraw. .... but to do so when the Iraqi capability to handle their own affairs" is in place, he said.
Suggestions that Washington will be forced to change its tack have grown amid the mounting violence across Iraq, more than three years after the invasion of the country.
But Blair insisted that the troops will not be pulled out too quickly.
"I think it's important that we stand the course and finish the job."

TITLE: Carter Inspires Record Twickenham Win
AUTHOR: By Mitch Phillips
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — New Zealand got their European tour off to a flying start as they beat England 41-20 on Sunday to condemn the world champions to a sixth successive defeat and their worst ever at Twickenham.The All Blacks were on top throughout the match but drove home their advantage with a 15-point barrage in the last five minutes of the first half.
They were leading 13-5 after an early Aaron Mauger try but further scores by Joe Rokocoko and Carl Hayman and a 54-metre penalty by Dan Carter put them 28-5 clear at the break.
England hit back in the second half with tries by Ben Cohen and Shaun Perry but a superb try by man of the match Carter, who claimed 26 points in all, kept the All Blacks in control.
The result was England's heaviest margin of defeat at Twickenham, overhauling the 18-point difference when they went down 29-11 to South Africa in 1997. It also marked their worst run for 34 years after a string of six losses.
For New Zealand it was a great boost ahead of their two tests against France and final game against Wales.
"I'm very pleased, I thought the guys played pretty well, the set piece was outstanding and that was key," New Zealand coach Graham Henry told a news conference.
"The lineout was the best for a long time, the scrum was dominant and we probably finished off most of the opportunities we got.
"The defence was a bit rusty but it was a record score at Twickenham so it's nice to be involved in those little milestones."England, hard-hit by injuries and under pressure from their dire run of results and performances, began positively and thought they had scored the first try after five minutes, only for Jamie Noon's effort to be ruled out by the video referee.The All Blacks were already ahead via a Carter penalty and doubled the lead with his second after 14 minutes.
They then set the tone for the afternoon when Mauger scored their first try from a turnover after 22 minutes, which Carter converted for a 13-0 lead.
England eventually got on the scoreboard after half an hour when debutant centre Anthony Allen made a half break and his bouncing pass was scooped up by Noon for a legal score.
But Carter then landed a penalty to begin a five minute blizzard of points late in the half that took the game out of England's reach. Rokocoko intercepted an Allen pass on the New Zealand 22 to run in his 33rd try in his 37th international before another lost England ball set up a terrific counter-attack that ended with prop Hayman crossing to secure a 28-5 halftime lead.England hit back five minutes after the restart when good handling by backs and forwards enabled Cohen to squeeze over in the left corner.Hodgson and Carter then missed penalties but the New Zealand flyhalf took less than a minute to more than make amends when England were punished for yet another vague clearance kick when he carved through the home defence for a superb try.
England stopped the rot when debutant scrumhalf Perry charged down a Mauger kick for a 60 metre breakaway try but they failed to take advantage when New Zealand number eight Chris Masoe was sinbinned in the 65th minute for a professional foul.
The All Blacks not only prevented England scoring but stretched their lead with another Carter penalty, the flyhalf sealing the win with a late three-pointer.

TITLE: Abbas, Hamas Negotiators Close to Government Deal
AUTHOR: By Ibrahim Barzak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Moderate President Mahmoud Abbas and negotiators from the Islamic militant group Hamas have reached agreement in principle on forming a government of independent experts, but they still need to wrap up important details, a Hamas Cabinet minister said Monday.The platform of the new government would be intentionally vague, especially on the issue of recognizing Israel. It is not clear whether that would be acceptable to the international community, which has called on the Palestinian government to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept past agreements with Israel.
Abbas headed to the Gaza Strip for further talks with Hamas, Palestinian officials said, a possible signal that the two sides were nearing agreement on the government.
Under the emerging plan, the Hamas Cabinet and prime minister would step down and be replaced by a team of experts, in hopes that this will end a crippling international aid boycott, imposed when Hamas came to power in March.
However, top Hamas leaders have yet to decide whether to accept the plan, and negotiations have broken down before. At one stage, Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas had reached an agreement, but Hamas then withdrew its support, balking at key points in the government platform, including an implicit recognition of Israel.
Haniyeh said he expected to meet Abbas on Monday night to discuss efforts to form a unity government.
"The government must lift the siege and suffering of the Palestinians," Haniyeh said.
The new compromise proposal would enable Hamas to appoint eight ministers and Abbas' Fatah would choose four, with the remainder of the portfolios awarded to smaller parties. The new prime minister would be chosen by Hamas, and a key sticking point is over how close he should be to the ruling party.
Abbas has urged Hamas to choose an independent to make the new government more attractive to the international community, his aides have said.
Haniyeh dismissed the dispute.
"The last thing we think about is who will be head of the government. We want to break the siege," he said.
Hamas' supreme decision-making body, the secret Shura Council, is to decide in the coming days whether to accept the proposal. If Hamas accepts, Abbas is to head to Gaza for a meeting with Haniyeh.

TITLE: Chopper Crashes North Of Baghdad, Two Dead
AUTHOR: By Hamza Hendawi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — A U.S. helicopter crashed north of the Iraqi capital on Monday, killing two American soldiers on board, and two Marines and a soldier were killed in fighting in the country's restive Anbar province.The military said no gunfire was reported in the area at the time of the helicopter crash. The incident occurred in Salahuddin province, which includes Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit and was under curfew because of Sunday's verdict and sentencing of the former Iraqi leader.
With the helicopter crash and the Anbar deaths, the number of U.S. troops killed this month in Iraq rose to 18 and follow a particularly violent month for the American military in Iraq, which saw 105 deaths in October.
Still missing was a U.S. soldier kidnapped last month in Baghdad, and the man's Iraqi uncle said Monday he believed his nephew's abductors belong to a "well organized" rogue cell from the Shiite Mahdi Army militia of the anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Entifadh Qanbar, the uncle, said he had received a $250,000-ransom demand from the kidnappers, through an intermediary. He had in turn demanded proof that his nephew was alive and well before entering negotiations.
The U.S. military said last week that that there was "an ongoing dialogue" to win the release of Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie, a 41-year-old reserve soldier from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Al-Taayie was visiting his Iraqi wife when he was handcuffed and taken away by gunmen during a visit to the woman's family.
U.S. officials, like Qanbar, said there had been no news of the missing soldier.
"We continue to conduct operations based on actionable intelligence to find our soldier," Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said Monday. "His safe return is obviously a top priority."
Qanbar, a former spokesman for the National Congress Party, said he had contact with the kidnappers through an intermediary in Baghdad, but had not heard from them since Saturday when he demanded that he be shown proof that al-Taayie was alive.

TITLE: Lennon Strikes as Spurs Defeat Chelsea
AUTHOR: By Justin Palmer
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Tottenham Hotspur and England winger Aaron Lennon condemned champions Chelsea to a second league defeat of the season on Sunday when Spurs won their London derby 2-1 at White Hart Lane.Lennon rifled in on 52 minutes to secure Spurs their first win over Chelsea in 33 league meetings and their first at home over their rivals since 1987.
"It was a great win, we were stronger than them today," Spurs manager Martin Jol told Sky Sports.
"We are now in the top half of the table and nobody can take it away from us that we had a win against the champions of England."
Defeat kept Chelsea in second place on 25 points, three behind leaders Manchester United who thumped Portsmouth 3-0 on Saturday.
Chelsea led through Claude Makelele's thunderbolt from 30 metres on 15 minutes but defender Michael Dawson levelled with a glancing header 10 minutes later.
Chelsea and England captain John Terry was sent off 18 minutes from time after he was shown a second yellow by referee Graham Poll for holding.
Poll's performance left Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho fuming, the Portuguese saying the official, who booked seven other players, had "wanted to be part of the show".
"He disallowed a goal from Didier Drogba which he can only explain," said Mourinho.
"To show a red card to a player for contact in the box when he was the attacking one was also a bit ridiculous... every decision was against us." Chelsea almost snatched a point four minutes from time but Dutch winger Arjen Robben struck the post with a curling strike.
Earlier, substitute Marlon Harewood struck two minutes from time to hand West Ham United a 1-0 win over Arsenal as tempers flared at Upton Park while Aston Villa beat Blackburn Rovers 2-0 at home.
Harewood converted Matthew Etherington's cross to secure a second successive league win for West Ham, who moved out of the bottom three and up to 15th.
The goal prompted an unsightly shoving match on the touchline between managers Alan Pardew and Arsene Wenger with the pair needing to be separated after Wenger took exception to Pardew's exuberant celebrations.
"It was a shame, it was a tense game... I was celebrating the goal, basically, that was all and Arsene had a problem with that, probably rightly," Pardew said.
"It was nothing personal. There was nothing said. He's a top guy, I really respect him... nothing changes my opinion on that. I will apologise to him again if I need to, I was celebrating a goal, I thought I was entitled to do that."
Harewood scored 12 minutes after spurning the best chance of the game, with his shot smothered by Jens Lehmann.
Arsenal, who remain fifth, created few clear-cut openings but had strong penalty claims turned down when Jonathan Spector appeared to foul Alexander Hleb.
Arsenal's Dutch forward Robin van Persie needed brief attention after he was felled by a coin thrown from the crowd. It struck the back of his head as he waited to take a throw-in late in the first half.
It was the second such unsavoury incident in the top flight this weekend. On Saturday, Fulham's Claus Jensen was hit on the head by a coin during their 1-0 victory over Everton, leading manager Chris Coleman to call for a prison sentence for the perpetrator.

TITLE: Australia Thrash Windies
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MUMBAI — Ricky Ponting hailed Australia's coolness under pressure after the world champions swept to their maiden Champions Trophy title on Sunday, beating holders West Indies by eight wickets in the final."It is a great feeling to win a tournament as big as this," a delighted Australian skipper told reporters after the rain-hit game.
"This is the one we hadn't won. Full credit to all the guys for the way they played and applied themselves over the last month. When the big games come around, we put our hands up and perform."
West Indies raced to a solid start before left-armer Nathan Bracken bowled the explosive Chris Gayle to take three quick wickets and help skittle them for 138 in 30.4 overs.
"The bowlers did a terrific job there today. At 1-80 at one stage, we had our backs to the wall," Ponting said.
"I thought Nathan's performance was outstanding. The ball he bowled to Chris put them on the backfoot. That is where the game turned."
Australian opener Shane Watson then hit 57 not out in a 103-run third wicket partnership with Damien Martyn (47 not out) to guide Australia to a revised target of 116 after a lengthy rain interruption.
All rounder Watson, who also took 2-11, won the player of the final award.

TITLE: Egyptian Convicted Of Terror
AUTHOR: By Ilaria Polleschi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MILAN — An Italian court on Monday sentenced an Egyptian accused of being one of the masterminds of the 2004 Madrid bombings to 10 years in prison for terrorist association.Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, also known as "Mohamed the Egyptian," was arrested in Milan three months after the March 11, 2004 blasts that killed 191 people and wounded 2,000 others.
He is the first suspected Madrid plotter to be convicted following the attacks.
"I'm ready to be convicted because we're in Italy. This is a political case against Islam," Ahmed said before his sentence was read, according to Italian media.
Prosecutors say Ahmed had close ties to the bombers and bragged in recorded conversations about how the rush-hour explosions on packed commuter trains were his idea.
But the head of the court said prosecutors did not need the Madrid evidence to convict Ahmed. They had also accused him of grooming young recruits, including one named Yahia Mouad Mohamed Rayah who was sentenced to 5 years in prison on Monday on terrorism charges.
The Italian verdict came ahead of a larger trial against 29 suspects in Spain set to begin in February.

TITLE: Kyrgyz President Sacks Interior Minister
AUTHOR: By Tolkun Namatbayeva
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BISHKEK — Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev has sacked the interior minister, a spokesman said, in response to opposition pressure as debate on constitutional reform in the Central Asian country was stalled.Bakiyev signed a decree ordering the sacking of Osmonaly Guronov as interior minister and appointing Omurbek Suvanaliyev in his place, Myktybek Abdyldaiyev, head of the presidential administration, announced to a crowd of protesters Monday.
The crowd outside the presidential offices broke into cheers on hearing the news, which was seen as a concession, though a relatively minor one, to opposition groups who had been demanding Guronov's removal.
The new interior minister then immediately fired the chief of police in Bishkek, another opposition demand, while officials said opposition leaders would be granted airtime on state television to express their views.
Bakiyev made the concessions following talks with opposition leaders, though it was not immediately clear how far these moves would go toward quelling opposition anger over his failure so far to enact constitutional reforms.
Those reforms, promised by Bakiyev last year as part of a package deal that opened the way for his election in July 2005, include a sharp curtailment of existing presidential prerogatives.
At the time of his election, Bakiyev promised to present a new constitution containing provisions for reduced presidential powers, but has so far appeared in no hurry to do so.
His election ended months of instability following a revolution in March 2005 that ousted his predecessor, Askar Akayev, and he was seen then both at home and abroad as a conciliatory figure able to balance competing interests.
Earlier Monday, debate on the constitutional changes was postponted until Thursday after Bakiyev failed to show up, as did the minimum 51 deputies needed for a quorum.
"Bakiyev has cheated us once again," Edil Baisalov, a spokesman for the opposition For Reforms movement, announced to around 4,000 protesters gathered in a square in Bishkek before the president's concessions were announced.
The demonstrators, whose numbers have fluctuated in five consecutive days of rallies, moved from the square to the presidential and government office where they chanted: "Bakiyev Resign!"
The text of the amendments that Bakiyev is now proposing has not yet been released, but the country's secretary of state, Adakhan Madumarov, said the changes would restrict the president's right to dissolve parliament.
Nomination of the government, a prerogative currently enjoyed exclusively by the president, would be done jointly by the head of state and the parliament under Bakiyev's proposed constitutional changes, Madumarov said.

TITLE: European Airports Bring In New Rules for Hand Luggage
AUTHOR: By Catherine Hornby and Patricia Nann
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: FRANKFURT — New rules forced air travelers to pack perfume, toothpaste and other liquids into small plastic bags in their hand luggage before going through security checkpoints at Europe's airports on Monday.Queues were longer than usual at terminals in Frankfurt and Paris as passengers got to grips with the new European Union regulations, though most travelers seemed reassured by the tougher measures.
"It's a bit cumbersome ... but I have a good feeling that things will be much safer now," said Alketa Vaso, 34, on her way to Chicago from Germany.
The rules limit the amount of liquids people may take on board planes and reflect efforts to standardize measures put in place in Europe after London authorities said in August they had foiled a plot to bomb flights bound for the United States.
Passengers flying out of Britain on the other hand will be able to carry more items onto aircraft from Monday, as Britain has agreed to partly lift its ban on liquids in hand baggage on flights under the new rules.
Most travelers in Frankfurt were well-prepared for the new security regulations, which will apply throughout the 25-nation European Union, as well as Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
"It's alright when you know beforehand, because then you can adjust to the rules," said Friedrich Bischoff, 50, as he headed to London from Frankfurt.
Paris's Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports mobilized 500 extra people to cope with the changes and ordered over a million plastic bags, a spokeswoman for Aeroports de Paris said.
"Some early morning flights experienced takeoff delays of less than 30 minutes but as of mid-morning the situation was back to normal," she added.
Before the main security point at Frankfurt, airport staff examined each passenger's plastic bag during the early morning rush to check its contents kept to the specified rules.
Toothpaste, shampoo and shower gels in small hotel-size packages tended to make it through.
But a tube of Gillette shaving gel, a large tub of Clarins face cream and bottles of fizzy drinks were among items headed for the rubbish bin.
"It's irritating. Although I understand it's important for security," grumbled Mladen Galic, 38, as some of his items were confiscated from the plastic bag he wanted to take to Zagreb.
Another passenger, Elmar Pickhardt, was forced to down two sports drinks on the spot or leave them behind. "I'm all for controls, but this is going a bit far," he said as he prepared to gulp down the drinks.
But he added: "I would prefer strict controls to another terror attack."
From Monday, passengers at Europe's airports can bring on board one re-sealable transparent plastic bag with a maximum size of 1 liter to store liquids. The liquids have to fit in individual containers of 100 ml or less.