SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1227 (93), Monday, December 4, 2006
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TITLE: U.K. Police Head For Moscow
AUTHOR: By Richard Balmforth
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday the Litvinenko affair was damaging ties with Britain, and British detectives headed for Moscow as part of their investigation into the ex-KGB spy’s death by poisoning.
“The police have left today for Moscow to carry out enquiries,” British Home Secretary (Interior Minister) John Reid told journalists in Brussels on the margins of a meeting of European Union justice and home affairs ministers.
Lavrov, also in the Belgian capital, said the fallout from Alexander Litvinenko’s death was harming relations with Britain. Litvinenko died in a London hospital on November 23, three weeks after suffering radiation poisoning caused by Polonium 210.
Lavrov said insinuations in Britain of high-level Russian involvement in Litvinenko’s death were “unacceptable,” adding: “It is of course damaging our relations.”
Both Russia and Britain believe Litvinenko’s death should not be politicized, Lavrov added. “If there are any questions, they should be put through law enforcement agencies,” Interfax quoted him as saying.
Responding to Lavrov’s comment, Reid said British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett had been in touch with Moscow “and they have assured us we’ll get all the cooperation necessary.”
Asked how long the British police would spend in Russia, a British embassy spokesman said “They’ll stay as long as it takes.”
Associates of Litvinenko have alleged either Kremlin involvement in his killing or that rogue elements in Russia’s state security service were responsible.
Before he died, Litvinenko, a former Russian state security service agent who became one of President Vladimir Putin’s sharpest critics in the London-based Russian emigre community, accused Putin of ordering his death.
The Kremlin has strongly denied any part in the killing, and Kremlin opponents also find the theory of Putin’s involvement highly improbable, noting such a high-profile killing on foreign soil could only damage him.
Italy’s foreign minister said he would ask Putin in Moscow on Tuesday to help the British police in their investigation.
“I think that it is also an opportunity, given that Putin has decided to receive me, to tell Russian authorities that we want answers,” Massimo D’Alema told reporters in Belgrade. “It’s clear that I will ask Russia to offer its full cooperation to the judiciary and to the British police forces above all.”
Scotland Yard detectives are likely to try to interview Russian citizens who met Litvinenko at London’s Millennium Hotel on November 1, the day he fell ill.
Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent, says he and businessman Dmitry Kovtun met Litvinenko that day at the hotel. But Lugovoi, now back in Moscow, says they discussed a business opportunity and denies anything to do with an attempt on Litvinenko’s life.
Alex Goldfarb, a London-based friend of Litvinenko, said the British investigators should insist on also seeing another ex-KGB agent, Mikhail Trepashkin, who had “substantive information” of use to them.
Trepashkin, serving a four-year sentence in a Urals prison for divulging state secrets, alleged in a letter last Friday that the FSB, the Russian state security service, had created a hit squad to kill Litvinenko and other enemies of the Kremlin.
“Mr. Trepashkin has substantive information that might be of interest to investigators and his lawyers are prepared to facilitate contact with him,” Goldfarb said by telephone from New York.
“This could be the only opportunity that the British authorities have to speak to him” because Trepashkin is in poor health, he said.

TITLE: Gazprom Winner is ‘Corn on the Cob’
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn and Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A 300-meter-tall twisting glass tower dubbed “the corn on the cob” beat out five international rivals to win the contentious competition to build a new Gazprom headquarters in St. Petersburg.
The decision infuriated critics, and a group of St. Petersburg’s cultural luminaries, including Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky, filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, rock musician Yury Shevchuk and writer Daniil Granin threw their weight behind what threatens to become a city-wide campaign against the construction.
Yury Sdobnov, vice-president of the Russian Union of Architects has already branded the winning design “blasphemous.” The British design has also been dubbed the “Tower of Babylon” by its critics.
The head of the Hermitage Museum said the building will blight the city’s landscape.
“It is a new economic symbol for St. Petersburg,” Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller told reporters at a ceremony at the company’s current St. Petersburg offices, where he and Governor Valentina Matviyenko announced the winning design by British architect RMJM.
“It will be a new leader, echoing the already famous architectural monuments of St. Petersburg,” Miller said.
According to RMJM’s design, the tower will change color up to 10 times per day, depending on the position of the sun. 
RMJM was picked from a shortlist of six internationally renowned architects, including Germany’s Daniel Libeskind and the Netherlands’ Rem Koolhaas. The other designs included ones in the shape of a DNA strand, a cluster of cubes, and an abstract design reminiscent of a flying eagle.
What will actually be built remains to be seen, as RMJM will present the final design for Gazprom’s approval in May.
“This project is not a whim for Gazprom,” Matviyenko said at the ceremony. “St. Petersburg should be happy that the No. 1 company in Russia is coming to the city.”
Critics, however, see the tower as a symbol of Gazprom’s control over the city. The tower will form the centerpiece of Gazprom-City, a business and residential center that will be built opposite Smolny Cathedral, one of the city’s most famous landmarks.
Polls have shown that up to 90 percent of residents are against the tower and architectural experts said it would destroy the architectural harmony of the city. 
The tower, if constructed, would be 2.5 times higher than the Peter and Paul Fortress, the city’s highest building, and more than 3 times higher than Smolny Cathedral or St. Isaac’s Cathedral. 
The St. Petersburg Union of Architects went as far as to refuse to take part in the design competition.
Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, who is designing a replacement for the city’s Kirov stadium, resigned from the design jury before Friday’s announcement, The New York Times reported. He said he opposed all six designs.
RMJM’s design has been dubbed “the corn on the cob” in various media, including in St. Petersburg-based online newspaper Fontanka.ru, which has strongly criticized the project.
As the decision was announced, a boat with a banner reading “Durdom City,” or “Madhouse City,” floated past Gazprom’s building on the Neva River.
Six protesters — one for each of the six designs — stood on the boat, dressed as patients from a mental health institute. 
Wearing signs that said, “A high rise tower for every idiot,” and “A tower for every fool,” the protesters got off the boat, walked to a waiting vehicle, apparently an ambulance, and drove off.
“It is illegal,” said Vladimir Popov, head of the St. Petersburg Union of Architects, adding that no one had authorized the contest. “You can’t construct that kind of building in St. Petersburg.”
St. Petersburg lawmakers Mikhail Amosov, Natalya Yevdokimova and Sergei Gulyayev sent a protest to the General Prosecutor’s Office, asking that the legitimacy of the contest and the deal between the city and Gazprom be investigated.
The city government has agreed to spend 60 billion rubles ($2.3 billion) on building Gazprom-City, using up to half of the tax revenues that it will receive from the company over the next 10 years.
Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the Hermitage Museum, has been among the most strident critics of the project. “Visitors get pleasure from the unique aura of St. Petersburg. ... If we destroy its aura, we will lose the economic foundation for our future existence,” Piotrovsky wrote in a comment last month for Vedomosti.
“In this part of town, the maximum height of buildings set by the local law is 48 meters but almost all projects that made it to the final of the competition go beyond this limitation,” Amosov said.
A Gazprom spokesman denied this was the case. “The television tower is 311 meters, and it isn’t visible from all parts of the city,” he said.
Supporters of the project have compared the furor to the reaction in Paris when the Eiffel Tower was built in 1889. Amosov, who heads the City Planning Commission at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly said his commission had already received a series of mass complaints about the plan including a joint protest signed by 950 residents of the Krasnogvardeisky district, close to the planned construction site. 
Tony Kettle, managing director of RMJM in Britain, and lead architect on the project, told the Financial Times: “When you consider Paris, a city with an equally precious environment, it has been made even more special by the 324-meter high Eiffel Tower.”

TITLE: United Russia Touts Policy Platform
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Conservatives the world over favor small government. Social Democrats subscribe to the welfare state. And now there are the true believers of United Russia, who say they will fight for ordinary people, boost the economy and combat corruption.
That, at least, was the platform mapped out by party leaders at United Russia’s seventh congress this past weekend in Yekaterinburg. The platform follows five years of criticism that the pro-Kremlin party does not believe in anything.
“Every step enshrined in United Russia’s strategy aims to increase the number of active people in our country,” party leader and State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said Saturday at the congress.
The congress was not only designed to launch United Russia’s platform. It also kicked off a yearlong campaign for the Duma in late 2007.
“We need to confirm United Russia’s leadership, to win by a meaningful margin,” Gryzlov said, vowing to continue on the course laid out by President Vladimir Putin.
More than 500 delegates and 2,500 guests descended on the industrial Urals city for the meeting. Representatives from 19 foreign political parties, including Communists from China and Republicans from the United States, also turned up, a statement issued by United Russia said.
Meanwhile, about 2,000 protesters sought unsuccessfully to rally outside the Kosmos complex where the congress was being held. Police quickly dispersed the crowd.
Following the failed protest, as many as 70 liberal and Communist activists blocked the main thoroughfare in and out of Yekaterinburg for several hours.
Inside the complex, Sergei Sobyanin, head of the presidential administration, read a greeting from the president, who called United Russia “the most influential political force in the country.”
United Russia enjoys majority status in 65 of 89 regional parliaments and a constitutional majority in the State Duma. And 69 region heads belong to the party, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu boasted at the congress.
The party got another shot in the arm at the congress, where Sergei Chemezov, head of the Rosoboronexport state arms trader, was elected to United Russia’s Supreme Council.
Another Putin ally, Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways, was expected to get elected to the panel but did not.
Widely viewed as a rubber stamp for Putin, United Russia came under fire after backing a measure last year cutting social benefits, and a series of bills this year that effectively make it harder for other parties to compete in upcoming elections.
Shoigu, speaking at the congress, proposed that in the future the party hold internal referendums on sensitive issues.
He also called for elections for the parliament’s upper chamber, the Federation Council. Federation Council members are now appointed by regional legislatures and governors.
Gryzlov promised to take action on this in the lower chamber, and he lashed out at the party’s political rivals, accusing unnamed opponents of “undermining” Putin’s agenda.
Singled out for attack was Anatoly Chubais, head of Unified Energy Systems. Gryzlov accused Chubais of pursuing profit ahead of updating the country’s decaying power plants and grids. Chubais, whose name is associated with the chaotic and unfair privatization of state assets in the 1990s, has morphed into a punch bag for populist critics.

TITLE: Police: Gaidar Not Poisoned
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Irish police said Friday that they had no evidence that former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar was poisoned.
Police opened an investigation after Gaidar fell ill during a conference at the National University of Ireland on Nov. 24, and friends began to speculate that he had been poisoned.
“No one suggests here that he was poisoned, and no evidence to this was found here,” Irish police spokesman Brendan Costello said by telephone from Dublin.
“Inquiries to date have been conducted with hospital and medical staff and through the diplomatic corps, all of whom have been most helpful,” Irish police said in a separate statement.
Gaidar began bleeding from the nose at the lectern and stumbled across the hall before vomiting and fainting. After being treated at an Irish clinic, he flew to Russia on Nov. 26 and is currently undergoing treatment at an undisclosed Moscow clinic. His aide, Valery Natarov, said Thursday that Russian doctors suspected that Gaidar had been deliberately poisoned.
Scotland Yard has opened its own investigation to see if there might be a link between the case and the poisoning death of former KGB spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died a day before Gaidar fell ill, The Times of London reported Friday. Natarov confirmed Friday that Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer who once worked with Litvinenko, had served on Gaidar’s guard detail in 1992. Litvinenko met with Lugovoi in London on the day he fell ill.
Gaidar, who served as prime minister in the early 1990s, heads the Institute for the Economy in Transition, a think tank, and is one of the leaders of the liberal Union of Right Forces party.

TITLE: Baturina Story Stumps Forbes
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his billionaire wife Yelena Baturina have never taken kindly to suggestions that Baturina amassed her fortune in the construction business thanks to her husband’s position.
So when Forbes Russia prepared to release its December issue last week with a picture of Baturina on the cover and the quote, “I am guaranteed protection,” a scandal was almost inevitable.
It began last Thursday, when Axel Springer Russia, the publisher of the Russian edition of Forbes, announced that the release of the December issue had been postponed because “the principles of journalistic ethics” had not been observed in the article on Baturina and her construction firm Inteko.
Forbes Russia editor Maxim Kashulinsky said in an interview Friday that the entire article had been leaked to Inteko and that a lawyer for the company had threatened to sue if the article were not withheld.
“I don’t know where the leak came from, but it certainly wasn’t from our editorial office,” Kashulinsky said.
The editor subsequently tendered his resignation to protest the postponement.
In a statement released Friday, Axel Springer Russia, the Russian subsidiary of Axel Springer, said Baturina’s cover quote about protection had been taken out of context. In fact, she said: “Like any investor, the protection of my rights is guaranteed.”
The German media giant relented, however, after Kashulinsky submitted his resignation and Forbes in the United States issued a statement demanding that Axel Springer release the issue as printed.
The issue, with the original cover quote changed to read, “As an investor I am guaranteed protection,” was available at newsstands over the weekend.
“It was the only correct decision,” said Kashulinsky, who said he would consider staying on after the decision to publish the December issue. “It has been neither signed nor withdrawn,” Kashulinsky said of his resignation.
Axel Springer released a statement Friday saying the December issue had not been delivered on schedule because “adequate fact-checking” had not been carried out in the Baturina story.
“After checking the facts in keeping with due journalistic diligence, the misleading quote was corrected, but no changes were made to the report itself,” the statement said.
Vladimir Pomukchinsky, publications director for the Rodionov Publishing House, which prints BusinessWeek in Russia under license from McGraw-Hill, said he was surprised by Axel Springer’s original announcement that the issue would not be released.
“It’s a strange situation. If companies are going to come into editorial offices every day to demand changes in articles before they are published, then the legal environment for publishing social and political journalism will simply cease to exist,” Pomukchinsky said.
In a statement released Friday, Inteko said it would not rule out legal action if “objectivity and professionalism are sacrificed” in the published article, as the company had “already encountered in the case of the original cover.”
Baturina has a successful track record in litigation. Last year, for example, Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court ruled against Kommersant, which she sued over two articles.
One report suggested that she had concealed her involvement in financing the construction of the Travsvaal water park, which collapsed in February 2004, claiming 28 lives.
The other report suggested that then-Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev had held on to his job thanks to Baturina’s influence.
The court ordered Kommersant to publish retractions of both articles and to pay damages to Baturina.
There have been an “enormous number” of similar confrontations between Yury Luzhkov’s camp and the media over the past 15 years, said Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
“But typically they are settled quietly and never made public,” Panfilov said. “The only thing that makes this case different is that Forbes wouldn’t be pushed around, and Kashulinsky went to the press.”
Panfilov dismissed insinuations in the media that the whole scandal was merely a stunt to promote the Baturina story.
“Even with a good PR campaign, the number of Forbes’ readers will hardly increase,” Panfilov said. “If it was a PR stunt by Forbes, it was a stupid one. If it was a PR stunt by Baturina, it was even more stupid.”

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Young Men Clash
MOSCOW (SPT) — About 20 young men armed with steel rods and empty bottles attacked 20 activists from the radical group Red Youth Vanguard on Sunday, Vanguard leader Sergei Udaltsov said, Ekho Moskvy reported.
Police detained two suspected attackers, Interfax reported.
It was not immediately clear Sunday whether anyone was injured in the clash near the Avtozavodskaya metro station in southern Moscow. 

Suspected Spy Detained
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Georgia’s Interior Ministry said its counterespionage agents had detained a South Ossetian resident who had been recruited by the Federal Security Service.
The suspect, identified as Kakha Bagayev, admitted to passing information on Georgia’s army, a ministry spokesman said Friday.
The suspect also said he had hired Chechens in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge to carry out terrorist acts in South Ossetia “so that they would be detained ahead of time and the Georgian side would be accused of violating the agreements” on a cease-fire in the region. 

Plane Detained
PRAGUE (AP) — A Czech military plane carrying the country’s deputy defense minister and army chief of staff was held in Turkmenistan for 14 hours after stopping there to refuel on its way back from Afghanistan, the Czech Defense Ministry said Sunday.
Turkmen officials refused to allow the plane to take off after saying there were weapons on board, a Czech Defense Ministry spokesman said.
The Tu-154 was carrying 30 passengers and crew, including four armed military police members who routinely accompany senior Czech politicians and military commanders on foreign visits, he said.
Turkmen authorities later cleared the plane and “apologized for the misunderstanding, which they hoped did not damage relations between the two countries.”

Official Attacked
Unidentified assailants Saturday fired at a car carrying a local official in Dagestan, wounding him and his brother.
The attack on Magomedtagir Magomedaliyev, head of the southern Untsukul district, occurred early Saturday as he was returning from his dacha outside Makhachkala, the region’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, four law enforcement officers and four civilians were wounded in separate attacks in Chechnya. 

For the Record
• Authorities in Chechnya’s southwestern district of Achkhoi-Martan on Friday detained Sultan Abalayev, who is wanted in connection with last year’s killing of Kyrgyz lawmaker Bayaman Erkinbayev. (AP)

• Several buses filled with Chechen refugees returned to Grozny from Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge on Thursday. Many of those who made the trip were Kistins, an ethnic group closely related to the Chechens. (AP)

• Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov has retained Akil Akilov as the country’s prime minister as he puts together a new Cabinet following his re-election last month, the president’s office said Friday. (AP)

TITLE: The Future is Now for Russian Men’s Tennis
AUTHOR: By Gregory Sandstrom
TEXT: Roger Federer may be the undisputed best single’s tennis player in the world, but with the success of the 2006 Russian Federation Davis Cup team, men’s tennis in Russia has established itself as among the top in the world. 
The coming of age in Russian men’s tennis is now officially complete. Along with figure skating, chess and biathlon, Russia competes with the upper echelon of tennis nations. And with the women’s volleyball team recently winning the world championships one might wonder, what next — are Russians going to show up on the professional golfing circuit?
A question for doubters of Russia’s transition to a democratic, developed civil society: why have Russian sports not suffered or even collapsed since the fall of the U.S.S.R., but rather continued to excel on the world stage? 
Russia remains a leader in the sporting world while its economy has declined considerably. By taking the 2006 Davis Cup crown, the Russian team has won an event in which 133 countries were involved. Contrast this with the annual Human Development Index that ranks the Russian Federation in 65th place (2006).
Does the world of sports somehow hold to a different standard than other areas of societal development? The Moscow Olympiad hosts of the Davis Cup final used the newest technology with on-court instant video review, there were no hooligan outbursts, the match umpires spoke in English and the crowd responded respectfully. 
What more can an international sporting event ask for? Live interviews immediately after the tournament were translated into three languages: Spanish, Russian and English. This was not merely a local event.
Former soccer star Diego Maradonna, on hand watching the matches, was at times delighted by the play of his Argentinean compatriots. But the results of the contest ended in favor of Russia’s budding talents. In the first Friday match, Nikolai Davydenko (ranked 3rd in the world) proved his accuracy and iron will against Argentinean Juan Ignacia Chela (33rd in the world), showing why he has become the level-headed Russian assassin of today’s tennis world. Though Marat Safin fought hard against David Nalbandian (ranked 8th in the world), the first day ended in a 1-1 draw.
The doubles match Saturday was dominated from beginning to end by Russia. Dmitry Tursunov served up aces and delivered consistency, while Safin managed his net-play magnificently, giving Russia a decisive 2-1 lead going into Sunday’s reverse singles matches. After Nalbandian defeated an ailing Davydenko in the fourth tie, Russian team coach Shamil Terpishev was faced with a tough decision about who should play the fifth and deciding match.
Should he select Tursunov (ranked 22nd) or Safin (26th)? Should he opt for stability and untested potential or go for proven talent (e.g. Safin’s Grand Slam titles at the Australian and U.S. Opens), but with the element of unpredictability? The top Russian experts were calling for Tursunov.
Terpishev placed his hopes and his reputation on team captain Safin. Marat Safin is the village wild-man of men’s tennis, taking the reigns from Croatia’s Goran Ivanesovic and before him, John McEnroe. Case in point: Safin holds the record for most rackets broken during a U.S. Open tournament. This is a man whose emotion sometimes gets the better of him and his tennis skills fluctuate into highs and lows. Yet he is without doubt one of the most talented players on the ATP tour, a pleasure to witness at the peaks and a pity to behold during the troughs.
Sometimes when you’re watching Safin you’re thinking, “Even I could beat this guy today!” This is a player who beats himself more often than he is beaten by his opponent. And yet the tennis world cannot help but respect the Russian in the middle of his surprising career. And it is a career now punctuated by his dependability in this year’s Davis Cup final win over Argentina.
Safin’s opponent in the deciding fifth match was Jose Acasuso (27th), ranked only one position lower than him in the world. Yet the gulf of talent separating them became obvious as the match progressed. There were no outbursts, no broken rackets and no untamed temper-tantrums from Safin. It was pure tennis with the Russians, at the end of the day, simply outclassing their Argentinean opponents.
Could this not be seen as a symbol for sports and society in the Russian Federation today? Does one opt for stability and consistency or instead take a risk with talent for the possibility of great reward? Compared with so-called developed nations, other parts of the world (such as Russia and Argentina) are faced with more hazardous choices. Tennis in most nations is viewed as an elitist sport, where only wealthy people are able to play regularly. Yet in Russia, the communitarian attitude toward sport is maintained so that talent is able to develop in a supportive atmosphere. A case in point: who was the so-called talisman of this year’s Russian Davis Cup team, but Mikhail Yuzhny (ranked 24th in the world), who salutes the crowd as a Russian military patriot after each victory?
Marat Safin’s mother coached both him and his sister Dinara, who helped Russia to the 2005 women’s Federation Cup title. One gets the impression however that tennis in Russia is more than a family affair. For example, what does it take to get a hug from former President Boris Yeltsin these days? Answer: Win the Davis Cup or the Federation Cup tennis tournaments and affection from the former president is guaranteed.
After the 2006 Davis Cup tournament, all of the Russian players thanked the public and thanked the Russian Federation for enabling the possibility of their success. In my home country of Canada, such gratitude would hardly seem likely. 
Thanking your coach, your fans, your family, yes. But thanking your nation? This would seem excessive in the individualistic sporting world. Russian athletes, however, it seems, are still grateful to their nation for assistance.
After a year when Davydenko won five ATP events and ended the year ranked third, when Yuzhny made the semi-final of the U.S. Open, when Safin made a comeback after a serious knee injury and when Tursunov proved he is capable of playing with the top players in the world, Russian men’s tennis has found reason to be optimistic. 
In the highly individualistic sport that modern-day tennis has become, it was a team effort that earned Russia its 2006 Davis Cup victory. Wouldn’t it be great if global society and politics were encouraged by the results of such sporting success?

Gregory Sandstrom is a St. Petersburg-based sports fan who submitted this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: Voter Dissatisfaction Revealed in Research
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If the next State Duma elections were held this month, 20 percent of St. Petersburg residents would vote against all parties, according to new research presented by the Agency for Social Information at the Rosbalt agency on Thursday.
Fifteen percent of respondents said they would ignore the elections and not go to polling stations at all.
The elections to the Russian parliament are scheduled for the end of 2007.
The agency polled 1,100 local residents in November and the beginning of December. The most popular political party in town is the pro-Kremlin United Russia. According to the research, 24.4 percent of St. Petersburgers would vote for the party in the next elections. United Russia is followed by the equally pro-government Just Russia, which had 7 percent of supporters in the poll.
The third most attractive is Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic party, with 5.3 percent of locals expressing an intention to vote for them
Although in the post-Soviet years St. Petersburgers have traditionally voted enthusiastically for democratic parties, the pattern appears to be changing. The poll shows that only 3.8 percent of locals would vote for Yabloko, with another 2 percent choosing the Union of Right Forces. 
The communists did not fare well in the poll either with only 3.9 percent of the respondents planning to vote for the Russian Communist Party in the next elections. 
The agency also asked respondents whether they think members of their families will be likely to vote during the next parliamentarian elections. Sixty percent of the poll’s participants answered positively to the question, and 27 percent said “no.”
“The point of this question was for the sociologists to be able to assess what we call an opinion climate,” said Roman Mogilevsky, head of the Agency for Social Information. “I mean, some people would be uncomfortable telling sociologists they would rather stay at home on election day — even if this is what they really feel.”
The low level of enthusiasm for elections is explained by the apparent lack of faith in the parliament, Mogilevsky said.
“Almost half of the poll’s participants said the elections will not change anything for them personally or for the country in general,” the expert said. “Ten percent of respondents said their no-show at elections should be taken as their protest against the existing political and social environment.”

TITLE: Kasyanov Calls for Boycott
AUTHOR: By Christian Lowe
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The opposition should boycott next year’s State Duma election because it is set to be an “imitation of democracy,” former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said.
Kasyanov, who is expected to be the liberal opposition’s main candidate in the 2008 presidential election, said the Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin was preparing to manipulate the Duma vote so only parties loyal to it win seats.
The December 2007 elections are seen as a dress rehearsal for the presidential race, when Putin is to step down, and as a litmus test of whether the Kremlin is prepared to allow a truly democratic vote.
“If the elections were tomorrow, I do not think there is a reason to simply participate in some kind of imitation of democratic processes. That would be my recommendation to political forces right now,” Kasyanov said in an interview late last week.
“We still have time before the parliamentary elections, but taking into account the environment we have now ... real, independent political parties should ultimately come to the conclusion that there is no possibility for free and fair elections and for them there is no chance to get in [to the Duma],” he said.
Any boycott would be embarrassing for the Kremlin, already under fire from rights groups and Western governments that say it is rolling back democratic reforms. Putin denies the accusations.
Kasyanov, who was dismissed by Putin in 2004 and now heads a political movement called the Popular Democratic Union, does not speak for all of the liberal opposition.
But as their most heavyweight candidate in the presidential elections, his view on a boycott is significant. The Yabloko party, which is in the same camp as Kasyanov, has already said it is actively considering a boycott.
Speaking in his suite of offices that occupies the top floor of a skyscraper overlooking southern Moscow, Kasyanov, 48, said he still planned to run for president.
He said despite a growing economy, many voters were “fed up” with official corruption, rising prices and curbs on democracy. He said he hoped Kremlin leaders, too, would realize Russia was heading in the wrong direction.
“They are also people,” Kasyanov said in fluent English. “That’s why I aim for the scenario when the authorities will understand that the only chance for everyone is free and fair elections.”
Putin’s opponents say that in the 2007 parliamentary vote, the Kremlin will use its tight grip on the media, bureaucratic muscle and new election rules to thwart genuine opposition parties.
Critics say the only parties that will win seats in 2007 are either openly loyal to the Kremlin or are masquerading as opposition groups but in fact take their orders from the Kremlin.
The liberal opposition favors closer ties with the West and market reforms.

TITLE: Ukraine’s Lawmakers Fire 2 Ministers
AUTHOR: By Natasha Lisova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV — Ukrainian lawmakers fired the foreign minister and interior minister Friday, setting the stage for a legal battle between the president and the prime minister.
Lawmakers voted 247-57 to sack Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk, one of Ukraine’s most pro-Western officials and a key ally of President Viktor Yushchenko. The president’s office has said the decision will be challenged in Ukraine’s Constitutional Court to determine whether the parliament has the right to fire a presidential appointee.
“We will act according to the law,” said Yushchenko’s chief of staff, Viktor Baloha. “But at the same time, there is a hole in our law. … As of today, we have a decision by the parliament to fire Tarasyuk. He will fulfill that decision, but at the same time, we will wait for the decision of the Constitutional Court.”
Baloha also insisted that Yushchenko could simply nominate Tarasyuk again, as appointing the foreign minister falls under the president’s powers.
Tarasyuk was not in the parliament for Friday’s vote, which was supported by the governing coalition made up of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s party, the Socialists and the Communists. 
But later he told reporters that the Constitutional Court would have to give its verdict, and predicted his firing would affect Yanukovych’s visit to the United States. Yanukovych traveled to Washington on Sunday.
Tarasyuk “is a master of conflicts,” lawmaker Ivan Bondarchuk, a Yanukovych ally, said before the vote. “He is a member of the Cabinet, but he does not act like a member of this team.”
Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, a Yushchenko-allied deputy, accused the parliamentary majority of trying to force through “a full revision of the foreign policy course of our state.”
Minutes after firing Tarasyuk, the lawmakers also ousted Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko in a 248-22 vote, overcoming the objections of the Socialists by agreeing to name another Socialist party member, Vasyl Tsushko, as his replacement. Lutsenko, a former Socialist, survived an attempt to oust him Thursday.
Lutsenko, immensely popular, was one of the organizers of the 2004 Orange Revolution, and opinion polls show his popularity continues to climb.
Baloha said Yushchenko’s office was pleased with the choice to replace Lutsenko with another Socialist.
Yanukovych had repeatedly feuded with Tarasyuk, including over the prime minister’s visit to the United States, which is to include meetings with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
The prime minister’s party also strongly opposed Lutsenko, who as interior minister had spearheaded numerous corruption probes against some of Yanukovych’s closest allies.
Asked whether his majority was usurping power, Yanukovych insisted that they were working within the constitution.
“If you want to call it usurping, let it be usurping,” Yanukovych said during a visit to eastern Ukraine. “But it is all done to benefit society.”

TITLE: Rising Up Through Layers of Trouble
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Local company Aditum has submitted plans for an underground shopping center beneath Ploshchad Vosstaniya, a project considered so risky it was abandoned by its previous developer. On Nov. 14, City Hall issued a decree allowing the recently registered firm to start projection and exploration for the center.
“At the moment the project looks like a layer cake of trouble,” said Alexander Dymov, Aditum CEO and co-founder. Among the main challenges he listed were legal issues, geological and engineering problems and the public’s negative perception of underground shopping areas.
“All those problems can be solved. The project seems untried only from a local perspective,” Dymov said.
The previous developer, Otkrytye Investisii, a part of Interros holding, planned to make an underground shopping center with two levels of shopping area and three levels of parking. However, the company gave up the project after exploration.
Unlike its predecessor, Aditum plans to limit construction to the area under the square and will not expand to areas under Nevsky Prospekt, Ligovsky Prospekt or the surrounding buildings.
The 42,500 square meter center will consist of two levels of shopping areas without any underground parking. 
Total investment into the project has been fixed at $200 million. Dymov said he is still negotiating with investors.
“We have prior agreement with a number of foreign banks. We are not considering Russian banks because their resources are more expensive,” he said.
Dymov estimated a payback period of around ten years, while construction itself would take two years.
For projection works Aditum hired the Dutch engineering company Witteveen+Bos, which is constructing a new metro line in the historic center of Amsterdam.
“Amsterdam has soil similar to St. Petersburg. And they manage to work 45 meters under ground, just three meters from residential buildings. This gives us confidence that it is possible,” Dymov said.
Another of the project’s participants is TP Bennet, a British architecture, design and planning company, known for its London Beach Station project.
Unlike the Stockmann center of boutiques, to be constructed nearby at the crossroads of Nevsky Prospekt and Ulitsa Vosstaniya, the underground center will target middle class customers. The rent rates will be about average. 
Igor Gorsky, director for development of Becar Realty Group, estimated construction costs at between $10,000 and $15,000 per square meter.
“It doesn’t make any difference — two levels or five levels. The problem is not the soil itself, though in St. Petersburg the soil is wet and subject to erosion, but the serious road junction and the monumental column in the middle of the square. The correct use of supporting frames is very important,” Gorsky said.
Gorsky predicted a payback period of between 10 to 20 years, depending on the cost of construction, rent rates and the range of tenants.
A regular shopping center would start making profit two to three times more quickly, Gorsky said. “However, no other project would have such a location and importance — railway station, two exits from the metro,” he said.
Gorsky saw the middle class as a natural target for this area, where the premium niche is to be occupied by Stockmann. The lack of parking is also logical in this regard, he said.
“Ploshchad Vosstaniya — a junction of stable mass flows — is probably the best place in St. Petersburg for an underground shopping center,” said Nikolai Kazansky, director for investment consulting of Colliers International.
Despite the above-average costs and a long payback period, Kazansky saw the project as advantageous.
“In the commuter belt the shopping center would face stiffer competition, but the shopping center at Ploshchad Vosstaniya is ensured against that and is destined to succeed,” he said.
An entrance to the shopping center directly from the metro would increase visitor numbers many times over, Kazansky said. As for the type of customer, he recalled that Okhotny Ryad, a similar center in Moscow, initially focused on premium class but without success.
“When they reoriented themselves toward the mid price segment and a younger audience, the center became more popular,” Kazansky said.
“Opening premium class shops in this area doesn’t make sense. They would not attract customers. Middle class brands pay sufficiently high rent rates, which make the center profitable,” said Dmitry Zolin, managing partner of LCMC.
He saw $200 million as a reasonable investment for such a project. The payback period would be eight to ten years, he said, but could be decreased depending on the tenants. As for additional risks, “digging into the ground is always risky, however such projects have been carried out in the past and will be realized in the future. It all depends on the quality of projection,” Zolin said.

TITLE: World Bank’s New Strategy
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The World Bank’s executive board is to consider a new strategy for cooperation with Russia on December 14, World Bank Managing Director for Operations Graeme Wheeler was quoted by Interfax as saying after a meeting with St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, in St. Petersburg on Monday. 
“Russia no longer needs the World Bank as a source of funding. The emphasis is moving to cooperation in the provision of consultation and the formation of knowledge,” he said. 
Matviyenko, in turn, said that St. Petersburg and the World Bank had signed an agreement on Monday under which the World Bank will provide consulting services for the Orlov Tunnel project. 
“The agreement that we signed today is a pilot project for new cooperation between Russia and the World Bank. At the moment St. Petersburg no longer needs loans, cooperation should be in the area of consultation, the provision of World Bank experience and the use of new approaches, and new financial mechanisms,” the governor said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Generating Bonds
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Territory Generating Company No 1 will issue bonds amounting to eight billion rubles ($305.3 million) in the first quarter of 2007, Interfax reported Monday.
The bonds will be in circulation for seven years with half a year coupon payment period.

Petrolesport Profit
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Petrolesport, one of the largest companies operating in the port of St. Petersburg, increased net profit by 20 percent in the third quarter of 2006 compared to the previous quarter, Interfax reported Monday.
Petrolesport earned 190.129 million rubles ($7.26 million).

Sintez Power
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Sintez Development has started construction of an 18 billion ruble ($687 million) heat and power plant in the south of the city, Interfax reported Saturday.
The project is financed by private investors and the main investor is Sintez group. Construction of the first part of the plant will be completed by fall of 2008 and the plant will be fully operational by 2011.

Northwest Properties
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — London & Regional Properties will invest 750 million euros ($1 billion) into real estate and construction projects in the Russian Northwest in 2006-2008, Interfax reported Friday.
The holding plans to complete 10 to 15 projects, including five hotels. 

Dubai City 
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Dubai-based developer announced on Sunday that it plans to build a new Russian city on 44,000 acres (18,000 hectares) near Moscow. 
A $11 billion investment in the project’s first 7,500 acre- (3,000 -hectare) phase will be made in partnership with Russian investment and development company, Coalco, according to a written statement.

TITLE: Medvedev Lashes Out At EU Energy Reform
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Gazprom deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said Friday that a pending European anti-monopoly plan to split up energy conglomerates smacked of “communism.”
Medvedev, who also heads Gazprom’s export division, compared the European Union’s anti-monopoly plan to “selling cars without wheels.”
The EU proposals, which are due to be unveiled Jan. 10, would not extend to Russia’s energy sector and could present potential acquisition targets for Gazprom if implemented.
But Medvedev suggested that by chipping away at energy conglomerates that controlled both production and infrastructure, the EU could destabilize companies’ investment plans and, in doing so, undermine its energy security.
“In Europe the ghost of communism is back with all the attempts to take ownership of infrastructure and divide it,” Medvedev told reporters in a conference call. “I hope at least the United States will not go this way.”
Brussels has long pushed Russia to ratify an energy pact that would give independent producers access to its export pipelines and oil and gas fields, thus reducing Gazprom’s ability to charge monopolist rents. Russia has resisted, arguing that it would need to receive equivalent strategic assets in Europe in exchange for any deal.
Medvedev added: “It’s like asking car producers to sell cars without wheels and engines. ... In my opinion, people without access or ownership of infrastructure on a long-term basis should not be allowed to play a role in the market.” 
Potentially more harmful, the EU proposals could target Russia’s long-term gas supply contracts with European companies, something Gazprom has argued would weaken its ability to invest in new projects. 
Separately, Medvedev insisted that Gazprom was capable of meeting the growing appetites of Europe and Asia without detriment to either market. 
“I can assure you that we have enough reserves to meet both local demand and export obligations, including potential sales in new markets: in China, Korea, and the U.S. and Canada for [liquefied natural gas] sales. This is fully supported by investment programs,” he said. 
In particular, Medvedev said the company planned to invest some $40 billion over 25 years to develop the Bovanenkovo field in the arctic Yamal-Nenets autonomous district. Gazprom would start pumping at the field in 2011, with production due to hit a peak rate of 150 billion cubic meters per year in 2015-2016, he said.
“This is quite sufficient not only to compensate for the decline in our current fields, [but] to meet growing demand in Russia and export markets,” said Medvedev, who met with officials on a trip to the United States last week to improve ties with Washington.

TITLE: $1Bln Indonesia Military Deal
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and his Indonesian counterpart, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, agreed on Friday to boost military and energy cooperation in deals worth more than $1 billion. 
Under a series of accords, Moscow plans to sell Jakarta at least $1 billion in arms and help the country develop its space program, and will offer to build Indonesia a floating nuclear power station.
“The talks strengthened my conviction that Russia is our reliable ally and partner,” Yudhoyono said during a joint news briefing with Putin in the Kremlin at the end of a three-day visit to Russia. “First and foremost, I’d like to highlight that we are counting on long-term cooperation with Russia in the military sector.” 
The visit was Yudhoyono’s first to Russia since his election as president in 2004. Putin and Yudhoyono met in 2004 and 2005 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Santiago, Chile, and Pusan, South Korea, respectively. 
The two leaders emerged after two hours of talks Friday and signed cooperation accords on military, space, nuclear power, tourism and other sectors.
Sitting in the front rows of the audience were a group of senior Russian officials, including Rosoboronexport chief Sergei Chemezov, Federal Atomic Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and Justice Minister Vladimir Ustinov. 
During the ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace’s ornate Malachite Foyer, Putin and Yudhoyono watched as officials from both countries took turns to sign the respective deals. 
Yudhoyono, a retired general, appeared composed throughout the briefing. Putin broke into a smile just once — when he exchanged comments with Ustinov, who took his turn to sign a deal on the protection of intellectual property rights in the defense industry.
Chemezov said on the sidelines of the briefing that a $1 billion arms deal would be made possible by a loan to Indonesia. The size of the deal might grow, he said.
On Friday, Kommersant cited a source in the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation as saying Indonesia had originally sought $3 billion worth of arms, including 20 fighter jets and six submarines. 
For now, Moscow will supply $500 million installments of arms, the newspaper said. 
Chemezov said the arms deal would be finalized within the next six months, before Putin visited Indonesia next year. 
A Rosoboronexport spokesman said that Moscow, a leading arms supplier to Indonesia in the 1960s, was looking to help modernize the country’s military hardware, much of which dates to that time.
Putin said the two countries had “considerable opportunities” to work together on nuclear power. 
Kiriyenko said Indonesia might be interested in a floating nuclear power station that Russia was now building.
“It’s a very interesting project which so far has no analogies in the world,” Kiriyenko said on the sidelines of the briefing. Kiriyenko said his agency was eager to bid for the contract to build a nuclear power station for Indonesia in late 2007 or early 2008, Itar-Tass reported. 
Russia this summer began construction of the world’s first floating nuclear power station in the Arctic port of Severodvinsk.
Russia will also help Indonesia to develop its space rockets program, due to start in 2009, Itar-Tass reported.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Belarus’ Nuclear Vision
MINSK (Reuters) — Belarus plans to build a nuclear power plant to reduce its dependence on energy imports, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday.
“The development of our own nuclear energy as a way to ensure Belarus’ national security has no alternative,” he said during a government session. 
Lukashenko said the nuclear plant would come on line in 2015. 
Cigarette Price Rise
n MOSCOW (SPT) — The price of a pack of cigarettes is set to rise by 50 kopeks to 15 rubles ($0.40) Jan. 1 when the Finance Ministry raises the excise tax on tobacco products by 30 percent, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported Saturday.
Data from the State Statistics Committee showed that the price of cigarettes had increased by 5.8 percent each year for the last six years — about half the rate of inflation, the newspaper reported.

TITLE: The Slippery Slopes of Success
AUTHOR: By Evgenia Ivanova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It took Will Bogner Jr a year of testing his company’s shop on Nevsky Prospekt but finally he has announed the arrival of one of Germany’s leading lifestyle brands in St. Petersburg.  
The most recent addition to the Bogner empire, the store caters for people who take pleasure in being rich and are not modest with their money. 
“The attitude here is money is good, let’s show them. I like that honest approach,” he said.
“There are lots of Russian people who are rich and enjoy it. We see a lot of them at elite ski resorts like St. Moritz buying stuff from our stores. They like luxury, they like to show off the fact that they have money,” Bogner said. 
“Our clothes don’t shout out that they are expensive but it’s like driving a Mercedes — the signal emitted from such things is clearly not poverty,” he said. 
Unlike in Western Europe, where for a long time people have been very careful about making displays of wealth (“they have their Rolls-Royce in the garage, yet choose to drive around in a less conspicuous vehicle”), in Russia they’d drive the Rolls-Royce, Bogner observed. 
He added that his first shop in the city is “a wonderful way of putting the money coming from oil and gas back into general business.”
Founded by his parents, Willy and Maria Bogner, in 1932, the small importer of Norwegian skis, ski accessories and knitwear has gradually established itself on a world scale, covering a broad spectrum of sport and fashion — from the ski to evening attire, from perfume to timepieces. 
Although the company was almost completely destroyed during War World II, it soon got back on track and become a synonym for cutting-edge designer sportswear, with such high-profile devotees as Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield and Ingrid Bergman. 
“I was lucky that my parents started the company, all we have to do is develop their ideas,” Bogner said, talking to The St. Petersburg Times before the shop’s official opening ceremony.
But he also noted that he and his wife Sonia, a former Brazilian photomodel and now Bogner’s business partner, have to “recreate the company every year.”
“A brand is a living thing. It is not like you establish it and then do nothing. Especially in fashion, you have to fight every season. In this business it is like a race,” and Bogner, an ex-Olympic ski champion, knows what he is talking about.
His sports background has helped him a great deal in business, said Bogner, whose motto in life has always been “do the best you can.”
From winning the Olympics to working on James Bond films as “the only crazy cameraman able to ski and film (even backwards) at 100 mph” —he has done it all. Bogner seems to have accomplished in one life what others would need several to achieve. 
Bogner’s winning recipe is to “find good people, love what you do and pass that feeling on to the people you work with.”
The major worry for most managers — of finding a good team — does not bother Bogner. 
“Maybe they [the mangers who complain] have to start with themselves and think the other way around — are they good to the people they work with? Maybe they don’t treat people right.”
Not only has Bogner continued the family business, but he has also brought in his own ideas: “I have also done some different things, things that my parents didn’t do — movies and photography.
That’s my contribution to the heritage.”
Asked where he gets inspiration for new collections, Bogner said that having a woman next to him is a great help. 
“If it’s warm but ugly I don’t want it,” Sonia Bogner said. “And I listen to her. If you are in fashion, you’re better off listening to a woman,” her husband admitted. 
Another source is satisfied clientele: “We have a lot of customers that tell us “Look, 30 years ago I bought that piece and I still have it.” It’s very satisfying to touch people’s lives in a positive way and not make them go crazy because something doesn’t work or the zipper broke.”
As for the next collection, that will most probably reflect the couple’s St. Petersburg’s experience.
“You will definitely find a lot of blue in the upcoming collection as we went to St. Catherine’s Palace and I was astonished by the color — I’ve never seen such a striking shade!” Sonia Bogner said, who now designs her own fashion line for Bogner.
Bogner has plans for a second store in the city, but said it was too early to go into details.

TITLE: Kiev Mired in Gas Intrigue Ahead of U.S. Trip
AUTHOR: By Steven Mufson
PUBLISHER: wp
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Has Ukraine cleaned up its act?
On Nov. 8, the Millennium Challenge Corp. — established by U.S. President George W. Bush to use development aid to reward good governance — announced that Ukraine had qualified for assistance. On Monday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is due to arrive in Washington to meet Vice President Dick Cheney, another date in the U.S. courtship of a government that is trying to find its place between Russia and the West.
But many energy industry experts say a shroud of secrecy regarding Ukraine’s natural gas business should have kept the country from meeting the Millennium Challenge Corp. standards for U.S. assistance. These experts point especially to the hidden identities of the owners of a Swiss-based company called RosUkrEnergo, which has been handed the rights to negotiate for all of Ukraine’s natural gas imports from Russia and Turkmenistan, raising questions about possible conflicts of interest or corruption.
U.S. companies that have explored doing business with RosUkrEnergo have been frustrated by its lack of transparency. One firm uncovered links to more than 140 offshore companies and trusts, from remote island nations such as Nauru and the Seychelles to Cyprus and Panama, according to an internal document. Another U.S. company’s representative said a lawyer for RosUkrEnergo’s owners did not see why the U.S. company needed to know with whom it was doing business. After further discussions, the U.S. company’s representative said he received only partial answers.
Yanukovych said in a recent interview that he was grateful to be awarded aid status, and he pledged to improve the ethical and administrative standards of his government.
The energy business is not only a key test of Ukraine’s progress in the 16 areas measured by the Millennium Challenge Corp., it is also an area of vital interest to Europe. Ukraine is both a big consumer of natural gas and the transit point for more than one-quarter of Western Europe’s gas imports from Russia and Turkmenistan.
That flow of natural gas to Europe seemed secure until last New Year’s Day, when Russia cut off shipments after Ukraine refused to agree to a sharp increase in prices. Three days later, the dispute ended when Gazprom and the Ukrainian national oil company Naftogaz signed a supply agreement that gave RosUkrEnergo the role of Ukraine’s middleman.
Why the need for RosUkrEnergo? The most likely answer is the company’s connections rather than its expertise. Half of RosUkrEnergo is owned by Gazprom; the other half is managed by a subsidiary of an Austrian firm called Raiffeisen Zentralbank on behalf of a group of Ukrainian businessmen. RosUkrEnergo is registered in Zug, Switzerland, where taxes are low and financial secrecy laws are strong.
One international consultant believes that RosUkrEnergo has earned hundreds of millions of dollars for transactions that could easily have been handled by the state oil and gas company. Ukraine’s energy minister said the country had paid RosUkrEnergo $300 million this year and owed another $300 million, Agence France Presse reported last month.
“RosUkrEnergo, the controversial Swiss-based gas trading company, is playing a growing and persistently opaque role in the Ukrainian gas sector,” a report issued in October by the International Energy Agency said. 
“Its ownership structure is murky, and the company appears to make significant profit simply because it signs contracts to transit gas from Central Asia to Ukraine.”
Yanukovych said he was unable to alter his government’s relationship with RosUkrEnergo. 
“Whether we want it or not, this is the inheritance that my government got. The legal basis ... was signed by our predecessors with RosUkrEnergo,” he said. “Ukraine has no legal basis to destroy this contract. To do so would ... put under threat gas supplies to Ukraine and to Europe.”
Yanukovych said Ukraine also had no choice but to accept Gazprom’s terms. “If there is a company able to supply us with necessary volumes of gas and prices lower than Gazprom, then we would negotiate with that company,” Yanukovych said. “Unfortunately, this company has not been found, so we accepted Gazprom’s proposal.”
Carlos Pascual, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and vice president of the Brookings Institution, said he supported the Millennium Challenge Corp. decision on aid because of Ukraine’s improvements in governance and progress in the fight against corruption. But he said the energy sector was a dark spot in the overall picture.
“The fact that there is such a lack of clarity about why this company has this arrangement and can maintain a monopoly on the transport of gas remains extremely troubling,” Pascual said.
A Ukrainian businessman, Dmytro Firtash, has claimed that he owns 45 percent of RosUkrEnergo, but diplomats and investigators for companies and nongovernmental groups like London-based Global Witness believe he is a front man for well-connected Russians and Ukrainians.
Recently, RosUkrEnergo has moved deeper into Ukraine’s domestic gas supply business. A new joint venture with Gazprom has been given most of the domestic distribution business. How it will run that network remains the subject of some anxiety; in November the venture refused to sign new gas supply deals with 16 Ukrainian companies in what some observers see as an effort to extract ownership stakes in the companies.
Tom Mayne of Global Witness, which in April issued a 63-page report on the Turkmen-Ukrainian gas trade, said he was dismayed that even after the pro-democracy Orange Revolution in Ukraine, government leaders failed to clean up the energy sector.
One official who has survived is Yuriy Boyko, the energy minister, who will be part of the prime minister’s delegation in the United States. Boyko was chairman of the state oil and gas company, Naftogaz, from 2002 to 2005 under Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s former pro-Russia president. 
Global Witness said it had obtained an unpublished audit of the “hair-raising practices” of Naftogaz under Boyko. Global Witness said documents show that Boyko, while Naftogaz chairman, also sat on a coordination committee of RosUkrEnergo. Dismissed after the Orange Revolution, Boyko was named energy minister after new elections brought back many pro-Russian officials.
Meanwhile, Western oil and gas companies are hoping for greater clarity as they seek approval to explore in the Black Sea.
Last Christmas Eve, the government published, in Ukrainian only, a notice inviting tender bids on a 12,000-square-kilometer, deep-water exploration bloc in the Ukrainian portion of the Black Sea. It would be Ukraine’s first deep-water exploration project, and despite the low-profile announcement, it drew five bids from companies, including ExxonMobil.
The surprise winners were Vanco Energy, a small Houston-based firm that has prospected for oil and gas in deep water off the coast of West Africa, and JNR, an investment arm of the Rothschild family. But just as a final contract seemed close to completion, the new government decided to toss out the company’s draft and come up with its own. Vanco is still waiting.
“I’m not discouraged,” said John Imle, the former president of Unocal who is now at Vanco, which already has a rig lined up for work. But he said he hoped the deal would be done by the end of the year and that Cheney would urge Ukraine to wrap it up. 
“The emerging market investors of the world are looking at Ukraine,” Imle said. 
“A lot of them are looking at this deal as a bellwether deal for determining whether large energy investments are sensible.”

TITLE: Hard Work and Tough Choices Ahead
AUTHOR: By William Burns
TEXT: Last month’s U.S.–Russia bilateral agreement on Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization is the single biggest achievement in economic relations between our two countries in over a decade. The negotiators, led by Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, deserve enormous credit, as do the business leaders in both countries, whose achievements in Russia have helped underscore what’s possible as the Russian economy modernizes and diversifies.
The last few years have been a period of considerable frustration and disappointment about our relationship in both Moscow and Washington. There is a growing risk that in the current fashion of mutual dissatisfaction the two sides may lose sight of what they have to gain by working together. This is a moment for both to take a step back and take a careful and honest look at what’s at stake. In two meetings over the past three weeks, presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush have demonstrated a clear appreciation of the fact that the United States and Russia matter to one another and that a healthy relationship between them matters to the rest of the world.
Economic cooperation is a powerful example of common ground between Russia and the United States. That’s where Russia’s accession to the WTO takes on enormous significance and helps create enormous opportunities. The bilateral WTO agreement comes at a moment of remarkable vitality in the Russian economy and in U.S. business growth here. Fueled by soaring energy prices, economic growth has averaged nearly 7 percent over the last seven years. Foreign direct investment has tripled in the last three years and Russia has transformed itself from debtor nation to creditor. With one of the fastest growing retail markets in the world, the economy will reach the $1 trillion mark this year, and some think it could hit $2 trillion by 2010.
U.S. business is expanding rapidly in Russia, helping to create jobs and opportunities for both countries. U.S. investment in Russia rose by nearly 50 percent last year, much of it outside Moscow. I’ve seen first hand the success of Alcoa in Samara; of International Paper in Svetogorsk, Leningrad region; of Coca-Cola in its expanded plant in Krasnoyarsk; and of General Motors as it builds a new plant in St. Petersburg. Proctor and Gamble employs more than 20,000 Russians, and its business is now four-fifths the size of its China operations. Boeing employs 1,300 high-end Russian engineers at its impressive Moscow design center, has just concluded a long-term, $18 billion deal for purchases of Russian titanium and is competing hard for a major aircraft sale to Aeroflot. Intel has its own research centers in Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk. Much more is possible in the years ahead.
With all the inevitable and sometimes frustrating ups and downs, there remains a solid, practical basis for energy sector partnership. ConocoPhillips and LUKoil have a thriving relationship. Despite recent controversy over Sakhalin, the ExxonMobil partnership with Rosneft in Sakhalin-1 saw its first tanker of oil depart Russia in October, and expects soon to be producing 250,000 barrels a day. Chevron has a significant stake in the Caspian Pipeline, the early expansion of which will bring substantial benefits to Russia. More broadly, Russia’s integration into the global energy market through everything from IPOs to downstream acquisitions will help drive home the reality that the market, over time, rewards transparency and punishes opacity.
WTO membership will bring its own benefits. Studies of recent WTO accessions show that foreign direct investment jumps an average of $4 billion in the first year of membership. The World Bank estimates that WTO accession could give more than a 3 percent boost to the Russian economy in the short term. These advantages come on top of already impressive growth and FDI figures. WTO membership will provide a strong impulse toward diversification of the economy beyond oil and gas. It will help the modernization of the aviation industry, making state of the art aircraft and plane parts more affordable and airlines better able to service Russia’s 11 time zones. WTO membership will help exporters and employers to expand in the ferrous and nonferrous metals, chemicals and telecommunications sectors.
Consumers will see a broader range of goods at cheaper prices in stores and groceries. Food processors will have better access to import ingredients due to lower tariffs and fewer import restrictions. WTO membership will also allow agricultural producers to better defend and promote their export interests. The bilateral agreement struck a mutually-beneficial compromise on financial services. On protection of intellectual property rights, as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in Moscow last month, Russia’s sustained anti-piracy efforts would open up new opportunities for both sides. Fighting piracy is not a favor to the United States or the WTO or anyone else. It is deeply in the self-interest of Russia, its reemerging music and film industries and its own technology sector.
The WTO agreement, and Russia’s WTO accession, reinforce and expand opportunities that are already clearly emerging in Russia. But realization of those opportunities does not come automatically. It requires hard work and tough choices. There is obviously the multilateral part of the accession process still to be completed. It will be very important for Russia, with the help of the United States, to keep up the momentum of the bilateral deal and solve the remaining multilateral issues as quickly as possible. It’s important too for Russians to plan ahead for accession and to anticipate both the immediate business and consumer opportunities it will create, as well as the short-term challenges that greater competition will bring for some sectors.
There are also deeper structural challenges ahead that Russians themselves must face. These are troubling problems for which Americans don’t have all the answers, but which Russians ignore at the risk of squandering this moment of opportunity. I say this fully aware that Americans have a habit of preachiness on these questions that doesn’t always endear us to others, and that a little humility is not a bad thing for Americans offering judgments about a place as complicated as Russia.
That said, it does little good to gloss over the danger that Russia’s excesses could eat up its successes. Corruption remains among the worst of these dilemmas. It is, in effect, an extra tax, weighing most heavily on small businesses. It has a corrosive effect on the rule of law, crippling law enforcement and breeding violence. How do you fight corruption effectively without a more or less independent media and a more or less independent judiciary? How do you expect to see that kind of responsible media emerge if investigative journalists like Paul Klebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya are murdered and if their murders go unpunished? And how do you protect Russia’s greatest resource — its remarkably creative and well-educated people — without investing aggressively in education and health care, dealing systematically with demographic decline and combating intolerance?
None of these steps is easy. None of them is going to be accomplished overnight. But WTO membership will highlight the advantages of fighting these difficult problems and strengthen the incentives and tools that Russians have for overcoming them. 

William Burns is U.S. ambassador to Russia. A longer version of this comment was delivered as an address to the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow on Nov. 28.

TITLE: Strength In Weakness
PUBLISHER: Financial Times
TEXT: The world economy looks like a healthy man who has been told to cut down on his beloved coffee: The ailment is well-known, but the cure is unpalatable. The robust global expansion of recent years has been accompanied by extreme international imbalances that have exacerbated fluctuations in the U.S. dollar. Too rapid a drop in the currency would be destabilizing, but a gradual dollar fall would help cure imbalances.
The past week has seen considerable dollar movement. Against the euro, it has fallen by 3 percent, hitting a 20-month low. On a trade-weighted basis, the U.S. currency is at its lowest level since 1997, apart from a brief period last May.
The long-term health of the global economy needs a weaker dollar. The imbalances are related to reliance across the globe on the rapid growth of demand in the United States. The United States is the only economy in which demand has consistently grown faster than output. 
Encouragingly, forecasts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predict that the global economic expansion will continue in 2007 and that the sources of demand will become more balanced, with stronger contributions from Europe and Japan.
This reorientation of demand growth away from the United States is resulting in a weaker dollar. But just as going cold turkey may not be the best way to solve a coffee addiction, trade imbalances should not be solved by abrupt dollar depreciation.
Currency stability might be maintained: The U.S. housing market is moderating slowly, the unemployment rate is low, and output growth has been revised upwards. The U.S. Federal Reserve must now persuade the markets to share its view that the economy will prove resilient and interest rates will remain high.
Meanwhile, Asian economies should not sit on the sidelines. China keeps its currency pegged to the dollar, while others often intervene heavily. As a result, the adjustment in exchange rates has so far been largely trans-Atlantic rather than global. Asian central banks should allow more currency flexibility.
At the same time, fundamental structural change must accompany the exchange rate adjustments. China must rely more on domestic demand, while the United States raises savings. The growth recoveries in Europe and Japan must also become more deeply established. A rebalancing global economy may well continue to grow strongly. But the adjustment may also mean further currency instability. It will be hard to kick the reliance on the U.S. demand fix overnight. In this case, it could be downright dangerous. Gradual detoxification is the right cure.

TITLE: Learning to Value the Accountant
AUTHOR: By Tom Stansmore
TEXT: At first glance, accounting doesn’t strike one as being a terribly interesting or exciting field.  To the untrained observer, numbers are arranged into columns, documents are signed, stamped and submitted to less than enthusiastic government authorities, and four times a year accountants claim to be overwhelmed with the amount of numbers, documents and submissions. 
Enron, WorldCom and the ensuing collapse of Arthur Anderson, however, did for a time at least, put the accounting profession into a more exciting, if not unwelcome spotlight.  The accounting shenanigans that led to the number 7 company on the fortune 500 list going belly up, the collapse of an accounting titan and thousands of people losing their life savings provided a glimpse into the significance and consequences that are part of the accounting profession. 
Briefly stated, a Chief Accountant can easily be the most important person in one’s organization.  This is true in countries throughout the world, but perhaps more so in Russia than in other places.   Russian legislation puts accountants on the forefront of tax laws, currency control regulations, profit repatriation, employment compensation and just about everything else that is important to the success of a business.  Simply put, a good Russian chief accountant can’t guarantee your company’s success, but without one, you are dead in the water. 
This simple truth, however, is often neglected in large part because accountants are typically not considered to be part of a company’s “core business.” Directors are instinctively more concerned with growth and will often devote much more time consulting with their sales mangers than making sure that they have collected every receipt related to every transaction and that they have signed and stamped everything that their accountants have put in front of them. 
The emphasis on form (typically at the expense of substance) adds to the weight on the shoulders of the Russian Chief Accountant.  Not only is a company’s Chief Accountant responsible for representing the company’s interests before the Russian State and making sure that employees get paid properly and timely, they are personally liable if something goes wrong.   The fact that the Russian General Director is also personally liable for mistakes of the Chief Accountant doesn’t help their relationship and the amount of signatures required by both often leads to the General Director viewing the whole process as a significant diversion from their real responsibility of growing the business. 
Fortunately, however, accounting is one of the internal corporate activities that can easily be outsourced.  That and the legislative changes introduced following the collapse of Enron and the inherent transparency of an outsourced accounting process has led to a significant increase in the amount of companies choosing to outsource this function.  The advantages are universal, but again in Russia because of the liability issues they are particularly valuable:
• Outsourced Accounting firms don’t get sick or take vacations;
• There is a range of accounting expertise available;
• Computer Software has made banking transactions safe, while allowing the owner of the account to stay in control;
• Management can focus on growth;
• A good Accounting Firm will also alert you to changes in legislation that may effect your business.
When selecting an outsourced accounting firm, one of the most revealing methods that one can take to find out about their prospective service provider is to ask to speak to some of the firm’s existing clients. An accountant will quickly learn most of what there is to know about the companies for whom they provide services, and it is only natural that customers do the same.  Outsourced accounting makes sense for many reasons, but it is imperative that one select a partner that is reliable, trustworthy and talented.  A firm with these qualities will be more than happy to provide references that can be confirmed independently.  

Tom Stansmore is the General Director of Emerging Markets Group and can be reached at t.stansmore@emg.spb.ru

TITLE: The Peculiar Case of Kosovo
AUTHOR: By Borut Grgic
TEXT: Kosovar Prime Minister Agim Ceku arrived for a busy tour of Moscow on Wednesday. These are crucial days for the leader as the international community considers reaching a decision on the final status of Kosovo. Russia will obviously play a very important role in this, both as a member of the Contact Group and as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
As Kosovo’s independence nears, international pundits disagree over what implications this will have for international law in general and, more specifically, on other separatist movements in places like South Ossetia, Abkhazia and even Chechnya.
If handled properly, the case of Kosovo will not create any precedents. It is a unique case for at least three reasons.
First, Kosovo has the right to self-determination, stemming from egregious human rights violations perpetrated against Kosovar Albanians by Serbia. Second, Kosovo has the right to independence as a constitutive unit of the former Yugoslavia, similar to that granted to other republics upon dissolution of the federation. It is worth remembering that Kosovo’s constitutional rights as a part of Yugoslavia were terminated in the 1970s by unconstitutional means, at which point the territory was included under the constitution of Serbia.
Finally, a strong argument can be made that Kosovo’s de facto independence under the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, or UNMIK, has created de jure independence by matter of circumstance. By transferring responsibility for the administration of Kosovo to the Kosovo Provisional Government, rather than to Belgrade, since 1999, UNMIK bestowed upon Pristina the functions of government, including the capacity to enter into contractual relationships with other sovereign entities. Kosovo has already signed bilateral trade agreements with Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania.
Clearly Kosovo’s case is not one of intervention by an external power. UNMIK is at present an international mission, set up by the Security Council. It is a different matter if another state decides unilaterally to intervene on the territory of another sovereign state. This would contravene international law.
Belgrade, on the other hand, has been stripped of its obligations and rights as the administrator of Kosovo.
Can Kosovo work as an independent entity? Certainly — it is already working. Kosovo has a stable currency and inflation is under control. Pristina privatized close to 90 percent of its public assets and has announced two major tenders, in the telecommunications and energy sectors, over the last two weeks.
A study group from the Kyrgyz Ministry of Finance recently visited Kosovo to familiarize itself with its public financial management system and budget process. Kosovo has a system with a broad tax base, few exemptions and low marginal rates, as well as a flexible labor market.
Kosovo is also energy rich. It is home to world’s fifth-largest deposits of lignite, a form of coal most often used for electricity generation.
Russia has economic and energy interests in a stable Kosovo and a prosperous Balkan region. An independent Kosovo is a precondition to optimizing regional economic development.
Serbia doesn’t need Kosovo. The best interests of the international community, including Russia, at this point lie in providing a quick fix and regional economic vitality. Serbia will be in a much better position to take advantage of the economic opportunities available in Kosovo if the two are separate and able to manage their own development strategies. Only if Kosovo and Serbia are separated politically can they establish a meaningful economic partnership.
Regional economic integration should also open new opportunities for Russian direct investment. With the economies of states in the Balkans growing at an average of 4 percent annually, demand for energy can only increase.
The Balkans have enormous energy potential but energy supply in the region is actually diminishing as a result of neglected research and development. This year, for the first time, all of the western Balkan states will be forced to buy some electricity on the spot market, which means paying spot prices. Russia could become a major energy supplier for the region by exporting more gas there by way of Turkey’s Blue Stream pipeline. Russian energy giants could also invest in regional energy projects to help upgrade obsolete infrastructure.
Russia has all the room and every reason it needs to be pragmatic on the question of Kosovo. The economic factors are obvious, but another factor is that Moscow is losing its appeal in Belgrade. Serbia is now European Union-bound and the new intellectual elites are pro-Western. Serbian pressure groups in Moscow have increasingly less relevance in Belgrade, which suggests that the Serbian diaspora is becoming more of a liability for the Kremlin than an asset. President Vladimir Putin should turn his back on this group and establish direct links with the modern Serbia in Belgrade. Russia should not risk a rupture in its relations with the United States and the EU by promoting the interests of an increasingly marginalized group.
Russia has an interest in ensuring that Kosovo’s transition to independence takes place. A flexible and pragmatic Russian approach to the issue of Kosovo’s final status would be welcomed by the rest of the region and by the international community in general.

Borut Grgic is director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

TITLE: A Tall Building With a Very Deep Problem
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The winning design in a competition to build a 300-meter high office tower for Gazprom Neft in St. Petersburg was to be announced on Friday. The story has received much attention both as a result of Gazprom’s involvement and the scheme for financing the project. Sixty billion rubles, about $2.3 billion, will come from the city budget.
Gazprom has shifted the registration of some of its subsidiaries, including Gazprom Neft, to St. Petersburg, meaning that the company will contribute from 12 billion to 15 billion rubles in annual taxes to the city budget. But the city will pay 6 billion rubles per year over the next 10 years for the construction of the office tower, meaning the 300-meter colossus will cost the city 40 percent to 50 percent of the extra revenues it is slated to receive from Gazprom.
Any major company, Russian or otherwise, would like to relocate to St. Petersburg to cash in on this deal — a 50 percent reduction in taxes, not in exchange for commitments to social spending, but simply for contributing the other 50 percent to the local budget. But the deal is only available for Gazprom.
This would be a problem even if Gazprom was 100 percent state owned. But Gazprom also has private shareholders, so St. Petersburg’s taxpayers are being asked to pick up the tab even for companies like Yukos, which still holds a 20 percent stake in Gazprom Neft.
It is doubtful that any private company would be interested in the construction of a 300-meter building on St. Petersburg’s marshy ground. There is good reason, after all, why the construction of buildings taller than the Winter Palace was prohibited by imperial decree. Today, the necessary technology for construction under these circumstances exists, but no local firms have it, meaning expensive foreign contractors will have to be hired.
The St. Petersburg metro, which experiences problems with flooding from time to time, is the only underground construction in the city. Plans for an underground shopping complex like Moscow’s Okhotny Ryad under the northern capital’s Ploshchad Vosstaniya were abandoned. An office complex is not a shopping center, and Gazprom doesn’t seem worried at all about profitability, but the costs could be incredibly high. Analysts have suggested the cost of the foundation could be as high as that of the building itself. The foundations will have to be sunk even deeper than the pit that still lies open beside St. Petersburg’s Moskovsky Station, reminding us of another St. Petersburg mega-project abandoned in the past — a high-speed rail line that still has yet to link the country’s two capitals.

This comment was published as an editorial in Vedomosti.

TITLE: Turning Immigrants Into Criminals
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: The movie “The Godfather” famously opens with a Corleone family wedding. While his guests celebrate outside, Don Vito Corleone receives supplicants in his study — ordinary, hard-working Sicilians from the old neighborhood. Bonaserra, the undertaker, asks the godfather to grant him a favor: to punish two kids who assaulted his daughter but got off lightly. In response, Corleone gently scolds the undertaker for not coming to him right away instead of trying to be an “American” and seeking to gain justice outside his ethnic family.
The Don knows where his bread is buttered. His power is rooted in the continued ghettoization of the Italian-American community. He can go on meting out justice and granting those peculiar small favors only as long as Italians are discriminated against or excluded from functioning within legitimate channels.
This is not a new idea. Criminologists in the United States have long observed that ethnic organized crime thrives in communities that feel embattled or isolated, among people who either fear to report incidents to the police or have little hope of obtaining positive results when they do. Early immigrants to the United States from other ethnic groups — not just Italians but the Irish and the Jews as well — were not accepted by mainstream society. They all produced strong, extensive mafias — and ended up as their greatest victims as well.
The anti-Italian bias of U.S. police in the 1930s, after the Mafia had grown stronger during prohibition, helped Italian organized crime attain its peak of power and influence during the 1950s.
U.S. law enforcement agencies learned their lesson. Every police department in the country now has an ethnic outreach program. In the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, the home of many immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Russian-speaking police officers began appearing in the early 1980s. The New York Police Department didn’t extirpate the Russian mafia, but by earning the trust of Russian residents it greatly diminished its ability to prosper and spread.
For the first time in modern history, Russia is experiencing a large-scale influx of new immigrants, both from neighboring, former Soviet republics and from impoverished parts of the developing world. The wave of immigrants does not consist only of guest workers offering unskilled labor; more importantly, newcomers have opened businesses and created extensive commercial networks. Given Russia’s unique reality of Byzantine laws and regulations interlaced with pervasive lawlessness and corruption, commercial networks of this kind, operating on the fringes of legality, provide fertile ground for the development of organized crime. If you are engaged in any kind of small wholesale, retail or service business, you need some kind of protection. If you are also a foreigner, you go to the godfather corresponding to your own ethnic background to get things fixed.
It is a dangerous situation, and anyone who has Russia’s interest at heart is right to be concerned. The criminalization of Russia’s foreign diasporas will continue to corrupt the state.
Ideally, immigration and the guest-worker system need to be legalized and foreign diasporas brought out of the shadows. But Russia’s problems run deeper. The mainstream of Russian society is itself hopelessly corrupt. Moreover, the Russian police are a joke. The law enforcement system is the most lawless part of society. Given these realities, it will be difficult for Russia to prevent the rise of organized crime among its growing ethnic populations. Its reach is already quite extensive, as recent repressions singling out Georgian criminals have shown. The sad thing is that those repressions, coupled with draconian restrictions against people from other former Soviet republics in the retail trade, are only going to strengthen the hand of various ethnic mafias.

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.

TITLE: U.S. Librarian of Congress Remembers Likhachev
TEXT: I first came to know Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev 45 years ago when I wrote the lead article for a scholarly roundtable on Old Russian culture sponsored by the Slavic Review. He and the great Russian theologian Georges Florovsky were my esteemed commentators. We met in person shortly thereafter in Leningrad and I saw that this deep scholar of Old Russian culture also exemplified the best in 20th-century Russian culture. Listening to him later as the oral examiner of a doctoral candidate, I understood that the erudition and graciousness with which he had commented on my article were not simply politeness to a young foreign scholar, but an innate quality expressed even more fully in his dealings with older Russian humanists working in the difficult confines of a reactionary Institute of History in Moscow.
In the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras I began working with Dmitry Sergeevich on bridge-building through the universal language of culture. During President Reagan’s second term I came to play something of a role in the cultural dimension of relations with Russia while Dmitry Sergeevich was playing a far more direct and important role as a cultural adviser to both Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev. 
In the summer of 1990, I listened to Likhachev read a marvelous paper showing that even his beloved Old Russia was a multi-ethnic society closely linked with Western and other outside influences, countering the prevailing chauvinistic view of Russian history. That evening I went with Dmitry Sergeevich to a stereotypically staged folklore presentation for the conference. Having eloquently described the real pluralism and multi-ethnicity of a supposedly monolithic Old Russia earlier that day, Dmitry Sergeevich decried to me the artificial Soviet kitsch that the waning Communist authorities were still superimposing on scholarly gatherings.
For the Bush-Gorbachev summit in Washington, I arranged with Dmitry Sergeevich to put on an exhibition of the book culture of the Old Believers at the Library of Congress. Dmitry Sergeevich came to Washington for the opening, and he guided Raisa Gorbachev through the mix of Old Believer books that had been brought by immigrants to the United States in the early 20th century, with new books produced in the remote regions of Russia in the same manuscript style as the older books.
Through these and many other encounters with Likhachev in this time of great change, I became aware of the extent to which this very old student of Old Russia was revered by the very young generation in the emerging post-Soviet Russia. He was, in a way, the last great representative of the high culture of old Petersburg, and at the same time a new version of that historic Russian phenomenon: a voice of conscience that speaks truth to power. He was, in effect, the Gorbachevs’ family tutor in the glories of the culture that preceded the Soviet regime. It is a tribute to the Gorbachevs that they valued him, and it is a tribute to Likhachev that he never became simply another house ornament of Russian leaders.
In his characteristically gentle but firm way, he defended the wholeness, and at the same time the variety, of Russian culture, and he extolled its power to help transform a society deeply corrupted by totalitarianism. He never received the recognition abroad that he deserved, but he deeply believed that openness to the West was also important in creating a healthy future for Russia. One of the last of many visions he shared with me was his hope to create a university with different faculties in different countries as a true vehicle for international understanding.
Dmitry Sergeevich believed that post-Soviet Russia must both recover its own moral, artistic, and spiritual culture and, at the same time, discover the more open political and economic practices of the West. He did not see any contradiction between the two. When he received two years after Anna Akhmatova an honorary doctorate at Oxford, he had a long and moving visit with Isaiah Berlin, whose famous conversation with the persecuted poetess had so enraged the Stalinist establishment. Both participants confirmed to me how heartwarming the meeting was. It seemed to represent symbolically a new bridge between Russia and the West, Christian humanism and Jewish enlightenment.
Dmitry Sergeevich in his last years wrote letters to the Russian Patriarch calling for more open acknowledgment of the failings of the Orthodox Church hierarchy in the Soviet era and to President Yeltsin opposing the initial war in Chechnya. He lived to see the first Soviet Gulag in the Arctic archipelago of Solovki, where he had been imprisoned as a young man, turned back into a monastery and forward into a center for environmental study.
He was influential in the composition of one of the best and shortest speeches that Yeltsin ever gave: at the reburial in St. Petersburg of the remains of the last Tsar and his family. For all his love of tradition and his horror at the assassination of the royal family, Likhachev emphatically rejected any return to monarchy and enthusiastically backed democratic reform.
Seeing him in his modest apartment and dacha as the 20th century neared its end, I was deeply impressed by the thick piles of letters this old man was receiving from young people all over Russia. Like Likhachev himself, a new post-Soviet generation seemed to be simultaneously looking back to pre-Communist Russian culture and forward to post-war Western experience. He seemed to be a beacon and a magnet for many young Russians.
Likhachev played a special role as honorary co-chairman with me during the first year of the Open World Program, an exchange program housed in the U.S. legislative branch that enables emerging leaders from Russia and other Eurasian countries to experience American democracy and civil society in action. I like to believe that the Open World Program expresses some of the hopes of this noble man whose centennial we are commemorating in 2006. Open World has been in many ways a tribute to his vision as well as to that of the Congress which have carried on the program since his passing.

Dr. James H. Billington is the United States Librarian of Congress, founder of the Open World Program and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Open World Leadership Center.  He visited  St. Petersburg to attend an international congress celebrating the 100th anniversary  (Nov. 29, 1906) of the birth of Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev.

TITLE: Bolton Resigns From UN Post
AUTHOR: By Terence Hunt
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Unable to win Senate confirmation, UN Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday. 
Bolton’s nomination has languished in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than a year, blocked by Democrats and several Republicans. Senator Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican who lost in the midterm elections Nov. 7 that swept Democrats to power in both houses of Congress, was adamantly opposed to Bolton.
Critics have questioned Bolton’s brusque style and whether he could be an effective public servant who could help bring reform to the UN.
President Bush, in a statement, said he was “deeply disappointed that a handful of United States senators prevented Ambassador Bolton from receiving the up or down vote he deserved in the Senate.”
“They chose to obstruct his confirmation, even though he enjoys majority support in the Senate, and even though their tactics will disrupt our diplomatic work at a sensitive and important time,” Bush said. “This stubborn obstructionism ill serves our country, and discourages men and women of talent from serving their nation.”
Bush gave Bolton the job temporarily in August 2005, while Congress was in recess. Under that process, the appointment expires when Congress formally adjourns, no later than early January.
The White House resubmitted Bolton’s nomination last month. But with Democrats capturing control of the next Congress, his chances of winning confirmation appeared slight. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joe Biden, said he saw “no point in considering Mr. Bolton’s nomination again.”
While Bush could not give Bolton another recess appointment, the White House was believed to be exploring other ways of keeping him in the job, perhaps by giving him a title other than ambassador. But Bolton informed the White House he intended to leave when his current appointment expires, White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. Bush said he accepted Bolton’s decision with deep regret.
“He served his country with extraordinary dedication and skill, assembling coalitions that addressed some of the most consequential issues facing the international community,” the president said. “During his tenure, he articulately advocated the positions and values of the United States and advanced the expansion of democracy and liberty.”

TITLE: Bush Probes Iraq Policy Before Crucial Report
AUTHOR: By Terence Hunt
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — President Bush, under pressure to change course in Iraq, was due to meet Monday with the Shiite leader of the largest bloc in Iraq’s parliament, and Thursday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his closest ally in the U.S.-led war. 
Bush is scheduled to receive recommendations from a blue-ribbon commission exploring different approaches for Iraq on Wednesday.
“I don’t think anybody thinks the level of violence is acceptable,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said Monday.
Bush will talk with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim about political reconciliation in Iraq within the framework of the Iraqi constitution, Snow said. Their talks will also address Iraq’s relations with Iran and ways that moderates within the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities can help build more strength in the unity government in Baghdad. Not taking sides in the bloody sectarian battle, Bush plans to meet next month with Iraq’s Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi.
These developments come amid an atmosphere of rising expectations about a new U.S. policy in Iraq and an acknowledgment by Bush’s national security adviser that Bush accepts that a new approach is warranted.
National security adviser Stephen Hadley said Sunday that while Bush recognizes something different needs to be done, the president won’t use the recommendations due this week from the Iraq Study Group as political cover for bringing troops home.
“We have not failed in Iraq,” Hadley said as he made the talk show rounds Sunday. “We will fail in Iraq if we pull out our troops before we’re in a position to help the Iraqis succeed.”
He added: “The president understands that we need to have a way forward in Iraq that is more successful.”
But, with the leak of another insider’s secret memo, the second in a week, the administration found itself on the defensive.
The latest, first reported in Sunday’s New York Times, showed that Donald Rumsfeld called for a “major adjustment” in U.S. tactics on Nov. 6 — the day before an election that cost Republicans the Congress and Rumsfeld his job as defense secretary.
Hadley played down the memo as a laundry list of ideas rather than a call for a new course of action.
He said that Bush — just before a pivotal election — was not portraying a different sense of the war to the public than his own defense secretary was giving him in private.
The president “has said publicly what Rumsfeld said, that things are not proceeding well enough or fast enough in Iraq,” Hadley said.
Democrats did not buy that.
“The Rumsfeld memo makes it quite clear that one of the greatest concerns is the political fallout from changing course here in the United States,” said Senator Joseph Biden, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “The bottom line is there is no one, including the former secretary, who thought the policy the president continues to pursue makes any sense.”

TITLE: Questions Persist About Clinton’s ‘Electability’
AUTHOR: By Beth Fouhy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Call it the front-runner’s paradox. 
While Hillary Rodham Clinton tops every national poll of likely 2008 Democratic presidential contenders, the New York senator is dogged by questions of “electability” — political code for whether she can win enough swing states to prevail in a general election.
It’s a gauge typically applied to Democrats, as few question the crossover appeal of the Republican front-runner, Arizona Senator John McCain. And for activists eager to recapture the White House after eight years of George W. Bush, electability remains a crucial yardstick by which Clinton, especially, seems to be measured.
Clinton began discussions last week with fellow New York lawmakers about her White House prospects and met Sunday with the state’s Democratic governor-elect — all indications she is stepping up plans to join a growing field of potential contenders for 2008.
But some Democrats still believe the odds are against her actually being elected president. Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party not aligned with any presidential hopeful, is among the nay-sayers.
“She’s a senator, she’d be the first woman running, and she’s Hillary Clinton,” he said. “All of that is almost insurmountable for a general election.”
He added: “There are people who would write a check and die for her, but there are plenty of others who wouldn’t vote for her if she promised to eliminate the income tax and give free ice cream to everyone. People have made up their minds about her, and that doesn’t give her much room to maneuver.”
Clinton has not yet declared she plans to seek the presidency, and aides say the question of whether she can win tops the list of considerations. She’s also said she is eager to return to the Senate, where, come January, she’ll be a member of the new Democratic majority.
“Hillary Clinton has a good sense of self,” said Chris Lehane, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked in the White House for President Clinton. “I don’t think she makes this race unless she thinks she has a pretty good chance of winning the whole thing.”
On Sunday, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh said he would form a presidential exploratory committee to assess his chances, while Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack declared his candidacy last week. Other Democrats weighing a presidential run in 2008 include Illinois Senator Barack Obama; New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson; Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee; and Kerry’s 2004 running mate, former North Carolina Senator John Edwards.
Hillary Clinton enjoys several advantages. She has millions in the bank and a topflight team of advisers. She was handily re-elected to a second term in the Senate, winning even the most conservative areas of her adopted home state of New York. And her husband is the Democratic Party’s best campaign strategist and biggest fundraising draw.
But analysts say there are other, significant downsides to a Clinton candidacy.
Despite her centrist six-year Senate voting record, Clinton’s reputation remains deeply rooted in her polarizing eight years as first lady. Skeptics say she may still be too liberal for many voters, who recall her husband’s scandal-plagued presidency and her own audacious effort to reform the nation’s health care system. And no one knows how her status as the first serious female candidate would play out.
“Everyone knows Hillary Clinton can raise the money and that she has a good team, but it’s mitigated by all the mumbling that she’s not electable,” said Joe Trippi, who managed Howard Dean’s upstart 2004 presidential campaign.
That year, Dean lost the electability sweepstakes — and the Democratic nomination — to Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who then lost to Bush in the general election.
In Clinton’s case, so persistent have been the concerns about her prospects for victory in a general election that this summer, two of her top advisers attacked the matter head on.
“We’ve heard all this ‘Hillary can’t win’ stuff before,’” strategist James Carville and longtime pollster Mark Penn wrote in The Washington Post, referring to Clinton’s first Senate race in New York in 2000. That year, she defeated Republican Representaive Rick Lazio by 12 percentage points.
Penn and Carville also argued that Clinton’s popularity with women voters could tip a number of swing states her way. In her landslide re-election victory last month, Clinton won 73 percent of the women’s vote, compared with 61 percent of men’s. 
“Certainly she could win the states John Kerry did,” they wrote. “But with the pathbreaking possibility of this country’s first female president.”

TITLE: Pinochet Fights For Life After Heart Operations
AUTHOR: By Rodrigo Martinez
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SANTIAGO, Chile — Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, accused of torture, killings and kidnappings during his 1973-1990 rule, was stable but still seriously ill on Monday following a heart attack over the weekend, his doctors said. 
Pinochet, 91, had a heart attack on Sunday and was rushed to hospital for an angioplasty operation to reopen his arteries. Doctors said it was too risky to operate further on the aging former general, the best known of the strongmen who dominated South American politics in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The patient’s life is still in danger. We can’t change that,” Dr. Juan Ignacio Vergara told reporters on Monday. “(But) everything is under control.”
Dozens of Pinochet supporters gathered outside the hospital clutching portraits of the retired general.
Some waved Chilean flags and sang the national anthem. Many shed tears for a man who, 17 years after he relinquished power, still provokes strong reactions.
Some Chileans regard Pinochet as the man who saved them from Communism by ousting leftist President Salvador Allende in a 1973 coup, while others view him as a murderer who should be put on trial for human rights abuses.
Around 3,000 people died in political violence during Pinochet’s 17-year rule and around 28,000 were tortured. Many more fled into exile.
Pinochet’s latest illness has revived speculation over how the Chilean government would handle a funeral for the former dictator. Some Chileans say he should be given full state honors while others would regard that as a disgrace.
The government has declined to discuss the issue, saying it would be in bad taste while Pinochet still lives.
President Michelle Bachelet was tortured during Pinochet’s regime and has said in the past that Chileans — herself included — would be offended if Pinochet was given full state honors while still under the shadow of human rights and fraud charges.
Pinochet has been charged with crimes in at least five separate cases, but, despite concerted efforts, no one has brought him to court. His defense lawyers have successfully argued he is too ill to stand trial.
Some of his critics view that as an excuse and complain that whenever a prosecution appears even remotely possible, the retired general falls ill.
Last week, Pinochet was placed under house arrest over the murder of two of Allende’s bodyguards in 1973. In the latest twist, a court ruled on Monday Pinochet should be freed on bail.
He marked his birthday last month by issuing a statement accepting “political responsibility” for acts committed during his rule but said he acted with Chile’s interests at heart. “Today, close to the end of my days, I want to make clear that I hold no rancor toward anybody, that I love my country above all else,” he said.

TITLE: ‘Red’ Chavez Wins Landslide
AUTHOR: By Saul Hudson
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez painted Venezuela the “red, really, red” of his anti-U.S. socialist revolution, sweeping to re-election in Sunday’s vote with wins in every state in the OPEC heavyweight. 
National opposition newspaper El Universal displayed a map on its front page on Monday depicting his political movement’s color red as a wave across all of the Caribbean nation.
Polling above 60 percent of the vote and 20 points more than his united opposition rival, Chavez said his win was a blow to President Bush, who sees the Cuba and Iran ally as a threat to regional democracy and stability.
Chavez, 52 and in office since 1998, now has a strong mandate to press his socialist reforms, including land confiscations and increased state control over the oil industry, and to seek to forge an anti-U.S. front in Latin America.
Smooth voting and a quick concession by the opposition defied many Venezuelans’ fears of post-vote chaos over a contested election and helps provide a stable political backdrop for investments in a booming economy.
But politics are unlikely to be tame.
Chavez acknowledges he thrives on confrontation and he is still loathed among many in the middle- and upper-classes who consider him a buffoon and dictator-in-the-making.
Chavez, the fourth Latin American leftist to win a presidential election in the last five weeks, has vowed to use his mandate to scrap presidential term limits and create a single party out of the array of groups that support him — which he would hope would lead in power for decades.
Critics, including Washington, fear the man known as El Comandante will be emboldened to intensify his buying of arms and influence with an oil bonanza from high prices in one of the world’s top crude exporters.
Opposition daily El Nacional spread a photograph over its front page of the barrel-chested former paratrooper in his signature open-neck red shirt raising his right fist in the air in a victory salute.
“It is another defeat for the empire of Mr. Danger,” said the outspoken Chavez, using one of his many insults for Bush that include donkey, drunkard — and worse.
Streets in polarized Venezuela were quiet on Monday.
Shantytowns were recovering from late-night partying celebrating the victory of a leader who many in the poor majority of the country’s population of 27 million idolize for lavishing oil revenue on schools, clinics and food-hand-outs.
There were no celebrations in the upmarket neighborhoods of the capital Caracas, where supporters had hoped opposition candidate Manuel Rosales would stop what they see as Chavez’s wasting of oil wealth on populist programs.
Carlos Marval, 44, was worried the president would ignore the demands of the 40 percent of Venezuelans who voted against his leftist drive.
“There’s no sense of an integrated country with us all moving forward together,” the computer technician said. “A large part of the middle-class feels marginalized.”
Rosales united the traditionally fragmented opposition and showed there is a solid section of the electorate fearful that Chavez will lead them to communism in the manner of his mentor, Cuban leader Fidel Castro. 
While Rosales lacked Chavez’s charisma, he ran a disciplined campaign that exposed Venezuelans’ anger at rampant crime and at Chavez’s increasing control over state institutions like the military and the giant state oil company.

TITLE: Doherty Fined, Escapes Jail
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON— Pete Doherty smiled and hugged fans outside court Monday after a judge ruled he will not serve jail time for possession of drugs including heroin and crack cocaine. 
District Judge Jane McIvor ordered the 27-year-old Babyshambles singer to pay $1,525 in fines and court costs and ordered him not to drive for four months.
“I feel relieved,” Doherty told reporters outside Thames Magistrates’ Court in London.
The singer was arrested in April for possession of less than 2 grams each of heroin, cannabis and cocaine, just three hours after he was sentenced to two years of community service for previous drug offenses. The drugs were found in the vehicle he was in and at his home.
Doherty was arrested again Aug. 7 with a crack pipe and a small amount of crack cocaine, and pleaded guilty Aug. 18 to all five counts.
“He’s not going to jail. It’s amazing,” said 16-year-old fan Georgina Raymond, who jumped up and down screaming into her cell phone, “I hugged him!”
In September, McIvor told Doherty he wouldn’t serve jail time for the charges if he continued rehabilitation, stayed employed and didn’t commit any other offenses. She also complimented him for his song “The Blinding.” Doherty didn’t break any of the imposed restrictions, McIvor said.

TITLE: East-West Tensions Flare at OSCE Meeting
AUTHOR: By David Brunnstrom and Mark John
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRUSSELS — Sparks flew at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Monday as Washington launched a thinly veiled attack on Moscow for using economic clout to pressurize small neighbors. 
Russia hit back, criticizing the rights watchdog for overreaching itself and accusing some within it of trying to force through “one-sided” solutions to so-called “frozen conflicts” in former Soviet states left over from the Cold War.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused supposedly independent structures within the 56-member OSCE, created in 1975 as a forum for East-West cooperation in the Cold War, of judging rather than helping states resolve problems.
“Either we come to terms with correcting imbalances in the OSCE as it is now, or we do what we can to legitimize the current status quo and perhaps re-christen the OSCE as an organization for humanitarian issues,” Lavrov said.
“If so, then every country will be in a position to decide whether they want to remain part of that organization,” he said, adding that the group should focus on issues like the fight against terrorism or drug trafficking, or risk irrelevance.
Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns told the meeting in Brussels many OSCE states were “backsliding” on human rights and cited the example of Moscow ally Belarus.
In a thinly veiled reference to Russian support for separatists in breakaway regions of Moldova and Georgia, he added: “Some OSCE countries are resorting to economic and financial pressure to impose on their neighbors.”
“So long as these countries remain torn apart from within and as long as open support for separatist regimes continues from without, these two countries will find it harder to realize their potential,” he said, urging Russian troop withdrawals.
Burns expressed regret that it had not been possible to work with Russia to implement a long-standing pact on limiting conventional forces in Europe. Lavrov blamed NATO for preventing its entry into force and said the situation had become critical.
Washington and Moscow differ over energy-rich Kazakhstan’s bid to take over the OSCE chairmanship in 2009 and diplomats said it looked likely that any decision would be postponed.
Lavrov said Russia backed the bid, but Washington and some European states argue the former Soviet state, which has never had an election deemed fair by Western observers, falls short of OSCE standards and its chairmanship should be delayed.
German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler, however, said “the time is ripe” for a Kazakh chairmanship and even those seeking delay are loath to rebuff a key energy producer that appears keener to reform than many Central Asian neighbors.
Washington has said Kazakhstan could take the chair in 2011 and on Sunday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried cited a possible compromise under which OSCE nations could agree now on the three states to hold the chairmanship through 2009-2011.
But Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, on a separate visit to Belgium, was adamant its candidacy was for 2009.
“We still hold to that position,” he told reporters after talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, in which the two gave the go-ahead for closer energy ties. They initialed a pact on cooperation on nuclear energy with Kazakhstan.

TITLE: More Medals On Offer At Asian Games
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DOHA, Qatar — A look ahead at Tuesday, the fourth full day of competition at the 15th Asian Games which end Dec. 15:
• Gold medals on offer: 38.
• The podium events include: men’s and women’s tenpin bowling trios; snooker and English billiards singles and doubles; men’s and women’s cycling individual time trials, dressage individual; 3 men’s and 2 women’s apparatus finals in gymnastics; men’s open and 60 kg and women’s 48 kg and open judo; six shooting finals; seven swimming finals; men’s 85 kg and 94 kg and women’s 75 kg weightlifting.
• Cheng Fei, the world gymnastics champion in vault, is heavily favored for gold in that apparatus. The men’s floor final, pommel horse and rings and the women’s uneven bars are also scheduled Tuesday.
• Praput Chaithanasakun of Thailand, the double gold medalist at the Busan Asian Games in 2002, is top seeded and is favored for English billiards gold.
• Choi Jun-sang, who won gold for South Korea in the individual dressage competition at Busan, is favored again in the same event Tuesday at the Doha Racing and Equestrian Club.

TITLE: Thai Weightlifter Breaks Record at Games
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DOHA, Qatar — Olympic champion Pawina Thongsuk has added another feather to her weightlifting cap.
On Monday at the Asian Games, the 27-year-old former physical education student bettered the clean-and-jerk mark set by Russian Svetlana Shimkova by one kilogram.
Thongsuk lifted 142 kg to improve Shimkova’s record of 141 kg set at Wladyslawowo, Poland earlier this year.
The Thai weightlifter, who set the snatch and total weight world records at the 2005 world championships, withdrew from this year’s world titles in the Dominican Republic to prepare for the Asian Games.
In other events, Japan’s Mayuko Hagiwara outsprinted Zhao Na of China at the end to win the women’s road race cycling gold. She finished in three hours, six minutes and 10 seconds on Doha’s 113.1-kilometer seaside Corniche course.
South Korea’s impressive equestrian record continued when it won the team dressage event for the fourth time in the last five games.
The South Korean team, composed of Choi Jun-sang, Kim Dong-seon, Shin Soo-jim and Suh Jung-kyun, picked up 65.777 points. Malaysia was second with 64.222 while Japan won the bronze with 64.188.
Suh’s gold was his sixth at the Asian Games in his career. He had previously won gold medals in 1986 and 1998 — both team and individual — and in 2002 (team), making him the most successful rider in the history of the games.
Suh could soon make it seven — after qualifying Monday for Tuesday’s individual medals in dressage, Suh led aboard Caleostro.
Elsewhere, Taiwan stayed on track for a baseball gold medal showdown with Japan. Third baseman Chang Tai-shan and designated hitter Chen Chin-feng hit solo home runs to lead Taiwan to a 4-2 victory over China.
Japan, the World Baseball Classic champion, and Taiwan meet Thursday in the final round-robin game in the tournament, with the winner to take gold.
Host Qatar picked up its first medal of the games when the women’s shooting team of Anisa Jama, Samsam Jama and Amal Mhamud secured bronze in the 10-meter running target event.
Off the competition fields, a high-ranking Indian official confirmed that discus thrower Seema Antil failed a doping test conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency during a team training camp in the leadup to the Asian Games.
Antil, 23, the Commonwealth Games silver medalist, failed a test in Muscat, Oman, and was sent home last week, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press.
He did not confirm the substance involved or where the sample was sent for validating, but did add that no other Indian athletes had failed tests in Oman.
Antil, who was stripped of her 2000 junior world championships title after testing positive to a banned stimulant, was part of a group of athletes sent to Oman last month to prepare for the Asian Games. She was sent home after four days.
In tenpin bowling, Indonesia’s Ryan Lalisang came agonizingly close to a perfect game while winning the gold in men’s singles. He had a 299 in his second game — just one pin away from a perfect score — en route to breaking records for individual game and six-game totals at the Asian Games.

TITLE: Arsenal Holds For Tottenham Win
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Brief Premier League match reports from this weekend: 

Played Sunday: 
EVERTON 2 WEST HAM UNITED 0 
Everton moved up to seventh place after an entertaining victory at Goodison Park. Midfielder Leon Osman broke the deadlock early in the second half, chesting a high ball down on the edge of the box and sending a looping shot into the top corner. 
Teenager James Vaughan sealed the points in stoppage time, the substitute scoring with a crisp low finish after an incisive pass from Lee Carsley. 
West Ham stay 17th, one place and one point above the drop zone. 

Played Saturday: 
ARSENAL 3 TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR 0 
Arsenal swept to a resounding win, albeit one helped by a controversial penalty, that should settle their nerves after consecutive defeats at Bolton and Fulham. 
Togo striker Emmanuel Adebayor opened the scoring in the 20th minute, evading Tottenham’s offside trap to fire past Paul Robinson. Gilberto then converted a controversial 42nd minute penalty, harshly awarded for Pascal Chimbonda’s tackle on Tomas Rosicky, and then scored another in the 72nd minute after Robin van Persie was tripped from behind by Jermaine Jenas.

BLACKBURN ROVERS 2 FULHAM 0 
Days after beating Arsenal, Fulham slumped to a sobering defeat by Mark Hughes’s men at Ewood Park. 
Democratic Republic of Congo forward Shabani Nonda lobbed Fulham keeper Jans Lastuvka in the sixth minute and his South African strike partner Benni McCarthy struck the second in the 24th minute with a deflected shot. 
MIDDLESBROUGH 1 
MANCHESTER UNITED 2 
Scottish midfielder Darren Fletcher extended United’s lead at the top to six points by scoring the winner at the Riverside. 
French striker Louis Saha, who missed a late penalty in a costly Champions League defeat at Celtic on Nov. 21 made no mistake from the spot in the 19th minute. The penalty was generously awarded after Cristiano Ronaldo went down as Australian keeper Mark Schwarzer came out to block. 
Boro nearly levelled immediately with a header onto the post by Portuguese defender Abel Xavier. James Morrison did equalise with a crisp half-volley in the 66th minute, after a wayward headed clearance by Argentine Gabriel Heinze, but it stayed all square for just two minutes. 
Ronaldo went on a maze-like run before laying the ball back for Giggs, whose chipped cross was headed into the corner by Fletcher. 

PORTSMOUTH 2 ASTON VILLA 2 
Two goals from Portsmouth’s Matthew Taylor looked to have turned this match around after Villa’s Gareth Barry converted and then conceded a penalty at Fratton Park. 
Villa went in front in the 37th minute when Pompey keeper David James clipped wingback Gabriel Agbonlahor in the area and Barry converted the spot kick. Portsmouth levelled in the 52nd minute through Taylor after good work by striker Benjani Mwaruwari. 
Taylor then put Pompey in front from the spot in the 80th minute after a hand-ball by Barry, but Villa clawed back a point when Colombian striker Juan Pablo Angel pounced on a poor clearance by Sol Campbell. A frustrated Portsmouth finished with 10 men after a late red card for Pedro Mendes.

TITLE: Former Australia Coach Eyes England Rugby Job
AUTHOR: By Mitch Phillips
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Former Australia coach Eddie Jones has become the first man to throw his hat into the ring publicly as the successor to former England trainer Andy Robinson.
Jones, who took Australia to the World Cup final in 2003 where they lost to England flyhalf Jonny Wilkinson’s last-minute drop goal, was sacked a year ago following a run of eight defeats in nine games.
Currently in charge of Super 14 side the Queensland Reds, Jones told the Sunday Times he would happily take on the England role through next year’s World Cup and could also be interested in a long-term role. 
Robinson left his post last week and elite director of rugby Rob Andrew said he did not rule out the possibility of an first-ever non-Englishman taking charge.
“Having coached at international level I would like to do so again and a job coaching England is one of the biggest in the world,” Jones said.
“Nobody wants to see England doing poorly because it is not in the interests of the game globally, so if the RFU (Rugby Football Union) asked me to look at a 10-month contract through to the end of the World Cup I would most definitely give it serious consideration.”
Jones said he would be happy to work with England’s current three assistant coaches — Brian Ashton, John Wells and Mike Ford — who were taken on this year but warned that they might not be part of his long-term plan.
“In a short-term situation like this you must, and the only reason you would change anything is if the staff won’t adapt. But you cannot keep on doing the same thing, because you will keep on losing if you do. You have to change,” Jones said.
As for what he would do to start England’s revival, Jones said he would throw in rugby league convert Andy Farrell at inside center.
“He’s got that natural instinct and will only get better. I saw a video of him playing Northampton recently and although he’s still raw and 10 games away from knowing what to do, he runs good lines, and has great distribution skills and physical presence,” he added of the former Britain rugby league captain whose move to union, part-funded by the Rugby Football Union, has been protracted after an injury-hit year.
“With a big No. 12 who gets over the gain-line combined with England’s forward power, you won’t go too far wrong,” Jones added. 
Jones said that England had been too conservative in trying out younger players, citing 20-year-old Gloucester flyhalf Ryan Lamb as one who should have been given a chance.
He also said that it was wrong to write off England’s chances of successfully defending the World Cup in France next year.
“The chances of reaching a semi-final are pretty good. You (England) have to beat South Africa in the group stage, but, if you do, anything can happen because you get momentum.
“Australia in 2003 is a classic example because at first we didn’t look like a team who could get to the final.”
England’s next match is against Scotland in the Six Nations championship on Feb. 3.

TITLE: Safin Leads Team Russia to Historic Davis Cup Win
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia won its second Davis Cup title on Sunday when Marat Safin beat Argentina’s Jose Acasuso in the deciding singles match.
Safin, ranked 26th in the world, beat Acasuso 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 to hand the victory to Russia, last year’s beaten semifinalist.
“It was tough,” Safin told reporters after the match. “But I didn’t want to let this cup get away. I did it for all the Russians who came.
“We did everything we could today, but the best team won,” said Argentina’s non-playing captain, Alberto Mancini.
An emotional Shamil Tarpishchev, Russia’s non-playing captain, paid homage to the thousands of fans that filled the Olimpiisky Sports Complex stands to cheer their team.
“You really helped us,” Tarpishchev told the crowd.
Earlier on Sunday, world No. 3 Nikolai Davydenko lost 6-2, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 to Argentine David Nalbandian to level the score at two matches apiece and take the final to a fifth and deciding match.
“I felt jittery,” Davydenko told reporters after his loss. “I wasn’t relaxed. I felt like my muscles wouldn’t obey me,” he said.
Plenty of celebrities and government officials were on hand for Sunday’s final, including Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sports head Vyacheslav Fetisov, former President Boris Yeltsin, Mayor Yury Luzhkov and former International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch.
“The support from the crowd is staggering,” Fetisov said during a break in play, adding that a Davis Cup win would give Russian sports a huge boost.
Football legend Diego Maradona was at the center of a fanatical group of Argentina supporters whose incessant singing and cheering drew a spirited response from Russian fans.
The 600-odd Argentina fans sang patriotic football chants in unison. Russia’s fans, spurred on by squad members Igor Andreyev and Mikhail Yuzhny, countered with chants of “Forward, Russia!”
Umpires frequently had to shout into the microphone to be heard above the din, and many serves were interrupted by exclamations in Russian and Spanish. 
Safin on Sunday regained the focus that he had lacked in Friday’s error-strewn loss to Nalbandian. He lived up to his reputation as a powerful baseliner in the first set, spraying the ball around the court and working the angles to finish, more often than not, with a cutting backhand cross-court passing shot and leaving Acasuso to feed off scraps.
But as the nerves crept in, so did the errors, and Safin crumbled in the second set, only to rebound in the third.
The fourth set went on serve until the tiebreak, when Safin served big and went for the winners. It was too much for Acasuso, and Safin engineered a lead that the Argentine couldn’t close. Acasuso sent the final ball into the net, sparking wild on-court celebrations and deafening cheers from the capacity crowd.
Ukraine-born Davydenko gave the hosts an early lead by beating Juan-Ignacio Chela in four sets in Friday’s first singles match. He admitted after the win that he had been nervous going into the match. Adding to pressure of opening the Davis Cup final was the fact that his opponent, Chela, had beaten Davydenko in their previous five encounters.
“Unexpectedly I easily won the first two sets,” Davydenko said at the post-match news conference. “But then I got nervous. How can you not be nervous when you’re playing at home with the support of the home crowd?”
Safin, whose ranking is deceptive as the former world No. 1 and Australian Open champion has only been playing tennis regularly for a few months after a long layoff due to injury, then failed to capitalize on Davydenko’s work.
Safin blamed Friday’s straight sets defeat to Nalbandian on the carpet.
“I don’t want to offend anyone, I just want to say that this is the sort of surface that doesn’t suit my game 100 percent,” Safin said, explaining that the carpet hindered his movement.
Host Russia chose to play the final on a fast, synthetic indoor carpet, which should have favored the big serves of Safin and teammate Dmitry Tursunov. It was certainly a far cry from the slow clay courts popular in Argentina.
Russia retook the lead by blazing through Saturday’s doubles match 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, chiefly thanks to Tursunov’s serving. Tursunov teamed up with Safin to beat Nalbadian and Agustin Calleri in a match that swung the momentum in Russia’s favor. 
Tursunov and Safin put 70 percent of their first serves on target, which proved vital on the fast surface. The Argentinians managed to land just 59 percent of their first serves.
Russia last won the Davis Cup in 2002, when Yuznhy, who was not chosen to play in this year’s final, won the last match from two sets down to beat France in Paris.
This year’s final was the first to use the Hawk-Eye electronic instant replay system. Players were permitted without restrictions to challenge any call they thought to be incorrect.

See Sports Opinion on Page 11.

TITLE: Sochi Hoping To Woo Asia’s Olympic Council
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DOHA, Qatar — Coming from a country that straddles Europe and Asia could hold advantages for Russia’s bid committee for the 2014 Winter Olympics when it pitches its credentials to members of the Olympic Council of Asia. 
At the very least, Sochi 2014 bid committee chief executive Dmitry Chernyshenko thinks he’ll get a fair hearing despite the presence of a strong Asian bid coming from Pyeongchang in South Korea. 
Sochi, a Black Sea resort, is competing with Pyeongchang and Salzburg, Austria to host the 2014 Winter Games. 
All three candidate cities will get a chance to make a five-minute presentation to the Olympic Council of Asia on Saturday, one of a handful of chances to get key messages across before the International Olympic Committee votes on the venue next July. 
The OCA meeting is running concurrently with the 15th Asian Games, which has attracted more than 10,000 athletes from 45 nations and states across the continent. 
“Half of Russia is in Asia and half is in Europe ... [and] plenty of Russians are from the Muslim world,” Chernyshenko said in an interview last Friday. 
“Half of the population of Russia is close to Asia.” 
Chernyshenko is inspecting the facilities and organization in Doha for the Asian Games, and says the preparation work has inspired Russian bidders. 
“We see some parallels between Sochi and Doha,” he said. “We’re really impressed with the state-of-the-art venues ... they’ve built from virtually nothing. 
“That’s the advantage of our bid, too. We’re building from scratch.”
The bid would have two main hubs — one on the coast for ice sports and an Alpine venue in the nearby mountains.

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: Valuyev to Fight
BERLIN (AFP) — St. Petersburg ‘s WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuyev will defend his title against American fighter Jameel McCline on Jan. 20 in Switzerland, his promoter Wilfried Sauerland said.
McCline has lost six of his 47 fights and is a firm underdog against the unbeaten Valuyev.
The 33-year-old Valuyev, unbeaten in 45 fights, won the WBA title last December in Berlin with victory over American John Ruiz to become the tallest (7 foot) and heaviest champion of all time.

Kerzhakov To Be Sold?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Zenit St. Petersburg has said an English club has entered the chase for its Russia international striker Alexander Kerzhakov, soccer website www.teamtalk.com reported Monday.
The 24-year-old has found himself at the center of transfer speculation following a dip in form, teamtalk reported. 
Zenit has admitted they are willing to sell Kerzhakov, teamtalk reported, adding that UEFA Cup holder Sevilla is the player’s preferred destination. 
“We are looking at offers from Sevilla and Betis and two other clubs from France and England, one of which is competing in the Champions League,” sporting director Konstantin Sarsania is quoted by teamtalk as saying.