SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1231 (97), Tuesday, December 19, 2006
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TITLE: Uranium Shipped To Russia
AUTHOR: By Louis Charbonneau
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DRESDEN, Germany — Russian experts working by night removed a large quantity of highly enriched uranium from a Soviet-era reactor in Germany on Monday and flew it to Russia for processing. 
Anti-nuclear protesters forced a convoy carrying the material to stop briefly despite efforts to keep the route secret and a heavy police presence.
Some 326 kilos of enriched uranium, enough for several bombs, was heading to a processing center in Podolsk, Russia from the former Rossendorf research reactor near Dresden, where the material was stored, U.S. and German officials said.
Moscow’s atomic energy agency Rosatom said in a statement on its web site that the shipment had arrived in Russia.
Roughly two-thirds of the uranium is highly enriched. In Russia it will be mixed with low-grade uranium to make reactor fuel that no longer represents a proliferation risk.
“This action is an important step toward promoting a global cleanout of HEU (highly enriched uranium) in the civilian sector,” said Arnaud Atger, a senior official at the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.
“The security of HEU is of particular concern due to the technical feasibility of constructing a crude nuclear explosive device from HEU,” he told reporters.
Atger, along with colleagues from the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), assisted the Russians.
The U.S. official charged with helping Russia and the IAEA recover enriched uranium around the world, NNSA Assistant Deputy Administrator Andrew Bieniawski, also welcomed the transport as a blow to any terrorist plans to acquire atomic weapons.
“Every kilogram of material that is moved is one less kilogram that could be used by terrorists to make a bomb,” he told Reuters. “The total amount of 326 kilograms is the largest ever shipment ever done under our program.”
Bieniawski said Washington had spent some $25 million to upgrade the Podolsk plant processing the HEU to help make it “one of the most secure facilities in Russia and the world.”
The U.S.-Russian nuclear material recovery program is two years old and is called the Global Threat Reduction Initiative.
The Rossendorf reactor was built by the Soviet Union in communist East Germany and remains a key site for scientific research. The reactor was shut down in the early 1990s.
Nuclear experts estimate there are some 1,850 tonnes of highly enriched uranium in global stockpiles.
As many as 500 uniformed German police and more undercover officers provided security for the transport from the forested Rossendorf research center to Dresden airport, police said.
A convoy of around 40 police vehicles escorted the silver armored truck carrying the uranium on its pre-dawn 10-kilometer journey to a waiting Ilyushin 76 Russian cargo plane.
Security officials kept the route for the journey secret and dispatched a second decoy convoy to confuse anti-nuclear protesters. But 20 to 30 activists still managed to find the right one and force it to stop briefly and change route. 
“The nuclear material should be kept in Dresden, because such transports always involve risks,” Tobias Muenchmeyer, a Greenpeace nuclear expert, told Reuters television. 
Rossendorf officials said all precautions had been taken to ensure security of the material, even if the plane had crashed. 
The German state of Saxony paid for Monday’s shipment. The United States funded all previous such operations.

TITLE: Nashi Youth Group Stages Mass Rally
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — An estimated 70,000 Kremlin supporters donning Santa suits converged on the capital Sunday to celebrate a key World War II victory, fanning across the city to remember the fallen and honor the 25,000 veterans still alive in Moscow. 
While the massive celebrations actually missed the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow by almost two weeks — the battle broke out Dec. 5, 1941 — they did coincide perfectly with a nearby, decidedly anti-Kremlin rally for slain liberal journalists.
That rally, on Pushkin Square, was held to honor the 201 journalists who have been killed since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Roughly 300 supporters, including the son and former colleagues of Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead Oct. 7, attended.
The liberals voiced contempt for the pro-Kremlin celebrations, which seemed to underscore the plight of democratic reformers. Reformers have grown angry and despondent as they have seen gubernatorial elections eliminated, opposition parties marginalized, independent newspapers quashed and nongovernmental organizations forced to give detailed reports of their activities under President Vladimir Putin. 
Indeed, some on Pushkin Square didn’t distinguish between the Grandfather Frosts bussed in by the pro-Kremlin group Nashi, which organized Sunday’s celebrations, and those whose defeat Nashi was celebrating.
“Nashi is a bunch of fascists,” said Nina Nikolayevna, 65, a Moscow doctor. “They are all paid for. We have a message for them: How are you not ashamed?”
Nashi activists flocked to the city from Tver, Belgorod, Ivanov, Vladimir and elsewhere in the country.
About 2,000 of them gathered outside the History Museum on Manezh Square, listening to flowery speeches about the veterans who defended Moscow from the Nazis.
Police maintained a low profile at the Nashi celebrations, maintaining tight security around Manezh Square, as is typical of events near the Kremlin, while keeping their distance from the activists clad in red and white.
At Pushkin Square, the police were more visible, outnumbering the liberal demonstrators. 
The death of Politkovskaya, who reported for Novaya Gazeta on human rights abuses in Chechnya and was highly critical of Putin, was the catalyst for the demonstration.
Viktoria Ivleva, one of Politkovskaya’s former colleagues, organized the event with the Russian Union of Journalists. 
Ivleva was joined by Yabloko Party leader Grigory Yavlinsky and the party’s second in command, Sergei Mitrokhin. 
After Ivleva read a list of the names of journalists who had been killed, Yavlinsky said in an interview: “It’s very important to stress that the state is not able to protect journalists. The state is responsible for the repression of its political opponents and journalists. We are here to say that such action will not be tolerated.”
Politkovskaya was fatally shot in her apartment building by an assailant whose identity has yet to surface. Russian officials and Western observers have linked her death to her reporting on the war in Chechnya; other motives have not been ruled out.
Also in attendance Sunday at Pushkin Square were Politkovskaya’s son, Ilya Politkovskoi, 28, and Dmitry Muratov, the slain woman’s former editor at Novaya Gazeta.
“There was no chance I wasn’t going to show my support for our fallen colleagues,” Muratov said.
Reuters reported late Sunday that some of those journalists who were recalled on Pushkin Square were, in fact, not killed in the line of duty, but in car accidents.
Muratov added that he and other newspaper staff had been in near daily contact with authorities investigating Politkovskaya’s shooting.
Ivleva said she hoped the rally, the first of its kind, would turn into an annual event. “This is a good turnout,” she said, as supporters lit candles in memory of the dead.
Ivleva blasted city officials for refusing organizers a permit to march instead of simply holding a rally. She said officials had cited Article 17 of the Constitution, which stipulates that one individual exercising his or her rights and liberties may not violate the rights or liberties of another. “They should have used that against Nashi,” Ivleva said.
The Nashi activists, meanwhile, expressed a blend of hope and pride. “I am proud of our grandfathers,” said Alexei Flagininskikh, 20, who traveled to Moscow on an overnight train from Belgorod with 540 other Nashi supporters from the city. 
“I consider it my duty to fight for their honor.”

TITLE: Duma Supports Relocating Constitutional Court
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The State Russian Duma voted overwhelmingly on Friday to move the Constitutional Court from Moscow to St. Petersburg but amendments to the law all but render the costly relocation symbolic, critics complain.
By voting to create a branch of the court in Moscow so that judges who oppose the move can continue to hear cases there, parliamentarians also secured the court’s right to organize its hearings in other cities than St. Petersburg, should the need emerge.
“These amendments give a way for the court to peacefully continue working in Moscow,” said Boris Vishnevsky, a political analyst and a member of the political council of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko party.
“Whatever happens to the court or its judges, the presidential administration has got a firm hold on plum St. Petersburg real estate, including the historic Senate and Synod buildings [intended for the court’s premises], and this is all that matters,” Vishnevsky said. “The Constitutional Court campaign pursued two goals: getting hold of that property, and publicizing Governor Valentina Matviyenko.”
It has been estimated that the court’s relocation will take 18 months to complete, and cost 221 million rubles ($7.95 million).
Friday’s vote irked the relocation’s advocates.
Vatanyar Yagya, a United Russia lawmaker at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly blamed “the Moscow lobby” for what he sees as an embarrassing setback that damages the interests of the city.
“The amendments make a serious departure from the original plan, that envisaged Moscow giving up some of its state responsibilities and boosting St. Petersburg’s status as Russia’s second capital,” Yagya said. “The whole idea of the federal state spreading its duties between several regions has been compromised. Moscow’s oppressive domination hampers the development of other regions. And until Moscow concedes and loosens its grip on power and financial resources, the other regions will continue to struggle to survive. Duties have to be more evenly spread in a large federal state like Russia, and the capital relieved of certain responsibilities.” 
The transfer of the Constitutional Court to St. Petersburg is a long-term ambitious dream of Governor Matviyenko, who has relentlessly promoted the idea of relocating national institutions with federal functions in St. Petersburg since she was elected three years ago. 
Matviyenko, who often complains about power being concentrated in Moscow, said the move, if it happens, will serve to strengthen Russia’s legal system and ensure the independence of the court. 
The move’s supporters say that moving it away from central government influence will lessen corruption in the court.
But Vishnevsky laughed at this suggestion, which he said was on the verge of naive and hypocritical.
“Anti-corruption strategies do not have anything to do with geography,” he said. “The location of an institution as such does not affect its integrity.”
The relocation plan has been strongly opposed by many of the court’s judges, who said the move will throw the court into chaos and  paralyze its work. 
Yagya said the judges are welcome to stay at home.
“Judges who do not want to move to St. Petersburg can easily be replaced by locals: there is no shortage of educated professionals here,” Yagya said.
Many critics branded the move as “exile” and “deportation.”
“The Constitutional Court is the last independent institution in the country and sending it to a safe distance from the main political arena can only weaken the court,” argued Semyon Borzenko, one of the leaders of the youth branch of the Communist Party of Russia.
After Friday’s vote at the Duma, the amendments are due to be approved by the Federation Council and revised by President Vladimir Putin before the law comes into effect.

TITLE: FSB Chief Warns of Spies
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Federal Security Service head Nikolai Patrushev has said foreign intelligence agents are actively spying on Russia with the help of new NATO members, Izvestia reported Friday.
In an interview, Patrushev also warned that corruption was swelling inside the country.
“The special services of leading world powers are active in Moscow and in other regions of our country,” Patrushev told Izvestia.
The FSB chief said the agents were actively cooperating with representatives of countries that recently joined NATO to collect information on Russia’s political and business life, defense and science sectors and the fight against terrorism.
Patrushev was apparently referring to the Baltic states and East European countries that used to be part of Moscow’s sphere of influence.
	(AP, Reuters)

TITLE: Cost of Chechen Conflicts Estimated at $23 Billion
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Chechnya’s regional legislature has set up a panel to assess the damage from two wars in the region in 12 years, its speaker said Sunday, Interfax reported.
Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov said determining the damage was needed for discussing financial issues. The Moscow-backed regional administration had urged Moscow to give it more economic freedom and a larger share of Chechen oil revenues.
Abdurakhmanov said some estimates put wartime damage at 600 billion rubles ($23 billion), while others gave a much higher figure.
“There are no politics behind the decision,” Abdurakhmanov told Interfax. “Our goal is to plan Chechnya’s needs realistically. When dealing with financial issues, one must know exactly what the republic had and what it has lost.”
Federal forces first rolled into Chechnya in December 1994 to crush its independence bid, but withdrew in 1996 after a series of humiliating defeats, leaving the mostly Muslim region de facto independent and largely lawless.
They returned in 1999 after a raid on neighboring Dagestan by Chechnya-based militants and a series of apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities, which were also blamed on the rebels.
Large-scale battles ended in Chechnya years ago, but rebels continue to mount regular attacks on federal troops and local law enforcement agents.
Amid continuing tensions, clashes sometimes occur between local police and federal servicemen.
An Interior Ministry soldier was killed Saturday in a battle with police officers who tried to check his identity in the southern town of Shatoi.
Police opened fire and wounded the serviceman, who died later in a hospital, the regional Interior Ministry said.
Neighboring regions in the Northern Caucasus have also remained restive, destabilized by violence spilling over from Chechnya and criminal groups.
Three gunmen on Saturday broke into the house of Ismail Bostanov, a top Muslim cleric in the republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia near Chechnya, shooting and stabbing him and stealing 200,000 rubles ($7,650), the Interior Ministry’s branch in southern Russia said in a statement.

TITLE: Small Plane Blows Up Killing 3
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A small passenger plane blew up in midair over the Leningrad region Saturday, killing all three people on board, Interfax reported.
The privately owned Yak-52 airplane was flying over a stadium in the town of Nizhniye Oselki, 25 kilometers from St. Petersburg, when the explosion occurred.
Two men and a 14-year-old girl died in the accident, an unidentified official at the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry told Interfax.
The official said one of the victims was Igor Samylin, a senior postal official in St. Petersburg. Local postal officials confirmed that Samylin had died in the accident, Interfax reported.
Nothing was known Sunday about the second man apart from his name — Viktor Popov. The identity of the girl had not been established, the Emergency Situations Ministry official told Interfax.
“According to eyewitnesses, the plane caught fire in the air. The pilot tried to land the plane, but he wasn’t able to control it. The plane broke apart on impact,” the official said.
The official added that the Yak-52 was designed to hold a maximum of two people.
Investigators are currently working to determine the cause of the explosion.
Also on Saturday, a flight instructor and his student died in a helicopter crash in the Moscow region, Interfax reported, citing an unidentified spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

TITLE: Other Russia Outflanked by Police Force
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — A motley crowd of 2,500 opposition activists on Saturday descended on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad chanting “Freedom!” and “Russia without Putin!” only to be overwhelmed by riot police.
The Other Russia, a coalition of liberal groups that agree on little except that they oppose President Vladimir Putin, had promised a March of Dissent from Triumfalnaya Ploshchad to Teatralnaya Ploshchad.
But the 8,500 OMON riot police, accompanied by helicopters, trucks and buses, deterred demonstrators from straying beyond their tight security ring.
“We decided to spare your heads,” Eduard Limonov, head of the unregistered National Bolshevik Party, told the crowd, explaining why plans for the march had been dropped.
About 200 activists slipped through the police line and marched up Brestskaya Ulitsa toward Belorussky Station.
A heavy police presence lined Tverskaya Ulitsa from the Mayakovskaya metro station down to Manezh Square.
Police detained about 40 participants at the demonstration, said Natalya Morar, a spokeswoman for the event. Police said they briefly held only 30 people, including Sergei Udaltsov, head of the hard-left Red Youth Vanguard.
“The Moscow authorities prepared well, and the sharp-tongued promises [to march] turned out to be nothing,” City Hall spokesman Sergei Tsoi said, Interfax reported.
The opposition rally included members of the United Civil Front, the People’s Democratic Union, the unregistered Republican Party, and several independent trade unions in addition to the National Bolsheviks and members of the Red Youth Vanguard.
Garry Kasparov, a former chess champion, heads the United Civil Front; Mikhail Kasyanov, Putin’s prime minister from 2000-2004, leads the People’s Democratic Union.
Scores of journalists also attended the event, but camera crews from state-run television channels were not seen.
Speakers criticized changes in the law that made it nearly impossible for opposition candidates to seek office. “We hate the government!” proclaimed a large, black-cloth National Bolshevik banner.
“This government squashed our liberties,” Kasparov declared. “We need another Russia.”
Limonov called for the resignation of Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev, Justice Minister Vladimir Ustinov and Central Election Commission Chairman Alexander Veshnyakov.
Kasyanov asked Russians to unite behind opposition candidates in the 2007 State Duma elections and the 2008 presidential race. Opposition leaders said Saturday that The Other Russia would nominate a presidential candidate in 2008.
“We’ve got 15 months until the change of government,” he said. “If this government continues with their policies, the country will fall apart.”
As the former prime minister spoke, a trio of elderly men argued beneath the monument to Vladimir Mayakovsky about whether it would be better to burn Putin alive or hang him.
Kasparov warned protesters to avoid confrontations with the police, saying there were subversives among them seeking to provoke a scuffle.
Indeed, as Kasparov spoke, a group of men unfurled a banner reading “Stalin Beria Gulag” and shouted, “Fascists!” They were quickly ushered away.
“This is a classic provocation,” Kasparov said of the group of men. 
“Today, the television will show them, saying it is we who are the extremists.”

TITLE: Multiple Warheads for ICBMs
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will replace single nuclear warheads on some of its strategic missiles with multiple warheads, news agencies reported Friday.
“In the near future we will begin to substitute the single warheads on Topol-M intercontinental missiles with multiple warheads,” Interfax quoted General Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, as saying Friday.
Fitting multiple warheads to single-warhead Topol-M missiles is a cheaper way for Russia to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and maintain nuclear parity with the United States. It also makes it theoretically easier to evade missile defense systems.
“This makes the task of replacing aging missiles much easier,” said Alexander Pikayev, a Moscow-based defense analyst who is co-chair of the Committee of Scientists for Global Security.
On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin visited a unit of newly deployed Topol-M missiles mounted on mobile launchers.

TITLE: Oleg Mitvol Facing Ministerial Rebuke
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Oleg Mitvol, the state official leading the charge against Shell-run Sakhalin-2, was threatened with disciplinary action Thursday. Yet it looked like his boss was the one in greater danger of losing his job.
Sergei Sai, the head of the Natural Resource Ministry’s environmental watchdog, sent a letter to Minister Yury Trutnev seeking disciplinary action against Mitvol, his deputy.
The latest infighting among state officials came just days after Gazprom said it was close to reaching a deal on securing a stake in Shell’s huge oil and gas project at Sakhalin-2, which Mitvol has accused of gross environmental violations.
If Trutnev approves the request, Mitvol will be formally disciplined. If he is reprimanded a second time, he will be fired, ministry spokesman Rinat Gizatulin said.
“Minister Trutnev will examine the letter by next week. No decision has yet been made,” Gizatulin said.
Yet it appeared that Sai, a relative unknown in Moscow’s political circles and a career geologist who joined the watchdog last year, could be the one on his way out.
Mitvol said Sai had received a letter from the Prosecutor General’s Office on Tuesday criticizing his work. Mitvol declined to provide details, saying only that Trutnev had told him of the letter. A note from the Prosecutor General’s Office would imply the threat of legal action.
“Sai has received a letter from the Prosecutor General criticizing his work and I think this is how he’s chosen to react,” Mitvol said by telephone.
Trutnev has thrown his support behind Mitvol in the past, and earlier this week said he would seek to discipline Sai for failing to check oil firms regularly for noncompliance. Mitvol echoed Trutnev’s calls for Sai to be fired.
“I’ve already had three bosses and each of them has made such a declaration before his own departure,” Mitvol said, Prime-Tass reported.
Analysts dismissed the possibility that calls for Mitvol’s departure were linked to the likelihood that Gazprom would soon take a large stake in Sakhalin-2. Mitvol’s high-profile campaign against Sakhalin-2 has widely been seen as a way to pressure Shell into giving Gazprom a bigger stake in the project.
Project operator Sakhalin Energy said Wednesday that the campaign — which has seen Mitvol suspend water-use licenses for a key subcontractor and threaten to pull the project’s entire environmental license — had begun to threaten the project’s production timetable.
The project is due to start shipments to customers in Asia and the United States in mid-2008.
Also on Thursday, Mitvol pulled back on threats to withdraw five licenses from London-based Peter Hambro Mining, Russia’s third-largest gold miner.
Mitvol told CEO Peter Hambro at a meeting in Moscow that he would recommend just two licenses for projects in the Arctic be withdrawn, but that 20 projects had passed environmental inspections. Checks will be carried out on the remaining 22 Hambro-affiliated projects operating in the country, he said.
“All foreign and Russian companies must understand that if they have a license agreement, they must fulfill every point,” Mitvol was quoted by news agencies as saying.
“Investors should understand that sooner or later, the state will ask how these resources are being used,” he added.
Peter Hambro shares lost more than one-third of their value after Mitvol, a former businessman, said two weeks ago that he might call for five licenses to be withdrawn. After Mitvol’s comments Thursday, the company’s shares soared by more than 12 percent by 5 p.m. London time.
Hambro said the company was ready to invest $380 million in Russia over the next three years, but warned of the effects of Mitvol’s threats.
“The market hates uncertainty. Investors in the West will put a higher risk premium on Russia if things like this happen,” he said, Reuters reported.
Mitvol said that the company’s main operational mine, Pokrovsky in the Amur region, had passed inspections. He will recommend withdrawing two licenses from Yamalzoloto, a company based in the Yamal peninsula that is ultimately owned by Peter Hambro, Reuters reported.
“The government generally sends signals to strategic resource communities, reminding them who is the boss,” said Denis Maslov, an analyst for Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk consultancy. “It’s more than oil and gas — gold and other metals are strategic resources as well,” he said.

TITLE: Brezhnev Remembered Fondly 100 Years Since Birth
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Many remember Leonid Brezhnev as a mumbling dotard with dark bushy eyebrows and a cuirass of medals pinned on his broad chest.
But more Russians today would rather live under Brezhnev, who would have turned 100 on Tuesday, than any other Soviet or post-Soviet leader, with the exception of President Vladimir Putin.
“Brezhnev himself lived well, and he allowed others to live,” said Marina Pukhalskaya, a Moscow pensioner who received free higher education, a relatively prestigious job as a civil engineer and, eventually, a free apartment during an 18-year rule that some quipped would never end.
People who knew Brezhnev or studied his leadership describe him as an apt bureaucrat but poor economist who had little regard for civil liberties or human rights. Acquaintances recalled astonishing displays of fairness and generosity, such as the time Brezhnev stood up for a sleepy conscript who accidentally hit the French president’s plane with a snowplow.
The protagonist of a zillion anecdotes, Dear Leonid Ilyich, as Brezhnev was known, is still remembered for the unprecedented stability that allowed ordinary people to plan out their lives. He also raised the Soviet Union to new levels of power and prestige.
“For 18 years, the country lived in clover,” said Andrei Brezhnev, the grandson of Leonid Brezhnev. He was 21 when the Soviet leader died of a heart attack in 1982.
“Granddad was very intelligent. Otherwise, he would not have been allowed by others to run the country for so long,” he said.
A nationwide survey last year indicated that 31 percent of Russians would prefer to live during the Brezhnev era, while 39 percent picked Putin’s time. Only 1 percent of the 3,200 people polled by the state-run VTsIOM longed for Boris Yeltsin’s 1990s.
Critics of the Brezhnev era — and there are many — focus on the prolonged stagnation of the 1970s, when authorities ignored fundamental economic problems and allowed the political system to decline. But even they agree that Russia is managing to live well by exploiting the biggest legacy of the Brezhnev era — the vast infrastructure that connects the gas-rich bowels of Siberia to the ovens of residents in Munich, Germany.
“Developing those oil and gas fields was the most serious achievement of the Brezhnev era,” former Acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar said. “And although it was never discussed openly at that time, the country had set its hopes on oil and gas exports.”
Born in Ukraine on Dec. 19, 1906, Brezhnev was a devout Soviet who grew up among the first generation that had no adult memories of pre-revolutionary days. He joined the Communist Party in 1929 and quickly rose through the ranks. He fought in several battles during World War II, including at Malaya Zemlya, a strategic beachhead near Novorossiisk that the Red Army fiercely defended for 225 days.
Brezhnev later published a book about Malaya Zemlya that won all the Soviet literary awards — thanks to his status as Soviet leader rather than his writing, since the book was penned by several talented ghostwriters.
After the war, Brezhnev led Communist branches in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Incidentally, his second book, which also won a slew of awards, was titled “Tselina,” or “Virgin Lands,” and followed the development of the vast Kazakh steppes.
Brezhnev joined the Party’s Central Committee in 1956, and became chairman of the Supreme Council — the No. 3 spot in the Soviet hierarchy — four years later.
Nikita Khrushchev, Brezhnev’s mentor for about a decade, was deposed by Party and KGB plotters in 1964, and Brezhnev was elected as a transitional compromise leader. But he managed to outlive the real powerbrokers who had handed him the post.
The economy performed the best in Brezhnev’s early years, due to a mild liberalization of the economy that was pushed by Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, Gaidar said.
But the Prague uprising of 1968 that was subsequently squashed by the Soviet Army prompted Brezhnev to steer the country back toward strict state regulation, both in the economy and internal politics.
“Soviet tanks not only crushed Prague back then, but they also crushed all our hopes that Soviet leadership would some day have a humane face,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, the oldest Russian human rights organization.
Brezhnev was not a cruel man, but he had no understanding of why people needed civil liberties, she said. “Rights were not an issue in public discourse until the mid-1970s, when Brezhnev began to be pressed about them during trips abroad,” she said.
Only then did the notion of rights begin appearing in the Soviet press, but it was always referred to as “so-called human rights,” she said.
In the meantime, Brezhnev remained attentive and responsive to the needs of ordinary people whenever he could get involved personally, said Yegor Ligachyov, a member of the Soviet Politburo in the 1980s and a regional Communist chief in Siberia in the 1970s.
“Once I showed him photographs of the bunk beds in a dormitory in Tomsk, and he nearly fainted,” Ligachyov said. “That is how Tomsk got nice, seven-story dormitories.”
Vladimir Musaelyan, Brezhnev’s personal photographer for 13 years, recalled how a soldier fell asleep behind the wheel of an airport snowplow and hit the plane of visiting French President Georges Pompidou in 1971.
Brezhnev was furious but ordered his aides to make sure that the soldier, who was injured, received good treatment in the hospital, a two-week leave, and no disciplinary action.
“He said the commanders would want to make a scapegoat of the boy, while it was their fault that they did not give conscripts enough sleep,” Musaelyan said.
Ligachyov noted Brezhnev’s notorious weakness for flattery. Officials enjoyed singing his praises at various meetings, and “Brezhnev never moved to stop these flatterers,” he said.
Brezhnev accumulated 114 medals, including the Hero of the Soviet Union three times — always on his birthday — and the Order of Victory, the highest Soviet military award. No one had been awarded the medal since World War II, and it was revoked in 1989.
As the oil fields of western Siberia were being developed and high oil prices were filling the country’s coffers, the Brezhnev regime began handing out money left and right to Third World countries — much to the displeasure of ordinary people.
“There was an informal guide for leaders of post-colonial countries to get money from the U.S.S.R.: They had to come to Moscow, say the 1917 Russian Revolution was the greatest event of the 20th century, and pledge that their countries would choose a noncapitalistic path,” Gaidar said.
Brezhnev firmly believed in high oil prices and ignored predictions of volatility from Soviet economists, Gaidar said.
Shortly before Brezhnev’s death, Moscow dazzled the world with probably the biggest extravaganza of Soviet times: the 1980 Olympic Games. Brezhnev, already ailing and mumbling, solemnly opened the Games.
When he died two years later, his coffin stood at the Kremlin’s Column Hall for three days as people passed by to pay their respects. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, Communists will lay a wreath at his tomb in the Kremlin wall and hold a conference dedicated to his legacy.
In one of his last photographs, Brezhnev lies on an outdoor couch, limp and with an expression of utter fatigue on his broad face.
“When I looked at this picture before approving it for Tass, I thought: ‘My God, how power wears out a man,’ and told them to withhold the photo,” Musaelyan said.

TITLE: Google Finds Bridging Cultural Gap Tough
AUTHOR: By Eric Pfanner
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google, was born in Moscow in 1973, and the first words out of his mouth were Russian. Yet neither Russian nor the Russian market has come easily to Google.
Rambler Media’s site is the third most visited site in Russia, trailing Yandex and Mail.ru. Google stands at eighth place. 
Created in Silicon Valley by Brin and Larry Page, Google has adapted its search engine to dozens of languages, selling billions of dollars in advertising around the world. But in Russia, Google is behind the curve, trailing local Internet companies in executing searches and collecting rubles on the ads linked to those searches.
Brin left Russia with his family in 1979, and Google set up its Russian site three years ago and opened its first sales office there only one year ago, giving its rivals a long head start. 
But the company’s development has also been slowed by cultural and language issues, company executives — and rivals — say. 
“Google promised they would destroy everything, but look at where they are,” said Irina Gofman, chief executive of Rambler Media, one of Google’s Internet portal and search service rivals in Russia. “They are not that big.”
In many Western European countries, Google is the most popular web site and by far the most popular search service; in Russia, though, it barely breaks into the top 10. 
According to comScore Networks, which tracks Internet traffic, 28 percent of Russian Internet users on home or office computers visited Google sites in October, making Google the eighth-biggest Internet brand.
Leading the pack was Yandex, a privately held Russian search engine that was visited by 64 percent of Internet users; Mail.ru, an e-mail service, came in second at 56 percent, and Rambler was third at 53 percent. 
But even in its share of revenue from ads linked to searches, the lucrative Internet business model pioneered by Google, the company lags. 
Yandex controls 50 percent of the Russian market for such ads, according to analysts at ING, a Dutch bank. Rambler is second with 41 percent and all other companies, including Google, fight over the remaining 9 percent.
Russia is not the only country in which Google has faced difficulties. In China, Google was allowed in only after agreeing to self-censor its search results. Russia, in contrast, allows Google and local search companies to operate without political interference; for instance, a search on www.google.ru for polonium — the radioactive substance used to kill the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in Britain last month — returned 11.1 million results.
The company’s difficulties in Russia probably have more to do with the complexities of the language than with politics. 
“Our understanding of Russian was not as good as we wanted it to be,” said Kannan Pashupathy, head of international engineering at Google. Google revamped its Russian site last week, Pashupathy said, improving its ability to deal with Russian, a complex language in which nouns may be one of three genders and be declined in up to six cases. 
The company has enhanced its service in other ways. It added a local version of Google News, which gathers headlines and article summaries from news organizations’ web sites, and last week made its e-mail service openly available to Russian Internet users. 
In an effort to deepen its understanding of Russia’s market, Google recently opened a second office there, in St. Petersburg. 
Despite its eighth-place standing among Internet brands in Russia, Google has made important inroads in recent years. Figures from Comcon, a Russian research firm, show the percentage of Internet users who visit it has doubled since the end of 2003, when Google offered only a rudimentary site.
“Of course they can fix the problems,” said Andy Atkins-Kruger, managing director at Web Certain Europe, a firm in York, England, that specializes in organizing search-based marketing campaigns in multiple languages. 
“But Yandex and Rambler aren’t going to stand still,” Atkins-Kruger said.
As the Russian Internet market grows, there may be enough revenue for several big competitors to share, analysts say. 
The ING analysts expect the number of Russian Internet users to more than double over the next decade, to 47 million. Internet ad spending is expected to rise to nearly $1 billion in 2012, from $110 million last year.
Another way for Google to grow in Russia would be to acquire a local competitor. But the company has made no direct approaches to the market leader, Yandex, according to its chief executive, Arkady Volozh. 
“Of course, everyone talks to everyone,” Volozh said. Referring to Google, he added, “So far they have preferred to compete rather than acquire.”
Gofman at Rambler Media said local companies’ understanding of the Russian market extended beyond the language. 
They have developed ways to receive payment for Internet ads using traditional accounts at brick-and-mortar banks, for example, which helps compensate for the fact that relatively few small businesses have credit cards or online payment capabilities, she said.
Volozh credited Russian expertise in computer programming and engineering with helping to keep a rival from Silicon Valley at bay.
“With real estate, it’s location, location, location,” he said. 
“On the Internet, it’s technology, technology, technology. We have this homegrown technology that in many cases is better than theirs,” Volozh said.

TITLE: U.K. Police End Probe in Moscow
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — British detectives probing the murder of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko have wound up their investigation in Moscow and are due to leave for home on Tuesday, a British police source said on Monday.
No details of what the Scotland Yard investigators had discovered were available.
Earlier, Russian agency Interfax, quoting what is said was an informed source, reported that the investigators had interviewed six people including Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, who met Litvinenko in London on November 1, the day he fell ill with radiation poisoning.
A friend of Alexander Litvinenko said he believed that the former Russian agent was murdered because he possessed allegedly damaging information about a high-ranking Kremlin figure, the BBC reported Saturday.
Yury Shvets, a former KGB agent, said he and Litvinenko had worked together providing confidential background information for international companies before possible investment in Russia.
Shvets told the BBC that his friend had been poisoned after a dossier compiled by Litvinenko — which allegedly contained sensitive material and has now been given to Scotland Yard — was leaked to the unidentified figure in Moscow.
Asked whether it was the reason for his death, Shvets said he thought it “triggered” the poisoning. “Yes. Well, I can’t be 100 percent sure, but I am pretty sure,” Shvets said. “Obviously there is always room for ... other suspicions, but in a tradecraft there is such a thing as most probable cause, most probable theory, and this is the one.”
The Metropolitan Police would not comment on Shvets’ theory.
Litvinenko died Nov. 23 in London after being poisoned with polonium-210. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement in Litvinenko’s death.
Also on Saturday, a British publishing house announced that it intended to publish, in English, Litvinenko’s book, “Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within,” which alleged that Russia’s Federal Security Service was behind a string of bombings at Russian apartment buildings in 1999.
Previously, the book had been privately printed, but Gibson Square, the British publishers, said it was never sold.
Meanwhile, Litvinenko’s death continued to have repercussions elsewhere in Europe.
One Russian described as a KGB defector was quoted on Friday as saying he feared for his life after receiving death threats following Litvinenko’s murder.
Yevgeny Limarev, who lives in eastern France, has links with Mario Scaramella, an Italian who met Litvinenko in London the day he fell ill.
Another Litvinenko associate, Andrei Lugovoi, a former security service agent who is being investigated in connection with the killing, also said fallout from the killing was taking its toll.
Lugovoi told Interfax Sunday that he considered himself to be a victim in the case.
“It is emotionally draining,” he said on the Vesti news program on Rossia television.
“I, my family and my reputation have been damaged, and I consider myself to be a victim irrespective of what Scotland Yard might think about it.”
Litvinenko died on November 23 from a lethal dose of polonium-210. On his deathbed, he accused Putin of being behind his death but the Kremlin has denied the allegation as nonsense.
Russian agencies said earlier that Kovtun had been questioned again on Monday. The Prosecutor-General’s office refused to comment on the reports.
Last week German police uncovered traces of polonium in properties Kovtun used in Hamburg.
(AP, Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: 2 Geese Die of Bird Flu
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT ) — Two geese at St. Petersburg’s zoo died of bird flu on Dec. 8, Fontanka.ru reported Monday.
The zoo was closed down on Monday. The zoo’s management said the closure was for routine maintenance in the run up for the New Year, it was reported.
“There’s nothing extraordinary in what happened. One goose died of old age and an abscess, the other, which was younger, had a tumor. 
“We have animals die every month,” Fontanka.ru reported Irina Skiba, the zoo’s director, as saying.
However, the news service reported that the cause of both deaths was bird flu and that this had been confirmed in Moscow.
“There is almost no chance that this is dangerous to people,” an unidentified source told Fontanka.ru.

TITLE: New Bridge Over Neva
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A new bridge over the River Neva is shedhuled to be completed in 4 years, Fontanka.ru reported Monday.
The bridge will connect the 23rd Line of Vassilievsky Ostrov and the Admiralteisky District. 
Although the bridge has not yet been designed, it will be built using the most advance materials, Vitaly Zentsov, the deputy chair of the City Hall’s committee on architecture and city planning is quoted by Fontanka.ru as saying.
The committee is currently preparing documentation for an architectural competition to be announced, Zentsov said.

TITLE: Mugging Group Held
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Police detained a group of drug users who are suspected in a series of knife point robberies involving young children, Fontanka.ru reported Monday.
The robberies have targeted young mothers whose children are threatened with knives until money, mobile phones and other possessions are handed over. 
The attacks happened in the Murinsky Ruchei district, at a parking lot on Vernosty Ulitsa and in the Sakharov park between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., Fontanka.ru reported.

TITLE: Belarussian President Has Tough Talks With Putin
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko and Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said after Friday’s talks with President Vladimir Putin that they had found a common approach to fuel prices for Belarus but skipped a joint dinner with his Russian counterpart.
Belarus’ economy faces a huge jolt in January, when Russia has said it will remove the country’s exemption from oil export duties and hike the price for gas supplies to European levels.
In an effort to lower the proposed oil export duty, set at $180 per ton, Lukashenko — whose country angered Russia by drawing large revenues from refining and re-exporting Russian oil — proposed paying most of the revenues to Russia. Belarus offered to return about 70 percent of such income to Russia and asked to keep the rest, said Valery Sadokho, economic adviser at the Belarussian Embassy.
It was unclear Sunday whether Gazprom and Belarus had come to terms on the valuation of Beltransgaz, the Belarussian gas-pipeline operator. Gazprom has said it will hike the gas price for Belarus to $200 per 1,000 cubic meters unless it can buy part of Beltransgaz.
The two leaders’ meeting was dedicated to the largely dysfunctional union state of Russia and Belarus but it lasted as long as three hours due to the oil and gas issues that Lukashenko said were not on the official agenda.
“We thought we’d have to skip some issues that are much written and spoken about, but as a result of our hard and lengthy negotiations, it seems we have found ... a thread that we can cling to,” Lukashenko said after the talks. “I think that we can shortly remove a lot of questions that have become hard for us.”
Before the meeting started in a Kremlin room ornately decorated in green, Putin looked pleased and relaxed, while Lukashenko appeared somewhat tense. Putin appeared to have lost some of his light mood after the talks.
State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, whom Lukashenko congratulated on his birthday Friday, will head a Duma delegation to Minsk for a further round of talks Wednesday, he said Sunday, Interfax reported. Lukashenko wished Gryzlov “success, happiness, health and political longevity.”
After the Kremlin meeting, Lukashenko headed home early, skipping a scheduled dinner with Putin and a joint trip to a new ice rink at the Khodynka field, Kommersant reported Saturday. Lukashenko is a renowned ice hockey enthusiast.
Russia and Belarus could sign an oil export duty deal at a government meeting Friday, a Belarussian delegation official said, Itar-Tass reported.
The 70 percent to 30 percent ratio was almost settled, he said. “The main thing now is to agree with the Russian side on the level of the oil export duty,” said the official, who was not identified.
Sadokho, the Belarussian economic adviser, insisted that Russia needed an agreement on oil because it did not have sufficient refining capacity.

TITLE: City Casinos May Close in 2009
AUTHOR: By Maria Levitov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The flashy, neon lights of Moscow and St. Petersburg’s casinos are expected to go out now that the State Duma has tentatively approved the creation of four gambling regions outside the two cities.
The measure — establishing gambling havens in the Altai, Primorsk and Kaliningrad regions, and an area between the Rostov and Krasnodar regions — passed a crucial second reading Friday in the Duma.
All that remains for the bill to become law is a third reading, widely considered perfunctory, the Federation Council’s support, and the signature of President Vladimir Putin, who submitted the bill in October.
Should the bill become law, the casino lights would go out in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other areas not slated for gambling on June 30, 2009.
The end of gambling in the capital would mark a seismic shift in post-Soviet Moscow’s landscape — shuttering high-profile nightspots like the Golden Palace and numerous slot machines tucked beneath underpasses, next to metro stations and even on the first floor of many apartment buildings.
The measure would also have huge financial and legal implications, sharply regulating a $5.5 billion industry largely controlled by criminal gangs that pay little, if any, taxes, city officials have said.
Duma Deputy Alexander Lebedev of United Russia offered mixed reviews, saying in an interview that the gambling zones “were chosen behind closed doors, which is not great. But it’s better than the alternative.”
The location of the gambling zones was the most controversial part of the bill. The first reading of the measure, which passed last month, did not specify the locations, leaving that up to the executive branch.
Another key provision in the gambling measure requires casinos and slot halls to have nearly $23 million in assets as of June 1, 2007.
Lebedev, a staunch gambling opponent, said executive branch officials from many agencies had told him that they did not want to bear the burden of choosing the zones’ locations.
“This fear had the potential to delay the passage of the law,” he said.
Surprisingly, it was the Duma’s Economic Policy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism Committee that defined the zones when it formally presented the bill Friday for the second reading.
All four regions selected were among those that had voiced an interest in housing casinos, Lebedev said. He added that the committee took into account which regions would attract the most foreign tourists and the distance of regions from Moscow; legislators did not want gambling halls near Moscow.
Many questions about the selection process were left unanswered, Lebedev said.
Industry experts called Primorsk a good choice for casinos but voiced doubts about the other gambling zones.
“The Chinese will gamble in the Primorsk region, where the casinos are already living off the Chinese,” said Samoil Binder, deputy managing director of the Association for the Development of the Gaming Business. “But you’ve got to be kidding yourself if you think you’ll find someone to sink $100 million to $1 billion in some hypothetical hope that some day people would want to come gamble there.”
Yevgeny Kovtun, a spokesman for the Gaming Business Association, more or less agreed with Binder. “With the exception of the Primorsk region, the locations of the other zones don’t make any economic sense.”
Moscow’s gambling class would rather fly to Riga or Kiev, capital cities where casinos are established, Binder said.
Regional authorities would be expected to determine the exact size and location of the gambling zones, which must fall outside residential areas, a copy of the law obtained by The Moscow Times said.
In the long run, the new zones would benefit the four regions, but developing a regulated gambling industry would take some time, said Alexei Titkov, senior analyst at the Institute for Regional Policy.
One problem Titkov identified is that Russians are less mobile than Europeans and Americans.
Also, Russia’s tourism infrastructure is undeveloped, Titkov said. For many, traversing a vast and poorly paved country is either too inconvenient or too expensive, he said, adding that illegal gambling dens were likely to sprout after the ban took effect.
Titkov said local residents in the relatively conservative Altai, Rostov and Krasnodar regions also may have some qualms about living near casinos, which the Orthodox Church and others have called immoral.
Those living in Kaliningrad and Primorsk would have fewer problems with gambling halls, Titkov predicted.
One caveat that could preserve gambling in Moscow and elsewhere is upcoming elections. Kovtun, of the Gaming Business Association, predicted there would be changes to the gambling measure after the 2007 Duma elections and the 2008 presidential election.
The Altai, Krasnodar and Kaliningrad regions are also among seven designated tourism zones, which were created to speed construction of roads, hotels and other facilities critical to luring tourists.
The tourism zones come into effect in early 2008, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said earlier this month.
The gambling measure exempts Russia’s stock exchanges and lottery operators.

TITLE: European Meat Ban Looms
AUTHOR: By Jeremy Smith and Robin Paxton
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRUSSELS — The European Union stood firm Friday in the face of Russian threats to ban the bloc’s meat exports next year over health worries and bypass Brussels by seeking separate deals with individual countries.
The likelihood of a temporary ban on EU meat products in Russia from Jan. 1 has increased, diplomats said, after the European Commission rejected Moscow’s proposal to sign bilateral trade deals with separate EU countries.
“We received a negative response to our proposal,” said Sergei Dankvert, head of the veterinary health inspection service watchdog. “Russia is not yet ready to allow imports of meat from the European Union as we have no guarantees of safety.”
Russia has threatened to ban EU meat imports from Jan. 1, citing concerns over animal health in Bulgaria and Romania, which are set to become full EU members in January.

TITLE: Fraud Victims Air Their Concerns
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Democracy in all its messy manifestations appeared in the unlikeliest of places Dec.14 — at a conference to provide a platform for victims of apartment fraud to air their grievances with a number of government officials, including Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov and Public Chamber representative Anatoly Kucherena.
At the end of the conference, participants agreed that more collective effort between investors and the government would be required to find a way out of the crisis.
Defrauded investors from 53 regions across the country crowded a 900-capacity auditorium in central Moscow, while more people gathered in the street and the lobby, anxiously trying to get past the security guards.
This was the first chance that cheated investor groups have had to speak directly with government officials, said conference chairman Anton Belyakov, head of an association that campaigns for the rights of apartment-fraud victims.
“We’ve come a long way since freezing in minus 37 degrees [Celsius] weather in front of the White House eight months ago,” he said.
“The law as it exists right now does not protect investors’ rights. Instead, it is victimizing them,” Belyakov said, commenting on the existing federal laws on investments in residential construction.
Conference delegates agreed that the apartment-fraud crisis was made possible by inadequate laws. The need to amend laws on apartment fraud has already triggered the creation of a number of legislative working groups. Mironov chairs a Federation Council committee on the subject, while Kucherena heads a similar group in the Public Chamber.
Until the law is revised to exclude any possible loopholes, people will continue to be robbed, Mironov said. He added that it was imperative that new legislation be drafted within the next six months.
As he took the stage to outline his own group’s suggestions, however, Kucherena was heckled by angry investors who perceived his proposal as a toothless measure that would provide people not with accommodation, but with a worthless system of credits.
“We want apartments!” several protesters shouted from the back row.
“Why are you protesting? Why am I under accusation?” Kucherena asked the audience.
Critics of the proposed bills say they are only one aspect of current problems. Responsibility for the situation also lies with local corrupt bureaucrats, who sometimes simply refuse to sign documents necessary for completed buildings to be passed on legally to purchasers, investors at the conference said.
“Two hunger strikes were necessary for one final signature to be added to the transfer document,” said Dmitry Schupanovsky, the head of a St. Petersburg investors’ committee, adding that buying an apartment today was a game of chance.
“The local bureaucrats do not help us, but actively resist us,” said Kaliningrad resident Maxim Sushenov, whose investors’ group has been in a legal dispute with city authorities for two years.
Overall, sympathies among conference delegates seemed to lie with Mironov, who vowed to ensure the current situation would not be allowed to happen again. “[I promise] as a representative of the Federation Council to make every possible effort to solve this problem and prevent it from happening in the future,” Mironov said.
As Belyakov read out the conference resolutions, however, members of the audience shook their fists and called for amendements. The day’s discussions may have marked only the start of a long and difficult process.

TITLE: Cheap Bulgarian Property Tempts the Russian Buyer
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In Soviet times, Bulgaria was a cheap, if not always cheerful, option for Russian tourists looking for a seaside vacation. Decades later, the country’s improved infrastructure and potential European Union membership, all amid a familiar Slavic setting, is tempting Russians to invest in Bulgarian property.
One of the newest destinations on the international real estate market, Bulgaria is appealing to Russians not just for its pleasant climate and cultural affinity, but also because of low prices. For example, a small resort apartment sells for as little as $35,000, a price tag that is inconceivable in Western Europe.
The market in Bulgaria was especially lively last year, said Darya Pushkaryova, a representative of Best Active, a company specializing in real estate in Bulgaria and other European countries.
Last year, prices grew by 30 to 40 percent, but they have leveled out since then after an explosion in development swamped the market with a supply of new properties.
Though no longer the hottest destination in terms of investment, Bulgaria’s prices are still low among other resorts with developed infrastructure. 
Russians with relatively modest means are increasingly seeing property in Bulgaria as potential summer homes, said Kim Waddup, the director of the International Property Show, which took place in Moscow last month.
“The market of international real estate is finally moving because affordable options are drawing in more Russians. ... Not only the wealthiest businessmen looking for luxury property,” Waddup said.
“I spoke with two retired university professors recently, who were looking at an apartment in Bulgaria,” he said.
“These days, going to Bulgaria takes as long as driving to your dacha that is four hours away.”
This year, there were 14 Bulgarian real estate firms at the International Property Show. This is a marked change on the 2004 show, when none of the 34 firms present were from Eastern Europe, but from more traditional investment choices like England and Spain.
“Right now, more people are buying property in Bulgaria to keep for themselves, rather than to invest, since Bulgarian prices are not growing as rapidly as those of Montenegro, for example,” Pushkaryova said.
Another destination that is extremely popular, Montenegro has a less-developed infrastructure, and attracts people who enjoy Balkan rural landscapes more than the condos that spring up across ex-Soviet Bulgaria.
Bulgaria’s current bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, however, is creating interesting opportunities in the country’s ski resort properties, where developing infrastructure is driving up the price, Pushkaryova said, and Bulgaria’s imminent EU membership will continue to push up prices.
What is more, owning property in Bulgaria also entitles the proprietor to residency rights. Russians, who usually need to go through the bureaucratic hassle of visa applications to visit Europe, will certainly bear this mind when considering real estate investments abroad.

TITLE: Call Abroad, Don’t Pay a Cent
AUTHOR: By Alastair Gee
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Goodbye, steep charges for calling abroad. Farewell, calls limited to a few snatched minutes. Hello, Internet telephony.
A raft of computer programs — Skype is the current darling — enable you to make free international calls between computers with Internet connections. Some companies go one better: You can call foreign mobile and fixed-line phones with no charge.
You might be able to avoid ever paying for an international call again. And suddenly, Moscow and St. Petersburg don’t seem all that far from the rest of the world.
“Skype allows multiple people to have a conference call — my brother in California, my dad in New York and I spoke all at once,” said Katherine Avgerinos, 23, a legal assistant at the Moscow branch of a U.S. law firm. Another time, she said, “they set up a web cam: I was able to sit in my apartment in Moscow, seeing and hearing my dad talking from New York, for free.”
Don’t throw out your telephone just yet, though. The sound quality with these programs can be patchy, and there are other cost-effective ways to call abroad.

Using Skype
Some of its services are not the cheapest, but Skype is the name most people know. To use it, you need a computer (Windows, Macintosh and Linux systems are supported), speakers and microphone. Skype works with a dial-up connection to the Internet, but since call quality can be low, broadband is preferable.
 Visit Skype.com to download the program. During the installation process, you’ll be prompted to choose a Skype username. This is the equivalent of your telephone number, and what other users will type to call you.
There are two dialing options: Calling another Skype user, which is free, or calling a mobile or fixed-line phone, which is a paid service, albeit with low rates. Calling any phone in the United States from Russia costs 2.4 cents per minute, for example.
To speak to other Skype users for free, they have to be online at the same time as you and have the program open. Type in their username in the bar at the top and hit return, or click the plus sign to search for it. Once it’s added to your address book, double-click it.
If the call goes through, you’ll hear a ring like that of a fixed-line telephone. The other person can choose whether to answer. Once you’re connected, speak into your microphone as if it were a regular telephone. To disconnect the call, hit the red button. If someone calls you, a notification window will flash up.
The paid service is called SkypeOut. You need to purchase credit as you might for a mobile phone. Click the “Buy Skype Credit” link on the Skype site to do so, and check calling rates at www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/all_rates.html. Once you’ve added credit, the process of calling is the same, although instead of a username, you type in a password. If the quality of your call is poor or there are gaps in the sound, try closing other Internet programs that might be using up your bandwidth. Using headphones can eliminate an echo. More help is available on the Skype site.
As well as using Skype to send text messages and collect voicemail, you can buy a SkypeIn forwarding number: If you have a New York-area SkypeIn number that forwards callers to a Moscow mobile, for example, a friend dialing from Manhattan will be charged for a local call, not an international one.

TITLE: Comstar Acquires 25% Stake in Fixed-Line Giant
AUTHOR: By Elif Kaban
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Telecoms firm Comstar said last Tuesday that it had bought a blocking stake of 25 percent plus one share in Svyazinvest, the main player in fixed-line telephony in the country, for $1.3 billion, confirming what some banking sources had said the day before.
The stake offers a tactical advantage to Comstar when the government, the majority shareholder, decides on the future of Svyazinvest.
Svyazinvest is the main player in the domestic fixed-line telecoms market, controlling seven regional telecoms firms as well as long-distance monopoly Rostelekom and Moscow’s dominant fixed-line operator, MGTS.
Analysts said the deal could more than double Comstar’s 2006 net income, and it implied a 22 percent discount to Svyazinvest’s valuation, based on its subsidiaries’ current market values.
The blocking stake in Svyazinvest was sold by financier George Soros in 2004 to Blavatnik’s Access Industries for $625 million, one-third of the price he had paid in 1997.
Banking sources said Blavatnik and Moscow-based Vekselberg, who Forbes magazine said earlier this year was Russia’s fifth-richest man, with a $10.1 billion fortune, were exiting Svyazinvest, given uncertain prospects for its privatization.
Fixed-line carrier Comstar, of which Sistema owns half, said the deal for the Svyazinvest stake gave 2711 Centerville Cooperatief, a company affiliated to U.S.-based Blavatnik, the right to buy 11.06 percent of its shares.
The call option comprises a 10.5 percent stake at a strike price of $6.97 per share, below the current market price. Comstar said the call option on the remaining 0.56 percent might be exercised from April 1, 2007.
Comstar had about $1 billion in its coffers, raised in a February initial public offering, and the company had already spoken of spending the money on the privatization of Svyazinvest. Comstar sold 35 percent of its shares at the IPO earlier this year, while Sistema holds 50 percent and MGTS 15 percent.
“The acquisition ... is in line with our previously stated intention to use IPO proceeds for value accretive acquisitions,” Comstar’s deputy chairman, Sergei Shchebetov, said in a regulatory statement.
Comstar is also keen on at least one other Svyazinvest firm, Moscow’s incumbent MGTS, where Svyazinvest holds 28 percent.
Since October 2005, Comstar has bought a total of six regional operators and recently announced the acquisition of a Greek Internet provider.
The government has repeatedly delayed the privatization of Svyazinvest, in which it holds 75 percent minus one share. Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref has said the state might decide against it, and could restructure it instead.

TITLE: Russia to Share Space Technology With Brazil, Political Ties Increased
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRASILIA, Brazil — Russia agreed to provide Brazil with rocket fuel and space technology on Thursday as part of a broader effort to increase political ties and trade in products including aircraft and beef.
Two of the world’s largest emerging economies, Russia and Brazil aim to boost bilateral trade to $10 billion by 2010 from $4 billion now, the foreign ministers of the two nations told reporters after a meeting.
Thursday’s agreement should help Brazil put satellites in space more safely after an explosion at its Alcantara launching pad at the edge of the Amazon jungle killed 21 people in 2004.
Brazil is also nearing a deal to buy Russian helicopters, said Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim. He could not confirm that the deal would cover 30 helicopters as reported in some local media and would not say what make they were. 
“Talks are under way, there’s a company that’s an exporter and so there could be some kind of military trading,” he said, adding that Brazil’s Embraer — the world’s fourth-largest commercial jet producer — also wants to sell aircraft to Russia.
Brazil, the world’s largest chicken and beef exporter, would also like Russia to lift a ban on frozen meat imports from some of Brazil’s largest ranching states.
Russia gets about a third of its beef, pork and chicken imports from Brazil, but it banned imports of live animals, beef and pork a year ago after Brazil suffered an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

TITLE: Teaching Old Managers 
New Tricks
AUTHOR: By Anna Shcherbakova
TEXT: A real manager should be a performer, an administrator, an entrepreneur and an integrator at the same time, and overemphasize different roles in different stages of a company’s life, according to Ichak Adizes, professor of Stanford University and the Management School of California University. He explained this PAEI-theory in “Corporate Lifecycles,” a book that is something of a bible for many managers and for many more management consultants. Recently, it was even translated into Russian. But I’m not sure it is popular among Russian top-managers, many of whom also double as owners of their businesses. Many of them do not like reading, preferring to act. And another rule — those with very high I.Q. ratings usually don’t have the guts to put their knowledge into action. 
“There’s only one decision-maker here — the president. His ideas are realized immediately without any calculations, estimations or forecasts,” claimed a good acquaintance who recently swapped his job with a huge international construction company for one at a local firm. In his old job, everything was regulated and planned, even the big bosses couldn’t make costly decisions without approval from shareholders. His new boss is a shareholder himself, so he doesn’t have to coordinate his ideas with anyone, despite their frequently wayward character. Some of his ideas, however, managed to make him rich and his company famous. In any event, the buck for his ideas always stopped with him. 
“If you add Administration to your Entrepreneurship you will be great,” Adizes told Russians in a recent interview. But, according to his theory, it isn’t possible for one person to have all four qualities in even quantities, so the ideal manager does not exist at all. Russian businesspeople confirm his theory. Over the last fifteen years, they have constructed a totally new economy in a country where entrepreneurship was almost a term of abuse for decades. They’ve had an uphill struggle, overcoming obstacles ranging from gangsters and tax authorities to their own employees who have frequently been lazy or untruthful or too busy reading management training books instead of doing some hard work. And they have their own opinion on almost every issue and have little time to the opinions of others. Their entrepreneurial abilities are stronger than their administrative, performance and integrative roles combined. And this seems unlikely to change, despite the fact that their businesses are already at a stage where they’re crying out for more administrators and integrators. 
Scientific theories work even when people don’t realize it. Some Russian businesspeople have sensed that something is going wrong and invited in consultants who read books and give them clever advice like delegating responsibility or even reengineering business processes. Some of them go further and invite in top-managers whose styles complete with their own. Strong administrators, for instance, schooled in foreign concerns. Alternatively, they bring their experienced employees into the managerial team. This is perhaps the best thing they can do to their companies. In the worst case, they use top-managers they’ve invited as consultants and do everything by themselves as usual. The results can be predicted — the entrepreneurs stay alone on top. 
My friend survived less than half a year in with his new boss. Now he is the general director of his own company. I don’t dare ask about his own style of decision making. 

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

TITLE: The Putin Puzzle Revisited
AUTHOR: By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
TEXT: You have to admire the perseverance of Western energy investors in Russia, whom no amount of suspicious deaths, arbitrary contract abrogation or naked shakedowns can discourage.
Although Shell is being muscled out of a $20 billion deal to develop the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas field, and even though American minority shareholders got wiped out along with Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the seizure of Yukos, Western money continues to take its chances on Russia out of desperation more than anything else. The world may be rich in hydrocarbons, but opportunities for Western corporations are vanishing behind closed nationalist doors in country after country, where governments increasingly monopolize the development and production of oil.
Western investors have gotten accustomed to overlooking a lot in Russia, but they may be unwise to overlook the sensational polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of President Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s presidency is constitutionally mandated to end in 2008, when new elections will be held. But who is Putin’s Putin? He succeeded Boris Yeltsin by promising that, whatever purges he might carry out, Yeltsin and his family would be shielded. Yeltsin was old, ill and alcoholic, and Putin’s offer must have seemed one he couldn’t refuse. Putin is young and vigorous, and has no reason to put his fate in the hands of a successor or successors who wouldn’t be able to guarantee his lifelong immunity even if they wanted.
In turn, if Putin amends the constitution to keep himself in power, it could provoke international repercussions that could undermine the assumptions on which much international investment is based.
To wit: For a lot of reasons, investors have been able to assume that, whatever happened in Russia, their home governments would at least be supportive of their investment efforts. U.S. President George W. Bush pronounced Putin a friend, and needs Russian support for U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan. German politicians have pushed and cajoled energy firms to increase ties to Russia. Former Chancellor Gerhard SchrÚder even sits on the supervisory board of a Gazprom affiliate. All this reflects a Western calculation that Russia has nuclear weapons; Russia is a potential nightmare; Russia has energy the world needs. We must cling to Putin as an acceptable partner and hope for the best.
The Litvinenko poisoning, rightly described as the first case of nuclear terrorism, opens up a can of worms. The world media are enthralled with the story. Several British and German bystanders show traces of polonium poisoning. The heat will be on investigators to get to the bottom of the matter, and such investigations have a way of running beyond the power of governments to keep the lid down.
More threatening to Putin, Litvinenko wrote a book linking him to the original sin of modern Russian politics, a string of apartment bombings in 1999 in Moscow and other cities that killed hundreds. The bombings were blamed on Chechen terrorists, letting then-Prime Minister Putin embark on the second Chechen war and helping him win election as president. There soon followed a series of homicides and arrests and constitutional moves that shut down prospects of journalistic and legislative investigation into whether the bombings had actually been a government provocation.
Now, there was some eye rolling when a column I wrote two years ago noted parallels between Putin’s career and Saddam Hussein’s. Hussein came to power after the early retirement of his mentor, who (like Yeltsin) promptly became invisible. Hussein’s first act was to start a war. And so on.
But the real point was that Hussein became a hostage of his miscalculations, especially overestimating the power Iraq’s oil gave him to manipulate other governments. Putin’s best option, perhaps his only option, is to play out his hand, putting his chips on Western governments to cover up for him. Last week the State Duma gave preliminary approval to a law that would directly grant the president power to impose economic sanctions on foreign nationals. The Jamestown Foundation, which monitors Russian politics, reports: “The proposed legislation ... would let the president freeze trade contracts, stop financial transactions, prohibit tourism and impose other economic sanctions.”
U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, who sees which way events are moving, late last month gave a speech in Latvia warning NATO urgently to adopt the position that energy sanctions imposed on a member state are an act of war against NATO itself.
Put yourself in Putin’s shoes. It’s hard to see how, except by holding onto power and trying to use it to control his circling enemies, he could hope to avoid becoming a target of political or legal retribution sooner or later. He’s riding high in domestic polls, thanks to a recovering economy — no small thing. But Litvinenko’s poisoning may have been the thread that begins the unknitting. The real threat has always been Ryazan. That’s the city where, on Sept. 22, 1999, a resident noticed men unloading bags of “sugar” into the basement of a large apartment block. The sugar was the explosive RDX; the men were federal security agents. Moscow claimed the incident was a training exercise, but the apartment bombings, which had killed 300 Russians, suddenly stopped.
Western governments have been nothing if not resolute in turning away from Ryazan and the evidence of the crime that allegedly underwrote Putin’s rise to power. Western leaders might prefer, all things considered, to see him remain in power rather than deal with the consequences of Ryazan. But it is not in the nature of the world that such a mystery can be concealed forever, or its consequences ducked.

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, where this comment was published.

TITLE: A Waste of Valuable Resources
AUTHOR: By Alexei Bayer
TEXT: In the early 1980s, being one of very few native Russian speakers in Princeton, New Jersey, I became friends with an emigre couple, the Gurfinkels. While the husband was working on his Ph.D., the wife, Natasha, gave up ancient history to enter a bank-training program.
The next time I saw her — a decade later — Natasha Gurfinkel was a senior vice president at Bank of New York, opening up East European and Russian financial services markets. It was a great individual achievement on her part, but a fairly common occurrence in the United States. U.S. multinational companies have been so successful in penetrating foreign markets because they rely on ex-pat executives who are equally at home in the United States and their old countries.
Immigrants are bridging international gaps in other ways. India’s software industry, which started economic and social modernization on the subcontinent while also bringing down the global cost of programming, was founded, for instance, by Indian ex-pats working in Silicon Valley.
The United States, with its lively immigration and diverse foreign-born population, has been a leader in a globalized economy. But foreigners are successful entrepreneurs in the domestic market as well. They open local barber shops, grocery stores and motels, and also found multibillion-dollar corporations. They are disproportionately represented among university professors, scientists and engineers.
Immigrants provide all of U.S. population growth, both directly and by having more children in the first generation. The problems of demographic decline and aging populations that dog Western Europe, Japan and Russia do not affect the United States.
Immigration is closely related to economic growth. By 1970, restrictive immigration policies had reduced the U.S. foreign-born population to an all-time low of 4.7 percent. A decade of economic stagnation duly followed. Today, over 12 percent of all Americans are foreign-born — something that accounts for the dynamism of the U.S. economy. This is why the current anti-immigrant backlash in Washington is so misplaced and self-destructive.
I would argue that the only lasting benefit Russia has reaped so far from its oil wealth is the influx of foreigners both from parts of the defunct Soviet Empire and from the “far abroad.”
First and foremost, those immigrants are a valuable economic resource, as can be readily seen on the streets of Moscow and on construction sites everywhere. They also provide the backbone of distribution businesses. Restrictions on the participation by natives of the Caucasus, initiated by President Vladimir Putin, underlie the inescapable fact that the abundance of goods now available everywhere in Russia was largely provided by networks created by immigrants.
The population is shrinking and the country is likely to face major demographic and economic problems in the future. To reverse the decline, the government has offered the repatriation of ethnic Russians, but it has so far found few takers, even from impoverished and troubled Central Asia.
More realistically, Russia needs to find a way to assimilate its new immigrants. True, the current wave of immigration is unprecedented in its size and scope. Throughout pre-revolutionary and Soviet history, however, Russia’s major cities, including the capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg, have always been remarkably ethnically mixed. Russian colleges and universities educated large numbers of foreigners. The government should rely on this inclusive legacy, benefiting from the energy, entrepreneurship and brains of its newcomers, instead of busily fanning dangerous nationalist prejudice.

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

TITLE: Investors Wary of Risks at UES
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: NIZHNEVARTOVSK, Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous District — It looked, at first, like a group of vegetarians touring a fish market. On a tour of the Nizhnevartovsk power station put on for Germany’s E.On utility this week, the foreign executives wore sour faces, while the station’s managers hovered around them, hoping for a deal.
But none was struck. Citing “numerous risks,” the head of the E.On delegation, Thomas Bull, said Tuesday that it would be “premature” for E.On to help build a $720 million turbine at the plant. The road to foreign investment in the power sector suddenly looked as rough as the nearby trails of the Ural Mountains.
“To be honest, I understand their hesitance,” said Valenin Bragin, investment director of OGK-1, the wholesale generating company that owns the plant. “You don’t buy the first fish you pick up and smell. ... First we have to build a business reputation. Right now, we have a reputation as a country of bandits.”
On top of reputation, state-set electricity prices are driving investors away. Until the prices are fully liberalized in 2011, energy production is almost sure to be a loss-making business in Russia, as it was last winter for almost every generating company in the country.
Under a plan hammered out in the Cabinet last month among advocates of gradual price hikes and Unified Energy Systems CEO Anatoly Chubais, who wanted faster price liberalization, prices for industrial users will be freed up step by step. Starting in January, just 5 percent of electricity will be sold on the free market. This figure will rise to 10 percent in January 2008, and only start to rise seriously after the 2008 presidential election.
At a briefing for reporters at the Nizhnevartovsk plant, Bragin gave a “solid guarantee” that the Germans would at least break even. The E.On officials appeared unmoved.
“My name is not worth any capital,” Bragin said on the sidelines of the briefing. “They might put some money down on the name Chubais. But in 2008, Chubais is burning his executive’s chair. After that, they won’t give any money and that’s it.”
The foreign investors OGK-1 has courted, including Mitsubishi and E.On, want to see a stable track record of at least three years before agreeing to any partnership in Russia, Bragin said. OGK-1 has management records for only 18 months.
“It will take time for us to develop projects that will be attractive to foreign investors,” he said.
But time is running short in the race to find investors. Next year alone, new construction in the electricity sector will require $15 billion, most of which must come from foreign partners, Chubais said.
“If we do not secure these resources, there will be no other source but the federal budget ... and such huge budget expenditure would mean the total destruction of the macroeconomic system,” Chubais said at a briefing at UES headquarters in southwest Moscow last month.
IPOs are Chubais’ main strategy. He plans up to 20 of them for UES subsidiaries next year, hoping to raise at least $10 billion. But analysts say this is unrealistic.
“At a certain point, the market becomes saturated and the interest dies out,” said Dmitry Terekhov, an electricity analyst at Antanta Capital.
In such a case, UES would need to turn to strategic investors such as state-owned giants Sberbank and Gazprom, a move it has been desperate to avoid.
When a 14.4 percent stake in generating company OGK-5 went up for sale in October, Gazprombank offered to buy the whole packet of shares for $485 million. But UES declined the offer, instead selling the shares to a range of investors for a total of $460 million. With no single investor buying more than 1.1 percent of the company, UES was signaling that a diverse investor base was worth more to it than Gazprom’s extra money.
In the summer of 2007, however, as energy IPOs flood the market and investor interest likely dwindles, UES may no longer have this option, Terekhov said. “But it will always be able to give Gazprom a call.”
Analysts and UES officials are divided on what a possible Gazprom hegemony would mean for the electricity sector.
On the upside, it could help secure more steady supplies of gas, which has been the biggest thorn in the side of the energy sector.
Moreover, in the longer term foreign investors might be attracted by Gazprom’s reputation as a partner with the political clout to get things done, unlike the inexperienced firms currently being spun off from UES, said Gianguido Piani, a St. Petersburg-based independent energy consultant.
A deal to be signed Friday in Moscow, where French engineering firm Alstom has agreed to build a 420-megawatt turbine for city utility Mosenergo, may help confirm this theory. Some analysts suspect that the deal clincher might be Gazprom’s 30 percent stake in Mosenergo and a promise by UES chief financial officer Sergei Dubinin that the national utility will sell a controlling stake to Gazprom next year.
“Gazprom is a good business partner,” Dubinin said.
Chubais may not be openly challenging that view, but he is clearly frustrated that Gazprom is not providing UES with more gas.
Last month, Gazprom refused to provide fuel for a new turbine built at the Northwest Thermal Power Plant near St. Petersburg, an embarrassing snub to UES. Chubais made clear that his main investment goal was to attract foreign partners — specifically Finland’s Fortum, Germany’s E.On, the United States’ AES and Italy’s Enel — that he hopes will take controlling stakes in UES companies.
Terekhov said selling out to a state-run Goliath like Gazprom would go against the most basic principle of Chubais reforms: liberalization.
Alexander Branis, director of Prosperity Capital Management, said Gazprom would do little to streamline the notoriously inefficient power sector.
“If they cannot efficiently handle their own development projects, they will not do much for the generating companies. And the generating companies need a lot of upgrades,” Branis said.
If power shortages worsen, however, Chubais may need to abandon these concerns for the sake of badly needed capital.
Counting on European firms for that capital is a lost cause in the short run, Piani said.
“The priorities for Europe are to refurbish its power grid and modernize production capacity in Eastern Europe,” he said. “Only then can Russia expect any attention from European firms. That will take at least five to 10 years.”

TITLE: Bulgaria Agrees to 40% Increase in Price for Gas
AUTHOR: By Michael Winfrey
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SOFIA, Bulgaria — Bulgaria’s ruling coalition government has agreed on a new deal with Gazprom that will raise the price state gas monopoly Bulgargaz currently pays by between 40 percent and 45 percent through 2012, a source said Friday.
The source said that under the deal, which will be valid until 2030, state-run monopoly Gazprom will stop its practice of paying for gas it transits through Bulgaria by selling Sofia supplies at a discount far below market prices.
A Bulgarian government statement said the contract would be signed Monday. It gave no other details.
“This will result in an increase of about 20 percent in the cost of gas to Bulgargaz as of the second quarter of next year,” said the source, who is familiar with the negotiations.
“The price will keep going up and by 2011 or 2012 be around 40 percent to 45 percent over the average current price paid by Bulgargaz.”
The new deal ends talks that began in January, when Gazprom, Bulgaria’s only gas supplier, demanded that the Balkan state change a contract that would expire in 2010 because the Russian firm said it had become unfavorable.
The deal raised fears among Bulgaria and neighboring states that depend on its network to receive Russian gas after Gazprom temporarily cut off supplies earlier this year to Ukraine over a pricing dispute.
Gazprom wanted to stop paying for transits by selling Bulgaria a corresponding amount of gas at around $83 per thousand cubic meters, far below market prices.
Sofia now pays $257 per thousand cubic meters not covered by that discount.
The average price Bulgargaz pays at present for gas covered under both regimes is around $170 per thousand cubic meters, compared with a market price of around $280.
But now both sides will deal only in cash.
The government declined to provide details of the new deal, citing contract confidentiality, but said its existing contract would be amended.
Bulgaria consumes 3 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually. Almost one-half of it comes in from the transit contract.
The source also said the contract would provide a secure source of energy for Bulgaria and its neighbors.
“By signing this deal, Bulgaria will have a guaranteed level of transit gas for several more decades.
“There was a threat that transits to countries that depend on Bulgaria for gas supplies could be cut to zero over the coming years,” he said.

TITLE: Nervous Investors Bring End To Stock Market’s Record Run
AUTHOR: By Simon Shuster
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — All good things must eventually end, and so it was last week for the 14-day run of positive numbers on Russian markets, which analysts said could now expect to be less liquid and more volatile as the holiday season begins.
On Tuesday, the RTS was down 0.7 percent and the MICEX dipped 0.1 percent, but both finished the week in positive territory as investors’ worries were eased.
“Russians are born traders but not born investors,” said James Beadle, research head at Pilgrim Asset Management. “They jump in and out very quickly and take a profit if something makes them nervous.”
What made them nervous last week, and sparked the impending downturn, were the meetings of the U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, on Thursday. But neither one had a decidedly negative outcome.
The Fed surprised no one on Tuesday by holding interest rates at 5.25 percent and reiterating concerns over a slump in the U.S. housing market. The same day, however, U.S. reports of a 1.1 percent jump in November retail sales outshined much of the gloom in the Fed’s statement and raised hopes that the correction expected for U.S. markets would be gradual.
“I am positively convinced that it will be a soft landing,” Beadle said. “It is taking place right now.”
The fears leading up to the OPEC meeting turned out to be emptier still, as the oil-producing countries announced further supply cuts, which promise to sustain high oil prices and bolster the Russian economy. The cuts will be imposed in February, paring a half-million barrels off the cartel’s daily output. But OPEC has often failed to follow through on such pledges.
“I can’t say that we have a lot of belief in OPEC’s ability to move its production up and down,” said Rory MacFarquhar, economist at Goldman Sachs.
Analysts agreed, however, that Brent crude prices would stay above $60 per barrel well into next year and should allow Russian oil firms, which have taken a back seat to banks and utilities in recent weeks, to go back to driving the economy in 2007.
The next few weeks, however, may be a period of modest trading but higher than usual risk.
“As investors drift off toward holiday vacations, it takes only a few people to move the markets, and that can make for some real volatility,” said Kim Iskyan, head of research at MDM Bank. “It’s an odd contradiction of the holiday doldrums.”
The Central Bank and Finance Ministry decided last week to allow foreigners to buy stakes of up to 20 percent in Russian banks without state authorization. Natalya Orlova, head of research at Alfa Bank, said in a note to investors Thursday that the move would encourage banking sector IPOs in the long run.
But since the move was foreseen as part of Russia’s deal with the United States on joining the World Trade Organization, it will not have a short-term impact on the market, MacFarquhar said.

TITLE: Arms Monopoly
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — President Vladimir Putin signed a decree granting a monopoly on weapons exports to Rosoboronexport, the state arms agency run by his longtime ally and former fellow spy Sergei Chemezov, Kommersant said Friday.
Official monopoly status, which only Gazprom had enjoyed, on gas exports, will boost Rosoboronexport’s annual sales by about 10 percent, or $600 million, the newspaper said.

TITLE: Utility Bill Cut
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mosenergo, the main electricity and heat supplier in Moscow, had its back tax bill for 2002 and 2003 slashed to $53 million, RIA-Novosti said Friday, citing a tax official who was not identified.
Mosenergo’s bill was lowered 80 percent to 1.4 billion rubles, or $53 million, from 7 billion rubles, RIA-Novosti said. The company still has a chance to win a full annulment in court, it said, citing Mosenergo spokesman Vasily Zakharov.

TITLE: PKN’s Mazeikiu
TEXT: VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Poland’s PKN Orlen on Friday bought a 30.7 percent stake in the Mazeikiu Nafta oil refinery from the Lithuanian government for $852 million, gaining control of the Baltic country’s biggest enterprise.
The purchase was completed a day after the Polish oil retailer bought a 53.7 percent stake from Russia’s Yukos in the refinery near the Latvian border.

TITLE: Caspian Stake Sold
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Private equity investor Baring Vostok Capital Partners bought a “substantial” stake in Bank Caspian to tap a lending boom in Kazakhstan.
Bank Caspian is “a leading retail bank in Kazakhstan,” the Russian company said in a statement Friday, without saying how much it paid or the size of its stake. The bank will be owned jointly by Baring Vostok Private Equity Fund III and Vyacheslav Kim, who is already a shareholder.

TITLE: RusAl Opens Plant
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian Aluminum opened the first aluminum plant built in the country since the Soviet era as Oleg Deripaska expands the company into the world’s biggest maker of the metal.
RusAl began production at its Khaz smelter in the Irkutsk region on Friday, the company said. It is the first smelter built in Russia in 20 years.

TITLE: Iran Gas to Armenia
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Iran will start shipping gas through a pipeline to Armenia in January, the Tehran Times reported Sunday, citing an Iranian official.
About 1 million cubic meters of natural gas will be shipped daily through the 160-kilometer pipeline, said Mohammad-Reza Akbari, the managing director of Payandan, the company operating the pipeline. That will increase to 3 million cubic meters per day “later on,” he said.

TITLE: Magnitogorsk Shares
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel, owner of the country’s largest steel mill, plans to sell 1.45 billion new shares, as the company prepares its listing.
Magnitogorsk, based in the Urals, will offer shares by open subscription, with holders of the stock as of Friday having the pre-emptive right to buy, the company said Friday in a statement.
The move is “not to finance any deal” and “shows that the company does not exclude a listing,” said Yelena Azovtseva, a spokeswoman for Magnitogorsk. The company’s board has not decided on a date for the sale, she said.

TITLE: LUKoil in Vietnam?
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — LUKoil, the country’s largest oil company, may build oil refineries in Vietnam, Interfax reported, citing CEO Vagit Alekperov.
The Vietnamese government wants to build “two or three” refineries and asked LUKoil to participate in the projects during a recent visit to the country by company officials, Alekperov said, Interfax reported Friday.

TITLE: Ukraine in Gas Talks
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, the country’s sole exporter of natural gas, is in talks with Ukraine on boosting shipments of the fuel to western Europe via Ukraine’s pipeline network, one year after cutting supplies over a price dispute.
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller met with Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko in Moscow on Friday to discuss raising transit volumes to Europe next year, the state-run company said in a statement Friday. No other details were provided.

TITLE: Severstal Board
TEXT: MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Severstal, the steelmaker owned by billionaire Alexei Mordashov, elected a new board of directors that includes five “independents.”
Chris Clark, Martin Angle, Rolf Stomberg, Ron Freeman and Peter Kraljic will join the board, the company said Friday in a statement. Clark, a former Johnson Matthey manager for 40 years, was elected chairman, the statement said.

TITLE: All the Homeless People
AUTHOR: By Geoffrey Smith
TEXT: The late arrival of freezing temperatures this year represents only a temporary respite for the more than 1 million homeless people who face the problem of how to survive until the spring. Although a couple of events in the fall helped raise the profile of the homelessness problem, the issue rarely garners much official attention.
Moscow’s first homeless exhibition, held at the Russian State Humanitarian University in October, organized by the charities Friends on the Street and the street newspaper Put Domoi, or The Way Home, provided homeless artists an opportunity to express their vision of the world in art and show a wider audience that homeless people have talents. At the Homeless Football World Cup, held in Cape Town, South Africa, in September, the Russian squad defeated Kazakhstan in the final.
But these events are exceptions and in Russia, as elsewhere in the world, most politicians steer clear of the issue of homelessness, just as most people stay clear of the homeless themselves. In a survey published in the magazine RF Segodnya, 30 percent of respondents said they felt contempt for the homeless, while 25 percent expressed indifference.
There is much that reinforces these attitudes, and one thing is language. The word most commonly used for a homeless person is bomzh — an acronym meaning “of no fixed abode.” It not only sounds like the English word bum, meaning vagrant, but also carries the same disdain, with a strong suggestion of non-person that is fortified by its use as an official term.
Another important factor is ignorance — not only about the conditions under which homeless people live, but also the scale of the problem. No country has reliable data on homeless numbers, and as the 2005 United Nations Handbook on Poverty Statistics says, difficulties in estimating homeless numbers “invariably result in a significant undercount.”
The number of homeless in Russia is between 2.76 and 3.44 percent of the population, according to figures from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Interior Ministry. These were cited in Igor Karlinsky’s “Analysis of the Social and Legal Status of the Homeless in Contemporary Russia,” published in 2004 and one of the few serious studies of the subject.
A common estimate of the number of homeless in Moscow is 100,000. Officials claim it is half this, while activists put the number much higher. If, however, we stay with the figure of 100,000, it is possible to start verifying another unknown homeless statistic: the number of deaths each winter. Most estimates over recent years have been in the region of 300. This, however, is the estimate of the number of those people dying of hypothermia and ignores the people who die of other causes — such as murder, tuberculosis, heart failure, starvation or unknown causes.
The scale of this distortion comes into sharper focus when these figures are expressed as a percentage: If 300 homeless people die each winter in Moscow, this would mean that 99.7 percent of the homeless — based on the conservative estimate of 100,000 — survive. Incredibly, this is almost exactly the same as (in fact slightly lower than) the percentage for Moscow as a whole.
Where macro figures are so hopelessly unreliable, one way of providing a reality check is to look at a small area where firm data is available. Friends on the Street is a charity working with the homeless and has direct contact with about 250 homeless people in Moscow, and through them, awareness of about twice that number. It knew of 47 homeless deaths last winter, suggesting that not three out of every 1,000, but one out of every 10 homeless people died over the winter. This does not account for the significant number who disappeared and whose fates are unknown.
Corroboration for this higher figure comes from two sources in St. Petersburg. One is the police, who told volunteers working with the homeless that, in their precinct area alone, they knew of hundreds of homeless people dying last winter. The other is an article by Paul Quinn Judge in Time magazine in 2003 that reported the number of homeless people who died from hypothermia from Oct. 1, 2002, to Jan. 9, 2003, in Moscow as 9,330.
Apart from discrepancies in record-keeping procedures, another major source of distortion surely lies in the reasons for their neglect.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, homeless people die without papers or any other means of identification. This makes establishing their identity extremely difficult, time consuming and sometimes impossible. As the police have priorities other than recording homeless deaths, the paperwork is often forgotten, and who’s complaining if this leads to an undercount?
But this feeds into a vicious circle: The police do not keep proper records because they have insufficient resources and more urgent work to do, and politicians and the rest of us do not treat homelessness as a more urgent problem because the records tell us it is not. Everyone is absolved of the responsibility that more truthful figures would make unavoidable.
People end up in the streets in a number of different ways. Many are ex-convicts who own nothing and have nowhere to go after being released. Some are the victims of crimes that cost them their homes and, in the case of losing their documents, their identities.
Although they are victims of crime, law enforcement officers generally treat them badly (and sometimes brutally), and these people feel they have little hope of legal redress.
Workers from rural areas, the Caucasus or Central Asia are also vulnerable, as their documents are often held by their employers, who can then disappear without even paying their wages. Doubly vulnerable as “illegals,” they end up with no way home and destitute on the streets.
One of the cruelest aspects of homelessness is the seeming impossibility of recovery. The life options available to the rest of us — like eating and washing regularly, getting medical help when we need it, dressing cleanly, wrapping up when it is cold and getting rapidly back into the warm — are not available. So people sink deeper and deeper into the pit until, ultimately, they die in this condition, usually decades earlier than would otherwise have been the case.
So we’re left with the traditional Russian question: “What is to be done?” One move would be to support the suggestion by Doctors Without Borders that homeless people be allowed into railway and metro stations on the coldest nights. This was done in mid-January, when temperatures dropped below minus 30 degrees Celsius. Denying the homeless shelter in these temperatures goes further than neglect by the government of its duty to protect the people of this city: It is tantamount to a human cull of Moscow’s underclass.
It would also be helpful to get a better understanding of what we are dealing with, including the social and economic effects of homelessness in Russia. In a country that is seeking its own path to democracy and where many, including President Vladimir Putin, stress the importance of Christian values, this should be a logical policy priority area. It might also be a good idea to throw out the other question that always seems to crop up when wondering, “What is to be done?” in a Russian context, namely: “Who is to blame?” If fault is to be found, it is best to concentrate on systemic faults, rather than seek scapegoats. And if we are to personalize the issue, the objective is not to allocate individual blame, but to see homelessness in its human aspect — simply to recognize that the homeless are people.
This represents no small challenge, and when progress has been made on this front, there should be no shortage of informed answers to these questions.

Geoffrey Smith is general director of IMES Consulting (Russia) and a volunteer with the organization Friends on the Street.

TITLE: Going for a Spin Around the Blocs
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Whoever said that political life in Russia is bland, that there are no interesting political blocs or battles between them?
I actually think that there are lots of interesting conflicts to follow — you just have to go looking somewhere other than the State Duma to find them.
Take, for example, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and the Federal Guard Service. These are Russia’s two main state security organs, and they maintain a lively disagreement over the operations of the country’s customs agencies. Each maintains that corrupt officials shouldn’t be in charge of customs, but are at odds when it comes to which officials to label as corrupt. The two sides are absolutely irreconcilable.
The reason I opted for the word “bloc” here instead of “party” is that it refers to very wide coalitions. For example, people in the know say Justice Minister Vladimir Ustinov and Kremlin deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin are among those who back the FSB position. Viktor Cherkesov, the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, is rumored to be in the other camp and reports, the story goes, directly to President Vladimir Putin. The signs of the struggle can even be seen in public: arrests, conflicts between special police force units, Ustinov’s firing as prosecutor general and a major house-cleaning at the Federal Customs Service.
It is clear that Sechin’s bloc currently holds the upper hand. We know this because it is those in the opposing bloc who have been ousted from their posts. Some, such as Deputy Interior Minister Andrei Novikov, have actually left office, while other FSB functionaries ostensibly fired by presidential decree remain at work.
If Ustinov manages to break free from the Interior Ministry and the FSB investigative committee, it wouldn’t just be a victory — it would be a triumph of the order of the taking of Berlin in 1945.
Another battle of the blocs is between what I will label the “succession party” and the “third termers,” headed up by Gazprom deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev and Sechin, respectively.
While these blocs are not identical to the two warring customs blocs, they are not altogether different either. The source of their conflict is the assumption that with Putin’s departure at the end of his second term, as the Constitution mandates, only one of these groups will end up at the top of the power heap. And if disagreements of this kind were resolved with poison and daggers during the Renaissance, the practice is appreciably softer today. Now the combatants simply open criminal cases against each other. Recent investigations into the activities in Mikhail Zurabov’s Health and Social Development Ministry are a case in point.
There is also a deep and tragic split between State Duma Deputy Speakers Lyubov Sliska and Vyacheslav Volodin, both members of United Russia. The amount of mud slung at each other by these two Saratov natives is at a level rarely seen. Sliska has been accused of being the owner of a 19 percent share in rail equipment maker Transmash, while Volodin faces charges of accepting kick backs.
Within Gazprom alone there are no fewer than four warring factions, even though at least three of them operate according to the same political motto: “We are not to blame for any of this craziness — you are!” You don’t even want to try to count how many there are in the government.
What is most important to understand is that it is impossible to reconcile these groups because what is at stake is not simple party manifestos or charters, but money and rank. Questions of money are funny that way: Party platforms can be rewritten and a person can even swear allegiance to two different masters. When a ruble hangs in the balance, however, it is hard to pretend that it belongs to both Ivan Ivanovich and to Pyotr Petrovich.

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

TITLE: Spy-World Whodunits Were Better in Our Day
AUTHOR: By Charles McCarry
TEXT: It’s a case stranger than fiction. Or is it? As the investigation into the poisoning death of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko continues, CIA-agent-turned-novelist Charles McCarry imagines a retired Stalin-era spy reminiscing about actual KGB assassinations, and yearning for the golden age of espionage — when things were done right.
I hope you will not mind hearing from a confused old man who in the loneliness of his dacha thinks of you often — especially in the past weeks as a certain operation in London has undressed itself in the world press and even in our own Russian news media. Now I read that the British police are in Moscow interviewing suspects in the assassination of the traitor Alexander Litvinenko, that the German police are calling this “the Third Man case,” and that Interpol has entered the investigation. How fortunate we are that the police of Fiji are inactive for the moment because of a coup d’etat in their country!
Scotland Yard in Moscow, interviewing suspects with the assistance of Russian prosecutors? These same agents of capitalism being interviewed by Izvestia? And the assassin, ill and perhaps dying along with his target, rather than admiring his medal and drinking champagne with a ballerina in a safe house in the Crimea?
When I was your age, I thought the expression “The world is upside down” was just an expression. Now I know better.
In the days of the great spymaster Pavel Anatoliyevich Sudoplatov, under whom I had the honor of serving, assassination was the tool of tools in protecting the socialist motherland. As Comrade General Sudoplatov himself put it: “We did not believe there was any moral question involved in killing Trotsky or any other of our former comrades who had turned against us. ... [Moreover] we believed that every Western country hated us and wished to see our doom.”
Even so, we chose our targets carefully. Assassination had an important educational element. The first purpose of killing an enemy of the revolution was to punish the criminal. But an important secondary purpose was to educate others about the cost of treason.
It was not Comrade General Sudoplatov’s way to take out an ad in the newspaper announcing that so-and-so had been eliminated for such and such a reason. Instead, he designed each operation to be an object of fascination. He wanted the news of it to be learned as a secret, passed via word of mouth by those in the know. He wanted each assassination to become legend, to remain a secret that would tantalize, a secret that would terrify, a secret that would teach lessons that could never be forgotten.
Sudoplatov achieved his effects by the ingenuity of his methods. Early in his career he was given the assignment of liquidating a traitor who lived in Western Europe. He invited the target to a cafe and presented him with a box of chocolates. He knew, of course, that his target was not so stupid as to eat candy given to him by a courier from Moscow.
So he had our people design a time bomb that would fit into the bottom of the candy box. The top layer was made of chocolates. Ninety seconds after he left the cafe, the box exploded. By these ingenious means he not only solved the problem at hand but taught others who may have been committing treason in their hearts a lesson about our vigilance and the implacable justice of our cause.
Of course, there were others, such as the exile who had to climb a long flight of outdoor stairs on his walk home. One night, as he reached the top, breathing deeply, an assassin sprayed hydrocyanic acid, which smells like peach blossoms, into his face with an atomizer. He gulped the gasified poison and died instantly — of a heart attack, according to the police report.
Then there was the heavy smoker. We learned that he never seemed to have a match for his cigarette. When he asked the man who’d been assigned to kill him — a man who seemed a mere stranger in the crowd — if he had a light, our agent produced a cigarette lighter that was actually a tiny gun designed to fire a single bullet into the target’s brain. It worked perfectly: Another traitor died in a state of surprise and another warning was released like a butterfly to be seen and wondered about, but never to be captured.
The most famous example of this technique, which might be called death in a crowd, was the elimination of the journalist Georgy Markov in London in September 1978. The target stood in a bus queue at Waterloo Bridge. Our operative jabbed him in the leg with the sharpened end of his umbrella, injecting him with ricin, an untraceable, deadly poison made from the castor bean. British police did not even know that this turncoat had been killed until months later, when they exhumed his body and discovered the platinum pellet that had contained the poison.
I know that you will remember these famous assassinations from your KGB school days. But I remind you of them to make a point — in fact to offer praise as well as advice.
Here is the word of praise: If you ordered the liquidation of the traitor Litvinenko in Britain, you acted in a proud tradition. A man who was a danger to the motherland no longer endangers her. And who knows? Perhaps this outburst of media gossip was part of your plan. Perhaps, since we are all capitalists now, the objective was to advertise this new weapon and create a market for it among those who wish to commit suicide and kill at the same time. If so, you are infinitely subtler than even the genius who was Sudoplatov.
Certainly the weapon was in Sudoplatov’s tradition: It was ingenious, it was one of a kind and state of the art, and God knows the victim suffered in an exemplary fashion. Above all, it struck terror in the hearts not only of potential traitors, but also in the minds and hearts of all capitalists and even planted a new dream in the mother brain of terrorism.
But comrade, this particular weapon, this polonium-210, fails every Sudoplatov test. It is indiscreet. Every chair, every bed, every glass and plate, every toilet the assassin used is radioactive. The only thing that police need to trace it is a Geiger counter! By contrast, the devices we used in the past vanished. The cigarette-lighter gun was passed to another agent in the crowd, then to another and another. The hydrocyanic acid at the top of the stairs dissipated into thin air. The fatal umbrella disappeared in plain sight among millions more in rainy London. No evidence was ever left at the scene — just suspicion, just a warning, just fear.
Permit me to mention another serious disadvantage. This weapon often kills the assassin. On the bright side, if he is too sick to talk and soon dies, embarrassment may be avoided. Regarding embarrassment, let me suggest in friendly spirit that the ideal assassin should not only be properly trained but also self-disciplined. I read in Spiegel Online that Andrei Lugovoi, Litvinenko’s suspected killer, met the target in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London: Litvinenko ordered green tea; Lugovoi ordered gin — four to six glasses because “the portions in the West are so very small.” I suspect, as do the British police, that the isotope polonium-210 may have been poured into Litvinenko’s tea. My dear boy, the results do suggest that this is not a job for a man who has just drunk four to six glasses of gin.
Fortunately there is no afterworld, so Comrade General Sudoplatov is unlikely to find out.
He had a temper, you know.

Former CIA agent Charles McCarry’s 11th novel, “Christopher’s Ghosts,” is due out next spring. This essay was published in The Washington Post.

TITLE: Australia Trounces England For the Ashes
AUTHOR: By Julian Linden
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PERTH — Australia beat England by 206 runs in the third test to regain the Ashes in record time after taking an unassailable 3-0 lead in the series on Monday.
Australia wrapped up another convincing victory with the second ball after lunch on the final day when Shane Warne bowled Monty Panesar to dismiss England for 350.
England beat Australia 2-1 at home last year to get their hands on the Ashes urn for the first time since 1989 but they gave it straight back after just 15 months, the shortest reign in the 124-year history of the contest.
“Losing the Ashes in 2005 was one of the lowlights of my career but right now is one of the more special times,” Australia captain Ricky Ponting told reporters.
“We have been very good, there’s no doubt about it.
“I think all the hard work has come through in our play, we’ve turned it round and played some unbelievably good cricket.
“It’s a huge occasion for us and to win the Ashes the way we have has been unbelievable.”
England captain Andrew Flintoff was generous in defeat.
“Australia played well in the three test matches...full credit to them,” Flintoff said. “We played well at times but they never let us take the initiative and always came back hard. It just hasn’t come off for us.”
Australia set England a target of 557 to win the match but the tourists’ only real hope of keeping the series alive was to salvage a draw after losing the first test in Brisbane by 277 runs and the second in Adelaide by six wickets.
Warne, playing in possibly his last Ashes series, picked up three of the five wickets that fell on the last day to lift his career total to 699. 
He heads to the fourth test in Melbourne, his home ground, poised to become the first man to reach 700 test scalps.
England started the final day hoping for a miracle to keep the series alive but lost their last five wickets for just 14 runs after Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen stalled Australia’s ruthless pursuit of victory with a stubborn 75-run partnership.
The pair pounded the Australian bowlers around the ground for the first hour before Warne triggered the collapse when he bowled Flintoff for 51.
The quick-thinking Ponting then ran out Geraint Jones for his second duck of the match when the England wicketkeeper failed to get his back foot behind the crease after surviving an lbw appeal off Warne.
Sajid Mahmood made four when he was trapped leg before wicket by seamer Stuart Clark and Warne dismissed Steve Harmison lbw to send the visitors to lunch on 349 for nine.
Pietersen, who survived a close run-out call on 46 that was referred to the video umpire, took a single off Warne’s first delivery after lunch to reach 60 before the master leg spinner rattled Panesar’s stumps to spark wild celebrations among the Australian players.
“It’s bloody fantastic to be honest, this side deserved this,” Warne said. “It hurt in 2005 and we knew we had to be ready.
“This side can do special things and we were ready right from day one. It’s a pretty good feeling.”
Australia batsman Mike Hussey was named man of the match following his innings of 74 not out and 103.

TITLE: Abbas Pledges New Elections in Palestine
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday he would press on with early elections as a truce between his security forces and the Hamas government came under strain in the Gaza Strip. 
A Palestinian security source said Interior Ministry police had briefly exchanged fire with Abbas’s presidential guard near the Foreign Ministry in Gaza. No one was hurt.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking after meeting Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the international community should try to put together in the coming weeks a package of assistance to help the moderate leader.
Internal fighting, already at its worst level in years, escalated after Abbas called on Saturday for fresh elections, a move intended to break political deadlock with the Hamas Islamists and get Western sanctions on their government lifted.
A truce deal was struck late on Sunday but sporadic violence soon broke out again in impoverished Gaza.
“As I told you in my speech, I am determined to go back to the people,” Abbas said in a joint news conference with Blair.
“We have been in a crisis for nine months. People cannot wait for long. People are suffering from the economic, social and security situation.”
Abbas insisted his Fatah movement was still open to the formation of a unity government of technocrats, saying in prepared remarks that this was the “best way forward.”
The West has sought to bolster Abbas, who favors a two-state solution to end conflict with Israel.
The Hamas Islamists seek the Jewish state’s destruction and have struggled to govern since taking office in March under the weight of Western sanctions that were imposed because of their refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence.
Blair said the package of assistance, to go through Abbas’s office, would include reconstruction and development aid. He did not give details.
“If the international community really means what it says about supporting people who share the vision of a two-state solution, who are moderate, who are prepared to shoulder their responsibilities, then now is the time for the international community to respond,” Blair said.
“I believe this is so critical and urgent over the coming weeks.”
Blair, on a drive to revive Middle East peace negotiations, will hold talks later with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Hamas, which surprised the once dominant Fatah to win elections in January, has said it would boycott new polls.
“Such a move would cast doubt on the entire legality of the Palestinian governmental system,” the movement’s supreme leader Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile in Damascus, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview.
“If civil war were really to erupt, it would not be our fault. Hamas will do all it can to avoid it.” 
Officials from Hamas and Fatah were expected to meet on Monday to try to cement the Gaza cease-fire. Previous deals to end internal fighting this year have quickly collapsed. 
In other violence in the strip, Palestinian medics and security sources said a school student had been wounded in a brief gunfight between members of Hamas and Fatah in Gaza City, while unknown gunmen had abducted a Fatah loyalist. 
Fatah blamed Hamas, which had no immediate comment. 
Forces loyal to Hamas and Fatah fought street and rooftop gunbattles across Gaza on Sunday in which at least three people were killed and 20 wounded.

TITLE: Search Party Finds Body Of Missing Mountain Climber
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HOOD RIVER, Oregon —  A missing climber found dead in a snow cave on Mount Hood was identified as a Dallas man who had placed a distress call to relatives a little more than a week ago, a person close to the family said Monday. 
Searchers found the cave Sunday near the spot located by cell phone signals traced from Kelly James, who made a four-minute call to his family Dec. 10 just below the summit, said Jessica Nunez, a spokeswoman for the climber’s family.
On Monday, a recovery team was expected to retrieve the body, which remained on the mountain over night because darkness made it too dangerous to retrieve. The search for two other climbers also was to resume on the treacherous north side of Oregon’s highest mountain.
The discovery of James’ body brought a sad conclusion to a long week of anxious optimism in the search for three men on the 11,239-foot mountain.
Family members had relied on intense religious faith along with confidence that the extensive mountaineering experience of the trio would save them from a week of blizzard storms and single-digit temperatures that kept search teams and helicopters at bay.
James, 48, had told his family that his climbing party was in trouble and that Brian Hall, 37, also of Dallas, and Jerry “Nikko” Cooke, 36, of New York City, had headed back down, apparently for help. James may have been injured.

TITLE: A Chance For Sheva To Shine
AUTHOR: By Mitch Phillips
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Performing well in the League Cup was probably not high on Andriy Shevchenko’s list of priorities when he joined Chelsea but the low-key competition has attained an unexpected importance for the struggling striker.
The competition has been generally shunned by the Premier League’s leading managers in recent seasons, although this year it appears to have regained some status with stronger lineups being used.
Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho has a soft spot for it, the club’s 2005 win in Cardiff being his first trophy with the club, and said he would use Wednesday’s quarter-final trip to Newcastle United as a chance for Shevchenko to play himself into form.
The Ukrainian has struggled since his $58.72 million pre-season arrival from AC Milan, with only three league goals and one in the Champions League, and is far from the player who was the scourge of Serie A for seven years.
In the last few weeks he has been relegated to lumbering late appearances from the subsitutes’ bench, having been completely outshone by fellow striker Didier Drogba.
Mourinho, however, is not about to give up on the most prolific scorer in Champions League history and a man he respects highly.
“I think against Newcastle he will play from the beginning and will have the chance to show me he deserves to be back in the team,” Mourinho said after his side’s late 3-2 comeback win at Everton on Sunday.
“It’s a great game to play — stadium, opponent, everything is good and he has a chance now to perform.
“He came on against Newcastle and Everton (the last two league games) and participated and helped to change the results.
“I want more from him but I want to say that a great man is there, a team man is there and because of that we believe he can come back to his best.”
Chelsea won the League Cup for the third time in 2005 but have some way to go to match Liverpool’s tally of seven. The Merseysiders host Arsenal on Tuesday in a quarter-final clash between the third and fourth-placed sides in the Premier League.
However, with both teams also going strong in the Champions League and a busy Christmas schedule to come, their Anfield clash could have a reserve team look about it.
Southend United plays an on form Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday.

TITLE: Plyushenko Slips On Home Ice as Joubert Takes Victory
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Olympic champion Yevgeny Plyushenko endured a disappointing return to action, as France’s Brian Joubert won his first Grand Prix final Saturday in St. Petersburg to establish himself as the top contender for next month’s European championship crown. 
South Korean teenager Kim Yu-na upset the favorites to win the women’s title for her maiden victory, whilst former world champions Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo of China signaled their return to the top by winning the pairs.
Bulgaria’s world champions, Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski, came from behind to clinch the ice dance gold. 
With Plyushenko taking a year off following his triumph in Turin and world titleholder Stephane Lambiel failing to qualify for the final, Joubert outclassed the injury-hit field despite an error-riddled free program. “I’m happy that I’ve won but it was very, very difficult,” Joubert said.
The 2004 European champion first put a hand to the ice on his opening quadruple toe loop, then tripled his next quad and finally fell on another attempted quadruple jump. 
The Frenchman still scored an impressive 233.46 points to beat an ailing Daisuke Takahashi by almost nine points, with fellow Japanese Nobunari Oda finishing third with 216.86. 
Kim, making her senior debut this season after winning the world junior title in March, beat defending champion and fellow 16-year-old, Mao Asada, by almost 12 points while another Japanese, Miki Ando, slipped from second to fifth after a terrible free skate. 
“The Japanese skaters are very strong ... [so] this is a great result for me. I still can’t believe it,” said the Korean. 
Asada, who was too young to compete at this year’s Turin Olympics, was the favorite after posting the highest score in women’s figure skating to win in Nagano two weeks ago. 
She led after Friday’s short program but crashed to the ice twice during the free skate. 
Shen and Zhao completed a clean, if not spectacular, free program to earn 203.19 points, just short of their best score when they won the final two years ago in Beijing. 
“We had a disappointing Olympics when I was struggling with my ankle injury, so we were really determined to do well this season and finish our skating career on top,” Zhao said. 
Shen and Zhao, who were third in Turin, beat Germans Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy by more than 22 points, with another Chinese couple, Olympic silver medalists Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao, dropping from second to third, and with Russia’s former world and European champions Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov finishing last. 
In the ice dance, Denkova and Staviski overtook Canadians Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, who were leading after Friday’s original dance, when Dubreuil lost her balance while performing a tricky twizzle sequence Saturday. 
Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin finished third with their best showing in major international competition.

TITLE: Music Producer Laid to Rest
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISTANBUL, Turkey — Kid Rock joined Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and hundreds of other mourners Monday at the funeral of Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder of Atlantic Records. 
Ertegun — who counted Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones among the stars signed to his label — died on Dec. 14 at age 83, days after falling and suffering a head injury at a Rolling Stones concert in New York City. He later slipped into a coma.
The Turkish-born Ertegun was buried at an ancestral family site near a Muslim religious lodge on the Asian side of the city following a religious service.
Gul praised Ertegun as a man who had done much to promote Turkey’s image.
“Nobody has, or ever will, do what he did for Turkey in the United States,” Gul said. “He has left a large void.”
“The one thing he loved more than music was Turkey,” the state-run Anatolia news agency quoted Lyor Cohen, chief executive of Warner Music Group, as saying.
Kid Rock said: “I have met many people, been to many places and seen many things, but he was definitely the best,” according to Anatolia.
“He could not sing but he was music personified,” the agency quoted the singer as saying.

TITLE: Reformist Candidates Do Well in Iranian Poll
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran — Opponents of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took an early lead in key races in Iran’s local elections, according to partial results announced Monday, with moderate conservatives winning control of councils across Iran. 
If the final results hold — especially in the bellwether capital, Tehran — it will be an embarrassment to Ahmadinejad, whose anti-Israeli rhetoric and unyielding position on Iran’s nuclear program have provoked condemnation in the West and moves toward sanctions at the UN Security Council.
A freelance Iranian journalist of reformist sympathies, Iraj Jamshidi, described the vote as “a blow to Ahmadinejad,” who was elected in 2005.
“After a year, Iranians have seen the consequences of the extremist policies employed by Ahmadinejad. Now, they have said a big ‘no’ to him,” said Jamshidi.
The incomplete results announced by the Interior Ministry suggested that the winners were mostly moderate conservatives opposed to the hardline president, rather than reformists. 
In the key race for Tehran, candidates supporting Mayor Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, a moderate conservative opposed to the president, had taken the lead.
The Interior Ministry said only about 500,000 votes had been counted so far in Tehran, about 20 percent of the expected turnout. Final results, however, were released from all municipal districts outside the capital.
In the southern historical city of Shiraz, as well as in the provincial capitals of Rasht, northern Iran, and Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, not one pro-Ahmadinejad candidate won a seat on the city council.
The partial results also indicated, separately, that reformers might be making a partial comeback, after having been suppressed in the parliamentary elections of 2004 when many of their best candidates were barred from running.
In the elections for the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of 86 senior clerics that monitors Iran’s supreme leader and chooses his successor, opponents of the president also appeared to have done well.
Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who lost to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election runoff, won a Tehran seat on the Assembly of Experts with a high number of votes.
By contrast, an ally of the president, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, won an assembly seat with a low vote toll. Yazdi is regarded as Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor.
Turnout overall was more than 60 percent — substantially higher than that of the 2002 local elections when turnout was about 50 percent, and marginally above that of the presidential elections last year when turnout was 59 percent.

TITLE: Channel One Cup Goes Russia’s Way in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Leonid Chizhov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Former NHL player Alexei Morozov scored two power-play goals Sunday to help Russia beat the Czech Republic 4-1 in the Channel One Cup. 
Neither team managed to score in the first period, but Petr Schastlivyi scored off Igor Volkov’s pass at 1:25 into the second period for Russia. It was Schastlivyi’s fifth goal in three Euro Hockey Tour events this season. 
“We expected them [the Czechs] to play defensively,” Russia coach Vyacheslav Bykov said. “They had several scoring chances but our goalie played perfectly and then we managed to open the scoring.” 
Former Pittsburgh Penguins winger Morozov made it 2-0 on a power play midway through the second. 
“We stuck to our defensive tactics in the first period, but we slowed down in the second and could not challenge our opponent,” assistant Czech Republic coach Pavel Marek said. 
In the third period, Nikolai Kulemin scored from the circle and Morozov added one more from close range to make it 4-0 with 10 minutes to play. 
Jaroslav Bednar scored a consolation goal for the Czech Republic on a power play about a minute later. 
The tournament is the third in the European Hockey Tour and is being played at the Khodynskoye Pole arena, which will host the world championship next year. 
Russia won the tournament in Moscow last year and also captured the Euro Hockey Tour title, edging Olympic champion Sweden in the final.
The result completed a good weekend for the host, which beat Finland 3-0 on Saturday. 
Schastlivy converted a short-handed breakaway in the second period as Russia dominated play and outshot Finland 36-18. 
Center Schastlivy opened the scoring 18 seconds into Finland’s power play at 34:54 when he intercepted the puck in the center, passed defender Pasi Puistola and beat goalie Petri Venanen with a shot into the top left corner. 
It was Schastlivy’s fourth goal in the Euro Hockey tour this season. 
Defender Ilya Nikulin made it 2-0 with a wrist shot at 47:06 and winger Morozov added another goal on a power play with one minute left. 
Russia is unbeaten in two previous events — the Ceska Pojistovna Cup in the Czech Republic in September and the Karjala Cup in Finland in November.
Nevertheless, Russia failed to score in its opener against Sweden on Thursday and lost in a penalty shootout 1-0. 
Also on Saturday, World and Olympic champion Sweden beat the Czech Republic 7-5, with Karl Fabricius and Tobias Enstrom each scoring twice.

TITLE: Gates  Becomes Defense Secretary
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Robert Gates was sworn in Monday as U.S. defense secretary at a crucial juncture in the Iraq war, a conflict that cost Donald H. Rumsfeld his job and likely will define Gates’ Pentagon tenure. 
Gates took the oath of office in a private event at the White House, and later planned to attend a public swearing-in ceremony at the Pentagon, where the military brass and senior civilian officials are eager to see what changes he may bring.
When President Bush announced last month that he was switching Pentagon chiefs, he said he wanted “fresh perspective” on Iraq, acknowledging the current approach was not working well enough. Rumsfeld was a chief architect of the war strategy and still defends the decision to invade in March 2003.
Gates, 63, takes office amid a wide-ranging administration review of its approach to the war. Bush said last week that he would wait until January to announce his new strategy, to give Gates a chance to offer advice.
Besides the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates faces other immediate challenges. One is the Army’s proposal that it be allowed to grow by tens of thousands of soldiers, given the strains it is enduring from the two wars. Rumsfeld had resisted increasing the size of the Army or the Marine Corps; Gates’ view is unknown.
Gates said at his Senate confirmation hearing Dec. 5 that he intends to travel to Iraq “very soon” after being sworn in, so he could consult with senior U.S. commanders about how to adjust U.S. strategy. He also raises some eyebrows by saying, when asked whether the U.S. was winning in Iraq, “No, sir.”
It’s not yet clear whether Gates intends to immediately shake up the Pentagon by firing generals or replacing senior civilian officials. He has asked Gordon England, the deputy defense secretary, to remain, but some have already announced their departures, including the top intelligence official, Stephen Cambone.
With years of public service under Republican and Democratic presidents, Gates has critics but also many admirers.
“He’s extremely capable,” said Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army general and one of Rumsfeld’s loudest critics. John Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries Association of America, called Gates a “breath of fresh air.”
Rumsfeld told Pentagon employees at a going-away ceremony that he expected Gates to do a good job.
At his confirmation hearing, Gates won plaudits for his candor.
Urged by Senator Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is among the most vocal critics of the Iraq war strategy, to “be a standup person” with the courage to push a war policy worthy of the sacrifices endured by troops and their families, Gates assured the committee that he had no intention of going to the Pentagon to be a “bump on a log.”
He pledged to speak candidly and boldly to the president and Congress about what he thinks needs to be done in Iraq. He was a member of the Iraq Study Group that spent nine months assessing the situation in Iraq and produced recommendations that include phasing out most U.S. combat troops by 2008.

TITLE: Castro Recovering, U.S. Politicians Say
AUTHOR: By Anthony Boadle
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HAVANA — Fidel Castro is not terminally ill and will make a public appearance shortly, but is unlikely to return to governing Cuba on a day-to-day basis, Cuban government officials told a visiting delegation of members of the U.S. Congress. 
“The party line is that Fidel is coming back. He does not have cancer,” Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat, told reporters on Sunday.
But Representative William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat and one of the leaders of the delegation, told The New York Times that he had concluded after discussions with officials that the 80-year-old Cuban leader, who has undergone intestinal surgery, would not return to running his country on a day-to-day basis.
“The Cubans were empathetic, and I believe them, that Fidel does not have cancer and that the illness he does have is not terminal,” Delahunt told the Times after returning to Washington.
Castro, who has not been seen in public since July 26, is planning to make a public appearance shortly, and if he did resume a political role, it would probably be setting broad policy, Delahunt told the newspaper.
“The functioning of the government, that transition has already occurred,” it quoted him as saying.
If Castro reappears, “this will not be Fidel sitting at his desk,” Delahunt told the Times. “This will be Fidel Castro is alive and recovering.”
Castro did not appear at celebrations of his 80th birthday this month, prompting rumors that he had died or was near death.
The 10-member U.S. congressional delegation, was the largest to go to Cuba since Castro’s 1959 revolution.
The three-day visit was aimed at improving ties between Havana and Washington. But the delegation’s efforts to launch a new dialogue with Cuba on the assumption that Castro was out ofthe picture were rebuffed by officials who insisted he was recovering.
“What dialogue?” one Cuban official told Reuters. “The ball has been in the U.S. court for a long time.”
The American legislators also failed to get a requested meeting with acting President Raul Castro, who took over the government temporarily on July 31 after his brother’s surgery.
Cuba has closely guarded information on Fidel Castro’s medical condition. But his closest ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has said that although Castro does not have cancer, he is fighting a “great battle” against a “very serious” illness.
The Communist Party newspaper reported on Saturday that Fidel Castro had telephoned several Cuban lawmakers.
The visiting U.S. legislators, who favor easing restrictions on trade and travel to Cuba, said they were told that with or without Fidel Castro, the island nation would continue to be a one-party communist state.
“Cuban officials made every effort to convince us that ... the potential demise and health issues of Fidel Castro do not change the nature of the government or the policies of this country,” said Representative Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican.
The delegation met separately with the three most senior Cuban officials in charge of policy toward the United States — Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, the ruling Communist Party international relations secretary Fernando Remirez de Esternoz and Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba’s National Assembly.
McGovern said that, despite assurances that Fidel Castro is recovering, the Cuban leader’s advanced age meant that even if he did return it would only be for a short time. 
“It would be a mistake to sit around and not do anything,” to change U.S. policy, which he called a “Cold War relic” that had failed to bring change to Cuba in almost half a century.

TITLE: Man Held For Prostitute Murders
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Police arrested a 37-year-old man on Monday on suspicion of murdering five prostitutes in one of Britain’s most dramatic serial killings of recent times. 
The naked bodies of five women, who all worked as prostitutes in the town of Ipswich in eastern England, were found dumped in the countryside over a period of 11 days this month, dominating television and newspaper headlines.
“He has been arrested on suspicion of murdering all five women — Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls,” Police Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull told a news conference.
Gull said the arrested man lived in Felixstowe, a port town about 19 kilometers southeast of Ipswich.
Police declined to name the man but said he had been arrested at around 7:20 a.m. and was in custody at a local police station, where he was to be questioned later on Monday.
Supermarket worker Tom Stephens, 37, told the Sunday Mirror newspaper he had been questioned four times by police and feared he could be arrested as he had known all the women and had no alibis. But he strenuously denied any involvement in the deaths.
The five killings have prompted a murder investigation on a scale unprecedented in recent British history.
The case evokes that of the 19th-century prostitute killer Jack the Ripper, who was never found, and Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, who killed 13 women, mainly prostitutes, in northern England between 1975 and 1980.
The investigation began on Dec. 2 when 25-year-old Adams’ body was found in a stream. Police discovered 19-year-old Nicol’s body in the same stream on Dec. 8.
Alderton, 24, who was three months pregnant, was strangled and Clennell, 24, was killed by “compression to the neck,” police said. Nicholls, 29, was the fifth victim.
The killer has been dubbed the Suffolk Strangler, although the precise way all the women died has yet to be established.
Police have drafted in hundreds of extra officers to help pore through 10,000 hours of surveillance television footage and thousands of calls from the public responding to appeals for information.
Sex workers have been urged to stay off the streets but some are ignoring warnings and still working, many to feed drug addictions. The five dead women were all drug users.
Prostitution is legal in Britain but advertising sexual services, streetwalking, brothels and kerb crawling — driving slowly through a neighborhood to ask women for sex — are all against the law.
The case has sparked calls for better protection for prostitutes, or the legalization of brothels so that women do not have to solicit for sex on the street.

TITLE: Indian Politician’s Son Guilty of Killing Model
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW DELHI — The son of an influential member of India’s ruling Congress party was found guilty on Monday of murdering a model in 1999, in a retrial of a controversial case which has transfixed the country. 
Jessica Lall, 34, was tending the bar at an exclusive party in New Delhi when she was shot dead by Manu Sharma, the son of a Congress party politician, apparently for refusing to serve him a drink after the bar had closed.
Sharma had been acquitted in February, raising widespread protests from the public and media who saw the initial verdict as evidence the rich and powerful are beyond the reach of justice. The Delhi High Court ordered a retrial after the outcry.
“We have no hesitation in holding Sidharth Vashisht alias Manu Sharma guilty of the offence of murder,” a two-judge bench told a packed courtroom.
Sharma is the son of Venod Sharma, a former federal minister from the northern state of Haryana.
The decision came as India’s courts seemed to be flexing muscles with a series of verdicts in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, a former federal minister was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in a conspiracy to kidnap and murder his former aide. Shibu Soren quit his post of coal minister when the court handed him a guilty verdict.
An opposition politician and former international cricketer, Navjot Singh Sidhu, was sentenced to three years in jail for culpable homicide for killing a man in a road-rage attack 18 years ago.
According to the prosecution in the Jessica Lall case, Sharma took out a pistol when he was refused a drink and said “I will do it my way” before shooting once in the air and then firing a single bullet at Lall.
But the prosecution’s case fell apart during the first trial when a key witness, budding actor Shayan Munshi, retracted a statement linking Sharma to the shooting.
Sentences will be announced on Wednesday.

TITLE: Boffins Say Brains Can Grow Back After Boozing
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Excessive drinking can damage brain cells but the brain can repair some of the harm, a team of international researchers said on Monday. 
But they warned alcoholics should get sober as quickly as possible because the longer they continue to drink heavily, the less likely their brains will be able to regenerate.
“The core message from this study is that, for alcoholics, abstinence pays off and enables the brain to regain some substance and to perform better,” said Dr. Andreas Bartsch, of the University of Wuerzburg, in Germany.
Slurred speech, blurred vision and an inability to walk without swaying can occur after a few drinks but chronic alcohol abuse can cause more lasting damage and poor general health.
Research in animals has shown that alcohol can disrupt the development of new brain cells in adults. Heavy drinking during pregnancy can also affect the development of the baby’s brain.
Bartsch and scientists from Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Italy uncovered the brain’s regenerative ability by measuring the volume, form and function of the brains of 15 alcoholic men and women before and after they stopped drinking to see how much they changed over seven weeks.
Using sophisticated scanning techniques they showed that after 38 days without a drink the brain volume of the patients increased by an average of nearly 2 percent.