SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1246 (12), Friday, February 16, 2007
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TITLE: Yabloko 
To Appeal Election ‘Hypocrisy’
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Battling to get back on the ballot, Yabloko has sent an appeal to the Supreme Court seeking to reverse the decisions of the St. Petersburg Election Commission and the Central Election Commission that led to the opposition party being expelled from the forthcoming elections to the city’s Legislative Assembly.
Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky said the verdict of the Central Election Commission has turned the March 11 elections into a farce and accused commission’s members of hypocrisy. 
“We believe the commission was following a political order from Governor Valentina Matviyenko, with the full support of the presidential administration — and perhaps even President Vladimir Putin personally,” Yavlinsky said on Tuesday. “Elections where the strongest opposition party is denied participation, and several political clones are competing for seats, are pseudo-elections — no better than those we had back in the Soviet era.”
Alexander Veshnyakov, head of the Central Election Commission, denied political bias or pressure.
“Yabloko simply had too many invalid signatures,” he said. “If we ignored the flawed lists and allowed them to enter the election campaign we would immediately be accused of acting out of political expediency, rather than sticking to the law.”
Veshnyakov will travel to St. Petersburg next week to hold a series of meetings with political parties and representatives of the local election commission.
The St. Petersburg Election Commission expelled the party from the race on the grounds that 11.97 percent of the signatures presented to the commission to register Yabloko for the election did not meet the required standards. The decision of the Central Election Commission later ruled that only 10.43 percent of the signatures were invalid but the verdict was no help to Yabloko.
According to Russian law, the amount of invalid signatures is limited to 10 percent of those on the list. 
In real terms, Yabloko exceeded the norm by 34 signatures.
St. Petersburgers Margarita Korovyakina and Natalya Kravchenko were among the 34 voters whose signatures were declared invalid. Experts felt their signatures resembled one another.
Both women traveled to Moscow to prove their signatures valid and defend their right to support Yabloko. But members of the Central Election Commission refused to listen to them. 
“The commission members even organized a vote on which evidence they would prefer to judge the validity of the signatures: the conclusions of experts or the live testimony of the people whose signatures were questioned,” said Mikhail Amosov, a Yabloko lawmaker at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. “Five people voted for accepting the statements from Korovyakina and Kravchenko but the majority of eight members [on the 13-strong panel] decided to ignore the people who had traveled all the way to Moscow.”
Most signatures were declared invalid on the grounds that the writing of the dates on them was similar enough for the experts to brand them fake. 
But there is one confusing detail.
“The Moscow experts had no problem with most of the 300 signatures that the St. Petersburg experts had branded invalid,” said Sergei Popov, deputy head of Yabloko. “But the Muscovites said some other signatures were fake. With such drastic differences in opinion, it is painfully obvious these claims are not credible.” 
Yabloko politicians are now pinning their hopes on a legal appeal as they feel that a judge will be obliged to accept evidence to a standard not required by the election authorities. 
At least forty voters, whose signatures were turned down for various reasons, are preparing appeals to the Supreme Court, said Yabloko lawyer Olga Pokrovskaya.
Pensioner Vitaly Sokolov, 78, became indignant when the Central Election Commission refused to accept his signature on the grounds that the number of his apartment building as given on the list was different from data provided by the Federal Migration Service.
“The trick is that the Migration Service for some reason has it wrong,” Sokolov said, waving his passport and a photograph of his house with a close-up of the street sign on it. “They simply have an address that does not exist in St. Petersburg in principle.” 
Vitaly Sokolov lives in Building No.1, 46 Svetlanovsky Prospekt. This address is also typed in his passport. But the Migration Service database does not mention Building No. 1.
The Central Election Commission invalidated Sokolov’s signature despite the fact that Sokolov himself, his passport and a photograph of his house show that the Migration Service database contains a mistake.
“I have lived in this house for the past 35 years, and I find it outrageous that these bureaucrats prefer a piece of paper to the real person,” Sokolov said. “This can only be done on purpose, to wipe Yabloko out — it exposes the shameful, murky deals that officials make.”
Amosov pointed out that the officials did not need to check people’s addresses with the Migration Service database as there is a centralised database created specifically for elections in Russia.
“This database, Prior [also known as GAS-Vybory], has Mr. Sokolov’s address right,” he said. “But the officials had a task to fulfil, namely to block the opposition party from the elections.”

TITLE: Estonia Votes To Remove Statue
AUTHOR: By Jari Tanner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TALLINN, Estonia — Estonian lawmakers on Thursday narrowly approved a bill calling for the removal of a Soviet war memorial from their capital, ignoring Moscow’s warning of “irreversible consequences” for relations between the two countries.
In a 46-44 vote, lawmakers in the 101-member assembly approved the Law on Forbidden Structures, which prohibits the public display of monuments that glorify the five-decade Soviet occupation of Estonia. 
The Bronze Soldier, a six-foot statue in downtown Tallinn, has become a rallying point for Estonia’s ethnic Russians, who make up about one-third of the Baltic country’s 1.3 million residents. The statue was erected in 1947 as a tribute to Red Army soldiers who were killed fighting Nazi Germany.
Many Estonians see it as a bitter reminder of the hardships and repression they endured under decades of Soviet occupation. For Russians, the Red Army’s crucial role in defeating Nazi Germany remains a cherished point of national pride.
Plans to remove the statue have infuriated Moscow, which accuses Estonia and neighboring Latvia of discriminating against Russian-speakers.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said passing the bill was a “grave mistake, a sacrilegious action which is unacceptable in today’s Europe,” Russian media reported.
Before the vote, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov warned that the Law on Forbidden Structures would cause “irreversible consequences” for Estonian-Russian relations, Interfax reported.
Marko Mihkelson, a lawmaker from the center-right IRL union, hailed the vote, saying it would serve as a reminder that Russia is not able to interfere in Estonia’s internal affairs.
“But, of course, it’s rather tragic that such issues still play a big part in our lives,” he said.
Meanwhile, Estonia’s Russians have vowed to defend the monument.
“Our government has embarked on the path of fascist Germany,” said Dmitry Linter, head of an informal group created last year to protect the Bronze Soldier from vandals. 
“Now we will call upon all European governments to support us in our struggle against the anti-constitutional actions of Estonian politicians.”
Soviet forces took over the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940. They were driven out by Nazi forces a year later, but reoccupied the Baltics in 1944 and incorporated them into the Soviet Union.
The three countries regained independence in 1991 amid the Soviet collapse, and joined NATO and the European Union in 2004.
Lawmakers added a clause to the bill calling on the government to dismantle the monument within 30 days after the president approves the law.
However, it was unclear whether President Toomas Hendrik Ilves would do so. On Wednesday his spokesman, Toomas Sildam, said Ilves was concerned the bill may violate the constitution.

TITLE: Reports: Russia May Exit Arms Treaty
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A top Russian general said Thursday that Moscow may unilaterally drop out of a key Soviet-era arms reduction treaty with the United States that banned medium-range nuclear missiles, Russian news agencies reported.
General Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the military’s General Staff, said Russia could pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan in 1987. The decision would depend, he said, on whether the U.S. completed plans to deploy components of a missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic — plans that have drawn sharp criticism from President Vladimir Putin.
“We shall see what our American partners do,” Baluyevsky was quoted by Interfax, ITAR-Tass and RIA Novosti as saying. “Their actions to deploy missile defense sites in Europe are inexplicable.”
Putin has said he does not trust U.S. claims that the planned European missile defense system was intended to counter threats from Iran, and warned that Russia would take retaliatory measures.
At a security conference in Munich on Saturday, Putin said the arms reduction treaty was outdated, and that many nations had since developed their own medium-range missiles eliminated by Russia and the United States.
The statement was part of a speech in which he blasted U.S. policy in unusually blunt terms and said that Moscow views NATO’s expansion to its borders as a threat.
Relations between Washington and Moscow have been strained by Russia’s opposition to what Putin called an “overly aggressive American foreign policy.” Moscow has been particularly critical of the U.S. intervention in Iraq.
The U.S., meanwhile, is concerned about what it sees as the erosion of political freedoms in Russia, and by Moscow’s alleged use of its vast oil and natural gas reserves to reward friends and punish foes in some of its former Soviet satellite states.
The 1987 treaty was hailed at the time as a breakthrough that helped ease East-West tensions and end the Cold War. Under its provisions, the Soviet Union eliminated 1,850 missiles with ranges of between 300 to 3,400 miles. The United States destroyed about 850 of its missiles.
Both nations still maintain huge arsenals of nuclear weapons ready for use on short notice. According to the Web site of the Nuclear Information Project, the U.S. has 5,735 deployed nuclear weapons and Russia has 5,830.
Baluyevsky said the treaty allows both Russia and the United States to walk away from it at any time. Following on Putin’s remarks, he said the deployment of medium-range missiles by many other nations provided a strong argument for leaving the treaty.
Yuri Solomonov, the head of the Moscow-based missile manufacturer that designed and built the latest Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles, said it was ready to resume the production of medium-range missiles if such a decision was made by the Kremlin, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

TITLE: Hate Murder Retrial Stalls
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The St. Petersburg City Court on Thursday entered the third day of the retrial of the suspected killers of Congolese student Roland Epassak, 29, who was stabbed to death in September 2005, but proceedings were postponed for an unspecified duration, pending fresh evidence as new defense witnesses took the stand.
While defendants Andrei Gerasimov, Yury Gromov, Andrei Olenev and Dmitry Orlov, aged between 19 and 26, pleaded not guilty, the court heard testimonies from three defense witnesses including a girl and two other students from Congo, who were friends of Epassak’s. 
The Prosecutor’s Office was not available for comment Thursday because its chief spokeswoman Yelena Ordinskaya was said to be on sick leave.
But as prosecutors attempted to heal the wounds of the July fiasco when the first attempt to prosecute the suspects was declared a mistrial amid allegations of the jury’s incompetence, a juror in the new 12-member panel was dismissed after the court learned he had a criminal record. Prosecutors said the retrial should be dismissed because the jury is unfit.
Governor Valentina Matviyenko also went public to condemn the jury and challenged prosecutors to take the case further amid wide-spread allegations that her city was becoming Russia’s leader in hate murders. 
Epassak’s murder was the first in what would become a series of hate killings that rocked St Petersburg.

TITLE: Bush Downplays Rift With Russia
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday brushed aside strong criticism of U.S. policies by President Vladimir Putin, saying there were many issues on which the two countries could work together.
As examples, Bush told a news conference that the United States and Russia had been able to cooperate in efforts to rein in Iran’s nuclear program and in the six-party North Korea nuclear disarmament talks.
Putin lashed out at U.S. foreign policy over the weekend in comments that reflected a growing chill in ties between the former Cold War foes, who are at odds over issues ranging from U.S. military plans for Europe to the state of democracy in Russia.
Bush acknowledged that disagreements persist. “I tried to convince him that NATO is positive,” that democracies on a country’s borders are a “good thing to have,” Bush said, referring to his Russian counterpart. 
In Moscow on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the United States to promote a resolution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program by showing the same “flexibility” that helped produce North Korea’s agreement to halt its atomic programs, news agencies reported.

TITLE: Club Gathers Together Foreign Women
AUTHOR: By Jennifer Davis
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The International Women’s Club will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a gala event to be held at the Yusupov Palace on March 10. Originally conceived as a support and networking group for foreign women living in St. Petersburg, the IWC’s first goal is to help recent arrivals navigate this beautiful, but bewildering city.
“Coming to this city for the first time, when you don’t speak the language, can make you feel lost,” said IWC Communications Secretary, Steffi Muller. “You often need help.” 
Muller, who arrived here three years ago with her husband, a project manager for Ford Motors, hails from Germany. Like many members of the IWC, Muller has previous experience of living abroad, having moved here from Brazil. 
“St. Petersburg is a very beautiful, interesting city,” she said. “But it can be challenging to live here.”
Founded in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, the IWC is a non-profit organization comprising of both international and Russian women which aims to welcome and assist all English-speaking, international women and to foster communication with Russian nationals.
Current membership numbers 140 women from over 50 countries. The majority are foreign nationals but club membership is also open to Russian women married to foreign men and a few select English-speaking Russian women whose memberships are sponsored by current members. 
According to the club’s charter, Russian women may make up 10 percent of the membership. The St. Petersburg IWC is entirely independent and is not affiliated with any other International Women’s Club worldwide. 
One way the IWC helps women settle and start functioning in St. Petersburg is by producing an invaluable, constantly-updated resource called the “IWC Tips Book.” 
With useful information on everything from visa support to English-speaking tailors, many grateful members refer to it as their “bible.” 
IWC president, Jennifer Gaspar, is a U.S. citizen who moved here three years ago from San Francisco, California. Gaspar works as a philanthropic advisor to international foundations and as a management consultant for Russian and Ukrainian non-governmental organizations. Her move to St. Petersburg was inspired by meeting her now husband, Ivan Pavlov, who visited San Francisco for his work in 2001. Gaspar joined the club in 2006. 
“I’ve met a lot of really great women through the IWC,” said Gaspar. “I found that I had a lot in common with many of them.” 
Gaspar believes that the members themselves direct the group. 
“We are a diverse community. Therefore, we will have diverse ideas,” she said. “I hope to find out more about what the women themselves want from the IWC and try to create a club for all of its members.” 
Membership in the IWC has grown continuously over the past twenty years, not least thanks to the internet. 
“It’s so much easier to get the information out now, said Muller. “In the past, hardcopies of newsletters were distributed by fax or available at certain hotels around town. With the constant turnover of members it’s important to keep getting the information out.” 
The IWC sends out a weekly events newsletter and a monthly bulletin to all its members. 
The IWC engages in fundraising for local organizations and its largest event is an annual Winter Fair held in the weeks before Christmas. The cornerstone of the Winter Fair is a raffle, where ticket holders can win prizes donated by various local and international companies such as IKEA and KLM Airlines. This year the Winter Fair raised $23,000 which was distributed to several orphanages in and around town.
The IWC is also home to several special activity groups that meet separately on a weekly or monthly basis. Peter’s Tea is one of the most popular events. Held every Thursday in a member’s home, Peter’s Tea is a purely social affair, where members get together to meet and greet each other over tea and biscuits. Members and guests pay a small fee which is later donated to charity. Other interest groups include arts and crafts clubs, local sightseeing tours, photography clubs, English conversation clubs, and even a ballet class for adults. 
“With all the activity groups, we try to find some kind of interest group for everybody,” said Muller.  “We want everyone to make contacts and friends.” 

The next general meeting of the IWC will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at the Novotel City Center. Registration begins at 10 a.m. Entrance is free for members. Non-members 200 rubles (later to be debited from the general membership fee if the participant decides to join). Www.stpetersburg-iwc.com

TITLE: Inteko Sues Forbes Over Cover Story
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Inteko, the construction giant owned by billionaire Yelena Baturina, said Wednesday that it was suing the publisher and editor of Forbes’ Russian edition over a December cover story about the company.
Inteko is seeking only 106,500 rubles ($4,040) from each defendant, but the lawsuits could further discourage journalists from writing about sensitive topics involving large corporations, warned the author of the country’s law on mass media.
The lawsuit against the publisher, Axel Springer Russia, says the story contained erroneous information about company activities and incorrectly said it enjoyed the support of government agencies, Inteko said in a statement. Baturina is Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov’s wife.
Forbes editor Maxim Kashulinsky subsequently damaged Inteko’s reputation by saying in an interview that the company had “violated media legislation that banned censorship,” the statement said. Kashulinsky lashed out at Inteko after it demanded that Forbes change a headline on the cover of its December issue, which Forbes did.
Regina von Flemming, director of Axel Springer Russia, said by e-mail that the company had received the lawsuits but declined to comment further.
Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer representing both the publisher and editor, said the legal action was without merit and warned that Inteko faced public ridicule whether it won or lost. “It will lose either way,” he said. “Nothing is worse than making a laughingstock of yourself.”
After the publication of the story, Inteko asked Forbes to reveal which documents and sources it had used for the story. Inteko said it had filed suit because Forbes had refused. It also said the story had caused Baturina “sincere regret” because she had met several times with Forbes reporters and provided “exhaustive” answers to their questions.
As for Kashulinsky, it said he had accused the company of censorship even after the publisher had conceded that the headline was “a breach of journalist ethics.”
Kashulinsky said at the time that Inteko was unhappy about the entire story and that someone had leaked it to the company. He also threatened to resign if the story was not printed.
The 106,500 ruble compensation sought in each suit was calculated on the basis of 1 ruble for every copy of the magazine, Inteko spokesman Gennady Terebkov said.
He said the lawsuits were filed last week. The lawsuit against the magazine was filed in the Moscow Arbitration Court and the one against the editor in the Chertanovsky District Court. The courts have yet to schedule hearings.
News of the lawsuits came days after Baturina’s brother Viktor indicated that Inteko might get support from at least one government body: City Hall.
“If I said that Luzhkov didn’t play a part in Inteko’s activities, that would be wrong, just as it would be wrong if I said that Inteko became Inteko because of Luzhkov,” Baturin said in an interview published in Vedomosti on Monday.

TITLE: Ecologists Urge Putin to Save Sochi’s Wildlife
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The World Wildlife Fund has written to President Vladimir Putin in what it called a last-ditch attempt to stop the destruction of rare wildlife habitat to make way for Sochi’s 2014 Winter Olympics bid.
The International Olympic Committee is due to fly to Sochi next week to evaluate the Russian bid,  shortlisted alongside Salzburg, Austria and Pyeongchang, South Korea.
IOC inspectors may reject the bid if it is not changed to lessen the impact of planned construction work on the environment, home to wild bears and deer, the WWF told Putin.
“Letters to the government did not lead to any action and we wanted to warn the president that Sochi’s bid was in danger of failing,” Igor Chestin, director of WWF’s Russian operations, said Wednesday.
Changes in the law last year shifted control of the mountains and forests around Sochi to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and partially stripped it of national park status.
The ministry says it is necessary to develop the area for the Olympics as a ski resort, but ecologists say the real beneficiaries are business interests who want the land for lucrative resort projects.

(Reuters, 
SPT)

TITLE: Ford Employees Resume Work
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Production restarted on Thursday at U.S. car maker Ford’s plant near St Petersburg, one of the biggest in Russia owned by a foreign auto maker, after a one-day strike over pay and conditions.
“The employees have gone back to work. The assembly line restarted at midnight,” said Yekaterina Kulinenko, Ford Russia spokeswoman. “The daily production norm is 303 Ford Focus models. We will make up for lost production in due course.”
The strike marked a rare stirring of industrial unrest in Russia, as unions sought a greater share of the profits of eight years of fast economic growth, in a rapidly tightening job market. 
The strike comes at a time of booming sales for foreign carmakers in Russia. Ford is among the most successful, with total sales of 116,000 locally produced and imported vehicles in Russia last year. It plans to import 2,300 Ford Focus to cover the shortage of the model in Russia, where people wait for months for the cheap car.
Trade union officials were unavailable for comment, but late on Wednesday union leader Alexei Etmanov did not rule out a resumption of work and more negotiations with management.
Kulinenko said new talks were scheduled for Thursday.
She said that management’s latest proposal was a wage hike of 14-20 percent, payments for those who have worked for more than 5 years, an increase to 7,400 roubles ($280) in the bonus for having a baby, interest-free credits and other privileges. “We did not make any new proposals,” she said.
Assembly line workers typically earn 13,000-19,000 rubles ($490-$720) per month, which is above the national average wage in Russia. Annual inflation was 9 percent last year.
The plant produced 60,000 cars last year — mainly the Focus model — and had planned to increase output this year to 75,000 cars.

TITLE: Consultants Join Forces  To Unify the Standard
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Three of Russia’s largest real estate consultancies announced, Tuesday, the creation of the St. Petersburg Research Forum, an attempt to unify standards for real estate assessment in the city. 
Consultants at Colliers International, Jones Lang LaSalle and Knight Frank will join forces to develop a classification applicable to the city’s commercial real estate as well as to explain approaches to local market research approved by all major consultancies.
“We hope that these new standards will stimulate property owners to develop projects more professionally. That would improve the quality of construction and property development in St. Petersburg,” said Boris Yushenkov, general director of Colliers International in St. Petersburg.
A unified standard has become necessary because of the huge number of construction projects, including warehouses, office centers and shopping centers, that are due for completion in 2007 and 2008, the experts said.
According to Colliers, this year around 330,000 square meters of office space will be completed (A and B class), around 350,000 square meters of warehouses and around 700,000 square meters of shopping areas.
At the moment consultancies use various standards for property assessment. Just as Russian hotels might legitimately lay claim to any number of stars, property owners manipulate prices and rent rates, benefiting from disputes between consultancies over how a particular business center should be classified.
A significant number of local business centers do not meet international standards associated with their particular class. Office centers will be the first segment to be addressed. Warehouses and shopping centers will follow.
“Specialists from different spheres of real estate will take part in developing this new way of classifying St. Petersburg office centers,” said Yekaterina Vovk, consultant of strategic consulting and market research department at Jones Lang LaSalle.
A similar project has been undertaken by the Moscow Research Forum, an association founded last year by the “big five” consultancies (Knight Frank, Colliers, Jones Lang LaSalle, Noble Gibbons and Cushman & Wakefield & Stiles & Ryabokobylko). 
Members of the Moscow Research Forum benefit from the exchange of information and, as a result, produce more detailed market reports. 
Member companies meet quarterly to discuss the volume of new office space on offer, the amount rented and their classification.

TITLE: Court Dismisses Microsoft Piracy Case Against Principal
AUTHOR: By Hannah Gardner
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Russian court threw out a software piracy case against a school principal after former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev asked Microsoft Corp. to intervene and President Vladimir Putin said consumers shouldn’t be punished for copyright violations.
“The case was dismissed because the damages to Microsoft are insignificant,’’ the presiding judge in the case, Vera Barakina, said by phone from Perm, a Ural Mountains city 1,200 kilometers east of Moscow. The principal, Alexander Ponosov, was accused of installing illegal Microsoft software on his school’s computers.
The case made headlines across Russia, where bootleg computer programs, movies and music can be bought for a fraction of what licensed goods cost. It was also the subject of the first question Putin fielded during a three-hour news conference this month. Putin called the case “utter nonsense,’’ an opinion seconded by Gorbachev, who wrote an open letter to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates asking him to get involved.
Ponosov plans to appeal today’s ruling because it only cleared him of piracy and not of knowingly committing a crime, Barakina said. The piracy charge carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison and about $10,000 in fines, Barakina said.
“Our interest is not in prosecuting schools or teachers, it is in helping students develop the technology skills they need in the 21st century,’’ Microsoft said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. The Redmond, Washington-based company, which has 19 offices in Russia, didn’t send a representative to Ponosov’s hearing Thursday.
Russia is rated the world’s worst piracy market after China, according to a survey by the International Chamber of Commerce. The US cited Russia’s lax attitude toward piracy as one of the country’s main stumbling blocks to joining the World Trade Organization. The US agreed last year to support Russia’s membership in the global trade body, after more than a decade of talks.

TITLE: Gazprom Funds Nuclear Industry
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom, Russia’s natural-gas export monopoly, loaned Russia’s nuclear industry $1.1 billion last year and plans to further expand in the sector through a strategic agreement with uranium miner and fuel trader Tenex. 
Gazprom’s lending arm, Gazprombank, signed an accord with Tenex, also known as Techsnabexport, to advise the state-run company on how to increase its value, the companies said in a joint e-mailed statement Thursday. The bank opened a credit line for Tenex that may rise to $500 million.
Tenex is expanding its uranium mining operations to meet Russia’s growing export contracts. 
The country plans to spend 20 billion rubles ($747 million) on uranium mining in the former Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine to cushion itself against rising prices.

TITLE: Gazprom, Norilsk Step Forward for Yukos Bid
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom, Itera and Norilsk Nickel stepped forward Wednesday as the latest interested buyers in the upcoming Yukos auctions, a spokesman for the company’s bankruptcy receiver said.
The three Russian companies join U.S. oil major Chevron and ESN Group, an Italian-Russian consortium, in hoping to bid for Yukos’ assets. Several other large international companies have expressed interest in bidding, spokesman Nikolai Lankevich said, but he declined to name them.
The final valuation of the assets is due to be completed by the end of February, after which bidding will formally begin, Lankevich said. 
State-controlled Rosneft and Gazprom are widely expected to snatch up the bulk of the nearly 200 Yukos assets due to be sold off this year. A preliminary valuation put the assets’ value at $22 billion, falling short of the company’s total liabilities, which stand at $26.6 billion.
Norilsk Nickel said in a statement that it would bid for Yukos’ research and development center with an eye toward improving its research in hydropower. 
A Gazprom spokeswoman hinted that the company would likely bid for the 20 percent stake that Yukos owns in Gazprom’s oil subsidiary, Gazprom Neft. The stake is a holdover from Yukos’ share in Sibneft, which Gazprom Neft was known as when Gazprom bought it from Roman Abramovich in 2005.
A spokesman for independent gas producer Itera suggested that the company could bid for the auctions’ prize assets — oil-production units Tomskneft and Samaraneftegaz.
“Itera is interested in building its resource base,” spokesman Yevgeny Ostapov said. “If the tender for the Yukos sale includes assets that interest Itera, then the company will take part.”
Analysts said Rosneft and Gazprom could be aligning themselves with foreign and domestic partners in a bid to avoid the legal mess that marked the battle for Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos’ main production unit, in December 2004.
A legal injunction from a U.S. court prompted Gazprom to withdraw its bid for the unit, and it went to a new company called Baikal Finance Group instead. Rosneft took over the group a few days later.
“The fate of the major assets will be decided by the Kremlin, rather than these auctions,” Alfa Bank chief strategist Chris Weafer said.
Most of the companies that have signaled interest have strong links to Gazprom and Rosneft. 
Chevron formed a joint venture with Gazprom late last year. ESN Group, which includes Italy’s Eni and Enel, sold a 5.3 percent stake in Unified Energy Systems to Gazprom in 2004 and is believed to have initially bought the stake on Gazprom’s behalf.
Itera, once the country’s largest independent gas producer, has seen its assets steadily chipped away and passed along to Gazprom since President Vladimir Putin appointed Alexei Miller as Gazprom CEO in 2001.
The Florida-registered Itera remains the only independent gas producer in the country with an export license. 
Rosneft has been seeking to boost its presence in the gas sector. Yukos’ 9.4 percent stake in Rosneft will also go up for auction.
Robert Amsterdam, a lawyer for former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was indicted last week on new charges, warned: “We will go on a campaign day and night that ensures that any company that buys those assets will pay the price.”

TITLE: Energy Cooperation Fuels 3-Way Summit
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW DELHI — The foreign ministers of India, China and Russia met Wednesday for talks on economic ties at a time when the Asian giants are seeking more energy supplies and Moscow is sitting on huge oil and gas reserves.
India’s Pranab Mukherjee, Russia’s Sergei Lavrov and China’s Li Zhaoxing discussed economic, energy and trade issues in New Delhi.
“Just the fact they are meeting and institutionalizing their relations to a greater degree is important,” said Alka Acharya, head of East Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “But what is most significant for them is coming together on economic issues — especially with energy — and how best to secure their needs.”
Few economic deals are expected from the summit, aimed primarily at smoothing the path for future trade deals. “The economies of all three countries are growing fast,” Li said at a news conference. “I believe there is great complementarity and potential for tripartite cooperation. …We discussed how to widen and deepen cooperation in fields like energy, transport, economy and trade.”
The summit comes after President Vladimir Putin’s high-profile visit to India last month, when Russia signed deals to help India construct nuclear power stations. India is also buying more Russian weapons, such as combat jets. China and India account for most of Russia’s annual arms sales of around $6 billion.
In Wednesday’s joint statement, the ministers said “trilateral cooperation was not directed against the interests of any other country.”
Experts said the three summit countries, each with its own bilateral relations with Washington, were not seeking any strategic, anti-U.S. partnership.
“Of all the three, Russia may have some concept of ganging up on the United States. But this meeting is really not about any strategic partnership between the three,” said C. Raja Mohan, strategic affairs editor of the Indian Express newspaper.

TITLE: Mitvol Investigates Petromir
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Natural Resources Ministry’s environmental agency, is looking into whether the company exploring the Angaro-Lensk natural gas deposit in eastern Siberia improperly boosted its reserves estimate.
The owner of the deposit, Moscow-based company Petromir, founded in 1999 by former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, estimated its gas reserves at 1.2 trillion cubic meters when it registered the field at the end of January. 
Mitvol believes these figures might be inflated and has started an investigation to find out what the real figures for the reserves might be, his spokesman said.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Fridman Gold</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group is buying up shares in Artel Staratelei Amur, a Russian gold and platinum miner, Vedomosti said, citing Alexei Mikhailovsky, head of Alfa’s gold unit.
Alfa now has 40 percent of the miner, its first foray into the precious metals industry, the newspaper said Thursday.
Moscow-based Alians Group, whose assets range from oil to construction, also has about 40 percent of Artel and is seeking control, Vedomosti said.

<b>Magnit Sales</b>
KRASNODAR (Bloomberg) — Magnit, Russia’s second-largest supermarket chain, said sales rose 57 percent in January as it opened 10 new stores.
Revenue came to $243.2 million, the Krasnodar, Russia-based company said Thursday in an e-mailed statement. Magnit’s store count increased to 1,903. The company operates discount food stores in more than 470 cities in the region.

<b>Artradis Fund</b>
SINGAPORE (Bloomberg) — Artradis Fund Management Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based hedge fund with $1 billion of assets, will invest in infrastructure in Russia and other former Soviet states, where transport and power networks have failed to keep pace with economic growth.
The month-old Artradis Russia Opportunities Fund, has $14 million under management and aims to raise $100 million initially, said Managing Director Stephen Diggle. Unlike most Russian funds, which focus on oil and gas companies, Artradis will target infrastructure, consumer and consumer finance stocks, he said.

<b>Saudi Plans</b>
RIYADH (Bloomberg) — Russian and Saudi Arabian investors want to establish an oil-services company with estimated capital of 500 million riyals ($133 million), Al-Riyadh reported.
Saudi investors will hold a 51 percent stake, the Riyadh-based newspaper reported Thursday, citing Ahmed al-Sanae, the deputy director of the Saudi-Russian Business Council. 
The company will conduct oil field and well services in Russia, the newspaper reported.

TITLE: Chutzpah, Russian-Style
AUTHOR: By Brett Stephens
TEXT: The nearest equivalent the Russian language has to the word chutzpah is naglost. In President Vladimir Putin, the Russian nation has found the embodiment of naglost.
Naglost: During the question-and-answer session following your speech on Saturday to the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, you were asked about the Oct. 7 murder (on your birthday, Mr. President) of muckraking journalist Anna Politkovskaya. You never quite got around to uttering her name. But you did helpfully point out that in the past 18 months “the largest number of journalists were killed in Iraq.”
True. But Moscow is not a war zone. And next to Russia, Iraq has a reasonably free press. Thirteen journalists have been murdered contract-style since you took office, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In not one of these cases has a suspect been convicted. Politkovskaya herself complained of “the weekly summons to the Prosecutor General’s Office to sign statements about practically every article I write (the first question being: ‘How and where did you obtain this information?’).” Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev described her murder as “a blow to the entire democratic, independent press.” You chose to eulogize her by noting her influence “was minimal.”
Naglost: Your speech in Munich contained a curious broadside against the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which you denounced for “imposing a regime that determines how these states should live and develop.”
That may not have been the most eye-catching of your comments, but it was the most revealing. Among its other benign functions, the OSCE bureaucracy monitors elections among its 56 members. That never raised an eyebrow until the OSCE raised a red flag over the Ukrainian election of November 2004, which had been rigged in favor of your preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. The OSCE’s verdict was crucial to having the results overturned and a new election called. You’ve never forgiven it. Since then, the OSCE’s election-monitoring office has come under a relentless barrage of criticism from your Foreign Ministry and from other former Soviet republics with questionable democratic credentials, all with the view to putting the monitors under your political control.
Naglost: So now you tell the Munich conferees that “no one feels safe” in the face of U.S. military, economic, cultural, political, legal and educational assertiveness. That’s one way to look at it.
Then again, some 4 million Georgians didn’t feel especially safe when unaccounted explosions — reliably attributed to your security services — disrupted fuel supplies to Tbilisi in the dead of last winter. Nor did hundreds of thousands of Georgians living in Russia feel safe after you imposed trade, travel and even postal bans on the country last fall, following Tbilisi’s expulsion of four of your spies. As to your question about NATO’s enlargement — “we have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended?” — the answer, of course, is you. You don’t bully the Baltic states the way you do Georgia, Ukraine and even Belarus because the former are members of the European Union and have a U.S. security guarantee at their back.
Naglost: Speaking of feeling unsafe, a recent item in the Daily Telegraph reports that a Russian court in the southern city of Novorossiisk condemned nine members of the ethnic minorities rights group Froda for having an “unsanctioned” tea with two German students. “We were told that, under the new law [on NGOs], any meeting of two or more people with the purpose of discussing publicly important issues had to be sanctioned by the local administration three days in advance,” Froda director Tamara Karastelyova told the newspaper. New legislation also requires NGOs to receive official clearance for any planned events months in advance.
In Munich, you airily dismissed any suggestion that Russian NGOs operate under repressive conditions by claiming your registration requirements are “not that different from registration systems in other countries.” Just what other countries did you have in mind?
Naglost: “In the energy sector Russia intends to create uniform market principles and transparent conditions for all,” you said Saturday. “It is obvious that energy prices must be determined by the market instead of being the subject of political speculation, economic pressure or blackmail.”
Perhaps you define the words “market principles,” “transparent” and “blackmail” differently in Russia than we do in the West. In December, the Russian government offered transparently phony environmental reasons — “unauthorized tree felling” — to force Royal Dutch Shell to relinquish control of its $20 billion Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project. In January, state-owned Gazprom used the threat of supply disruptions to gain control over Belarus’ gas-pipeline network. This month, state prosecutors filed new charges against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky that will keep him in a Siberian gulag past the 2008 election. Could you tell us just what might be in store for March?
Naglost: You savaged the United States for “an almost uncontained hyper-use of military force” in international relations and a “greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law.”
That’s funny, because when it comes to the hyper-use of force it’s hard to top what your men did in Chechnya. “During Zachistkas [clean-up operations], I killed all men,” one returning soldier told the American journalist Maura Reynolds. “I did not feel the least bit sorry for them. They deserved it. I didn’t listen when they begged for their lives or when their wives cried and begged to have mercy on their husbands.” There are many other testimonials like this.
And then there is the unsolved killing of Alexander Litvinenko, British subject. Not much of a mystery anymore as to where that polonium trail leads: Scotland Yard has found traces of it everywhere Moscow businessman Andrei Lugovoi went in London. So why do you deny British authorities a chance to question him?
A man who knows you and your friends well observes that the world has seen monarchies, dictatorships, military juntas and democracies, but “we have it only in science fiction stories of a secret service coming to power.” Until now. Its defining characteristic: naglost.

Brett Stephens is a columnist for the The Wall Street Journal, where this comment appeared.

TITLE: One Man’s Unpopular World
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: On the eve of his visit to Saudi Arabia, President Vladimir Putin told Arab news channel Al-Jazeera that Russia “no longer had any disagreements with Arab countries”; during last Saturday’s security conference in Munich, Putin criticized what he referred to as today’s “unipolar world,” which “bears nothing in common with democracy.” In short: With Iran and Syria we haven’t any disagreement, but with the United States — we have.
This wasn’t news for the Russian media, but it must have come as a bit of a surprise for those at the Munich conference. Prior to this, the export version of the Kremlin’s ideology ran more along the lines of “our friend, George.”
The modern world is not unipolar — it is free.
It is a world in which U.S. corporations build factories in China and logistical centers in New Delhi because it is more profitable. It is a world in which executives from Morgan Stanley or Salomon Brothers hold teleconferences with associates all over the globe — from Bangkok to Moscow to Paris. In this world a surgeon performing an operation in Cairo can be assisted via satellite by a consulting physician in Los Angeles.
None of these conditions are elements of political control or direct orders from U.S. President George W. Bush or British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This is less activity in which any country is free to participate.
Those who aren’t interested — countries like North Korea or Venezuela — remain on the outside and tell their people about the inherent superiority of their nation, the cursed gringo, the need for a “defensive” jihad or the dangers of a unipolar world.
These countries do not form a second axis of power, because getting Venezuela and Belarus, for example, together in this way would take more than occasional visits by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Kiev. There would have to be at least some economic ties between the countries. And it is hard to imagine a prospering Belarussian investment bank conducting conference calls with partners in Pyongyang and Tehran.
Not long ago, Russia stood on the threshold of that open world. True, the country faced a number of difficulties, including a corrupt legal system and oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky with direct access to the Kremlin leadership. But Russia also had lots of shortcomings in 1913, with a power vacuum at the top and the figure of Rasputin, beside whom Berezovsky looks pretty tame, enjoying the favor of the Tsar.
But Russia still managed to start out along a fairly enlightened path in 1913. Then in 1927, with the end of the New Economic Policy, it turned in the opposite direction. Russia also took a relatively progressive tack in 1999, but it now appears again to be doing an about face. But Putin does still deserve some credit: In contrast to Vladimir Lenin or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, his chosen path is most likely motivated not by ideology, but by psychology.
The thing is that Bush doesn’t run this unipolar world full time. Perhaps he acts as chief on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays — that is, following every new Kremlin charge against Khodorkovsky or prior to a Putin visit to Saudi Arabia. But on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, when Putin meets with Bush, the unipolar chief becomes “his friend, George.”
The Kremlin makes too many mistakes and then blames them on the machinations of its enemies, driving Russia farther and farther from the open gates of the free world. The country’s growing international isolation is thus more the result of its leaders’ phobias than of any ideological program. Such isolation might help to delay a national catastrophe, but it won’t avert it.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: The great and the good
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The State Hermitage Museum premiered its major blockbuster of this season, “Alexander the Great: The Road to the Orient,” on Tuesday. 
About 500 exhibits — paintings, prints, sculpture and applied art objects — from all the museum’s departments, showcases the ancient hero’s legendary campaign to Asia which resulted in an empire that spanned from the Balkans to India. 
In many respects, this campaign, sometimes taken as the first example of cultural globalization, became paradigmatic for relations between East and West, whether it was during the wars of thousands years ago or the recent war in Iraq, when democratic values and personal freedom were delivered by the sword. 
The restless personal biography of the Macedonian king Alexander III, (356 BC–323 BC) has become an integral part of the grand sweep of ancient history. Aged 20, Alexander took the Macedonian throne, by 26 had conquered the world (at least as the Greeks knew it), had prententions toward being a god, but died of a fever at the age of 33. 
Aristotle was his tutor for some years and it was he who introduced the blond teenager to the work of Homer, the poet whose writings fascinated Alexander; in general, the Trojan War hero Achilles is mentioned as his forebear. Alexander inherited a superb army from his father, King Philip. Abrilliantly coordinated fighting machine, using cutting-edge engineering devices and managed by Alexander’s tactical genius, the army reduced to nothing larger, better, equipped enemies, bringing the young king only victories. The ambitious military genius made sure that his heroic deeds were recorded; dozens works about him were written by his contemporaries, but the main biographies appeared only centuries later, including those by Plutarch and Curtius among others. 
The Hermitage exhibition consists of iconographical and archaeological parts housed in the incapacious Anteroom and the vast Nicholas halls respectively, and the whole show is beneficially framed by the classical interiors of Giacomo Quarenghi and Vasily Stasov. 
Just as there is no authoritative biography, there are no original portraits of the great warrior. 
However, three outstanding artists of the period — the sculptor Lysippos, the painter Apelles and the gemcutter Pyrgoteles — are traditionally mentioned as being responsible for the visual depiction of the character: a blond, handsome godlike youth with a leonine mane, severe look and a suit of armor. 
As there have always been ambitious sovereigns — be it Louis XIV (there is a series of engravings referring to Charles Le Brun’s well-known painting cycle “The Battles of Alexander The Great” dedicated to the monarch), Catherine the Great (Richard Brompton’s painting visualizing the so-called “Greek Project” of the empress is on display as well) or Napoleon — there has always been a continual appeal to the ancient exemplar Alexander. 
Highlighted by a quite standard collection of Alexander stories concerning Diogenes, the Gordian Knot, Apelles’s studio, Darius’ family and so on, the way he was depicted varies from the East to West, age to age, and spans refined Persian miniatures, pompous academician paintings and rough Russian lubok — cheap popular prints.
Surprisingly entertaining, the Anteroom’s display is followed by an authentic, scrappy reconstruction of Alexander’s route. 
A selection of archaeological features of the period is by definition optional and fragmentary. Numerous rare mosaics, sculptures, amphorae, cameos, busts, manuscripts, coins, architectural details, painting fragments, murals and other cultural curiosities trace a process of Hellenisation across a gigantic territory from Europe, Egyptian Africa and Asia during and after Alexander’s time.
Scholars allocate two stages in Alexander’s campaign: the first is signified by unification of ancient Greek city-states and the liberation of the former Greek coastal regions of Asia Minor, while the period that followed after the invasion of Egypt and the establishment of Alexandria is characterised by greed and revenge as Alexander desired the defeat of every powerful empire of the time. 
His maniacal pursuit of Darius III, the Persian king, was followed by the degradation and absorption of his empire, and ended up with a short-term invasion of India, a civilization that no westerner had yet imagined. If his contemporaries are to be believed, the deeper Alexander proceeded into Asia, the more intoxicated he became by it: the orientalisation of his clothes and manners turned him into kind of Oriental potentate. 
But this, apparently, remains simply an interesting fact of his personal biography. Historically, the export of ancient Greek culture to beyond the the classical Greek region — from art, science, and literature to systems of the state management and urban ideas — is considered to the chief influence of that grandiose and bloody campaign. 
   
“Alexander the Great” runs through May 1 at the State Hermitage Museum. Www.hermitage.ru

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Two local promoters have revealed plans for the next few months. Planeta Plus, which brought Paul McCartney and nearly brought the Rolling Stones to the city last year, will not promote any international music acts in the near future (the biggest name on its list is Russian pop heartthrob Dima Bilan), while NCA (which brought Simple Minds and Deftones last year) offers its usual lineup of veteran acts such as Slade, Europe and Alphaville.
Since New Year, Moscow has already seen such acts as Starsailor, Maximo Park, Art Brut and Tindersticks’s Stuart A. Staples. Now the capital is awaiting <b>Ian Brown</b> and <b>Brett Anderson</b>, who will perform at B1 club on Feb. 23 and 24, while only Jason Webley and Brazzaville have so far this year taken the trouble to make a railroad trip to St. Petersburg. They are frequent sights in the city, anyway.
“There’s no places to play at [in St. Petersburg],” said the Moscow-based promoter Maxim Silva-Vega of Avantmusic by phone this week. Silva-Vega brought the bands ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Devendra Banhart, and Arab Strap to Moscow and I Am Kloot to St. Petersburg last year.
“I’ve been to Moscow recently and saw such a number of posters... It’s noticeable, and it’s a pity,” said Seva Gakkel, former Akvarium cello player and the founder of the city’s seminal TaMtAm club, who formed an agency called Monoplan earlier this month. Monoplan’s first enterprise will be a concert by <b>Sean Lennon</b> at Baltiisky Dom on March 7.
“I think it’s caused by pure economics, because several 1,000- or even 3,000-capacity clubs have appeared in Moscow, which make concerts profitable, because concerts in concert halls are twice as expensive as those in clubs:?you have to rent the venue, equipment and do the advertising, while a club has also profits from selling expensive drinks at the bar, so artists’ pay can be compensated pretty easily.”
There is a need in St. Petersburg for a club like the sadly-missed Platforma, according to Ilya Bortnyuk of Svetlaya Muzyka, because such artists as Arto Lindsay and Nina Nastassia now have no appropriate place to perform in the city.
“It’s directly connected to the lack of clubs. If there were clubs, there would be concerts,” he said.
Bortnyuk, who brought Sparks, Ladytron and dEUS last year, disagreed, however, with Gakkel about the lack of interesting music events in the city.
“I have so many things in my head now and I feel like half of all the artists will come here in summer,” he said. “We’ll have 15 to 20 very good artists in summer. We’ll have a lot of acts to come, starting in May. I would not say there are less concerts.”
Bortnyuk said it is too early to reveal names, however.

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Thespian’s refuge
AUTHOR: By Olga Kalashnikova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: During the twenty-year history of the Priyut Komedianta Theater there have been lots of events and achievements, however, now celebrating theater’s anniversary, which takes place on Sunday on the stage of Music Hall Theater, its artistic director Victor Minkov prefers to speak not about the past, but about the future with its premieres, plans and new projects.
“Twenty years is not a time to look back: the theater is just beginning to develop both in creative and organizational terms,” said Minkov.
Now a modern theatrical center, twenty years ago Priyut Komedianta was a small stage with performances given in a chamber atmosphere. Priyut Komedianta was established on Feb. 19, 1987 by actor and director Yury Tomoshevsky, who decided to bring to life the idea of a “one-man theater.” The theater became popular as the Soviet Union began to collapse because its small, poetic shows revived the atmosphere of the literary and artistic salons of early 20th-century Russia before the Bolshik Revolution of 1917. Priyut Komedianta — which in English carries the sense of “Thespian’s Refuge” — became a shelter for those actors who could not fulfill all their dreams and plans in their own staid, state-run repertory theaters. 
Minkov came to the theater in 1995 and soon introduced a new way of working in which it became a state-funded theater with a fixed repertoire but without a permanent actors’ company. Under this new system, unique in Russia at the time, a company of creative people, including directors, actors and designers, gather from different city theaters to stage a particular performance. 
This system allows, for example, the well-known Moscow actress Inga Oboldina comes to the theater every month to act in “Knocked Down by The Rain,” a new play introduced to the repertoire last year. 
“This is the first time in Petersburg theater history that a popular Moscow actress appears in repertory theater,” said Minkov.
The combination of Russian repertory theater and the Western model of using contracted professionals allows the theater to be experimental and to stage various genres, from classical pieces to modern plays and musicals. 
The theater tries to maintain the traditions of the Russian theater school with the International Master/Pupil Festival held annually in November. 
The festival shows the best works of students of outstanding Russian directors. The first in 2005 represented Pyotr Fomenko’s pupils, while last year’s festival featured plays directed by students of Kama Ginkas. Later this year, the festival will be devoted to students of Mark Zakharov. 
Taking something from the great masters, students usually try to find their own style. 
“Our new program will concentrate on young producers. Either young directors or interesting, advanced, original producers,” said Minkov. “This niche is still free in St. Petersburg.”
“The atmosphere at Priyut Komedianta encourages actors and directors to put on rather liberated productions,” said Andrei Moguchy, the director of such performances as “Pro Turandot” and “Non-Hamlet.” 
Priyut Komedianta is also planning five foreign tours and will take part in different European theater festivals, including a St. Petersburg theater season in Prague where Priyut Komedianta will perform its versions of “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams and “Two For the Seesaw” by William Gibson. 
The theater has other ambitious plans, such as increasing its capacity to 500 seats with the construction of three more floors. 
“We hope that the reconstruction will take place in 2009,” said Minkov.
“There is also the idea of converting the theater into a ‘theater-club’ as a shelter for all creative people in our city, where, apart from its main activity — putting on performances — there will be some ‘hooks,’” said Minkov.
“Maybe there will be a press bar, an open studio, where artists’ interviews could be held. There are plans to have Internet access in the theater, and the opportunity to reserve books from the Mayakovsky Library.”
“The task is to make the time spent in the theater comfortable in all ways. The theatergoer should be given more services,” added Minkov.
This Sunday’s anniversary celebration will meanwhile be held in the much larger Music Hall Theater and devoted to those people who work at Priyut Kommedianta every day. 
Among the guests to perform will be leading soloists of the Academy of Young Singers of the Mariinsky Theater, six-year-old violinist Daria Dadonova, Yury Tomoshevsky and singer Tamara Gvardtsiteli.
See listings from page ix and map for more information.

TITLE: The plot thickens
AUTHOR: By Peter Finn
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: The Washington Post
MOSCOW — Into one of the most sordid episodes in Russian literary history, the Soviets’ persecution of Boris Pasternak, author of “Doctor Zhivago,” a Russian historian has injected a belated piece of intrigue: the CIA as covert financier of a Russian-language edition of the epic novel.
Ivan Tolstoy, who is also a broadcaster for Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, writes in a forthcoming book that the CIA secretly arranged for the publication of a limited Russian-language edition of “Doctor Zhivago” in 1958 to help Pasternak secure the Nobel Prize in Literature that year.
“Pasternak’s novel became a tool that was used by the United States to teach the Soviet Union a lesson,” Tolstoy said in a telephone interview from Prague, where he works as a Russian commentator for the U.S. government-funded radio stations. The novelist knew nothing of the CIA’s action, according to Tolstoy and the writer’s family.
Tolstoy said his book, “The Laundered Novel,” is based on more than a decade of research and will be released later this year, the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Doctor Zhivago.” He previewed its  contents in a recent lecture in Moscow.
A CIA role in printing a Russian-language edition has been rumored for years. Tolstoy offers the first detailed account of what would rank as perhaps the crowning episode of a long cultural Cold War, in which the agency secretly financed literary magazines and seminars in Europe in an effort to cultivate anti-Soviet sentiment among intellectuals.
A CIA spokesperson said the agency would have no comment on Tolstoy’s account. The agency’s files on its cultural underwriting in Europe remain closed, historians said.
An official at the Swedish Academy, which chooses the Nobel winner in literature, said that materials on the prize committee’s internal deliberations are sealed for 50 years. The Pasternak file will not become public until 2009.
The CIA connection has dismayed Pasternak’s family and sparked a feud with Tolstoy, himself the grandson of an acclaimed Soviet-era novelist, Alexei Tolstoy.
“It is a detail hardly worth mentioning, a cheap sensation,” said Yevgeny Pasternak, the author’s 84-year-old son and an editor of his collected works, in an interview at his Moscow apartment. “I can add that my father knew nothing about this game. There is no doubt he would have won the prize anyway — in 1959.”
Pasternak, also a renowned poet, finished “Doctor Zhivago” in 1955 and submitted the novel to a Soviet publishing house for consideration.
The story of a man torn between two women against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution was rejected. But Soviet-era documents published in 2001 show that even in unpublished manuscript form it was hardly ignored.
“Boris Pasternak’s novel is a malicious libel of the U.S.S.R.,” wrote Soviet Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov in an August 1956 memo to members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In a memo of its own, the KGB offered the opinion that “a typical feature of his work is estrangement from Soviet life and a celebration of individualism.”
Other Soviet papers show that the KGB knew that Pasternak was looking abroad as well and had reached a deal with the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli to issue the novel in Italian.
In the months leading up to its publication date in late 1957, the Soviet authorities called on Italian communists to urge Feltrinelli, himself a communist, not to go forward with it.
Pasternak was pressured into sending Feltrinelli telegrams telling him he was withdrawing his consent for publication. But Pasternak sent separate, secret letters to Feltrinelli urging him to go ahead despite what his officially encouraged cables might have said, according to extensive correspondence between the two that is quoted in a memoir of Feltrinelli by his son, Carlo.
In early November 1957, just days after Feltrinelli received a letter from Pasternak scolding him for lack of decency because of his determination to publish, Pasternak secretly wrote how happy he was that the Italian was not “fooled by those idiotic and brutal appeals accompanied by my signature (!), a signature all but false and counterfeit insofar as it was extorted from me by a blend of fraud and violence.
“We shall soon have an Italian ‘Zhivago,’ French, English and German ‘Zhivagos’ — and one day perhaps a geographically distant but Russian ‘Zhivago’!”
Pasternak had been nominated for the Nobel Prize for his poetry every year between 1946 and 1950. The novel, which after the Italian edition appeared in English and French, received almost universal acclaim abroad, rekindling interest in Pasternak as a potential laureate.  In 1958, he was nominated again for the prize by the previous year’s winner, the French writer Albert Camus. But there was still no Russian-language edition of “Doctor Zhivago,” and the Swedish Academy required that any work under consideration be submitted in its original language, Tolstoy said. Soon a Russian “Zhivago” appeared at the academy, bearing the name of Feltrinelli as publisher. But the Italian house had not printed it.
In the memoir, Carlo Feltrinelli wrote that his father had suspected a CIA hand in the pirated edition. The agency “allegedly photographed the typescript at the Malta airport when the plane Feltrinelli was traveling in made a bogus emergency landing,” the younger Feltrinelli wrote in his book “Feltrinelli: A Story of Riches, Revolution, and Violent Death.”
Later, in a 1970 article for the Sunday Times of London, the elder Feltrinelli wrote that “while the literary world was acclaiming ‘Doctor Zhivago’ and its author, I became aware of the first signs of a battle between me and a number of persons and institutions (all connected with the same circle of anti-Soviet activities that in one way or another were connected to the CIA). It would seem that someone had printed an edition at the request of some Russian emigres in Paris who had certain ties with Americans.”
According to Tolstoy, among those seeking a Russian-language copy in 1958 was Nikolai Nabokov, secretary-general of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The organization, based in Paris, was exposed in the 1960s as a leading vehicle of the CIA’s attempt to woo anti-Soviet intellectuals in Europe.
Carlo Feltrinelli remains skeptical that any such secret publication was aimed at the judges in Stockholm. “If there were some fake copies, if there was some CIA edition, I still don’t see the connection with the Nobel Prize,” he said in a phone interview from Milan, where he runs the company founded by his father.
Tolstoy said that he tracked down the Russian emigre who typeset the book, found the publishing house that printed it, and interviewed ex-CIA operatives to unravel a web of agency deceptions behind the publication.
The forthcoming book “has all concrete details,” said Tolstoy, who added he was not going to steal his own thunder by revealing all his evidence in advance of publication.
The Soviets, certainly, had no doubt that the writer had Western promoters.
“In the summer of 1958, a large campaign to award Pasternak a Nobel prize was initiated by Americans and launched in the West,” wrote a KGB official in a memo to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. “All reactionary and anti-Soviet forces took an active part in this campaign.”
Pasternak won the prize on Oct. 23, 1958, “for his notable achievement in both contemporary poetry and the field of the great Russian narrative tradition.”
“Infinitely grateful, moved, proud, amazed and confused,” wrote Pasternak in a telegram hurriedly sent to the Swedish Academy. “He was very happy for a few hours,” recounted his son.
But Soviet authorities quickly unleashed a torrent of abuse on the celebrated author. He was forced to turn down the honor and was expelled from the Writers’ Union, where 29 members, including some old acquaintances, spoke against him.
Tolstoy argues that the Nobel Prize kept Pasternak out of prison because such a punishment would have been too embarrassing internationally for the Soviets. “The KGB wanted to destroy him,” said Tolstoy. “A Russian publication and a Nobel Prize were necessary to save him.”
That is an interpretation that Pasternak’s son contests. He said the writer’s health, already fragile, buckled under the official onslaught. Boris Pasternak died of cancer in 1960 at the age of 70.
“Some of his friends believed that it would be fine if he got the prize one year later — the scandal would be over and everything would be quieter,” said his son, who accepted the honor on his father’s behalf in 1989. “I don’t know.”

TITLE: An intimate partnership
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yevgenia Obraztsova and Vladimir Shklyarov are two rising young dancers in their early 20s whose partnership is now one of the most exciting in the Mariinsky Theater. They are also the best of friends offstage. Last weekend, Shklyarov celebrated his 22nd birthday while on a Mariinsky Ballet tour to Ludwigshafen in Germany. Three weeks earlier, Obraztsova celebrated her 23rd birthday more prominently, while dancing on the Mariinsky Ballet’s tour to Washington DC.
Obraztsova’s birthday got a mention from Washington Post dance critic Sarah Kaufman. Reviewing Obraztsova’s performance as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” opposite Mariinsky star Andrian Fadeyev, Kaufman wrote: “Her Juliet combined childlike innocence and spontaneity with a mature sense of scale… Her emotional clarity and the quality of her dancing — light and silky, rather than forceful — suited the soft tone of this ballet.”
So how did Obraztsova celebrate her birthday in Washington? I asked her when I met her and Vladimir for afternoon tea in the Hotel Astoria in St. Petersburg. “Actually I wasn’t feeling very well on that day.  In the evening I went to watch Vladimir’s Romeo performance [with Olesia Novikova].”
It was Shklyarov’s debut as Romeo, as he had not danced the role at home in St. Petersburg. Obraztsova said: “I watched his whole performance. Vladimir is a most appealing and natural Romeo. And I entirely believed in his acting. I really think that Vladimir is one of the best Romeos in the Mariinsky Theater now.”
Shklyarov acknowledged with gratitude the help that he got from Obraztsova before his debut as Romeo in Washington. Obraztsova has already been dancing Juliet for four years.  
“I didn’t have much time for rehearsals,” Shklyarov said. “Yevgenia helped me a lot. She was really most kind to help me go through some of the steps late at night after the rehearsals, when our theater’s studios were free. It was a big help. And we also frequently discussed the technical aspects of the role.
“Before the New Year, I took a short vacation to Verona. I saw for myself Juliet’s tomb as well as the Capulets’ house. It was good timing, because Yevgenia was guesting in Verona at that time and dancing in ‘Cinderella.’ So I spent New Year’s Day in Verona. It was my first time celebrating the New Year outside Russia. A friend who is superstitious said that this means that I’ll spend a lot of time abroad this year. I’ll see.
“I’ve read Shakespeare’s play. And Yevgenia suggested that I watch Zefferelli’s movie. I think that this is the best movie of ‘Romeo’ and it has inspired me a lot. I’ve actually incorporated some moments of the movie into my interepretation — in that sword-fighting episode with Tybalt. I’ve always preferred dramatic ballets, as acting is more interesting to me than just technique.” 
Shklyarov added: “I always enjoy guesting with other companies to gain more experience. But sometimes it’s not always possible, due to clashes with the Mariinsky’s performances at home and abroad.” 
Obraztsova had to decline an invitation to dance in the UNICEF gala in Rome last week organised by the Italian star Roberto Bolle, because of the Mariinsky’s German tour.
Both Obraztsova and Shklyarov have been quite prominently cast in the past year, each adding a number of new roles to their repertoires. Shklyarov  made debuts as Lankedem in “Le Corsaire,” Albrecht in “Giselle,” and Matteo in “Ondine,” and last week on the German tour, he danced a new role in the William Forsythe ballet “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude.” 
Obraztsova has guested twice with the Rome Opera and in Florida. At home in the Mariinsky Theater, she made her debut as “Cinderella”  at the beginning of this season in September, and last November also made her debut as Maria in “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai.” More significantly, Obraztsova danced Ondine in the premiere of that ballet at the Mariinsky Ballet Festival last March.
Obraztsova has also appeared in two French movies — Cedric Klapisch’s “Russian Dolls” and  Bertrand Normand’s documentary “Ballerina.”
Which new roles do the young dancers particularly desire to dance? Obraztsova answered without hesitation: “Giselle. But of course it’s entirely the management’s decision whether to let me dance.” 
Shklyarov said: “I most want to dance “Swan Lake”, and I hope that my teacher Sergei Berezhnoi will help me.”
They have also danced together regularly in “La Sylphide.” Last November, Obraztsova finally made her Mariinsky debut in the classic “The Sleeping Beauty,” and was glad to be partnered by Shklyarov who had first danced the ballet a year before.  
“We wish to dance together more in future,” said Obraztsova. “Partnering is a sensitive issue. A good partner can normally encourage me to dance better.”

Vladimir Shklyarov dances in “The Nutcracker” on Saturday, and in “Ondine” on Feb 21. www.mariinsky.ru

TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Although Channel One’s celebrity prank show “Practical Joke” (Rozygrysh) was off the air for the whole of last year, it kept quite a high profile in the tabloids due to tales of the episodes that were never shown. Actress Chulpan Khamatova was not amused when she was seemingly taken hostage by terrorists — especially when they “shot” someone — and model Inna Gomes needed hospital treatment for shock after she was tricked into thinking that she had shot down a helicopter full of passengers.
So far, so tabloid gold. The show even got a mention on the British gossip newsletter Popbitch. But did it go too far? Apparently not, because it went back on the air last month in a Friday evening prime-time slot. Admittedly, that isn’t the ideal slot for water-cooler television, not for anyone who remembers the beginning of “Bridget Jones,” anyway.
Pajama-clad, I tuned in, ready for armed guerilla fighters to flit across my screen. But I was disappointed. Only one out of three victims was put in a situation where he believed someone had died. And another one got off far too lightly in a lame sketch involving him holding someone’s elephant.
The main problem for me was that I hadn’t heard of any of the victims. They were actors Yevgeny Stychkin and Andrei Fedortsov and actress Irina Rakhmanova. The only familiar face was Anastasia Volochkova, the Bolshoi’s infamous “fat ballerina,” who appeared in some archival footage. This was quite good, though: She was left suspended above a stage for a long time, but seemed totally unconcerned, checking her manicure and heels before finally working up a feeble shriek. What a pro.
The best set-up involved Fedortsov, who was told that his friend was actually the one being targeted by “Practical Joke.” They went on a fishing trip that was being filmed for a “documentary.” Fedortsov was told that a diver would be sticking fish on the end of his line with hilarious results.
Then his friend got out a stick of dynamite. No, this isn’t part of the joke: The Russian compleat angler sometimes makes things a bit easier for himself by chucking dynamite into waterways so that the fish all go belly-up. Obviously, this is not best done when a diver is hovering just below the water line.
Seeing a giant fireball engulf the lake, Fedortsov showed himself to have true grit. Though fully clothed, he immediately jumped into the water to find the diver, who, of course, was not in the water at the time. Luckily, they didn’t keep Fedortsov in suspense too long.
Another aquatic prank didn’t go off so well for Rakhmanova, who had all the get-up-and-go of a rabbit in headlights. Together with a “Spanish producer,” she boarded a boat for a cruise along the Moscow River. Then the captain started checking passengers’ tickets and throwing people who hadn’t paid overboard. This is a good moment to mention that the episodes were all clearly filmed in summertime, so ice wasn’t a factor. But still, we’re not talking about a crystal-clear river.
In such a situation, you would hope that someone would (a) try to stop the captain, (b) call the police or © guess that it was a set-up. Not Rakhmanova, who actually took off her jacket in preparation for a dip before they let her in on the joke. 
The other episode just didn’t cut it. Valenki falling out of a truck, a random elephant — these things do not a brilliant sketch make, although, to be fair, I didn’t actually laugh during the other ones either. The only part that was even less funny was the studio act of the show’s presenters, Valdis Pelsh and Tatiana Arno. 
The curvaceous Arno looks great in satin, and Pelsh used to host a show called “Guess the Melody.” Does this mean they can pull off studio gags? No, it does not.

TITLE: Roll with it
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: <b>Banzai</b> // 17 Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Tel: 315 8787 // Open 11 a.m. through 12 p.m. // Menu in Russian // Credit cards accepted // Lunch for two with no alcohol 1,180 rubles ($44)

Opened earlier this week behind swags of black and red balloons, this latest addition to a well-established St. Petersburg chain of sushi restaurants smartens up the corner of Gorokhovaya and Moika by replacing a dodgy bistro that was formerly located there.
Banzai follows a tried-and-tested formula of offering a plethora of immaculately presented sushi, shashimi, yakatori, rolls, soups and salads in minimalist surroundings.
The interior is completely black and, likewise, the waiters and chefs are dressed in black from head to toe. To prevent this look becoming dull and morbid, the extensive seating area — accommodating up to 150 guests — is lit brightly from above and below, and wall-sized mirrors and large windows provide visual interest. The staff wear gray aprons and welcoming smiles, softening the severity of their all-black dress code.
It seems Banzai has got off to a flying start with local office workers in a district of town that seems to witness the opening of a new restaurant every week. There are six business lunches on offer from 250 rubles to 350 rubles ($9.40 to $13.20). 
Business Lunch No. 2 (290 rubles, $11), as well as including five rolls containing salmon, avocado and cucumber, has a lively shredded ginger and chinese leaf salad doused in soy, and curved pieces of yellowtail, perch and marlin sushi. Sesame rice completes the clasic picture, presented in a traditional lunch tray. Accompanied with miso soup and a choice of black or green jasmine tea, the business lunches offer good value for money.
The mind-boggling array of other dishes — there are 200 separate items on the menu (count them, you’ll see) — makes it difficult to single out any for special mention. Although there is no English language menu, each dish is illustrated with a photo and the names are easily understood with a basic knowledge of Russian food terms (tunets for tuna, ogurets for cucumber) and Cyrillic for the many dishes curiously named after U.S. states and cities such as Alaska, California, Arizona, Boston and New York.
Plumping for a dish with, perhaps, a more authentic Japanese connection, leads to Fujiyama — a selection of eight rolls containing eel and cucumber, and covered in sesame seeds, for 410 rubles ($15.50). Eel — ugorl in Russian —?sounds unappetizing in English, but the nuggets of beige meat nestling inside seasoned rolls of rice, when dipped in soy, have a pleasing, smoky taste that attests to the general all-round quality of Banzai’s menu.
Without cool jazz playing in the background and unhurried but polite service, the restaurant is laid-back with a sense of style, although with sushi restaurants poping up like mushrooms in St. Petersburg this doesn’t single out Banzai as anything outstanding. However, sipping good-quality coffee — Americano — for 70 rubles a cup ($2.65) and relaxing in well-padded bench seats after a filling sushi lunch is not a bad way to spend an afternoon. 
Banzai has two other locations at 51 Suvorosky Prospekt (Tel: 275 7742) and 64 Kamenoostrovsky Prospekt (Tel: 974 4078) but its new Gorkovskaya branch is well-placed to become a popular dining spot. As an encouraging sign of goodwill, the new place is offering, at least for the time being, a voucher for a 30 percent discount on a return visit, valid for a month. That should ensure plenty of repeat custom among St. Petersburg’s ever-growing army of sushi fans.

TITLE: Film feast
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: BERLIN — The 57th International Berlin Film Festival opened in Berlin last Thursday with “La Mome” (2007), the life story of the legendary French singer Edith Piaf by French director Olivier Dahan. Running through Sunday, the festival presents more than 370 films from almost 60 countries in various programs and nominations, including the 22 films competing for the Golden and Silver Bear awards.
There’re no Russian films in the competition this year, although a few short and documentary films are being shown in various programs, and there’s a special showing of Timur Bekmambetov’s “Dnevnoi Dozor” (Day Watch), his 2006 sequel to the hit fantasy horror flick “Nochnoi Dozor” (Night Watch) from 2004. 
The Berlinale was set up in 1951 by Oscar Martay, a film officer with the American Military Administration in post-war West Berlin, to western political and cultural ideas in a city surrounded by the Communist GDR. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940) opened the first festival.
Since then, the festival has evolved into one of the leading film festivals in the world and a few specific features have consistently marked the festival program: the importance of social/political cinema; a noticeable bent toward Hollywood cinema, which is not common among other European films festivals; and, especially in the last few years, an interest in Asian films. 
This year’s festival features 22 films in international competition. The first days saw the premiers of the “The Good German” (2007), Stephen Soderbergh’s new film with George Clooney and Cate Blanchett that tells the story of an American journalist entangled in a murder conspiracy in post-war Berlin. Shot in black and white with equipment from the 1940s, this film mixes archive material with contemporary film techniques. Another premier was the new film by Robert De Niro, “The Good Shepherd” (2007), starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Alec Baldwin, detailing the founding years of the CIA.
“Goodbye Bafana,” directed by Bille August and starring Joseph Fiennes, Dennis Haysbert and Diane Kruger, depicts the 20-year friendship between Nelson Mandela and James Gregory, one of his white prison guards, on whose memoirs the film is based. Mandela has disputed the depth of the relationship Gregory depicts in the book but the film adds to the vogue for films based on recent historical events. 
Another film based on real events is one of the two German entries in the competition, “Die Faelscher” (The Counterfeiter) by Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitsky. The film tells the story of the world’s biggest cash forgery, carried out towards the end of World War II in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which became known as Operation Bernhard. The film focuses on imprisoned forger Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), originally from Odessa, who is put in charge of the production of fake British pounds and U.S. dollars. The questions of personal responsibility and issues of collaborating with the enemy splits the team. As Stefan Ruzowitsky said at the press conference after the premier, the film’s creators tried to make the characters as ambiguous as possible. 
The film is based on the autobiography of Adolf Burger, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor. His life story is fused with the biography of another real master forger, Salomon Smolianoff, of Russian origin, also engaged in the operation in Sachsenhausen. “Notes on a Scandal” shows a completely different, yet no less masterfully and brilliantly depicted psychological drama of a very intimate and controversial kind. Set in a London school it features the love/hate relationship between two teachers played by Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett — both of whom have been nominated for Oscars for their roles. 
The official competition program is not everything the Berlinale has to offer. More than 350 other films are being shown in various categories — including Panorama, which aims to discover the new art-house films of the coming season, young German cinema in Perspectives Deutsches Kino, and Forum, which searches for contrast and contradiction in new cinema all over the world. 
Although there are no Russian films in this year’s competition, a few films from Russia can be found at the Berlinale. One of them, “Moskva. Pride ‘06,” is a documentary  by Vladimir Ivanov featuring footage from the first Moscow Gay Pride, which took place amid controversy in May last year. Another documentary, “Miss Gulag,” the debut film by U.S.-based Russian filmmaker Maria Yatskova, records a fashion show held in a women’s penal colony in Siberia. 
Another film is a Russia/Azerbaijan co-production, “Good Bye, Southern City,” (“Proschai, Yuzny Gorod”), a feature film film set in Baku during and after the fall of the Soviet Union that traces the changing social landscape. Also this year’s Berlinale will present the children’s short animated film “Zhiharka” by Oleg Uzhinov from Pilot Moscow animation studio.

TITLE: Goaltender Gerber Helps Tame 
Panthers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: OTTAWA — Goaltender Martin Gerber stood in for the suspended Ray Emery and made 28 saves on his way to a first shutout of the season as the red-hot Ottawa Senators recorded a 4-0 win over the Florida Panthers on Wednesday.
Gerber’s seventh shutout was his first in 21 games with Ottawa since leaving the Carolina Hurricanes in the off-season, and the Swiss goalie took full advantage of Emery’s three-game ban for slashing Montreal’s Maxim Lapierre on Saturday.
Ottawa’s third straight victory improved the team’s record to 8-1-1 over the last 10 home games. Chris Phillips opened the scoring 8:21 into the first period before Mike Fisher beat Florida goalie Ed Belfour to double the advantage with the only tally of the second.
Phillips was quick to praise Gerber’s performance after the game. 
“He’s a big part of our team, and for him to get back in there and have a game like tonight is not only big for him personally, to go and do that, but for the club as well,” Phillips told reporters.
• The Nashville Predators moved back into first place in the overall league standings as Tomas Vokoun stopped 22 shots in a 5-0 win over the San Jose Sharks. 
• The New Jersey Devils beat the Montreal Canadiens for the eighth straight time as Brian Rafalski scored twice in a 5-2 win. 
• Yevgeny Malkin tied the game with just over five minutes to play in regulation and fired the shootout winner as the Pittsburgh Penguins edged the Chicago Blackhawks 5-4.
• Rookie David Backes recorded his first two-goal game as the St Louis Blues beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-2.

TITLE: Hamas, Fatah
To Meet Over Crisis
AUTHOR: By Mohammed Daraghmeh
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RAMALLAH, West Bank — A dispute over control of powerful internal security forces is touching off a critical first challenge for the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah’s power-sharing agreement, officials said Thursday.
Efforts to implement the agreement brokered in Saudi Arabia ran into trouble Wednesday when Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s Islamic Hamas group presented several conditions for forming the government, said Nimer Hamad, an aide to President Mahmoud Abbas.
With Hamas refusing to resign from the government until Abbas’ Fatah movement meets the conditions, the deal could not be finalized.
As a sign of the crisis, Abbas postponed a speech scheduled for Thursday in which he was to detail the agreement. Abbas is scheduled to travel to Gaza later Thursday to meet with Haniyeh to try work out the problems, Hamad said.
The stakes are high for both men. A collapse of the Saudi deal could lead to a resumption of a deadly power struggle, centered in Gaza, that has killed more than 130 people since May.
The rifts are deep, and Abbas has rejected the Hamas demands in the past. Most problematic for Abbas is likely to be Hamas’ insistence that he approve a 5,600-strong militia Hamas set up last year over the president’s objections.
Hamas also wants Abbas to lift his objections to the appointment of dozens of Hamas loyalists to senior civil service positions, and to commit to a candidate for the key post of interior minister, the top security job.
Hamas proposed two candidates, but Abbas has said he wants to review more applicants.
The two factions are also at odds over other Cabinet appointments. Hamas says Fatah can’t fill any of the remaining five Cabinet positions that are to be staffed by independent candidates, while Fatah says it can fill one.
All these last-minute Hamas demands have led Abbas to postpone his speech, Hamad said.
“He found it difficult to address people while there are difficulties on the road to implementing the agreement,” he said.
A Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, said he was hopeful the two leaders could resolve the issues.
Last week’s power-sharing deal, brokered in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, cleared the way for the formation of a Hamas-Fatah coalition. However, the agreement left many key issues unresolved, such as the fate of the Hamas militia.
Abbas’ latest troubles with Hamas come at a time when the international community, led by the U.S. and Israel, is still withholding judgment on the emerging coalition deal.
Abbas is to host Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Ramallah on Sunday, to be followed a day later by a three-way summit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Abbas told senior Fatah members on Wednesday that he wants to hear from Rice and Olmert on the deal before delivering his speech. “He told us he wants things to be clear first, and then he’ll deliver the speech to the Palestinian people,” said Hana Amireh, a top Palestinian official who participated in the meeting with Abbas.

TITLE: Terrorist Bombing Trial Begins in Madrid
AUTHOR: By Jane Barrett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID — A Spanish trial began on Thursday of 29 people charged with involvement in the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people three years ago in the deadliest al Qaeda-related attack in Europe.
Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, who is accused of inciting people to carry out the morning rush hour attacks, was first to be led to the stand but he refused to give any evidence.
Dozens of lawyers and victims filed into the courtroom to hear evidence against 20 Arab men and nine Spaniards who face charges ranging from terrorist murder to stealing dynamite from mines to sell to the bombers, often in exchange for drugs.
The accused who had been held in custody awaiting trial sat in a high-security glass box, watching silently as a clerk read out their names. The other 11 sat in open court.
“I know nothing about these accusations,” said Ahmed, also known as “Mohamed the Egyptian.” He was convicted of belonging to a terrorist group by an Italian court last year.
“With all respect, I am not going to answer any questions even from my lawyer,” he said through an interpreter.
Dressed in jeans and a white jacket, Ahmed sat back in his chair while state prosecutor Olga Sanchez asked a list of questions about why and when he came to Madrid, and comments he allegedly made that the March 11 bombings were “my plan.”
She also asked if he was involved in a global jihad, or holy war, and whether he had indoctrinated others about martyrdom. Ahmed is one of four men the prosecutor has singled out as the ideologues behind the bombs which ripped apart four commuter trains like tin cans and injured about 2,000 people, many of whom are still in treatment and have never returned to work.
Two of the other alleged masterminds will follow Ahmed on to the stand. The fourth was one of seven suspects who blew themselves up in an apartment block weeks after the bombs.
When the bombs exploded three days before an election, the then-ruling conservative Popular Party (PP) quickly blamed the attack on Basque separatists ETA.
As more evidence pointed to Islamist militants and a video tape surfaced claiming the attack was revenge for Spain’s support for the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nation turned out in force to vote the PP out of power.
When the new Socialist government took power, it quickly fulfilled an election pledge to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.
The Madrid court hearings are expected to last until July when the three-judge panel will retire to consider the evidence. 
They are not expected to come out with their verdicts and sentences until October at the earliest.

TITLE: Arsenal March Past Wanderers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Arsenal won 3-1 after extra time at Bolton Wanderers on Wednesday to reach the FA Cup fifth round, with the cool head of Swede Fredrik Ljungberg finally laying the ghost of their bogey team after three glaring misses. 
Two goals by Togo striker Emmanuel Adebayor and one by substitute Ljungberg in the fourth-round replay earned Arsenal a home tie with Blackburn Rovers on Saturday. 
The Londoners, who had lost four of their five previous matches at Bolton, went in front in the 13th minute. 
Tomas Rosicky’s pass to Julio Baptista on the left was blocked but Adebayor, having helped in the build-up, hit the loose ball into the roof of the net thanks to a slight deflection. 
Bolton, who managed to stop the visitors adding to their tally in a first half dominated by Arsenal, snatched a 90th-minute equaliser through defender Abdoulaye Meite to take the game into extra time. 

GOOD RUN 
Ljungberg, a veteran of three FA Cup final victories with Arsenal, struck the all-important second goal early in the second period of extra time, placing a low shot inside the far post after a good run by fellow substitute Jeremie Aliadiere. 
Adebayor, who should have wrapped up the tie in normal time, finally put away his second in the closing seconds when he and Baptista broke away and the Brazilian set him up. 
“The goal Freddie scored was top drawer, there wasn’t much we could do after that,” Bolton manager Sam Allardyce told Sky Sports. 
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said: “Bolton are a good side and we have shown tonight we are a great side.” 
His team squandered two big chances to wrap it up in normal time. 
Captain Gilberto Silva blasted a 64th-minute penalty over the bar after Tal Ben Haim had brought down Baptista. The Israeli defender, lucky not to be booked at that stage, was sent off near the end of extra time for a second yellow card. 
Adebayor was guilty of a worse miss five minutes from time when he broke away and rounded keeper Jussi Jaaskelainen before striking the post with an empty net at his mercy. 
Baptista missed another penalty for Arsenal when they were 2-1 up, firing over the bar. 
Bolton hit the woodwork through Stelios Giannakopoulos and captain Kevin Nolan.

TITLE: Iraq Adviser:  Al-Sadr Is Now In Iran
AUTHOR: By Qassim Abdul-Zahra
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq — An adviser to Iraq’s prime minister said Thursday that radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is in Iran, but denied he fled due to fear of arrest during an escalating security crackdown.
Sami al-Askari said al-Sadr traveled to Iran by land “a few days ago,” but gave no further details on how long he would stay in Iran. 
A member of al-Sadr’s bloc in parliament, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, said al-Sadr left three weeks ago.
“I confirm that Muqtada al-Sadr is in Iran on a visit,” said al-Askari. “But I deny that his visit is a flight.”
But another lawmaker loyal to al-Sadr, Saleh al-Ukaili, insisted that al-Sadr is in Iraq and claimed the accounts of his departure were part of a “campaign by the U.S. military” to track down the elusive cleric.
Conflicting reports on al-Sadr’s whereabouts have been exchanged for days.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have put pressure on backers of the anti-American cleric and other militants in a major security operation that began in force this week.
The chief U.S. military spokesman, Major General William Caldwell, said al-Sadr “is not in the country.”

TITLE: CSKA Left Homesick Against Haifa
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Former winners CSKA Moscow were left feeling homesick after failing to break down stubborn Maccabi Haifa in the UEFA Cup first knockout round on Wednesday. 
The 2005 champions switched the first leg to Vladikavkaz in the volatile Caucasus region near Chechnya, about 1,500-km south of the Russian capital, because of freezing temperatures but the move failed to pay off as they drew 0-0. 
There were goals aplenty in two other ties, with Bayer Leverkusen edging Blackburn Rovers 3-2 and Fenerbahce drawing 3-3 with AZ Alkmaar. 
CSKA’s match was played amid tight security, with thousands of riot police employed in and around the Spartak stadium in addition to Russia’s special anti-terrorist units, who were guarding the Israelis during their stay. 
Maccabi went closest to scoring when Yaniv Katan hit the post from close range. 
“It was not one of our best matches to say the least,” CSKA coach Valery Gazzayev told reporters. “We made too many defensive mistakes.” 
Leverkusen beat Blackburn although a late goal from the Premier League side set up an exciting return at Ewood Park. 
Defender Jan-Ingwer Callsen-Bracker stole in at the back post to head Leverkusen in front against the run of play after 18 minutes. 
A well-struck David Bentley free kick from 35 meters deflected off the wall past keeper Jorg Butt to haul Rovers level but their joy was shortlived as Carsten Ramelow scored before the break with another deflected shot. 

SUBLIME FINISH 
If those goals owed much to good fortune, Leverkusen’s third on 56 minutes was a sublime finish from Bernd Schneider, the German international back-heeling a cross from Gonzalo Castro. 
Substitute Shabani Nonda’s deflected volley four minutes from time could prove significant for Rovers in next week’s second leg. 
Fenerbahce fought back from 3-1 down to draw with injury-depleted Alkmaar in Istanbul. 
Demy de Zeeuw’s goal for AZ was cancelled out by Tumer Metin to send the sides in level at halftime. 
Two goals in the space of a minute just after the hour, from Nourdin Boukhari and substitute Julian Jenner, put AZ in control before Fenerbahce rallied. 
Tuncay Sanli showed fine control and composure to bury a low shot and in the 75th minute Tumer netted his second with a left-foot strike into the top corner. 
AZ coach Louis van Gaal was deflated by his side’s inability to kill off the game, saying: “We controlled the match and created enough chances. 
“Beforehand we would have taken a score draw away from home but now we feel disappointed. I think we deserved more.”

TITLE: South Korea Agrees Talks With North
PUBLISHER: Agence France Press
TEXT: SEOUL — South Korea has agreed to resume high-level talks with North Korea that could restart major aid shipments despite calls for caution over an international deal on Pyongyang’s nuclear programmes.
Just two days after North Korea agreed to disable nuclear facilities in return for energy aid and diplomatic concessions, officials from the two Koreas met to set up the bilateral ministerial talks.
Their unification ministers will hold four days of negotiations in Pyongyang from February 27, the first such meeting in seven months.
Seoul officials have said the meeting could pave the way for the resumption of rice and fertilizer aid worth millions of dollars to the impoverished North.
In Washington, U.S. President George W. Bush hit back at critics of the Beijing deal but urged the communist North to live up to its commitments.
At a White House news conference, he said it was a “good first step” but warned of “a lot of work to be done to make sure that the commitments made in this agreement become a reality.”
China meanwhile called for all sides involved to get to work “immediately” on implementing the Beijing agreement.
“This is an important step forward and marks a substantive step toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu on Thursday.
“We urge all sides to immediately begin the initial actions and implement their commitments.”
The officials who met in the North’s border city of Kaesong said in a statement that “both sides confirm their will to develop bilateral relations in accordance with the spirit of the June 15 declaration.”
After a historic summit in 2000, the two Koreas — which are still technically at war following the 1950-53 conflict — agreed to work for peace and reconciliation.
The ministerial talks were suspended last July after North Korean missile tests sparked international alarm. The North then carried out its first atom bomb test in October.
The regular aid shipments have remained suspended since the missile tests.
“The normalisation of inter-Korean relations will serve as an opportunity for moving reconciliation forward and promoting peace on the Korean peninsula,” said Lee Kwan-Se, South Korea’s chief negotiator at Kaesong.
Apart from aid the likely ministerial agenda will include reunions of separated families, the opening of cross-border railways and the South’s provision of raw materials in return for the North’s minerals, according to officials quoted by Yonhap news agency.
Conservative critics of the Seoul government’s “sunshine” engagement policy with the North said it was too soon to resume aid.
“The government looks anxious to rush aid to the North,” Kang Jae-Sup, head of the opposition Grand National Party, told a party meeting, while South Korea’s defense minister also urged caution.
“The North Korean nuclear problem poses a serious threat to our defence posture until it is completely resolved,” Kim Jang-Soo told reporters.
Under the Beijing accord, North Korea will be given 50,000 tons of fuel aid for closing its Yongbyon nuclear facility within two months and allowing UN atomic inspectors back in.
It would eventually receive one million tonnes if it permanently disables key facilities.
The United States would begin the process of delisting the North as a sponsor of terrorism and normalising relations.
But there is no agreement yet on getting rid of the North’s plutonium stockpile, estimated to be sufficient to make six to eight more bombs.
At his press conference Wednesday, Bush defended the deal against critics, including from his key conservative base, who said North Korea is being rewarded for bad behaviour.
Former U.S. envoy to the United Nations, John Bolton, said the agreement undercut UN sanctions and was “a very bad deal” when Washington is challenging Iran over its nuclear program.
“I strongly disagree with his assessment,” Bush retorted, saying he had “an obligation to try all diplomatic means necessary.”
The U.S. leader went on: “Now, those who say the North Koreans have got to prove themselves by actually following through in the deal are right, and I’m one.”
Bush promised to step up food aid to the North if Kim Jong-Il’s regime took “verifiable measures” to end its weapons program.

TITLE: Star in Poverty Pledge
PUBLISHER: Agence France Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Tennis world number one Maria Sharapova became the latest celebrity appointed goodwill ambassador of the UN Development Program (UNDP), pledging to use her charisma and fame to galvanize support for the fight against world poverty.
At a crowded news conference at UN headquarters, the 19-year-old US-based Russian star also donated $100,000 to eight UNDP recovery projects in rural communities in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine still affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
“My first step is to focus on the Chernobyl-affected region, where my family has roots,” the photogenic tennis ace said. “Today, it is poverty and lack of opportunities that pose the greatest threat for young people in the Chernobyl region.”
The pre-dawn blasts on April 26, 1986, at the Soviet-era Chernobyl plant, the world’s worst nuclear accident, unleashed a cloud of radioactive dust that drifted over a large swath of Europe and still haunts millions of people in Ukraine and neighboring countries.
Sharapova was born in Siberia and spent two years there after her family fled the Belarus city of Gomel in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. In 1995, she left Russia for the United States to become a full-time student at a prestigious tennis academy.

TITLE: Celtics Demolish Bucks, End 18-Game Record Losing Run
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BOSTON — The Boston Celtics finally snapped their franchise record 18-game losing streak on Wednesday with a 117-97 rout of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Paul Pierce scored 32 points to lead the Celtics, who had not won a game since Jan 5 and were closing in on the NBA’s all-time losing streak record of 24 losses.
But with a tough five-game, seven-day road trip coming up after the All-Star break, the Celtics made sure of snapping the run with an authoritative performance against the struggling Bucks.
The fans gave the Celtics a standing ovation in the final minute, as one of the NBA’s most storied franchises finally ended its drought.
“The guys are in there taking monkeys off each others’ backs and all that stuff. It’s just a relief to get it done,” Boston coach Doc Rivers told reporters.
Gerald Green added 21 points for the Celtics, who trailed by 15 points in the second quarter before taking over and cruising the rest of the way.
The Bucks have lost 20 of their last 24 games and are just 4-17 since losing star Michael Redd to a left knee injury.
Wally Szczerbiak returned to the Celtics lineup after missing two games with a sprained right ankle and added 14 points for Boston.
Mo Williams had 31 points and Charlie Bell added 24 points for the Bucks.
• The Toronto Raptors won their eighth straight home game as seven players scored in double-digits in a 120-109 win over the injury-plagued New Jersey Nets. 
• Tim Duncan scored 23 points as the San Antonio Spurs snapped the Detroit Pistons’ seven-game winning streak with a 90-81 at The Palace at Auburn Hills.
• The Charlotte Bobcats snapped a four-game losing streak as Gerald Wallace had 32 points in a 100-85 win over the Chicago Bulls.
• Gilbert Arenas had 22 points as the Washington Wizards beat the Philadelphia 76ers 92-85.