SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1272 (38), Friday, May 18, 2007
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TITLE: EU-Russia Talks Run Into Trouble
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAMARA, Russia — Instead of showcasing progress between Russia and the European Union, a summit taking place Friday may only serve to advertise the growing antagonism between Moscow and its Western neighbors.
Two days of talks between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and an EU delegation led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel are not expected to yield a single agreement, analysts said.
“The relations between Russia and the EU have sunk to their lowest point in years,” said Yevgeny Volk, the head of the Heritage Foundation’s Moscow office.
The summit, which was scheduled to begin with a private dinner Thursday, appeared doomed by the inability of the two sides to resolve thorny energy, trade and security issues — and a hardening of attitudes, perhaps, on both sides.
The Kremlin has accused the West of trying to isolate Russia and meddle in its internal affairs. EU leaders, meanwhile, are concerned about Russia’s harsh rhetoric and the government’s crackdown on political critics as the nation prepares for parliamentary elections in December and a presidential vote next March.
“As progress in Russia-EU relations has stalled, problems in all areas began mushrooming and a rollback began. It’s like riding a bike: you stop moving and you fall,” Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine said.
Tensions between Russia and Europe spiked last month, after Estonian authorities removed a statue commemorating Red Army soldiers from its location in downtown Tallinn, the capital. The former Soviet nation is now a member of the EU.
Relocation of the monument led to several days of clashes between Estonian police and ethnic Russian protesters, in which one person was killed and hundreds were arrested.
A pro-Kremlin, nationalist youth group, meanwhile, blockaded the Estonian Embassy and at one point chased the Estonian ambassador as she prepared to meet with journalists. 
Meanwhile, Russian officials restricted traffic across a key bridge to Estonia, and halted passenger rail service.
The EU and Russia have also failed to resolve Russia’s ban on Polish meat and plant exports, which prompted Warsaw to block the start of talks on a new EU-Russia partnership agreement last year. Russia has staunchly refused to lift the punitive measure in force since late 2005.
Estonian and Polish officials talked of outright cancellation of the Samara summit, but Germany insisted it go ahead because of the importance of maintaining economic and political ties with Russia.
Russia currently supplies a quarter of Europe’s oil and over two-fifths of its gas, and many EU nations are concerned about their rising energy dependence on Moscow. Such fears increased after Russia briefly halted gas supplies to Ukraine and Belarus during the winters of 2006 and 2007. The shutdowns, amid politically charged price fights, led to shortfalls in supplies to the EU.
The EU has urged Russia to ratify an international energy charter that would oblige it to offer foreign investors fair access to its oil and gas deposits and export pipelines. But the Kremlin, which has established control of much of the nation’s energy sector, has bluntly rejected the pact.
“Russia now feels a sort of arrogance of power: it’s sure of its strength and it believes that the Europeans are divided and dependent on its energy supplies,” Volk said.
The U.S. and the EU have intensified their search for alternative energy sources to reduce dependence on Russia. But Putin dealt a major blow to these efforts last week by securing pipeline deals that would send the bulk of Central Asian oil and gas exports through Russia.
The deal, in particular, preserves Russia’s near-monopoly on the transport of Central Asian gas.
Many analysts warn, however, that the Kremlin’s domination of its oil and gas industries could prevent Russia from using Western technology and investment to modernize its decaying infrastructure.
“Russia is losing its chance for modernization,” said Alexander Konovalov, the head of the Moscow-based Institute for Strategic Assessment.
Not only have the EU and Russia failed to make progress, they’ve seen deals made previously fall apart.
Last year, Moscow promised to scrap Russian charges for flights over Siberia by European airlines. To the dismay of EU officials, Russia continues to levy the charges.
A recent EU strategy paper warned that Moscow’s disregard for its commitments could jeopardize efforts to bring Russia into the World Trade Organization_a key goal of the Kremlin, which the EU had agreed to support.

TITLE: Orthodox Church Reunifies After 80 Years
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — Church bells pealed as leaders of the Russian Orthodox faith signed a pact Thursday healing a historic, 80-year schism between the church in Russia and an offshoot set up abroad after the Bolshevik Revolution. 
After a choir sang hymns, Moscow Patriarch Alexy II, leader of the main Russian Orthodox Church, led the ceremony with a sermon praising the end of the formal division.
“Joy illuminates our hearts,” Alexy said, addressing worshippers in the vast Christ the Savior Cathedral. “A historic event awaited for long, long years has occurred. The unity of the Russian church is restored.”
Alexy later signed the reunion agreement with Metropolitan Laurus, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Worshippers wept and incense wafted up into the cathedral’s soaring cupola. 
Later in the ceremony, also attended by leaders of church and state, Alexy formally signed the reunion agreement with Metropolitan Laurus, head of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. President Vladimir Putin joined the celebration, broadcast live on television. Alexy thanked him for helping end the split by meeting with leaders of the church abroad.
“They saw in you a man devoted to Russia, and it was very important to them after decades of repression,” Alexy said. 
The patriarch presented Putin with a set of icons.
In remarks reflecting centuries of pre-Soviet tradition of a close relationship between the dominant Orthodox church and Russia’s rulers, Putin told the congregation that the agreement was “a nationwide event of an historic scale and of vast moral importance.”
“The church division resulted from a deep political split of the Russian society,” and ending the rift was a step toward healing society’s divisions, he said.
Worshippers and white-robed clergy packed the Christ the Savior Cathedral, symbolic of Russia’s rejection of its Communist past, when atheism was state doctrine and many believers were arrested and imprisoned.
“We came to celebrate the holiday, and because our church is finally reunited,” said Zinaida Yushinskaya, 70, a retired geologist who said she was reprimanded for wearing a cross in the Soviet era and would have been fired for worshipping openly. She called the pact part of a revival of “the millennium-old tradition” of Russian Orthodoxy. “It’s in our genes,” she said.
The ornate white cathedral, with its shimmering gold domes on the Moscow River, is a replica built in the 1990s to replace the original, which was blown up in 1931 under orders of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
“In 1917 a tragedy began — the division of the church, the division of the people,” said Vladimir Tenekov, one of thousands who waited in intermittent rain to attend the ceremony. “Now the opposite is happening. The church and the people are being unified. Such a thing only happens once in a century, or many centuries.”
The church abroad split from the Moscow Patriarchate three years after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution amid the country’s civil war, and cut all ties in 1927 after the leader of the church in Russia, Patriarch Sergiy, declared loyalty to the Communist government. The Russian Orthodox Church said that Sergiy hoped to save the church from annihilation, but the breakaway group regarded the decision as a betrayal — and saw itself as the true protector of the faith.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the two churches began discussions of reunification. The Moscow Patriarchate last year disavowed Sergiy’s declaration, setting the stage for Thursday’s reconciliation.
Laurus has said that the reunion pact signed Thursday — called the Canonical Communion Act — does not mark a merger, and that his branch would maintain administrative control over its 400-plus parishes worldwide. The New York-based church reports 480,000 U.S. members.
The Moscow Patriarchate, meanwhile, counts about two-thirds of Russia’s population of 142 million as members. There are also, the church says, millions more believers in the other former Soviet republics. 
Under the pact, each church will maintain its own leaders and council of bishops, with high-level appointments in the church abroad subject to approval in Moscow. But their clergy would be able to lead services, and their parishioners to take communion in both churches. 
“We will pray together even if we are at different ends of the Earth,” Archbishop Mark of the church abroad said. “The prayer of a person in a Russian village will be linked with the prayer of a believer in America or Australia.” 
For leaders of the faith, Thursday marked the real end of the Bolshevik Revolution, which divided Russia’s religious community along with the rest of society, said Andrei Zolotov, and expert on the church and chief editor of Russia Profile magazine. 
He said it was the first time a schism in the sometimes fractious Russian Orthodox Church was “being healed without saying one side was right and one side was wrong,” Zolotov said.

TITLE: Gay Parade Denied Permission, But Activists Fight On
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: City Hall has refused to give permission for a gay pride parade to be held on Nevsky Prospekt in downtown St. Petersburg on May 26, citing the tight schedule of already confirmed events in the city center that day.
Russian gay rights activists have previously made two attempts to organize a gay parade in Moscow but Mayor Yury Luzhkov fiercely opposed the idea, condemning the parade as “satanic” and swearing he would never allow them to take place in the Russian capital.
Alexandra Polyanskaya, a spokesman of the St. Petersburg parade’s organizing committee, said it is planning to reapply for permission to hold the parade on another day. 
“Misconceptions about sexual minorities are widespread here,” Polyanskaya said. “Gay people feel they need to show they are normal human beings. Their sexual orientation does not make them monsters.”
Igor Petrov, coordinator of the Russian gay and lesbian network, said outdoor festivals of gay culture are essential to resist homophobic attitudes which he said reign in the country.
Earlier this year the network polled 3.500 gay people nationwide to reveal discouraging statistics on discrimination towards sexual minorities. Ninety percent of respondents, regardless of their age, gender, occupation or place of residence said they had been subject to various forms of discrimination including physical abuse because they are homosexual.
“When attacked for homophobic reasons, gay people rarely get any police assistance,” he said. “Homophobic attacks, if registered at all, are qualified as a theft or robbery attempt, or plain hooliganism. It shows that the state turns a blind eye on the problem.”
The idea of thousands of gay people on the streets of St. Petersburg has caused strong outrage in the Russian Orthodox Church.
Metropolitan Vladimir of St. Petersburg and Ladoga denounced the plan. 
“The Russian Orthodox Church confronts and fights the vicious tendency to present homesexuality as the norm,” he said on Thursday, asking Governor Valentina Matviyenko “to ban the parade, in the context of the growing need to consolidate Russian society and protect children and young people from propaganda of sin.”
A motley crew of local religious, cultural and non-governmental organizations — including the St. Petersburg Noble Assembly, the city’s submariners’ club and an NGO called Christian-Democratic Perspective — sent a letter this week to City Hall to voice anger over the suggested march. 
“This city survived 900 days of the Siege of Leningrad and paid millions of lives for the victory in the Second World War; it would be a tremendous blasphemy to let a bunch of perverts march along its streets,” the letter reads.
According to a nationwide survey published this week by the Moscow-based Levada Sociological Research Center, 81 percent of the poll’s participants were against allowing gay demonstrations in Russian towns. Seventy percent of respondents were convinced that gay organizations do not even have the right to organize such events in principle.
“I just do not understand this: why go public about bedroom habits and expose one’s sexual preferences?” said political columnist Dmitry Motrich. “If the city continues in the same way, we can easily end up with marches of oral sex enthusiasts or public meetings of practitioners of spanking.”
While Motrich criticized the parade’s organizers for choosing an already busy weekend — St. Petersburg celebrates City Day on May 27, the date of its founding in 1703 — gay activists stressed that the end of May is equally dear to the Russian gay community. Russia’s late ex-president Boris Yeltsin put an end to criminal prosecution for male homosexual relations when the law that he signed in April 1993 came into force on 27 May 1993. Most gay festivities in Russia are typically held around the anniversary of that date.
Edvard Murzin, a human rights advocate and member of the Bashkiria State Council, said he joined the parade’s organizing committee seeking to raise public awareness of what he calls “a gay stigma and widespread homophobic attitude in Russian society.”
“I am a heterosexual and a Muslim but I conform to the fact that Russia is a secular state, where the rights of all minorities, be it political, ethnic or sexual, are declared to be equally protected,” Murzin said. 
Polyanskaya said gay activists from Moscow and St. Petersburg are planning an informal get-together on Palace Square on May 26.

TITLE: Opposition March Planned For June 9
AUTHOR: By Olesya Dmitracova
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Anti-Kremlin protesters plan to intensify their campaign of rallies against President Vladimir Putin by holding a march in St. Petersburg next month during an international economic conference, they said on Thursday.
Speaking on the eve of a similar protest planned for an EU-Russia summit, opposition leaders said they would march in Russia’s second city on June 9 during the meeting of top international political and business leaders.
But leaders of the Other Russia coalition said police had arrested and searched many of the activists who are organising a “march of the dissenters” to coincide with the EU-Russia summit on Friday in the southern Russian city of Samara.
“We can count on 5,000 people in St. Petersburg provided there aren’t the same large-scale purges as in Samara,” said Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and fierce Putin critic.
“We understand that during the economic forum where Putin’s Russia must appear in the best light before the rest of the world, the actions of security authorities might be even more shameless than now in Samara,” he told journalists.
German leader Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso are due to visit Samara for the summit.
The Other Russia leaders added they were planning two more protests: one in Moscow on June 11 and another one in the southwestern city of Voronezh at the beginning of June.
“A demonstration of any size in Samara tomorrow... will be a great achievement ahead of the same protests in June in Moscow and, most importantly, in St. Petersburg,” said Sergei Udaltsov, one of Other Russia’s leaders.
“There, taking into account the size of the cities, the authorities can’t use the tactics they used in Samara — a full-on information blockade and full-on detentions of activists.”
Kasparov said the Other Russia activists had told the Samara authorities they would like to hold a rally of up to 1,000 people. But he declined to forecast how many protesters would attend the march in Samara’s busy centre.
“Even a nucleus of 200 people can swell very quickly.”
Other Russia brings together Kremlin opponents from across the political spectrum, from liberals to nationalists, and rights activists. 
They say Putin has trampled democratic freedoms and demand free and fair presidential polls in 2008. But Other Russia has marginal influence as the majority of Russians support Putin.
Last month Other Russia organised “marches of the dissenters” in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. Thousands of riot police snuffed out both demonstrations, detaining hundreds of protesters and beating many others.

TITLE: Strasbourg Throws Out  Appeal in Chechnya Case
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STRASBOURG, France — The European Court of Human Rights said Wednesday that it had thrown out Russia’s appeal of a ruling condemning military forces for the disappearance and presumed death of a young man during the war in Chechnya seven years ago. 
Russia will have to pay the man’s mother 35,000 euros ($47,400) in damages and more than 12,000 euros ($16,250) for court expenses. 
The court upheld its judgment that Russia violated the European Convention on Human Rights by unlawfully detaining Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev during a takeover of a Chechen village by Russian troops. 
The landmark case was followed by several other similar rulings by the human rights court against Russia over the past year, and nearly 200 other Chechen disappearance cases are still pending in Strasbourg. 
Yandiyev’s mother, Fatima Bazorkina, filed the complaint against Russia in 2001 after she saw television footage of an officer interrogating her son as troops were taking over the village of Alkhan-Kala. The officer orders soldiers to shoot her son at the end of the footage. 
The officer, later identified as Colonel-General Alexander Baranov, was questioned about the incident by authorities but never prosecuted. 
Yandiyev was a student at the Moscow Sociology University before going to Chechnya in his final year of studies in 1999 to find his father.

TITLE: Saturday Night is Museum Night As Dozens Open Their Doors Till Late
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Dozens of St. Petersburg museums are opening their doors far later than usual on Saturday as the annual Museum Night event gets underway. 
Visitors to such museums as the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, the Anna Akmatova Museum, the Museum of the Political History of Russia, and the Central Museum of Rail Transport will be able to enjoy concerts, talks, excursions and guided tours in some cases as late as midnight. 
The annual late-opening is designed to take advantage of the onset of White Nights, the summer season when the sun barely sets. 
The colonade of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the highest publicly accessible point from which to view the city’s skyline, will be open until 11 p.m. Tickets cost 150 rubles.
Many activities will take place at the St. Peters and Paul Fortress, where various departments of the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg host street theater events from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m.  Recitals on the carillon — bells operated by a large keyboard — on Cathedral Square within the fortress will also take place at this time.

TITLE: Russian Man Questioned In Missing Madeleine Mystery
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PRAIA DA LUZ, Portugal — Kate McCann marked the 14th day of the search for her missing daughter Madeleine by attending a church service Thursday, while Portuguese police released a local Russian computer expert questioned in connection with the case.
Madeleine, aged 4, vanished after her parents left her, and her brother and sister, both aged 2, alone in their room while they went to a tapas bar inside their hotel complex in southern Portugal’s Algarve region, a popular European tourist destination.
Police said they questioned a Russian man who is believed to have had business dealings with their only formal suspect in the case, 33-year-old Robert Murat, a British man who lives close to the McCanns’ hotel.
The Russian, who has lived in the resort town Praia da Luz for several years, was taken to a local police station by plain-clothes detectives late Wednesday. They also took computer equipment from his apartment.
Inspector Olegario de Sousa told Portugal’s news agency Lusa the man was released in the early hours of Thursday after providing a witness statement.
Police have placed Murat under formal investigation, though they released him after questioning earlier this week because they did not have enough evidence to charge him.
Murat has denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>2 Children Kidnapped</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Two children were kidnapped late Tuesday in central St. Petersburg, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The children, aged 6 and 11, were kidnapped at around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, St. Petersburg prosecutors told Interfax.
Fontanka.ru identified the children as Alexandra Borodulina, 11, and her brother, Dmitry Borodulin, 6. Authorities said they were kidnapped near their home on Admiralteiskaya Naberezhnaya in central St. Petersburg, Fontanka.ru reported.

<b>Falun Gong Expelled</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Reuters) — A member of the Falun Gong spiritual group who was living in St. Petersburg has been deported to China, where he could face torture and death, followers of the movement said Wednesday. 
The group, which is banned in China, said migration service officers detained Gao Chunman, a former professor of biotechnology at China’s elite Qinghua University, in his St. Petersburg apartment.
Ivan Shkodyuk, chairman of the group’s Moscow branch, said the officers “carried Gao onto the street, put him into a car and drove off.” 

<b>Rhino Sprayed</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — In what a zoo official called an “act of enormous stupidity,” an unidentified vandal broke into a Kaliningrad zoo and painted the side of a rhinoceros with an expression of love to a woman, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The vandal painted the words “I love you, Olya” in English on the side of a rhinoceros named Teodor, a zoo official told Interfax.
“The rhinoceros could have easily crushed or trampled or gored the person,” he said. 

<b>Putin Criticizes NGOs</b>
MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin criticized human rights groups Wednesday for remaining silent amid the controversy between Russia and Estonia over the removal of a Soviet memorial, Interfax reported. 
“I did not see any flurry of activity coming from rights groups when the remains of Soviet soldiers were being relocated in a neighboring country. Where were our human rights organizations?” Putin said. 
“I am not for fanning hysteria, of course,” he added.

TITLE: Clovers to Sprout Up Across the Country
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Clover Group, a holding company registered this year, has put forward plans for a $500 million multifunctional center on Ushakovskaya embankment. The company plans to raise $3.5 billion on capital markets to replicate similar projects across Russia, managers said Tuesday at a news conference.
The 315,000 square-meter Clover Plaza will be built on a 7.8-hectare site formerly occupied by Severny Plant. The complex will comprise an A-class business center (72,000 square meters), elite residential areas (90,000 square meters), shopping and entertainment areas (30,000 square meters). It will also include a conference hall, car park, 150-room 4-star hotel as well as a 120-room apartment-hotel.
“There is no synergetic effect in combining such areas, but we have already completed several complexes of this type and we think this solution is the best one available,” said Alexander Popov, general director of Clover Group.
Construction is to start this year, with the complex due for completion in 2011. Popov expects a return on the investment within six years to seven years. MEL company is investor and proprietor of the complex.
The hotels will most likely be operated under the Holiday Inn brand, Popov said. Clover Group signed agreements on strategic partnership with Rezidor SAS and Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG).
Michael Cooper, Vice-president of Intercontinental Hotels Group, noted that the St. Petersburg market is “extremely important” for IHG because of a continued shortfall in supply.
“Intercontinental has made a long-term commitment to development in Russia. We are looking to cooperate closely with Clover Plaza for the next six to seven years,” Cooper said.
IHG is already developing two Holiday Inn hotels in St. Petersburg, with four hotels already open in Moscow.
In total, Clover Group plans to develop 1.5 million square meters of commercial and residential space and over one million square meters of premium and business-class housing in Russia’s 29 largest cities. By 2015 the company is expected to increase its capitalization to $7.5 billion.
Clover Group will develop multifunctional centers under the Clover brand, family centers “Ya igrayu” (I play), Vitrina shopping and entertainment centers and residential projects. The company has already completed three multifunctional centers — in Nizhnevartovsk, Vladivostok and Rostov-on-Don.
“At the moment 16 projects are under way in 13 cities,” Popov said. Clover Group will soon start the construction of multifunctional centers in another 13 cities. They will comprise A-class business centers, shopping and entertainment areas, residential areas and hotels.
Clover Group will also manage real estate. In St. Petersburg, the company will construct four hotels including two apartment-hotels. The latter will be located on Galernaya Ulitsa and on the Admiralteisky Channel embankment respectively with the other two hotels located on the Ushakovskaya embankment.
Yury Borisov, managing partner of IB Group and president of the Guild of Developers and Managers, was positive that multifunctional complexes can still attract investors. “Stable, long-term investment into one project is an advantage when one considers the level of competition for investment in St. Petersburg,” Borisov said. With large projects, investors spend less on bureaucratic procedures and approvals, he added.
This particular complex will benefit from its location in the developing business area between Petrovsky Fort, the city center, the President business center and the Ushakovskaya road-junction.

TITLE: Gref Upbeat On Trade
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Joining the World Trade Organization looks well within Russia’s reach this year, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said Wednesday, sounding an upbeat note amid concerns about new and persisting hurdles to the bid.
“In the next three weeks, we plan to complete the final round of bilateral talks with Georgia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Guatemala,” Andrei Kushnirenko, deputy head of the ministry’s trade talks department, said through his spokeswoman. 
Negotiators then hope to wrap up the multilateral negotiations by the end of July and secure the State Duma’s approval for accession by year’s end, said the spokeswoman, Anastasia Zimonina.  “But this is only our plan,” she added. “It might happen and, as always, it might not.”
New hurdles emerged this month after a number of WTO member countries threatened to veto Russia’s accession, unless Russia changed its hardline stance on certain issues — a position that could also be adopted by the European Union.

TITLE: Builders Blame Protests On Disinformation, Unveil Plans
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In an attempt to appease unhappy residents, the city’s construction firms have announced plans for a “unified standard communication to the population about new construction.” They believe that regular letters to local residents and feedback via complaint boxes at construction sites will help improve the situation.
“We have been alarmed by the unwarranted protests that have occurred recently on construction sites. With a few exceptions, these have not been real conflicts between builders and residents but are simply a result of a lack of information,” Maxim Shubarev, President of the Northwest Construction and Industrial Complex Association and President of Peterburgskaya Nedvishimost construction company, said at a press conference Wednesday.
“Often we saw intentional attempts at disinformation,” said St. Petersburg vice-governor Alexander Vakhmistrov. There were vigorous protests in March, and he expects the same in December as well as next year before the presidential elections in March.
According to the builders, discontent among local residents is often cynically capitalized upon by populist politicians but also provoked by competitors, the constructors said.
Vakhmistrov said that in 99 percent of cases construction is absolutely “legal and acceptable.” 
However, City Hall was forced to revoke a number of decrees on construction, such as that planned on  Ploshchad Muzhestva. Among recent conflicts Vakhmistrov alluded to the construction projects at Pulkovskaya Ulitsa and in Kalininsky district, where a new house was to be built between two schools.
Before starting construction, the association recommends that companies distribute a letter across the district describing the project in detail. Complaint boxes should be available for residents at construction sites. RBI, Peterburgskaya Nedvishimost and other Association members will test the new scheme over the coming months.
Vakhmistrov suggested that other construction companies introduce similar schemes.
“It’s clear that people would prefer a park than a building in its place,” said  the General Director of RBI holding Eduard Tiktinsky. However constructors often improve the environment while the parks and other areas vigorously protected by local residents are often left in poor shape, he claimed.
In fact, part of the problem is local residents’ displeasure at the poor state of construction sites. Vakhmistrov said that City Hall responded to a recent accidents involving falling cranes by launching an investigation. As a result, the authorities suspended operations on about 50 construction sites, temporarily shut down over 300 lifting mechanisms, and handed out over 200 fines.
On Tuesday, another, quite different initiative, was discussed at Rosbalt, where experts called for the preservation of the city’s environment In particular need of protection, they say, are monuments of industrial architecture, which are often demolished and replaced by new buildings. 
The experts want to transform industrial buildings into office and cultural centers, as in Finland and England. They cited the example of Soho in New York, which used to be an industrial area.
Boris Kirikov, deputy chairman of the Committee for State Control and Protection of Monuments, accused investors of “bad manners.”
“Primarily they are just worried making the territory free of liabilities, if not free of everything. An investor’s point of view is often cynical to the extent of savagery. Why is there this empty space near the Summer Garden — Marsovo Pole? There is now a underground parking project that is being seriously discussed — no matter that the place is a cemetery,” Kirikov said.
Alexander Margolis, co-chairman of the Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments in St. Petersburg, suggested that rather than construct a skyscraper Gazprom should redevelop a gasworks, for example, or the former Russian-American Manufactory.
“We saw how historical Moscow was ruined. Now big money is flowing here, and the risk is high that all that cash will have little effect on our mental disorder,” Margolis warned.
“St. Petersburg’s monuments are not particularly old — mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries. But St. Petersburg is valued for its architectural integrity. It’s our competitive advantage compared to other European cities,” said Oksana Dmitriyeva, State Duma deputy.

TITLE: ‘Populist’ Yukos Tax To Go to Housing, Research
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — The State Duma on Wednesday passed in a first reading a bill that would allow the government to pump billions of dollars from the sale of Yukos assets into housing and high-tech research.
The bill’s critics, however, described it as a populist attempt to show that the Kremlin’s drive to bankrupt the country’s former leading oil producer was for the public good.
The bill — passed after just a couple minutes’ debate — would amend the federal budget to allow the government to soak up and spend the entire tax arrears of the oil company, which are in excess of 400 billion rubles ($15.5 billion). The bill would force regional budgets to fork over the money to federal coffers. 
Presenting the bill to the Duma, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the regions with Yukos oil fields would not have seen the tax revenues anyway. Instead, most of this money would have gone to Moscow, where Yukos trading companies were registered.
The bill is expected to pass in second and third readings Friday, Interfax reported.
The diverted revenue will go toward the creation of the Russian Nanotechnology Corporation and the Housing Reform Fund, helping causes championed by President Vladimir Putin in his state-of-the-nation address last month, Kudrin said.
“This money will go toward some of the most important strategic goals of our economy,” Kudrin said.
In his address, Putin ordered the government to allocate 250 billion rubles ($10 billion) to the housing fund, which will provide new homes for people living in crumbling buildings or repair these buildings, and 130 billion rubles ($5.5 billion) to the nanotechnology corporation, which aims to put the country at the forefront of research in this field.
First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will oversee the housing fund, while First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov will oversee the nanotechnology corporation. Communist Duma Deputy Alexei Kondaurov, a former KGB general and security consultant to Yukos, said the proceeds from the auctions were being linked to the projects in an effort to justify the state’s onslaught against Yukos.
“It’s all to confirm that everything that was done against Yukos was right,” he said by telephone. “To me, it looks like cheap politicking.”
Claire Davidson, a spokeswoman for Yukos’ former managers, defended Yukos’ record on social spending and scientific research. The company was good at providing housing for its employees and in 2003 opened a research center, whose research topics included nanotechnology, she said.

TITLE: Comstar CEO Quits on Losses
AUTHOR: By Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Comstar CEO Eric Franke stepped down on Wednesday amid speculation that the country’s largest alternative phone operator was in for an overhaul after recently reporting a disappointing quarterly loss. 
Comstar is expected within a week to appoint Sergei Pridantsev, CEO at Center Telecom, one of fixed-line operator Svyazinvest’s seven regional units, as the company’s new CEO, spokeswoman Yulia Yasinovskaya said.
The board said in a statement Wednesday that it had agreed to Franke’s request to be released from his employment contract to take up a position with another, unspecified business. Franke was leaving his post with immediate effect, the statement said.
Nikolai Tokarev, the company’s vice president and chief financial officer, would serve as interim CEO until “a decision is made to elect a new president,” the statement said.
Alexander Goncharuk, CEO of Comstar parent company Sistema, said Wednesday that Franke’s exit was not connected with Comstar’s performance. Franke “loves to travel and it appears that the time has come for him to go traveling again,” Goncharuk said.
Comstar last month reported a fourth quarter 2006 loss of $63.1 million on operating revenues of $ 1.12 billion. The company raised nearly $1 billion in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in February 2006 and paid $1.3 billion to acquire a 25 percent stake in state fixed-line operator Svyazinvest in December. 
Industry watchers have linked Comstar’s loss to a $62 million executive bonus plan and said the firm lacked a credible turnaround strategy.
“Rival Golden Telecom is the yardstick Sistema used to measure performance at Comstar, but while its rival had a 20 percent profit last quarter, Comstar came out with a loss,” said Yelena Bazhenova, a telecoms analyst with MDM Bank. “There was high expectation that Franke would bring order to the chaos with Comstar’s corporate clients by consolidating its many small operators and raising the quality of service, but nothing happened.”
Bazhenova also said Franke had failed to utilize funds raised through the IPO for an aggressive push into the regions.
Franke, 51, joined Comstar last June from Mobile TeleSystems, another Sistema company. He replaced Semyon Rabovsky as Comstar CEO. 
Goncharuk said at the news conference that Pridantsev had been tapped to replace Franke starting Thursday.
Comstar shareholders are expected to meet within a week to confirm Pridantsev in the job, Yasinovskaya said.
“Pridantsev is a young, effective manager who successfully increased the viability of Center Telecom, salvaging it from the brink of collapse in the space of a year,” Bazhenova said.
Alex Kazbegi, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, said the change was “no more than the replacement of one good performer with another.” 
Vitaly Kupeyev, an analyst at Alfa Bank, said Franke’s successor would have his work cut out.
“Comstar over the years acquired many small businesses that had little in common [with each other] in their structure and governance,” Kupeyev said.

TITLE: What Stands Behind China’s New Walls
AUTHOR: By Martin Wolf
TEXT: The Great Wall is China’s most celebrated tourist attraction. As China’s impact on the world and its rulers’ desire to control the world’s impact on China grow, it appears as an enduring and disturbing metaphor. From the Great Wall, aimed at the “barbarians” of the Steppes, to today’s Great Firewall, aimed at free flows of information, China’s rulers have wished to keep their people separate. 
Yet how far can China remain inside the world and outside it, embrace the west’s market economy, while rejecting its political ideas? 
In “The Great Wall: China Against the World,” Julia Lovell, a lecturer in Chinese history and literature at Cambridge University, views Chinese history through the lens of the walls that the Chinese built and rebuilt over 2,500 years. These were thou-sands of kilometers long. They demanded the forced labor of millions of people. They bankrupted dynasties. Yet they failed: the nomads of the Steppes found a way round, “flowing like water, along the path of least resistance.”
This is a history with potent lessons: of the ability of this greatest of agrarian empires to mobilize human resources; of its indifference to human life; of its desire to “define, enclose and exclude” — to define what was civilized, enclose what was Chinese and exclude what was foreign; and, not least, of its imperviousness to lessons of failure.
“China’s rulers were unable,” Lovell argues, “either to defeat the northerners militarily or to contemplate compromise or negotiation.” With these alternatives ruled out by military weakness and cultural superiority, respectively, the empire resorted to a strategy as expensive as it was unsuccessful.
What does this history tell us about contemporary China? Chinese Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping, Lovell notes, “was a pragmatic authoritarian. His primary concern was national stability, the key to which, he believed, was not democracy but capitalist-style economic prosperity.”
Yet as he also remarked: “If you unlatch the window, it’s hard to stop the flies and mosquitoes rushing in.” Not surprisingly, if one looks, one sees wall-building everywhere. The aim is what it has always been — stability, autonomy and control.
Today’s walls, however, are those of subtle intimidation and intervention in the flow of information. China’s vast foreign currency reserves, now rising at a rate of about $500 billion per year, are a wall against external interference, bought at the cost of more miserable lives for several hundred million people.
It is no accident, says Lovell, that “the Great Wall was one of the largest beneficiaries of the Communist Party’s new, pro-traditional cultural policy, one designed to fill the ideological blank left abandoning Maoist iconoclasm.”
The wall is a symbol of embattled, but technologically proud, Chinese nationhood. As such, it is very much to today’s purpose. Yet, in a deeper sense, it is irrelevant. For today’s challenge is very different from the one at which the walls failed.
In the past, every foreign dynasty ended up Chinese. No better example can be found than the one — the Manchu Qing dynasty: “Within 250 years, the once vigorous Manchus would be so bound and constricted by the ritualized Chinese superiority complex they had inherited that they were unable to contemplate useful dialogue with the next wave of barbarians — the West — to assault the Middle Kingdom.”
The new invaders were dangerously different from all predecessors. They were more technologically and scientifically advanced than the Chinese. Worse, they were not merely impervious to Chinese civilization, but brought destabilizing new ideas of equality, freedom and democracy.
Nowhere, then, was it harder to come to terms with the shattering impact of Western power, ideas and technology than in the world’s longest-lived imperial civilization.
Sun Yat-sen, architect of post-imperial China, even declared that: “The basic task is to import the foundations of Western society, that is, the new belief in equality and human rights. We must be thoroughly aware of the incompatibility between Confucianism and the new belief, the new society and the new state.”
A Western ideology, Marxist communism, did provide a contemporary form of “legalism,” the totalitarian ideology of the Qin kingdom, which unified China in the second half of the third century before Christ. With his cultural revolution, Mao Zedong even imitated the burning of the Confucian books initiated by the first emperor.
As the ideology of a mighty state in the modern world, Marxism is another dead end. But a party-state whose ideology is the justification for its hold on power cannot abandon Marxism lightly. Nor does it have anything compelling to put in its place.
The Han dynasty, which succeeded the Qin, could employ Confucianism. But what is the post-Marxist ideology for a communist China? In what values, apart from power and money, does it believe?
One answer is wounded nationalism. This shown in the emphasis on reunifying the mother-land, in the determination to hold on to all territory the Qing won and in the desire to remind foreigners of their crimes.
Yet nationalism is a poor answer. Shorn of its age-old cultural content, it is morally empty. A strongly nationalistic China can never hope to be, not only the most powerful state in the world, but once again among its most culturally admired and influential.
Lovell refers to: “The central, crippling psycho-logical dilemma of modern China: what to do with the extraordinary accumulation of experience and achievement that made China the most powerful country in the world until the 18th century, but left it practically helpless against the imperialist west 100 years later. … Passionately wanting to be strong and modern like the West, at every turn Chinese modernizers have glanced uneasily over their shoulders back at the past to ponder whether they are still ‘Chinese.’”
When the walls were built, the Chinese knew they were protecting not just a dynasty, but the cultural center of the world. Today, such confidence impossible. Chinese reformers, says Lovell, have been afflicted by an “unstable combination of hatred and admiration for the imperialist West, and of scorn and veneration for China and for its past.”
The modern walls will ultimately fail, as did the ones of old. But the big question is whether China knows what values it is trying to defend.

Martin Wolf is a columnist for the Financial Times, where this comment appeared.

TITLE: It’s Time for Putin to Find New Friends
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: When French President Jacques Chirac handed over power to Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin lost the last European ally with whom he had built a strong personal friendship.
Putin’s foreign policy has been based on the concept of strong personal friendships, which entailed recruiting the leaders of other countries like spies. Having recruited George, Jacques, Silvio and Gerhard, Putin expected them to support him through thick and thin. They were his friends, after all. 
The Kremlin’s domestic policies are based on exactly the same principle, by the way. It makes no difference how much money the president’s friends have embezzled, how many Beslans they have bungled or how incompetent and self-interested they are. In the Kremlin people are judged not by their actions, but by how close they are to Putin. His friends are forgiven everything.
There are two big problems with this type of foreign policy. It may have worked fine in the 17th century for establishing friendly relations with Louis XIII of France or Gustav II Adolf of Sweden. In the era of democracy, however, elected leaders serve for a fixed period and then hand over the reins to other politicians who chew them up and spit them out in a grueling election campaign.
More importantly, in Putin’s inner circle friendship trumps every other consideration. Friends are the people who can always be counted on to support you. And this works up to a point. Friendship exists in the West as well, of course, but it is less unquestioning.
If you’re eating with a friend in a restaurant and he puts his feet on the table, you let it go. If you’re eating out with a friend and he decks the waiter, you might let this go, too. But if you’re eating out with a friend and he whips out a pistol and starts blowing away other diners, the Western leader will scream and high-tail it for the exit. And his friend who’s doing the shooting will, in all sincerity, consider this a betrayal. We’re friends, after all.
After gunning down a few diners — that is, after Beslan, the elimination of gubernatorial elections, the Munich speech and sending riot troops against peaceful demonstrators, among other highlights — Putin has no friends left in the West.
From the Kremlin’s perspective, the West is to blame for this turn of events. After all, these people rig their own elections. Any KGB lieutenant colonel knows that. They’re prepared to befriend any petty tyrant as long as he’ll do what they want him to do. Any KGB major knows that, too. 
To the Kremlin’s way of thinking, these are the people who poisoned former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in his prison cell in The Hague; who had Yasser Arafat killed; and who allowed their crony, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, to poison his prime minister, Zurab Zhvania.
And these back-stabbing Western leaders have the gall to criticize the good people in the Kremlin for doing much the same thing and — unlike their Janus-faced Western colleagues — never firing anyone no matter what they’ve done.
Putin’s foreign policy failed in the West a long time ago, at the moment when his friends began to get up from that restaurant table with a pained smile and sidle toward the exit. Now those friends have stepped down or been voted out of power one after another.
Putin has no chance of getting another group of European leaders to join him at the table. The only thing left is for him to head east and make friends with the guys who will never be voted out of office — the kind who only leave office in a coup.

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

TITLE: Starry, starry nights
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Valery Gergiev’s internationally acclaimed “Stars of the White Nights”  festival opens Friday with a performance of Mussorgsky’s epic opera “Khovanshchina,” with Gergiev conducting and mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina as Marfa.
This year the festival’s focus moves to the newly opened Mariinsky Concert Hall, where many recitals take place, although its traditional program of operas and ballets continues to offer a feast of mouthwatering performances at the Mariinsky Theater itself.
Some of the Mariinsky’s brightest opera and ballet stars, including Borodina, tenor Vladimir Galuzin, bass Nikolai Putilin, soprano Anna Netrebko and ballet dancer Ulyana Lopatkina are lining up alongside international guests that include this year, among others, the celebrated Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier, baritone Thomas Hampson, bass Rene Pape and violinist Maxim Vengerov.
No other classical music festival in Russia — and few around the world — could think of showcasing the array of classical celebrities that Gergiev’s festival typically assembles. 
During the festival’s fifteen-year history the list of star participants has included tenor Placido Domingo, soprano Renee Fleming, bass Paata Burchuladze, conductor Riccardo Muti and the orchestra of Milan’s La Scala Opera House, conductor Esa Pekka Salonen and pianist Alfred Brendel. 
Among the festival’s greatest highlights  will be a series  of concerts marking 125th anniversary since the birth of Igor Stravinsky, including a performance by the  London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gergiev on June 17, the composer’s birthday.
The opera program includes three brand new productions. On May 31 the company premieres a new version of Puccini’s evergreen masterpiece “Tosca.” Directed by Paul Curran and designed by Paul Edwards, the show will feature renowned soprano Maria Guleghina, who is recognized as one of the finest interpreters of the role of Floria Tosca on the international operatic scene. 
On June 21, the Mariinsky will present a new version of Prokofiev’s opera “The Gambler,” staged by Temur Chkheidze and designed by  Zinovy Margolin. For the premiere the role of Alexei will be sung by Galuzin. 
July 6 sees a rare performance of Hector Berlioz’s opera “Benvenuto Cellini” at the Mariinsky’s brand-new concert hall. The production will be staged by Vasily Barkhatov and designed by Margolin, responsible for the Mariinsky’s recent production of Leos Janacek’s opera “Jenufa.”
The event’s ballet program traditionally incorporates Marius Petipa’s grand-scale classical works from the troupe’s trademark repertoire as well as the company’s most recent experimental premieres. This year this includes ballets by George Balanchine and  Michel Fokine and two sets of one-act ballets that originally premiered at the Seventh International Mariinsky Ballet Festival last month, including a reconstruction of Marius Petipa’s “Le reveil de Flore” and a bold contemporary work “Wie der Alte Leiermann” set to a piece by St. Petersburg composer Leonid Desyatnikov.
On July 7, the ballet troupe premieres another contemporary work,  Peter Quanz’s ballet “Aria Suspended,” set to Stravinsky’s Symphony in C Major. Quanz is a young and aspiring Canadian choreographer, who has caught the attention of the critics with his ballets for the respected American Ballet Theater. 
A significant proportion of the festival’s program will be performed at the Mariinsky’s new state-of-the-art concert hall. The concert program includes the Mahler Symphonies Series conducted by Gergiev. The festival’s Stravinsky tribute incorporates works by the composer and contemporaries such as Prokofiev, Bartok, Schoenberg, Debussy and Sibelius.
The new hall will host recitals by a string of renowned Russian-born musicians, including violinist Maxim Vengerov (May 27), violinist Vadim Repin (June 17), pianist Alexander Toradze and violinist Nikolai Znaider (June 23 and 27 ).
Soloists from the celebrated Wiener Collage Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra will perform works by Schoenberg,  Bartok, Vysotsky and Staar on July 1.
Two of the classical music world’s most audacious divas, Lopatkina and Netrebko, are making appearances. Lopatkina, the Mariinsky’s prima ballerina, appears in “Swan Lake” on May 19 and June 9, and again in “La Bayadere” on June 1, while glamorous soprano Netrebko gives a solo recital at the Mariinsky Concert Hall on May 25. 
Pianist Hampson gives a recital at the concert hall on May 29 and bass Pape performs scenes from Russian operas, also at the concert hall on June 17 and then appears as Filippo II in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” on June 19 at the Mariinsky Theater. Finnish National Opera soloist Jorma Silvasti will sing Laca in “Jenufa” on June 24 June, and Vasily Gerello gives a solo recital at the concert hall on July 2.
German mezzo-soprano Meier, particularly known for her Wagnerian roles appears in a program of works by Wagner at the concert hall on July 3. 
Ballet audiences will be pleased to see Svetlana Zakharova in “Don Quixote” on July 4 and Diana Vishneva in “Romeo and Juliet” on July 9 and “Scheherazade” on July 15.
The Mariinsky Theater will also continue the tradition — established at “Stars of the White Nights” festivals in recent years — of adapting its shows to the exteriors of Vyborg Castle and Ivangorod Fortress for special outdoor performances. Tchaikovsky’s “Mazeppa” will be performed in the castle at Vyborg near Finland on June 25 and again in the fortress at Ivangorod near Estonia on July 7.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: A local concert by the <b>Skatalites</b> was cancelled due to a flight delay, said Pirkko Vishnevskij, who co-organized the band’s brief Russian tour with the local band Markscheider Kunst, in an email.
“The KLM air company postponed their flight Manchester-Amsterdam for six hours, and when they finally landed in Amsterdam, where they should have had another flight to any place in Russia on Saturday (all flights to St. Petersburg had flonwn by then), all the arrangements fell through,” she said.
Meanwhile, the British band <b>Starsailor</b> will not take part in Maxidrom, a massive rock event due to take place at the Ice Palace on May 25. According to the band’s statement on its official web site, the bassist James “Stel” Stelfox has “dislocated his shoulder leaving him unable to play for a little while.”
But <b>Placebo</b>, scheduled to headline the event featuring a selection of Russian bands, will perform, the local promoter PMI said on Thursday.
With advancing warm weather, the trend for temporary open-air summer places has hit the town.
Datscha has extended to a courtyard behind the bar Mod on Konyushennaya Ploshchad, where its owner Anna-Christin Albers now runs a summer bar called <b>Dunes</b>. 
“We have a kiosk, beautifully designed, in sea colors, creating a southern atmosphere, and sand all around where people can lie down — to put it briefly, it’s a beach,” said Albers by phone this week. 
“I want it to be a daytime place, with children, coffee and mineral water, a place to relax. And there’s a great view of the Church on the Spilt Blood. It’s such an absurd place.”
Dunes works daily, at 11 a.m. until the last customer leaves (walk through the first yard to get to the second to find it).
And Light Music, the local promoter responsible for bringing David Byrne and Sparks to St. Petersburg, will open its open-air bar called Veranda More (Verandah Sea) this week.
A joint project with the company Art Festival, Veranda More will be promoting weekly concerts by mostly international artists.
The bar’s music schedule include Swedish pop singer <b>Jay-Jay Johanson</b> (May 30), the French bossa-nova band <b>Nouvelle Vague</b> (June 6), the British cabaret-punk band <b>The Tiger Lillies</b> (June 13) and the German lounge band <b>De Phazz</b> (July 5).
Veranda More will officially open on Saturday with a set by New York-based DJ <b>Ursula 1000</b>.
The address is Krestovsky Ostrov, Severnaya Doroga, Torets Grebnogo Kanala. Call 922-3902 for more details.
<b>Iva Nova</b> will perform its last local concert for a while before embarking on a large tour of Europe. The local all-women folk-punk band will perform at Manhattan on Friday.
<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Festival contender
AUTHOR: By Marina Kamenev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Alexander Kugel’s mobile rang while he was in the shower. He reached for the phone with a soapy hand, and he could barely hear the heavily accented voice telling him that his short film “Imprudence” had been accepted into the Cinefondation contest at the 60th Cannes film festival. The 21-year-old student at VGIK film institute was ecstatic.
Kugel won’t be the only Russian filmmaker at Cannes, which began Wednesday, but he will be the youngest. The main competition program includes new works from Andrei Zvyagintsev, who took top honors at the Venice film festival in 2003 with his debut “The Return,” and art-house master Alexander Sokurov, whom Kugel described as one of his greatest influences.
In Cinefondation, film students from around the world compete for a first prize of 15,000 euros. Simply getting exposure at Cannes can be helpful as well — the last Russian to be honored with a Cinefondation award, second-place winner Nikolai Khomeriki from 2005, went on to shoot his first feature, “977,” later that year.
Kugel submitted his own film to Cinefondation last September. “I had forgotten about it until I got the call six months later,” he said in an interview last week. “It was a nice way to be reminded.”
The young director described his 15-minute short as “a cautionary tale about being too cautious.” The storyline cuts back and forth between two encounters. In one of them, the unnamed male lead (theater actor Dmitry Bozin) talks to a girl (Anna Kuzminskaya) who is initially seen bouncing up and down on a trampoline. In the other one, Bozin’s character talks to a mysterious professor-like figure who has selected him to participate in a personality survey. 
Much of the film consists of outdoor sequences where Bozin’s character confesses his anxieties about filling out the survey to the girl. 
Kugel wasn’t sure where he got the idea for “Imprudence,” but he said the leafy landscape of Moscow’s Sparrow Hills district was one source of inspiration. He wrote the script with that specific location in mind. The worst part of the process wasn’t the filming itself, Kugel said. “I hate asking actors to take my roles — it’s the worst part of directing for me,” he said. “I’m really scared they’ll say no. But when I’m behind the camera, I’m in complete control.”
On his web site, Bozin recalls the moment he was asked to play the film’s lead role. “It was after the final performance of ‘The Last Love of Don Juan’ and a VGIK student walked up to me to ask if I wanted the role. I saw Kugel hovering nearby. He said just one word to me; I wouldn’t for a second have imagined that he was the director.” On set, though, it was a different matter. The lengthy outdoor takes ran well into the evenings. One night, the cameraman wanted to stop filming because it looked like it would rain, but Bozin recalled that Kugel forced everyone to continue. In the end, the rain never came. 
“To this day, I am sure that Alexander can even control the weather,” Bozin says on his web site. 
Kugel will soon be heading off to Cannes. Although many of his film idols will be at the festival too, the young director has little desire to speak to them.
“If they are giving a lecture, then great,” he said. “But directors aren’t very interesting people — it’s the films they make that are interesting. Besides, I’m too shy just to walk up to them.”

TITLE: Homes away from home
TEXT: This is the second article in a two-part series dedicated to the life and work of the only two Finnish architects who owned studios in St. Petersburg before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and designed buildings that can still be seen in the city today.
Published for the first time, the article is by Finnish art historian Timo KeinEnen, head of the Archives of the Museum of Finnish Architecture in Helsinki, who has just completed research in a number of the city’s libraries and archives. 

By Timo Keinanen 
Special to The St. Petersburg Times
The apartment block at 9 Zhdanovskaya Ulitsa on the Petrograd Side, opposite Petrovsky Stadium, is a well-preserved building that dates back more than a century. Its elevations are in red granite. The stones on the ground floor are quarried in massive blocks, while on the upper floors the material changes into smaller slabs of granite. Symmetrically placed bay windows are in iron and glass. A handsome external door with magnificent wrought-iron hinges catches the attention. There is a stucco frieze below the eaves, which repeats the number 1904, the year the building was constructed, and a curious feature — a gorgon’s head with writhing snakes for hair. These terrifying faces protect the building from intruders because, according to the myth, the gorgon’s gaze turns people into stone. The building was designed by the Finnish architect Albert Stunkel, who also lived there. 
Stunkel’s architectural work lives on in several buildings in St. Petersburg that show how Classical, National Romantic and Art Nouveau themes were running through the minds of architects in the early 20th century.  
Stunkel was born in Vyborg (Viipuri) in 1865. His father was the German-born Johann Stunkel and his mother, Henriette Karoline Keldan, came from the Swedish-speaking population of Vyborg. 
Albert’s father died when he was 11 years old and he was sent to school in St. Petersburg. After school, he went on to the civil engineering institute and qualified as an architect in 1890. Stunkel lived and worked entirely in St. Petersburg and designed only one building in Finland — the Bellevue Hotel in Hango (Hanko), a port town in Finland, 130 kilometers west of Helsinki, in 1892. Leonard Benois, a key figure among architects in St. Petersburg during this time, spotted Stunkel’s talent and took him on as an assistant. Stunkel worked in Benois’ office and at his dacha in Bobilsky near Peterhof, helping on various projects including dacha designs by Benois and L. I. Kron. Stunkel also met his future wife, Nina Meissner, amongst Benois’ family circle. 
Besides assisting Benois, Stunkel had his own office and designed industrial buildings in St. Petersburg, some of which still survive on the banks of the Obvodny Canal. 
A major work for Stunkel was the new surgical department in the extension to the German Evangelical Hospital and Deaconess institute. When the building was opened in 1904, it was said to have hot-water central heating. The red-brick hospital buildings are still standing at the corner of Ligovsky Prospekt and Nekrasova Ulitsa. 
As Stunkel’s family grew it became a matter of urgency for him to find a new home. Stunkel’s father-in-law, the wealthy businessman Alexander Meissner, put up the funds to build the apartment building on Zhdanovskya Ulitsa in 1904. There are references to Finnish National Romanticism in the granite elevations of this building, but the extensive areas of glass and the use of ironwork in the bay windows suggest Central European influences. 
In 1910, Stunkel designed a five-story apartment building at 129 Sadovaya Ulitsa, at the southern end of the Canal Griboedova. The elevations of the building are rendered and follow the Classical tradition with an abundance of stylised Classical motifs: pilasters, vases and festoons of laurel leaves. The gorgon’s face, familiar from the Zhdanovskaya building, also appears on the eaves of this building. MG, the monogram of the builder, M. Grekhova, can still be seen on the facade. However, early 20th-century National Romantic trends can be seen in the portico. The architect gave the apartment’s doors, especially the wrought-iron hinges, robust forms. 
One of Stunkel’s last designs was a building at 1A 14th Line of Vasilievsky Ostrov, built by his wife’s parents, where his mother-in-law lived. The facade of the six-story building is divided into four horizontal bands. The entrance is in the center of the building and there is also a bay window on the central axis. Here, there are only references to Classical motifs suggesting that the architect has adopted a new trend towards simplicity. However, Stunkel’s work was to be interrupted by the unrest of war and revolution. 
The family was under threat during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and in 1919, Albert Stunkel decided to send his wife and children to Finland as he had remained a Finnish citizen. Stunkel remained in Petrograd, as the city was then known, to put his affairs in order, with the intention of following his family to Finland soon after. 
However, he was arrested and sent to Moscow where he was drafted into forced labour. During this period his home was confiscated. When he returned to St. Petersburg, he was a sick man and died of typhoid fever in 1920 at Olga Meissner’s home on the 14th Line.
Stunkel’s architectural work lives on in several buildings in St. Petersburg that show how Classical, National Romantic and Art Nouveau themes were running through the minds of architects in the early 20th century.

TITLE: Bravo Venice!
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new season of exhibitions at the city’s Edge Art Gallery began Thursday with the opening of a show by the Russian artist Dmitry Polarouche.
Since graduating from the St. Petersburg Academy of Art and Design, Polarouche has participated in a number of national and international exhibitions including shows in London, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Helsinki, and Geneva. His works are represented in many collections all over the world including the contemporary art collection of the Vatican.
Edge owner Edward Emdin described the show as “a very special event” for the gallery which opened at the end of 2005 to hold exhibitions dedicated to a single artist, rather than a mix of artists. The gallery has since mounted shows by such artists as Yury Kalyuta and Andrian Gorlanov. Polarouche’s new exhibition, titled “Venezia… ancora Venezia…,” was inspired by the Italian city.
“Many masters have turned to the city to find new edges,” Emdin said. “They discover new readings of unique combinations of shapes, roughness of textures, using a kaleidoscope of paints.”
The new exhibition represents Polarouche’s unique response to Venice, Emdin added.

“Venezia… ancora Venezia…” at Edge Art Gallery, 6 Konnogvardeysky Bulvar. 
Tel: 571 0150. http://solartgallery.com/solart/_anons.shtml

TITLE: Identity politics
AUTHOR: By Amy Knight
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Tennent H. Bagley was working for the CIA in Switzerland in May 1962 when KGB officer Yury Nosenko, in Geneva as part of a Soviet delegation to an arms-control conference, approached the Americans with an offer to share his secrets. Bagley was the first to interview Nosenko, who gulped down copious amounts of scotch as he told his story. After several secret sessions with Nosenko before the latter returned to Moscow, Bagley was convinced of Nosenko’s bona fides: “Nosenko gave every indication that he was really a KGB officer. Only an insider could have spoken so easily about secret Soviet places, KGB people unknown to the general public, and secret operations.” 
Indeed, Nosenko, who worked in the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate, carrying out counterintelligence operations against Westerners, had much valuable information to pass on. Although some of what he said repeated what the Americans already had learned from Anatoly Golitsyn, who had defected from the KGB six months earlier, Nosenko offered much that was new — including details about the bugging of embassies in Moscow, the KGB’s sexual entrapment operations and even the presence of a double agent in Geneva. 
Bagley’s excitement over the new informant was soon dampened by a trip to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, where he spoke with the chief of counterintelligence, James Angleton, and examined the Golitsyn files. Upon returning to Langley in September 1962 to serve as deputy chief of the CIA’s Soviet bloc division, Bagley decided that Nosenko was a fraud, dispatched by the KGB to deceive the CIA. 
What led Bagley to change his mind about Nosenko? Because Nosenko’s information overlapped with (and at some points contradicted) what Golitsyn had revealed, Angleton and Bagley suspected strongly that the KGB was using Nosenko to confuse and divert the CIA from pursuing real threats, including that of a possible “mole” at Langley. Golitsyn had predicted that the KGB would send over a false defector. Nosenko seemed to be a likely candidate.
Bagley’s conviction that Nosenko was a KGB plant became stronger after Nosenko made an abrupt decision to defect during a trip to Geneva in January 1964. In an interview in Geneva, Nosenko told Bagley that he had been directly involved in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald, who had come to the Soviet Union in 1959 to request asylum, and that the KGB had nothing to do with Oswald’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But in a subsequent interview with the FBI, Nosenko apparently contradicted some things he had said to Bagley, leading the latter to conclude that Nosenko was lying when he claimed firsthand knowledge of the Oswald case.
In April 1964, at the instigation of Bagley and his colleagues, Nosenko was placed in solitary confinement, and a hostile interrogation was begun. The objective was no longer to get useful information from Nosenko, but rather to have him admit that he had been lying and that he was really under Soviet control. As Bagley recounts: “At times the interrogation descended into a shouting match, as no interrogation should, when we called his ludicrous stories what they were: nonsense, crap, bullshit. Our aim was to shake his composure and force some sort of admission. But even when he’d been shown — and admitted — that his stories were impossible to believe, he never confessed.” 
For the next four years and eight months Nosenko remained a prisoner of the CIA, living in what have been described as extremely harsh conditions. Bagley dismisses those who later criticized Nosenko’s incarceration, in particular the two years and two months Nosenko spent in a specially built prison at a CIA training site: “Nosenko’s supporters in CIA later attacked it as a ‘torture vault’ or ‘dungeon,’ whereas the Office of Security designed it simply to permit a minimum guard force to prevent escape.” 
But what about the fact that all subsequent CIA investigations of the Nosenko case (five in all, following Bagley’s own study of the matter) concluded that Nosenko was a real defector and not a KGB plant? If their conclusions were accurate, then the lengthy incarceration of Nosenko was a terrible injustice. 
In order to prove his thesis that Nosenko was a fake defector, Bagley spends most of his book marshalling evidence of Nosenko’s inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Nosenko falsely claimed, for example, to have a higher rank than “captain” in the KGB and was inconsistent about the details of his KGB career and about some of the spy cases he handled. 
But Bagley overlooks circumstances that might explain at least some of the discrepancies. A subsequent CIA study pointed out that when Bagley, whose Russian was “mediocre,” first interviewed Nosenko in 1962, he took notes. The notes were used in the process of transcribing the tape recordings of the interviews, which were of poor quality and hard to follow. It later emerged that the notes and transcripts, which formed the basis for charging that Nosenko was lying, contained many errors. Also, given that Nosenko was drinking heavily during the debriefings in Geneva, he easily could have made misstatements. And finally, Nosenko doubtless wanted to prove that he was important and could provide valuable information, so he embellished the facts. 
The reaction in Moscow to Nosenko’s defection suggests strongly that he was genuine. It is known from numerous sources that Nosenko’s boss, Second Chief Directorate head Oleg Gribanov, lost his job, as did several of his colleagues, as a result of the defection. Moreover, according to two Russian historians who published a book about defections in 2001, the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court pronounced Nosenko guilty of treason under Article 64 of the Criminal Code 4 1/2 months after his defection, and sentenced him to death in absentia.
Bagley dismisses claims about the panic in Moscow as implausible because he does not think Nosenko was important enough to the KGB, and notes that CIA stations abroad could not “verify” an exodus of KGB officers back to Moscow. But he fails to appreciate the overreaction that defections caused at Soviet headquarters, no matter who the defector. To cite one example, after the 1945 defection in Canada of Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk for Soviet military intelligence, all hell broke loose back home. We know, not only from memoirs of former Russian intelligence officers, but also from Canadian records and Soviet messages decrypted by the U.S. National Security Agency — made public in the 1990s — that significant numbers of personnel from all the Soviet intelligence organizations were recalled from both Canada and the United States because of Gouzenko’s defection. 
Bagley’s book fails to make a convincing case that Nosenko, who was finally exonerated by the CIA in 1977, was a fake defector. 

Amy Knight’s most recent book is “How the Cold War Began: The Igor Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies.”

TITLE: In the Spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The last chord of the Eurovision Song Contest has died away, and with it any illusions that chirpy songs spread a message of peace between nations — at least in Eastern Europe. With the music out of the way, the contestants got down to the serious business of recriminations, backstabbing and allegations of foul play.
After winning third place at Saturday's final, the Russian girl group Serebro set to work immediately, regaling the tabloids with tales of dastardly sabotage in their dressing room and even complaining of sexual harassment from Serbian singer Marija Serifovic, who won the contest with a ballad called "Molitva," or "A Prayer."
The lead singer of Serebro, Yelena Temnikova, told Tvoi Den that Serifovic — described in the tabloid as "a well-known lesbian in her country" — tried to flirt with her. "I was so shocked by her behavior that the only thing I could do was to tell her 'fuck you,'" the Russian said, showing the wonderful power of Eurovision to break down language barriers.
Serifovic got a hero's welcome on coming home to Serbia, but Russian voters only awarded her five points and the tabloids sneered about her appearance. Moskovsky Komsomelets wrote that she looked like "a relative of Kim Jong Il," and Serebro producer Maxim Fadeyev told Tvoi Den, "At first, I couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman."
After beating off the Serbian advances, the Serebro girls faced an attack on their home territory, Tvoi Den recounted. Apparently, a pair of shoes was stolen from their dressing room and Russian flags were torn down from the walls. The unknown vandal even poured glue on the girls' chairs, staining Temnikova's dress.
Then again, if you read Komsomolskaya Pravda, the glue was poured on the floor, the girls' dresses were ripped rather than stained and posters — not flags — were torn from the walls. But let's not quibble over details.
When it comes to the runner-up, Ukraine's Verka Serdyuchka, quibbling is very much allowed. The question is, did she sing "Lasha Tumbai" or "Russia Goodbye"? I think a "Russia" might have slipped out during that vivid silver-clad performance — and so do some Russian journalists. 
"Verka Serdyuchka sang 'Russia Goodbye' at Eurovision," Tvoi Den stated authoritatively, warning of "the calm before the storm." Moskovsky Komsolets agreed: "Serdyuchka made her final choice and decisively, with expression and enunciating every syllable, said goodbye to Russia six times."
The comedian who performs as the outrageous train attendant Verka, Andrei Danilko, told Tvoi Den that he didn't sing "Russia, Goodbye" and was "on the verge of tears" from all the criticism. In a subtly insulting way, the tabloid put this quote in the headline, but changed it to the feminine form — which Danilko doesn't use when he's not in character.
The comic complained that threatening comments and phone calls had "sucked away" all his energy, causing him to lose 10 kilograms. But at least some Russian journalists admired his performance. "They shouldn't have left Verka with silver," Izvestia wrote. "She could well put the Helsinki forum down in history by offering the West a new dance rhythm and moves." 
Coming in at sixth place, Belarussian contestant Dima Koldun won far more sympathy in the Russian media, partly because his song, "Work Your Magic," was composed by Russian pop star Filipp Kirkorov.
Talking to Tvoi Den, the young singer Koldun put his sixth place down to hostility toward Belarus, saying, "They marked me down. What can you do?" His producer and composer Kirkorov added, "I'm sure that if Dima had performed for Russia, we would have won first place."
The flamboyant singer, and now Eurovision guru, didn't mince words about the impact of his song. "Today, Koldun is a national hero of Belarus. Like Gagarin."

TITLE: Moscow
Meals
TEXT: Looking for a place to eat next time you head to Moscow? A monthly look at a selection of restaurants in the capital.

O Cleary’s 
48 Ul. Narodnogo Opolcheniya, korpus 1 // Tel; (+8 495) 195-9035 // Open: 10 a.m.-last client // Metro: Oktyarbrskoye Pole.
Irish pubs have broken loose from the city center and are settling in neighborhoods further and further afield. No longer solely the haunt of the tourists, expats and other miscellaneous well-to-do. O’Cleary’s fills this niche nicely. 
Its basement setting is large and spacious, which helps keep the smoke levels down. Although roomy, the place is popular enough that on Friday evenings you may find that the bar’s the only place left with free seating. There are 14 varieties of draft beer including Guinness at 230 rubles a pint and Kilkenny at 220 rubles a pint. There’s also English Boddington’s (190 rubles a half-liter) and Scottish Tennent’s (190 rubles a half-liter). There is a good selection of beer snacks such as nachos (240 rubles), potato wedges with cheese and bacon (170 rubles) and prawns boiled in beer (220 rubles). There is even a Guinness Irish stew (180 rubles).

Pokrovskiye Vorota
19 Ulitsa Pokrovka // Tel: (+8 495) 917-3985, 621-4340 // Open: 11 a.m.-11 p.m // Metro: Kitai-Gorod.
Last month, the popular film “Pokrovskiye Vorota” marked its silver jubilee — perfect timing for the opening of a restaurant named and styled after this Soviet classic.
The restaurant is a shrine to the cult comedy, with numerous photos, props and other knickknacks from the movie evoking its late-1950s setting. As would be expected in such a retro restaurant, the menu is a suitably Soviet lineup of classics minus any nods to the latest fashions. A straightforward olivye costs 115 rubles, vinegret goes for 85 rubles, a plate of marinated mushrooms for 195 rubles, and a large plate of various salted pickles for 250 rubles. Boiled potatoes with herring and onion cost 175 rubles. Mains run the full gamut of retro dishes, starting at 155 rubles for a humble chicken shashlik and reaching up to 525 rubles for lamb ribs. There is also a decent selection of blini.

Shampan 
12 Bolshaya Nikitskaya Ulitsa // Tel: (+8 495) 629-5325/7815 // Open: 24 hours // Metro: Biblioteka Imeni Lenina.
If you’re looking for something casual, then Shampan is definitely not your spot. As the name — Russian for “champagne” — suggests, this establishment is aiming to attract a high-flying crowd. The fit-out is far from subtle and lovers of all things lavish won’t be disappointed — there’s so much gold and crystal it’s like you’re sitting in one of Louis XIV’s living rooms.
Given its posh pretensions, the regular menu, which includes French, Italian and Japanese cuisine, features some surprisingly reasonable prices. The delicious, lightly seared pink tuna with green herbs and tataki sauce at 180 rubles is excellent value, as is the substantial serving of oyster mushrooms fried with nameko sauce for 280 rubles. Pasta dishes start at 290 rubles for a spaghetti pomodoro and reach 550 rubles for pappardelle with seafood. Meat mains average around 450 rubles, with the exception of the marbled beefsteak at 1,100 rubles.

TITLE: Journey to the interior
AUTHOR: By Leo Mourzenko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The title of a new Russian-language film showing in St. Petersburg “Indi” recalls the English word “indie” which has associations with indie rock, or film festivals such as Sundance or Tribeca where indie films are shown every year. None of the above has anything to do with “Indi” but the title reveals a deep state of confusion that hides behind the pretty poster of a woman holding a sandcastle in her hands.
Indi is a name of a princess that lived in that aforementioned unstable mansion. The tale of her misfortunes is told into a little girl’s ear at the beginning of the movie. And since the good old Soviet days, Russians have felt an inexplicable warmth toward Bollywood, the Hindi-language version of Hollywood, so it well might be that by “Indi” they are refering to India and its far-out, crazy and touchingly passionate junk movies. 
However, a more compelling theory is that “Indi” is a coded reference to Ibsen. Just a few letters different, the name of the Norwegian author of highly-serious dramas best reflects the nature of this film. It might just as well have been Racine or Hugo — what matters is that you have to have been born in the 19th century to hold the story told in “Indi” close at heart. 
There’s a woman named Arina (Alyona Babenko) who is happily married to a guy nicknamed Duka (Alexander Baluyev). They live their blissfully uneventful lives worrying about failing to conceive a child when Arina gets into a car accident. Advised by her husband, she flees the scene leaving a man in another vehicle to bleed. Unable to escape her guilty conscience, she suffers nightmares and becomes unbalanced. The news that the man’s injuries weren’t fatal helps put her mind at ease but as is widely known the only real way to deal with bad memories is by going to Africa, so that’s exactly what the lady does.
Nothing wrong with the story so far, only these exciting events (the car crash scene takes about a minute) occupy about forty minutes of the film. It’s painfully boring, as the first act of an Ibsen play should be. 
The next forty minutes are devoted to sightseeing with a little bit of sex. In an intoxicating mixture of National Geographic, Anna Karenina and daytime TV, we see Arina fall for Arseny (Alexander Domogarov), an alpha male who drives an old SUV and speaks Arabic — seriously, what could be more thrilling? The Karenina moment comes with Arina’s suffering over her undeniable excitement about her new pal; National Geographic kicks in when Arseny takes her on a ride through the desert to a conveniently-occurring traditional celebration at an oasis; soap-opera reveals itself when it turns out that Arseny is the same guy that Arina nearly killed in a car accident a few weeks before!
We’ll leave the ties between Ibsen and bad television to literature students, but in the given context this surprising development rather smells like something from an Indian movie in which every character is somebody’s twin from whom they were separated at birth. 
The third act of this epic tragedy is the most fun. Back at the resort, prompted by guilt and shock, Arina lets her new friend go beyond the point of no return. Back home, despite her initial resistance, a summer fling becomes an involving romance — and that’s when the earth under her sandcastle gets a serious shake.
As every good Ibsen character should, Arina achieves self-realization through guilt and the dramatic resolution of the story is telegraphed. Surprisingly, the predictability doesn’t make it all bad.
Once past the first hour, the movie is quite watchable. The actors seem to know what they’re doing, the imagery of the deserts is indeed quite striking and if you agree to abide by the rules of an Ibsen tragedy than you’re in for a good time.
The problem is that however classical it may be, the film is too shallow for its own premise. Its hour-long character set-up doesn’t go too deep. We learn nothing other than the same points repeated again and again: Arina is lost, Duka wants kids. After we find out that Arseny is actually married we don’t see it affecting his character at all and it doesn’t seem to bother him until the end of the story. There’s a hint that Duka, like Karenin, realizes that Arina is having an affair but chooses to forgive her and let it go. It remains a hint. 
Instead of elaborating on all of the above, we get long unnecessary moments that are supposed to fill us in on the characters’ background but end up alienating us from the story. 
This failure is especially surprising given that it took four screenwriters to pen the thing. On the other hand, this might be the cause. If there had been only two maybe the movie would have been forty minutes shorter and better for it.

TITLE: Wait Over for Brown as Rival Pulls Out
AUTHOR: By Sumeet Desai
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Sure of becoming prime minister after long years of waiting, Gordon Brown smiles much more now.
He’s got tailored suits and whiter teeth, and is making a huge effort to appear more personable. But Britain’s Chancellor still faces a battle to guide the increasingly unpopular Labour to a fourth successive election victory.
Brown is set to take over as Labour leader and prime minister on June 27 without a vote after his only rival for the party leadership conceded defeat on Wednesday.
The son of a clergyman, Brown’s serious style is very different from that of Prime Minister Tony Blair, the perennially upbeat lawyer who announced last week he will step down on June 27 after more than 10 years in office.
“Perhaps I will soon be able to talk about things other than financial figures,” the 56-year-old Scot told Reuters. “I give news about the economy, and so the scope for great humour isn’t really there. I can’t just start cracking jokes about taxation.”
Brown says he always wanted to be footballer. But at 16, a sporting injury cost him an eye and put him in hospital for months. He was in danger of going completely blind.
“Every event that you face shapes you,” he says. “I just had to stay determined and positive.
“The most important thing in one’s life is to be determined when bad things happen to you, and not to let events beat you.”
Brown threw himself into left-wing politics at Edinburgh University, his beliefs shaped by the poverty he saw growing up in Kirkcaldy, a town with a failing linoleum industry.
The Brown Sugars — miniskirted female fans — cheered him to his first election victory as university rector. Colleagues remember the student Brown as being intensely driven and he remains a single-minded workaholic.
Flying into Iraq for the first time in November, Brown continued studying his papers as the military helicopter lurched violently a few metres above the ground.
As the longest-serving Chancellor in 200 years, Brown has had a greater hand in shaping domestic policy than any other incumbent in living memory.
He held the government’s purse strings so tightly that one former top civil servant said he demonstrated “Stalinist ruthlessness” towards colleagues over spending plans.
His first act on entering office in 1997 is still regarded as Labour’s masterstroke, handing control of interest rates to the Bank of England. He also kept Britain out of the euro.
The British economy has thrived and the International Monetary Fund repeatedly praises his skilful management.
But government borrowing has risen and the housing boom that has made huge numbers paper millionaires has increased inequality and created a trillion-pound debt mountain.
With decisions often made within a tightly knit coterie, many have criticised Brown’s management style. Opponents say he lacks charm and often walks right past them without a word.
Certainly, Brown is more of a bruiser than Blair. He angered fellow G7 finance ministers in 2005 over his determination to get a deal on writing off Africa’s debts and likes to portray himself as a staunch defender of British interests in Europe.
Fatherhood, however, has softened him. Brown shed a tear on television last year talking about the death of his daughter, Jennifer Jane, 10 days after her premature birth in 2001.
He and wife Sarah have had two sons since. Brown’s face lights up when he talks about them. “I need a red cement mixer. I’m going to be in trouble unless I get a red cement mixer,” he suddenly interjected at dinner recently, referring to a popular children’s toy.

TITLE: Sevilla Retains UEFA Cup in Shootout
AUTHOR: By Justin Palmer
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GLASGOW — Goalkeeper Andres Palop emerged as Sevilla’s hero by saving three penalties in the shootout to give his side victory over Espanyol in a thrilling all-Spanish UEFA Cup final at Hampden Park on Wednesday.
The Andalucians became only the second side to retain the trophy after a pulsating game, played in driving rain, ended 2-2 after 120 minutes, condemning Espanyol to more European final heartbreak — 19 years after they lost the 1988 final on penalties to Bayer Leverkusen.
 Palop, whose headed goal against Shakhtar Donetsk in the last 16 had kept the holders in the competition, saved spot-kicks from Luis Garcia, Jonatas and Marc Torrejon to give Sevilla victory 3-1 on penalties.
Sevilla, emulating Real Madrid who achieved successive UEFA Cup triumphs in 1985 and 1986, remain on course for a treble. They play Getafe in the King’s Cup final and are still in contention for the Primera Liga title.
Brazilian winger Adriano Correia had fired the holders ahead on 18 minutes but Espanyol were level 10 minutes later, Albert Riera’s shot from just inside the box beating Palop after taking a deflection.

CLOSE RANGE
Mali striker Frederic Kanoute, who also scored 12 months ago in the 4-0 rout of Middlesbrough in a one-sided final in Eindhoven, pounced from close range to turn home a Jesus Navas cross at the end of the first extra period.
But after Sevilla had wasted a host of chances to seal the trophy, Brazilian substitute Jonatas let fly from 20 metres and scored with the help of a slight deflection five minutes from the end of extra time.
Sevilla had opened the scoring on 18 minutes. Palop threw a long pass out to the left flank where Adriano Correia gathered. His pace took him away from David Garcia’s desperate lunge, and with Espanyol caught short at the back, Adriano advanced into the box before curling decisively around Gorka Iraizoz.
The goal stunned the Catalans but they were behind for only 10 minutes.
Riera, who had gained possession on halfway, cut in from the left flank running parallel across the edge of the box. Setting his sights on goal, his right-footed shot caught the outstretched foot of Daniel Alves and the deflection was enough to deceive Palop.
Ramos introduced the more attack-minded Jesus Navas for Maresca at the start of the second half and the change gave Sevilla greater balance.
Pandiani was also thrown into the fray after 55 minutes, seconds after Tamudo had forced Palop into tipping his rising shot over the bar.
Espanyol had their tails up and Palop came to his side’s rescue again, producing a stunning one-handed save to palm Riera’s left-footed half-volley, struck with real venom, on to the crossbar.
A goal at that stage would have been just reward but they were put on the backfoot after 68 minutes when Hurtado, booked in the first half, halted substitute Alexander Kerzhakov’s run with a tackle from behind and was sent off.
Sevilla, with their man advantage, became the dominant side and looked to have settled the tie when Navas crossed low from the right and Kanoute, a peripheral figure for much of the game, got in front of his marker to turn in at the near post at the end of the first extra half.
Espanyol rode their luck after that but conjured an equaliser when Brazilian Jonatas curled in a shot that took the tie to penalties.

TITLE: Sarkozy Makes 
Fillon PM
AUTHOR: By Francois Murphy and Jon Boyle
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — French President Nicolas Sarkozy named Francois Fillon as prime minister on Thursday, banking on the moderate conservative’s negotiating skills to push through sweeping reforms in the face of union resistance.
On his first full day in office, Sarkozy held a breakfast meeting with Fillon before confirming the appointment of the 53-year-old who masterminded Sarkozy’s presidential campaign.
Fillon worked with powerful trade unions when he was social affairs minister to push through sensitive pension reforms in 2003, making him a natural choice to spearhead Sarkozy’s changes to labour laws and the pensions system.
“In a world of six billion human beings, the 60 million French people must remain united. That is the spirit of openness that the president wants,” Fillon said at a handover ceremony with outgoing Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
“I will listen to everyone because a France in motion needs everyone.”
Fillon’s cool temperament contrasts with Sarkozy’s high-octane personality. Commentators have said that in the “calm break” with the past that Sarkozy has called for, the right-winger is the break while Fillon is the calm.
The prime minister heads the government and is in charge of carrying out policy while the president has traditionally had a more hands-off role.

TITLE: Cole Eyes Wembley
Way To 
Salvation
AUTHOR: By Trevor Huggins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: COBHAM, England — Chelsea winger Joe Cole is looking to make up for a season wrecked by injury with an FA Cup winners’ medal in Saturday’s final against Manchester United.
Cole missed the first two months of their Premier League campaign after picking up a knee injury on tour in the United States and then suffered a stress fracture of his foot in November, sidelining him for over four months.
Now recovered and looking ahead to only his ninth start of the season, Cole told reporters: “It’s a great feeling for the team, the club — and especially for me.
“People didn’t expect me to be back playing this season and I want to grasp the opportunity with both hands and come home with the pot.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for United, they’ve won the championship and they’ve played some good stuff.
“But on a personal note, for me, it’s so important — everything’s geared up for this moment. Every game this year has been a bonus and to play in an FA Cup final is magnificent. I can’t wait.”
Saturday has a special lure for Cole as the first FA Cup final to be played at the new Wembley Stadium, finally ready and certain to be packed to its 90,000-capacity.
“I’ve not seen it yet, only when it was being built, so I’m really excited,” he said. “It means so much to everyone around the world but especially to an Englishman.
“I’ve been brought up with Wembley. I used to get on the train and walk down Wembley Way and go to all the England games and to cup finals there.” 
Though the league title has gone to United and they bowed out of the Champions League semi-finals, Chelsea can still make it a trophy double after beating Arsenal in the League Cup final at Cardiff in February.
“This is every bit as important as anything we’ve played in this year,” Cole said. “We can finish the season with two trophies and that would be a great achievement.”
That view was shared by Cole’s fellow wingers at their training ground south of London.
England team mate Shaun Wright-Phillips said: “I don’t think anyone would see the FA Cup as a consolation prize. It’s a big trophy and it speaks for itself.”
Dutchman Arjen Robben, just back in training after injury, added: “It’s going to be a special game — we both got knocked out of the Champions League semi-finals and we fought together for the Premiership.”

TITLE: Lab Analyst Admits to Gaps in Landis Drug Tests
AUTHOR: By Michael A. Hiltzik
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: Defense lawyers for Tour de France champion Floyd Landis on Wednesday began building their case that the French laboratory that found he tested positive for testosterone is inept and dishonest, contending that its analytical records are rife with unexplained time gaps that may conceal efforts by lab personnel to manipulate test results.
The target of the attorneys’ barbs was Cynthia Mongongu, a supervisory analyst at the French government doping laboratory in Paris.
Mongongu conducted the most important test on Landis’ urine sample from Stage 17 of the Tour de France and double-checked a colleague’s analysis of Landis’ backup, or B, sample from the same stage.
The lab, known by its initials LNDD, ruled that a carbon isotope ratio assay showed both samples to be positive for testosterone use, triggering the doping contention last summer.
The 31-year-old American cyclist is contesting the accusation at a hearing before three arbitrators at Pepperdine University in Malibu. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).
Mongongu also performed the analyses on most of the seven other urine samples taken from Landis during the 2006 race. These samples, which LNDD originally ruled clean after a rudimentary screening, were reanalyzed in April using the more exacting carbon isotope test. Four were then declared positive for testosterone use.
Landis is hoping to convince the three arbitrators that LNDD’s performance falls far short of the standards for anti-doping labs set by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which is the accrediting agency for LNDD and 33 other such facilities around the world. If he succeeds in doing so, then USADA will face the difficult burden of proving that the flaws in the lab’s technique did not cause the positive readings on his sample.
The strategy requires Landis’ defense to delve into the lab’s methodology in numbing detail. Such microscopic scrutiny is rare in anti-doping cases.
Landis was forced to appeal several times to the arbitration panel to gain access to data his defense regarded as crucial.
For the most part, cross-examination by Maurice Suh, a Landis attorney, focused on numerous unexplained gaps in LNDD’s records of the carbon isotope tests on Landis’ samples.
The test involves an instrument that analyzes the constitution of more than a dozen chemical samples, including eight control samples designed to verify the equipment’s accuracy. The test is designed to be automated, so that all the steps take place sequentially over a period of about seven hours without any intervention by an operator.
The tests on Landis’ Stage 17 samples, however, each appear to have included an unexplained gap of about five hours between two of the steps.
“Tell me what happened here,” Suh said to Mongongu, referring to one of the gaps.
She said “there was a problem,” and that she had to implement one of the steps manually. Although such a departure from routine normally requires written documentation under WADA rules, Mongongu acknowledged that she made no note of the problem at the time.
Mongongu acknowledged that at several points during the April retests, she intervened manually in the test sequence because the instrument had produced a result that was “undoubtedly not correct.” She did not document her action at the time, she acknowledged.
The incorrect or unacceptable results being produced by the machine tended to involve calibrations or verification runs, rather than readings on Landis’ samples. But the defense may be intending to argue that the inadequacy of the machine casts doubt on Landis’ results.
Mongongu’s testimony suggested that the performance of the machine had been erratic for years; under questioning by Howard Jacobs, another lawyer for Landis, she said that she had had to summon a manufacturer’s technician roughly 10 times since September 2003 to repair the hardware.
Records of the retesting in April indicated numerous similar gaps in documentation, some of them covering periods of more than an hour. Mongongu testified she could not recall the reason for the gaps.
Mongongu had defended her technique Tuesday under direct questioning by a USADA attorney. On Wednesday, however, she acknowledged that she had failed to document several steps in her analysis of Landis’ Stage 17 sample, including where and when she acquired the sample vial and when she passed it on to the next technician in line.
Mongongu was also asked about a leak of the April results to L’Equipe, a French sports journal. L’Equipe’s report that several of the tests had returned positive results appeared on April 24 ? the morning after the tests were completed.
Mongongu denied passing the results to L’Equipe or knowing who did. She also said that she was never questioned on the matter by the lab’s director, Jacques De Ceaurriz.
Landis, 31, faces a two-year suspension from competition and the loss of his Tour title if the contention is upheld and a subsequent arbitration appeal fails.

TITLE: Inept Cavaliers Let Finals Slip Through Net
AUTHOR: By Howard Beck
PUBLISHER: the new york times
TEXT: CLEVELAND — Late-game pratfalls put the Nets on the edge of playoff elimination, and a disastrous fourth quarter should have ended their season Wednesday night. Only a strange brew of stout defense, good mojo and striking ineptitude by the Cleveland Cavaliers saved them.
The Nets scored 6 points in the fourth quarter, and still beat the Cavaliers, 83-72 — a result that could qualify as the worst victory in N.B.A. playoff history.
The Cavaliers, with a chance to advance to their first Eastern Conference finals since 1992, managed to score 13 points in the final quarter and lost on their home court for the first time this postseason.
Cleveland holds a 3-2 lead in the series, which returns to Continental Arena on Friday. At the moment, it appears neither team is capable of taking control. Players and coaches had only wry grins and shrugs after the teams combined to shoot 4 for 32, with 12 turnovers, in the fourth quarter.
“Both teams were on fire defensively,” Jason Kidd said, drawing chuckles.
The Nets survived because they built a 22-point edge in the third quarter, and because they stifled LeBron James with swarming defense. James finished with 20 points and 5 turnovers and was frequently forced to give up the ball to his teammates, who could not make a shot.
Larry Hughes, the Cavaliers’ No. 2 scoring option, went 3 for 17 from the field. Donyell Marshall, called upon late in the game after barely playing in the series, went 0 for 7. The Cavaliers shot 33.3 percent as a team.
The night ended with a variety of concerns for James. He banged his knee in the final minute while chasing a loose ball and left the court before the final buzzer. James tripped over Kidd and fell into the folding chairs that form the Cavaliers’ bench. He stayed there a few minutes, but said later that he was O.K.
During the game, James’s girlfriend, Savannah, was taken from the arena after requiring medical attention. She is expecting the couple’s second child next month. The team did not have any information on her condition.
“I think she’s O.K.” James said. “From what little information I have, I think she’s doing fine.”
In general, James seemed unperturbed ? even upbeat ? despite his team’s failure to close out the series.
“I should feel upbeat,” James said. “We’re still up, 3-2. There’s no reason for me to be down. At the end of the day, it’s just basketball for me. I got a family at home I got to worry about more than basketball.”
The Cavaliers won at Continental Arena on Monday night and seem confident they can do it again. The Nets, after winning at Quicken Loans Arena for the first time in three tries, have reason to believe they can win a Game 7 here if they get that far.
Kidd was generally brilliant Wednesday, with 20 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists, his performance marred slightly by 8 turnovers. Vince Carter, who lost the ball in the final seconds of Monday’s defeat, rebounded with a 12-point, 10-assist game. He controlled the game for long stretches with his playmaking, repeatedly finding Mikki Moore (14 points) for open layups and jumpers. Richard Jefferson had 15 points, 9 in the third quarter when the Nets opened their biggest lead.
After shooting better than 50 percent through three quarters, the Nets made just 1 of 15 shots in the fourth. They missed their first nine field-goal attempts of the period as the lead shrunk from 18 points to 9. But they survived, just as they have throughout a season marred by injuries, trade rumors and doubts about their future.
“This has been kind of the makeup of this team,” Kidd said. “You know, counted out. It goes back to after the All-Star break. Nobody thought that we were going to make the playoffs. We all believe in one another, we all support each other, in good times and bad. And we just felt, hey, this is another game that we can hopefully come out and perform and give ourselves a chance to win.”
Tension in the series had heated up considerably by tip-off. The Cavaliers were incensed by Moore’s takedown of Sasha Pavlovic in Game 4 and accused the Nets of targeting Pavlovic in the series. On Wednesday, Pavlovic exacted his revenge.
On a fast break early in the third quarter, Kidd hit Moore with the ball and Pavlovic hit Moore, sending him crashing into the basket stanchion. The fans erupted in approval. 
Pavlovic was called for a flagrant foul. Moore simply stood back up and clapped, then made both free throws.

TITLE: Sabres Hold On To Extend Series
AUTHOR: John Wawrow
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OTTAWA — Ryan Miller and the Buffalo Sabres withstood a late Ottawa Senators rally and stayed alive in the Eastern Conference finals. 
Miller was remarkable in stopping 15 shots in the third period, and Chris Drury and Derek Roy each had a goal and assist in a 3-2 win over Ottawa in Game 4 on Wednesday night. 
The Sabres nearly squandered a three-goal lead but staved off elimination, cutting the Senators’ best-of-seven series lead to 3-1 and making Game 5 necessary in Buffalo on Saturday. advertisement  
It wasn’t easy for the Sabres, who ended a three-game skid and won for the third time in eight games.
The Senators put a big scare into the Sabres, rallying for two goals in a 1:46 span, cutting Buffalo’s lead to 3-2 with 3:19 left in the second period.
Miller, however, stopped 31 shots — the same number he stopped in a 1-0 loss on Monday.
“When things weren’t going our way at the end of the second period, we could’ve packed it in there, and said, ‘Ah, you know it’s too tough,’ “ Miller said. 
“But we battled through some tough situations.”
Ottawa had back-to-back power plays in the third period but failed to score, despite getting 10 shots on net during a 4:30 stretch. 
Peter Schaefer and Dean McAmmond scored for the Senators, who had a six-game winning streak snapped and lost for only the second time in seven home games.