SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1309 (75), Tuesday, September 25, 2007
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TITLE: Ideas Versus Experience Clash In Primaries
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As Garry Kasparov faces off with Mikhail Kasyanov in a series of primaries being held by The Other Russia Coalition to elect a unified opposition candidate that would oppose pro-Kremlin rivals in the forthcoming presidential elections, the contest is one of political steadfastness verses leadership experience.
In a series of regional primaries being conducted in 54 Russian cities, former chess champion Kasparov and former prime minister Kasyanov have so far led the field. Kasparov won the vote in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
The list of potential candidates in the primaries also includes Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky, Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov, emigre dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, liberal State Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov, former leader of the Union of Right Forces Boris Nemtsov and People movement leader Sergei Gulyayev.
The decisive vote takes place this coming Sunday during the opposition coalition’s federal congress in Moscow.
Grigory Golosov, a doctor of political science at St. Petersburg’s European University, said the difficulty with the regional conferences currently taking place is that they are meant to carry out two tasks — one declared, one undeclared.
The declared goal is choosing the coalition’s preferred candidate to stand in presidential elections in March while at the same time selecting a leader capable of navigating the opposition through the political landscape in coming years. 
“Regardless of the fact who will become the unified candidate, there will be other opposition politicians willing to run for president,” Golosov said. “Zyuganov and Yavlinsky, technically speaking, can be both described as opposition candidates. 
Also, even if the conference decides upon either Kasyanov or Kasparov, it does not necessarily mean that the other will automatically bury his presidential ambitions.”
Kasyanov on Saturday was elected the leader of a new political party, People for Democracy and Justice. He left The Other Russia coalition in July.
Kasparov has demonstrated a long-time dedication to liberal values. Analysts predict his political consistency can potentially win him a greater share of democratic votes.  Kasyanov, by contrast, threw himself into the camp of Putin’s critics only after being forced out of the prime minister’s seat in 2004. 
Kasparov’s involvement in politics did not start with The Other Russia. Back in the 1990s the chess champion was a member of Yegor Gaidar’s liberal Russia’s Choice party, later renamed Russia’s Democratic Choice, where he kept a low profile.
“Kasparov never hid his liberal orientation, and voiced his opinions on any suitable occasion,” said Yevgeny Volk, head of the Moscow office of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative, Washington-based think tank. 
“The malicious glee he pours on Putin and the security services has deep roots. In his early career, when he was playing against Anatoly Karpov, a darling of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Kasparov, with his Jewish ancestry, bold attitude and humble origins was treated with annoyance and contempt by the xenophobic Communist machine, including the country’s KGB secret-service.”
Little appears to have changed. The KGB’s successor, the Federal Security Bureau or FSB, has accused Kasparov of extremism and violations of the Russian constitution during the opposition marches in March and April.
Russia’s state-owned television stations, which once trumpeted his international victories in chess, have until very recently shunned coverage of Kasparov’s political career. Russian TV revived coverage of Kasparov in April when broadcasters reported on a series of “dissenters’ marches” in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod. Presenters ridiculed him and called the former world champion a marginal figure — in striking contrast to Western coverage, where lengthy footage from the marches was accompanied by commentaries about Kasparov’s stated commitment to democratic values and human rights.
Kasparov’s avowed liberal views and openness, his wealth and his status of a self-made man appeal to the West, said Maria Matskevich, a senior researcher with the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 
“To become a successful politician at home he will have to do something about the lack of a strong supporting team and a detailed political program,” she said. “Kasyanov’s strong point is his four years in the office as Russia’s prime minister [2000-2004]. He is an experienced executive but he lack’s Kasparov’s wealth of ideas.” 
Some voters may also be put off by the fraud and other corruption charges that periodically, so far without success, are brought against Kasyanov. Although none of the allegations have ever been proved, they have been circulated in the mainstream media.
Although Other Russia leaders declared earlier this year that they would develop a program of national unity, the document is yet to be completed. 
“Kasparov’s charisma and creative personality make him an appealing public figure, but he is not the right sort of person to be able to cope with the bureaucratic routine that is an inseparable part of a professional politician’s life,” Matskevich said. “Manipulating chess pieces is different from motivating, influencing, and organizing people.”
How much voter support the unified candidate can garner and how much     good the backing of The Other Russia does is another matter. The coalition’s popularity, as reflected by nationwide polls is at best a modest 15 percent. The view that people have of the coalition is generally based on hostile coverage of the “dissenters’ marches” offered by state controlled television channels. Kasparov has repeatedly complained about restricted access for the coalition leaders to television. The Other Russia is also said to be weakened by its political alliances, which some analysts predict will hamper its chances in elections.
“The presence of National Bolsheviks in the coalition serves to put off many Russians with liberal views,” Volk said. “Limonov’s radical views, his followers’ extravagant escapades, like throwing eggs at their enemies, and the general stigma of an extremist movement turns many potential supporters away.”
But what his critics call a major mistake, Kasparov himself sees as an important political achievement. 
“Our coalition is a model of an ideal parliament, where several political forces, however diverse they may be, manage to reach a compromise for the people’s benefit,” he said. “This is essentially something that the Russian State Duma should become. More importantly, democracy, as I see it, means tolerance toward other people’s views.”
Kasparov compared the political alliance with the unification of opposition forces in Chile back in 1988, when Communists and Christian Democrats joined forces to challenge the country’s military ruler, Augusto Pinochet, in a popular vote aimed at deciding whether the dictator should be the only presidential candidate. 
Whichever candidate the coalition finally settles on, there is no guarantee that they will be registered by the Central Election Commission. The tendency of removing opposition candidates from the elections on technical grounds established in regional elections earlier this year, when opposition parties encountered serious problems in 11 out of 14 regions, is highly likely to continue, Golosov said.

TITLE: Kasparov Wins Local Opposition Vote
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Garry Kasparov, the leader of the United Civil Front and the opposition coalition The Other Russia, was selected to represent the bloc in March presidential elections at a primary election in St. Petersburg on Sunday, with former local Legislative Assembly deputy Sergei Gulyayev, who has recently launched a liberal, mildly nationalist group “Narod” (People), coming second.
The regional conference drew a record-breaking number of 268 delegates featuring members of Yabloko, the National Bolshevik Party and the left-wing Avangard Krasnoi Molodyozhi (Red Youth Avant-Garde) as well as the other parties and groups. Such conferences have been held throughout Russia since Aug. 5 in 52 regions with final conferences which were due to take place in Ulyanovsk and Moscow on Monday.
Because of disruptions from the authorities, The Other Russia chose to hold absentee voting in the Rostov Oblast and Volgograd Oblasts. A second round of elections failed in the Kaliningrad Oblast because its organizers were detained.
Despite continuous police interference and the denial of permission by many venues to hold opposition meetings, notably in Moscow last week when two halls backed out of agreements to allow meetings there, the St. Petersburg conference was held in Park Inn Pulkovskaya hotel without problems.
“We managed to avoid such complexities first of all because we dealt with a management that is independent. We chose a [Western-managed] hotel, even though financially it’s more burdebsome than some [state-owned] film theater,” said Olga Kurnosova, the head of the United Civil Front in St. Petersburg, by phone on Monday. “However, it meant that we were secure against 'power cuts' or 'disconnections of water' or 'sewerage' on the day of the event.”
The meeting was picketed by the Kremlin-backed youth organization Young Guard (Molodaya Gvardiya), the youth division of the pro-President Vladimir Putin party United Russia.
Fourteen young people wearing white jackets with the Young Guard logo, some hiding their faces from cameras, spent 15 minutes in front of the hotel holding posters and shouting slogans against The Other Russia and its leaders before the conference started. 
Attempted provocations included a young woman accredited as a journalist of an obscure publication who repeatedly tried to confront Kasparov with a question, but was not permitted by Kurnosova, who was presiding, and a young man who tried to sneak in with a chess board —reminiscent of an incident when Kasparov, as the chess player turned politician, was attacked with a chess board in Moscow in 2005 — but was stopped by a guard.
Candidates also included London-based former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, former chairman of the Central Bank Viktor Gerashchenko, communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, ex-prime minister and leader of the People’s Democratic Union Mikhail Kasyanov and State Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov. Only Gulyayev and Kasparov were present.
Addressing voters, Gulyayev voiced several points of his party Narod’s Program of National Revival that calls for large-scale political reform, including setting limits on the power of the president and raising the importance of the parliament, the abolition of limitations imposed on elections during the rule of Putin, the appointment of judges and district police officers by vote and the establishment of a professional army in Russia.
“The state can afford to maintain today’s army on a professional basis,” he said, arguing that it is outnumbered by professional police and state security forces.
Kasparov, who spoke next, agreed with Gulyayev’s main points such as the need for vast political, legislative and army reforms. While criticizing certain points such as nationalization of the liquor industry, including breweries, as “excessive,” Kasparov described the differences as acceptable in a normal parliament as opposed to the current State Duma, which he said, citing the Duma’s current chairman Boris Gryzlov, “is not a place for discussions.”
“The primaries that we are holding may seem insignificant [due to a low number of participants], but this is a big mistake — and the authorities understand this, that’s why they react to our actions so harshly,” said Kasparov. 
“Why are the authorities are afraid of this so much? It is because cells of normal democratic society form here. We create what [Putin’s former top economic adviser turned oppositionist] Andrei Illarionov called a ‘proto-parliament.’ There are different people in a parliament, it must represent different viewpoints.
“The Other Russia is the alternative to the de-facto one-party KGB dictatorship. … The Other Russia is a symbolic name that causes sheer irritation and fear in them, because in The Other Russia everything goes differently. … Here we have an election with an unknown result.”
The 268 votes were split between Kasparov and Gulyayev as 123 and 99 in the first round (with Ryzhkov coming third with 17 votes) and 111 and 76 in the second, which was held because none of the candidates got the necessary 50 percent plus one vote in the first round.
“I congratulated Garry on the victory in St. Petersburg yesterday,” said Gulyayev by telephone on Monday. 
“I think that this is a normal result. I won the election in the Leningrad Oblast [on Saturday] and came second in St. Petersburg, it’s a deserved estimate of my work. I’m taking part as a delegate in The Other Russia’s assembly [in Moscow] on Sept. 30 and will present my program there for sure as a candidate. The primary in St. Petersburg is not final, so I will speak at the assembly as a candidate, take part in the voting and keep on struggling.”
Kurnosova said the conference in St. Petersburg was a success.
“If we see it as a primary, then the primary was a great success, because there were many aspects of genuine voting — full-scale agitation, people who came driven by their own motives, [the candidates’] addresses, in many aspects it is a model of elections that is almost forgotten today,” she said.
“Usually people have no opportunity to ask questions to the candidates, to hear their real position on some pressing issues, that’s why as a model for primaries, I think it went very successfully.”
The presidential election is scheduled for March 2008.

TITLE: New U.S.-Russia Treaty Threatens Polar Bears
AUTHOR: By James Kilner
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — A new Russia-U.S. treaty could allow hunters in Russia to kill polar bears, a species already under threat from global warming, the World Wildlife Fund said on Monday.
Russian and U.S. scientists and authorities drew up the treaty to improve cooperation and standardize treatment of polar bears living across the Bering Strait — which stretches from Russia’s Chukotka region to Alaska in the United States. But it may force Russia to reintroduce polar bear hunting, 50 years after the Soviet Union banned it, to match legislation in Alaska, said Viktor Nikiforov, WWF Russia’s polar bear expert.
“It’s not a treaty about hunting, it’s about cooperation and management but on the negative side it is a potential gate for the reintroduction of hunting into Russia,” he said of the treaty enforced on Sunday but drawn up seven years ago when global warming was less topical.
“We have to be worried about that.”
Global warming threatens to kill off the polar bear by melting the ice they use to hunt seals and earlier this month a U.S. Geological Survey estimated two thirds of the 20,000 to 25,000 population could die by 2050.
In Alaska the Inuit people are allowed to hunt polar bears for non-commercial purposes — for fur and meat. Now the new treaty calls for people in both areas to be treated equally.
And there is some pressure from grassroots groups in Chukotka to reintroduce polar bear hunting and match the Alaskan quota of about 25 polar bear kills a year, Nikiforov said, estimating there to be around 2,000 living around the Bering Strait — which freezes into an ice bridge in the winter.
“If the scientific community agree to continue hunting on the Alaskan side then the treaty says the quota has to be split 50-50,” he said.
Ten years ago, Nikiforov said, the polar bear population living around the Bering Strait could have been twice as high at nearly 5,000 but global warming is melting the Arctic, destroying their hunting ground and lengthening swims which kills some from exhaustion.
“The worldwide polar bear population is under great stress,” Nikiforov said.
Norway has banned polar bear hunting but indigenous people in Canada and Greenland still hunt them.

TITLE: President Mulls New Line-Up
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov presented his proposed cabinet team to President Vladimir Putin late Monday, Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin chief spokesman Alexei Gromov as saying.
No details of the new line-up were given and there was no information on when it might be announced.
Russia has been awaiting details of the new cabinet since Zubkov’s appointment on Sept. 12, with speculation focusing on the likely fate of Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Economy Minister German Gref, the cabinet’s leading liberals.
Russian news agencies reported earlier in the day that Putin had returned from the Black Sea resort of Sochi to Moscow.
“The prime minister presented his proposals at the meeting with President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin,” the Itar-TASS news agency quoted Gromov as saying.
Putin has said he wants a new team to lead the Russian government through parliamentary and presidential elections over the next six months.
Delays announcing the line-up fuelled speculation about internal Kremlin tensions.
“A government meeting is planned for today,” said Alexander Smirnov, an official with the Kremlin’s press service. “Of course some of the ministers will be new.”
Reuters, AFP

TITLE: Belykh,
Nemtsov But No Chubais
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Calling themselves the last “samurai of Russian democracy,” the Union of Right Forces kicked off its election campaign Friday by confirming its party lists for the Dec. 2 State Duma elections.
Conspicuously absent from the congress was party stalwart Anatoly Chubais, who stayed away following a veiled warning about the election campaign from President Vladimir Putin.
Leader Nikita Belykh was confirmed to head up the national list for the Union of Right Forces, or SPS. Boris Nemtsov, the former leader of the liberal, pro-business party, got the No. 2 spot, while literary critic Marietta Chudakova was confirmed for the third place on the ticket.
“This troika represents three generations of democrats,” Belykh told delegates before the vote. The congress approved the list 129-to-10 in a secret ballot.
Maria Gaidar, daughter of former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, will head the Moscow city list, while Leonid Gozman, board member at national electricity utility Unified Energy System, tops the list in St. Petersburg.
In a rather modest event compared with the previous year’s, delegates also approved a party campaign platform with the slogan “freedom and humanism.”
Belykh spoke for about 20 minutes, telling delegates that election success was possible, despite “government television channels working against” the party and “possible criticism from the president’s side,” in an apparent reference to comments made by Putin at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on Sept. 14.
In a comment made at the annual meeting with international Russia analysts and journalists, Putin hinted that SPS co-founder Chubais could use his position as UES CEO to help the party.
“Everyone knows Anatoly Chubais is an SPS leader, both formally and informally,” Putin said. “At the same time, he heads of one of our biggest energy companies. As you know, this company, with its huge resources ... is able to provide not only moral and administrative, but also financial backing. I hope they do it according to the law.”
A party official, who asked not to be named, said Chubais had decided not attend the congress “just in case,” following the remarks.
Belykh replied to repeated queries about the remarks by suggesting reporters “address these questions to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”
He also dismissed rumors that the party had bowed to Kremlin pressure by not including independent Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov on its lists.
“We did not receive any calls from the presidential administration,” Belykh said. “We held long talks with Ryzhkov, but there has never been a question of putting him on the SPS lists.”

TITLE: Teenage Inmates Stage Riot in Kresty Prison
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A riot of teenage inmates in the city’s remand center Friday was a so-called “test of strength” for new authorities at the center, known colloquially as Kresty, the city’s Federal Correctional Service Department or FCSD said on Monday.
“Criminal structures wanted to check the new head of Kresty for strength,” Interfax quoted Eduard Petrukhin, deputy head of FCSD, as saying.
A criminal case under article 321 of the Russian Criminal Code has been opened, Petrukhin said.
He said the FCSD managed “to calm down teenagers with the help of words” because the FCSD doesn’t have the right to use weapons against them.
A group of 17 teenagers held in Kresty started the riot to demand a relaxation of rules, particularly rules about the examination of parcels.
The riot began unexpectedly when a group of teenage inmates went for a walk. Suddenly two young men began breaking the locks in the yard. Others followed their example and also began breaking locks in other yards, Fontanka.ru reported.
Two inspectors tried to calm down the teenagers. However, stones and pieces of bricks were thrown and an inspector sustained a head wound.
The rioters climbed the roof and waved linen that other inmates passed them from the cells. 
The FSCD called for OMON special forces officers who then arrived.  However, the FSCD did not use them as they had then managed to peacefully solve the problem after 2 hours of negotiations.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Malenchuk, head of the city’s FCSD, said “the demands of the teenagers were absolutely illegal,” Interfax said.
They demanded permission to play soccer, have dumb-bells and barbells in their cells, and receive unchecked parcels with cigarettes.
Malenchuk said Kresty’s new authorities have tightened the center’s regime.
During the last three weeks officers seized about 200 mobile phones from parcels containing canned food, Malenchuk said.
He said five of the 17 teenagers that took part in the riot are being kept in Kresty for very serious charges. The three of them are skinheads, and one of them is charged with the murder of a 10-year-old boy, he said. He added that four of the most active protesters might be taken to a different remand center.
Adult criminal leaders provoked the riot, Malenchuk said.
Sergei Khudorozhnikov, head of Kresty, said the actions were provoked by criminal leaders at large.
“Someone was trying to attract attention to himself,” Khudorozhnikov said. He said Kresty authorities have information that a hunger strike is being prepared in Kresty. However, he said the hunger strike would not take place on a large scale.
“From our information, only adults will take part in the action but not all of them,” he said.
He said if needed Kresty will use force and special means, as well as special forces units, to prevent the hunger strike.

TITLE: Communist Leader Calls Putin a Tsar and Pharoah
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: OSKOVSKY, Moscow Region — Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov took aim at President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power at a party congress Saturday and ridiculed the chances of “artificial parties” to bleed votes away from his party.
Zyuganov told about 300 delegates gathered at the Scientific Methodological Center in the former state-farm town of Moskovsky, 20 kilometers south of Moscow, that Putin had gathered enormous power in his hands.
“[Putin] has more power today than the pharaoh in Egypt, the tsar and the Soviet Union’s general secretary had combined,” Zyuganov said.
With the latest polls suggesting that his party was headed for a better showing than in the last State Duma elections, in 2003, Zyuganov told delegates that the Kremlin-backed socialist party, A Just Russia, would not succeed in taking votes from the Communist Party, or KPRF.
“The difference between us and them is that we are a real party. Someone in the Kremlin wants us to get only 14 percent,” said Zyuganov, whose party’s 162,000 members make it the country’s second largest, after United Russia.
“Look at [A Just Russia]. What can it do for the country?” he said. “The party doesn’t offer even a hint of socialism. There is more socialism in capitalist France than in their program.”
A Levada Center poll conducted last week showed the Communists with the support of 18 percent of decided voters ahead of the Dec. 2 Duma vote, trailing only pro-Kremlin United Russia party, which had 55 percent.
The nationalist Liberal Democratic Party was running third at 11 percent, while A Just Russia was at 7 percent, the cutoff point for parties to make it into the Duma.
The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. The percentage of undecided voters was not given.
Zyuganov said his party was attracting new supporters as voters became tired of unfulfilled promises from United Russia, “the party of the rich.”
The congress opened with a concert featuring musicians in Russian folk costumes. Stalin and the October Revolution were common themes in the music, which was played against a backdrop of ubiquitous red flags.
“Let’s vote for the KPRF, let’s pick the KPRF for the next Duma,” a tanned Zyuganov sang to the tune of the patriotic song “Proshchaniye Slavyanki” — the Slavic woman’s farewell.
The congress almost unanimously approved Zyuganov, Nobel laureate physicist Zhores Alfyorov and retired FSB colonel Nikolai Kharitonov, a deputy in the current Duma, to head up the party’s national election list.
“I represent Moscow, Alfyorov — St. Petersburg, and Kharitonov — the Far East,” Zyuganov said.
Zyuganov pointed out that neither Kharitonov, a former presidential candidate, nor Alfyorov was a party member.
One deputy leader, Ivan Melnikov, will head up the party list in Moscow, while another, Vladimir Kashin, will occupy the top spot for the Moscow region. Former cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya will head the party list for St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Chechen Charged in Murder Case
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — The former head of a district in Chechnya has been charged as an accomplice in organizing the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, his lawyer said.
Shamil Burayev, who was detained by police earlier this month as he drove his car in Moscow, was charged with “complicity in murder as an accomplice” by the Prosecutor General’s Office, defense lawyer Pyotr Kozakov said Friday.
He gave no further details, but he later told Interfax that Burayev had maintained his innocence in the face of police interrogation.
Prosecutors could not be reached for comment late Friday.
Burayev was the head of Chechnya’s Achkoi-Martan district administration for eight years until 2003, when he was fired by then-Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov. He also ran for president of the republic.
Prosecutor General Yury Chaika has said the Oct. 7 murder of Politkovskaya was organized by a Chechen criminal group in Moscow that specialized in contract killings.

TITLE: Candidate Seen as Beyond Opposition, Beyond a Chance
AUTHOR: By Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: CAMBRIDGE, England — An overgrown garden in the university town of Cambridge is an unlikely place to hear a Russian presidential candidate speak, but Vladimir Bukovsky is anything but an ordinary candidate.
Until last month, Bukovsky, 65, did not have a Russian passport. He blames President Vladimir Putin for the death of his friend Alexander Litvinenko, and he assails his adopted country, Britain, for its “weak” response to the Andrei Lugovoi affair.
Bukovsky is not just opposition-minded, he is “beyond opposition,” in the dismissive words of one political analyst — a label that describes both his appeal and the weakness that will ensure he stands little chance of becoming president if he manages to get on the ballot.
“They have dismantled everything in Russia that remotely resembled democracy,” said Bukovsky, sitting in a plastic chair in his back garden, smoking one cigarette after the other. “People are now in jail. It is all returning. It is the return of the Soviet system. ... There are some frightening similarities.”
Bukovsky spent more than 12 years in camps and psychiatric hospitals from the age of 16, when he joined an underground organization at school, until he was expelled from the Soviet Union at the age of 33. He became one of the era’s most famous dissidents, meeting presidents and prime ministers as he campaigned against the Soviet system.
In May, he declared his intention to run for president in the March election. His candidacy was put forward by a group of prominent liberal activists, including satirist Viktor Shenderovich, political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky and journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza.
“I would like it if a person like Bukovsky could be our president, but it will never happen,” said veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who has known Bukovsky for more than 30 years. “Nobody will allow him to register.”
Bukovsky plans to return to Russia in October for the first time in more than a decade to bolster the opposition. “The opposition is completely destroyed, so the idea is to just help the opposition to recreate themselves, to reinvent themselves,” he said on a recent afternoon.
He had just heard that, to his surprise, he was being issued a new Russian passport. His previous one had expired, and he was refused a visa when he last tried to visit on his British passport.
He has been back to Russia a handful of times since the Soviet collapse. The first time was in 1992, when President Boris Yeltsin gave him a Russian passport and even considered him as a vice presidential candidate.
The next year, he tried to renounce his Russian citizenship to protest Yeltsin’s introduction of a new constitution but could not find a way to do it, he recalled with a chuckle.
“I don’t think there is anyone in Russia today with a more clear opposition attitude to the current system than me,” he said. “I give a quite a polar opposition to the current powers.”
He is dismissive of opposition leaders such as Mikhail Kasyanov and Viktor Gerashchenko. “None of these people really can be opposition leaders,” he said. “I mean, they have already been in power, and people know really what to expect from them.”
Of President Vladimir Putin, he said: “I was worried as soon as he was appointed as a successor. At that time, the world was rather optimistic, upbeat, saying he’s young and energetic, as if it is good to have a young and energetic bastard.”
Bukovsky has never been known for hiding his feelings. Under the Soviet regime, he was branded a “psychopath” by state psychiatrists for his opposition activities. It was through Bukovsky that the West first learned about punitive psychiatry after his accounts were smuggled out of the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
In 1976, he was taken by force from the Soviet Union, flown out by special forces to Zurich, and swapped for jailed Chilean communist Luis Corvalan. The exchange sparked a chastushki, or dirty limerick: “They swapped a hooligan for Luis Corvalan. Where can you find such a bastard to swap for Brezhnev?”
Currently, Bukovsky, a neuroscientist with degrees from Cambridge and Stanford, lives on a quiet street of unexceptional two-story houses in north Cambridge. His front and back gardens are wild and overgrown, and he said with a smile that the only people who can see anything in his garden are the folks at Google.

Ballot Obstacle Course
Bukovsky faces some major obstacles before he even gets on the ballot. Candidates are not allowed to have dual citizenship, and they need to live in Russia for 10 years before the election.
Bukovsky has consulted with lawyers about the two issues. He said he had found a legal loophole that he believed could let him run with dual citizenship. As for 10-year residency, “Lawyers say it is not clear what ‘constant prozhivaniye’ means,” he said, switching to Russian for the word “residency.”
General Alexander Lebed, who ran for president in 1996, had not lived in Russia for 10 years; he had served for years as a commanding officer in Moldova. Technically, Bukovsky said, neither Yeltsin nor Putin lived in Russia for 10 years before their elections because Russia did not exist as a country before December 1991.
Bukovsky said he would fashion his electoral platform after he arrived in Russia next month. Some things are clear, though. He is a keen federalist and abhors the state capitalism that has expanded under Putin. “Huge companies like Gazprom are really an abomination. I cannot imagine how much money they waste,” he said.
State media have all but ignored Bukovsky, and his candidacy has received little coverage in mainstream newspapers. For now, Bukovsky is letting his campaign web site, Bukovsky2008.org, speak for his bid.
“Bukovsky is one of the bravest and decent people in Russia,” former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov said on the web site. “I am proud that I know this man.”
Poet Lev Rubinstein quotes from a 1968 barricade poster when talking about Bukovsky on the web site: “Be a Realist. Demand the Impossible.”
Political analysts agree with that last statement, saying Bukovsky has no chance of winning the election. Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada Center polling agency, said Bukovsky did not even appear as a candidate in surveys.
“Kasyanov is much better known,” Gudkov said, adding that the former prime minister had received a popularity rating of 0.5 percent in a recent survey. “He has no access to the Russian public. Nobody knows him.”
Indeed, when bookmakers recently made a list of candidates, first lady Lyudmila Putina was on the list with 200-1 odds, but Bukovsky was nowhere to be seen.
“He is an anti-communist hero, and like many heroes, he is a little bit crazy,” said Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst. “He continues to fight against communism even though communism disappeared 20 years ago. He is like Don Quixote.”
He said Bukovsky would fail to get on the ballot due to a lack of financial backing and a complete absence of support from voters. Candidates unaffiliated with political parties need to collect 2 million signatures to be placed on the ballot.
Bukovsky said he would rely on volunteers and donations for his campaign and that he would not pay for signatures, a standard practice in Russian elections.
As Bukovsky chain-smoked throughout a 90-minute interview, his hands shook and his rheumy eyes showed that he was not a well man. He conceded that he did not have the strength for an active campaign and would not travel all over the country.
There is no doubt about his opposition, though. Even when talking about life in Britain, he remains stubbornly opposed to many issues, the eternal dissident.
He is a patron of the United Kingdom Independence Party, a marginal party that vehemently opposes British membership in the European Union and has published pamphlets and lectured on the “EUSSR,” as he likes to call the EU.
“The EU structure is a pale copy of the Soviet Union, a huge bureaucratic unaccountable structure, a monster that strives to stifle any initiative,” he said. “It costs a lot of money and will ruin the economies of the European countries pretty soon.”
His other favorite bugbear is the television license that, by law, everyone has to pay for the upkeep of the BBC television channels. Bukovsky cut up an enlarged copy of his license outside the BBC headquarters as part of a campaign against a corporation that he says is politically biased.
Even though he knows his chances of getting on the ballot are slim and even slimmer of winning, he clearly enjoys thinking about how he might — just might — have a shot at the Kremlin.
“They might get themselves into big trouble with this idea of faking [elections],” he said, talking about a possible face-off between two Kremlin-backed candidates.
“Democracy could backfire on them. They split their vote, and if I come in the middle of it, we could all can end up with about 30 percent,” he said, laughing before taking another puff on his cigarette.

TITLE: Belgravia to Invest $2 Bln Across Russia
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The British investment group Belgravia is to announce a $2 billion joint venture to develop business parks across Russia, the Financial Times reported Monday citing the group’s head, Duncan Hickman.
The joint venture will be operated by Belgravia in cooperation with Immo Industry Group, a Belgium-based industrial property company, and Rostik Group, a Moscow-based operator of restaurant and leisure businesses.
“There was rapidly increasing demand for industrial space in Russia given the growth of the economy and the arrival of many multinationals. The current supply of business parks was insufficient even for existing needs,” FT cited Hickman as saying Monday.
The partners will together invest $1 billion which – with gearing – means investment of $2 billion into more than two million square meters of buildings on 15 sites, Hickman told the newspaper.
All the sites have been pre-let to 44 industrial occupiers. In addition, the Hilton Group has committed to providing 15 hotels on the sites, which include Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Rostov-on-the-Don and other large cities, Hickman said.
There will also be Planeta Sushi, TGI Friday’s and 1-2-3 Cafe retail outlets.
Oleg Barkov, general director of real estate consultancy Knight Frank St. Petersburg, was positive about the prospects of this venture, though it would be a long-term investment for Belgravia, he said.
“The market is very promising. It’s far from saturated, especially in the regions,” Barkov said. “But in Russia investors could face difficulties in acquiring land plots and obtaining the engineering infrastructure. If they have signed prior rent agreements with chain tenants, it could be easier for them to accumulate the necessary resources,” Barkov added.
Barkov considered operating through a joint venture and developing projects from scratch to be favorable. “They will not have to negotiate with local partners or bargain. In Russia, developers and land owners are not easy partners to negotiate or merge with,” he said.
According to Barkov’s estimations, about 100 foreign investment funds operate in Moscow looking for new projects and about 30 funds in St. Petersburg.
“Interest to the Russian real estate market has been steadily growing for the last three years. The problem is that investors find very few appropriate objects for investment,” he said.
Nevertheless, according to Knight Frank’s data, in the first half of 2007 Russia held first place in Eastern Europe in terms of foreign investment into real estate.
The largest western funds and banks including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Immoeast, Quinn Group, JER Partners, Rutley Russia and others have announced investment of millions of dollars into real estate in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities in Russia.
According to Knight Frank, capitalization rates in Russia are still higher compared to European markets. Profitability of A-class office centers in Russia varies between 8.5 percent and 10.5 percent a year, of luxury shopping centers – between nine percent and 11 percent, and for logistic complexes – between 10 percent and 12 percent.
Russia is ahead of Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, where capitalization rates vary between six percent and eight percent a year.
According to The Financial Times, two weeks ago Deutsche Bank, AIG and the Redwood Group paid an estimated $450 million for a portfolio of industrial property in Russia.
Earlier this month RBC news agency reported that Taller Capital will invest into a network of over 100 shopping and industrial areas in Russia and Ukraine. Located on major high-ways, the areas will combine industrial premises, warehouses, shopping and entertainment centers and hotels.
The company and its partners will invest about $100 million into each area, and the project is expected to be completed by 2014.

TITLE: Sochi to Boast Russia-Shaped Artificial Island
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: SOCHI, Russia — Russian developers outlined plans on Saturday for a 350-hectare artificial island in the shape of Russia to be built off the Black Sea coast near the future Olympic venue Sochi. 
Federation Island is expected to house around 25,000 people in apartments and villas and is to be completed in time for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, said its designer, Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat. 
It will have two marinas, three religious centres, roads, parkland and artificial rivers, the latter designed to mimic some of the major rivers of Russia. 
“Building something in existing houses, within existing agreements is harder than building something new,” van Egeraat said as he outlined the project on the sidelines of a weekend economic forum. 
The project will cost around 6.2 billion dollars and is to be located along the coastline near to where many Olympic complexes are also planned.  Construction is due to start next year and developers M-Industry, based in Saint Petersburg, said the project had all the funding in place. 
An official from the Krasnodar regional administration where Sochi is located, Yury Rysin, described it as “a unique project for our country.” The Russian state has undertaken to spend billions of dollars in upgrading the region’s ageing Soviet-era infrastructure, including new roads and telecommunications.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Unemployment Drops</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s unemployment rate fell in August to a record low as economic growth fueled a need for workers, the Federal Statistics Service said.
The unemployment rate declined to 5.7 percent from 5.8 percent in July, the Moscow-based Statistics Service said in an e-mailed statement Friday. The median forecast of nine economists in a Bloomberg survey was for a 5.7 percent rate.
The average monthly wage increased an annual 14.4 percent in August to reach a monthly average of 13,410 rubles ($535), the statistics office said. Real disposable income increased 12.5 percent, it said.

<b>Gazprom’s New Pipe</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, Russia’s gas-pipeline monopoly, was ordered to take over and complete a potentially money-losing pipeline on the Kamchatka Peninsula that was started seven years ago, Kommersant reported.
New Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov ordered state-run Gazprom to take over the project from state oil producer OAO Rosneft, the Moscow-based newspaper said Monday.
Rosneft and Gazprom both doubt the project will be profitable, Kommersant said, citing Gazprom Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Ananenkov and an unidentified Rosneft Executive.

<b>Retail Sales Rocket Up</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian retail sales advanced more than expected in August as higher wages boosted spending, the Federal Statistics Service said. Retail sales grew an annual 16 percent, compared with 14.7 percent in July, the Moscow-based service said in an e-mailed statement Friday. The median forecast of nine economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for a 14.5 percent rate. Retail sales rose 4.2 percent on the month.
Magnit, Russia’s second-largest supermarket chain, said first-half profit climbed 81 percent on expanding in Russia’s smaller towns with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. Consumer demand is fueling economic growth, which will probably accelerate to 7.5 percent this year from 6.7 percent in 2006, government officials have said.

<b>Local Bank Up 20%</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Bank St. Petersburg increased its authorized capital stock by 20 percent up to 302.3 million rubles ($12 million), Interfax reported Friday.
The bank has issued 50.8 million new shares. Out of the increased capital stock 16.8 percent will be distributed through an open subscription, which is scheduled for October.

<b>New Sea Port Terminal</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Sea Port of St. Petersburg group will start operating a new car terminal in December this year, Interfax reported Friday.
The company has invested $5 million into the project. The terminal will process 80,000 cars a year. It will be operated by Third Stevedoring Company, a part of the Sea Port of St. Petersburg group.

<b>Gas Processing Center
<b>ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Ust-Luga and NOVATEK will construct a new complex for natural gas processing, Regnum reported Friday.
The cost of the project is about 9.6 billion rubles ($384 million). The investment agreement was signed at the 6th International Investment Forum in Sochi. The new complex will enable six million tons of natural gas to be processed a year.

<b>Kazakhstan Oil Found</b>
MOSCOW — (Bloomberg)— Petrolinvest SA, a Polish company exploring for crude in the former Soviet Union, struck oil in Kazakhstan and will test another three levels at the same well.
The G-4D well at the Zubantam deposit has “registered estimated productivity” of 40 barrels a day at one level, it said in a regulatory statement late Sunday.
Petrolinvest rose as much as 39.5 zloty, or 11 percent, to 399.5 zloty and was trading up 7.8 percent at 388 zloty by 11:30 a.m. in Warsaw trading. In comparison, Poland’s benchmark WIG Index of stocks was down 0.1 percent.
The Gdynia, Poland-based company has 1.07 billion barrels of “potential exploitable” oil reserves in Kazakhstan, it said this month, citing initial tests. The sum would be enough to supply Poland for about five years.

<b>Oligarch Department</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s government will create a special department to monitor the country’s richest businessmen, RIA Novosti reported, citing an unidentified tax official.
Interregional Tax Inspectorate No. 11 will be formed within the Federal Tax Service in the next few days “for control over the oligarchs,” the state-run news service said Monday.
There are 10 similar inspectorates currently working with major companies, though not with individuals, RIA said. Nobody at the Tax Service in Moscow could be reached immediately for comment when Bloomberg News called.

<b>Power Machines Share
<b>MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Alexei Mordashov bought 30 percent of Power Machines, Russia’s biggest turbine maker, from fellow billionaire Vladimir Potanin after Siemens AG waived its right of first refusal.
The price was based on “current market prices,’’ Andrei Kirpichnikov, a spokesman for Potanin’s Interros holding company, said by telephone Monday.
Kommersant newspaper reported Monday that Mordashov would pay $471 million for the stake. Kirpichnikov said that figure was “close to the truth.’’ Russia’s competition watchdog earlier this month rejected Siemens AG’s bid to raise its 25 percent stake in Power Machines. 

<b>Price of Gas Increased</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas exporter, will raise the price of gas in Hungary by 10 percent, Nepszabadsag said, without saying where it got the information.
Gazprom will charge E.ON AG, Hungary’s natural-gas importer and wholesaler, $300 a cubic meter of gas starting in January, compared with the current price of $270 a cubic meter, the newspaper said. Natural gas prices didn’t rise in Hungary this year because the government struck a deal with E.ON to spread out price increases over a longer period of time, Nepszabadsag said.

<b>EEFC Issues Shares</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Eastern European Financial Corporation issued new shares of three billion rubles ($120 million) total value, Interfax reported Friday.
The corporation has issued three million new shares. Before the issue authorized capital stock of the company was 360 million rubles ($14.4 million).

<b>Credit Payments Lag</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s Mortgage Credit Agency said overdue payments jumped fivefold to 1.3 billion ($52 million) in the first half of the year, Vedomosti reported.
Forty percent of the delinquencies were from borrowers who falsified their applications, the Moscow-based newspaper cited agency spokeswoman Anna Yartseva as saying.
The agency encourages home loans by buying back mortgages from banks.

<b>Hambro Profits Soar</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Peter Hambro Mining Plc, the second-biggest miner of gold in Russia, almost doubled first-half profit as prices and production advanced. The shares rose to the highest since April.
Net income rose to $21.4 million, or 26.5 cents a share, from $11.6 million, or 14.4 cents, a year earlier, London-based Peter Hambro said Monday. Sales climbed 58 percent to $93.1 million. Production from the Pioneer project, the company’s biggest gold deposit, started Monday.

TITLE: Imperial Angered By Mitvol
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — London-listed Imperial Energy on Friday accused Oleg Mitvol, the deputy head of the Natural Resources Ministry’s environmental watchdog, of causing damage to the oil firm and its reputation after a misleading statement sent its shares into a tailspin. 
On Thursday, the Natural Resources Ministry posted a statement on its web site claiming that it had “annulled” five licenses being operated by Imperial Energy and that the company was failing to meet targets at some of its concessions. 
Shares subsequently plummeted by 15 percent on the London Stock Exchange. Imperial was quick to refute the claims, and the shares eventually closed 6 percent down Thursday. 
The day before, Imperial’s shares had risen by 15 percent after a state reserves committee confirmed reserves at a new oil field. 
Mitvol, who has previously claimed that Imperial overstated its reserves and failed to meet production targets, confirmed by telephone Friday that the announcement related to five concessions relinquished by the company in April 2006 that were not commercially viable. But Imperial said it was not satisfied and would ask the Natural Resources Ministry to publish an official retraction.

TITLE: President Welcomes Foreign Investment
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin told business leaders in Sochi on Friday that private investors, including foreigners, would have a major role in a $1 trillion program planned to modernize industry and infrastructure.
Speaking earlier at the city’s investment forum, acting First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said the country aimed to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure over the next 10 years.
In his speech to the forum, Putin said his administration was working to encourage private investment.
“We expect that private investors will play an increasingly noticeable and leading role in the large-scale modernization of the economy,” he said.
Acting Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said earlier that the state would contribute about 20 percent of investment in the economy, with private business supplying the bulk.
Ivanov, speaking at the forum, said state investment in the economy would equal 3.8 percent of the gross domestic product in the next two years and rise to 4.5 percent by 2015.
“We are prepared to give investors additional tools that will guarantee a high level of returns in infrastructure investment,” Ivanov said. 
“We are broadening competition. We aim to guarantee liberal access to monopolized sectors of the economy by strengthening free market regulatory methods,” he added, without specifying which sectors.
“In those areas where maintaining monopolies is economically justified — and I emphasize the word economically — we are prepared to privatize the maximum number of structures within the service and maintenance sectors.”
Ivanov said the country should pass long-awaited legislation governing foreign investment in strategic sectors by the year’s end. The State Duma passed the bill in a first reading last week.
The legislation defines 39 business areas where national security is affected and requires foreign investors seeking a controlling interest in such a business to undergo an approval process. Kudrin, also speaking at the forum, said capital investment in the country would total $370 billion in 2010, compared with $168 billion in 2006. The government’s national projects have been a key driver of capital investment of late. Ivanov said the government would invest 170 billion rubles ($6.8 billion) next year in the state power grid company, plus another 120 billion rubles ($4.8 billion) in the Federal Atomic Energy Agency.
Investment in the country’s airport network will reach $30 billion by 2020, Ivanov said.
Among the business leaders meeting with Putin were MDM Bank chairman Oleg Vyugin, Evraz Group board member Alexander Abramov, Renova chairman Viktor Vekselberg, Basic Element chairman Oleg Deripaska, Sistema chairman Vladimir Yevtushenkov, Interros chief executive Vladimir Potanin and TNK-BP chief executive Robert Dudley.
Enel, Ernst & Young, E.On, Strabag and Cementir were among the foreign firms represented at the meeting, the Kremlin said.
Putin said the government would support the liquidity of the country’s banks to ensure economic growth amid a worldwide credit squeeze.
“We will in no way allow the situation to lead to the creation of so-called bubbles in the economy,” Putin said Friday in televised remarks. “There will be a swift reaction to events affecting global markets.”
The Central Bank has injected more than 2 trillion rubles ($80 billion) into the banking system through repurchase agreements since last month.
Longer-term lending presents a bigger hurdle than short-term lending, Vyugin said Friday. Banks are “being cautious and are not parting with their liquidity,” Vyugin said. If the capital markets remain closed for banks and Russian companies in retail, construction and other industries, companies will have to curb investments, he said. 

Reuters, MT, Bloomberg

TITLE: RusAl Puts IPO On Hold ‘Indefinitely’
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Aluminum giant RusAl has shelved a $9 billion IPO to float shares in London this year on concerns over a global liquidity crunch, two of the company’s largest shareholders said Friday. 
Nonexecutive chairman Viktor Vekselberg told reporters that the initial public offering would not take place this year. This was repeated by majority owner Oleg Deripaska in comments to Interfax. 
“It will definitely not happen before year-end. The issue is still on the agenda,” Vekselberg said on the sidelines of the Sochi investment forum. “The reason is obvious. All companies are reviewing timings of their flotations. The market is very volatile, and to take the risk without being sure the IPO will be successful does not make sense,” he said. 
Deripaska said the IPO would not take place before the end of 2007. “The IPO is on hold indefinitely due to market trends,” he said, Interfax reported.
In May, Vekselberg said RusAl, created in March out of a merger of Oleg Deripaska’s Russian Aluminum, Vekselberg’s SUAL and Swiss firm Glencore’s alumina assets, was looking at a listing in November in London. 
RusAl’s IPO was expected to be one of the largest listings this year, with analysts predicting that its 25 percent stake would fetch in the upper range of its $5 billion to $10 billion band. Alfa Bank values the company at $36 billion to $38 billion.
The firm, which has hired Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank to manage its listing, did the groundwork over the summer, presenting itself to investors and analysts in London. Earlier this month, analysts were still expecting the listing to take place as planned. 
“I anticipated this [postponement] because there has been no news,” said Valentina Bogomolova, a metals analyst at Alfa Bank. “If it had been scheduled for November, then in September we would have expected roadshows and meetings with investors.”
She now expects the company to list within the next year. 
Analysts say flagging aluminum prices, coupled with continuing turmoil on global markets, may be factors in RusAl’s decision to delay. RusAl is highly profitable and does not need the cash. 
“Given the [current global] volatility, people are very wary of coming to the markets, particularly of not getting the valuations they want,” said Mark Butler, senior investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management. 
RusAl is still awaiting approval to list from Britain’s Financial Services Authority, Euroweek reported last month. The watchdog said Thursday that it did not comment on individual listings. 
The firm is facing legal wrangles with a Tajik company over a state-owned smelter in the Central Asian country, while Deripaska is also fighting a separate claim from Mikhail Chernoi, his former business partner, for a 20 percent stake in Russian Aluminum. 
One London-based metals analyst said the RusAl IPO had been on and off for several months now. “It’s not market conditions, it’s something else,” he said, but was unable to elaborate.

TITLE: Severstal Ventures Further Into Gold Mining
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Miner and steelmaker Severstal continued its foray into the gold sector Thursday, paying 2.6 million rubles ($103,300) for a deposit in the republic of Buryatia.
The Sagan-Gol project is the second 25-year gold license acquired this month by Severstal, the country’s largest steelmaker including foreign assets, and follows the company’s acquisition of a 22 percent stake in London-listed Celtic Resources.
“We are looking to diversify Severstal’s mining business and are looking at attractive opportunities,” said Sergei Loktionov, spokesman for the company’s mining division, Severstal Resurs. 
“Gold projects are attractive,” he said.
Gold prices have risen 80 percent in the last three years, hitting a 28-year peak earlier Thursday, but analysts say most of the country’s best gold assets were snapped up when prices were much lower.
Severnaya Zolotorudnaya Kompania, a Severstal subsidiary, paid 73 percent over the 1.5 million ruble start price for the Sagan-Gol deposit.
Severstal Resurs said that Sagan-Gol contained an estimated 60 tons of gold to Russian P1 and P2 classification, which means they have yet to be upgraded to proved and probable. 
The license terms dictate that geological fieldwork must begin within 15 months of the award.
Severstal’s main owner, billionaire Alexei Mordashov, said this month that the company saw unrealized potential in Russian gold mining.

TITLE: A New Asian Century
AUTHOR: By Eric Kraus
TEXT: At the beginning of the decade, when I first argued that Russia was moving toward an alliance with China, this was met with derision. One American scholar — close to the Washington neocon faction then confidently gearing up to export its particular version of “democracy” to the world — assured me that Russia was so afraid of China that it would be compelled to seek a military alliance with Washington, and this under virtually any terms the Americans dictated. Quite amazingly, these people still have jobs!
Admittedly, there was good reason for skepticism. Relations between Russia and China were historically fraught. Beginning with Peter the Great, Russia had increasingly looked to the West. During the first, disastrous post-Soviet decade, Moscow had sought desperately to ape the institutions and policies of the Atlantic alliance — foreign flora that proved grotesquely unsuitable to the Russian climate. Furthermore, as a legacy of Soviet-era military conflicts, tens of thousands of kilometers of borderlands were under dispute. Russians feared the Yellow Peril with wild tales of the 2 million illegal immigrants ready to seize Russia’s Far East (either the wily Chinese have learned invisibility, or they number, at most, one-tenth of that figure).
Yet, despite the barriers, a fundamental recasting of the relationship was vitally important to both countries. Under the new administration of Vladimir Putin, both had increasingly opposed the unilateralism of Washington, seeking to restore their own spheres of influence in a multipolar world.
From an economic standpoint, China scoured the globe for resources — energy, grain, pulp and paper, minerals, metals and ores — to feed its voracious industry, yet virtually everything it needed was available just across its western border. For Russia, China was both a threat and a promise — a tough competitor, but the ultimate growth market for Russian commodity exports and a reliably mercantilist partner deeply disinclined to interfere in the domestic affairs of others.
Thus, seven years later, Russian-Chinese trade has surged to more than $40 billion per year. Russian railroad and electricity networks are being built to service Chinese demand. Following a tedious hesitation waltz when Moscow flipped back and forth between choosing the rival Japan and China pipeline routes, China finally prevailed; Russia’s eastern oil pipeline is now nearing completion. A parallel gas pipe will likely be laid, as China comes to realize that Exxon’s attempted end-run around Gazprom for Sakhalin gas has run into the wall of Russian resource legislation.
In addition, diplomacy has been a great success. All outstanding Russian-Chinese border conflicts have been resolved. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, now widened to include all of the main Asian and Eurasian countries, excluding U.S. allies Japan and Australia, has evolved from a talking shop into the key lever for Russian-Chinese influence in the southern republics. Russia and China are tightly aligned at the UN Security Council, where China — somewhat reticent to antagonize its second-largest trading partner — discreetly shelters behind a Russian government increasingly willing to assume a more confrontational stance.
Finally, the largest joint military exercises in either country’s history have been conducted, and after decades of selling slightly antiquated weaponry, Moscow is now willing to export its most recent generation of military technology to Beijing, signifying a new confidence in their long-term relationship.
Intellectually shallow but profoundly convinced of their own moral superiority, the current Washington clique has missed the vital point: For the past several hundred years (and despite a brief radical interlude of the early 1920s), Russia has been a fundamentally conservative power, largely seeking to maintain the status quo and evincing no desire to overturn the global political architecture.
Rather than a revolutionary transformation, Moscow merely seeks to regain its traditional status as a great power, a stakeholder in the post-war division of power. China, on the other hand, a 5,000-year-old empire now recovering from a very temporary bout of weakness, is an essentially “disruptive” power — one seeking a profound reordering of the global system. Last year, we heard much vacuous cant as to whether it was China rather than Russia that “deserved” to be in the Group of Eight. This is totally beside the point! Unlike Russia, China has evinced not the slightest desire to join an organization that it sees as a club of losers, an association of sunset powers solemnly gathered to discuss their fading glory.
Western hectoring of Russia — European Union lawmakers hailing terrorist murderers as freedom fighters, oligarchic thugs suddenly transformed into heroes for liberal democracy, Dick Cheney slamming Putin’s record on democracy, then the very next day praises the democratic credentials of Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev (a man characterized as a corrupt and brutal dictator ... by Cheney’s own State Department) have simply reinforced Russian’s perception of Western hypocrisy and self-dealing.
While American unilateralism and the employment of tame nongovernmental organizations to sponsor regime change in what Russia views as its own historic sphere of influence did succeed in its implicit purpose of putting the fear of God into the Russians, their eminently predictable response — a growing alienation from the West along with a fundamental rapprochement with China — should have constituted the neoconservatives’ very worst nightmare. It seems particularly ironic that, having refined policy failure to a fine art, the administration of George W. Bush managed a feat evading two generations of Communist policy makers — building a durable alliance between the two Asian giants.
The 19th century was unambiguously European, the 20th American, and the 21st will surely be Asian. More than 50 percent of global gross domestic product (in terms of purchasing power parity) now originates in the emerging economies. As the United States slides into recession, with both Europe and Japan likely to follow, this secular shift can only accelerate.
Like Russia itself — not one of those countries which have enjoyed a spectacular transformation from half-starved agrarian backwater to economic powerhouse in a single generation did so by the application of the strict liberal economic policies advocated by the International Monetary Fund, often referred to as the “Washington Consensus.” Instead, all have employed some mix of free markets and state capitalism, rejecting equally the dogmas of Marx and Adam Smith.
It is only to be expected that these new economic powers will increasingly define a novel and fundamentally pragmatic economic and political ideology, with abstract concepts of democracy and extreme economic liberalism will be seen, at best, as luxury products — and, at worst, as a recipe for chaos. In what has recently been described as “the world without the West,” the new thinking is not so much anti-Western as it is a view that the West is gradually becoming irrelevant as the world enters into a period of intense and globalized economic competition.
A vital side of the BRIC’s quadrilateral, Russia has already benefited enormously from the rapid growth in global commodity demand; its New Asian Century is just beginning.

Eric Kraus is investment adviser to the Nikitsky Russia Fund. This comment represents a summary of a presentation he delivered at the CLSA Hong Kong conference.

TITLE: The Astonisher in Chief
AUTHOR: By Richard Lourie
TEXT: Charles de Gaulle offered the following counsel: “A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.”
Surprise is also an integral element in any attack. President Vladimir Putin’s replacement of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov with Viktor Zubkov caught Russia and the world by surprise, exactly as intended. That display of skill and dominance proved that Putin is still the astonisher in chief.
The timing of certain other events may also have been calculated as a prelude to the government shake-up. The resumption of bomber flights and the submarine dive under the North Pole —both projections of national and presidential power — came within weeks of the reshuffle. Later, other events will no doubt also be revealed as part of a series of intricate moves with a twofold goal: to ensure a smooth transition after the election of a new president in March and to ensure a smooth transition for Putin as well, though exactly to what remains unclear. The biggest surprise is still up his sleeve.
It is unlikely that Putin will choose either of the two most extreme choices facing him: to remain in power despite the Constitution or to fade off into domesticity and philanthropy. So, assuming that he wishes to remain among the power elite and even run for president again in 2012, when he will be only 60, where would Putin most likely seek a position of power that doesn’t depend on vagaries like loyalty?
There are really only a few choices. Private business in Russia has wealth but no power. That has been true since Putin himself broke Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky for impudently challenging his political monopoly. State-dominated businesses that can function as instruments of state policy offer greater opportunities. When offered the prime minister slot by Yeltsin and Berezovsky, Putin reportedly responded: “I am not sure that I am ready for that. ... Why don’t you guys offer me Gazprom to run? I could handle that.”
Now, after the Kremlin, Gazprom might seem too small. Putin must be considering appointing himself head of the Federal Security Service. It’s his home territory and offers a power base that combines intelligence and influence like no other. Nearly all the contenders for president and many of the key figures in government are from the KGB/FSB fraternity, which serves as a sort of personnel department. For that alone, the FSB would be worth controlling.
Polls of Russian society show that the three most respected institutions are the church, the army, and the intelligence services. Putin has done much to heal the rifts within the Russian Orthodox Church, but only a post-Soviet Dostoevsky could imagine the KGB colonel-turned-president forsaking power for the cross.
That leaves the military. Sergei Ivanov, one of the two leading contenders to be Putin’s successor, was defense minister until he was named first deputy prime minister. He was replaced by Anatoly Serdyukov. But Serdyukov had to hand in his resignation when his father-in-law, Zubkov, was named prime minister.
Or was that the game all along? “Promote” Ivanov from defense minister to first deputy prime minister, where he looked like a candidate, then replace him with Serdyukov, who was automatically knocked out with the appointment of his father-in-law. Zubkov might be a perfect interim president because he is loyal and compliant to Putin and does not have any ambitions for a second term. In the meantime, as defense minister, Putin could rebuild the army into a formidable force, a worthy achievement to trumpet when elections roll around again in 2012. And when it comes to raw power, it’s hard to match a million bayonets.
Those seem to be the main possibilities. But who knows? Some men have deep pockets, and some have roomy sleeves.

Richard Lourie is the author of “Sakharov: A Biography” and “A Hatred for Tulips.”

TITLE: Touting Independence With Tractors and Heels
AUTHOR: By Matthew Collin
TEXT: The rumors that Georgian protesters would stage a daring peace march through the South Ossetian conflict zone, as the breakaway region celebrated its independence day last week proved to be untrue. But that didn’t stop the separatist authorities from restricting access to their capital, Tskhinvali, in the run-up to their annual showpiece event, citing fears of sabotage, terrorist attacks, and — to use the catch-all word for dastardly deeds in this region — provocations.
But provocations proved to be irrepressible, as they often do in the Caucasus. Georgian government-backed activists who have started a movement aimed at ousting the separatist president, Eduard Kokoity, managed to strew propaganda leaflets around the streets of Tskhinvali featuring their slogan, “Kokoity, Farewell!” The activists claim that they managed to sneak into the separatist stronghold and distribute the leaflets themselves, although the breakaway authorities insist that they were dropped from a light aircraft.
The independence day celebrations went ahead anyway, and proved, as usual, to be somewhat peculiar. Last year, the separatists staged a mock trial of Georgia, convicting the country (in its absence) of genocide against Ossetians. This year, warriors on horseback led a military parade, which was followed by a group of nurses tottering along on high heels, farmers on tractors and bakers parading loaves of bread.
The separatists want to link with North Ossetia to become part of Russia. Although Moscow pays most of the bills in South Ossetia, it has shown little indication that it will fulfill their ultimate desires. Nevertheless, that does not seem to have dampened their enthusiasm. “Indestructible Unity With Russia!” was the slogan of the day, and even little children were enthusiastically waving the Russian flag.
Unsurprisingly, as this was an official event, there was also a lot of anti-Georgian rhetoric, most of it echoing the official separatist line. “Do you know what Georgia did to us?” demanded one middle-aged woman. “They committed genocide against our people!” A man standing nearby simply observed: “We are Russians. Georgia is our enemy.”
Any mention of the “traitor” Dmitry Sanakoyev inspired a torrent of vitriol. Sanakoyev is an Ossetian who fought in the war against Georgia, then served as a separatist minister. But he later switched sides and now heads the rival, pro-Georgian South Ossetian authority. “Sanakoyev will not live for long,” advised an elderly man.
The war in South Ossetia may have ended almost 15 years ago, but some people are not yet ready to give up the fight.

Matthew Collin is a journalist in Tbilisi.

TITLE: Nice Guys Do Finish First
AUTHOR: By Mark H. Teeter
TEXT: Four of the seminal figures of Russian literature in the second half of the 20th century — Vladimir Nabokov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky and Vassily Aksyonov — became citizens or long-term residents of the United States. Bully for us, Americans might say, flattered that their country was the venue of choice when these world-renowned writers became unwanted by their homeland. Yet little beyond the simple fact of residence actually unites this seeming “Russian-American” quartet, whose very different members worked in very different genres and styles — and harbored very different feelings about their New World host.
Only one of them really jumped into American life with both feet and genuinely marveled at what he found when he landed — Vassily Aksyonov, who just turned 75. Askyanov treated the United States and its divergent people with unfeigned interest, all due respect and regular doses of the sort of exasperated yet affectionate criticism that one reserves for close friends and family members. And perhaps family is a key concept here.
Aksyonov’s extended U.S. odyssey began one day in 1980, when the ever-vigilant Soviet authorities decided to revoke his citizenship while he was on a fellowship at Washington’s Kennan Institute. 
Suddenly this writer of “suspect loyalty” found himself kicked out of the great dysfunctional family that was the U.S.S.R. and forced to live with a bunch of de facto distant relatives — Americans, a people he had long admired and even visited once before but about whom he still had mountains to learn. With no real choice, in any case, Aksyonov set about the business of Americanizing himself for what might prove a long haul.
Much of his adaptation is recorded in the 1987 memoir “In Search of Melancholy Baby,” a worthy addition to the long line of immigrant-discovers-America chronicles that reveals, as the best of them do, as much about the observer as the observed. Aksyonov’s Americanization is initially a headlong charge across a broad front: multiple credit cards and magazine subscriptions, sharp clothes, the American Automobile Association, the United Way and on and on — after which a certain alienation sets in, and with it, a newly critical authorial persona. While his romance with the New World is tempered by the excesses he finds in it, the hero never stops appreciating the home he has found and the fact that he can criticize that home any way he wants to. Like any other member of the family.
A memoir seldom conveys how others perceive its protagonist, but I suspect that Aksyonov’s U.S. friends saw him as both a major writer and major nice guy, which is certainly how I perceived him. Not only did he introduce me, a junior researcher at the Kennan Institute during his tenure there, to several of his friends and fellow writers, he also invited me — an unpublished novice translator — to put several of his current works into English. This included a finely tuned seriocomic op-ed piece for The New York Times and a charming short story about a winter-weary Soviet apparatchik who decides to seek asylum abroad — not political, but climatic.
The story presented a few minor translation problems — and one major one. Any way you rendered it, the last line still came out smacking of the one denouement categorically forbidden in Creative Writing 101: “So it was all a dream!” I couldn’t leave the line there, but neither could I tell one of the masters of modern Russian fiction that I knew better than he did how to end one of his works.
In the end, I gave Aksyonov the completed translation with the last line intact. After reading it over in his office, he came down to my library workspace and told me I’d done a fine job indeed, pointing out several places that he thought were handled particularly well. We went over the spots I needed help with, and everything, it seemed, was ironed out. Except the ending.
After checking to make sure that there was room to duck if he took a swing at me, I said, “Vassily Pavlovich, I think the ending works better in English without that last line.” Aksyonov glanced at both texts again, looked up, smiled and said: “You think so? Fine. Hey, you’re the translator.” And a translator who now believed he really was one.
Here’s to Vassily Aksyonov at 75. His continuing success — in the United States, Russia, Europe and everywhere else — is heartening evidence that nice guys sometimes finish first. And I suspect that wherever he goes, he’s always among family.

Mark H. Teeter teaches English and Russian-American relations in Moscow.

TITLE: Russia To Face America in Davis Cup Final
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Igor Andreyev beat Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-3, 3-6, 6-0, 6-3 Sunday to lead defending champion Russia over Germany 3-2 and into the Davis Cup final against the United States.
With Germany one win away from its first final in 14 years, Mikhail Youzhny evened the best-of-five series 2-2 by defeating Philipp Petzschner 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 in the first reverse singles match.
Andreyev served three winners to rally from 0-30 down in the fifth game of the opening set and hit a precise backhand down the line to earn three break points in the eighth game.
Kohlschreiber saved two before double-faulting, and the Russian served out the set.
Andreyev netted an easy backhand to fall behind 30-40 in the sixth game of the second set, and the German broke him with a backhand down the line before going on to even the match 1-1.
Andreyev recovered, winning the third set at love, and he broke right back after Kohlschreiber broke him in the fourth set. The German saved two break points in the eighth game but faltered to fall behind 5-3.
Serving for the win, Andreyev wasted three match points, then saved a break point before closing it out with a forehand on the second deuce.
Youzhny was named as a substitute for Nikolai Davydenko and looked shaky early on, but broke Davis Cup rookie Petzschner to take a 4-3 lead in the first set, then held at love in the next game on his way to a 1-0 advantage.
The two traded breaks to open the second set, then held their serves until the ninth game, when Youzhny converted his third break point for a 5-4 lead. Youzhny ceded the third set after falling behind 3-1 but broke an error-prone Petzschner for a 3-1 lead in the fourth before closing out the match with an ace.
The decisive fifth match was a battle between Friday’s upset winners. Andreyev gave Russia its first point with a three-set win over Tommy Haas in the opening singles, but Kohlschreiber evened it by outlasting Davydenko. Petzschner teamed with Alexander Waske to beat Youzhny and Dmitry Tursunov in four sets Saturday.
Germany has not reached a Davis Cup final since 1993, and has not beaten Russia since the first round that year. The Germans reached the semifinals the following two years, but lost to Russia both times. The Russians again beat Germany in the first round in 1999.
Russia is undefeated in 14 matches at home since 1995, and won its second Davis Cup title last season over Argentina.
The U.S. team, which defeated host Sweden in Sunday’s semifinal in Goteborg, will host Russia in the final in November.
Russia beat the United States in last year’s semifinals in Moscow, also on clay.
In Sweden, Andy Roddick secured the win with his big serve, defeating Jonas Bjorkman 6-2, 7-6 (3), 6-4, putting the United States up an insurmountable 3-1 in the tie. Bjorkman replaced Thomas Johansson, the 2002 Australian Open winner who was scratched from the first reverse singles in the best-of-five format because of illness. Johansson won the second singles Friday against James Blake.
“If you would have told me I could get through three sets with Jonas without getting broken I would have questioned your sanity a little bit,” Roddick said. “But I was very happy with it.”
The American held serve throughout the match on the fast indoor carpet, then broke to lead 3-2 in the third set when Bjorkman’s backhand sailed long.
“I thought he played great [in the second set],” Roddick said. “If I’d had just a little bit of a slip-up I would have been struggling. Even when I didn’t I had to come up with a big serve on break points.”
Bjorkman, at 35 the oldest player in the series, is still one of the world’s top doubles players but has slipped to 55th in the ATP singles rankings. Roddick, who is ranked fifth, improved his record to 5-2 against the Swede.
“I think Jonas played a good match,” Roddick said. “That’s why he has been as successful as he has been.”
Bjorkman had his chances in the second set, earning two break points at 2-2. But the Swede returned long at 15-40 and then Roddick aced him to get to deuce. Roddick held to 3-2 with another ace and a forehand winner.
After missing a set point in game 11th, Roddick dominated the tiebreaker from the start. He aced Bjorkman to lead 1-0 and earned two mini-breaks en route to a 5-0 lead. He won when the Swede netted a forehand.
Roddick broke Bjorkman’s serve twice in the first set, winning it with a forehand near the baseline that the Swede returned into the net.

TITLE: Burma’s Regime Faces Biggest-Ever Protest
AUTHOR: By Aung Hla Tun
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: YANGON — Tens of thousands of people joined streams of Buddhist monks on marches through Yangon on Monday in the biggest demonstration against Myanmar’s ruling generals since they crushed student-led protests 20 years ago.
“The streets are packed,” a witness said of massed opposition to the generals and 45 years of military rule that has turned the resource-rich country into one of Asia’s poorest.
Five columns of maroon-robed monks, one stretching more than one kilometer (nearly a mile), marched from the Shwedagon Pagoda, the devoutly Buddhist country’s holiest shrine, to the city centre to applause from thousands of onlookers who joined them.
“People locked arms around the monks. They were clapping and cheering,” the witness said on the sixth day of marches by monks, some of them carrying placards calling for “National Reconciliation” and “Release of Political Prisoners.”
Protests were also reported in Mandalay, where 10,000 monks marched on Saturday, in the northwestern city of Sittwe and in Bago, just north of Yangon.
In Yangon, after holding prayers at the Sule Pagoda in the main business district, the monks marched to another pagoda with tens of thousands of people trailing behind them.
For the first time, the marchers included members of parliament elected in 1990 from the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) two days after a dramatic appearance of support for the monks by detained NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
What began as anger at last month’s shock fuel price rises has become a wider movement against the generals, with one monk group calling for peaceful mass protests against the junta until its downfall.
“There’s no prospect now of the monks just deciding to abandon this. They are getting braver every day and their demands are getting greater every day, and it’s much more overtly political,” a Yangon-based diplomat said.
“It’s now about Aung San Suu Kyi, it’s about reform.
“The monks have got numbers and, if not immunity, then certainly it’s much more difficult for the government to crack down on them than on ordinary civilians,” the diplomat said.
The United States, the loudest Western critic of the regime, expressed sympathy for the protesters and denounced the military.
Myanmar’s regional neighbors, long frustrated by the generals refusal to speed up reforms, looked on with worry.
“We hope that the ongoing protests will be resolved in a peaceful manner,” said the Foreign Ministry in Singapore.
There were no signs of trouble during Monday’s protests, but rumors of an imminent crackdown — one suggested hospitals were being emptied of non-critical patients — swirled in Yangon.
The generals are due soon to hold a quarterly summit in their new capital of Naypyidaw, carved out of the jungle. Dealing with the protests is sure to top the agenda.
The protests, which began on August 19, prompted a midnight round-up of the democracy activists who organized them. They now face up to 20 years in jail and are drawing public declarations of support from the famous.
The country’s biggest stars of the stage, screen and music, including Tun Eindra Bo — Myanmar’s equivalent of Angelina Jolie — have formed a “Sangkha Support Committee” and pledged to provide the monks with whatever assistance they need.
“The fact these celebrities are joining in is very significant,” said one Myanmar exile who listened to them giving interviews on Burmese-language foreign radio stations.

TITLE: Zenit Goes To Top Of The League
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Zenit St. Petersburg went three points clear at the top of the Premier League on Sunday with a 4-1 win at Rubin Kazan as the team’s rival for the championship Spartak Moscow slipped to second following a 4-3 defeat in a Moscow derby against Lokomotiv.
Zenit has 46 points with six matches remaining in the March-November season ahead of Spartak at 43 points and third-placed FC Moscow at 42 points after its 4-1 rout of Dynamo Moscow.
Pavel Pogrebniyak scored two goals to keep Zenit on course for its first league title in the modern era, with further goals from Igor Denisov and Konsantin Zyryanov. 
With the league crown in sight, Zenit has sought to dampen speculation that coach Dick Advocaat would leave the St. Petersburg team at the end of this season to become coach of Australia. 
“We are confident he will stay with us if we finish top,” Zenit’s director of football Konstantin Sarsania said, according to Australia’s broadcasters SBS, reported at goal.com. “Dick has told us quite frankly that if we take the title he will stay. He is an honest man and we believe him.”
“We are fully aware of his contractual talks with Australia but we know also that he could easily end up remaining where he is. We feel he has done a great job for us,” Sarsania added. “It could well go down to the last game of the season in November to decide Dick’s future.”
However, The Sydney Morning Herald reported Friday that Advocaat had reached an agreement with the Australian Football Federation that will be announced at the end of the Russian soccer season.
“Advocaat has signed on the dotted line to coach the Socceroos through the 2010 World Cup campaign,” the newspaper wrote, adding: “It’s believed Advocaat, 59, agreed terms in a meeting with Football Federation Australia’s technical director, fellow Dutchman Rob Baan, in Europe two weeks ago. The FFA has stalled on making an announcement, possibly until Advocaat completes his contract with Russian club, Zenit St Petersburg, in mid-November.”
The newspaper said it is understood that Advocaat would continue to live in Europe while coaching the national team through its 12-game qualifying campaign, but has agreed to spend up to eight weeks in Australia each year. Advocaat’s first game in charge would be Australia’s opening qualifier in February 2008.
Zenit’s confidence was given a boost Thursday with a 3:0 victory over Standard de Liège in the first leg of the first round of the UEFA Cup at a rain-soaked Petrovsky Stadium. 
Captain Andrei Arshavin scored twice with Korean Kim Dong Jin completing the scoreline four minutes from time.
Advocaat stressed that it is important to win both home and away ties if the team is to advance in Europe in post-match comments posted at www.zenit-fc.com.
“Yes, we have a good basis with 3-0, but we still have to go [to Belgium for the second leg],” Advocaat said.

TITLE: Iran Does Not Want War, Says President
AUTHOR: By Nahal Toosi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran is neither building a nuclear bomb nor headed to war with the United States in a television interview ahead of an appearance at Columbia University on Monday.
The public-relations push appears aimed at presenting his views directly to a U.S. audience amid rising strains and talk of war between the two nations.
Ahmadinejad is to speak and answer questions at a Columbia forum Monday, followed by a scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.
Columbia’s invitation has drawn howls from politicians, religious groups and other organizations. But the university has not backed down, and its president, Lee Bollinger has promised to grill Ahmadinejad on subjects such as human rights, the Holocaust and Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
Tensions are high between Washington and Tehran over U.S. accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, as well as helping Shiite militias in Iraq that target U.S. troops — claims Iran denies.
“Well, you have to appreciate we don’t need a nuclear bomb. We don’t need that. What need do we have for a bomb?” Ahmadinejad said in the “60 Minutes” interview taped in Iran on Thursday. “In political relations right now, the nuclear bomb is of no use. If it was useful, it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union.”
He also said that: “It’s wrong to think that Iran and the U.S. are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing.”
Before leaving Iran, Ahmadinejad said the American people have been denied “correct information,” and his visit will give them a chance to hear a different voice, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Ahmadinejad has appealed to the American people before, distinguishing between the population and their government. Recently, he told a television show that Iran wants peace and friendship with America. Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad also has sent letters to the American people criticizing President Bush’s policies in the Middle East.
Washington has said it is addressing the Iran situation diplomatically, rather than militarily, but U.S. officials also say that all options are open. The commander of the U.S. military forces in the Middle East said he did not believe tensions will lead to war.
“This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me, which is not helpful and not useful,” Adm. William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television, which made a partial transcript available Sunday.

TITLE: Polish Opposition Party Looks For Votes Among Poles Living Abroad
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WARSAW — The leader of Poland’s main opposition party heads to Britain and Ireland this week to try to win support from Polish emigrants ahead of next month’s election, the center-right Civic Platform said on Monday.
An estimated 2 million Poles have left since the former communist country joined the European Union in 2004. Most are in Britain and Ireland, where Polish plumbers, builders and painters have earned a reputation for hard work on low pay.
The Civic Platform said its leader, Donald Tusk, would campaign in London on Saturday before heading to Dublin later in the day. He will return to Poland via Scotland on Sunday.
Poland will hold a parliamentary election on Oct. 21, two years early, after the collapse of the coalition led by the conservative Law and Justice party of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech, the president.
The Civic Platform is favored by financial markets, who believe it would reform the economy in the country of 38 million more quickly than the ruling party.
The emigrants are generally seen as more likely to support the opposition than the ruling party, but their impact may be limited because votes from abroad will count only towards Warsaw rather than affecting seats across Poland.
The president launched a campaign last week to try to bring home the emigrants, whose absence has led to an increasingly tight Polish labor market and soaring wages that threaten to cut short an economic boom.

TITLE: Chelsea’s Post-Mourhino Era Begins With Loss to Man U
AUTHOR: By Pete Oliver
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MANCHESTER, England — Chelsea’s troubled week ended on a low note on Sunday with manager Avram Grant losing his first game after taking over from Jose Mourinho, 2-0 to fierce rivals Manchester United on Sunday.
A positive result might have softened the blow of Mourinho’s shock departure after three successful years at Chelsea but a first United goal for Carlos Tevez and a late Louis Saha penalty ended those hopes.
Grant, a former Israel national coach, might have felt luck was against him when John Obi Mikel was sent off after 32 minutes.
With 10 men, Chelsea never looked like recovering from Tevez’s headed goal in first half injury-time.
For the 2005 and 2006 champions it was the second defeat in three Premier League games and the fourth game in a row without a win. United have not enjoyed the most fluent of starts to their season either and, despite enjoying the numerical advantage for an hour, they looked to be heading for a fifth successive 1-0 victory from a less than convincing performance until Saha added the second goal.
But in such a highly-charged game, manager Alex Ferguson will take satisfaction from the result and the fact that Tevez finally got on the scoresheet in his sixth Premier League start.
The Argentina international has yet to reproduce the form he showed for West Ham United last season but displayed sharp reactions to get to a lovely cross from Ryan Giggs ahead of goalkeeper Petr Cech.
United had threatened sporadically in the first half with Cech making a brilliant save to keep out a curling short from Wayne Rooney in the second minute.
Cech also saved from Tevez and Giggs volleyed over from a tight angle before Chelsea, watched from the directors’ box by Netherlands manager Marco Van Basten, were rocked by Mikel’s dismissal.
The midfielder lost control of the ball and then in trying to regain possession sent United fullback Patrice Evra flying in what referee Mike Dean deemed to be a dangerous a two-footed tackle.
United failed to really press home their advantage after the break as a strike force of Rooney, Tevez and Cristiano Ronaldo failed to click.
By his own admission Ferguson does not yet know his best attacking formation and it was old favourite Giggs who had gone closest to a second goal when he volleyed a Michael Carrick pass over the crossbar.
The scrappy game then degenerated further with two players from each side collecting cautions, including Joe Cole whose desperate lunge at Ronaldo provoked a furious response from Ferguson.
United made sure of their three points after Saha went flying after what appeared to be slight contact from Tal Ben-Haim in the box.
The Frenchman picked himself up to drive home the spot kick and give United a second goal for the first time this season.

TITLE: North’s Rugby Teams Face Test
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: PARIS — Northern hemisphere rugby powerhouses face a nightmare scenario this week — possible elimination from the World Cup before the quarter-finals.
The biggest scalp would be that of world champions England, which faces the in-form Tongans, with defeat meaning the ignominious tag of being the first titleholder to exit at the first hurdle.
However, the most precariously placed is Triple Crown winners Ireland, who have to score four tries and beat Argentina — a side that have not conceded one so far, even in the 17-12 win over France — to progress.
Wales and Scotland also face do-or-die matches.
The Welsh take on the unpredictable Fijians while the Scots face their Six Nations bogey team Italy. England looked to be a slightly improved unit in their 44-22 victory over Samoa on Saturday, though at one point the Samoans were within four points of them.
Even talismanic kicker Jonny Wilkinson was not perfect with the boot on his return to the World Cup scene, four years after his drop goal secured the northern hemisphere their first Webb Ellis trophy.
However, England’s seasoned coach Brian Ashton promised the Tongans a battle next Friday.
“It’s a fight to the death on Friday night,” Ashton said after Tonga had pushed South Africa all the way on Saturday before losing 30-25.
If anyone could lay claim to having had a nightmare tournament then it is the Irish.
From three average performances — the worst being the 14-10 defeat of Georgia — to rumours of star fly-half Ronan O’Gara’s private life and fullback Geordan Murphy admitting he was angry at being dropped for the 25-3 defeat by France, the Irish could be forgiven for wanting to pack their bags.
However, British and Irish Lions lock Donncha O’Callaghan — who along with fellow Lion Paul O’Connell has been under-par — swore that the Irish could raise themselves against the Pumas.
“It’s a chance to go out and put in a big performance,” said O’Callaghan.
“The fellas are down now but we’ve got to pick ourselves up and go out next week because this is something we’ve trained hard for.”
The Welsh may see themselves as slight favourites against the colourful Fijians.
However, embattled Welsh coach Gareth Jenkins is not getting carried away.
“They [the Fijians] are going to be a threat,” said the 56-year-old, who has a record of just six wins in 19 tests. They have world-class players, they have physicality and they have individual talent — they can score tries from anywhere.”

TITLE: New Japanese Leader Named: Fukuda Considered Moderate
AUTHOR: By Isabel Reynolds
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TOKYO — Japan’s prime minister-to-be, Yasuo Fukuda, named his party lieutenants on Monday as he braced for a showdown with a combative opposition amid calls for early elections after a disastrous year for the ruling coalition.
Fukuda, a 71-year-old moderate who favors warmer ties with Asia, was voted leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Sunday after the abrupt resignation of his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, whose administration was crippled by scandals and gaffes.
He will be officially voted in as prime minister on Tuesday given the LDP’s huge majority in parliament’s lower house.
However, the opposition Democratic Party and its allies hold sway in the upper house, an unusual situation that is likely to plague Fukuda’s administration with policy struggles.
The thorniest issue may be Japan’s naval support for U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan, which the LDP wants to continue beyond the November 1 expiry of the current mandate in the face of opposition from the muscle-flexing Democrats.
Fukuda, who beat Aso to the top job, chose conservative former education minister Ibuki Bunmei, a loyal ally in the leadership election, for the No. 2 party position, replacing Aso.
He named allies Sadakazu Tanigaki, a doveish former finance minister but also a faction leader, and Toshihiro Nikai to other top LDP posts. Another Fukuda backer was put in charge of election strategy. Fukuda denied that the appointments had been made on the basis of factional deals, the LDP’s traditional way of operating. “I chose the best people for the positions,” he told reporters.
Analysts say the party would have difficulty restoring public trust if Fukuda were seen to be putting cronies or factional candidates into key cabinet and party positions.
Tanigaki has advocated raising the consumption tax to help tame Japan’s huge public debt, and his appointment is a sign that the issue will be at the center of the new government’s policy.
Some analysts have voiced concern that efforts to help those who have lost out economically in the restructuring of the past few years could result in a further expansion of government debt.
“We must proceed with reforms, but we have to decide how to deal with those who feel a bit left behind,” Tanigaki told a news conference.
One problem facing Fukuda is Aso himself, a hawkish former foreign minister some analysts see as having earned recognition for doing better than expected in Sunday’s LDP ballot.
He could be named to the cabinet in Tuesday’s reshuffle, although many commentators say major personnel changes are unlikely because the government wants to push ahead with legislation after a two-week hiatus. 
Although Fukuda has sought cooperation from the Democratic Party, the opposition group repeated on Sunday its demand for an early general election. Many newspapers echoed the call.

TITLE: New Castro Images Released
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HAVANA — Cuba published a photo Sunday of a standing, smiling Fidel Castro looking heavier but still gaunt as he met with Angola’s president, the first head of state to see the ailing 81-year-old since June.
The picture, which appeared on the front page of Communist Party youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde, shows Castro in a track suit, athletic pants and tennis shoes. The Cuban leader appears to have gained weight and wears a warm half-smile as he shakes hands with Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, who was in Cuba since Thursday on an official visit.
The image was released two days after Castro gave a surprise hour-long interview on state television, during which he answered rumors about his death that have swirled recently in the United States by saying simply, “well, here I am.”
Sunday’s photo was the first time Castro has been seen standing in months. He stayed seated during the interview, which aired Friday evening just hours after officials said it was taped.

TITLE: China Told To Look to Olympic Victory
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — China has told its distraught national soccer team to wipe away the tears and focus on the Olympic Games next year, after it bowed out of the Women’s World Cup in front of 52,000 home fans in Wuhan on Sunday night.
China’s 1-0 quarter-final loss to Norway, courtesy of a number of fluffed goal chances and a crucial defensive blunder from rookie Wang Kun, left players and spectators weeping at the Wuhan Sports Center Stadium.
“The road is still long. I hope you can now dry your eyes,” Monday’s Beijing News quoted Xie Yalong, a vice-chairman of the Chinese Football Association, as saying.
“After all, there is still the 2008 Olympics. Although everyone feels bad at the moment, there’s nothing that can be done, life goes on,” Xie said.
Eleventh-ranked China’s loss to world number four Norway drew both sympathy and admonishment in the nation’s newspapers.
“China bows out with head held high,” the China Daily proclaimed in its headline, praising the “Steel Roses’” pluck.
“Thornless Roses wilt at the brightest moment,” the Beijing News said more frankly, bemoaning the team’s failure to score, despite peppering the Norwegian goal with 21 shots.
China’s failure to reach their semi-final target left coach Marika Domanski-Lyfors pondering her future, despite a ringing endorsement from players and Chinese football officials.
“For me, first of all, I would have to think about if I would be the coach in the future and in the Olympic Games,” the China Daily quoted the Swede as saying.
“No matter who coaches, China is a great team,” she said.

TITLE: Menchov Wins in Spain
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID — Russia’s Denis Menchov won the Tour of Spain for the second time Sunday to don the gold jersey on the final podium in Madrid at last.
Menchov won his first Spanish title in 2005 when Spaniard Roberto Heras was stripped of the crown after testing positive for the banned blood booster EPO, or erythropoietin.
This time Rabobank’s Menchov, 29, was able to celebrate his successful defense of an overall lead taken on the ninth stage of this year’s race and never relinquished. Born in Oryol, Menchov played football as a child before being spotted by talent scouts from the prestigious CSKA cycling school and started racing at 12.
Success competing in France ensured the Russian signed for a top amateur Spanish squad, Banesto, in 1998.
The Spaniards gave his Russian team, Samara, 3,000 euros ($4,233) worth of cycling material — tires, wheels, and bike frames — in exchange for their top rider.
After signing a professional contract with Banesto in 2000, Menchov won the Best Young Riders jersey in the Tour de France in 2003, confirming his quality as a stage race rider.
Snapped up by Dutch team Rabobank in 2005 as its Tour leader, Menchov had failed to shine in France because of illness or poor form. However, he has done far better on this side of the Pyrenees, winning two stages of the 2005 Tour of Spain and — after Heras’ positive test — the overall title.

TITLE: Legendary Mime Dies Aged 84
AUTHOR: By Angela Doland
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — Marcel Marceau, the master of mime who transformed silence into poetry with lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions that spoke to generations of young and old, has died. He was 84.
Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau breathed new life into an art that dates to ancient Greece. He played out the human comedy through his alter-ego Bip without ever uttering a word.
Offstage, he was famously chatty. “Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop,” he once said.
A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp during World War II, unlike his father who died in Auschwitz. Marceau worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children, and later used the memories of his own life to feed his art.
He gave life to a wide spectrum of characters, from a peevish waiter to a lion tamer to an old woman knitting, and to the best-known Bip.
His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. In turn, Marceau inspired countless young performers — Michael Jackson borrowed his famous “moonwalk” from a Marceau sketch, “Walking Against the Wind.”
Marceau’s former assistant Emmanuel Vacca said on French radio that the peformer died Saturday in Paris, but gave no details.
In one of Marceau’s most poignant and philosophical acts, “Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death,” Marceau wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes.
He took his art to stages across the world, performing in Asia, Europe and the United States, his “second country,” where he first performed in 1955 and returned every two years. He performed for Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
Tireless, Marceau took his art to Cuba for the first time in September 2005.
“France loses one of its most eminent ambassadors,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement. Prime Minister Francois Fillon praised Marceau as “the master” with the rare gift of “being able to communicate with each and everyone beyond the barriers of language.”
The son of a butcher, the mime was born Marcel Mangel on March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg, France. His father Charles, a baritone with a love of song, introduced his son to the world of music and theater at an early age. The boy was captivated by the silent film stars of the era: Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx brothers.
When the Nazis marched into eastern France, he fled with family members to the southwest and changed his last name to Marceau to hide his Jewish origins.
With his brother Alain, Marceau became active in the French Resistance, altering children’s identity cards by changing birth dates to trick the Nazis into thinking they were too young to be deported. Because he spoke English, he was recruited to be a liaison officer with General George S. Patton’s army.
His father was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.
“Yes, I cried for him,” Marceau said. But he said he also thought of the others killed.
“Among those kids was maybe an Einstein, a Mozart, somebody who [would have] found a cancer drug,” he told reporters in 2000. “That is why we have a great responsibility. Let us love one another.”
Some of Marceau’s later work reflected the somber experiences. Even the character Bip, who chased butterflies in his debut, took on the grand themes of humanity.
Marcel’s life as a performer began with the liberation of Paris from the Nazis. He enrolled in Charles Dullin’s School of Dramatic Art, studying with the renowned mime Etienne Decroux.
On a tiny stage at the Theatre de Poche, a smoke-filled Left Bank cabaret, he sought to perfect the style of mime that would become his trademark.
The on-stage persona Bip was born in 1947, a sad-faced double whose eyes lit up with childlike wonder as he discovered the world. Bip was a direct descendant of the 19th century harlequin, but his clownish gestures, Marceau said, were inspired in part by Chaplin and Keaton.
In 1949, Marceau’s newly formed mime troupe was the only one of its kind in Europe. But it was only after a hugely successful tour across the United States in the mid-1950s that Marceau received the acclaim that would make him an international star.
Single-handedly, Marceau revived the art of mime, which dates to antiquity and continued until the 19th century through the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, or improvised theater. Marceau started his own company, then in 1978 the International School of Mime-Drama.
Marceau also made film appearances. The most famous was in Mel Brooks’ 1976 film “Silent Movie” — he had the only speaking line, “Non!”
As he aged, Marceau kept performing, never losing the agility that made him famous.
A perforated ulcer nearly killed Marceau in the Soviet Union in December 1985. He was rushed home to Paris in critical condition, but bounced back to the stage five months later.

TITLE: English Dictionary Clears Hyphen Logjam
AUTHOR: By Simon Rabinovitch
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.
And if you’ve got a problem, don’t be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby).
The hyphen has been squeezed as informal ways of communicating, honed in text messages and emails, spread on web sites and seep into newspapers and books.
“People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they’re not really sure what they are for,” said Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, the sixth edition of which was published this week.
Another factor in the hyphen’s demise is designers’ distaste for its ungainly horizontal bulk between words.
“Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography,” he said. “The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned.”
The team that compiled the Shorter OED, a two-volume tome despite its name, only committed the grammatical amputations after exhaustive research.
“The whole process of changing the spelling of words in the dictionary is all based on our analysis of evidence of language, it’s not just what we think looks better,” Stevenson said.
Researchers examined a corpus of more than 2 billion words, consisting of full sentences that appeared in newspapers, books, web sites and blogs from 2000 onwards. For the most part, the dictionary dropped hyphens from compound nouns, which were unified in a single word (e.g. pigeonhole) or split into two (e.g. test tube).
But hyphens have not lost their place altogether. The Shorter OED editor commended their first-rate service rendered to English in the form of compound adjectives, much like the one in the middle of this sentence.
“There are places where a hyphen is necessary,” Stevenson said. “Because you can certainly start to get real ambiguity.”
Twenty-odd people came to the party, he said. Or was it twenty odd people?

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Cheney’s Iran War?</b>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had at one point considered asking Israel to launch limited missile strikes at an Iranian nuclear site to provoke a retaliation, Newsweek magazine reported on Sunday.
The news comes amid reports that Israel launched an air strike against Syria this month over a suspected nuclear site.
Citing two unidentified sources, Newsweek said former Cheney Middle East adviser David Wurmser told a small group several months ago that Cheney was considering asking Israel to strike the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz.
A military response by Iran could give Washington an excuse to then launch airstrikes of its own, Newsweek said. Wurmser’s wife, Meyrav Wurmser of the neoconservative Hudson Institute think tank, told Newsweek the claims were untrue.
Wurmser left Cheney’s office last month, the magazine reported. The steady departure of neoconservative hawks from the administration has also helped tilt the balance against war, it said.

<b>Sex Toy in Sausage</b>
BERLIN (Reuters) — Staff at a German butcher’s shop were shocked to discover a customer had hidden two sex toys in their sausages for transport to Dubai, police said Wednesday.
“It was two latex dildos with a natural look,” said a spokesman for police in the southwestern city of Mannheim.
After shopping there earlier in the day, the man, who spoke broken English, returned to the butcher’s with two large “Schwartenmagen” sausages. He asked a shop assistant to wrap and cool them until he departed for Dubai the next day.
But the assistant noticed the goods had got heavier and alerted police. Officers discovered the man, who was about 50, had removed some of the meat and packed the dildos inside.
“He could have used a loaf of bread,” the spokesman said. “It’s not against the law here. But obviously I can’t speculate on what customs in Dubai will have to say about it.”

<b>Gandhi  to Lead</b>
NEW DELHI (Reuters) — Congress party named Rahul Gandhi, heir of the Nehru-Gandhi family, as one of its general-secretaries on Monday, in an apparent indication it was gearing for possible early polls.
Rahul’s appointment to the All India Congress Committee comes as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition government struggles to retain the support of communist allies opposed to a landmark nuclear energy agreement with the United States.
Congress also reshuffled its office-bearers and named new heads for four key state units in an effort to revitalise the organisation of a party whose political fortunes have been patchy since a surprise general election victory in 2004.

<b>Swastika Handbags</b>
MADRID (Reuters) — Spanish fashion chain Zara has withdrawn a handbag from its stores after a customer in Britain complained swastikas were embroidered on it.
Zara, owned by the world’s second largest fashion retailer Inditex, said it did not know the 39 pound ($78) handbag had green swastikas on its corners.
The bags were made by a supplier in India and inspired by commonly used Hindu symbols, which include the swastika. The original design approved by Zara did not have swastikas on it, Inditex said.
“After the return of one bag we decided to withdraw the whole range,” said a spokesman for Inditex, which has more than 3,330 stores in 66 countries.
Zara pulled the bags after 19-year-old Rachel Hatton told Britain’s Daily Mail she asked for a refund when she spotted swastikas on her bag.

<b>Warne’s SMS Blunder</b>
SYDNEY (Reuters) — The wife of former Australian cricket champion Shane Warne says their marriage reconciliation is over after he mistakenly sent her an incriminating text message.
Simone Callahan, who reunited last December with the spin bowler known also for his womanising, told a woman’s magazine she caught Warne cheating on her while he was in London.
As Callahan got the couple’s three children ready for school in Melbourne, a text dropped into the inbox of her mobile phone, she told New Idea magazine.
“Hey beautiful, I’m just talking to my kids, the back door’s open,” the message from Warne said.
“You loser, you sent the message to the wrong person,” Callahan sent back.

<b>Tornadoes Hit U.K.</b>
LONDON (Reuters) — A series of tornadoes hit central and southern England on Monday, tearing off roof tiles and ripping branches from trees.
Residents watched aghast as the storms twisted their destructive way through towns from Nuneaton in the Midlands to Farnborough in Hampshire.
One witness described the scene in Nuneaton as “absolute bedlam” and said the roofs had been ripped off a row of 10 to 15 houses.
Terence Meaden, Deputy Head of the UK’s Tornado and Storm Research Organisation, said the storms were “quite a big event”, second only to those of last December when Britain was hit by at least 12 tornadoes across the country.
“Some of the places definitely had tornadoes because they were seen — I would say that we have nine events which could be tornadoes and some of them certainly were,” Meaden told BBC Television.

<b>Arsenal Stays Cool</b>
LONDON (Reuters) — Premier League football club Arsenal said on Monday it did not need a billionaire backer and had had no contact with Alisher Usmanov, the wealthy Russian businessman who has built up a 21 percent stake in the club and wants more.
“We will meet any major shareholder that seeks a meeting. We have not met Usmanov and Usmanov has not requested a meeting,” Arsenal Managing Director Keith Edelman told reporters as the north London club reported a 65 percent drop in annual profit, due mainly to the costs of refinancing its debts.
Former vice chairman David Dein is spearheading Red and White Holdings, the investment vehicle bankrolled by Usmanov and London-based Farhad Moshiri.
Edelman told reporters the club was not concerned if Usmanov waged a hostile takeover war.

TITLE: New season, new opportunities
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Expanding MBA programs
The International Management Institute of St. Petersburg (IMISP) has added new courses to its MBA program. During the second year of their studies, students will take new obligatory courses on corporate culture and leadership, on managing changes in business, and business control oriented toward the business owner’s perspective.
The number of elective courses has also increased. Such courses have become more oriented toward business practice. New courses on the practical issues of capital project assessment and techniques of company value management have been added to other financial disciplines.
IMISP has also employed new lecturers, including Alexei Portansky, director of the Information Bureau for Russia’s Entry into the WTO, and Vasiliy Kulagin, a former financial manager of Lucent Technologies and Vympelkom-Region.
So far, IMISP has realized 41 MBA programs, including 27 open programs, ten corporate programs for Gazprom, Yamburggazdobytcha and United Technologies (UTC), one joint program with the Kaliningrad Institute of International Business and three joint programs with MBA Agrobiznes.
Over 1,000 people have completed IMISP programs, and over 160 people are studying various programs at present.
Back to Basics
This fall, the Open Business School in St. Petersburg will start to offer the first MBA programs in English for local students. The school will offer a one-year foundation MBA program, “Fundamentals of Senior Management,” as well as a full-time Open University Business School MBA program that takes two and a half to three years to complete.
In 1992 the school signed an agreement with the Open University Business School (OUBS) in Great Britain to run OUBS programs in Russia and the CIS. Besides the advantage of getting a western diploma in St. Petersburg, the new English language programs are shorter compared to their Russian language analogues.
In August this year, the Open Business School in St. Petersburg welcomed over 250 guests to the celebration ceremony of its 15th anniversary. On August 23, in the garden of the General Consulate of Great Britain in St. Petersburg, the Open Business School also awarded this year’s graduates their diplomas.
For graduates and students
The Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in St. Petersburg has launched regular quarterly meetings, seminars and round tables for graduates of the school, in addition to annual alumni meetings. The meetings focus on financial and accounting issues, marketing and sales, production and logistics, human resources management, strategy and innovation.
This year the school opened a Service for Career Development. Specialists from the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School will assist MBA students in improving the skills and personal qualities necessary to gain employment and forge a successful career.
In 2007, the school also introduced a student exchange program between its three branches, which are located in Leuven and Gent in Belgium, and St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg the students visited the Ford, Gillette and Nevskaya Kosmetika enterprises, while in Belgium they were able to visit Volvo, Electrabel and Sun Interbrew. Next year the school plans to offer programs in Belgium, the United States and China.
In 2008, the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School will introduce short-term executive management courses in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The courses will focus on marketing, finance, HR management and production management. A number of corporate programs will start next year.
Enrollment for EMBA begins
The Graduate School of Management of the St. Petersburg State University is now enrolling two new groups onto one of its most popular programs, the 22 month university level Executive MBA program taught in Russian.
The program is specially oriented at training top managers, without focusing on any specific industry but offering an ideal range of courses in general management.
One of the entrance requirements is adequate managerial experience (three years or more). Its convenient teaching format — four-day modules once a month — allows students to keep running their business while pursuing their studies.
The program includes a one week tour to a business-school partner in Europe (the Graduate School of Management has established links with 26 leading foreign schools of management).
All courses are taught by tenure track professors who combine extensive academic knowledge with practical business skills.
Graduates are awarded their MBA degree along with a diploma from the St. Petersburg State University. The presentation of the EMBA program (Open Doors day) will take place on October 11, and the deadline for applications is October 31. Study begins on November 14 and December 12.

TITLE: Wiser Students Make Higher Demands
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In Russia, over 60 business schools compete for the opportunity to educate managers. According to estimations by Begin Group company, in value terms the Russian business education market is worth 1.29 billion rubles.

What is a typical MBA student like? And what do students normally expect from a business school?
“Year after year, MBA students are becoming more and more prepared for acquiring business knowledge. They are becoming more experienced (including experience in senior management) compared to students from previous years. As a result, business schools face higher demands concerning the quality of courses and professional level of tutors,” said Alla Zhavoronkova, head of the BEGIN project at Begin Group.
“Specialized courses are becoming more popular. As a rule, new educational programs offered by business schools are specialized – it’s easier to attract students to these programs,” Zhavoronkova said.
In Russia about 5,000 people receive an MBA diploma every year. According to a poll of MBA students completed by Begin Group earlier this year, in St. Petersburg 67 percent of students are men and 33 percent are women. The average age of the students is about 30.
Out of the total number of respondents, seven percent were specialists, 35 percent – mid-range managers, 37 percent – senior managers, seven percent – business owners and 14 percent were temporary unemployed.
Despite their relatively young age, MBA students, as a rule, already have a higher education qualification and several years of work practice. Only four percent of students said they had been working for less than three years. Most of the students said they had been working for over four years (23 percent), over seven years (39 percent) and over 11 years (26 percent). Eight percent of students said they had over 16 years of work experience.
Only three percent of students had enrolled on MBA programs without any experience in management, while 28 percent of students had up to four years of management practice, 36 percent – over four years, 26 percent – over seven years, and seven percent – over 10 years of management practice.
Students of St. Petersburg’s business schools tend to be younger and less experienced in comparison with their Moscow colleagues, the research showed.
When asked about their expectations, most of the students indicated gaining new knowledge (66 percent), career development (63 percent) and a salary increase (39 percent) as their main objectives. However, these expectations are not usually realized immediately after graduation.
“An MBA diploma becomes an advantage in a person’s career development several years after they graduate from a business school. Alumni should not expect immediate results. However, our poll shows that MBA students are promoted and get higher salaries even while they are still studying at business schools,” Zhavoronkova said.
Among the respondents, only 27 percent said that their expectations of a salary increase were already realized, while 45 percent indicated that their salary had not increased.
At the same time, ten percent of MBA students expect their salary to more than double within a year of completing an MBA course, while 16 percent of students expect their salary to increase by 50 percent.
28 percent of students expect their income to increase by 51-75 percent, and 12 percent hope to get a 25 percent to 50 percent salary increase. Five percent of students have moderate expectations of an approximate 25 percent salary increase and only 14 percent said that they do not expect any particular changes in salary.
In St. Petersburg, MBA students are more oriented toward career development and salary increase than in Moscow, according to the Begin Group research. Networking and new contacts, on the contrary, are less important for local businesspeople.
The poll showed that 25 percent of students considered an MBA course to be fully worth the cost of fees. Another 59 percent said that the quality of education more or less corresponded to the price.
Despite the fact that the students indicated new knowledge as the main advantage of business education, 90 percent of them said that the international accreditation of a business school is an important factor for them.
In St. Petersburg, students are more concerned about the school’s accreditation than in Moscow, where 68 percent of students pay attention to this factor.
The students explained that an international accreditation is an advantage in job hunting and career development. Some students said it was an obligatory requirement of certain employers. The students expect an international accreditation to help them find employment in a larger company or move to an international enterprise.
Expectations of career development had been fulfilled for six percent of students, and more or less fulfilled for 36 percent while other 36 percent said their expectations had not been fulfilled, the research shows.
During their MBA education, 26 percent of students were promoted from mid-range management or specialist positions to senior management positions. 32 percent of specialists became mid-range managers, while another 13 percent of students started their own business.
According to Begin Group, MBA students appreciate the opportunity to develop new practical skills. They also value highly a useful form of education, books, qualified tutors, an individual approach, new knowledge, useful contacts, improvement in their social status, communication with colleagues, and an intensive education.
Most of the students asked expressed their dislike for formalism in education, a lack of practical lectures and hands-on lessons, non-adapted western business cases, unexpected changes in the lessons schedule, a discrepancy between theory and practice, a strict schedule that was incompatible with work, and a low professional level among their tutors.
In general, the respondents said that they were quite satisfied with the quality of MBA courses.
While ambitious employees are looking for opportunities to improve their qualifications and professional skills, only a small proportion of employers are actually concerned about the systematic education of their personnel.
According to research conducted by the Open Business School in St. Petersburg, 23 percent of respondents in private companies based in St. Petersburg and Moscow said that managers in their companies “take an active interest” in the education of their employees, and only 11 percent of respondents said that their managers consider education and staff development “a serious issue”.
In most of the companies (56 percent) managers do not promote the idea of educating and training personnel.
Only one out of every three companies surveyed provided their employees with advice on professional and career development. Only 37 percent of companies had career plans for particular employees.

TITLE: A Tale of Two Business Schools
AUTHOR: By Yelena Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What have the medieval towns of Leuven and Gent in Belgium got in common with Russia’s northern capital? Until last year you could have looked for many answers, such as a common European culture and many tourist attractions, but now they all have campuses of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. At the end of 2006, the famous Belgian business school opened its third campus in St. Petersburg, the fruit of years of collaboration between Vlerick and the International School of Management (ISM) in St. Petersburg. 
Upon visiting the medieval towns of Gent and Leuven where the two major campuses of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School are located along the picturesque canals, you could get the impression that the Belgian school chose St. Petersburg for its new campus over other European cities due to its beautiful architecture and perception as the Venice of the North. However, it is more likely that the prudent Belgians had a more logical reason for making the decision, such as the study conducted by McKinsey which suggested that the Russian economy would need between 25,000 and 30,000 MBA students over the coming years in order to fulfil the country’s challenges and opportunities.
Founded in 1953 by Professor Baron André Vlerick, the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School has evolved into the leading business school in Belgium and one of the top business schools in Europe, which holds the three most important accreditations relevant to the world of management education: EQUIS, AMBA and AACSB.
The School benefits from the combined knowledge of the two largest Belgian universities, Gent University and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
For over fifty years, Vlerick has been the Alma Mater for many managers and entrepreneurs at different stages in their careers. Now the global community of Vlerick alumni numbers 11,500 people in over 100 countries.
The school’s Gent campus is housed in the renovated medieval premises of the ‘Groot Seminarie’ — where once, in medieval times, monks studied Christian teachings, would-be top managers now learn the secrets of modern business. Although the school buildings are fully equipped with modern facilities, their facades retain their ancient appearance and the numerous statues of saints and the Virgin Mary and Jesus in the halls remind students of the history of the building. 
The St. Petersburg Campus is also located in the historic city center, on Birzhevaya Liniya 16. According to Vlerick, the reason why they chose St. Petersburg for their third campus is clear. 
“Russia is currently one of the world’s four major growth markets along with China, India and Brazil, a market of talented people and steadily increasing demand for well trained managers,” said Vanessa Debruyne, Press Relations Officer at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. 
“The third campus is the result of years of co-operation with the International School of Management (ISM) in St. Petersburg. We therefore do not have to start completely from scratch”, said Patrick De Greve, the Vlerick Leuven’s Director General.
As well as full-time MBA courses, this year a part-time MBA course is being offered for the first time. The school emphasizes the international character of its programs and claims to be the only one in St. Petersburg to offer a full-time international MBA, both in terms of course contents and range of participants. Due to the fact that lectures are delivered in English, no less than 37 percent of the present students are of non-Russian origin. They come to St. Petersburg from countries such as India, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Switzerland in pursuit of their Vlerick MBA. 
Anastasia Korshunova, International Business Development Officer at the St. Petersburg Campus, thinks that there are two major reasons for foreign students to come to Vlerick St.Petersburg. “Currently the full-time International MBA program is significantly cheaper (8,000 euros) than the same program in the campuses in Leuven and Gent (15, 000 Euros) while the quality of the delivered programs is the same: the diploma our graduates receive is identical to the one issued in Belgium, professors fly in from Brussels every week to deliver lectures to our MBA students, the Careers Center is available in Leuven and in St. Petersburg, and graduates of the St. Petersburg Campus have the right to join the Vlerick Alumni Association. The reason for the price difference is that Vlerick has just entered the Russian market and is keeping the promotional price for the first couple of years at a lower level,” she said. “It is strange, but the most popular format of studying an MBA in all the major business schools — that is, full time — is not so common in Russia. Today there are only a few MBA programs (one or two) in Russia that are run on a full-time basis, while a full-time MBA is the program that allows students to receive real return on their investment in a short period of time. MBA graduates have a real chance of being recruited by the major multinational companies and of significantly increasing their income.”
As another reason for foreign students to study at the St. Petersburg campus, Korshunova named the growing Russian economy. “Today the job proposals our MBA graduates receive from Russian companies can be far more attractive than those they can expect from the European market,” she said.
The students share her opinion. Tobias Bosshammer, a full-time MBA 2007 student from Germany, thinks that by studying at the St. Petersburg campus he is getting “a world class MBA as well as great opportunities to extend his career to Russia.” Rutger Coolen, a full-time MBA 2007 student from the Netherlands, said that in Russia he “could improve his management skills with a leading European MBA, while experiencing one of the most dynamic and beautiful cities in the world.” 
Now the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School is in the process of developing both open programs as well as company specific training schemes for managers in the Russian market. In addition, enthusiastic plans are being drawn up in the field of research headed by St. Petersburg campus Dean, Prof. Alexander Yanchevsky. 
“The exchange between three campuses will prove enriching for the schools’ students and researchers alike,” explains the Dean, Anders Aspling. “And it also offers us new scope for recruiting faculty members to work on all the campuses.”