SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1313 (79), Tuesday, October 9, 2007
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Fradkov Named Foreign Spymaster
AUTHOR: By Miriam Elder
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin has named Mikhail Fradkov as head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, in a surprise appointment that, observers said, indicates that the bland former prime minister had been a KGB operative.
Fradkov will replace Sergei Lebedev, who was named executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States on Friday.
“As far as the director of foreign intelligence is concerned, this person is well known to you. This is Mikhail Fradkov,” Putin told reporters Saturday in Dushanbe, where he was attending a CIS summit.
Fradkov, widely seen as an “outsider” and obedient technocrat when appointed prime minister by Putin in 2004, stepped down last month in a cabinet shake-up.
His resignation had been seen as the death of his political career, and his appointment to the Foreign Intelligence Service, known by its Russian acronym SVR, indicates a KGB background and his allegiance to Putin’s siloviki backers, analysts said.
“This confirms that Fradkov was an agent,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a leading sociologist who tracks Kremlin politics and the security services.
The siloviki are a hawkish Kremlin clan comprising current and former security and military officials. Kryshtanovskaya estimated that 78 percent of the elite under Putin are affiliated with the siloviki, while 26 percent have direct experience working for the security services.
The only hint on Fradkov’s resume to a possible KGB past was his posting to the economic section of the Soviet Union’s embassy in New Delhi in 1973, just a year after he graduated from the Moscow Instrument-Building Institute.
Fradkov, a diminutive, moon-faced man with a soft voice, would be a model operative for the security services, Kryshtanovskaya said.
“The special services ... value modesty. They don’t want people who are out there working on their own image. They must work not in their own interests, but in the interests of the corporation,” she said.
“His manner comes across as ‘I’m small, pay no notice,’ but his position on the Security Council, then the tax service, then his appointment as prime minister, show that he holds the highest state secrets,” she said.
The highlights of Fradkov’s relatively lackluster career before becoming prime minister included short stints as foreign trade minister and trade minister in the 1990s and as the head of the Tax Police under Putin. He also served briefly as deputy head of the Security Council.
He might have first met Putin in the early 1990s, when he was a deputy foreign trade minister and Putin oversaw foreign trade in St. Petersburg.
Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst, agreed that Fradkov’s security ties were being laid bare with his appointment to the SVR.
“The president is drawing on a reserve of personnel who are currently needed — people from the SVR, people from the KGB,” he said.
Some officials praised the move, with Alexander Torshin, deputy speaker of the Federation Council, describing Fradkov as “a man with clean hands, a warm heart and a cool head,” Itar-Tass reported.
But Duma Deputy Viktor Ilyukhin, a Communist who sits on the Duma’s Security Committee, expressed doubt that Fradkov was up to the task. “Putin in the last month has not been acting in the interest of the country,” Ilyukhin said by telephone Sunday. “While I respect Fradkov, the SVR is a very specific service to which he is not suited. The head of the SVR should be a professional.”
The SVR coordinates the country’s spying activities abroad. Mike McConnell, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said last month that Russian espionage was close to Cold War levels.
Fradkov has been “relaxing in the Moscow region” since he resigned, White House spokesman Yevgeny Revenko said. He attended Putin’s 55th birthday celebrations at the Kremlin on Sunday.
The appointment of Lebedev as executive secretary of the CIS was announced Friday by Kazakh President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has held the CIS’s rotating presidency for the past year. Lebedev replaces Vladimir Rushailo, a former interior minister, who has headed the CIS since June 2004.
Lebedev and Putin both served with the KGB in East Germany in the 1980s.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Lebedev’s intelligence background would aid him in his new role as secretary of the CIS, a loose grouping of 12 former Soviet republics.
“Being in charge of the foreign intelligence services, you have access to maximum information. Being the owner of maximum information gives you the opportunity to use this information to speed up effectiveness,” he said.

TITLE: Police: Killer’s Identity Known
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: Associated Press Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators know who pulled the trigger but still have not determined who ordered the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the chief investigator said in an interview published Monday.
Politkovskaya, whose persistent reporting of atrocities against civilians in Chechnya had angered the Kremlin but won her international acclaim, was gunned down in the entryway of her Moscow apartment building on Oct. 7, 2006. The first anniversary of her death has brought new attention to attempts to find her killers.
Petros Garibyan, the lead investigator in the case, said the murder was political and may have parallels to the 2004 killing of Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian edition.
Charges have been filed against 11 people, 10 of whom have been arrested, Garibyan said. He said investigators have identified the gunman but have not yet filed charges against him.
“We haven’t charged the killer yet, but we know who he is,” he said in the interview published in Politkovskaya’s newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.
Those arrested were accused of helping organize the murder, but the investigators had not yet determined who ordered it, said Garibyan, senior investigator with the Prosecutor General’s office. He refused to speculate on who might have been behind the killing, which occurred on President Vladimir Putin’s birthday.
His boss, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, said in August that the hit on Politkovskaya was ordered by someone living outside the country with the aim of discrediting Putin. The statement was interpreted as a reference to Boris Berezovsky, a former Kremlin insider who lives in London and is one of Putin’s fiercest critics.
But investigators working on the case have not backed up Chaika’s statement, which echoed statements made by Putin within days of the killing.
Garibyan said investigators believed Politkovskaya’s murder was both politically motivated and linked to her writings.
“If we speak about Anna’s journalistic activities, we see politics,” he said. “And when we speak about the political version, we can’t avoid her professional activities because Anna was a journalist who wrote about acute political issues.”
The investigator said that some of the people questioned about Klebnikov’s killing also figured in the investigation into Politkovskaya’s killing.
“The same people who were witnesses or contacts of witnesses and suspects in Klebnikov’s case have come into the focus of our attention,” Garibyan said. “But it’s too early to talk about a clear connection between these two murders.”
Two Chechens were charged with carrying out the killing on behalf of a Chechen separatist figure, but were acquitted in 2006. The Supreme Court ordered them tried again, but the trial has been suspended since March after one of the defendants failed to show up in court.
Several Chechens were also arrested in Politkovskaya’s case, including the former chief administrator in one of Chechnya’s districts, officials said.
Many contested the official version of Klebnikov’s killing, saying it was likely connected to his work investigating corruption and Russia’s shadowy business world.
Some observers, including Polit-kovskaya’s editors, said she also might have been killed because of investigations into corruption that threatened to infringe on someone’s business interests.
Garibyan said the investigation has been hurt by leaks of information that occurred when his team had to share information with other agencies while preparing to detain the suspects and seize their car. 
He said that some of the leaks could have been caused by sloppiness, but others were deliberate.
The suspects’ arrests were announced in August by Chaika, who said Politkovskaya’s murder was organized by a Chechen criminal group in Moscow that specialized in contract killings and that among the suspects were five law enforcement officers accused of tracking her and providing her killers with information.
The names were printed in a newspaper the following day and included officers from the Federal Security Service and Interior Ministry. Novaya Gazeta editors, who have been working closely with Garibyan’s team, said the leaking of the names hurt the investigation.

TITLE: Politicians Head Line for Soccer Seats
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu and Kevin O’Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Anyone hoping to get a ticket for the crucial Oct. 17 soccer match between Russia and England would have had to get up very early Monday morning — with the exception, of course, of top United Russia officials.
More than a thousand people had already put their names on the list for tickets days before the sales office opened Monday, said Anzhela Biryukova, the spokeswoman for the match at Luzhniki stadium, and thousands are expected to wait in line for hours for the last 10,000 tickets on sale.
Spicing the story up a bit is the fact that the match is taking place just two months before the State Duma elections. It’s a good bet that the pro-Kremlin United Russia party wil try to use the game as a vehicle to boost its support ahead of the Dec. 2 vote.
The crucial qualifying match for the 2008 European Football Championship is the most anticipated football game in Moscow since Russia played Slavic neighbor Ukraine in 1999. Russia needs a win to have any chance at qualifying for next year’s tournament in Austria and Switzerland.
Most of the tickets were sold before Monday through fan clubs and applications by mail. The postal sale attracted more than half a million requests. Luzhniki stadium has a capacity of about 80,000.
There may be quite a few politicians among the 80,000 in attendance. Four years ago, when the Russian national team won 4-1 against Switzerland in a European Championship qualifying game, United Russia was brazen in its attempts to associate itself with football success.
National television stations led the late-night news with reports featuring United Russia leaders Boris Gryzlov — then the interior minister — Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, and federal sports agency head Vyacheslav Fetisov cheering on the home side from their VIP box at Lokomotiv stadium.
After the game, the three United Russia leaders flanked national team coach Georgy Yartsev, also a member of United Russia, in a post-game interview with Channel One television.
A state official admitted Friday that United Russia used the victory four years ago as a public relations exercise.
“During the last election campaign, United Russia members watched the first half of the game on television and, when they saw the team was winning, went to the stadium just to be caught by the television cameras,” said the official, who asked not to be identified. “I think it will be the same this time.”
“I’m talking about the big names,” he added.
Some in the sports world have grown weary of the opportunistic interest from political figures.
“Maybe some are actually interested in football, but [most] go to games to show off, to show that they are close to the people,” said football historian Aksel Vartanyan, singling out former President Boris Yeltsin as a politician who took the populist sports approach.
On the other hand, Vartanyan said, Leonid Brezhnev was a real fan. Never having to worry about getting elected, Brezhnev actually had games delayed until he could arrive, leaving fans sitting around wondering about the holdup.
This time out, it’s unlikely that even President Vladimir Putin could delay the start of the match against England.
Politicians, government ministries and bureaucrats have been scrambling for tickets ahead of the game, the Russian Football Union said. Judging by the numbers trying to use their pull to get seats, this is not just restricted to those important enough to end up on camera if Russia takes the lead.
“The biggest problem is the VIPs, the deputies, the senators,” union spokesman Andrei Malosolov said.

TITLE: Ministers Told to Mind Ps & Qs
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In an effort to improve what she called the “poor verbal performance” of Russian government officials, the rector of St. Petersburg State University and head of the Russian Language Teachers’ Association has called for Russian language exams in the Kremlin and the Duma.
“I have got all the writing tests ready,” Lyudmila Verbitskaya told reporters, adding that she is planning a trip to Moscow to secure a meeting with new Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov. “We really must get serious about the problem: the country’s top-ranking officials make embarrassing mistakes. They often can’t get the stress right in the easiest words.”
Verbitskaya’s idea is to make the Russian-language entrance exam obligatory for all state officials as part of the recruitment process. Their knowledge of the language would then be monitored through a series of tests.
“Russia needs to follow the example of France, where a language exam is mandatory and a specially assigned minister overlooks the purity of the language as used by government officials,” Verbitskaya said.
Verbitskaya said she had meant to contact former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov about introducing a similar practice in Russia but never managed it.
“But I am determined to get through to Viktor Zubkov with my proposal because I am convinced the exams are absolutely necessary,” she added.
Russia’s most powerful politicians are widely ridiculed for their verbal lapses in the Russian media. Such lapses feature prominently in hundreds of blogs.
“The administrative reform was launched with an eye for the ministers to feel the hopelessness of the situation,” Fradkov said of a recent reform plan, mixing metaphors with aplomb.
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov is known for his clumsy attempts at flattery when addressing President Vladimir Putin.
“I do not want to be unfaithful, neither to my wife, nor to the president nor to Muscovites,” the Mayor once proclaimed.
On another occasion, the Mayor’s bragging about his achievements in animal farming led to embarrassment. 
“Besides two cows, I also have a pig,” he confided to reporters. “The president uses my milk, and I am so pleased.”
But the uncrowned king of laughable lapses is Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia’s Ambassador in Ukraine and a former prime minister, who once admitted to having “approximately two sons.”
Chernomyrdin was disconcerted with a situation because “it was too direct and perpendicular,” and he once claimed that the Russian government “is not the kind of organ where you can manage with your tongue alone.” 
Verbitskaya’s previous initiatives included a proposal to close the popular (but now defunct) political puppet show “Kukly” for “creating a distorted and insulting image of President Putin.”
Verbitskaya has also taken her campaign for better Russian to the metro with posters featuring her image explaining grammatical points.
The rector has also campaigned for a third term for Putin and served as a “steamer” in the regional list of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party during the elections to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly in March.

TITLE: Experts Slam Plans For Communal Apartments
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As plans put forward by City Hall to re-settle 80 percent of the residents of St. Petersburg’s notorious communal apartments by 2016 are rubberstamped by the city's Legislative Assembly, both real estate experts and people who live in communal aprtments have expressed scepticism that such targets can be reached. 
According to the plan, by 2011 at least 56,000 St. Petersburg families are to have been moved from communal apartments to new housing. At least 75.3 billion rubles ($3 billion) will be allocated to the purpose from the city budget, Fontanka.ru said.  
But “the most important factor for re-settling communal apartments is not the financial factors but human ones,” Alexander Romanenko, president of the Russian Real Estate Guild, who also heads Advecs Real Estate Corporation, said.
According to Romanenko, the communal apartments that are most attractive to developers were sold and residents already resettled during the last 15 years.  
“Most of the apartments left are problematic to developers: either the residents have exaggerated demands [because residents of downtown apartments tend to expect large sums to buy them out] or their location in second and third yards [makes them unattractive]”, Romanenko said.
However, Romanenko said the new law also contains positive elements, such as that now not only district administrations will be able to suggest the list of the residents to be re-settled, but that developers can initiate such activity themselves.
“I hope the common efforts of business and the state will allow for the development of an efficient mechanism to  have influence upon the so-called ‘last resident’ whose demands prevent other residents from improving their living conditons,” he said. 
In order to do so City Hall should author additional legislative acts that would regulate the process of re-settling communal apartments, Romanenko said.
“If administrative resources are not enabled, the planned volumes and terms of the program will not be fulfilled,” he said.
At the same time, Romanenko said the efforts of the city authorities to solve the problem, including committing financial backing, was “extremely positive.”
Alexei Popov, general director of the Central Real Estate Agency, said the government’s project indicates “the intention of the city authorities to speed up the process of re-settlement.”
“The problem is that business is careful to deal with state money because cashless money transfers delay bargains. For that reason many companies ignore such programs though at first glance they look attractive,” Popov said.
He said the most interesting communal apartments for developers in the center are either those located in buildings where residents can be completely re-settled, or first floor apartments that can be converted to offices and shops.
“The communal apartments located on the city’s outskirts are of low interest to developers. In those cases, the government will need to make concessions and give developers vacant spots for construction.  Otherwise, expenses won’t be compensated,” Popov said.
Residents of communal apartments did not show much optimism about the new law.
“The law is more interesting to developers than to residents,” said Larisa Galushko, who recently moved from a communal apartment to a separate one.
Galushko said it took her family of seven, including three children, years to solve the problem of re-settlement.
“We had a number of different investors coming to us with different offers for re-settlement but most of them were completely inappropriate, and I see many investors as not being honest,” she said.
The Galushkos, who were all registered in a single 24-square-meter room in a communal apartment on one of the city’s central streets, got offers to move to the suburbs at Sosnovaya Polyana, or to an apartment in the center located on the ground floor above the flooded cellar that made the apartment almost impossible to live in, and to other inappropriate places.
“In the end the developers offered us a more decent choice in the center but then they never fulfiled the promise of paying for us to move,” she said.
Meanwhile, subsidies will be offered only to those who have lived in St. Petersburg for at least 10 years and who live in less than 20 square-meters of space.
St. Petersburg has from 120,000 to 150,000 communal apartments.  About 40 percent of them are located in the center and about 329,000 families live in such apartments.

TITLE: Boxer Turned Economist Stays in the Fight
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It was a stump speech in what was very much a local election. But when Grigory Yavlinsky took the stage in the small Moscow region town of Pushchino, he wanted to talk big ideas.
“Our program is built on idealism,” Yavlinsky told the crowd of 200 voters before launching into an hour-long analysis of how misguided economic reforms in the 1990s had produced the systemic corruption Russia has today.
Hours after the speech, aimed at capturing votes for his Yabloko party in regional legislature elections, Yavlinsky briefly let down his mask. Riding in the backseat of his BMW, he tried with childlike exuberance to get a read on how voters had viewed his performance.
“Was it OK?” he asked his spokeswoman, Yevgenia Dillendorf, over his cell phone.
Dillendorf duly delivered the good news: People were excited that he showed up and hung around afterward to sign autographs and discuss local issues.
“Excellent,” he said, and tucked the phone into his coat pocket.
The obvious pleasure Yavlinsky takes in jazzing up a small town crowd is due in no small part to the fact that his visibility — and relevance — in politics has steadily declined since he finished fourth in the 1996 presidential election, garnering 7.3 percent, or 5.5 million votes. Yavlinsky, a former junior boxing champion who has been known to physically intimidate political opponents, is fighting to the bitter end.
Yavlinsky, a shunned economic reformer who wrote a manual for operating coal mines that is still used today, plans to run for president in March. But nobody — Yavlinsky included — has any illusions that he will win in a race more akin to a scripted professional wrestling bout than a clean fight.
But what frustrates many liberals, including his own supporters, is that Yavlinsky is still trying to land jabs — criticizing human rights abuses in Chechnya, corruption and selective prosecution — while the Kremlin and its allies are essentially smashing steel chairs over the heads of their opponents. Yabloko, for example, was stricken from the ballot in March elections in St. Petersburg on a technicality, though the party said it was banned because of its vocal opposition to the construction of a Gazprom skyscraper in the city.
“I’m moving my way,” Yavlinsky said in a recent interview at Yabloko’s headquarters, across the river from the Kremlin. “I’m consistent. I’m not going to self-destruct.”

Fractured Opposition
Since the 1996 election, Yavlinsky has been under pressure to team up with like-minded parties, primarily from the pro-business Union of Right Forces party, or SPS, which has chastised Yavlinsky for his obstinacy.
“Yavlinsky recognizes only one way of merging: Everybody joins Yabloko,” SPS leader Nikita Belykh said. “We have always been in favor of merging democratic forces.”
The two parties have been negotiating for 10 years but with little result. Yavlinsky considers SPS a Kremlin project because of its big-business links, including Unified Energy System head Anatoly Chubais, architect of the 1990s privatizations that Yavlinsky was denouncing to Pushchino voters in March. Chubais is an SPS founder but is not a member of the party.
“Time has run out for people like Yavlinsky,” said SPS co-founder Boris Nemtsov, who implemented Yavlinsky-authored economic reforms as the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region in the 1990s.
As for other opposition figures — such as 2003 presidential candidate Irina Khakamada, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov — “they are welcome to join Yabloko,” Yavlinsky said, speaking in the fluent English — albeit with an American twang — that he learned while studying labor economics at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy.
Yavlinsky has refused to associate with The Other Russia, an opposition coalition led by Kasparov and writer Eduard Limonov, a founder of the banned National Bolshevik Party. The coalition has staged several Dissenters’ Marches across the country that have been violently quashed by riot police.
Yavlinsky calls Limonov a “typical Russian nationalist.”
“Yabloko can’t join nationalists. It’s not acceptable for us in principle. Nationalism in Russia is a very dangerous thing and contagious thing. Is that clear?” a visibly annoyed Yavlinsky said, slipping into Russian.
Economics vs. Boxing
Yavlinsky was born into a relatively well-off Jewish family in Lviv, western Ukraine, in 1952 and enjoyed a happy childhood. “The war brought people together. You never betrayed your friends,” he said.
Alexei Yavlinsky, his father, was an orphan whose younger brother died of hunger in his arms. He lived with an adopted family in Kharkov and later moved to Lviv. He was stationed in Central Asia during World War II.
Yavlinsky’s mother, Vera, was evacuated from Tashkent to Lviv after World War I. She taught chemistry in the city and married Alexei there in 1947.
Yavlinsky’s love for a girl, led him to take up boxing to protect her. By the time he was 18, he was an upstart from the Dynamo boxing club in central Lviv, who had twice been crowned national junior boxing champion.
One of his former coaches, Pyotr Vasilyuk, called Yavlinsky “a clever fighter.” “He worked so hard and had a focus one rarely sees,” Vasilyuk, who still trains young boxers at Dynamo, said by telephone from Lviv.
As a young adult, Yavlinsky realized that he had to make a decision: continue boxing and aim for the top of the sport or indulge his love for economics. “My coach said he thought my future was in learning and studying,” Yavlinsky said.
In 1969, Yavlinsky moved to Moscow and studied labor economics at the Plekhanov institute. One of his professors there, Alexei Tarkhanov, remembers Yavlinsky fondly.
“He was very talented,” said Tarkhanov, head of the labor economics department at the institute. “He loved to speak in front of an audience. He loved to give presentations and spent considerable amounts of time and energy trying to persuade people that his point of view should be considered.”
Yavlinsky met his wife, Yelena, at the institute, and the couple has two children. Their son Mikhail was born in 1971 and currently works for the BBC Russian Service in London. Their other son, Alexei, was born in 1981 and works as a computer programmer in Moscow.
Yavlinsky submitted his doctoral thesis, titled “The Development of the Division of Labor in the Chemicals Industry,” in 1976, the same year he began traveling the country as a senior engineer at the All-Union Coal Industry Scientific-Research Institute. “I came to the conclusion that the main problem is that people simply didn’t want to work,” said Yavlinsky, whose research centered on the coal mining cities of Kemerovo and Ulyanovsk.
“Where are the incentives? Good workers and bad workers are paid the same. That wouldn’t work. Then, it hit me. This is not just an inefficient payment system, it is a symptom of a much wider, deeper, more philosophical problem,” he said.
In 1980, Yavlinsky became head of the heavy industry department of the State Committee for Labor and Social Problems, but four years later he was put on forced leave — officially for tuberculosis — after writing a paper called “Problems With Improving the Economic Mechanism in the U.S.S.R.”
Yavlinsky’s report had one guiding thesis: The Soviet economy was based on fear. It was an assertion, Yavlinsky said, that caused him “huge problems.” He declined to elaborate.
Despite the setback, his skills were in demand as Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost era approached.

The Reformer
In 1989, Yavlinsky was made department head of the Soviet government’s State Commission on Economic Reform, and the following year he and two fellow economists proposed market reforms called “The 400 Days Plan.”
It was around this time, Yavlinsky said, that he had a physical altercation with Soviet Finance Minister Valentin Pavlov, who stopped by Yavlinsky’s office to convince him to scrap the plan.
“Pavlov was drunk, and he was trying to blackmail me,” Yavlinsky said. “I don’t want to talk about this, out of respect. But yes, I punched him.”
Yavlinsky said his 400-day program was refashioned by Mikhail Bocharov, then a deputy in the Supreme Soviet, into the “500 Days” program, which gained subsequent support from Gorbachev and Russian President Boris Yeltsin but later was rejected.
Yavlinsky resigned after his plans for economic reforms went nowhere. “I believe in economics, and I believed in the reforms,” he said.
He continued to work as an adviser to government economists, and after the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 he went on to introduce successful reforms in Nizhny Novgorod under Nemtsov.
Yavlinsky’s presidential ambitions surfaced in October 1993, when he formed an electoral bloc in Moscow called Yabloko, or Apple, whose name is based on the last names of its founding members. The first two letters came from Yavlinsky; the “B” from former Yeltsin aide Yury Boldyrev; and the “L” from Vladimir Lukin, now the country’s ombudsman.
The bloc became a political party in 1995, finishing fourth in Duma elections, and Yavlinsky, as its head, ran the following year for president against Yeltsin and Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.

Always a Bridesmaid
The 1996 election is still a sensitive topic for Yavlinsky. After building up a solid voter base on promises of battling corruption and ending the first Chechen war, he feels he was cheated out of third, or possibly even second, place.
He complains he was hurt by his reputation as a “super dove” out to cleanse the corridors of power during a time when the country’s billionaires were being born in controversial privatizations.
“Yeltsin offered me a position to support him in the 1996 election, as long as I withdrew from election race,” Yavlinsky said. “I said to him, ‘I have a list of things you should do: If you stop the corruption, stop the bureaucrats from stealing from the people, then we can talk.’ He said: ‘What can I do? These people are my friends. I’m not going to do that.’ I said: ‘Then there is nothing to talk about.’”
Yavlinsky said his chances of becoming president this time around were even less realistic than a decade ago. What can be done to get an opposition figure into the Kremlin? Telling the public the truth about what is going on day by day and formulating an alternative, Yavlinsky said. “Criticisms without alternatives have no substance. Simply saying that this is a bad government means nothing,” he said. “We must say, ‘I’m ready to make a good government, and I can do that.”
“The problem is that no one would ever believe that they could create something.”

TITLE: Discontent Sours CIS Summit
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Unhappiness over Russia’s continued domination of former Soviet republics soured a summit of their leaders, with Kazakhstan announcing plans to form an economic grouping without Moscow and Tbilisi refusing to sign an amended CIS treaty.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed at the summit Friday the creation of a union of Central Asian countries that would “allow the region of 50 million people to create a self-sufficient market using both economic and political means.”
Nazarbayev, speaking with reporters in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, also made clear his unhappiness at Russia’s domination of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose grouping of 12 former Soviet republics.
“Of course Russia is the biggest economy and we cooperate smoothly,” said Nazarbayev, who had held the rotating presidency in the CIS over the past year. “But although the special role of France and Germany is taken into account in the European Union, they cannot make decisions without smaller member states.”
Nazarbayev’s own desire to take a leadership role in Central Asia, where Kazakhstan is by far the biggest economy, has become evident in recent months.
Other signs of discontent over Russia’s domination overshadowed birthday wishes to summit host, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, and President Vladimir Putin, who both turned 55 over the weekend.
The summit adopted a modification to the CIS treaty to make the grouping more flexible and allow its members to join other alliances if they wished.
“We all talk about the CIS as an organization that is not effective, we all make decisions and sign documents that are not implemented — that’s why Kazakhstan initiated this reform,” Nazarbayev said at the news conference.
However, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, seeking to integrate his nation into the European Union and NATO, skipped the meeting altogether, taking a trip to Paris instead. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, an outspoken critic of Putin, attended the summit but said he had declined to sign the document.
“We did not sign the main conceptual document because we believe that practically not a single positive norm works in the CIS in relation to Georgia,” Saakashvili told Georgian journalists in Dushanbe.
He said Georgia has good relations with most CIS nations but “a whole series of questions for Russia.”
Amid a series of disputes last year, Russia imposed a sweeping transportation and postal blockade on Georgia and a crackdown on Georgian migrants living in Russia. It also banned imports of Georgian wine and mineral water, two of the country’s most important exports.
The declaration adopted Friday bemoaned the lack of implementation of CIS decisions and said it was essential that members be on the same page. It said that to boost effectiveness meant “reaching a common understanding on ... provisions for implementation by the states of their commitments.”
Reuters, AP

TITLE: Beirut Charges Four Russians Over Terror
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanese authorities on Friday charged 20 suspected militants, including four with Russian citizenship, with terrorism for purported membership in the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam group, judicial officials and the state-run news agency said.
Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza filed the charges against 16 Palestinians and four Russians, the officials said on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Three, including one Russian, are in detention while the rest are at large.
The Russians are the first non-Arabs to be charged by authorities since Fatah Islam members fought Lebanese troops for three months starting May 20.
One of the Russian nationals is from Dagestan, and was identified by his nickname, Abu Abdullah. The others are Sergei Fisotsky, born in 1989, Timur Khozkov, born in 1987, and Aslan Yimkozhayev, born in 1987. Only Fisotsky is in custody.

TITLE: U.S. Ends Attempt To Influence Russia
AUTHOR: By Peter Baker
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: WASHINGTON — The secretaries of state and defense and a squadron of other U.S. officials head to Moscow this week for a series of top-level meetings. They will discuss missile defense, a conventional forces treaty and the next step in nuclear arms cuts. 
Not on the official agenda — the future of Russian democracy. 
In watching Russia’s slide toward authoritarianism, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush once considered the ultimate test to be whether President Vladimir Putin voluntarily gave up power in 2008, as promised. But last week Putin shrugged off U.S. warnings and signaled that he plans to keep power by becoming prime minister, once again surprising an administration that has now all but abandoned hopes of influencing Russia’s internal direction. 
Some administration officials had assumed Putin would at least give up any formal leadership role out of a desire to avoid an international backlash. “We didn’t really think through the possibility of him staying on in this kind of high-profile position,” said a senior official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues. 
Yet Putin’s plans have only underscored the administration’s emerging conclusion that it is powerless to prevent the Kremlin’s retreat from democracy and reinforced a gloomy resignation about where Russia is headed. “What are we supposed to do?” asked another frustrated official. “One shouldn’t exaggerate our ability to shape the future of Russian politics.” 
The prospect of Putin’s remaining in charge in Moscow in whatever position after next year’s presidential election would cement one of the greatest U.S. foreign policy setbacks of the Bush era and could trigger a “Who lost Russia?” debate in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. Instead of the democratic ally Bush envisioned after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Russia has become a challenge and an embarrassment for a president who made the spread of democracy a central mission of his administration. 
The discouragement stems from a fundamental miscalculation of Putin’s motives in backing the U.S. operations in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, current and past officials said. “People read too much into the post-9/11 support,” said Angela Stent, the Russia officer at the National Intelligence Council from 2004 to 2006. “That support was there because the Taliban was also their enemy. And we mistook that for something else.” 
So Bush is recalibrating expectations for the relationship and has essentially stopped putting pressure on Putin. In recent months, according to aides, the issue has come up only as a formality, if at all. 
After Putin last week effectively outlined his plan to remain in power, U.S. officials said, no action memos were drafted with options. “This is ultimately a matter for the people of Russia to decide,” as White House press secretary Dana Perino put it.

TITLE: Hermitage to Show $100Mln Skull
AUTHOR: By John Varoli
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Damien Hirst’s $100 million diamond and platinum skull will go on show in May at the State Hermitage Museum in Russia, where a boom in metals and oil has spawned wealthy new collectors.
The skull, studded with 8,601 diamonds and weighing 1,106.18 carats, will be shown as part of the St. Petersburg-based museum’s international contemporary art project, 20/21, which is being launched at the end of October, spokeswoman Elena Getmanskaya said.
A planned world tour for the skull would “probably start in about six months time,” Hirst said in an interview. “We might even start it at the Hermitage.”
Auction houses and some dealers are reaching deeper into Russia for new customers with tours of art and shows. The country is in its ninth year of economic growth, in large part driven by global demand for oil, gas and metals. Rich Russians are purchasing art for reasons that range from investment to home decorating, as well as a love of art.
Larry Gagosian, who has galleries in the U.S. and U.K. and lists more than 80 artists on his Web site, opens a show in a Moscow shopping mall on Oct. 18 that will include works by Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko.
“We’re coming to Moscow to get to know the market,” Gagosian said in an interview in Kiev on Friday. He said a lot of Russian collectors don’t come to New York “so, based on the amount of business we’ve done in Russia over the past two or three years, it seemed a good idea to try to take it a step further.”
Hirst, the most expensive living artist, was also at the Pinchuk Art Center in Kiev, where seven of his works, bought by Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk, are on display.
Hirst is among artists who have benefited from an 11-year boom in art prices, helped by demand from countries such as Russia, that has quadrupled values for the most expensive contemporary works.
He is part of an investment group that bought the skull, “For the Love of God,” in August and plans to resell it later, London art dealer Jay Jopling’s White Cube gallery said at the time. The buying group is required to send the skull on tour, it said. The plan to resell the skull came as hedge fund managers and other art collectors lost money in the credit markets.
Hirst said that the skull’s tour would include shows “in all the best museums around the world. I just want people to see it. We had a great reaction when we showed it in London, and it’s been in newspapers all over the world.”
He would not give more details of the skull’s sale: “It’s been sold. I can’t say to whom, because I’ve signed a lot of confidentiality agreements. They want to remain anonymous.”
The life-size skull cost $20 million to make, including diamonds and fabrication, Hirst’s business manager Frank Dunphy said in June.
Hirst became the auction world’s priciest living artist in June, overtaking Jasper Johns and Lucian Freud at a Sotheby’s auction in London. A telephone bidder paid 9.7 million pounds ($19.3 million) including commission for one of his pill cabinets, “Lullaby Spring.”

TITLE: Tymoshenko’s Braid Not Just a Fashion Statement
AUTHOR: By Clifford J. Levy
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: KIEV — It curls around her head like a golden crown, a rococo flourish that sets her far apart from the jowly men she has challenged. Out of power for two years, Ukrainian firebrand Yulia Tymoshenko has plotted a comeback that culminated in a strong showing in parliamentary elections last week. 
And part of her strategy is her hairstyle, or rather “the Braid.” 
Tymoshenko’s braid has become such a staple of her persona that her web site unabashedly features articles about it, including some claiming that the braid has influenced designers like Narciso Rodriguez and celebrities like Sienna Miller. Yet the braid is not just a fashion statement. A braid is a traditional Ukrainian hairstyle, and by adopting it, Tymoshenko, 46, has been able to underline her nationalist credentials, drawing a contrast with her main opponents, who are more closely linked to Russia. 
Wrapped up in Tymoshenko’s nationalism are religious overtones. She has often tried to capitalize on the revival of the church in Ukraine, and the braid echoes the halos found in representations of Orthodox icons. Imagine the effect at political rallies, where she often calls for moments of prayer. 
The success of her look can be seen in one of her strongholds, central Ukraine. In a tiny village home last week, an elderly woman, Praskovya Teplyuk, posted a photo of Tymoshenko right next to that of a traditional Orthodox icon. Teplyuk seemed to regard both with equal fervor. What did she think of the other candidates? “They are all gangsters,” Teplyuk said. 
Tymoshenko has tried to play up that view with her other signature look, white clothing, which is intended to show her purity in the face of what she has called a corrupt political and business culture. (Her rivals point out that Tymoshenko was once an energy oligarch in Ukraine.) 
Tymoshenko’s advisers acknowledge that using a hairstyle as a campaign symbol could trivialize her. But they say she is such an electrifying leader and speaker that no Ukrainian would consider her a hollow candidate. Still, she is regularly asked that most frivolous of questions: Is the braid real? “Everything that I have is natural — braid, nails — I practically never use cosmetics,” she once said at a news conference. “They often ask me in the provinces about my braid. Now, once and for all, I am going to lay to rest these rumors.” With that, in front of the cameras, she let her hair down, Rapunzel-like, for all the world to see.

TITLE: Kudrin’s Portfolio Expands to Finance
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin received sweeping power over the national economy and finances, including the budget, foreign debt, state-run monopolies and customs rules in the new Cabinet, according to a government decree published Friday.
Kudrin, who will also retain his post as finance minister, increased the remit of his portfolio largely at the expense of Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov after being promoted in the Sept. 24 Cabinet reshuffle.
Kudrin’s elevation is widely viewed as a sign that the country will adhere firmly to liberal economic policies in the run-up to the State Duma elections in December and the presidential vote in March.
The decree gives Kudrin supervisory powers over the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, the Federal Financial Markets Service and the Federal Customs Service. Kudrin earlier said that he would oversee the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.
Zhukov will receive new responsibilities, such as monitoring regional development and the Investment Fund, the turf of Regional Development Minister Dmitry Kozak. The Investment Fund has been allocated $4.4 billion this year in addition to substantial reserves left over from last year.

TITLE: Congress Palace Will Boost Strelna’s Image
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A new congress center to be constructed by 2011 near the presidential residence of Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna is to make this St. Petersburg suburb “Russia’s European facade.”
Vladimir Kozhin, head of the presidential administration, thus described the goal of the ambitious construction project, named StarWay, at the project’s presentation in the Konstantinovsky Palace on Sunday. 
“This project will fulfill the historic destination of Strelna’s palace and park ensemble as Russia’s European facade, and will become an international ground for strategic dialogue between countries this century,” Kozhin said, according to Rosbalt news agency.
Spanish architect Riccardo Bofill, whose Taller de Arquitectura studio won the contest for the construction of the Congress Center, said he was happy to be in charge of the project.
“It’s a great pleasure for me to design the building.  I planned the project for this very place,” Bofill said at the presentation.
Bofill, who has completed hundreds of projects in Spain, Luxembourg,  China and other countries, said his project is “based on concentric compositions around the main building.”  He described the architectural style as neo-classical.
Kozhin said the Congress Palace was planned to be built by St. Petersburg’s 300th anniversary celebrations in 2003.  However, a lack of financial and human resources prevented the building from being completed at that time, he said.
The total area of the new center, which will host various groups of politicians, heads of major corporations, businessmen, mass media and conference delegates, will come to 90,000 square meters. The main hall will be able to house 2,500 delegates and will be used for holding congresses, forums, banquets, ice shows, theater shows and concerts.
The main hall is unusual in that it will be able to be transformed to host different events, so it could be a restaurant or even a skating rink, said Yury Panibratov, head of the Northwestern regional department of the Russian Architecture Academy.
The center will also include a chamber hall for 700 people, an exhibition space of 8,000 square meters, a conference area of more than 10,000 square meters equipped with multi-functional rooms, negotiation and mass media rooms. It will also house a business club for holding boards of directors and business meetings.
The project cost amounts to $494 million.  Investors include the Konstantinovsky Congress Center, founded by the presidential administration, as well as LUKOil, Gazprom Bank and Bank Rossiya, Interfax said.
In addition, an overland metro express train line will be built near the center.  The metro will transport the center’s guests from Strelna to St. Petersburg.  A special escalator will take guests right to the city center, Kozhin said.

TITLE: Severstal Wants Full Control
AUTHOR: By Mark Herlihy
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Severstal, Russia’s biggest steelmaker, plans to run Celtic Resources Holding Plc as a unit even should its 161 million-pound ($328 million) offer to buy the whole company fail.
Severstal, controlled by billionaire Alexei Mordashov, needs 80 percent of the shares for the purchase to become compulsory, the Moscow-based company said  Monday in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service. It already owns 30 percent.
“This significant strategic stake can be used to block any other party from acquiring full control of Celtic,’’ it said. Severstal “intends to run Celtic as a subsidiary.’’
The purchase in August of 22 percent of London-based Celtic, which produces gold and molybdenum, marked Severstal’s entry into the business. Within two weeks, Mordashov said he would create a non-ferrous unit that may be sold or spun off by adding other gold assets to the stake. Severstal has since won exploration rights to two deposits for the precious metal in Russia.
The soaring price of the metal has attracted investment from Roman Abramovich,  Alisher Usmanov and Vladimir Iorich, founder of coal miner Mechel, who all bought gold mining companies in the past year.
Celtic shares fell as much as 0.4 percent to 565 cents in London trading and were at 566 cents at 10:14 a.m. Monday, valuing the company at $316.2 million. 
Severstal’s offer is subject to it getting 50.1 percent of Celtic shares. Celtic management rejected offers on Sept. 18 and Sept. 28. The latter “significantly undervalues’’ the company, it said. Celtic owns two gold mines, a molybdenum mine in Kazakhstan and two copper and gold projects in Russia. 
Three investors have sold their Celtic stakes to Severstal, the Russian company said on Sept 28; Aton Capital, East Guardian Opportunity Fund and DWS Investments.

TITLE: GM Russian Sales on the Rise
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — General Motors Corp., the world’s largest carmaker, said third-quarter European sales rose 15 percent, boosted by purchases of Chevrolets in Russia and eastern Europe.
Sales in Europe increased by 66,730 vehicles to 523,590 in the quarter, the company said in a statement. 
“GM’s European growth this year is fueled by increases in both the Chevrolet and Opel/Vauxhall brands,’’ Jonathan Browning, GM Europe sales and marketing vice president, said in the statement. The carmaker has “aggressive growth plans in Central and eastern Europe.’’
Overall Russian sales almost doubled in the first nine months, tripling the carmaker’s market share in the country to 9.3 percent. Opel sales almost tripled in Russia in the third quarter.
Chevrolet is “a major player and the fastest-growing volume brand in Europe,’’ Browning said. The Opel/Vauxhall Astra was the top-selling car in Europe in September, the company said.
Saab sales fell 9 percent to 64,580 vehicles in the first nine months. GM sold 3,390 Cadillac luxury vehicles in Europe in the three quarters, an increase of 31 percent, as well as 1,034 Corvette sports cars and 1,520 Hummers, the civilian model of a military transport vehicle.

TITLE: Evraz Plans More Rails
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Evraz Group, a steelmaker part-owned by billionaire Roman Abramovich, plans to make more products used by its largest customer, state-owned Russian Rail, as $26.6 billion is set aside to upgrade tracks and rolling stock.
Evraz wants to build a mill making 50-meter (164-feet) rails, twice the length of those produced today, and use Nippon Steel Corp. technology to make higher quality wheels and track, said Pavel Tatyanin, chief financial officer of the Moscow-based company.
“The economy remains such that rail transport makes sense, given the climate and massive distances,” Tatyanin said in an interview Monday. Evraz bought the biggest producer of rails in the U.S., Oregon Steel Mills Inc., in January.
Russian Rail, accounting for about 13 percent of Evraz’s revenue, will spend more than 110 billion rubles ($4.4 billion) this year and 10 trillion through 2030 to expand in Siberia and the Far East and add a high-speed track to St. Petersburg. It operates the world’s longest network across 11 time zones.
Evraz, Russia’s second-biggest steelmaker, will spend at least $690 million next year on modernizing technology at steel and coal operations in Russia, U.S., South Africa, Italy and the Czech Republic, Tatyanin said.
Evraz’s Oregon Steel holds a license to produce certain kinds of rail products using Nippon Steel technology. The license agreement expires this year, allowing Evraz to transfer the technology to other plants. The Russian company is also in talks with Nippon to upgrade the equipment, Tatyanin said.
The Russian steelmaker will set construction deadlines and output volumes after talks with Russian Rail, Tatyanin said.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Shipyard Profits Rise</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) – Severnaya Verf shipyard increased its net profit by 84 percent last year up to $12.89 million, according to International Financial Reporting Standards, Interfax reported Friday.
Revenue accounted for $311.5 million last year as opposed to $457.72 million in 2005. Profit before taxes were reported at $14.5 million – a 48.7 percent increase on 2005 figures.

<b>Maxidom To Expand </b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) – Maxidom retail chain plans to increase revenue by 37 percent this year up to 10 billion rubles ($400 million), Interfax reported Friday.
At the moment Maxidom operates six DIY supermarkets in St. Petersburg. This year the company will open one new supermarket in St. Petersburg and one in Rostov-on-the-Don. By the end of 2009 Maxidom will open six to eight new supermarkets in the regions, investing $20 million to $25 million into each new store.

<b>Gazprom Buys Shares</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom, Russia’s largest company, gained 17.67 percent in TGK-1 as it seeks control of the generator, which supplies electricity and heat to the St. Petersburg city and region.
Gazprom offered 3.5 kopeks a share and TGK-1 accepted the offer, the St. Petersburg-based utility said today in an e-mailed statement. The Moscow-based natural-gas producer owns the shares through a unit of Russian Energy Projects.

<b>VTB To Finance UES</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — VTB Group, Russia’s second-biggest lender to companies, agreed to finance the domestic and foreign expansion of Inter RAO UES, the country’s electricity trader.
VTB will arrange loans and invest in the trader’s plans to build and upgrade power plants, the two sides said in an e-mailed statement today.
The bank plans to invest between $2 billion and $4 billion in Russian electricity by the end of this year, Chief Executive Officer Andrei Kostin told reporters Monday in Moscow, Interfax reported.

<b>Usmanov Bid Blocked?</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Arsenal is close to offering shareholder Stan Kroenke a seat on the board in its bid to thwart a takeover attempt by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
The Arsenal board, led by Chairman Peter Hill-Wood, supported the move, which would probably happen within months, the newspaper reported, citing an unidentified source close to the club.
Usmanov said last week he might launch a full takeover after spending 120 million pounds ($245 million) on a 23 percent stake, the newspaper said.

<b>Mechel Ups Estimates</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mechel, winner of an auction for the world’s biggest untapped coking-coal deposit, boosted official estimates for the field’s reserves by more than tenfold.
The Elga field, which largely contains the variety of coal used by steelmakers, holds between 30 billion and 40 billion tons of the fuel, Moscow-based Mechel said Monday in an e-mailed statement.
The Russian government previously put Elga’s reserves at more than 2.7 billion metric tons.

<b>Joint Holding in Baku</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) – Kirovsky Plant industrial enterprise has created a joint venture with Kavkaz Holding in Baku, Azerbaijan, Interfax reported Friday.
Kirovsky Plant owns 51 percent of shares of the new venture, and Kavkaz Holding owns 49 percent. The new company will assemble excavators and tractors. Planned production is ten machines a month by the end of 2008. The machines will be distributed in the Caucasus, Middle East and Central Asia.

<b>Sea Port To Sell Shares</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port, which handles a fifth of all cargo shipped through Russian ports, plans to sell shares and list them in London.
Morgan Stanley and Troika Dialog are managing the sale, the company said Monday in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service. The port didn’t say how many shares it will sell.
Novorossiysk plans to raise its profile as it seeks to increase capacity at the Black Sea port of the same name. The port is intended to become “the gateway between international markets and the rapidly growing Russian market,” Chairman Alexander Ponomarenko said in the statement.

<b>Azerbaijan In Europe</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Azerbaijan, the third-largest oil producer in the former Soviet Union, wants to use gains from the sale of natural resources to buy stakes in European companies, the daily newspaper Financial Times Deutschland reported.
“We will do what we can to ensure that our money is gainfully invested,” the newspaper quoted Azeri President Ilkham Aliyev as saying, adding the country’s revenue from oil may swell from $2 billion to $200 billion in coming years.
Azerbaijan is becoming an alternative energy hub for Europe. German Economy Minister Michael Glos will accompany a business delegation including the heads of the four main utilities to Azerbaijan between Oct. 16 and Oct. 19, aiming to diversify his country’s energy supplies.

<b>Customs Union Signed</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia will establish a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan by 2011 to boost economic ties in the region, President Vladimir Putin said Saturday.
The three countries Saturday signed an agreement setting out the legal basis for the union, Putin said after a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in remarks broadcast by Russian state television channel Vesti 24. Under the agreement, the three countries will establish an intergovernmental commission to oversee trade issues, Putin said. The three other members of the Eurasian Economic Union, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, expressed interest in joining the customs union, he said.

<b>Oil Output To Increase </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, said output will probably rise 25 percent to 100.6 million tons this year (2.02 million barrels a day) after buying Yukos Oil Co.’s assets at bankruptcy auctions.
Production will climb 13 percent excluding acquisitions, state-run Rosneft said in an e-mailed statement Monday. Refining will increase 43 percent to 39.9 million tons, the Moscow-based company said.

TITLE: Investors Should Brave Russian Climate
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Gershkovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Jump in, the water’s fine! This is the message that Frank Schauff, the newly appointed head of The Association of European Businesses in the Russian Federation, wants to send potential investors. 
The AEB, established in 1995, seeks to provide a support network for members of the European Union and the European Free Trade Association with business interests in Russia. As the association’s CEO, Schauff, 39, hopes to improve business conditions for foreign investors by helping them cope with some of the bureaucratic challenges of conducting business in Russia.
Schauff’s interest in Russian culture began to develop when he was still a student at the University of Cologne. While at the university in 1991, Schauff took the opportunity to travel to Russia and study at Volgograd State University. He witnessed firsthand the changing ethos that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“I think that speaking with Russian students at the University of Volgograd allowed me to delve deep into the mentality of this country,” Schauff said. He added that his study abroad and extensive travel through Russia and Central Asia were among his most formative experiences.
Since his days as a student in Volgograd, Schauff has earned a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a doctorate in East European history from the University of Cologne. He has worked as a lecturer at the Free University in Berlin and advised the Social Democratic Party of Germany on foreign policy. Aside from his native German, Schauff speaks Russian and English fluently, and is conversational in French, Italian, Bulgarian, Croatian and Serbian.
“I think that Frank Schauff’s excellent analytical skills and his communicative personality make him the appropriate person to lead the AEB,” said Hans-Joachim Spanger, deputy director of the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt. Spanger and Schauff worked together to advise the German government on its foreign policy toward Russia.
Lobbying is a large component of the AEB’s work, and Schauff’s experience as a political adviser has allowed him to gain insight into the Russian government.
“I think that a knowledge of Russia’s political landscape prepared me for this position,” Schauff said. “As an adviser to the Social Democratic Party of Germany, I became familiar with the political processes in Russia, and now I can be more active in addressing the concerns of foreign businesses here.”
Schauff hopes his leadership of the AEB will help increase the communication between the Russian and the European business communities.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” he said. “The accumulated foreign investments from the EU represented 75.7 percent of the total foreign investment in September 2006 with a total of $98.4 billion invested by the major EU investors in the Russian economy. The first five countries to invest in the Russian economy are EU counties:Cyprus, Netherlands, Luxemburg, U.K., and Germany. The United States and Japan rank in at 6th and 10th.” 
More than 550 companies are part of the AEB, and with much of the foreign investment coming from Europe, Schauff considers the AEB a vital resource for European businesses.
Assessing the conditions for foreign business in Russia, he said much had improved over the last eight years. “Things have gotten much easier for businesses in Russia. There is greater security and political stability. Investors are very happy here.” 
Schauff joked that the best piece of advice he can offer potential investors is: “Don’t read the papers!”
“I think that Western media coverage of Russia sometimes offers an incomplete picture of the situation here,” he said. “Looking from outside Russia and from within offers two different perspectives. Those who are here are happy to be here. Our figures for investment speak of no big problems with doing business in Russia and, in general, things are moving in the right direction.”

TITLE: Nabiullina To Tackle Inflation
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will “take measures” to curb rising food costs after the inflation rate accelerated more than forecast, RIA Novosti reported, citing Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina.
The ministry submitted proposals to increase export taxes on wheat and barley and is “looking into” tariffs on dairy products, the state-run news service cited Nabiullina as saying at a cabinet meeting in Moscow on Monday. Officials also plan measures to “fight local monopolies.”
The government won’t meet its 8 percent inflation target for the year after consumer prices rose 0.8 percent from September to August, Nabiullina said, RIA reported.
The CPI rise follows massive liquidity injections into the banking sector by the Central Bank.
“This is a horrible figure. I do not remember a time when expectations and reality were so different. It means it will even be difficult to have the same inflation as last year’s 9 percent,” said Natalya Orlova, economist at Alfa Bank.
The September rise brings price growth in the first nine months of the year to 7.5 percent, for the first time in 2007, exceeding last year’s corresponding figure. 
(Reuters, SPT)

TITLE: Faberge Sale Could Set Record
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — A previously unrecorded egg by jeweler Peter Carl Faberge containing a clock and animated cockerel goes on sale next month with a record price tag of up to $18.26 million.
The translucent pink egg has never been seen in public before and was not publicly documented when it was made in 1902 for the Rothschild family.
Faberge eggs have become a byword for opulence and luxury ever since the young jeweler was commissioned in 1885 by Tsar Alexander III to make one as a gift for his wife, Maria.
The intricate pieces rarely come on the open market.
“There have been two or three in the last 10 to 15 years at auction. But to find one that has never been seen in public is absolutely extraordinary,” said Anthony Philips, a director of auction house Christie’s.
“There are only two other known Faberge eggs that have a clock in them and also an automaton. When the clock strikes, the cock comes up, shakes its wings and sings,” he added.
The record for a Russian work of art of $13.5 million was set by the Faberge Winter Egg at Christie’s New York in April 2002. That egg was of Russian Imperial Family standard and therefore commanded a premium. Most eggs were made for the tsar and his family, but a few were commissioned by wealthy collectors.
Christie’s is confident the Rothschild Faberge Egg is of the same standard as the Imperial eggs and, because it bears the Rothschild provenance, may well attract similar levels of interest when it goes on sale in London on Nov. 28.
“The market is incredibly strong. There has been an explosion of Russian interest,” said Philips, adding that he expected bidding interest from across the world.

TITLE: Mechel Shares Soar After Winning Coal Auction
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Mechel, a metals and coal producer owned by Russian billionaire Igor Zyuzin, rose to a record after winning an auction for the world’s largest untapped deposit of coking coal with a bid of 58.2 billion rubles ($2.3 billion).
Mechel gained $2.40, or 4.4 percent, to $57.33 as of 1:16 p.m Friday in New York trading. The shares have more than doubled this year.
Mechel outbid Russian diamond monopoly Alrosa to win the rights to the Elga field in Siberia at a sale Friday organized by the Russian government in Moscow. Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steelmaker, was banned from bidding at the last minute without explanation.
The starting price for the deposit, which holds estimated reserves of more than 2.7 billion metric tons of hard coking coal used in steel production, was 47.4 billion rubles. It was sold along with the Yakut field, in which Mechel already has a 25 percent stake, as well as a partially completed rail track and road to the Elga field owned by OAO Russian Railways.
Mechel will need to spend about $3 billion on infrastructure at the field in the Sakha Republic in the next seven to 10 years.
The company will finance the project from its own funds and through borrowing, Chief Operating Officer Alexei Ivanushkin told reporters in Moscow after the auction. Mechel will raise $2 billion for the Elga purchase through a loan arranged by ABN Amro Holding NV and BNP Paribas SA, Interfax reported Friday, citing unidentified banking sources.
The field “is a strategic asset that will allow us to become a leader in the coal business,’’ Ivanushkin said, adding that as much as 60 percent of the coal produced there will be sold in the domestic market, where prices have soared by more than a third in recent months.
“There are more opportunities selling to Russian and Ukrainian markets,’’ he said.  “Why should we be supplying our competitors?’’

TITLE: Gref Is Sberbank Candidate
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government may appoint former Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref as the new president of state-controlled Sberbank, the country’s largest bank, government sources said Friday.
The sources confirmed reports in Vedomosti and Kommersant that the current president of Sberbank, Andrei Kazmin, was expected to leave after 11 years at the helm and that Gref was the main contender to replace him.
Gref resigned last month following the cabinet reshuffle, in which Viktor Zubkov replaced Mikhail Fradkov as prime minister.
Vedomosti said Gref was the only candidate to replace Kazmin, but Kommersant quoted sources as saying the government was also considering two other candidates.
They were Igor Zavyalov, a former deputy head of VTB bank, and Vladimir Dmitriyev, the current head of the Development Bank.

TITLE: Pinchuk Plans Interpipe IPO
AUTHOR: By Ellen Pinchuk and Daryna Krasnolutska
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk said he planned to raise at least $1 billion by selling shares of pipe maker Interpipe in Ukraine’s biggest initial public offering.
“We need investments and we want to enter Western markets,” Pinchuk said in an interview Thursday. “Next spring, we will have an IPO in London.” He will sell no more than a 25 percent stake in “the first stage.”
Pinchuk, the son-in-law of former President Leonid Kuchma, aims to invest in more non-Ukrainian companies as a former adversary, Yulia Tymoshenko, emerges as favorite to become prime minister for a second time. During her first term as prime minister, she canceled his purchase of the country’s biggest steelmaker and threatened to annul more state asset sales of the Kuchma era.
Pinchuk bought Kryvorizhstal for $800 million under Kuchma’s rule. President Viktor Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, who came to power in the 2004 Orange Revolution, took the plant back under state control and resold it to ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, in October 2005 for $4.8 billion.
“The acquisition of Kryvorizhstal was totally legal,” said Pinchuk, adding that the government’s resale was politically motivated. He said he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and was waiting for a ruling. 
Tymoshenko, front-runner for the post of prime minister after last month’s elections, is threatening to regain control of other Pinchuk companies, including Nikopolskiy Ferrosplavnyi Zavod, the country’s biggest producer of ferromanganese, which was also sold at a discount by Kuchma. Pinchuk said that auction was also legal.
Pinchuk aims to diversify and reduce the number of Ukrainian companies in his portfolio. “We have different kinds of risks,” mainly political, Pinchuk said. “We do not have a predictable government and nobody knows what will happen.” He opened an investment company, EastOne, in London on Sept. 27.
Interpipe, whose customers include Gazprom and Rosneft, had sales of more than $1.6 billion last year, producing 4.3 percent of the world’s seamless pipes and 13 percent of its railway wheels.

TITLE: IMF Warns of Inflationary Pressure
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund on Friday said it expected robust economic growth in Russia over the near term, bolstered by high oil prices, but cautioned that inflationary pressures were building.
“With surging growth, the economy is running increasingly close to capacity,” the IMF wrote in a notice. “Domestic resource constraints are tightening, not least in the labor market, causing increased leakage of demand into imports and renewed inflationary pressures.”
The IMF said its staff projected gross domestic product growth of around 7 percent in the near term.  The IMF said the country’s monetary policy had become “more accommodative” over the past year after the Central Bank returned to a stable exchange rate policy.
“Demand pressures appear to be intensifying, driven by acceleration in investment and strong growth in private consumption,” the IMF wrote.

TITLE: Local B-Class Business Centers Snapped Up
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In the first half of this year, 14 new business centers opened in St. Petersburg, adding over 100,000 square meters to the gross office area offered for rent, according to estimations by analysts at Becar Commercial Property SPb. The company forecasted that over 40 new business centers could open in the city by the end of 2007.
“The most dynamic segment is B-class office space. Most of the business centers that opened in the first half of 2007 were advertised as B-class areas, and as a result, the proportion of B-class office area has increased at the expense of C-class and A-class business centers,” said Oleg Spivak, director for consulting at Becar Commercial Property SPb.
Becar estimated total office space at about 1.2 million square meters, which is equal to 261.8 square meters per city resident.
Despite the growing number of business centers, tenants are still faced with a lack of high-class office area. According to Becar, in the first half of 2007, the occupancy of newly-built centers varied between 50 percent and 100 percent.
“Many high-class office areas are rented even while the centers are still being constructed, which proves that there is high demand for office space.  Only two new business center owners are still negotiating with tenants,” Spivak said, all the others having been occupied promptly after completion.
Most of the newly-built business centers (about 50 percent) are located in the Vasileostrovsky and Central districts. However, real estate experts noted a new trend of office centers moving outside the historical center of the city.
“Considering new projects that have been announced recently, we can say that business space in St. Petersburg will become decentralized. It’s a natural step if you take into account the deficit of land, limitations on reconstruction in the city center and transportation problem,” Spivak said.
The most popular areas for the construction of new business centers could be Petrogradskaya, Aptekarskaya, Vyborgskaya, Sverdlovskaya and Ushakovskaya embankments and areas along the Obvodny canal, Moskovsky Prospekt and area near to Pulkovo airport.
“Demand for A-class, B-class and B+ business centers keeps growing. The market is far from saturation. Besides the Central district, office space in the Petrogradsky district is very popular. Large foreign companies for whom image is important consider location first and foremost,” said Artur Kim, deputy director of MK PSB.
“The Vyborgsky and Nevsky districts, Obvodny Canal, Sea Port and areas in proximity to the airport are rapidly developing,” Kim added.
Kim indicated that business centers are becoming larger and sometimes combine office space with other areas. Among examples of multifunctional centers, he listed Nevskaya Ratusha, Okhta-Center and Frunzensky Department Store.
By the end of 2007, Becar expects about 400,000 square meters of office space to be added to the existing volume.
The largest centers scheduled for opening this year are Lider at the Square of Constitution (28,000 square meters), Avenue at Aptekarskaya Embankment (16,500 square meters), Paradny Kvartal (15,000 square meters), Shatelena Renaissance House-2 (13,360 square meters), Golitsyn on the 13th line of Vasilievsky Island (10,500 square meters) and Obukhov-Center (32,000 square meters).
“The city still lacks B and B+ office areas. A number of business centers of that type are being constructed in the city and are due to open in 2008. Competition in this market segment will increase. Among the most important factors are parking space, infrastructure, proximity to a metro station and centralized air-conditioning system,” Kim said.
According to his observations, business centers of all types are completely occupied. “Waiting lists of tenants are quite common. This deficit of office space is likely to continue until large projects are completed that will offer office space in excess of the available area,” Kim said.
He estimated that rent rates for B-class office space vary between 980 rubles and 1,260 rubles per square meter a month. “The rent rate depends on whether the business center actually provides all the services expected from its class and can be easily accessed by car. In general profitability of business centers does not decrease,” Kim said.
According to Becar, in the first half of 2007 rent rates varied between 425-663 rubles per square meter a month in C-class business centers, 557-1,050 rubles in B-class business centers and 738-1,815 rubles in B+ business centers. Rent rates for some B-class centers were higher than for A-class business centers.
The experts forecasted that the increase in rent rates by the end of 2007 will remain lower than the inflation rate. The difference in rent rates for newly-built A-class and B-class business centers will be insignificant.
Expenses involved in acquiring new office space this year varied between 56,700 rubles and 105,000 rubles per square meter, depending on the stage of construction, interior design and total area acquired.
Several business centers were sold as operating businesses. The Swedish investment company Ruric sold two centers to Northern European Properties Ltd., a British company, for $25 million. The total area of the two business centers on Ulitsa Dostoevskogo is 7,200 square meters.
Meanwhile, the Finnish investment company Sponda Plc. acquired Inform-Future on Tambovskaya Ulitsa, paying four million euros for the 3,700 square meter business center.
The Stroganovsky business center on Nevsky prospect was put up for sale at 11.1 million euros.
“These examples prove that interest from foreign and Russian investors in office space in St. Petersburg is not diminishing. Experts forecast that the number of high-class business centers up for sale will grow, because developers are interested in the quick turnover of funds,” Spivak said.

TITLE: Austrian Construction Firm To Expand in Russian Market
AUTHOR: By Matthias Wabl
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Strabag SE, Austria’s biggest builder, plans to raise as much as 1.35 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in an initial share sale to fund expansion in the booming Russian and Balkan construction markets.
Strabag is offering 28.2 million shares for 42 euros to 48 euros apiece, the Spittal an der Drau, Austria-based company said Monday in an IPO prospectus. The shares are set to start trading on the Vienna Stock Exchange on Oct. 19.
Strabag sold a 30 percent stake to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in April, bolstering the company’s connection with a market that is growing four times faster than Western Europe. Chief Executive Officer Hans-Peter Haselsteiner is seeking funds to invest in projects such as construction of buildings and roads in the Black Sea resort of Sochi which will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. 
“The company plans to further expand its activities in the Russian market, taking advantage of the fact that it is one of the first Western construction companies to have expanded into this region,’’ Strabag said in the prospectus. The company will focus on Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg and Sochi. 
A quarter of the shares will be freely traded after the IPO and that total may rise to 49 percent with the current owners reducing their stakes to 17 percent each, Haselsteiner has said. The other owners of Strabag are the CEO’s family and a group of Austrian investors led by Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich AG.
Strabag’s net income gained almost fourfold to 191 million euros last year as increased work in Germany, its biggest market, and eastern Europe helped boost sales by 36 percent to 9.43 billion euros. Russia should become the company’s biggest single market in “a couple of years,’’ Haselsteiner has said. 
The company plans to build roads, bridges, hotels and public buildings such as schools or hospitals. About 45 percent of the company’s sales are from road construction while building construction accounts for about 47 percent with tunnels accounting for the rest.
Deripaska, owner of world’s largest aluminum company, Russian Aluminum, has a fortune estimated at $16.8 billion, the Russian edition of Forbes magazine said on April 19, including building and cement assets and the airport at Sochi. He plans to spend $2 billion at the resort, Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported in March.
Strabag competes with companies such as Spain’s Fomento de Construcciones & Contratas SA, which last year bought Austria’s Alpine Bau GmbH to gain access to markets on the Balkans.
Sweden’s Skanska AB is also expanding in the region to benefit from so-called public private partnerships where construction companies own parts of a highway or a school and generate revenue from toll or rental income.
Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Raiffeisen Centrobank are managing the share sale, with lawyers from Cerha Hempel Spiegelfeld Hlawati.

TITLE: Democracy’s Facade
AUTHOR: By Christopher Walker and Robert Orttung
TEXT: One could have hoped that Anna Politkovskaya’s brutal murder and the international condemnation that followed would have set Russia’s besieged press environment on a different course. With hindsight, however, her death represented a harbinger of more repression to come. Since she was killed Oct. 7, the crackdown on Russian news media has proceeded unabated and, if anything, with even greater ferocity.
The assault on the media has gained momentum in the lead up to the December parliamentary and March presidential elections, which will define the country’s leadership succession. These elections are tightly controlled enterprises, and the Kremlin is not leaving anything to chance. Democracy in Russia is more a facade than a reality, and a premium is placed on “managed transfer” of power. In this system of governance, media is a pivotal instrument of control and this explains, at least in part, why the Kremlin continues to tighten its grip.
In the time since Politkovskaya was killed, the authorities have applied a full range of methods — regulatory, economic, judicial, as well as harassment and intimidation — to strengthen their media dominance.
On the legislative front, the Kremlin has pushed through amendments to broaden the law on extremism. This month, provisions will take force expanding the definition of extremism to include public discussion of such activity, and they will give law enforcement officials broad authority to suspend media outlets that do not comply with the new restrictions. These amendments come on the heels of a law President Vladimir Putin signed in July 2006 that expanded the definition of extremist activity to grant the authorities virtually unchecked power against critics.
The authorities shut down the Educated Media Foundation, the Russian affiliate of Internews, a respected, global media nongovernmental organization that provides training and support to journalists and news organizations. The Educated Media Foundation suspended its work following a raid in April on its Moscow headquarters. Police seized financial documents and computer servers as part of a supposed criminal investigation of the organization’s president, Manana Aslamazian, in connection with her failure to declare cash she brought into the country.
Physical intimidation and murder continue to be constants feature of Russia’s media landscape. In March, just five months after Politkovskaya’s murder, Ivan Safronov, a defense correspondent for Kommersant, plunged to his death from his apartment building in Moscow and became the latest journalist to die under unclear circumstances. He reported last year on the failed test launches of Russia’s latest submarine-based nuclear missile, which reportedly infuriated defense officials. Safronov was apparently also investigating sales of missiles and advanced fighter jets to Iran and Syria via Belarus, and authorities had threatened him with criminal investigation in connection with his plans to write on this sensitive subject.
As part of the broader pattern, the state is paying more attention to international media, especially international broadcasting. The authorities have focused on the broadcasts of the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, whose radio programming provides an alternative news voice to listeners across the country. The Kremlin has undertaken an intimidation campaign against RFE/RL’s partners — Russian radio stations that rebroadcast Radio Liberty programs — subjecting them to debilitating harassment. In August, Bolshoye Radio, a Moscow radio station, announced that it would no longer carry the BBC’s Russian-language broadcasts. Although technical violations were cited as the official reason for the station’s decision to pull the BBC off the air, many condemned the act as censorship.
The campaign of repression comes on top of a systematic effort since Putin came to power to cleanse the country’s media landscape of independent voices of political consequence. All of the major national television channels, from which most people get their news, have come under state control during the Putin era. State-managed media now function as a propaganda machine, slavishly touting the Kremlin’s achievements, bringing to mind Brezhnev-era news standards.
The official inquiry into Politkovskaya’s murder could have represented an important step forward, but it has seemingly fallen apart. Almost a year into the investigation, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika removed the inquiry’s key investigator, an official who had won the respect of Politkovskaya’s colleagues.
In a system of rule by law rather than rule of law, it is not surprising that the Politkovskaya case has become a window into the larger problems confronting the country, the very issues on which she so courageously reported: political violence, corruption and lawlessness.
Meanwhile, the grim state of affairs for freedom of the press freedom in Russia cannot be viewed in a vacuum. The ability of journalists and editors to freely and independently ply their trade tends to be a barometer for other fundamental freedoms. The crackdown on the press has wider implications for the country’s capacity to normalize its politics, address rampant graft and develop effective, institutions based on the rule of law.
As Russia girds itself for a critical change of leadership, the news media’s downward trajectory bodes poorly for its democratic prospects.

Christopher Walker is director of studies at Freedom House. Robert Orttung is a senior fellow at the Jefferson Institute.

TITLE: Confusing Control for Stability
AUTHOR: By Richard Lourie
TEXT: Russia has been flexing its muscles lately, and the adjective “resurgent” is now nearly always attached to its name. President Vladimir Putin has also been pulling off one political surprise after another. But just how strong and stable does Russia appear on closer inspection?
Many Russians would like to see Putin stay on in power in one capacity or another. They would have no great objection to Putin simply flouting the Constitution or using a two-thirds majority in the State Duma to amend it. If Putin is to become prime minister, structural changes will also have to be made in the government since all the important “power ministries” report to the president. But this desire for continuity at any price conceals a deep fear of instability.
There have simply been too many changes in too short a time for anyone to feel solid ground under their feet. One day there’s a Soviet Union, the next it’s gone. One day Boris Yeltsin is on a tank in front of the parliament building defending freedom, the next day he’s having his tanks shell the parliament. One day the ruble is strong, the next it’s worthless, and then it’s strong again. One day Mikhail Khodorkovsky is the richest man in the country, the next day he’s a pauper in prison.
The Kremlin confuses control for stability. The media, the opposition parties and the judiciary are all viewed as potential sources of instability instead of means for reconciling conflicting interests. The post-Soviet leadership still subscribes to the position of Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who said, “The disadvantage of free elections is that you can never be sure who is going to win them.”
The current dispensation, however, seems to suit the people. The experiment with democracy in the ‘90s only justified suspicions that the result would be license and larceny, not freedom and fairness. The current dispensation involves control of the media (with a little breathing space left so that the intelligentsia doesn’t suffocate), intimidation via selective punishment (Khodorkovsky) and unsolved murders (Anna Politkovskaya), combined with real social freedoms — of religion, travel and business. But its stability is based on one man and a set of factors, all of which can change.
The price of oil has almost quadrupled since Putin came to power. The government has been smart enough to put $130 billion aside in a stabilization fund in the event of a steep and sudden drop in the price of oil. That’s unlikely, but a world recession, an environmental calamity or some technological breakthrough could catch everyone by surprise. The real problem is that the nation’s economy — like its political system — is not being allowed to diversify adequately. State monopolies lose all the advantages that competition confers. Even in a world of high gas and oil prices, Moscow may start having problems delivering the goods because it has impeded foreign investment and has not been motivated to develop new fields.
Polling in Russia is fairly reliable, but it is difficult to gauge public sentiment in a society where there is little advantage to public dissent. There are indications that the great and glaring disparity of wealth is beginning to produce a backlash of resentment and class antagonism. Others are voting against Russian life with their untimely deaths, destabilizing the relationship between the birth and death rate. The nation’s population decreases by about 750,0000 people every year.
Most of the leading Chechen rebels have been either killed off or bought off, but the Chechens have been resisting Moscow for two centuries and there is no reason to assume the struggle has ended. The lesson future Chechen rebels may have learned from the latest failed uprising is to let go of the mountain-warrior myth and use some of the terrorist tactics developed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oil may fall and the people may rise — nobody knows. That’s what makes Russia a land of danger and surprise.

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

TITLE: Boney M to Rock the South Ossetian House
AUTHOR: By Matthew Collin
TEXT: Ra-Ra-Rasputin! Russia’s greatest love machine!” These are not exactly the kind of lyrics you might expect the Georgian government to consider appropriate as part of its struggle to win back control of the tiny pro-Russian separatist region of South Ossetia. Nevertheless, informed sources insist that those flamboyant disco-era swingers, Boney M, are on their way to the Georgian-controlled sector of the conflict zone this month.
Boney M will perform in a rural village in volatile South Ossetia. Not a sentence I thought I would ever write, even amid the everyday surrealism of life in the Caucasus. But maybe someone here thought that a sweet blast of “Sunny,” not to mention the deathless “Daddy Cool,” would help convince the separatists that Georgia has the best tunes.
This is not the first time, however, that the Georgian authorities have invoked the alchemical power of disco to win hearts and minds. Earlier this year, President Mikheil Saakashvili announced that a disco would be constructed in the South Ossetian village of Tamarasheni so Georgian and Ossetian youths could lay down their weapons and rave together in peace and loving harmony — one nation under a groove. Of course, he didn’t use these words exactly, but now the place is built and the veteran crooners of Boney M are coming. Misha has delivered — and in style.
The Georgian protest campaign aimed at ousting the South Ossetian separatist leader, Eduard Kokoity, has also been using pop music to rally the faithful. Its anthem “Kokoity, Farewell!” is a funky mix of Georgian and Ossetian rappers and traditional singers. When they launched the campaign, they pumped up the volume high enough to unnerve the separatist strongman just across the de facto border. Or so they say.
The pop propagandists haven’t ignored Georgia’s other breakaway region, Abkhazia, either. A rock video clip that gets serious play here shows smiley-faced Georgians waving national flags as they head off to Abkhazia in trains, boats, old Ladas and even planes. It’s something of a wishful fantasy, considering the antipathy still felt toward Georgians in parts of Abkhazia that remains scarred by the civil war of the ‘90s. But it’s in perfect harmony with the government’s efforts to make people believe that regaining control over the rebel regions is possible, despite the bloodshed and enmity of the past.
And so back to the main event — the arrival of Boney M. The cultural triumph would be complete if Misha were there to see them rock the South Ossetian house, perhaps wearing a Travolta-style white suit out on the dance floor with strobe lights flashing and a bass line pumping. Daddy Cool, incarnate.

Matthew Collin is a journalist in Tbilisi.

TITLE: Karl Rove as Putin’s Aide
AUTHOR: By Mark H. Teeter
TEXT: Given the tension, mutual suspicion and general bad odor between Russia and the United States over recent years, it’s good to see the stars above realigning to make effective cooperation possible again. No, forget the high-level U.S. delegation flying into Moscow this week for “consultations.” Think electioneering. In early September, right-wing political guru Karl Rove found himself out of a job. In early October, President Vladimir Putin found himself organizing a political campaign. Bingo!
This is better than “Jupiter aligns with Mars”; this is “compassionate conservatism” joins “waste ‘em in the outhouse,” making a tag-team that could crush campaign opposition from Yabloko, The Other Russia or WrestleMania.
Some might ask whether this outhouse really requires major remont by Karl “The Architect” Rove. Indeed, with a popularity rating somewhere north of 80 percent, Putin needs to campaign for prime minister about as hard as Prince Charles needs to campaign for king. Barring a tragic fly-fishing mishap, it’s a done deal.
Yet how done is done? Putin apparently craves a Soviet-sized mandate, and bridging the gap between an anemic 80 percent plurality and a Brezhnev-style landslide — well over 99 percent of the vote in the 1979 election, with absentee ballots mailed from Khimki still coming in — is not as easy as United Russia’s drumbeaters might suppose.
There may be foreign observers. It has to look real. No, really real. And the Gryzlovs, Pavlovskys and Leontyevs, now pulling the party barge upriver, know as much about the annoyingly real reality that picky foreigners like as they do about sewing emergency sutures after unpublicized fly-fishing injuries. So who you gonna call?
Putin: Thank you for coming to Moscow on such short notice, Mr. Rove.
Rove: My pleasure, Mr. President. And please call me Karl. Now [rubbing hands], what seems to be your little election problem?
VP: Karl, I want to win this State Duma race big — I mean b-i-i-i-g [extending arms like lying fisherman], something well into the 90 percent range — but I can’t just stuff the ballot boxes. People might notice.
KR [chuckling]: You’d be surprised what people don’t notice. In West Palm Beach and Cuyahoga County, we had “voting irregularities” that ...
VP: I’m talking international observers, Karl, not the Florida secretary of state or something.
KR: No problem, Mr. President — I’ve done some foreign bag jobs, too. You see what just happened in France? A swarth-enhanced half-pint America-lover goes up against a cuter version of every Frenchman’s mom who just loves the 35-hour workweek — and he wins?! I wasn’t exactly observing when the merde hit the ventilateur for Segolene.
VP: You did that? [low whistle] Wow. OK, let me fill you in on the situation here. We have two oppositions, real and pretend. The real people are hopelessly impractical and divided, but we harass them anyway because, get this, “They want to destabilize Russia” — that’s the slogan for our rent-a-kid activists. Anyway, the pretend opposition is led by a party called ... damn, I had it right here.
KR: It’s something like “Relax, It’s Just Russia,” right?
VP [furrowing brow]: That sounds familiar. Anyway, we can keep the real opposition off TV and out of most print media east of The New Yorker, but the other “oppositionists” are kind of a delicate problem: See, they’re supposed to exist, be nicely visible and not do anything off-script, like win too many votes — which they accidentally might. We can’t sic the Nashisty on them or arrange a painful fishing accident for them either. Polls show us way ahead now, but I want someone to make sure they can’t jump up and bite us from behind. Can you handle that kind of high-pressure job?
KR: High pressure? Sir, I worked for a man who could launch the world’s largest missile force but couldn’t pronounce the word “nuclear” [rolls eyes]. I even wrote it out phonetically for his teleprompter, NEW-CLEAR, and he still ... Incidentally, would you mind saying the Russian word for “nuclear”?
VP: “Yaderny” — why?
KR: Well, if you’d said “yadreny”... Never mind. Mr. President, I will be honored to take over this campaign. Rest assured that on Dec. 2, United Russia will win a dramatic landslide victory without any actual drama or that tiresome ballot counting that can mar a good landslide.
VP: Great, we’re counting on you, Karl! [rises slowly, rubbing posterior] Now if you’ll hand me that fly rod off the wall-mount there, I have a score to settle with Moby Pike.

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

TITLE: Four Killed Escorting Pakistani President
AUTHOR: By Roshan Mughal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MUJHOI, Pakistan — One of three helicopters escorting President General Pervez Musharraf crashed in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir on Monday, killing four passengers and injuring five, officials said. The president was unhurt.
Major General Waheed Arshad, an army spokesman, blamed a “technical fault” for the crash of the military helicopter and said Musharraf had already reached his destination when the accident occurred.
The crash revived concern about the safety of the U.S.-allied general who has survived several assassination attempts. It happened two days after he secured a provisional victory in a controversial presidential election.
Musharraf traveled to Kashmir on Monday to commemorate the second anniversary of the Oct. 8, 2005, earthquake that killed nearly 80,000 people. The helicopter crashed in Mujhoi, about 12 miles south of Muzaffarabad, the main town in Pakistan’s portion of the disputed Himalayan territory.
State television later aired video of Musharraf touring the quake zone.
The president’s spokesman, Rashid Qureshi, was among the injured, suffering a burned right hand, officials said. He was in stable condition.
Arshad said the dead included an army brigadier, two soldiers and a cameraman for Pakistan Television. Two pilots and a technician escaped unhurt, he said.
In Mujhoi, hundreds of residents and scores of soldiers swarmed around the still-smoldering wreckage, 100 yards from the Jhelum River. Part of the helicopter’s tail jutted above the crowd. At least four ambulances, sirens wailing, left the scene carrying injured people.
Witnesses said the helicopter’s engine was on fire before it hit the ground but there was no indication it had come under attack. Minutes before, two other helicopters flew past the village, they said.
Naseer Ahmed, a resident, said the noise of the engine suddenly grew louder and the pilots found level terrain on the outskirts of the village for an emergency landing. He said several passengers jumped from the chopper before it hit the ground and exploded.
He said he helped drag bodies out of the burning chopper.
The helicopter was one of three taking Musharraf and others to Muzaffarabad for quake commemorations, said a senior army official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to media.
Arshad said only that an army helicopter made a crash landing in the Jhelum Valley due to a technical fault while en route to Muzaffarabad. He declined to say how close Musharraf had been to the crash.
“The president was in some other chopper and he safely reached where he had to go,” he said.
Security was tight in Muzaffarabad on Monday, restricting residents’ movement around the city in anticipation of the visit. Military officials later said that Musharraf was in the city, about 60 miles northeast of the capital, Islamabad.
Helicopter accidents are not uncommon in the rugged Kashmir region, but the crash came at a sensitive time.
Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, swept a presidential election by lawmakers on Saturday that was boycotted by most of the opposition because he contested the vote while still army chief. Musharraf has to wait for a Supreme Court ruling on his eligibility to find out whether he will win a new five-year term.
Musharraf has promised to quit the military and restore civilian rule before beginning the new term in which he has vowed to step up the fight against Islamic extremism.
His nominated successor, General Ashfaq Kayani, was promoted Monday to the post of vice chief of the army and is to take the top job as soon as Musharraf vacates it.
Under the constitution, the chairman of the upper house of parliament takes over if a sitting president dies.

TITLE: Argentina Advances to Semifinals At Last
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — Argentina hung on in the face of determined Scotland pressure to win their quarterfinal 19-13 on Sunday and reach the last four in the World Cup for the first time.
In by far the least attractive match of the quarterfinals weekend, the tiring Pumas defended their tryline tooth and nail against a last-ditch Scottish onslaught to earn a semi-final against South Africa.
“We were very tired and Scotland played really well. We stuck with it, we wanted to be in our first semi-final and we are,” Pumas captain Agustin Pichot told ITV television.
Argentine players and fans, some beating drums, became locked in a frenzy of soccer-style celebration as the Pumas, unlikely semi-final candidates when the tournament started a month ago, notched a historic fifth World Cup victory in a row.
The teams scored one try apiece, number eight Gonzalo Longo for Argentina in the first half and replacement scrumhalf Chris Cusiter for the Scots with 16 minutes remaining.
The difference between the sides in the end were six of the points from the boot of centre Felipe Contepomi, whose three penalties and a conversion took his tournament tally to 64 points.
The Argentines, notching their sixth successive victory over Scotland, had a nervous final quarter of an hour as Scotland, their dream of a second semi-final since 1991 ebbing away, threw everything they had into a potential match-winning try.
In the poorest of the four quarter-finals following Saturday’s exciting upset victories by hosts France and defending champions England to reach the other semi-final, the packs dominated from the off in a battle of attrition.
Scotland went ahead with a Dan Parks penalty from just inside the halfway line after Contepomi had missed his first effort. Contepomi, however, put the Pumas level and then 6-3 up with successive penalties either side of the half hour.

TITLE: Kremlin Cup Gets Underway
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli beat Ukraine’s Alona Bondarenko 6-2 7-5 in the first round of the Kremlin Cup on Monday.
The fifth-seeded Frenchwoman, making her debut in Moscow, won the opening set in 27 minutes but was tested in the second by the up-and-coming Bondarenko.
Bartoli, the highest seed in action on the first day of the $2.3 million indoor tournament, broke the 25th-ranked Ukrainian in the 12th game to clinch the win after one hour 46 minutes.
Bartoli, looking for her first title of the year, will face Vera Dushevina in the second round after the Russian wildcard knocked out Eleni Daniilidou of Greece 7-5 6-1.
Seventh seed Patty Schnyder of Switzerland also advanced, dispatching France’s Emilie Loit 6-4 6-1.
The top four seeds, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Maria Sharapova, Anna Chakvetadze and Serena Williams, all received byes into the second round of the tournament.
On the men’s side, eighth seed Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany had little trouble against American Justin Gimelstob 6-1 6-3, but sixth-seeded Italian Potito Starace was beaten by world 111 Frenchman Florent Serra 4-6 6-4 6-3.

TITLE: Nobel For Medicine Awarded
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM, Sweden — U.S. citizens Mario R. Capecchi and Oliver Smithies and Sir Martin J. Evans of Britain won the 2007 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for groundbreaking discoveries that led to a technique for manipulating mouse genes.
The widely used process has helped scientists use mice to study heart disease, diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis and other diseases.
Capecchi, 70, who was born in Italy, is at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Smithies, 82, born in Britain, is at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Evans, 66, works at Cardiff University in Wales.
They were honored for a technique called gene targeting, which lets scientists inactivate or modify particular genes in mice. That in turn lets them study how those genes affect health and disease.
To use this technique, researchers introduce a genetic change into mouse embryonic stem cells. These cells are then injected into mouse embryos. The mice born from these embryos are bred with others, to produce offspring with altered genes.
The first mice with genes manipulated in this way were announced in 1989. More than 10,000 different genes in mice have been studied with the technique, the Nobel committee said. That’s about half the genes the rodents have.
“Gene targeting has pervaded all fields of biomedicine. Its impact on the understanding of gene function and its benefits to mankind will continue to increase over many years to come,” the award citation said.
In a telephone interview from Salt Lake City, Capecchi called the award “a fantastic surprise.”
He said he was deep asleep when he got the phone call from the Nobel committee at 3 a.m. local time. “He sounded very serious,” Capecchi said, “so the first reaction was, `This must be real.’”
Smithies told The Associated Press getting the award was “very gratifying.” After working on the research for more than 20 years, he said it’s “rather enjoyable being recognized at this level.”
Smithies said he hopes winning the prize will make it easier to secure funding for other work.
Although gene targeting uses embryonic stem cells from mice, it is different from how stem cells would be used to treat disease in humans. In people, stem cells would be prodded to become replacement tissue like nerve cells for transplant into patients.
Capecchi’s work has uncovered the roles of genes involved in organ development in mammals, the committee said. Evans has developed strains of gene-altered mice to study cystic fibrosis, and Smithies has created strains to study such conditions as high blood pressure and heart disease.
The medicine prize was the first of the six prestigious awards to be announced this year. The others are chemistry, physics, literature, peace and economics.

TITLE: Favorite New Zealand Out, France To Tackle England
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CARDIFF — France players barely had time to celebrate their extraordinary 20-18 win over favorite New Zealand before coach Bernard Laporte asked them to turn their minds to Saturday’s World Cup semi-final against England.
“The players defeated New Zealand who are the best team in the world with a lot of talent, generosity and solidarity and I’m proud of what they did,” Laporte told a news conference in Cardiff on Sunday.
“They are responsible guys, they know it was only a quarter-final and that we now have to turn our minds to the semi-final, so we’ll have a video session at six o’clock to start working on the England game.”
Going back to the win over the All Blacks, Laporte said it came through discipline, great defense and a lot of passion.
“We noticed that, in our two November tests, we let New Zealand gain territorial advantage and use our errors under pressure to score,” he said.
“We decided to push them back as deep as possible into their own territory, to do our best to keep the score low for as long as possible and then to take our chance. All the players stuck to the game plan and it worked.”
Relying on a kicking game, the French, whose last win over New Zealand dated back to 2000 and who had been crushed 47-3 last November in Lyon, limited their deficit to 13-3 at half-time.
After center Luke McAlister was sent to the sin-bin for obstruction, Laporte gave an injection of speed and power to the team when he sent flyhalf Frederic Michalak, lock Sebastien Chabal and hooker Dimitri Szarzewski into the battle.
The French abandoned the kicking game and went back to their typical style of play, running and passing the ball at speed.

TITLE: Interpol Launches Campaign To Hunt Down Paedophile
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Interpol on Monday launched an unprecedented worldwide public appeal to track down a man shown sexually abusing children in images posted on the Internet.
The man appears in around 200 photographs featuring abuse of 12 young boys, which investigators believe were taken in Vietnam and Cambodia, possibly in 2002 and 2003.
The pictures had been digitally altered to disguise the man’s face with a swirly pattern, but computer specialists at Germany’s federal police agency, the BKA, worked with Interpol’s human trafficking team to produce identifiable images.
The global police body said it was making the unique public appeal because, despite extensive efforts through its network of 186 member states, the man remained unknown.
“For years, images of this man sexually abusing children have been circulating on the Internet,” Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said.
“We have tried all other means to identify and to bring him to justice, but we are now convinced that without the public’s help this sexual predator could continue to rape and sexually abuse young children whose ages appear to range from six to early teens.”
Photographs of the man are available on Interpol’s web site, www.interpol.int.

TITLE: Heatwave Kills Runner In Chicago Marathon
AUTHOR: By Caryn Rousseau
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHICAGO — A Michigan police officer died and dozens of others needed medical care while running the Chicago Marathon as record heat and smothering humidity forced race organizers to shut down the course midway through the event.
Chad Schieber, 35, collapsed Sunday while running on the city’s South Side and was pronounced dead shortly before 1 p.m. at a hospital, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.
An autopsy on the Midland, Michigan man was scheduled for Monday.
“Obviously very sad news, and our thoughts and prayers are with the individual’s family,” said Shawn Platt, senior vice president of LaSalle Bank, the marathon’s sponsor.
Schieber was a 12-year police veteran in Midland, a city of about 42,000 in central Lower Michigan. He worked as a field training officer and community relations officer and implemented the department’s child DNA identification program, the Midland Daily News reported.
At least 49 people were taken to hospitals, while another 250 were treated onsite, many for heat-related ailments. Chicago Fire Department officials said they used 30 ambulances from area suburbs. Three people were in critical condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital late Sunday, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Monasteri.
About 10,000 of the 45,000 registered runners never even showed up for the 30th annual race, while another 10,934 started but didn’t finish, officials said.
The high heat index prompted organizers to stop the race at 11:30 a.m., about 3 1/2 hours into the run. Runners who hadn’t reached the halfway point were diverted to the start and finish area, while those on the second half of the course were advised to drop out, walk or board cooling buses, Platt said.
Race director Carey Pinkowski said organizers were concerned that emergency medical personnel wouldn’t be able to keep up with heat-related injuries as the weather turned more cruel.
“We were seeing a high rate of people that were struggling,” Pinkowski said. “If you were out there at 1 o’clock, it was a hot sun. It was like a summer day, it was just a brutally hot day.”
Kenya’s Patrick Ivuti won, leaning at the finish line to edge Jaouad Gharib of Morocco by 0.05 seconds. Ethiopia’s Berhane Adere rallied to successfully defend her women’s title.
By 10 a.m., temperatures had already reached a race-record of 88 degrees. The previous marathon record of 84 degrees was set in 1979. Pinkowski said it was a tough decision to stop the race, but a prudent one.
Lori Kaufman, a runner from St. Louis, said she was told to start walking by mile No. 14. She said she didn’t have enough water or Gatorade.
“We had a lot of spectators just handing us bottles of water which helped a lot,” Kaufman said. “Every medic station that we passed was full of people. I mean they were not doing well.”

TITLE: England Seeks Repeat Showing In Qualifiers
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON (AFP) — England manager Steve McClaren has called for his players to dish up a repeat dose of last month’s back to back wins in next week’s Euro 2008 qualifiers against Russia and Estonia.
After a troubled start to his time in charge of England, McClaren is finally experiencing a sense of unity as England’s Euro 2008 qualifying campaign reaches its climax.
Certainly, there were no complaints from the home fans last month as McClaren’s men recorded back-to-back three-goal wins over Israel and major Group E rivals Russia.
Those victories mean England now occupies pole position in its bid to accompany likely table-topper Croatia into next summer’s finals.
But McClaren is eager to ensure the momentum is not lost on Saturday when Estonia head to Wembley for a contest which should provide the ideal confidence boost ahead of the trip to Moscow four days later for a re-match with Guus Hiddink’s Russia that will probably determine England’s fate.
“Before the Israel game I called for everyone to push together on behalf of the team,” said McClaren.
“The reaction was amazing and the atmosphere transmitted itself over to the players, so we ended up with a performance everyone wanted.
“Those last two wins have put us in an excellent position. But the job is still to be completed, which is why the fans must realize they have such an important role to play this weekend.”
McClaren has already hinted at changes for Estonia’s visit as he looks to ensure his strongest possible side is available for the Moscow adventure.
Skipper John Terry, central defensive partner Rio Ferdinand and Chelsea duo Joe and Ashley Cole are most at risk given they are a caution away from suspension.
Michael Owen and Frank Lampard both played for their clubs at the weekend and will need to have their fitness assessed before McClaren finalizes his line-up.
Yet the former Middlesbrough boss is acutely aware he cannot risk an unexpected slip-up against an Estonia side whose only point — with the exception of a win over Andorra - came against Macedonia, a team England failed to beat on home soil 12 months ago.
“Russia is the make-or-break game for us but sometimes you can be too clever with yourself,” said McClaren.
“You should go into every game respecting your opponents and realizing you are never going to get an easy game.
“Ask any of the managers whose teams were playing in Europe this week and they will tell you exactly the same thing.
“They might play clubs they have never heard of, who they think they should beat, and still have difficult games against them. I know that because I have experienced it myself.
“If you go into any game not respecting your opponent or not taking them seriously, you are going to be in trouble.
“Estonia are a tough, organized team who will play with a dogged determination to keep us out.”
McClaren will be without strikers Dean Ashton and Andy Johnson, who miss out with respective knee and ankle problems. West Ham striker Ashton said: “It’s frustrating but there are plenty of players with the same sort of luck and I’m not going to get too down about it.
“It is part of the game and one of those things.”

TITLE: Off-Duty U.S. Sheriff Goes on Gun Rampage
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CRANDON, Wisconsin — The residents Tyler Peterson was hired to protect and serve can’t understand how the 20-year-old who shot six of their young people and critically injured another could have passed a background check to become a sheriff’s deputy.
Peterson was shot to death after opening fire early Sunday on a group of students and recent graduates who had gathered for pizza and movies on their high school’s homecoming weekend. Peterson was off-duty from his full-time job as a Forest County deputy sheriff; he was also a part-time Crandon police officer.
David Franz, 36, who lives with his wife two houses from the duplex where the shooting occurred, said it was hard to accept that someone in law enforcement was the gunman.
“The first statement we said to each other was, how did he get through the system?” Franz said. “How do they know somebody’s background, especially that young? It is disturbing, to say the least.”
Sheriff Keith Van Cleve said he would meet with state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen on Monday morning to discuss the case.
Crandon Police Chief John Dennee said it would be handled by the state Department of Criminal Investigation because the suspect was a deputy and officer.
Peterson was killed Sunday afternoon, eight miles north of Crandon in the rural town of Argonne, Dennee said.
Crandon mayor Gary Bradley said Sunday that a sniper killed the suspect, but Van Cleve would not confirm that officers shot him.
The gunman’s motive was unclear, but the mother of a 14-year-old victim, Lindsey Stahl, said the suspect may have been a jealous boyfriend.
“I’m waiting for somebody to wake me up right now. This is a bad, bad dream,” said Jenny Stahl. “All I heard was that it was a jealous boyfriend and he went berserk. He took them all out.”
Dennee declined comment on whether Peterson had a romantic relationship with any of the victims.
The lone survivor of the shooting, a male, remained in a critical condition Monday at St. Joseph’s Hospital, according to nursing supervisor Penny Funk.
The white, two-story duplex was about a block from downtown Crandon, a town of about 2,000 located 350 kilometers north of Milwaukee in an area known for logging and outdoor activities. The victims had gathered for what Dennee described as “a pizza and movie party.”
Three of the victims were Crandon High School students, said school Superintendent Richard Peters, and the other three had graduated within the past three years.
“There is probably nobody in Crandon who is not affected by this,” Peters said, adding that students “are going to wake up in shock and disbelief and a lot of pain.”
Peters did not know whether Peterson had graduated from the 300-student school. But Crandon resident Karly Johnson, 16, said that she knew the gunman and that he had helped her in a tech education class.
“He graduated with my brother,” she said. “He was nice. He was an average guy. Normal. You wouldn’t think he could do that.”
The Crandon School District called off classes Monday.
One victim, 20-year-old Bradley Schultz, was a third-year student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was home to visit his friends, said his aunt, Sharon Pisarek.

TITLE: Sports Watch
TEXT: <b>France Strikes Gold</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (AP) — France won its third straight men’s team epee title and Poland took gold in the women’s team foil at the World Fencing Championships on Sunday.
In the men’s final, Eric Boisse, Fabrice Jeannet, Jerome Jeannet and Ulrich Robeiri defeated Italy 45-38.
Hungary settled for the bronze medal with a 45-40 victory over Spain.
In the women’s team foil, Sylwia Gruchala, Katarzyna Kryczalo, Magda Mroczkiewicz and Malgorzata Wojtkowiak beat Russia on a 26-25 sudden-death victory.
Japan took the bronze medal, beating Hungary 33-31.

<b>Ferrer On Top</b>
TOKYO (AP) — David Ferrer overpowered Richard Gasquet 6-1, 6-2 Sunday to win the Japan Open for his third title of the year.
The top-seeded Ferrer was in control from the outset, breaking Gasquet in the first game of a match that lasted only 52 minutes.
“Maybe Richard was a little tired because he played last week,” Ferrer said. “I’m very happy to win this tournament and just want to enjoy the moment.”
The 25-year-old Spaniard won titles this year in Auckland, New Zealand, and Bastad, Sweden.
Ferrer became the tournament’s top seed after defending champion Roger Federer withdrew because he said he needed rest after the U.S. Open and Davis Cup.

<b>Zenit Loses to Loko</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Reuters) — Front-runner Zenit St Petersburg went down 1-0 at Lokomotiv Moscow opening the door for Spartak Moscow to go level on points with a victory at Spartak Nalchik on Monday.
Zenit has 49 points with four matches remaining while Spartak and third-placed FC Moscow, who kept its own title hopes alive with a 1-0 home defeat of Rostov, have 46 each.
Bosnia defender Emir Spahic threw the title race wide open with a second-half penalty for Lokomotiv before missing a second spot kick in injury time.

TITLE: Olympic ‘Hero’ Admits Steroid Use, Dishonesty
AUTHOR: By Pat Milton
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WHITE PLAINS, New York — Marion Jones tried to choke back the tears streaming down her face, and bowed her head in a desperate effort to regain the composure that used to be her trademark.
The strong, poised woman who was once a symbol for everything right about women in sports was long gone. She was now a liar and a cheat, her sins laid bare for everyone to see.
“It’s with a great amount of shame that I stand before you and tell you that I have betrayed your trust,” she said Friday, admitting she used steroids after years of angry denials.
“I have been dishonest, and you have the right to be angry with me,” she said, her voice cracking as her mother stood behind her with a supportive hand on her shoulder. “I have let (my family) down. I have let my country down, and I have let myself down.”
The owner of three Olympic golds and two bronze medals pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators when she denied using performance-enhancing drugs. In a teary apology afterward outside the U.S. District Court, the 31-year-old also said she was retiring.
Jones also pleaded guilty to a second count of lying to investigators about her association with a check-fraud scheme.
“You’re vindicated, but it doesn’t make you feel any happier this is going on,” said Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency. “The fact that she was using the performance-enhancing drugs is not a surprise. People suspected strongly or knew, but couldn’t prove the use.
“When something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Jones is the biggest name to be brought down so far in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative scandal. But home run king Barry Bonds also has been linked to BALCO, and a grand jury is still investigating whether he lied  or not to federal investigators.
Bonds denied ever knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs. In testimony before a grand jury in 2003, Bonds said he believed a clear substance and a cream given to him by his trainer were flaxseed oil and an arthritis balm.
“The federal government will vigorously prosecute individuals who provide false statements to its agents,” said Scott N. Schools, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.
Jones had been dogged by suspicions and doping allegations for years. Her ex-husband, C.J. Hunter, was busted for doping, and Tim Montgomery, the father of her son Monty, was stripped of his world record in the 100 meters in connection with the BALCO case.
Jones herself was one of the athletes who testified before a grand jury in 2003 in the BALCO investigation. In August 2006, one of her urine samples tested positive for EPO, but she was cleared when a backup sample tested negative.
But Jones vehemently denied all doping allegations, even issuing this emphatic declaration in 2004: “I have never, ever used performance-enhancing drugs.” She also sued BALCO founder Victor Conte after he repeatedly accused Jones of using performance-enhancing drugs and said he watched her inject herself.
No longer.
On Friday, Jones sat perfectly still, detailing her crimes in a clear, loud voice. Speaking into a microphone, her eyes on the judge above her, she admitted lying to a federal investigator in November 2003 when he asked if she had used performance-enhancing drugs.
“I answered that I had not. This was a lie, your honor,” she said.
Jones said she took steroids from September 2000 to July 2001 and said she was told by her then-coach Trevor Graham that she was taking flaxseed oil when it was actually in “the clear.” It is a performance-enhancing drug linked to BALCO, the lab at the center of the steroids scandal in professional sports.
“I consumed this substance several times before the Sydney Olympics and continued using it after,” Jones told the judge. “By November 2003, I realized he was giving me performance-enhancing drugs.”
She said she experienced “faster recovery and better times” while using the substance.
“He told me to put it under my tongue for a few seconds and swallow it,” she said. “He told me not to tell anyone.”

TITLE: Brown Cools Election Fever for Now
AUTHOR: By Jane Perlez
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: LONDON — After intense speculation, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Sunday that he would not go ahead with a general election, a decision apparently prompted by the unexpected success of the opposition Conservative Party’s annual conference last week.
Brown, the Labor Party leader, who had enjoyed a commanding position in the polls after taking over as prime minister from Tony Blair, told BBC television in an interview broadcast Sunday morning that he wanted more time to show Britain that he had a “vision for the future of this country.”
“I believe the public priority was not an election but that we got on with the job,” Brown said in the interview, recorded Saturday night from 10 Downing Street.
But political commentators quickly criticized Brown, saying he had allowed election fever to run out of control and then become unnerved by opinion surveys in the last two days that indicated that the Labor Party may have lost ground to the Conservatives, who are led by David Cameron. Brown had to make a decision by Tuesday on whether to call an election for Nov. 1.
Political analysts said internal party polling with results similar to a survey in the newspaper News of the World on Sunday showed that Labor was likely to lose a string of marginal seats.
The polling indicated that a Conservative Party pledge at its conference in Blackpool, England, last week to abolish the inheritance tax on property worth up to one million pounds, or about $2 million, could be a major factor in the areas with vulnerable seats.
Many of the swing seats are around London and in the prosperous southeastern part of England, where housing prices have skyrocketed in the last few years.
A wealthy donor, Michael Ashcroft, had given about $20 million to the Conservative Party, specifically aimed at the campaign for those marginal seats, party workers said.
The decision to say no to an election effectively canceled the progress Brown had made in persuading Britain in the last three months that he was a strong leader, said Jon Snow, the longtime anchor of Channel 4 television news, and a respected political commentator.
Among the strengths that Brown had shown was a fast and sober statement after botched terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow days after he took over as prime minister in late June; swift attention to devastating floods in the English countryside this summer, and firm stewardship during a foot-and-mouth crisis in the cattle industry.
He had also worked to distance himself from President Bush, a distinct difference in style to his predecessor, Blair.
The impressions of a new Brown could now be replaced by less flattering old impressions, Snow said.
“This revives old worries of his being indecisive, that he finds these things difficult,” Snow said. “It will take a long time to regain the poise and respect which he had built up. He has to start all over again.”
Brown, who was finance minsiter for 10 years under Blair, does not need to call an election until 2010 under Britain’s parliamentary system. The Labor Party has more than a 60-seat majority in the 646-member Parliament, prompting some Labor backers to describe a rush to an election in November as unnecessary and dangerous.
If Brown had gone to the polls and lost, his term as prime minister would have been one of the shortest in British history.
Until last week, opinion surveys had indicated that Brown’s personal approval ratings were handily ahead of those of Cameron, who has led the Conservative Party for nearly two years.
But to the surprise of the Labor Party, the Conservative Party held a cohesive conference last week, and Cameron gave a persuasive and personal keynote address in which he barely looked at prepared notes, holding the floor for more than an hour.
The speech, in which Cameron, 40, called the family the best form of social security, received glowing reviews from many quarters.
While Cameron was doing well in Blackpool, Brown made a lightning trip to Iraq to visit British troops at their headquarters in Basra. There, Brown announced that 1,000 of those soldiers would return home by 2008, leaving 4,500 in Iraq.
The Iraq visit turned out to be a blunder. The Ministry of Defense told reporters that the 1,000 troops included 500 soldiers whose withdrawal had already been announced in July. Moreover, the ministry said 270 of those soldiers were already back in Britain.
That allowed the Conservatives to accuse Brown of playing politics with the Iraq deployment, which has been highly unpopular with the British public.
 Cameron wasted no time on Sunday in responding to Brown’s decision. “He’s treating the British people as fools,” Cameron said on BBC television after Brown’s appearance. “Everybody knows he wanted to have an election, and he’s now saying, ‘I’m not having an election because I want to make my changes.’”
That was the kind of sharp talk that galvanized the Conservatives at their conference.
“I felt proud of the party in the way that everyone responded to the threat of an early election by pulling together and putting the best foot forward,” said Antonia Cox, an active Conservative Party worker who is seeking selection by the party as a parliamentary candidate.

TITLE: Bolivian Town Cashes In On The Legacy of Che Guevara
AUTHOR: By Eduardo Garcia
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VALLEGRANDE, Bolivia — The bearded image of guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara has become a pop icon splashed on mugs, T-shirts and even bikinis 40 years after his death, and this Bolivian town is out to cash in on the marketing frenzy.
In central Bolivia, where Guevara battled the army before he was captured and killed, tour operators offer a chance to retrace his final steps on the “Che Trail.”
“If it wasn’t for Che, not many foreigners would come here,” said Carlos Robert Pena, who owns a Guevara-themed restaurant in Vallegrande catering to foreign tourists.
Shopkeepers peddle Che posters, pins and hats, and images of the long-haired Guevara in a beret look down from the walls inside restaurants, hotels and cafes. A museum recalls his life as a revolutionary.
If, as historians say, Bolivians were reluctant to stand alongside Guevara in his revolution, some are eager to take advantage of his role in putting this town in the history books. 
Each year, thousands of people make a pilgrimage here to remember him.
After Guevara joined the guerrilla uprising that helped Fidel Castro seize power in Cuba in 1959, the Argentine-born doctor set off for Congo to foment revolution there.

TITLE: F1 Season Goes Down to the Wire
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SHANGHAI — Fernando Alonso has history on his side, even if the Spaniard suspects McLaren team bosses are against him in his battle to win a third Formula One championship in a row.
Teammate Lewis Hamilton remains the title favorite despite a Chinese Grand Prix that dealt the 22-year-old rookie his first retirement of the season after leading from pole position.
The Briton’s agonizing slip, while limping back on worn tires, into the gravel trap at the pit lane entry transformed what had looked like a cruise to the championship into a three-way fight down to the wire.
Hamilton will now head for the final race in Brazil on October 21 with 107 points to Alonso’s 103 and 100 for Ferrari‘s Kimi Raikkonen.
“You can’t go through life without making mistakes, I’m over it. I know the team is working very hard to make sure we can bounce back in Brazil,” said Hamilton, who can still become the first rookie champion as well as the youngest.
“But don’t worry there’s still one race to go in Brazil, I can still do it.”
Alonso, who finished second on Sunday behind Raikkonen, sounded less optimistic about his chances after an angry weekend in which he aimed some heavy criticism at his team.
“Hopefully I can do a good race (in Brazil) but for the championship, I still need something really dramatic if I want to win. With a normal race, it will be impossible,” he said.
History suggests there is a better chance of that happening than he imagines.
The last time three drivers were in with a chance of the title at the last race was 1986, when Hamilton’s compatriot Nigel Mansell led Frenchman Alain Prost and Brazilian Nelson Piquet before the Adelaide finale.
Prost won the title after Mansell’s tire exploded.
Of the eight occasions since 1950 on which the title battle has gone down to the wire as a three-way fight, only three have seen the driver leading the championship before the final race go on to become champion.
In four of those showdowns, the glory has ultimately gone to the man who had been in second place.
Alonso has won both his previous titles, with Renault, at Interlagos while Hamilton has no previous knowledge of the circuit — although that is no big obstacle since he has won three times this year at unfamiliar tracks.
It is easier to hunt than be hunted, however, and Hamilton will have to live with the torment of Shanghai for the next two weeks before he has a chance to put matters right.
Mental strength and resilience will be crucial against two experienced rivals who will feel they have nothing to lose and will be trying to exploit every psychological advantage as the deciding day approaches.
Hamilton knows a win at Interlagos ends all argument but fourth place would also be enough if Raikkonen were to lead Ferrari to a one-two finish.
Both Hamilton and Alonso, who may be leaving the team after Brazil, expect McLaren to give them equal cars and treatment. But there can be little doubt about who the team would rather see win their first title since 1999.
“We weren’t racing Kimi, we were basically racing Fernando,” McLaren boss Ron Dennis said on Sunday, explaining the team’s delay to bring Hamilton in for new tires.

TITLE: Diana Jury Visit Paris Tunnel Where She Died
AUTHOR: By Paul Majendie
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — British jurors probing Princess Diana’s death are to see for themselves in Paris where she died in a high-speed car crash with her lover Dodi al-Fayed.
The jury, which has been meeting in London in an inquest to decide if the Paris crash 10 years ago was an accident, will on Monday and Tuesday retrace the last day of the couple — from the Ritz Hotel where they spent their final evening together to the crash scene in the Alma underpass.
The judge, concerned the court’s Paris visit could provoke the same paparazzi hysteria that greeted the world’s most photographed woman when she was alive, has called on the media to respect the jury’s privacy.
Lord Justice Scott Baker acknowledged the intense media coverage of the case. 
He said: “I believe this interest will most likely intensify when the court visits Paris.”
He told the London court last week that the six women and five men jurors were performing a public duty “under considerable pressure.” He urged media not to identify any of its members.
Diana, 36, Dodi, 42, and chauffeur Henri Paul were killed when their Mercedes car crashed in a road tunnel as they sped away from the Ritz Hotel in Paris, pursued by paparazzi.
Under British law, an inquest is needed to determine the cause of death when someone dies unnaturally.
Major investigations by French and British police have concluded that the deaths were a tragic accident caused by a speeding chauffeur, who was found to be drunk.

TITLE: Arsenal Consolidate Premier League Lead
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Arsenal beat Sunderland 3-2 on Sunday, moving back to the top of the Premier League after Robin van Persie secured victory with a well worked winner 10 minutes from time.
It was Arsenal’s 10th successive win in all competitions but they made hard work of it after racing into a 2-0 lead in the opening 14 minutes before allowing Sunderland to pull level early in the second half.
Manchester United, who beat Wigan Athletic 4-0 on Saturday and led the table overnight, slipped back to second, with Sven-Goran Eriksson’s Manchester City consolidating their third place with their fifth straight home league win, 3-1 over Middlesbrough.
Liverpool, beaten 1-0 by Olympique Marseille in the Champions League at Anfield on Wednesday, were just 90 seconds away from another home defeat when Fernando Torres scored with a header to force a 2-2 draw with Tottenham Hotspur, whose goals came from Robbie Keane either side of halftime.
Chelsea scored for the first time in five league matches to win 1-0 at Bolton Wanderers where Salomon Kalou grabbed the only goal after 41 minutes.
Arsenal’s victory took them on to 22 points from eight matches, followed by United on 20 from nine and Manchester City, 19 from nine.
Liverpool are fourth with 16 points from eight games. Portsmouth, who won 2-0 at Fulham, are fifth with 15 points.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was a relieved man after their victory over Sunderland.
“We allowed them to come back to 2-1, then 2-2 and it became a test of our mental strength, resilience and quality,” he told Setanta Sports.
“We lacked a little bit of sharpness. It is always very difficult when you have played away in the Champions League in midweek, but to get the three points today was good.”
There was some good and bad news for England coach Steve McClaren.
Frank Lampard returned to the Chelsea side after missing the last seven matches with a torn thigh muscle while Michael Owen, who had a groin operation last week, came on as a late substitute and scored in Newcastle United’s 3-2 win over Everton at St James’ Park.
They should both be available for England’s important Euro 2008 qualifiers against Estonia and Russia later this month, but Andy Johnson, who scored for Everton in the defeat at Newcastle, pulled out of the squad with an ankle injury.
Dean Ashton, who injured his knee in West Ham’s 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa on Saturday, is doubtful.
There will not be any Arsenal players in the England team in those matches, but they lead the table thanks to two goals from Dutchman Van Persie and one from Swiss defender Philippe Senderos against Sunderland.
Van Persie put the Gunners ahead with a blistering free-kick after seven minutes while Senderos made it 2-0 with a scrappy goal seven minutes later.
Sunderland came back into the match with goals from Ross Wallace and Kenwyne Jones before Van Persie scored Arsenal’s late winner after being freed up by substitute Theo Walcott.

TITLE: SPIBA welcomes its new members!
TEXT: • BDO Unicon North-West
• Enterprise Ireland/Embassy 
of Ireland
• Consulate General of Japan
• IBM
• Firm KOMFORT
• Maslennikov & Partners
• Novotel St. Petersburg Centre

BDO Unicon North-West is an active member of the global network of audit companies BDO International, the top ranked national Russian company. BDO Unicon in the Northwest District is represented by BDO Unicon North West, a leader in the regional market of audit, valuation and consulting. 
It accumulates multi-year experience and traditions of BDO Unicon and BDO International, making it possible for its clients to confirm financial statements prepared to international standards by affixing the worldwide accepted “audit seal.” 
The company’s aim is to be among world leading auditors and consultants, dedicating itself to developing companies.

18a Petrogradskaya Embankment, 
St. Petersburg 197046
Tel.: +7 (812) 332-20-90
Fax: +7 (812) 332-20-91
 business@bdo-unw.spb.ru//www.bdo.ru

Novotel St. Petersburg Centre
This modern 4-star hotel is located in the very heart of the historical centre of St. Petersburg.
On the 9 floors of Novotel St. Petersburg Centre, there are 233 rooms consisting of 217 Novation rooms, 14 Junior Suites and 2 Executive Suites. Seven modern meeting rooms with air-conditioning, daylight, ergonomic furniture and state of the art conference technology. Private dining room, modern restaurant, bar, La Brioche Deli-Counter. High speed Wi-Fi Internet access, fitness centre, hammam, massage.

Mayakovskogo ul. 3a / Nevsky Prospect
191025 St. Petersburg, Russia
Tel.: +7 812 3351188, fax: +7 812 3351180
H5679@accor.com//www.novotel.spb.ru

SPIBA EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

Ludmila Murgulets, Stockholm School of Economics,
Executive Committee Chairperson
Christian Courbois, Westpost
Sebastian FitzLyon, S.Zinovieff & Co.,
Honorary Consul of Australia in St. Petersburg
Irina Galieva, JT International
Glenn Kolleeny, Salans
Sergey Spasennov, Pepeliaev, Goltsblat & Partners
Ruslan Vasutin, DLA Piper
Elena Marchenko, BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH (affiliated member)

Natalia Kudryavtseva, Executive Director

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: SPIBA HR COMMITTEE HOLDS ROUND TABLE ON LABOUR FORCE IMPORT FROM REGIONS
Lack of personnel is a hot issue for companies today. On September 19, 2007, SPIBA HR Committee organized the round table on labour force import from regions to indicate related problems and outline possible solutions, which proved to be informative and productive.
Right to left: Irina Kulaeva, HR Director, Building Demolishing Holding Company; Natalia Kudryavtseva, SPIBA Executive Director; Marina Grinevskaya, HR Director, Farmos/Lumene; Olga Vinogradova, Head of HR Department, KmK; Dmitry Kozlov, Sales Specialist for Industrial Projects, ANCOR; Anna Gurevich, General Director, Knowledge & Skills.
SPIBA BREAKFAST BRIEFING ON FORTHCOMING ELECTIONS TO STATE DUMA
On September 25, 2007, SPIBA in partnership with The St. Petersburg Times held the breakfast briefing on the forthcoming elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation at the Grand Hotel Europe. Guest speakers at the briefing were Dmitry Krasnyansky, Deputy Chairman of the St. Petersburg Elections Commission and Aleksei Gromov, Head of the Control and Research Department of the St. Petersburg Elections Commission.
Right to left: Aleksei Gromov and Dmitry Krasnyansky answering questions.
SPIBA MEMBERS DISCUSS PROSPECTIVES OF DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL-SCALE POWER GENERATION IN ST. PETERSBURG
The proper development of power supply system in St. Petersburg is one of the key factors for business growing. On October 3, 2007, SPIBA and the IFC (World Bank Group) held a joint round-table meeting at the Ambassador Hotel to discuss the perspective development of small-scale power generation in St. Petersburg. 
The audience included representatives of the St. Petersburg and federal authorities, diplomatic missions, non-government organizations and business. 
Right to left: Andrei Sorochinsky, Deputy Chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Energy and Engineering Support, and Maksim Titov, Team Leader, IFC North-West.

TITLE: SPIBA Events Snapshots
TEXT: What happened since July 2007

11.07.07
Seminar: Style Rules for Classic Men’s Wear
Guest speaker: Anastasia Glot, 
Expert, Machiavelli Luxury Group
17.07.07
Open Meeting of the SPIBA 
Marketing Committee – Site Visit to the Baltika brewery
19.09.07
Round Table: 
Labour Force Import from Regions: Problems and Solutions
Organised by the SPIBA HR 
Committee
21.09.07
Seminar – Exhibition – Concert: 
Historical Roots and Fruits of Professionalism and Creativity. Swedish Financiers, Economists and Entrepreneurs in Russia
Organized by Stockholm School of Economics in Russia with the support of SPIBA
25.09.07
Breakfast Briefing: 
The Forthcoming Elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation
Guest speaker: Dmitry Krasnyansky, Deputy Chairperson of the St. Petersburg Elections Commission
03.10.07
SPIBA Round Table: Development of Small-Scale Power Generation in St. Petersburg
Guest speakers: Andrei V. Sorochinsky, Deputy Chairman of the St.Petersburg Committee for Energy and Engineering Support; Oleg V. Kolomiichenko, Head of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Agency’s Department for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast; Vladimir Y. Vasiliev, Member of the Council of the State Duma of the Russian Federation; Elgiz I. Kachaev, Chairman of the St. Petersburg regional division of the all-Russian public organization Delovaya Rossiya; Aleksei E. Kuzmin, Deputy Director General – Director for Corporate Development, ADD Group
Leading sponsor: the IFC
04.10.07
St. Petersburg Entrepreneurship Group in partnership with the US – Russia Center for Entrepreneurship
Outsourcing for Growth: Experience of Risk Management and Increasing Efficiency

FORTHCOMING EVENTS
25.10.07
SPIBA Reception:
12 Years of Being the Voice of Business

We are planning a lot of events in the future. Keep an eye on SPIBA information to be distributed by e-mail and announced.

SPIBA has launched a new section on its website www.spiba.ru – Intra-SPIBA.
The section is an electronic directory with detailed information about SPIBA member-companies. Access to Intra-SPIBA is available to SPIBA members only.

SPIBA has launched a new series of events THEMED AS: 
SPIBA Cultural Discovery!
The new series of events united by the theme “SPIBA Cultural Discovery” opens with three events that we have organized in partnership with the Alexandrinsky Theater and the Alexandrinsky Charitable Foundation within the framework of the Alexandrinsky International Theatre Festival.
On Tuesday, September 25, 2007 SPIBA members enjoyed the performance of QUARTET (QUATUOR) by COMÉDIE FRANCAISE (France), a tour around the Russian Drama Museum, networking and buffet.
The forthcoming Cultural-Discovery events will include:
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Performance of ARLECCHINO, SERVITTORE DI DUE PADRONI by PICCOLO Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa (Italy)
Friday, October 19, 2007
Performance of MACBETH by DRAMA ROYAL THEATRE (Sweden)

TITLE: SPIBA Companies News
TEXT: By the end of October ANCOR recruitment holding will have released an All-Russian Salary Survey for the second half of the year 2007.
It’s the only project of such a large scale. In the course of this project the following questions have been considered:
– Policy of administration and payments of wages of employees on more than 130 positions
– Operating conditions in companies
– Policy of indemnifications and privileges
– Level of wages (fixed and time parties) and correlation of official duties for all positions under research
The ANCOR standards guarantee the confidential treatment of the information received from the participants. All the participants will receive the results for free upon completion of the project.
AVANTA Personnel recruiting company started opening its new offices in Moscow, Krasnodar and Vladivostok and linking them to AVANTA Personnel’s network of regional recruiting agencies in Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Perm, Samara and Rostov-on-Don.
At the press-conference which took place on September 20th in RIA Novosty, AVANTA Personnel representatives shared the Company’s development plans and presented up-to-date information concerning current labor market trends.
By the end of 2007 more than 360 employees will be working in AVANTA Personnel in Russia and by the year 2010 the number of employees will exceed 1,000 people.
By 2010 the company is planning to open more than 20 regional offices in Russia alone.
In September 2007 BAT-SPb factory (a member of BAT Russia) celebrated its 10th anniversary of production and completed the construction of the new department building for producing cigarettes and filters within a large-scale investment program for expansion in Russia.
The total investment allocated for BAT-SPb in 2005-2009 was approximately US$110 million. Investment went into the construction of an additional administrative building and the modernisation and upgrading of production machinery. The construction of new buildings expanded the factory area from 44,300 square meters to 52,500 square meters, and production capacities increased from 20 billion to 37 billion cigarettes per year.
BDO Unicon North-West is proud of its large-scale projects, which are important to the Northwest region economy, and its contribution to the development of Russian culture, i.e. its joint projects with the RF Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications, the State Hermitage, the Farukh Ruzimatov Foundation and the Mussorgsky Opera and Ballet Theater.
To continue these traditions and support Russian art, BDO Unicon North-West provided financial assistance to establish a prize for talented students of the Vaganova Ballet Academy in September 2007
Since May 2007 Digital Group Company has been an authorized partner of Swiss company Reichle & De-Massari AG (R&M, Zurich) that produces a full range of fiber-optic cable equipment to build the latest generation solutions. The equipment of R&M is installed in many European companies, banks, airports, parliaments and hotels.
Digital Group Company was chosen as the St. Petersburg Administration’s partner, providing a full range of services concerning audio and video equipment for the AGRORUS Exhibition in August 2007. Digital Group took part as a system integrator to organize a video conference between Vice-governor M. Oseevskiy and General Director of the Peterburzhenka factory F. Viherev.
In September 2007 Digital Group Company signed two state contracts for the delivery and installation of video equipment for GU BKZ Oktyabrskiy.
DLA Piper in St Petersburg is delighted to announce that since September 3, 2007 the Company’s offices have been relocated to Zinger House business center. Our move to the renowned Zinger House results from the dynamic development and expansion of the DLA Piper practice over the past year.
Within the limits of the agreement on interaction of the St.-Petersburg government and RAO UES of Russia, ITM Group (ZAO “INTECH”)), being the constant contractor of OJSC “TGK-1” on installation of the electric equipment and instrumentation and automated control systems, is carrying out the installation of the new equipment at the most important power stations of St.-Petersburg: Vasileostrovskaya thermal power station ‹ 7 and Pravoberezhnaja thermal power station ‹ 5.
ITM Group employees are equipping substation 40A with new modern techniques for its management, protection and automatics.
At Shushary substation, which will supply the future factory of Toyota and the other sites in the Industrial zone with electric power, the installation of high-voltage equipment 110 kV of the ABB company has been completed and cells for 10 kV capacity distribution and delivery are being mounted.
On October 18, 2007 Ernst & Young celebrates its 15th anniversary in St. Petersburg. Since 1992, our practice in the Northwest region of Russia has grown significantly: our St. Petersburg office now employs more than 160 people.
By offering quality and client-drive services we have worked hard to earn a reputation that allows us to now serve the top international and local companies in the Northwest region.
We are also happy to announce the expansion of our tax & legal practice and the appointment of Anna Kostyra as Head of the Dispute resolution team in St. Petersburg.
Konsu Group, the Finnish company specialized in financial management and juridical consultation, is expanding its activities in St. Petersburg. “Due to the fast economic growth in Russia and especially in the North-West, our business is running at a good speed,” says Pirjo Karhu, the managing director of Konsu Group and its subsidiary Konsu SP. 
To meet positively increasing challenges Ms. Anna Mahlamaki has been nominated for as Key Account Manager at the Konsu St. Petersburg office on Shpalernaya Ulitsa.
Mannheimer Swartling is happy to announce that as of September 17, 2007 we have new staff members: Liubov Erigo and Irina Selezneva.
Liubov and Irina are highly qualified litigators with more than 25 years of experience. They will become valuable members of Mannheimer Swartling’s growing litigation and arbitration practice.
In the first half of 2007 Maris Properties in association with CB Richard Ellis launched a new direction which is its property management department.
STEP Construction (Russia) and GSE Group (France) entered into a partnership agreement for the design and construction of sites intended for logistics and industry. Cooperation is envisaged in projects valued at over 50 million dollars. For implementation of joint projects a mixed group of experts will be formed.
Even today the consortium offers a new product on the construction market – a construction concept of logistically purposed buildings “on a turn-key basis” - OPTIMA. OPTIMA offers reductions in investments of 15% and transaction (current) costs of 20 % during construction of a site. OPTIMA comprises 10 innovational solutions.
Sebastian FitzLyon, Chairman of the Zinovieff Group, reports that the affiliated companies S.Zinovieff & Co. and Zinovieff Services are now providing full facilities management and cleaning services at the 4,200 sq. m offices of EMC, an international software corporation. The Sales and Leasing Department of S.Zinovieff & Co. reports the leasing of 1,200 sq. m of office space in the city center to Statoil, Norway’s leading oil company. The Building Services Department is shortly completing the Mertens House reconstruction monitoring project. The Valuation Department is undertaking a valuation for International Paper.
The Maestro Temirkanov International Foundation for Cultural Initiatives announces that the Eighth International Winter Festival Arts Square will take place in St. Petersburg on December 28, 2007 – January 7, 2008. Over the past seven years, the festival has become the highlight of the cultural and social scene in the winter season of the city of St. Petersburg.
The festival opens with internationally known pianist Evgeny Kissin performing with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Maestro Yuri Temirkanov and will offer ten additional outstanding performances, including two evenings of ballet and an evening of jazz. The festival offers several events amid the ten days of musical presentations, including an exhibition and reception at the State Russian Museum, and lavish receptions for the opening and closing of the festival. One of the highlights of the festival is Maestro Temirkanov’s New Year’s Eve Ball at the opulent Yusupov Palace. 
For further information, contact Snezhana Zamalieve at info@temirkanov.com or by telephone 933 5092.