SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1331 (97), Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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TITLE: Banker Found Dead In Pool
AUTHOR: By David Nowak and Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — Authorities opened a murder investigation Friday into the death of a senior executive at state-run bank VTB, who was found dead with his legs bound, in a swimming pool at his luxury dacha outside Moscow.
The body of Oleg Zhukovsky, a VTB managing director who handled accounts in the notoriously murky timber industry, was discovered Thursday in the pool at his dacha in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region, Oleg Krasnoshchyokov, a duty officer with the Odintsovo police department, said Friday. Zhukovsky’s arms and legs had been tied up and a plastic bag was tied around his head, Krasnoshchyokov said.
Although the body was found with the arms free, loose ropes around the wrists indicated that Zhukovsky’s hands had earlier been tied together and to his ankles, sources involved in the investigation said, Kommersant reported Saturday.
The time of the death and the motive for Zhukovsky’s murder remained unclear. The Moscow region branch of the Investigative Committee has opened a murder investigation and formed a special team to handle the case, the committee said in a statement Friday.
“We have conducted a search of the crime scene, performed forensic and other examinations, and have called for other necessary investigative actions and procedures,” the Investigative Committee, a semi-autonomous agency that operates under the auspices of the Prosecutor General’s Office, said in the statement.
No other details were given, and committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko declined to comment further.
But citing an unidentified law enforcement source, Kommersant reported Friday that a suicide note was found near Zhukovsky’s body in what might have been a sloppy attempt at a cover-up.
The suicide note included the phrase, “I am very tired of life,” and ended with a plea not to blame anybody for his death, Kommersant said. The fact that Zhukovsky was tied up and found at the bottom of the pool made suicide an unlikely version of events, the source told the newspaper Friday.
“He’s not Harry Houdini,” the source said, adding that authorities believed the perpetrators broke into the dacha and forced Zhukovsky to write the note. The attackers proceeded to cover Zhukovsky’s head with a plastic bag and torture him, the source said. The banker might have died of a heart attack at some point, the source said.
The note was being examined by handwriting experts, RIA-Novosti reported.
VTB, headed by Andrei Kostin, is the country’s second-largest bank, after Sberbank. Earlier this year, it raised $8 billion in a so-called “people’s IPO,” in which many individual Russian investors bought shares in the bank. Since then, it has been one of the worst-performing Russian blue chips, with its share price falling by more than 20 percent since May, prompting outrage from minority shareholders who had expected the government to support the stock.
The murder investigation is the second into the death of a VTB official in just over a year. In October 2006, Alexander Plokhin, a branch manager at VTB-24, was shot dead at his home in Moscow.
Zhukovsky headed up VTB’s lending operations with the timber industry, in which he was prominent figure. In October he held a presentation with the Federal Forestry Agency on the development of the industry through 2015.
VTB spokeswoman Tatyana Yurovskikh said the bank did not want to make a statement regarding Zhukovsky’s death. A senior executive at the bank said Friday afternoon that he had only recently learned of his colleague’s death and was not authorized to comment.
Zhukovsky’s close involvement with the forestry industry, which is worth an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion annually, has led to speculation that his death might be connected with VTB’s lending activities in the sector.
Russia’s timber industry is particularly criminalized, analysts said, and it has been the center of some of the country’s most hostile corporate takeover attempts in recent years.
The situation has been exacerbated, said Andrei Yarashchenko, head of Greenpeace Russia’s forestry department, by the new Forestry Code that came into effect in January, which will terminate existing leases for timber companies and make way for new agreements. The companies are now competing with one another for control of the most lucrative leases.
“The rules developed by the government are not very clear about how it should be done,” Yarashchenko said, adding that poor government regulation attracts criminal interests.
But industry insiders said Zhukovsky did not court controversy, and they expressed skepticism that his death, which bore echoes of the brutal business dealings of the 1990s, was related to his professional activities.
“I really don’t think it was connected with his work. ... He was a fantastic person, full of life,” said Roman Shipov, an adviser at the Federal Forestry Agency. “His death is a huge loss, not only to us, but particularly to the banking industry.”

TITLE: Putin Supports Medvedev as Successor
AUTHOR: By Jim Heintz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin threw his support behind first Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as his successor on Monday, saying that electing him president would keep Russia on the same course of the past eight years.
There have been months of intense speculation on whom Putin would support to run in the March 2 presidential elections — along with the wider question of what Putin himself will do once he steps down.
Putin’s popularity and steely control is so strong that most observers expect that the candidate he supports would be a shoo-in.
He made the statement in a meeting with representatives of the United Russia party — which is his power base and dominates parliament — and of three other parties. The parties told Putin they all supported Medvedev.
“I completely and fully support this proposal,” Putin said, according to video on state television.
Putin had long been seen as trying to choose between Medvedev, a 42-year-old business-oriented lawyer and board chairman of state natural gas giant Gazprom, and Sergei Ivanov, another first deputy premier who built up a stern and hawkish reputation while defense minister.
“Medvedev is not an extremist. He is not known for any kind of harsh views on politics, and apparently Medvedev better suits Putin’s view of how to achieve continuity,” said Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Although Putin is banned by the constitution from seeking a third consecutive term in office, he has indicated a strong desire to remain a significant power figure. 
He has raised the prospect of becoming prime minister, and his supporters have called for him to become a “national leader” with unspecified authority.
Medvedev holds powerful positions but projects a mild-mannered public image and has been widely seen as an official devoted to Putin.
Putin reinforced that perception Monday, saying that electing Medvedev would pave the way for a government “that will carry out the course that has brought results for all of the past eight years.”
The Russian stock market surged on the news, led not only by Gazprom shares but also apparently boosted by the end of long uncertainty over whom Putin would designate as successor.
Some have speculated that Putin could eventually try to return to the presidency — a goal that could be easier if Medvedev succeeds him, said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a prominent liberal politician.
“If Putin wants to return in two, three years ... Medvedev will be the person who will without a doubt give up the path for him,” he said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Both Medvedev and Putin worked under St. Petersburg’s reformist Mayor Anatoly Sobchak in the early 1990s. After Putin became prime minister in 1999, he brought Medvedev to Moscow to become deputy chief of staff of the Cabinet. He then moved up to become deputy chief of staff for the president, was appointed to head Gazprom’s board in 2002 and became full presidential chief of staff in 2003.
In 2005, Putin named him a first deputy prime minister, and almost immediately Medvedev began to receive extensive television coverage — even more than that accorded to the prime minister.
The disproportionately lavish coverage raised speculation that Putin even then saw Medvedev as his preferred successor. But Ivanov later was appointed to another first deputy premiership and began to receive equally wide TV coverage, suggesting that Putin was conducting an unstated competition or that there was jockeying for influence among Kremlin factions.

TITLE: Navy Move to Petersburg To Cost $1 Billion
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Moving the Russian Navy Headquarters from Moscow to St. Petersburg will cost more than a billion dollars, Russian navy experts said.
The navy experts said this would be the minimum cost for the move, while independent experts said the figure would be twice as high, without even including the construction of secure headquarters to be used in the event of an attack, Interfax said on Monday.
The cost of the move was announced after the Russian Navy High Command prepared plans for the relocation.
“The development of this document was a forced measure, the answer to this summer’s order from the Russian Defense Ministry to prepare such a decision,” a source at the Naval Command told Interfax. 
According to the plan, by Dec. 31, 2009, the first group of 800 officers and admirals, headed by the Russian Navy’s commander-in-chief should arrive in St. Petersburg. By that time the building of the Admiralty should have undergone repairs and been provided with new lines of communication and reliable defenses.
However, many personnel within the Russian navy are critical of the idea. 
Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, who headed the Russian Navy Headquarters from 1998-2005 said the haste in the implementation of the project will lead to the project being more expensive, and damage the quality of works.
At the same time, Kravchenko said the main negative consequence of the decision would be the disturbance of coordination with the high Command of the country and other military forces.
“It will make it more difficult for the Naval Command to participate in the consideration and solving of general problems, as well as the problems that directly concern the navy,” Kravchenko said, Interfax reported. “And what about reports to the Defense Minister, the work at General Headquarters? Should the Navy Commander and other naval officers fly to Moscow every day?” he said.
Kravchenko said all developed countries try to locate military command boards compactly to provide efficiency and convenience of management. 
The coordination of military command boards should be carried out in single corridors or floors of buildings and without the need to fly to the capital, especially in view of the fact that in St. Petersburg the period of attack warnings amounts to about 15-20 minutes, he said.
The move may also worsen the problem of providing officers with residential apartments.
“We’ve now got 6,000 navy officers in St. Petersburg who don’t have apartments. In Moscow, this number is 1,750 officers. If the headquarters are moved to St. Petersburg the number of apartment needed for navy officers will greatly increase,” Kravchenko said.
Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, who oversees national and navy policy at the Federation Council, also expressed his negative attitude to the decision, calling it “inexpedient.”
“Making such decisions during reforms in the army and the navy, when there is a lack of money for the construction of apartments for officers and new ships, is not constructive and inexpedient,” Popov said, Interfax said.
Popov said he wasn’t against such a decision in principle, but did not understand the haste.
“We can explain it from the historical point of view — the Russian Navy was born in St. Petersburg and the Admiralty is here — but it’s incomprehensible from the timing point of view,” Popov said.
Current navy officers and admirals of the Navy Headquarters in Moscow are also critical of the plans. Only 20 admirals and officers of the headquarters expressed a wish to move to St. Petersburg for further service. 
About 200 officers at the headquarters took part in the survey, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Analyst: Vote Result Of ‘Political Purge’
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A “political purge” is the main reason behind the outcome of the Dec.2 parliamentary elections in Russia that resulted in the pro-Kremlin United Russia party winning 64.7 percent of seats in the State Duma, according to Grigory Golosov, a political sciences doctor at St. Petersburg’s European University.
“If the electoral mechanisms that Russia had back in 2004 still existed today, the results of the Dec. 2007 parliamentary elections would have been different, and the support for United Russia substantially weaker,” Golosov said.
Golosov spoke at a presentation of an international project focused on the elections held at the European University on Thursday. 
There he cited a series of amendments to the Russian law that he said have created a coordinated and powerful scheme aimed at preventing the opposition parties from having a strong presence in Russia’s political arena.
Between the 2003 elections and the Dec. 2007 vote Russia has banned political blocs and coalitions from participating in the elections, has increased the threshold for parties to pass in the State Duma to 7 percent, cancelled the minimum voter turnout and the option of voting against all candidates. 
At the same time, smaller parties had to re-register as organizations as they no longer meet the requirements: parties with fewer than 50,000 members or based in too few regions are now banned from elections. 
Of opposition parties in Russia, at least 17 have lost their status under the new law.
The transparency of elections in Russia has also suffered. Only party observers are allowed to monitor the vote, while access for independent Russian observers is restricted.
This year, Russia has also introduced a proportional representation system — also known as the party lists system — that requires candidates to run on a registered party list, in contrast to a majoritarian system that allows independent candidates to stand.
“Even though in the previous line-ups of the Russian parliament we saw most independent deputies easily conforming to the rules set by United Russia, the ruling party felt it would be safer to get rid of them in principle,” said Henry Hale, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, U.S. 
“It is much easier to manipulate and organize the deputies who belong to party lists than adjust to a variety of politicians. And with the independent deputies there was potential for trouble-making, however theoretical it may have sounded to some critics,” Hale said
Golosov stressed that although the competitive environment is clearly unfavorable for the opposition, the democratic parties — namely the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and Yabloko — should be considered directly responsible for their poor performance at the past elections.
During both the 2003 parliamentary elections and the Dec.2 vote, Yabloko and SPS failed to get representation. 
In this year’s campaign, Yabloko took just 1.6 percent of the vote, while SPS went away with a discouraging  0.96 percent.
The analyst said the Union of Right Forces (SPS) made a fatal mistake by incorporating leftist rhetoric in its campaign. Television commercials in one of the regions showed an elderly couple tempting others to vote for SPS for the sake of an increased pension and a more beneficial social package.
SPS performed well during a series of regional elections that were held in 14 regions of Russia in the spring and many experts had attributed the win to an appeal to voters from socially vulnerable groups dependent on the state and its social benefits.
Hale said that the SPS result was influenced by the fact that the current Russian government has enforced a series of successful economic measures that had originally been proposed and pushed by SPS, but have never been associated with the free-market party in the public eye. 
“United Russia claimed all the credit for the economy boost, and the reformers were helpless against the pro-Kremlin propaganda machine,” Hale added.
In the meantime, the U.S. expert said Yabloko’s mistake was what he called an overly critical attitude towards the Russian president and his team. 
In Hale’s opinion, harsh and radical criticism of the Kremlin made little sense in a situation where the overwhelming majority of ordinary people are happy with Putin’s presidency, and a more balanced approach would have helped to win greater support among the voters.
Talking to reporters in October, ahead of the parliamentary elections, Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky compared the campaign with a running race, where all the participants, except for the favorite, are hobbled. 
“State propaganda, biased media coverage, or no coverage at all, and administrative intervention at all stages — these are the realities of Russia’s current political landscape working against us,” Yavlinsky said.
“The future of the liberal parties is in their own hands,” Golosov said. “They have not done anything constructive and efficient over the past four years to win the voters’ trust, and if they continue in the same vein, then by the next parliamentary elections they will probably have ceased to exist altogether.”

TITLE: Bus Blast Kills 2 In Nevinnomysk
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-NA-DONU — A bomb exploded on a bus in southern Russia on Sunday, killing two people and wounding four others, officials said.
The blast occurred when a bus traveling from Pyatigorsk to Stavropol stopped at a station in the city of Nevinnomysk, about 1,050 miles south of Moscow, said Sergei Kozhemyaka, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry’s branch in southern Russia.
A duty officer at the regional police headquarters later said investigators had determined that the explosion was caused by a bomb. The officer refused to give his name, saying he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The explosion in the back of the bus killed two passengers and wounded another four, including one who was in serious condition, Kozhemyaka said.
An explosion on a bus in the same region on Nov. 22 killed five people and wounded a dozen others.

TITLE: National Bolshevik Activist  Awarded $22,000 by Court
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Russia to pay 15,000 euros ($22,000) to an activist with the banned National Bolshevik Party who was convicted of seizing a presidential administration reception office, the activist’s lawyer said.
The court ruled Thursday that Russia violated the rights of Vladimir Lind, who holds dual Russian and Dutch citizenship, under three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment, the right to liberty and security and the right to respect for private life, Lind’s lawyer, Dmitry Agranovsky, said Friday.
Lind was one of 39 members of the now-banned group arrested for briefly seizing the reception office in December 2004. Agranovsky filed a complaint with the Strasbourg-based court that Lind had been detained without sufficient cause and was held in inhumane conditions. “The court upheld all our complaints,” Agranovsky said, Interfax reported.
Russia is required to pay out the compensation under the European Convention on Human Rights, which it has ratified. The ruling concerning respect for Lind’s private life was “linked to the fact that Lind was not released to say goodbye to his dying father,” Agranovsky said.

TITLE: Brit Puts Operatic Twist on the Russian Experience
AUTHOR: By John Wendle
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Shooting Siberian rapids and whipping up the Altai on horseback: Neil McGowan sounds like a National Geographic adventurer, but he has made a successful career in Russia organizing these trips for others and sometimes doing them himself — with a little opera on the side.
McGowan, 47, is a cheery Londoner and the managing director of The Russia Experience, a tour operator that owns the Trans-Siberian and The Beetroot Backpackers brands.
Having a bachelor’s degree with honors in music from the University of London and a few operas already under his belt, McGowan was an offbeat choice to show tourists around Soviet Leningrad. But in the early 1980s, when the British government slashed funding for the arts, McGowan found himself having a hard time producing the operas he had been directing since the age of 19, and he needed work.
“In the good-ol’-bad-ol’-Soviet-ol’ days, I got the job for fairly poor reasons,” he said. “They [the tour agencies] were short of tour-leaders and they were desperate. ... All you had to do was attend a basic interview, and that was it. They were different times to now!”
After more than two decades working in the region, McGowan is no longer the choice of last resort but a seasoned professional. He has done three Tran-Siberian rail journeys from Moscow to Vladivostok and makes two or three shorter trips on the route every year to check up on contacts and ensure the quality of the route.
“I have to admit, I have a soft spot for Siberia,” he said.
After three years working in Leningrad, McGowan was transferred to Boston to a marketing position with EF Educational Tours, a job he stayed with for two years before again moving into freelancing.
McGowan spent the next decade in London, eventually setting up The Russia Experience, after some stops and starts.
“We focused on individual travel — on mountaineering, kayaking, backpacking, but there weren’t the numbers,” McGowan said.
It was at this point that McGowan dubbed himself a “destination specialist” and focused his efforts on Beetroot Backpackers and Trans-Siberian.
The firm eventually opened a Moscow office in 1997 and in 2000 McGowan moved full-time to Russia’s capital.
In the past seven years McGowan has seen his industry, and Russia as a whole, change repeatedly in response to new trends, and he has had to react.
“Moscow reinvents itself every two years,” McGowan said. “You’ve got to go with the flow and ride the punches.”
From extreme tours in Siberia, McGowan’s firm began to run tour packages with a flair for fun in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Kiev and places in between.
The “flair” included hard-to-arrange tours of such places as Stalin’s secret bunker; the “fun” meant group trips to Moscow’s legendary discos.
“If one thing didn’t work out, Neil would find another,” said Yelena Zakhtser, who worked for McGowan as a tour guide for five years. “He always has something new and interesting.”
Now, as interest in Moscow has fallen with rising prices, McGowan has again focused on expanding the rail and overland tours of Siberia while still running the city tours in European Russia.
Although he sees Siberia’s increased user-friendliness as a long-term trend for Russia’s tourist industry, there is little stability at present.
For all of the built-in unpredictability of his professional life, McGowan’s involvement in opera has been stable.
“Opera is one of the things that keeps me here on a personal basis,” he said of Moscow.
Since moving here in 2000, McGowan has created the Prozrachny Teatr troupe and staged eight shows including “Festival of the Female Voice,” “Berlin Decadence,” “Bastien and Bastienne” and a modified version of “The Impresario.”
The Prozrachny Teatr troupe, a group made up of many of the understudies from the Bolshoi Theater and others, is soon to open Menotti’s “The Medium.”
Echoing Chekhov, McGowan said, “Tourism is my lawful wife, but opera is my mistress.”

TITLE: Parents Petition Authorities Over Handicapped Children
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Members of the St Petersburg Organization for Deaf and Mute Children (ARDIS) have voiced concerns over the infringement of their rights, challenging City Hall and the Legislative Assembly to adhere to a set of proposals they authored last month.
The proposals consist of 11 principles which should be kept to, according to ARDIS, in order to prevent what it describes as systematic discrimination against disabled children in the education and social spheres. 
They include a call to introduce a dual educational system within state schools with a tailored program for every handicapped child. The current system has forced children to alternate between ordinary and specialized schools.
“Though deaf and mute children are able to integrate with others in mixed kindergartens or schools, they lack the environment necessary to get rid of speech and hearing difficulties, given the absence of individual approaches which take a minimum of five years to achieve results after preliminary treatment,” says a petition signed by parents and sent to the city’s executive and legislative branches. 
“Those who are lucky enough to have obtained treatment soon go back to communicating in gestures — rendering the treatment useless — when an individual approach isn’t taken and when there are no other children around for them to rehabilitate with,” the parents wrote. 
Valeria Olshanskaya, president of ARDIS, suggested the authorities concerned should give financial backing to the proposals. She said that the two different kinds of schools should be merged, more teachers, instructors and doctors should be recruited and kindergartens, schools and medical institutions should be provided with modern equipment.   
Seven-year-old Katya had hearing and speech implantation surgery October 15, after losing her speech when she was three, says her mother, Tatyana Skorodumova. She has noted a slight difference in her kid’s reaction to her surroundings, as “her sense of hearing is recovering, but I don’t expect a real improvement for a year as her development is hampered by the poor environment at her kindergarten,” she said.
Zalina Nikolayeva says she does not expect a full recovery for her daughter, who was born mute 4 years ago, for another 10 years. Her daughter, Anya, had an operation the same day as Katya at the St Petersburg State Institute of  Ear, Throat, Nose and Speech Research, using modern techniques and recently installed state-of-the-art equipment, according to  Yury Yanov,  the institute’s director. 
There are 5,000 deaf and mute children, including 847 deaf children with mental problems, in St. Petersburg and 1 million nationwide, Yanov said. 
Yanov said that one child in every 1,000 in Russia is born deaf, but the figure increases to 40 in every thousand among premature births.
Though the number of deaf and mute implantation operations and facilities is a tenth per capita of that to be found in western Europe, Yanov said that he is proud of his institute for having performed 191 operations over the past 10 years on patients from across Russia, with St. Petersburg residents accounting for just five operations per year on average. 
With a need for about 1,000 implantation operations nationwide, and 40 in St Petersburg alone, Yanov complained that the Health Ministry has only allocated funds for 230 operations over the last fiscal year, leaving 30 patients on St Petersburg’s waiting list. 
A City Hall representative speaking at the press conference said that the authorities planned to allocate 30 million rubles ($1.2 million) for the next budget year to address the issues raised by ARDIS and that the Legislative Assembly had guaranteed approval for the allocation. 
Parents speaking at the press conference, however, said that the funds were insufficient and that the authorities should develop long-term financial and strategic policies in line with their proposals.

TITLE: Kasyanov Selected as Candidate
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Despite having difficulties with holding a congress the night before, the Russian People’s Democratic Union managed to select its leader, Mikhail Kasyanov, as its candidate in the March presidential election.
Kasyanov, a former prime minister, was approved unanimously Saturday by an initiative group of 692 members at the Moscow Palace of Youth. He told the meeting that the country faced an important choice in the presidential vote.
“We are approaching a decisive moment: Either we follow the mainstream path of building a civilized state, or we continue to roll into the abyss where the current authorities are taking us — the dead end of totalitarianism,” Kasyanov said Saturday, Interfax reported.
On Friday evening, the delegates to the planned congress were denied entry to a conference hall that had been rented in Moscow’s International Investment Bank, and a smaller group was forced to hold their meeting in its offices, Yelena Dikun, an adviser to Kasyanov, said Friday.
“The owners of the conference hall told us that we could not use it, because our meeting was of a political nature,” Dikun said Friday.
This was not the first time that Kasyanov’s movement has run into venue difficulties. In early November, delegates were prevented from meeting in Tver when a conference hall booked there was closed for fire-safety reasons. Two weeks earlier, in October, a similar gathering was forced to evacuate a cultural center in Ufa after a telephone bomb threat. Delegates trooped over to a nearby hotel, which received a telephone call about a bomb minutes later.
Dikun said the incidents were politically motivated.
She said the movement would now collect the 2 million signatures necessary to have Kasyanov’s candidacy registered.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>German Visa Fraud</b>
BERLIN (AP) — An employee at the German Embassy in Moscow has been fired after authorities discovered that hundreds of visas were issued to people based on forged documents, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
The ministry discovered the case during a regular inspection of embassy operations, a spokesman said on condition of anonymity, confirming a report released by weekly Der Spiegel before its planned publication Sunday.
The embassy employee helped 1,259 applicants get visas for Germany with forged documents, Spiegel reported, adding that police had already tracked down 153 applicants who were granted those visas.

<b>Tymoshenko Vote</b>
KIEV (Reuters) — Ukraine’s parliament will vote Tuesday on whether to return Yulia Tymoshenko to her old job of prime minister and on appointing a Cabinet, the assembly’s speaker said Friday.

TITLE: Rubles Are a Girl’s Best Friend for Russia’s In-Crowd
AUTHOR: By Natasha Singer
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: MOSCOW — Americans who love celebrities follow the escapades of Lindsay Lohan. The British consume themselves with the romantic lives of their royals. But in Moscow, where raw political power and big money hold sway, it is the children and grandchildren of politicians and oligarchs whose love lives, fashion tastes and socializing are widely chronicled and followed.
They are women like Dasha Zhukova, 26, a doe-eyed brunette, who is the daughter of a Russian tycoon and reportedly the girlfriend of another, Roman Abramovich, 40, the billionaire who owns the Chelsea soccer club in London. She might turn up at a reception at Spaso House, the residence of the American ambassador here, or in Los Angeles with Abramovich to watch his team play David Beckham’s.
And they are women like the sisters known as “the Gorbachev girls,” Anastasia and Ksenia Virganskaya, 20 and 28 respectively, who are granddaughters of Mikhail Gorbachev and who recently appeared at a party here with Donatella Versace in gowns chosen by the designer.
These and other well-connected beauties are the It Girls of Moscow, part of a transnational jet set that shows up from Monaco to Ascot.
Entertainment programs on Russian television interview them. Local glossy magazines register their every heartbreak and hemline. And beginning next year, Tatler, the British society magazine, plans to start publishing its first foreign edition here, to focus on Russian socialites who, like Paris Hilton in the West, influence the handbags, the lap dogs and the taste in boyfriends to which other trend-conscious people aspire.
“We don’t have our own Angelina Jolie or our Britney Spears with the resources to wear fancy clothes,” said Ksenia Chilingarova, a poet and magazine editor. Chilingarova, 25, is an It Girl herself, the daughter of Artur Chilingarov, a deputy speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament and a polar explorer. (He gained international notoriety last summer for claiming a chunk of seabed under the North Pole for Russia.)
At 11 a.m. on a recent Friday, Chilingarova was dressed in evening attire — a common sight in Moscow because constant traffic jams prevent people from going home to change at the end of the day — for a party that night to be given by the crystal purveyor Nadia Swarovski. “The reality is that the children of famous people are so popular because they have the money to dress up, wear jewelry, travel to Paris and London and be photographed doing it,” Chilingarova said.
Indeed, the party pages of Russian editions of Harper’s Bazaar, Hello, OK!, Viva! and GALA are so popular that readers flip to the back to read them first, and to check out what local socials are wearing, said Shakri Amirkhanova, the editor in chief of the forthcoming Russian-language Tatler. Ten years ago, the wives of successful businessmen who spent a lot of time and money getting gussied up in flashy clothes, served as role models, she said.
“But now it is a new generation — I call them ‘the children of’ — who have influential lifestyles,” said Amirkhanova, 29.
Amirkhanova, who is the granddaughter of Rasul Gamzatov, a well-known poet, used to date Boris Yeltsin Jr., the grandson of the former Russian president, and has attended Paris fashion shows with Zhukova and other It Girls. “If they work in fashionable jobs, if they wear a mix of designer and high street clothes, if they go on spiritual retreats in Tibet and drink green tea and do yoga and have iPhones, other people will follow,” she said.
There is some historical precedent for this phenomenon. In tsarist times, members of the nobility followed the doings of the ruler’s entourage. And in some ways the new Moscow high society replicates the social structure of the old Soviet caste system, in which children of the nomenklatura attended the same elite schools and social events (although without blog coverage).
“Russia has always been a monolith state and Russians have always been obsessed with people in power,” said Nina Khrushcheva, an associate professor in the international affairs program at New School University in New York. Khrushcheva, a Nabokov scholar, is a great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier who was ousted in 1964. “So now it is a monolith state with tall, blond leggy girls who promote themselves as the children of power,” she said.
Like Tinsley Mortimer, the Manhattan socialite with her own handbag line, some of the young Russians are seeking ventures that are essentially brand extensions of their famous family names.
Zhukova designs a casual clothing line called Kova & T together with Christina Tang, a friend with whom she attended the University of California, Santa Barbara. The clothes sell at Fred Segal in Los Angeles and at Harvey Nichols in London.
One evening in November, Zhukova invited a reporter to her father’s town house in a historic district of the capital dotted with mansions that house embassies. She had lit a fire in a discreetly opulent living room scattered with antique silk carpets. Just back from a trip to Asia, she made a pot of green tea. The first shipment of her clothing line, which had just debuted here at the TSUM department store, had sold out in five days, she said.
“It’s for people who don’t need a loud piece to make them look fashionable,” said Zhukova of her pared-down jeans line, which eschews complicated stitching and logos. She was casually dressed in a striped bateau top, black leggings and ballet flats.
Zhukova said she also owns a gossip Web site — www.spletnik.ru — a kind of Russian answer to Gawker, with another friend, Polina Deripaska, the wife of the billionaire Oleg Deripaska.
That Zhukova lives mainly in London, where she said she is studying homeopathic medicine, and appears in Russia once or twice a month only increases her cachet among local society chroniclers.
She and Amirkhanova of Tatler were leaving the next morning for Tel Aviv to attend a match between the Russian and Israeli soccer teams (Russia lost). But Zhukova was loath to acknowledge that her jet-setting lifestyle makes her an object of popular fascination.
 “I guess any young girl who is more or less in society and who does a clothing line may become a style influence,” she said.
The Gorbachev granddaughters, both of whom work as editors at the lifestyle magazine Grazia, are also increasingly chronicled. They came to international attention several years ago when they attended a Paris debutante ball at the Hotel Crillon, one wearing Versace, the other in Dior. But the young women aren’t entirely at ease in their public roles.
“I feel uncomfortable in this dress,” said Ksenia Virganskaya, standing in the stairway of the Versace boutique late last month in a black tuxedo dress with white cuffs that she said Versace had chosen. She turned to show the back view of the outfit, which had originally been backless but was now patched with a large oval of white cloth. “I made them close it up before I would wear it,” she confided.
Virganskaya said she was about to leave for St. Petersburg to interview Catherine Deneuve for Grazia. Her younger sister, meanwhile, was preparing to fly off to an event at Versailles.
“It was not my goal to become a trendsetter,” said the younger Virganskaya. “But now people write, ‘Look at the Gorbachev girls, even their dog is a trendsetter.’” Other Muscovites have terriers, but the sisters have a toy dog called a papillon, she said.
Other It Girls inhabit the role more comfortably. Nina Gomiashvili, 35, a former child actress and the daughter of Archil Gomiashvili, a well-known comic actor and businessman, met a reporter at Gostinaya, a home-style cafe she owns that is decorated with hard wood floors and bird cages. At her new photography gallery, Pobeda (Victory in English), she presides in high style over the art openings dressed in Carolina Herrera or Loris Azzaro. The fashion photographers Ellen von Unwerth and Michel Comte each attended the openings of personal shows this year at her gallery, as did the Moscow A-list.
“I am a little bit privileged, I am from a good family,” said Gomiashvili, who has a blond pageboy hairdo. “But I don’t think your last name should work for you. I think you should work to make your last name memorable.”
Chilingarova, the daughter of the polar explorer, is also working on her brand. Next week, she plans to introduce her own magazine, called Pride, for and about the Russian jet set.
“It’s called Pride not like Pride and Prejudice, but like a pride of lions because, in Russian, our name for people who go out is social lions,” she said, using the Russian term for a social animal.
It was 1 a.m. on a Monday morning at the Hotel Metropol, in the V.I.P. section of the after-party for a national fashion design competition called the Russian Silhouette awards. Chilingarova was lounging on a sofa by a coffee table laden with platters of smoked fish, red caviar and bottles of Champagne. Next to her sat another Moscow It Girl, Nadezhda Mikhalkova, an actress whose father, Nikita Mikhalkov, is an Oscar-winning film director and whose grandfather, Sergei Mikhalkov, wrote the lyrics to both the old Soviet and the new Russian national anthem.
“We are not all dumb, we are not all blond, but it’s a hard job actually to go out and be photographed all of the time,” said Chilingarova, who was leaving later in the week for Paris to attend a charity fund-raiser called the Louis XIV ball. “You can get tired of being photographed.”

TITLE: Renault Awarded 25% AvtoVaz Stake
AUTHOR: By Anna Smolchenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Renault has emerged the winner to buy a 25 percent stake in AvtoVAZ as the French carmaker looks to reinforce its position in what will soon become Europe’s largest car market and help the Russian giant resuscitate its troubled Lada brand.
On Saturday, Renault president and CEO Carlos Ghosn and Sergei Chemezov, head of new state holding Russian Technologies, which includes AvtoVAZ, signed a memorandum of understanding in Tolyatti, agreeing to help revive the Lada brand and share technological expertise.
Renault beat out a number of competitors, and the move came as a surprise as many analysts expected companies like General Motors or Italy’s Fiat to be the front-runners. 
Renault’s negotiations with AvtoVAZ lasted the longest of all the bidders and the conditions of the deal changed repeatedly, said one industry source familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to discuss the deal with the media. That Renault finally emerged the winner may also be a sign that lobbying by French President Nicolas Sarkozy with President Vladimir Putin might have helped the French firm get the inside track.
“A major task, which we’ve been working on for two years, since Rosoboronexport assumed control of AvtoVAZ, is finally completed,” Chemezov said, Interfax reported Friday. “We have now decided with which company we are going to develop the auto industry.”
In 2005, the Kremlin handed officials at state arms trader Rosoboronexport, which has since been folded into Russian Technologies, the job of turning the company around. Initially, the company said cooperation with foreign partners would be limited to parts and equipment, but it later realized that AvtoVAZ, with its 40-year-old equipment and outdated designs, could not make it on its own.
The companies declined over the weekend to specify the price Renault will pay for the 25 percent stake, but Chemezov said the French carmaker beat out U.S. General Motors, Italy’s Fiat, Canada’s Magna and Germany’s Volkswagen by offering a “fair price, close to market price” and technological expertise. 
Renault chief financial officer Thierry Moulonguet said in a conference call Saturday that the market value of AvtoVAZ was $5.7 billion and that his company paid “reasonable multiples” for the stake, Reuters reported. Bloomberg estimated the stake at $1.36 billion, based on the carmaker’s market value of $5.44 billion Saturday evening.
Russian Technologies will form a joint venture with Renault to own 50 percent of AvtoVAZ, Renault said in a statement. 
Under the agreement, the companies will share manufacturing and marketing expertise and technology, carry out exchanges of executives and cooperate on engines and gearboxes to equip cars made by both companies, the statement said.
The French carmaker stressed that it would help develop the Lada brand “while respecting its identity, in order to maintain its leadership.”
The intention to boost the Lada brand, which boasts clunky small-car designs it inherited from Fiat 40 years ago, appears to be a sharp turnaround from the start of the talks, when Renault initially proposed to use AvtoVAZ facilities to produce vehicles under the Renault brand, the industry source said. AvtoVAZ initially termed the conditions “unacceptable,” but later agreed, the source said last week.
“We are ready to retain the individuality of the plant. It’s a win-win situation,” Ghosn said Saturday, RIA-Novosti reported.
The deal comes at a time when the automotive market in Russia is developing at an unprecedented pace and AvtoVAZ continues to bleed market share as foreign carmakers set up shop in the country. Renault, in cooperation with the Moscow government, already operates a plant in the city, and associated Japanese carmaker Nissan is building its own plant in St. Petersburg.
Renault hopes the tie-up will significantly enhance the Renault-Nissan alliance in Russia, which is expected to become Renault’s priority market.
Renault said it had agreed with AvtoVAZ and its shareholders that Lada sales volumes would be consolidated into sales figures for Renault, which would consequently revise its 2009 forecasts upward.
Ivan Bonchev, an automotive analyst with Ernst & Young, said this would help Renault boost its profits and further reinforce its global position. “Carlos Ghosn has very ambitious plans,” he said.
The Russian market is expected to overtake Germany’s in several years, to reach 3.5 million to 4 million cars sold by 2015, up from 2.3 million in 2007, Moulonguet, Renault’s CFO, told reporters. AvtoVAZ has the potential to increase its share of the Russian market to 40 percent from 30 percent, Moulonguet said, Bloomberg reported.

TITLE: New Interactive Ads Come to Local Malls
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: REMAR Group and MGA Ad Group have presented a new high-tech advertisement technology known as Interactive Projection Systems, which was installed last month in several shopping centers in St. Petersburg. Advertisement agencies expect this technology to become a popular option for large consumer companies.
A multimedia device equipped with infra-red sensors reacts to passers-by and sends a video signal onto the floor under their feet. So far MGA Ad Group had only used this technology in Moscow.
Pavel Galitsky, commercial director of REMAR Group, said that the company had signed agreements with Adamant and Macromir, two companies that operate extensive shopping areas in St. Petersburg.
“Several companies manage the majority of shopping centers, which makes the expansion of MGA Interactive Projection Systems easier. By signing agreements with the major market players, we will instantly reach the audiences of the majority of large shopping centers in the city,” Galitsky said.
The projection systems have already been installed in Nevsky, Kontinent, Mercury, Zanevsky Kaskad and Sennaya shopping centers. By the end of 2007, REMAR Group and MGA Ad Group plan to install the systems in St. Petersburg’s 12 largest shopping centers.
In spring this year, MGA Ad Group installed seven projection systems in Moscow, and by the end of October the company was operating 35 systems in the capital.
According to research carried out by Expert Data marketing agency, only 15 percent of visitors to the shopping center did not notice the systems, and about 20 percent instantly recognized it as an advertising ploy.
The majority of visitors (over 50 percent) perceived the new devices to be a combination of entertainment and advertisement, while about 25 percent perceived them merely as a form of entertainment.
“I saw this system at Mega shopping center. It’s an interesting solution. You involuntarily notice it because of the bright colors and its location right under your feet. That is the main advantage of the system. Its interactive format facilitates more creative advertising concepts,” said Anna Sizova, PR manager at Molinos.Ru advertising agency.
The popularity of the new systems will depend on the price of placing an advertisement, she said.
“Unusual visual methods are the main advantage of Interactive Projection Systems. Advertisement is turned into a game, which makes people interact,” said Anna Vendik, head of the PR department at Promaco agency.
Vendik was positive about the prospects of the new advertisement technology. She saw it as a useful option for image advertisement and promotion of commodities.
“With this system it is possible to create individual scenarios and video content, making advertisement unique and easy to remember. The picture can be projected on any surface, so the system can be used in practically any location,” she said.
Interactive Projection Systems have been in operation in the United States for the last five years, and normally 50 percent of the visitors to shopping centers demonstrated an interest in them, said Arkady Graf, general director of MGA Interactive.
In Russia, large consumer companies like Beeline, Samsung, Euroset, Sokol, Sony Pictures and Procter&Gamble already use the new technology, he said.
In St. Petersburg, advertisements will cost between $1,430 and $2,860 a month depending on the attendance of the individual shopping center.
The software for the projection systems was designed by BS Graphics, a Russian IT company. Video clips and special effects will be also produced by BS Graphics at a minimum cost of $2,000, Galitsky said.
All the projection systems will be connected into a network to allow monitoring and control. Advertisers will be able to order an advertisement and get reports on-line at any time. The organizers expect this to be a useful option for large advertisers who order advertisements in several cities simultaneously.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Real Estate Investment</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — TriGranit, a Hungarian developer, will invest about 20 billion rubles ($817 million) into real estate projects in St. Petersburg, City Hall said Friday in a statement.
According to the agreement signed between St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko and TriGranit Development Corporation, the company will construct a shopping and exhibition complex and a production studio complex in the city.

<b>$30M for New Terminal</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The National Container Company invested $30 million into a new container terminal at the Ust-Luga port in the Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported Friday.
Construction started in April 2007, and by the end of December two mooring lines will be completed. By the end of 2008 the terminal will be operating, processing 150,000 to 180,000 TEU. By 2019, $800 million will be invested into the terminal. Ultimate capacity is planned at three million TEU.

<b>Skyline Ready to Grow</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — In the second quarter of 2008, the first high-rise office center will be completed in St. Petersburg. The 75 meter-high RESO International Business Center will be located in the Primorsky district, said a consultant for the project, which is being managed by Maris Properties in association with CB Richard Ellis.
The 21-story center will offer 55,315 square meters of A-class office and shopping areas. 

<b>Web Plus Prices Slashed</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Web Plus telecom operator introduced new tariffs for corporate clients as of December 7, the company said Friday.
Internet speed doubled for unlimited and fixed tariffs, while prices remained the same. As a result, Web Plus tariffs are 30-40 percent lower than average tariffs on the market, the company said.

<b>Alcohol Sales Reviewed</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s government has prepared proposals to restrict sales of alcoholic beverages to specialized stores or separate sections in supermarkets to help fight illegal selling, Vedomosti reported.
Such a step would help in tracking the amount of beverages sold and comparing figures with production, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified government official.
The proposals may be presented to President Vladimir Putin if they are approved by the finance, economy and agriculture ministries and by the tax service, Vedomosti said, citing an unidentified official at the Finance Ministry.

<b>Kazakhstan Goes Green </b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said the government should impose so-called environment-protection taxes as the Central Asian nation begins to assert its national interests amid high commodity prices.
“We need to stimulate companies to make their businesses environmentally friendly,” he said Friday at a meeting of foreign investors in the capital, Astana. There should be “tough” requirements to protect the environment, he said, without elaborating on the size of the taxes.
The government is also considering banning imports of “obsolete” equipment and plans to establish emission quotas for each region of Kazakhstan, Environment Protection Minister Nurlan Iskakov said. He didn’t specify which emissions.

<b>Ford Shift Resumed</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co., the second-biggest U.S. automaker, resumed the second of three shifts at its Russian factory, where striking workers halted production last month.
“We have resumed production at the Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk on a two-shift basis,” spokeswoman Ekaterina Kulinenko said in an e-mailed statement Monday.
The factory, near St. Petersburg, turned out 300 cars a day before more than 1,500 employees went on strike over wages and working conditions on Nov. 20 for the second time that month. Ford resumed one-shift production Nov. 28.
Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford makes the best-selling Focus sedan at the factory. Sales of the model in Russia jumped 51 percent in the first nine months of the year to 67,546, according to the Association of European Businesses in Russia.

<b>Shoppers Assert Rights</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian consumers will be able to return defective goods more easily under an amended law that comes into force Dec. 12, Vedomosti reported.
The legislation protecting consumer rights will enable shoppers to return cars, household appliances or computers with any defects, the newspaper said. The current law permits only returns of goods with “significant” defects, according to Vedomosti.
The new law also will permit returns of goods if their guaranteed repair takes more than 45 days at a time or more than 30 days within a year, the newspaper said. International auto distributors may face more returns because their service centers lack capacity and parts, Dmitry Gulin, head of Russia’s car-dealers association, told Vedomosti.
The updated legislation also will require suppliers to pay compensation for delayed delivery equal to 0.5 percent of prepayment per day, the newspaper said.

TITLE: Russian Stocks Climb Despite Jitters
AUTHOR: By Tim Wall
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — After the virtual nonevent of the State Duma elections, it was back to business last week as Russian markets ticked up on the back of a flurry of deals and relief over gas price reform. 
Casting a shadow over investor sentiment, however, was the high-profile infighting in the Sergei Storchak affair.
The RTS and MICEX followed an upward trend in the United States, where the government’s mortgage plan on Thursday lifted stocks and eased fears that the U.S. economy could slip into recession.
The RTS gained 3 percent to end the week at 2285.85 points, just 2.5 points off its previous high, while MICEX was up 3.4 percent at 1913.38 points, just 4 points off its Nov. 8 all-time high. The country also experienced net fund inflows of $343 million in the week to Wednesday, according to data from EPFR Global.
The dealmaker of the week was state-controlled carmaker AvtoVAZ, whose parent company, Rosoboronexport, picked France’s Renault as its strategic partner on Friday. The Tolyatti-based firm’s stock soared 23 percent on the week as sentiment strengthened about a deal, particularly after a bid by General Motors was made public Tuesday.
Another significant deal last week was the $400 million acquisition of 40 percent of Highland Gold by Roman Abramovich’s Millhouse holding. The sale, which sent the London-listed miner’s stock up as much as 9.7 percent Tuesday, underlined recent moves to expand across a range of metals by Abramovich and fellow Kremlin-connected oligarchs Deripaska and Alexei Mordashov.
Unlike Deripaska and Mordashov, however, who have clashed this year over control of turbine maker Power Machines, Abramovich appears to have successfully steered clear of any major disputes — reinforcing his image as the country’s Teflon oligarch.
The week’s biggest relief for investors was the news Tuesday that domestic gas prices would be raised 25 percent to an average of $69 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2008, in line with the government’s reform plans. Fears had been mounting that the tariffs hike would be put off until after the presidential election.
The tariffs approval, along with a deal on a gas price hike for Ukraine and the news that the government had declared 31 gas fields “strategic,” sent Gazprom stock up 4.6 percent Wednesday, pushing it past Microsoft to become the world’s fifth-biggest company by market value.
Analysts saw the stocks rally as primarily gas fired, with Gazprom the main beneficiary. Independent gas producer Novatek also jumped 4.4 percent Wednesday, although it will also have to pay 19 percent more in transportation tariffs next year, another measure approved Tuesday. “It’s reassuring for investors to see no backtracking or populism on commitments to reach netback parity on gas prices with Europe by 2011,” said James Fenkner, managing partner at Red Star Asset Management. “We see a relief, pre-election rally ... continuing on into the first quarter, on the perception of lower political risk.
“Raising tariffs in an elections year can only happen when those elections aren’t really contested,” he added.
Gazprom also managed to shrug off a 25 percent fall in second-quarter profits Wednesday, with figures showing that it was having trouble keeping costs under control. Instead, investors focused on the upside of higher prices and demand rising at 20 percent annually.
Clemens Grafe, chief economist at UBS, said investors were “not too interested” in the disappointing figures. “In the long term, the liberalization of prices to netback parity by 2011 is what matters,” he said.
While Gazprom enjoyed a surge of 7.8 percent on the week, Rosneft — where three senior executives left last week, sparking talk of a wider shake-up at the top of the company — was up a more modest 4 percent.
If the gas price news was a relief for investors, the most worrying was the continued infighting among the Kremlin-connected siloviki, with two parts of the Prosecutor General’s Office publicly sparring over the corruption charges against Storchak, one of Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin’s deputies.
In a note to investors Thursday, UBS described the recent twists in the Storchak affair as “discomforting.”
At the heart of the dispute, analysts say, is likely the intensifying debate about the use of the $144 billion stabilization fund, which Storchak oversaw before his arrest. As of Feb. 1, the fund is to be divided into two — a “rainy-day” Reserve Fund, which will hedge against a fall in oil prices, and a “spend-now” National Welfare Fund, which will be used to fund infrastructure and other domestic investment projects.

TITLE: Lavrov Sees End To Polish Meat Dispute
AUTHOR: By David Brunnstrom
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRUSSELS — Poland and Russia expressed hope Friday that a long-running dispute over Moscow’s ban on Polish meat imports could be resolved in the course of a series of high-level diplomatic contacts mapped out amid warming ties.
“I think we’re on the right track,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a Brussels news briefing before a meeting with Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski aimed at normalizing ties that deteriorated under Poland’s previous government.
Sikorski said after the talks that Polish Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki would visit Moscow next week and that Lavrov had invited new Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to visit the city in the first quarter of next year.
Asked when a Russian ban on imports of Polish raw meat and plant products, in place since November 2005, might be lifted, he said Warsaw wanted this as quickly as possible. The rift between Moscow and Warsaw is holding up development of Russia’s ties with the European Union.
“No dates were cited, but the businesslike and very friendly ambiance of the meeting leads me to hope that in the course of the rich calendar of contacts that we have sketched out that the issue might be resolved,” Sikorski told reporters. “Everybody knows that a better climate of relations between the two countries can help resolve the issue and that is our hope.”
Russia cited poor quality controls for the meat ban. Poland called the move politically motivated and blocked the start of talks between Moscow and Brussels on a new strategic partnership agreement covering areas such as energy, human rights and trade.
Officials in Warsaw say Poland is likely to drop its opposition to talks on the EU-Russia partnership if Moscow lifts the ban, but it will not happen soon and Poland will still set certain conditions.
“We will definitely talk about this with our European partners and with Russia,” said Krzysztof Lisek, the head of the Polish foreign affairs committee. “Good relations between Poland and Russia are also good for relations between Russia and the EU.”
Sikorski also said Poland would consult with the Russians on the proposed stationing of elements of a U.S. missile defense system on Polish soil, which Moscow opposes.
He said a Russian deputy foreign minister would visit Poland to discuss the issue before the end of the year.
“We will make our decisions but we are willing to listen to our neighbors and their arguments,” Sikorski said.

TITLE: Rosneft Considers TGK-10
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Rosneft, Finnish utility Fortum and Gas de France are considering bidding for control of TGK-10, a source close to the deal said.
The three energy giants have signed confidentiality agreements allowing them to enter the company’s data room, which lays out information to potential investors, the source said Thursday.
Norilsk Nickel has also expressed interest but has not yet signed the agreement, the source said.
In February, TGK-10, or Territorial Generating Company No. 10, plans to hold a secondary offering of 633 million shares, equal to 136.55 percent of its share capital before the sale and 57.73 percent after. At the same time, TGK-10’s parent company, state utility Unified Energy System, will sell the government’s stake in the generator, equal to 255.56 million ordinary shares.
The company is being sold as part of a sweeping reform of the power sector, which will see all UES assets sold off by July with the aim of raising investment and introducing competition to the electricity market. TGK-10, which has a generating capacity of 2.8 gigawatts, provides power and heat to five regions of western Siberia, including Khanty-Mansiisk and Tyumen.
The firm is also attractive because of the size of its secondary share sale, the source said.

TITLE: Gazprom Up In Anticipation
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas export monopoly, rose as much as 2.9 percent after Russian President Vladimir Putin endorsed its chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, as his successor.
Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, gained 2.3 percent to 355.82 rubles at 2:36 p.m., valuing the company at 8.44 trillion rubles ($345.03 billion).
United Russia Chairman Boris Gryzlov proposed Medvedev, 42, as the party’s candidate at a meeting in Moscow today and Putin supported the idea, state television reported. Medvedev also serves as Russia’s first deputy prime minister.
Medvedev’s role in the energy industry makes domestic tariff increases and tax reductions more likely for energy firms, Julian Rimmer, head of sales and trading at UralSib Financial Corp.’s London office, said by phone from London.
“People think that tariff hikes for the energy companies are now more likely,’’ Rimmer said by phone from London. “People in the oil sector understand that for Russia to solve its production problem, it needs to stimulate production in Siberia.’’
The election is scheduled for March 2. Putin has pledged to stand down after serving two consecutive terms, the maximum allowed by the constitution.

TITLE: Imedi TV Station Reports Sabotage
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Georgian police smashed monitors and pulled out wires in a deliberate act of sabotage when they raided an opposition television station last month, managers said Friday after they were let back in for the first time. 
The Imedi station is operated by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and was at the center of a crackdown on the opposition that hurt President Mikheil Saakashvili’s democratic credentials and dismayed his Western allies. 
After pressure from Western governments, a Georgian court lifted an injunction that had barred Imedi from broadcasting. Police unlocked the gates at midnight Thursday, allowing staff into the three-story building. 
A reporter saw extensive damage to the studio’s main control unit. Monitors had been smashed, wires were pulled out and a protective panel had been ripped off. Other computers and equipment had been lightly damaged. 
“What I saw is total destruction,” the station’s general director, Lewis Robertson, said after inspecting the offices for the first time since the Nov. 7 raid. 
“Obviously people knew what they were doing. There is millions and millions of dollars worth of damage in this building. ... But I think and I hope that we are able to resume broadcasting by Monday.” 
There was a mood of jubilation among Imedi staff as police unlocked the gates at midnight. 
Journalists rushed toward the entrance of the building to reclaim lost property and inspect the damage. Later, they raised the blue and white flag of Imedi on one of the flag posts outside the building. 
“I feel like I have been reborn,” Imedi journalist Diana Trapaidze said. “This month without work has been a nightmare.” 
Saakashvili, a staunch U.S. ally, called a snap Jan. 5 presidential election after the protests, but Western governments have said they could not be considered fair unless Imedi was allowed to broadcast once again.

TITLE: German Business Optimistic On Russia
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Michael Harms, the head of the German business delegation in Russia, is putting much trust in Russia’s economic future. 
“The mood is very, very good,” he said in a recent interview in his office in Moscow. As the main reason, he identified high growth rates: “In the last two years, everything simply exploded,” he said.
While weak institutions and rampant bureaucracy still pose challenges, he said, constant improvements regarding the rule of law represent a positive trend. “Legal procedures are working, you can actually enforce your claims in the courts and firms have been winning legal battles against tax authorities,” he said.
And he identified the country’s largest economic drawback as an opportunity: “Infrastructure poses a massive challenge ... and this might offer opportunities to the German construction industry.”
Harms is the main political lobbyist for Europe’s biggest economy and Russia’s biggest trade partner. And his profile is set to rise after Dec. 14, when the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce Abroad is to be founded. Harms is designated to be elected the chamber’s CEO next spring. His organization currently has more than 500 member firms, of which 30 are Russian.
Harms, who is 43 and the father of two children, was born in Monino, in the Moscow region, where his father, an East German officer, was studying at the Soviet Air Force Academy. 
Although his mother is Russian, Harms said he does not like it when people say he has a special relationship with Russia, because his parents moved to Dresden when he was a few months old. 
He did move to Moscow, however, in 1985 to study international relations and Iranian studies. He returned to Germany in 1991 and two years later got a degree in political science from Berlin’s Humboldt University.
He has experience in dealing with the difficulties of economies in transition. Before coming to Moscow this summer, for seven years he was an executive in the influential Ost-Ausschuss of Germany’s business associations, the industry committee for Eastern Europe. From 2001 to 2003, he also served as executive secretary of the Balkan Stability Pact’s Business Advisory Council in Brussels. 
“He has extensive experience in the country and knows both the German and the Russian system very well,” said Regina von Flemming, CEO for the publishing house Axel Springer Russia. She added that Harms was both competent and kind and that he had very good social skills. “He is the right man for the right job,” she said.
As a business lobbyist, Harms believes that politics in this country currently has far too much relevance. “The ultimate goal must be that it is utterly irrelevant who is prime minister: If businesses need not bother to know his name — that would be ideal,” he said.
But he was adamant that the ongoing volatility was not disquieting business. 
“I do not sense any anxiety among our members. The prospect that Putin is going to stay in the political system has rather reassured our firms,” Harms said. 
He brushed off questions about corruption, saying it was more a problem for domestic firms than for foreign investors.
“A professional entrepreneur usually decides not to pay a penny, even if that makes him wait for a whole year,” he said.
Harms admitted that his role as an ambassador for German business was aided greatly by his country’s image here.
“German investors are seen as reliable, honest and interested in long-term relationships with the best know-how,” he said.

TITLE: Economic Expansion Continues
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The economy expanded an annual 7.6 percent in the third quarter, better than expected, suggesting that problems on global credit markets have not had a major impact on the country.
Gross domestic product growth followed expansion of 7.8 percent in the second quarter and 6.8 percent in the third quarter last year, the Federal Statistics Service said on its web site Friday. 
The data are not seasonally adjusted. 
“The effect of the global credit crunch was less significant than some feared,” said Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist at Deutsche Bank in Moscow. Capital investment and consumption were “strong and remained the main drivers of growth.”
The country is enjoying its ninth consecutive year of economic expansion, boosted by rising incomes and spending. Wages expanded at an annual rate of more than 10 percent every month since February 2006, reaching a monthly average of 13,540 rubles ($553) in October.
Fourth-quarter data are also likely to be “robust,” showing the resilience of the economy amid fears of a global economic slowdown, Lissovolik said.
The fallout from the U.S. subprime mortgage market collapse has rippled through the world financial system, raising borrowing costs and fueling concerns of a slowdown in Russia. Net capital inflow declined to $56.8 billion in the third quarter from a record $66.2 billion at the end of June, according to the Central Bank.

TITLE: Blast Does Not Mean Gas Cuts
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV — A blast damaged a major gas pipeline running through Ukraine, the second such explosion this year, but supplies to Europe continue to run smoothly, the pipeline’s operator said Friday.
The pipeline takes Gazprom gas from the Arctic Urengoi gas field, through the Urals and to Ukraine’s border with Slovakia. Gazprom supplies one-quarter of Europe’s needs, 80 percent of which goes via Ukraine.
Pipeline operator Ukrtransgaz said an explosion occurred Thursday evening near a compression station in central Ukraine, on the Urengoi-Pomary-Uzhgorod link.
“The incident did not affect transport of natural gas to European countries,” the company said in a statement.
“To secure the necessary volumes of transit during repair work, we have increased the volume of gas taken from underground storage.” It said it was investigating the cause of the blast.
Ukrainian state-owned energy firm Naftogaz said gas had been switched to the parallel Progress pipeline immediately after the blast and the damaged section had been closed.
The Ukrainian Energy Ministry said the damaged pipeline could be in operation again within two weeks.

TITLE: Chavez, Lukashenko Sign Agreement
AUTHOR: By Ian James
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez promised to supply the oil needs of Belarus for years to come Saturday, while President Alexander Lukashenko agreed to help Venezuela beef up its military.
As Lukashenko concluded his first visit to Venezuela, Chavez said both he and his counterpart were wrongly labeled “dictators” by Washington and their critics.
“The international media dictatorship ... calls him ‘Europe’s last dictator,’ and me the last dictator of Latin America. Here we are, the last dictators. But it’s written in the Bible: The last will be first,” Chavez said, laughing. “They demonize us ... [because] we’re leading a process of liberating our nations, uniting our nations.”
Venezuela and Belarus share similarly hostile stances toward Washington. The U.S. government labels the leftist Chavez a threat to Latin America’s stability and calls Belarus an “outpost of tyranny,” accusing Lukashenko of stifling dissent and free speech.
Chavez presented Lukashenko with a medal, and they signed an agreement pledging military cooperation. They did not discuss specifics publicly, but Chavez has expressed interest in buying an air defense system from Belarus equipped with radar and anti-aircraft missiles.
The two governments also signed an accord establishing a joint venture to produce oil and natural gas in the South American country.
“The oil your nation needs ... is here, as much as you need for 100 years, 200 years,” Chavez said during a ceremony at the Guara Este oil field in eastern Venezuela. “And here is the Belarus-Venezuela mixed company to share this potential and this wealth.”
He said the joint venture would operate at an oil field at Lake Maracaibo, one in the Orinoco River basin and three others. “In a few years, we can produce nearly 50,000 barrels of oil per day between us, and that oil will go to Belarus.”
The deal could be a boon to Belarus, which is reliant on Russia for its oil and gas. Under the agreement between the countries’ state-run companies, Petroleos de Venezuela SA will control 60 percent of the venture, while Belorusneft will take a 40 percent stake.
“We have a way to respond to this great gift the Venezuelan people have given us,” Lukashenko said through an interpreter. “I promise ... that we are going to do everything you say for your country, to maintain your sovereignty, guarantee your security and independence.”
Officials also signed a series of accords pledging cooperation in areas from mining to construction of public housing in Venezuela.
Although the United States remains the largest consumer of Venezuelan oil, Chavez said his country and Belarus both saw Washington similarly. “We resist being guided, dominated and bound up by an empire that aims to be the world’s owner,” he said.
Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said Friday that he did not see any problems concerning natural gas supply and prices with Belarus, because Moscow and Minsk have a five-year agreement in place.

TITLE: Ritzio Betting on Europe As Russia Restricts Gambling
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ritzio Entertainment Group, Russia’s biggest gaming company, plans to expand its presence in Germany and Italy and enter other European countries before gambling is restricted in its home market.
Ritzio has spent about $100 million this year buying 80 slot-machine halls in Germany, gaining between 1 percent and 2 percent of the local market, spokeswoman Larisa Shishkina said Friday by telephone. The Moscow-based company is targeting as much as 15 percent of the German gaming market and plans to add to its business in Italy, where it has a venture with a local operator.
Russia’s government passed a bill in December last year that will allow gambling only in four areas of the country from July 2009, including one in the Russian Far East and the exclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland. The bill was proposed by President Vladimir Putin following concern across the nation that gambling was undermining morals.
“We have always aimed to diversify geographically and become eastern Europe’s largest gaming holding,” Shishkina said. “The new law has pushed us to work faster and more dynamically.”
Ritzio, whose chains include Vulcan, Million and City Casino, is controlled by billionaire Oleg Boyko, ranked Russia’s 43rd-richest man by Forbes magazine.
The company generated $1.2 billion  in sales last year and has about 900 gaming salons in Russia, Germany, Italy, Belarus, Ukraine, the three Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Romania, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico, according to Shishkina.
Kommersant reported the German acquisitions on Friday.

TITLE: Stillwater Wins $2.6M Suit
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: WILMINGTON, Delaware — Stillwater Mining, the U.S. producer of platinum and palladium that is owned by Norilsk Nickel, has won a judge’s approval for a $2.6 million settlement of a five-year shareholder lawsuit.
Investors sued officials of Stillwater in Delaware Chancery Court and federal courts in New York and Montana in 2002, “challenging the accuracy of certain public disclosures” about financial results and ore reserves, according to court papers.
“Plaintiffs achieved what they set out to achieve,” said Judge Stephen Lamb in approving the settlement at a hearing Friday. He awarded lawyers who filed the complaint $50,000 in fees. A Montana federal judge must also approve the pact.
Stillwater, based in Billings, Montana, with $613.1 million in sales last year, is about 54 percent owned by Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest palladium miner. Stockholders who owned Stillwater shares from April 20, 2001, to April 1, 2002, are eligible to apply for part of the settlement fund. The money will be paid by National Union Fire Insurance of Pittsburgh, court papers show.

TITLE: International Hospitality Spreading Across Russia
AUTHOR: By Max Delany
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — International hotel chains are increasingly beating a path to far-flung cities around the country in a bid to meet increasing demand for rooms outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.
From Kaliningrad to Irkutsk, world famous brands, such as Radisson SAS, Holiday Inn, Hilton and Park Inn, are set to launch in these previously untapped markets, as they try to make business and leisure travel inside the country more convenient.
Traditionally lagging several years behind Moscow on the development curve, the regions are now making tentative catch-up steps as the country’s economic boom moves beyond the capital.
Rezidor, the largest foreign hotel operator in the country, entered the market 15 years ago. After heading to Moscow first, the firm expanded to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, then on to St. Petersburg and last year to Yekaterinburg. 
Now the company is set to open a succession of venues around the regions. The firm will be opening high-end Radisson hotels in Tyumen, Rostov-on-Don and Kaliningrad and midrange Park Inn hotels in Voronezh, Ryazan and Irkutsk.
“Some cities are more suited for high-end hotels and some for midrange hotels,” said Rezidor regional business development director Avril Hovland. 
Except for Irkutsk, the hotels are principally targeted at business travelers, Hovland said.
As for the split between guests, the regional hotels will look to scoop up the growing domestic demand, but some existing hotels have shown surprisingly high figures for foreign guests. 
“In Yekaterinburg we see a split of around 60 percent Russian and 40 percent foreign. This was higher than we expected,” Hovland said.
Unusually, about 40 percent of the revenues from the regional hotels will come from conferences and additional services they offer, Hovland said. In general, regional towns suffer a severe shortage in such facilities.
The company is even looking at installing Paulaner brewery bars in its regional hotels, after the impressive success of a similar project in Moscow. 
Proving its increasing commitment to the Russian market, Rezidor, which, instead of franchising, manages the hotels it opens in the country, has recently become the only hotel operator to open a fully dedicated branch office in Moscow.
One major problem is finding and training enough staff in regional cities, Hovland said.
Despite the company’s determination to see Russian managers installed eventually, general managers for the new hotels around the country are still being hired from Europe.
Although Rezidor may have stolen a march on its competitors in the regions, it is not the only major international company branching out, and it is expecting a sharp increase in competition.
In September, InterContinental Hotel Group opened its first regional hotel in Samara, and over the summer the firm announced plans for a 200-room Holiday Inn hotel in the central Siberian city of Novosibirsk.
Penciled in to open in late 2009, the hotel will be aimed primarily at business travelers visiting the country’s third-largest city. 
Samara and Novosibirsk “are two key Russian cities of importance to InterContinental because of their population size, in most cases international air connections, and vibrant economies,” said Michael Cooper, vice president for strategic development in Russia and Ukraine at InterContinental Hotels Group.
“We also will open Holiday Inn in Chelyabinsk in early 2008,” Cooper said. 
Unlike Rezidor, however, InterContinental does not manage the individual hotels around the country.
“InterContinental has expanded in Russian regions in partnership with local companies who have chosen to invest in InterContinental-branded hotels under our franchise or management flag,” Cooper said. “Over the next five to 10 years, we plan to see InterContinental-branded hotels broadly spread among all of the major cities in Russia.” 
These ambitious expansion plans are being mirrored by Hilton.
The parvenu hotel giants are keen to engage in large-scale nationwide expansion in the coming years and have ambitiously pledged to build 50 hotels.
Last week, the Hilton group announced plans to redevelop a hotel in Perm. The midrange, 104-room Hilton Garden Inn Perm will open in late 2008.
And Hilton’s move into the regions comes before the international chain has even opened its first hotel in Moscow. The Hilton Moscow on Leningradskoye Shosse is slated to open in March.
Consultants have long heralded the opportunities for potential commercial investors outside Moscow. 
“Russia’s growing business and leisure tourism market on one hand, and lack of international standard hotels on the other hand, create ample opportunities for major international hotel operating companies,” said Yevgeny Bezel, senior vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. “The country’s growing economy and eleven time zones are big enough to support any ambition.” 
And the impact that the opening of an internationally recognized hotel chain has is a big positive, Bezel said. 
“Every Russian city wants to have a developed infrastructure, including modern hotels which meet the requirements of today’s business and leisure travelers,” he said.

TITLE: Orco Group Records Triple Profits
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: PRAGUE — Orco Property Group, a real estate developer that operates in Central and Eastern Europe, said last week that nine-month profit tripled, bolstered by the earnings of a German unit and new projects in the Czech Republic and Poland. 
Net income advanced to 68.4 million euros ($101 million) from 22.9 million euros ($33.7 million) in the first nine months of last year, the Luxembourg-based company said in an e-mailed statement. 
That exceeded the $73.6 million  median estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. Sales surged to 213.3 million euros ($314 million) from 79.6 million euros ($117 million) a year earlier. 
Orco bought Viterra Development in June last year as part of a move to expand in German real estate. Rental revenue almost tripled to 39.6 million euros ($58 million), boosted by this year’s takeovers of Russian warehouse operator Molcom and Gewerbesiedlungs-Gesellschaft mbH, which leases commercial space in Berlin. 
Orco said it expected that its 2007 sales target of 250 million euros ($368 million)  “will largely be fulfilled” and that it aimed to boost revenue next year.

TITLE: Turkmen Resort Gets Under Way
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TURKMENBASHI, Turkmenistan — Locked away during Soviet times and later under the 21-year rule of Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan has been slowly opening its doors since Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov came to power a year ago. 
Last week, he officially opened construction of a complex in Turkmenbashi, where he plans to build dozens of new hotels, fountains, roads and parks. 
State media have touted the area as a tourist hot spot, but critics believe its long, cold winters and remote location dent its allure as a tourist destination. 
Berdymukhammedov said the government would earmark $1 billion for the project, not far from the Iranian border, while foreign companies including Russia’s Itera and France’s Bouygues have pledged to put in a further $4 billion. 
He vowed to introduce tax breaks for construction companies and easier visa procedures for tourists — a step forward for a country that was first in the former Soviet bloc to introduce a visa regime for other former members.

TITLE: Local Housing Analysis
AUTHOR: By Thomas Schafbuch
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — There is a massive housing shortage in the northern capital that will not be satisfied in the near future. In the first quarter of 2007 housing for sale on the St. Petersburg market totaled 4.77 million square meters, according to the 2007 Real Estate Overview of St. Petersburg by Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost. According to information from the State Statistics Service 1.1 million square meters of residential space was brought on stream in St. Petersburg between January and August, which represents a 28 percent rise over from the same period last year. Despite this increase demand is not even close to being satisfied. “In a city the size of St. Petersburg with a population of 4.5 million people there should be 4 to 4.5 million square meters of residential space going up every year,” said Konstantin Kovalyov, managing partner at Blackwood. Various government programs have been initiated to increase the amount of construction to an average of 3-3.5 million square meters annually, said Kovalyov. But even if these do come into fruition, it will still be below what experts believe is needed.
Building in St. Petersburg is complicated given height limitations and the fact that most of the city center is UNESCO-protected. Just like in Moscow, the St. Petersburg city government has made it an official policy to replace the city’s ‘khrushchyovki’ — Khrushchev-era temporary residential buildings at the end of their design life — and re-house residents in new apartments as close as possible to their original home. Yet this policy has not dissuaded people from continuing to buy apartments in apartment blocks slated for eventual demolition. “As of June 2007 the most popular apartments for buyers were in the Primorsky and Nevsky districts and in ‘khrushchyovki’ or newly built properties,” said Sergei Drozdov, general director at Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost. 
 
Acquisition and Rental Rates 
According to Knight Frank’s 2007 St. Petersburg Residential Report, the elite sector of residential real estate consists of 450,200 square meters in 3,460 apartments spread across 34 buildings and residential complexes. The most expensive elite property currently on the market is 37B Naberezhnaya Maloi Nevki in the Petrogradsky district, costing $16,136 per square meter, which for the sake of comparison is about $2,000 above the average cost of an apartment on the primary market in the central prefecture of Moscow, according to information supplied by Blackwood. But after that the prices fall abruptly to $12,357 per square meter at Stella Maris residential complex at 4 Ulitsa Dinamo and then continue to fall to $10,087 per square meter at the Olimpiiskaya Derevnya complex at 10 Vyazovaya Ulitsa. 
As for the rest of the market, acquisition rates are relatively standardized. According to Blackwood the average cost of an apartment is $3,250 per square meter. The biggest price difference is between the Moskovsky district ($3,240 per square meter average) and the Central district ($3,500 per square meter average) — a difference of just $260. Analysts at Blackwood expect prices to rise no more than 5-6 percent by the end of the year and for them to rise by 10-15 percent in 2008. 
Rental rates vary greatly depending on the region. For example the average rate for an apartment on Vasilyevsky Island is $1,220 per month, but across the Malaya Neva in the Petrogradsky district, that figure jumps to $2,580 per month. The average monthly rental rate in St. Petersburg is $1,700, according to a report by Blackwood. 
 
Defining St. Pete Elite 
There are no hard and fast criteria for classifying a residential complex as elite. Experts polled for this article agreed that the most prestigious location for elite real estate are Krestovsky Island and Kamenny Island which are both located in the north of the city on the other side of the Malaya Nevka from the Petrogradsky district. Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost goes a step further by breaking down elite-class real estate into two categories, A and B. Class A residential complexes are located on the ‘golden triangle’ bounded by Nevsky Prospect, the River Neva and Naberezhnaya Fontanki, or in the area around Tavrichesky Sad and Naberezhnaya Robespyera, or else in certain parts of the Petrogradsky district and Krestovsky and Kamenny Islands. If located in the latter, they must have a good view of the river. The requirements for Class B elite properties are less stringent. They are generally located in the historic center, but having an ‘exclusive’ tag for the location is less important. They are generally located in the Admiralteisky region (incorprorating the west of Izmailovsky Prospekt), the Petrogradsky district and historic areas of Vasilyevsky Island. According to Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost, Class A elite apartments cost between $12,000-15,000 per square meter while Class B cost $6,500 per square meter. Knight Frank’s report states that elite real estate on average costs $6,454 per square meter while for Moscow that figure stands at $17,657. 
 
Location 
The Primorsky district has continued to be a popular place for new construction, retaining its number one position from last year but the surprise of this year was Vyborgsky district, rising from seventh to second place according to Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost’s overview. A number of projects there are getting under way or have come on stream this year, such as Pragma House a 25-story, 17,108 square-meter mid-range residential complex at the intersection of Prospekt Prosveshcheniya and Ulitsa Kompozitorov, delivered in June. Prices for apartments start at 47,250 rubles ($1,900) per square meter. 
The most desirable places to live in St. Petersburg are the Central, Vasileostrovsky, Petrogradsky and Moskovsky districts. The first three owe their popularity to their central location and historic cityscape, while the latter, located in the south near the Pulkovo airport, is popular thanks to its well established social and transport infrastructure, said Kovalyov. 
 
Chinese Investment 
The lion’s share of investment is domestic or from Western countries, but new players are starting to enter the market. In September, Yevgeny Lukyanov, Presidential Envoy to the Northwest Federal District, announced that unnamed Chinese investors are investing $500 million in the development of a satellite town, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported. An additional $100 million dollars will be invested by an unidentified Russian source to bring the total figure to $600 million. The ability of the Chinese economy to capitalize on cheap labor to deliver goods at competitive rates has raised expectations that this may at last put cheap housing within reach, but unidentified experts warned that graft and government red tape are likely to cancel out any savings and create costs that will be passed onto the consumer, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported. 
 This is not the first Chinese project in St. Petersburg. Since 2005, The Shanghai Foreign Joint Investment Company has been developing a multi-functional complex on a 208- hectare piece of land on Zhemchizhi in the southwest suburbs of St. Petersburg in the Krasnoselsky district on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. The 1.76-million-square-meter project, billed the Baltiiskaya Zhemchuzhina (Baltic Pearl) will include malls, housing for around 35,000 people, hotels, parks, schools, clinics, libraries and other social infrastructure.

TITLE: Implenia Gets Russian Partner
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Implenia, Switzerland’s largest builder, said last week that billionaire Shalva Chigirinsky had bought a 2.7 percent stake and that a joint venture with the Russian investor’s building company was founded to develop Russian property and infrastructure projects.
Russian Land Implenia will be split evenly between the two owners, Implenia chairman Anton Affentranger and RLI chief executive Urs Haener said. 
Implenia is battling a takeover attempt by Isle of Man-based Laxey Partners. Switzerland’s Takeover Board delayed its approval of the bid Nov. 23, saying it needed more information. The two parties in the Russian venture are entering into a longer-term partnership that goes beyond the joint venture. 
“We chose Implenia because of its expertise in project management and a huge know-how in infrastructure,” Haener said at a news conference in Zurich. “We prefer to pay a bit more for the right quality.” 
Russian Land, majority-owned by Chigirinsky, bought a 2.71 percent stake of Implenia, and each company will appoint a representative to the other’s board. 
Chigirinsky is director and joint largest shareholder of London-based oil company Sibir Energy. 
Russian Land bought its stake at 39 francs ($34.75) per share, Implenia said. Haener, a Swiss citizen who previously worked at Sibir, called it a “fair” price.

TITLE: Commercial Property Investment Booming
AUTHOR: By Maria Ermakova
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investment in Russian commercial property may rise 20 percent this year as consumption rises on the back of economic growth fueling demand for shopping malls and warehouses, real estate broker DTZ Holdings Plc said last week.
Commercial projects will attract about $6 billion from investors by year end, the largest inflow for any central and eastern European country, said Nicolas Spiro, head of research for the region at London-based DTZ. Investors may bring in about the same amount in 2008, although that could decline “a little” if there is concern about global economic growth, he added.
“The improving macroeconomic climate is increasing spending power tremendously and bringing strong demand for shopping centers,” Spiro said at a press conference in Moscow last week. Russian cities “will continue to offer significantly higher yields than other European cities.”
Russia’s economy will expand by about 6 percent annually in the next years, fueled by private consumption and growth in retail trade, telecommunications and services, said Natasha Zagvozdina, deputy head of research at Renaissance Capital, a Moscow investment bank. Russia still trails other European states in shopping space per capita, she said.
Moscow, Europe’s largest city, has the potential to more than double its shopping space, Mark Jagger, managing director for Russia at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., said Oct. 16. The city increased the amount of space in its malls almost four-fold since 2002 and its “market is still big enough to absorb all kinds of” property products in the next years, Stefano Carosi, head of Russian investment at DTZ, said last week.

Yields
“We are very positive on Russia,” said George Schoenberg, co-chairman of the Russia Empire Plc property fund. “We are going into higher risk cities, but with higher returns because of lower competition and lower construction costs. Due diligence is key.”
Yields on Moscow prime office and retail space may slide to between 7 percent and 8 percent next year, still more than other central and eastern European countries, Spiro said in an interview Wednesday.
Moscow yields now are at 8 percent to 9 percent, giving a premium of 250 to 300 basis points above the rates in central Europe, he added. The yields in other Russian cities range from 10 percent to 11 percent, he said.
London-based Russia Empire next month will close a $150 million private equity investment into eight shopping malls in cities including Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg, a residential project and a hotel, Schoenberg said Wednesday in an interview. The fund plans to invest as much as $500 million annually in Russia and plans to raise about $300 million in an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange’s alternative market in June, he said.
Most Attractive Cities
St. Petersburg and Samara will be most attractive cities for investment in Russian retail property until 2009, with Samara and Rostov-on-Don surpassing St. Petersburg as the most lucrative markets afterwards, Spiro said Wednesday.
Samara, based on the Volga river in central Russia, will boost its retail space five-fold by 2009, and Rostov-on-Don will nearly double, according to DTZ. Novosibirsk, called the capital of Siberia, will increase its shopping space 10-fold over the same time and will still have a low amount of space per capita, the broker’s research shows.

Retail Growth
Russia’s $318 billion retail sector will expand by an average of 22 percent annually through 2011 and may increase 27 percent this year, as disposable income rises an average 10 percent a year, Zagvozdina said Wednesday in a presentation. Consumer loans will fuel further spending and may rise 56 percent to $122 billion this year, increasing a further 50 percent in 2008.
Russian food retail chains will open more outlets in regions where per capita income is growing faster than in Moscow, Zagvozdina said. Supermarket chains will double their market share in total food retailing by 2011 and superstores will almost triple their presence, raising demand for leased space.
X5 Retail Group NV, Russia’s biggest supermarket chain, plans to increase its sales space by almost a third this year and build a superstore chain in 2008. Carrefour SA, Europe’s biggest retailer, plans to open its first outlets in Russia next year, the companies said.

TITLE: Worn Out by Elections
AUTHOR: By Robert Coalson
TEXT: With the dust settling from the State Duma elections, all eyes have turned to the presidential election in March. But some in the Kremlin might be turning their thoughts to the presidential election in general — as in getting rid of it altogether.
One thing seems clear when one looks back at the presidency of Vladimir Putin from the early assaults on independent media, the Yeltsin-era oligarchs and the recent Duma elections: It demonstrates a clear, almost step-by-step progression toward a closed, unaccountable and authoritarian political system. And such a system can never be complete when a figure as powerful as this president serves, at least theoretically, at the pleasure of the people.
The model for this type of reform was established in 2004, when the presidential administration produced a series of reforms that essentially created the current political system. In addition to reforms that brought the Duma under control, the Kremlin abolished the direct elections of regional heads and replaced it with a new system according to which they are confirmed by local legislatures after being nominated by Putin. Since that reform was implemented in 2005, virtually all regional leaders have undergone the test of Putin’s confidence; disloyal ones have either changed their tune or have been replaced.
On the regional level, this reform created something of a perpetual-motion machine, as far as promoting the Kremlin’s interests is concerned. That is, loyal regional heads — with all their massive administrative resources — have no trouble maintaining legislatures dominated by United Russia. Those legislatures, in turn, have proven compliant rubber stamps to all of Putin’s “nominations,” a compliance enforced by the provision of the law that enables Putin to disband any legislature that rejects his candidate. The Kremlin’s control of regional administrations and legislatures could prove very handy if it decides to pursue major constitutional changes.
The Duma elections now set the stage for Putin’s inner circle to further strengthen the political system by instituting a system under which, for example, the president is confirmed by the Duma from a nominee or nominees put forward by the leading faction in the parliament. Or by the Public Chamber, which can easily be made even more compliant than it is now. Or by some process involving the already-tamed regional legislatures, a scenario that would give the impression of being inclusive without introducing the danger of actually being inclusive. Or the Federation Council, which represents both the Kremlin-selected governors and the tamed legislatures, could present the nominee.
Whichever variant is chosen, its main feature will be a closed loop involving exclusively United Russia and the bureaucracy.
Interestingly, the elimination of the direct election of governors was presented as a response to the wave of horrific terrorist incidents that rocked the country in 2004, a wave that culminated in the Beslan school hostage taking. Those terrorist incidents were exploited by the presidential administration to introduce radical reforms to the political system in the name of national security.
An analogous situation seems to be unfolding now. One of the main themes of the Kremlin’s Duma campaign was its often savage anti-Westernism. Putin’s national-security state was portrayed widely and consistently as the reliable bulwark against a tide of foreign enemies plotting the dismemberment of the country and the pillaging of its national resources. This fear mongering was perhaps best encapsulated by a Rossia television special report called “Barkhat.ru,” which was broadcast in prime time at least twice since the end of September and alleged that the CIA was using nongovernmental organizations and opposition politicians to foment a revolution in Russia.
This kind of rhetoric has continued unabated since the elections ended, with the radical Nashi group handing out leaflets in Moscow repeating the same allegations. Putin himself has hinted that the negative assessments of foreign election monitors were part of an effort to undermine Russia’s unique form of democracy. With the experience of Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan being constantly vilified in the state media, it is easy for the Kremlin to make the case publicly that elections themselves are the Achilles heel of Russian sovereignty. Taking such decisions out of the hands of the public can be depicted as a national-security measure.
There has been a wave of change-the-constitution analyses moving through the Russian infosphere in recent months. In one such piece, Mikhail Remizov, an analyst with the conservative National Strategy Institute, argued recently that a new constitution must be written that makes it clear that Russia is not a product of the Enlightenment. He argues that Russia must disentangle itself from the Western conception of human rights, which he argues have become “a master key for desovereignization.” The new constitution must be written in such a way as to make sure that human rights “will cease to be lever of political interference.”
In one of his first statements following the Duma vote, Putin brought up the issue of elections. “It is unfortunate that one election campaign here is piled up on top of another — the presidential one,” he said. “People are already tired of all sorts of political technologies and political advertising. Maybe the new Duma needs to think about how to divorce these two campaigns in the future. It is important that the country not get burdened with an endless series of elections.”
This statement has had analysts scrambling to determine whether Putin’s solution to this problem is to disband the Duma early and hold early parliamentary elections. Perhaps he would encourage the next president to resign early so that early presidential elections could be held, in which Putin himself might run for a third, nonconsecutive term. Or perhaps the president is thinking of a more wholesale and radical approach to the “burden” of elections.
For months now, journalists and Russia watchers have been asking Putin about the country’s political future, including whether he will run for a third term. And, although he has been evasive in his answers, he has also avoided, so far, openly lying. Maybe now is the time for someone to ask him point-blank whether he and United Russia are prepared to guarantee the protection of the people’s right to directly elect the president of their country.

Robert Coalson is a Russia analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and former editor of The St. Petersburg Times, based in Prague.

TITLE: Ending an Empire Over a Few Drinks
AUTHOR: By David Marples
TEXT: Sixteen years ago Saturday, the leaders of the three Slavic republics of the Soviet Union gathered at a hunting lodge in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha nature reserve near Minsk and signed an agreement that spelled the end of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine and Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus signed the Belovezh Agreement, which created the Commonwealth of Independent States, on Dec. 8, 1991.
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev maintained that the agreement was illegal, since it had been signed by only three of the 15 republics, and for four days after the Belovezh Agreement was signed, he continued to hold control over the Kremlin as president of the Soviet Union. But in the end, Gorbachev accepted the dissolution of the Soviet Union when he resigned on Dec. 25, transferring control of the Kremlin to Yeltsin.
The seeds of the Belovezh Agreement were planted several months earlier, during the failed putsch of Aug. 19 to 21. The State Committee for a State of Emergency issued a statement saying Gorbachev had become ill while on vacation at his Crimean dacha in Foros, and it dispatched tanks into Moscow to enforce its authority.
Badly planned and with little public support, the putsch failed ignominiously. But it led to a transfer of power in the capital from the Soviet president to Yeltsin, the newly elected president of the Russian Republic. Yeltsin took control over military forces on Russian territory. In addition, Moscow began to take away control of valuable assets and resources from the already depleted Soviet coffers, and the country quickly tumbled into a state of bankruptcy.
A few years ago in Minsk, I asked Shushkevich about Belovezh. Originally he had wanted to invite Gorbachev to the Belovezh summit, I was told, but Yeltsin insisted that the Soviet leader should not be present. As Yeltsin was the chief power broker by this time, Shushkevich could hardly decline his request. Yeltsin’s goal was simple: He wanted to remove Gorbachev from power. It was preferable for Yeltsin to render the Soviet leader’s position null and void behind the scenes.
Why did Ukraine attend the summit? The answer, Shushkevich said, was quite simple. For the first time in history, a Russian leader would be signing an agreement recognizing the independence of Ukraine and Belarus. Therefore, for Shushkevich and Kravchuk, the benefits were enormous.
Why were leaders of the other republics not invited? The official version was that Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev was on a flight to Moscow and could not be reached. Subsequently, Yeltsin claimed, Gorbachev dissuaded Nazarbayev from attending. The Kazakh leader later contradicted this version, claiming that he was excluded from the gathering because he was viewed as being too close to Gorbachev. As for the other Central Asian leaders, perhaps the Soviet tradition of presenting them with a fait accompli explained their absence. They duly joined the CIS later in the month.
As for the Belovezh meeting itself, according to an account by British political analyst Taras Kuzio, it took place over several rounds of vodka, which was to be expected in a hunting lodge once patronized by Brezhnev and his cronies. Yeltsin reportedly passed out at some point during the talks and had to be carried from the room by several bodyguards. Kravchuk and Shushkevich continued the negotiations late into the night.
It seems a fitting and even symbolic farewell to the Soviet Union where Gorbachev’s failed anti-alcohol campaign was still a recent memory. The CIS had no form and very little substance, but that was not the goal of the three leaders. Whatever the legality of the occasion, they had successfully deprived Gorbachev of his raison d’etre and destroyed what was left of his cherished Soviet empire.

David Marples, a professor of Russian history at the University of Alberta, Canada, is the author of “The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991.”

TITLE: Refugees Dreaming of Home in Hotel Charm
AUTHOR: By Matthew Collin
TEXT: The Hotel Charm isn’t really a hotel any more, and it’s definitely not charming. The hallways are scruffy, the stairwells are filthy, broken light fittings cast a pall of gloom across the corridors, and in winter it’s cold and damp. But for more than a decade, this dingy concrete block in Tbilisi has been home to around 25 families.
That’s because they haven’t got anywhere else to go. Their original homes are destroyed, abandoned or occupied by other people now. They’re just a few of the 250,000 Georgians who fled the war in the breakaway region of Abkhazia in the early 1990s: tolvilebi, which means refugees, or to be more accurate — internally displaced people. Georgia has one of the largest numbers of refugees in the world, according to the United Nations. Tens of thousands like them have been squatting in hotels, college dormitories, sanatoriums and even hospitals since the end of the war.
Marina is a mother of two who lives on the seventh floor of the Hotel Charm. When her hometown of Sukhumi fell to separatist Abkhaz fighters in 1993, she escaped across the mountains, walking through snow for a week. Since then, she has occupied a hotel room with seven of her relatives. “It’s good here,” she says cheerily. “We have electricity, heat and hot water.”
Some people who fled the war have managed to build new lives for themselves. But others like Marina, who still live in dilapidated temporary accommodation, sustain themselves with dreams that they will one day be able to return home. They’re encouraged by politicians who insist that they will regain control over Abkhazia. Mikheil Saakashvili, who is campaigning for re-election in the January presidential election, has promised that if he wins, the refugees will be able to go back safely within months. He has said his victory will represent “a ticket on a train to Sukhumi.”
Such populist rhetoric plays well with people like Marina. “First of all, we want to go back home,” she explains. “If that does not happen, they should allow us to stay here, or give us apartments. But first of all, we want to go back to Abkhazia.”
A couple of floors up, Laniku, an elderly widow, is a bit more skeptical. “I’ve heard a lot of promises but not a lot of truth,” she says. “We shall see what happens.”
For the young children playing in the dank corridors of the Hotel Charm, this is the only home they’ve ever known. Negotiations between the Georgian government and the Abkhaz separatists have been in deadlock for more than a year. For the hotel’s unwilling guests, that could mean that they won’t be able to check out anytime soon.

Matthew Collin is a journalist in Tbilisi.

TITLE: Putin’s Pretend Democracy
AUTHOR: By Mark H. Teeter
TEXT: Now that the pretend results from the pretend elections to the nation’s pretend parliament have been certified, the next order of political business will be the pretend presidential election in March. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer Muscovites pretend to believe in the democratic process. Go figure.
The country’s current campaign zeitgeist is seriously deflating traditional romantic perceptions of Russia’s inscrutability (riddle! mystery! enigma!). In today’s campaigning, we see “sovereign inscrutability” (repetition! intimidation! crooks!). After the reigning party’s leader indicates who the winner will be, a nice, competitive presidential campaign can begin. And once it does, we’re off to the pretend races again, with intensive pretend politicking flooding Russian airwaves, mailboxes and brainpans. You get pretend goose bumps just thinking about it.
The make-believe here has been all-pervasive. Perhaps the only authentic political noise allowed in the media just before and after the State Duma elections was the official Russian criticism of official U.S. criticism of unofficial Russian campaign practices. Whatever Russia’s (myriad) procedural blasphemies, here they had a point. The current U.S. administration traces its legitimacy to some extremely creative vote counting in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004, respectively. A few hundred dedicated international observers in those locales would have had a field day.
But if mutual electoral finger-pointing is now a rhetorical staple of “Cold War II,” that’s still no reason for Russian and U.S. citizens to abandon the political process. When my students next profess their fervent indifference to all things civic, I will say, “Wait: You can participate in elections — even the upcoming no-contest presidential contest — with both dignity and hope. And maybe even get some satisfaction.” I’ll add, “I know this from experience,” my eyes misting over, unfazed by a muffled chorus of “Uh-oh, he’s having another flashback.”
The 1972 U.S. presidential election was a mismatch of biblical proportions, with an idealistic but slingshotless David bravely running against an incumbent Republican Goliath so assured of his sovereignty that he could wiretap his opponents with impunity. He thought.
Democrat George McGovern was uncompromised, underfunded and not named Kennedy. End of story. President Richard Nixon, whose political career ran the gamut from contemptible to illegal, was cravenly wooing “silent majority” voters who distrusted unshaven, un-white and un-old Americans and supported the continued air-to-surface democratization of Southeast Asia.
This was the first election for five concerned young male voters sharing a co-op in Menlo Park, California. Setting aside the house basketball, we collected some campaign literature and a sample ballot, then dutifully sat down to figure out how democracy actually worked. Which was not as easy as we had thought: Not only were there several complicated state propositions to unscramble, there were some wholly mysterious elected offices to fill. We had not known that Redwood City had a harbor commissioner. In fact, we had not known that Redwood City had a harbor. Democracy was working already.
On the first Tuesday in November, we went off to vote for various people and against Nixon. Winning was not the point. We simply wanted to cast votes for peace and against crooked government — and make somebody official count them. We knew that someday we could tell our grandchildren (or our students) that we had done the right thing when the country hadn’t — and would take two more years to do it, in fact.
I genuinely enjoyed voting that day. As we left the neighborhood garage that served as our polling station, a housemate said I was beaming.
Indeed, as the world soon saw, the United States’ disheartening 1972 election was followed by a reheartening 1974 vindication, with the scoundrel in chief escaping Washington only two steps ahead of a constitution-crazed citizenry brandishing pitchforks and a bill of impeachment. And while the process is seldom that productive that fast, this was a hopeful lesson for young voters. Somehow, we sensed, the new president and the garage in Menlo Park were connected. Our protest had been registered — and unarguably, it had spread.
Now get out there in March, I’ll conclude, and vote for whomever you think is best, kids. No American should lecture you on electoral democracy. But remember the Menlo Park Five! Not only did we help dropkick the sovereignly undemocratic Nixon onto the compost heap of history, we almost got housemate Warren Dillon elected harbor commissioner. Imagine the possibilities.

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

TITLE: Vick Gets 23 Month Sentence
AUTHOR: By Larry O’Dell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RICHMOND, Virginia — Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison Monday for his role in a dogfighting conspiracy that involved gambling and killing pit bulls.
The suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback could have been sentenced up to five years by U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson. Vick, who turned himself in Nov. 19 in anticipation of his sentence, was wearing a black-and-white striped prison suit.
After Vick apologized to the court and his family, Hudson told him: “You need to apologize to the millions of young people who looked up to you.”
“Yes, sir,” Vick answered.
Vick acknowledged he used “poor judgment” and added, “I’m willing to deal with the consequences and accept responsibility for my actions.”
Federal rules governing time off for good behavior could reduce Vick’s prison stay by about three months, resulting in a summer 2009 release.
Before the hearing started, Michael Vick’s brother, Marcus Vick, sat with his right arm around their mother, comforting her as she buried her head in her hands and wept.
Vick pleaded guilty in August, admitting he bankrolled the “Bad Newz Kennels” dogfighting operation and helped kill six to eight dogs. He has been held at a jail in Warsaw, Va., since he voluntarily began serving his sentence.
In a plea agreement, he admitted bankrolling the dogfighting ring on his 15-acre property in rural southeastern Virginia and helping kill pit bulls that did not perform well in test fights. He also admitted providing money for bets on the fights but said he never shared in any winnings.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank called the sentencing “another step in his legal journey.”
“This is a difficult day for Michael’s family and for a lot of us, including many of our players and fans who have been emotionally invested in Michael over the years,” Blank said.
“We sincerely hope that Michael will use this time to continue to focus his efforts on making positive changes in his life, and we wish him well in that regard.”
At a news conference after pleading guilty last summer, Vick apologized to the NFL, the Falcons and youngsters who viewed him as a role model and vowed: “I will redeem myself.”
Court papers revealed gruesome details about Vick’s dogfighting operation, including the execution of underperforming dogs by electrocution, drowning, hanging and other means. Those details prompted a public backlash against the once-popular NFL star and outraged animal-rights groups, which used the case to call attention to the brutality of dogfighting.
Vick was suspended without pay by the NFL and lost all his lucrative endorsement deals.
Two of Vick’s co-defendants were sentenced Nov. 30. Purnell Peace of Virginia Beach got 18 months, Quanis Phillips of Atlanta 21 months. Another co-defendant, Tony Taylor, will be sentenced Friday.
The case began in April when a drug investigation of Vick’s cousin led authorities to the former Virginia Tech star’s Surry County property, where they found dozens of pit bulls — some of them injured — and equipment associated with dogfighting.
Vick initially denied any knowledge about dogfighting on the property. He changed his story after the three co-defendants pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the government.
By 8 a.m. Monday, about 50 people were in line outside the courthouse waiting for the doors to open. About two dozen animal rights activists stood across the street holding posters showing injured pit bulls and the messages, “Report Dogfighters” and “Dogs Deserve Justice.”
“We want to make sure the focus on the animals in this case isn’t lost,” said Dan Shannon, spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Julia Novak arrived with her small beagle, Frankie, who wore a sandwich board with the message on one side: “Dogfighters use dogs like me for bait.”
Ryan Eanes, 27, of Richmond, wore his No. 7 Vick jersey as he waited in line.
“We all make mistakes,” Eanes said. “I don’t support the situation with the animals, but I support him. I believe his apology is sincere.”

TITLE: South Korean Govt Slated Over Oil Spill
AUTHOR: By Jun Kwanwoo
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: TAEAN, South Korea — South Korea’s worst ever oil spill spread along a pristine coastal region Monday as the government came under fire amid charges it acted too slowly to limit the disaster.
Almost 9,000 troops, police and volunteers armed with shovels and buckets struggled to clean up the huge slick. But officials said it would deal a heavy blow to tourism and oyster and abalone farms in the area.
The crude oil had so far hit 160 marine farms out of a total of 445 in the area under threat, said Cho Kyu-Sung, an official of Taean county 90 kilometres (56 miles) southwest of Seoul.
“The damage will be enormous if you include long-term environmental expenses,” he told AFP.
Some 140 ships and five planes were helping, but the Coast Guard said the slick has already hit 50 kilometres of coastline, and more oil was expected to come ashore.
Park Myung-Jae, home affairs minister, said four townships would be declared a disaster zone, making them eligible for extra help and compensation.
Park vowed immediate aid of 5.9 billion won (6.4 million dollars) and said more state funds would be forthcoming soon.
Northwest winds were quickly pushing the slick south along the coast, said Lee Jae-Hak, of the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute.
“Damage was bigger than expected because of wrong weather forecasts by the authorities,” Lee told AFP.
“High waves and strong winds were the main cause. However, authorities failed fully to take seasonal winds into consideration after booms were set up.”
Lee said it may take months or a year to remove oil from the land surface, “but it will take four or five years to remove chemicals and other pollutants.”
About 10,500 tons of crude oil leaked into the Yellow Sea when a drifting barge carrying a construction crane smashed into an oil tanker Friday.
The barge’s cable to a tugboat had snapped during rough weather before it holed the 147,000-ton Hong Kong-registered Hebei Spirit in three places.
Officials reported difficulties contacting the tug captain to warn him of the imminent danger.
The captain, for as yet unknown reasons, did not receive a warning radio message about the tanker’s presence in the area, said Song Hee-Sun, a regional traffic official of the maritime ministry.
Officials then tried to call his mobile phone but when they finally got through, it may have been too late to prevent the collision, Song told AFP.
“He is under questioning by police. So we cannot say whether he is responsible or not,” he added.
The leak from the tanker, which was anchored eight kilometres off the coast, was only completely stopped early Sunday. The oil spill is about twice the size of South Korea’s previous worst such case in 1995. Newspapers alleged a slow response to the disaster, saying no lessons had been learned since then.
“Precious time was lost in preparing seaside communities for the impending ecological disaster,” a Korea Herald editorial said.
“Equipment to contain the oil spill was not distributed promptly, leaving villagers helpless as they watched the oil move ashore.”
The JoongAng Ilbo said it suspects “authorities tackled the accident in a loafing and idle manner.” Shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries, who operated the barge and tug, said the tanker’s owner would be able receive a maximum 300 billion won (326 million dollars) through an insurer to cover damage from the spill.
Samsung was responsible for compensating the owner, a spokesman told AFP.
“We are awaiting the outcome of an investigation by police. But we are basically responsible for the incident,” the spokesman said. “We will not swerve from our duty.”
“It is regrettable that it came under unfavourable circumstances.”
The Samsung group is already under official investigation over allegations that it had operated a huge slush fund to bribe officials in the past.

TITLE: EU Closer To Unity On Kosovo
AUTHOR: By David Brunnstrom
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRUSSELS — Kosovo Albanian leaders said on Monday they will start immediate talks with Western backers towards an independence declaration as the EU came close to unity in support of the province’s drive to secede from Serbia.
With a United Nations deadline for agreement on the future of the breakaway province expiring on Monday, Russia warned any unilateral recognition could trigger problems around the world.
Skender Hyseni, spokesman of Kosovo’s “unity team” in the breakaway territory’s negotiations with Serbia, said talks with Western powers would start on steps leading to a declaration of independence and subsequent international recognition.
Asked to clarify recent speculation on the timing of a declaration, Hyseni said it would be “much earlier than May.”
In Brussels, where European Union ministers arrived for talks on Kosovo, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told reporters: “There is virtual unity on Kosovo.”
“Apart from Cyprus, which has enormous problems with this ... all other countries are going in this direction,” said Luxembourg’s Jean Asselborn.
But Russia, which backs Serbia’s vehement opposition to independence and wants more negotiations, stepped up warnings of the potential fallout, saying a unilateral declaration could set off a “chain reaction” of problems worldwide.
“I want to stress that UDI of Kosovo and recognition of such independence will not remain without consequences,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after meeting the president of Cyprus on Monday.
“It will create a chain reaction throughout the Balkans and other areas of the world,” he told to reporters in Nicosia after talks with Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos.
Cyprus is the only member of the 27-member bloc that is insisting that sovereignty for the Serbian province must be backed by a UN resolution, EU ministers said on Monday.
The EU’s chief mediator, Wolfgang Ischinger, said on arriving to brief ministers that he expected intensive contacts between the EU and the Kosovo Albanians before decisions were taken in Brussels and Pristina.
“This is not a matter of many months, but it is also not just a matter of a few days,” Ischinger said.
Leaders of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority are widely expected to proclaim sovereignty from late January onwards. Serbia, backed by Russia, vehemently opposes independence.
Major powers in the United Nations Security Council are due to debate Kosovo on December 19, but Moscow has already said it will call for more negotiations — something the United States and the vast majority of EU states think is pointless.
Cyprus and to a lesser extent Greece have led a group of doubters within the bloc that at one time numbered half a dozen states concerned either because of their proximity to the Balkans or because of separatist movements on their territory.
“We are primarily concentrating on the precedent in international law,” Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou Markoullis said on Sunday, asked by reporters whether its concerns were linked to sensitivities over the decades-old dispute between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus.

TITLE: Mayweather Stops Brave Hatton in Tenth
AUTHOR: By Tim Dahlberg
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LAS VEGAS — Floyd Mayweather Jr. didn’t need to dance to beat Ricky Hatton. His fists proved a lot more potent than his feet.
Mayweather remained unbeaten Saturday night and retained his claim to being the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world by stopping Hatton in the 10th round of a brawl that featured none of the fancy footwork the American has shown in the ring and on reality TV.
Hatton wouldn’t let Mayweather move, but it didn’t matter as Mayweather used precision punches to wear down the challenger for his 147-round crown. Hatton kept trying to get inside and score points, but Mayweather had an answer for everything he did.
The end came after Mayweather landed a crushing left hook that dropped Hatton on his back in Mayweather’s corner. Hatton got up at the count of eight, but Mayweather almost immediately got him on the ropes and landed another flurry of punches to the head.
Hatton went down almost on a delayed reaction, while at the same time referee Joe Cortez moved in to stop the fight and Hatton’s corner threw in the towel at 1:35 of the round.
It was the first loss for Hatton, a brawler from Manchester, England, who did his best to do what no other fighter had ever done and break down Mayweather’s defenses. It was clear from the early rounds, though, that Hatton would have trouble doing that. Mayweather, fighting for the first time since beating Oscar De La Hoya in May, was able to pile up points and seemed to be cruising for an easy decision win when he shot out the left hook that was the beginning of the end for Hatton.
“I knew it was going to be tough,” Mayweather said. “That’s why I didn’t do anything halfway. He was definitely the toughest competitor I’ve ever faced.”
Mayweather (39-0) was ahead 89-81 on two ringside scorecards and 88-82 when he scored the thundering punches that both stopped Hatton and answered critics who said he was a boring fighter who fought defensively and rarely took any chances when it counted.
It was Mayweather’s hometown, but Hatton’s crowd at the MGM Grand hotel arena. A brass band played in the upper deck, among thousands of British fans who packed the arena and needed little urging to stand up with beers in hand to sing “There’s only one Ricky Hatton” to the tune of “Winter Wonderland.”
David Beckham sat ringside in the arena just down the street from where his wife was performing at the Mandalay Bay on the Spice Girls reunion tour. Those unlucky enough to not get tickets going for thousands of dollars watched it on closed circuit at several Strip hotels, while back home some 350,000 British homes were expected to spend about $30 for a pay-per-view broadcast that began about 5 a.m. in London.
Mayweather countered with a little star power himself. He was joined by fellow “Dancing With the Stars” competitors Mark Cuban, Wayne Newton and Helio Castroneves on his walk to the ring, an appearance that was roundly booed by most of the crowd, which also nearly drowned out with boos and whistles the pre-fight national anthem by Tyrese Gibson.
Unfortunately for Hatton, their vocal support wasn’t much help in the ring. There, Mayweather held all the advantages, and he gave Hatton a beating from the eighth round on when he caught him with a huge right hand and followed it with a series of head punches.
“I wanted to punch with power,” Mayweather said. “A couple of fights ago I gave my fans a dud, so I wanted to come back and give my fans a great fight.”
Hatton was on his back in the neutral corner for about 15 seconds after being knocked out, but got up and even took a microphone to thank his fans for coming.
“I felt really big and really strong, but I left myself open,” Hatton said. “He’s better inside than what I thought with all the elbows, shoulders and forearms he used.”
Hatton was cut over his right eye in the third round and though the cut didn’t bleed much he said it affected him mentally and that he wasn’t the same after that.
“I thought I was doing well in the fight until then,” Hatton said. “I don’t think he was the hardest puncher tonight, but he was more clever than I expected.”
Mayweather’s dominance was shown by ringside punching statistics that showed he landed 129 of 329 punches to 63 of 372 for Hatton. Even more telling was that Mayweather outlanded Hatton 78 to 26 over last five rounds, including a 32-6 margin in the eighth round.
Hatton was undefeated, just like Mayweather, but he had not fought the same caliber of fighters and many questioned how he would be able to get inside the vaunted defenses of a 30-year-old who has spent his entire life learning the fine art of boxing. Oddsmakers made him a decided underdog, though by fight time there was enough money on Hatton to bring Mayweather down to a 2-1 favorite.
The fight was lucrative for both. Mayweather was guaranteed $11 million plus a slice of any pay-per-view profits, while Hatton had a $6 million guarantee.
Hatton (43-1) was also moving up in weight, fighting at 147 pounds for only the second time, and fighting an opponent who was taller and had a reach advantage over him. If that wasn’t enough, Mayweather was universally regarded as both the best defensive fighter in the world and the best pound-for-pound fighter.
Hatton’s only real chance before the 16,700 who sang his praises from the opening bell, was to turn the fight into a nonstop brawl, and he did his best to do just that. He was always on the attack, trying to bully Mayweather into corners and against the ropes where he would have a better chance landing inside punches.
The fight was fought through a succession of clinches and emotions wore raw as the rounds added up. In the sixth round, Hatton threw Mayweather against the ropes and pushed his head between the second and third ropes, prompting Cortez to take a point away from the challenger.
Before the action resumed, Hatton showed his disgust by turning his back to Mayweather and sticking out his rear end.
Earlier, Cortez stopped the fight twice to lecture both boxers about using headlocks, elbows and punches behind the head in a mostly futile effort to turn the fight into some kind of a boxing contest.

TITLE: Trial Begins For Former Peruvian President
AUTHOR: By Monte Hayes
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LIMA, Peru — Former President Alberto Fujimori faces trial Monday on charges of using a death squad to kill leftist guerrillas and collaborators — a case stirring mixed emotions in a country where many admire him for defeating a bloody insurgency.
It is the first time in Peru’s history that a former president faces a public trial for crimes committed during his administration — and one of the few cases of a Latin American leader being tried after leaving office.
Fujimori is charged with authorizing a death squad to kill nine students and a professor at La Cantuta University in 1992, and 15 people in a tenement in Lima’s Barrios Altos neighborhood in 1991. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of some $33 million.
He also is charged with ordering the abductions of a prominent journalist and a businessman, who were interrogated by army intelligence agents and released. Fujimori, 69, denies involvement.
Elected in 1990, Fujimori initially received tremendous support for his crackdown on the Maoist Shinning Path guerrillas and his economic reforms, which ended hyperinflation inherited from the previous government and spurred record foreign investment.
But his government became increasingly authoritarian, intimidating news media, human rights groups and political parties.
In November 2000, he fled to Japan, as his government collapsed in a corruption scandal involving his former spy chief, Vladmiro Montesinos.
In 2005, Fujimori moved to Chile, expecting to be extradited to Peru on minor charges and hoping for the chance to return to politics in his home country. He apparently miscalculated: Chile’s Supreme court approved his extradition charges including human rights violations. The civilian militias that Fujimori armed to fight the Shining Path in remote jungles feel abandoned by the presidents who succeeded him, and are outraged that he is on trial.
“It’s not right if he had people killed in Barrios Altos like they say, but that is no reason to put him on trial. He did what he had to do,” said Jose Luis Farfarn, 33, head of the militia in the hamlet of Triboline.

TITLE: Barry Bonds Pleads Not Guilty to Perjury Charge
AUTHOR: By Paul Elias
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO — It was federal court, but it was still San Francisco, perhaps the only U.S. city where Barry Bonds would be greeted by a throng of fans. Baseball’s home run king smiled, waved and made eye contact with his supporters as he visited U.S. District Court on Friday for a whirlwind arraignment. The proceedings were a marked contrast to Bonds’ usually surly public persona.
Inside the courtroom, Bonds remained composed as a federal magistrate told him he could face jail time if convicted of the four counts of perjury and one of obstruction of justice.
The 43-year-old said little during the 30-minute hearing. He appeared relaxed as he smiled and chatted with his cadre of six attorneys. He then stood before the judge with his hands clasped behind his back and said: “I’m Barry Bonds.”
His lawyer entered a not guilty plea, and Bonds was allowed to leave without posting any bail money, though he’ll forfeit $500,000 if he violates the terms of his release or misses any required court appearances. A pretrial hearing was scheduled for Feb. 7, but Bonds may not have to attend.
If convicted, legal experts say Bonds could spend up to 2 1/2 years in prison.
He lingered for several minutes Friday to embrace and chat with an aunt while federal security officers scrambled to maintain order and keep the throng at bay.
As Bonds emerged from the courthouse, he waved to a small gathering of fans chanting “Barry, Barry.” Hundreds of cameras and tape recorders were shoved in his face, but Bonds coolly ignored them.
Instead he posted a statement on his Web site: “I still have confidence in the judicial system and especially in the judgment of the citizens who will decide this case,” Bonds said. “And I know that when all of this is over, I will be vindicated because I am innocent.”
Bonds’ new lead attorney Allen Ruby said he would soon ask a judge to toss out the case because of “defects” in the indictment. He declined to elaborate.
Prosecutors wanted Bonds to turn over his passport and restrict his travel to within the United States. But the judge declined after Ruby, in a sign that Bonds intends to play baseball next season, said such a restriction would interfere with his ability to make a living.
The indictment charges Bonds with lying when he testified he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs, even though prosecutors say he flunked a private steroids test in 2000. Bonds’ personal surgeon, Dr. Arthur Ting, collected the blood sample and is expected to be called as a witness if the case goes to trial.
Former Giants teammates and other players, including Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, also could testify at trial, which wouldn’t begin until late next year at the earliest.
Investigators also say they seized other evidence, including an alleged “doping calendar” maintained by Bonds’ personal trainer Greg Anderson, who spent about a year in jail for refusing to help investigators in their perjury probe of Bonds.
Anderson, who was released from prison after Bonds was indicted, still could be called to testify at the trial. His lawyer said Friday that Anderson will refuse, meaning prosecutors could ask the judge to send him back to prison for contempt.
Bonds’ new defense team, assembled in the days leading up to his first court appearance, is expected to attack the credibility some of the government’s key witnesses, including Bonds’ former mistress and a one-time business partner who had a bitter split with the slugger over memorabilia sales.
Legal experts also say the reliability of the drug test, seized during a raid of the BALCO steroids lab, will be subject to fierce scrutiny by Bonds’ lawyers.
Bonds, who made nearly $20 million last year playing for the Giants, was flanked by six private lawyers, including high-priced criminal defense attorneys Ruby and Cristina Arguedas, and noted appellate specialist Dennis Riordan.
Bonds, long represented by local attorney Michael Rains, added the new lawyers to his team for their federal court experience, which Rains lacks.
Arguedas and her firm represented several athletes called to testify before the BALCO grand jury, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Parrella told the judge there was “a potential conflict of interest with some of the attorneys,” though he didn’t name them.
Parrella said he would file court papers on the issue, which could be debated at the Feb. 7 hearing. If so, Bonds would be required to attend because he may have to formally waive any conflict concerns. Otherwise, the judge said Bonds could skip that hearing.

TITLE: New York Rangers End Devils Winning Streak
AUTHOR: By Ira Podell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Even though the New Jersey Devils had not lost in nearly a month, one could sort of see this defeat coming.
They rattled off four straight road wins, then swept a five-game homestand in building a nine-game winning streak that vaulted them from also-ran status to first place in the Atlantic Division.
Impressive? Yes. Dominant? Not lately.
The Devils’ run came to an end Sunday night, 30 seconds into overtime when Brendan Shanahan whistled a shot past Martin Brodeur to give the New York Rangers a 1-0 victory.
Two of the final three games of the winning streak went beyond regulation time, including a 4-3 overtime triumph versus Boston on Wednesday in which New Jersey fell behind by three goals in the first period.
On Friday, the Devils trudged through a 3-2 regulation victory against Washington, which has the fewest points in the NHL. Then they went to face the Rangers for a fourth time this season, after losing the first three, seemingly struggling to keep the streak alive.
“A little bit,” said Brodeur, who made 28 saves. “I think we knew we weren’t playing some great hockey. Even today, we didn’t play a great hockey game, but we got by again and we got a point.”
New Jersey will have a chance to start a new winning streak Monday when it faces the Capitals again, this time in Washington.
“We have to look at the positives. We had something special going,” Devils forward Patrik Elias said. “To get a point in 10 games in a row, that’s great. We’ve just got to let it go.”
In other NHL games Sunday, it was Detroit 5, Carolina 2; Calgary 3, Chicago 2; and Colorado 9, St. Louis 5.
The Devils (16-10-3) were disappointed after their first loss since another 1-0 defeat on Nov. 16 against the New York Islanders. They said the right things, but bidding farewell to the third-longest winning streak in team history and seeing it snapped by the Rangers definitely hurt.
New Jersey hadn’t lost four straight to its biggest rival since a six-game skid during New York’s run to the Stanley Cup title in the 1993-94 season. The Devils fell four short of matching the team mark of 13 straight wins.
“We have to find a way to beat these guys next time,” Devils captain Jamie Langenbrunner said. “But our focus now is to not let this one drag on and cost us another one.
“We got one (point) when we didn’t score a goal. So that’s a good sign, I guess. I don’t think we ever got wrapped up in the streak, so much. It just kind of happens.”
Henrik Lundqvist needed to make only 17 saves to record his fifth shutout this season. None of the stops came in overtime as Shanahan had the lone drive of the extra session.
Lundqvist’s biggest test came right after the game’s opening faceoff when Zach Parise had a prime scoring chance on New Jersey’s initial rush at 13 seconds. Lundqvist didn’t face another shot until he forced John Madden to go wide on a breakaway during 4-on-4 play, and denied a backhanded attempt with 7:33 left in the period.
Parise got two more pucks on net in the final minute, recording three of the Devils’ four shots in the first. After putting up nine in the second, the Devils were again held to four in the third.
“We’ve got to get back to playing our game a little better,” Langenbrunner said. “We’re making a few too many mistakes, missing too many opportunities, not getting enough pucks to the net. Seventeen shots is not enough shots in this league.”
The Rangers had been outscored 14-4 in losing their previous three, including a pair of home defeats this week in which Lundqvist uncharacteristically allowed four goals in each.
“We were worried too much about their game and got away from our game,” Elias said. “We were a little hesitant and didn’t pressure them enough. He’s been having a little bit of trouble, and we didn’t test him enough to see how good he is.”
Steve Valiquette took a 4-2 loss at Atlanta on Friday when Lundqvist rested for the third time in 29 games this season.
“I was thinking, ‘Get pumped up for this game,’ and it’s not hard to get that feeling going out there to play against the Devils and play against Marty,” Lundqvist said after his 12th NHL regular-season shutout — 82 fewer than Brodeur. “After the first period I felt like I was back.”
Lundqvist lowered his goals-against average to 1.94 and moved into a tie for the league lead with 15 wins.
“They always present a challenge to us, especially with them being on a nine-game winning streak,” Shanahan said.

TITLE: Prison Shelled in Mortar Attacks in Iraqi Capital
AUTHOR: By Lori Hinnant
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Mortar shells slammed into an Interior Ministry prison Monday, killing at least seven inmates and wounding 23, police and a hospital official said. Separately, a fire broke out at one of Iraq’s main oil refineries, but the U.S. military said it was due to an industrial accident, not an attack.
Iraq’s foreign minister, meanwhile, said a new security pact with the United States would set a time limit on the American troop presence, saying the government’s eventual goal was “to reach a level of preparedness that leaves us with absolutely no need for foreign forces to remain in the country.”
The mortar rounds hit a prison made up of several cellblocks, each containing prisoners accused of terrorism-related crimes or civil offenses, police said.
Police said American troops sealed off the area on the east bank of the Tigris River in central Baghdad. The U.S. military said it had no immediate information, and Interior Ministry officials could not be reached for comment on the attack, which struck about 200 yards from the main ministry building.
A hospital official said the inmates were sleeping when the mortar rounds hit, one landing directly on a cell and two others nearby. Casualties were sent to a hospital inside the Interior Ministry compound for treatment, the official said.
Black smoke billowed for hours after the fire broke out about 9 a.m. at the Dora refinery in southern Baghdad. It was built in the 1950s and is the country’s oldest.
Iraqi oil officials and the U.S. military initially said the plant had come under indirect fire, the military term for mortars or rockets. But the U.S. later issued a statement saying American forces had determined that a pipe had exploded as the “result of an industrial accident.”
Jihad said the plant was still operating, adding that a few firefighters and a refinery employee suffered from breathing problems after trying to extinguish the blaze.
The military said Iraqis and Americans arrived at the refinery shortly after the fire broke out and began to get the situation under control.
One of three main refineries in Iraq, the Dora facility — like most of the industry — is operating at half capacity because of pipeline attacks since the 2003 U.S. invasion, said Oil Ministry spokesman Assim Jihad. On Friday, a bomb exploded beneath a key pipeline outside the northern city of Beiji, home to the country’s largest refinery.
According to Oil Ministry figures from July, the industry suffered 159 attacks in 2006 by insurgents and saboteurs, killing and wounding dozens of employees and reducing exports by some 400,000 barrels a day. Such attacks have cost Iraq billions of dollars since the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Iraq had formally requested UN authorization for the U.S.-led presence in Iraq.
“We left an underline that the Iraqi government hoped that this would be the last extension of the mandate,” he said, adding the negotiations for a new pact with the Americans would be “the most important that Iraq has ever entered.”
He said the deadline for reaching an agreement was July: “There will be negotiations about the conduct of these (U.S.) troops and their rights, privileges and also questions of command and control.”

TITLE: Al Gore Accepts Nobel Award
AUTHOR: By Doug Mellgren
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OSLO, Norway — Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize on Monday and urged the United States and China to make the boldest moves on climate change or “stand accountable before history for their failure to act.”
“We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency — a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here,” Gore said in his acceptance speech.
Gore shared the Nobel with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for sounding the alarm over global warming and spreading awareness on how to counteract it. the UN panel was represented at the ceremony by its leader, Rajendra Pachauri.
“It is time to make peace with the planet,” Gore said at the gala ceremony in Oslo’s city hall, in front of Norway’s royalty, leaders and invited guests. “We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.”
The former vice president urged China and the U.S. — the world’s biggest carbon emitters — to “make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.”
His remarks came as governments met in Bali, Indonesia, to start work on a new international treaty to reduce climate-damaging carbon dioxide emissions. Gore and Pachauri plan to fly there Wednesday to join the climate talks.
The governments hope to have the new pact, which succeeds the Kyoto accord, in place by 2012, but Gore has said the urgency of the problem means they should aim to come to an agreement by 2010.
Before his speech, Gore said in an interview with The Associated Press that he believes the next U.S. president will shift the country’s course on climate change and engage in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
“The new president, whichever party wins the election, is likely to have to change the position on this climate crisis,” Gore said in the interview. “I do believe the U.S., soon, is to have a more constructive role.”
He said it was not too late for Bush administration to join efforts to draft a new global treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
“I have urged President Bush and his administration to be part of the world community’s effort to solve this crisis,” Gore said. “I hope they will change their position.”
The Bush administration opposed the Kyoto treaty on climate change, saying it would hurt the U.S. economy and objecting that fast developing nations like China and India were not required to reduce emissions.
The other Nobel awards — in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature and economics — will be presented at a separate ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.
Each Nobel Prize includes a gold medal, a diploma and a $1.6 million cash award.
The Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, are always presented Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of their creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.
In Stockholm, the winners of the science Nobels receive their awards Monday from Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf before being treated to a lavish white-tie banquet at City Hall.
The 2007 awards in medicine, chemistry and physics honored breakthroughs in stem cell research on mice, solid-surface chemistry and the discovery of a phenomenon that lets computers and digital music players store reams of data on ever-shrinking hard disks.
Three U.S. economists shared the economics award for their work on how people’s knowledge and self-interest affect their behavior in the market or in social situations such as voting and labor negotiations.
One of the economics winners, Leonid Hurwicz, 90, and the literature prize winner, 88-year-old British writer Doris Lessing, could not travel to Stockholm. They will receive their awards at later ceremonies in Minnesota and London, respectively.

TITLE: U.S. Tennis Team Faces Tough Davis Defense
AUTHOR: By Rebecca Bryan
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: PORTLAND, Oregon — The United States have reasserted their Davis Cup dominance, earning their 32nd title with a 4-1 triumph over Russia in the 2007 World Group final.
But captain Patrick McEnroe’s close-knit squad of Andy Roddick, James Blake and Bob and Mike Bryan, who claimed America’s first Davis Cup crown in 12 years, were barely done celebrating when they began looking ahead to the difficult task of retaining the title in 2008.
“It’s not impossible to repeat,” McEnroe said. “Look at the Russians - they reached the final this year after winning last year. It’s difficult, but not impossible.”
“I think this team is really dangerous,” said Bob Bryan, who teamed with twin brother Mike to crush Igor Andreev and Nikolay Davydenko 7-6 (7/4), 6-4, 6-2 in doubles and secure the victory on Saturday.
The Bryans had the chance to clinch the Cup thanks to singles victories on Friday by Andy Roddick and James Blake.
Roddick beat Dmitry Tursunov 6-4, 6-4, 6-2, and James Blake beat Mikhail Youzhny 6-3, 7-6 (7/4), 6-7 (3/7), 7-6 (7/3).
With the tie decided, Roddick sat out the reverse singles and Andreev beat Bob Bryan 6-3, 7-6 (7/4), then Blake rounded out the 4-1 victory by beating Tursunov 1-6, 6-3, 7-5.
Sweden were the last country to win back-to-back titles, in 1997-98. Russian captain Shamil Tarpischev predicted that trend toward diversity will continue.
“Undoubtedly,” he said. “A lot is decided by the condition of the players at the specific time. Especially since Davis Cup comes right after the largest tournaments, a lot will depend on the condition of the players and which ones are present.”
Tarpischev, for example, didn’t have Marat Safin for the final. The mercurial star, whose Davis Cup exploits included a decisive victory in the 2006 final, ruled himself out after crashing out of the Madrid Masters in October.
Tarpischev said that was just the nature of the Davis Cup.
“As far as Safin is concerned, we had the four strongest players available here,” he said. 
“The one thing is Safin might have strengthened the doubles team, but he didn’t end up being here,” he said.
Both captains said the choice of surface accorded the host nation was also key.
“I think it’s always better when you’ve got the home court,” McEnroe said. “But we did win two matches on the road this year, which is pretty tough to do.
“I think that was really the key to the year, was to win two away ties.”
One of those was a tricky first-round clash on clay against the Czech Republic in Ostrava.
“When we won that, I think we thought maybe things can break right for us,” said McEnroe, who guided a team to the title for the first time since taking over the captaincy in 2001.

TITLE: Two Koreas To Begin Talks
AUTHOR: By Kwang-Tae Kim
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — The two Koreas will hold high-level military talks this week to discuss a joint fishing zone and other projects aimed at improving ties between the rivals, the South’s Defense Ministry said Monday.
The militaries of North Korea and South Korea are scheduled to sign security arrangements for cross-border projects and consult on the fishing area around their disputed maritime border off the peninsula’s west coast, the ministry said in a statement.
Two-star generals will represent each side in three days of meetings starting Wednesday at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas.
This week’s talks come two weeks after the defense ministers of the two Koreas held their first meeting in seven years in Pyongyang.
The defense chiefs agreed on security arrangements for the first-ever regular train service across their heavily fortified border, which was set to start Tuesday.
But the two ministers failed to reach a consensus on the joint fishing zone, which was a key issue at their talks.
The proposed fishing zone, in an area where the two Koreas fought bloody naval skirmishes in 1999 and 2002, was part of an accord signed in October by South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
South Korea has proposed that the zone extend on both sides of the border, but North Korea has argued that it should only be to the south.
It remains unclear whether the two sides can produce any breakthrough in the issue in the upcoming talks, since they have long been at odds over the disputed maritime border.
North Korea does not recognize the current sea boundary, which was drawn unilaterally at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War by the then-commander of UN forces, and has long demanded it be redrawn farther south.

TITLE: Musa Qala Recaptured from Taliban
AUTHOR: By Amir Shan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan and international forces have retaken a southern town held by Taliban militants since February, the Defense Ministry said Monday. A Taliban spokesman said the militants fled to avoid civilian and Taliban casualties.
Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said Afghan, British and U.S. forces had “completely captured” Musa Qala, a town in the opium poppy growing belt of northern Helmand province. He said fighting was continuing around the town.
Afghan and international troops have stepped up operations around Musa Qala since early November, and fighting in the area has intensified in the last several days as forces advanced on the town.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said militant fighters left Musa Qala as a strategic decision to avoid Taliban and civilian casualties.
“Because of the massive bombings this morning, the Taliban didn’t want to cause more casualties, so this afternoon all the Taliban left Musa Qala,” Ahmadi told The Associated Press by satellite phone.

TITLE: U.S. Rejects 2020 Rich Nation Ecology Targets
AUTHOR: By Emma Graham-Harrison
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Washington rejected stiff 2020 targets for greenhouse gas cuts by rich nations at UN talks in Bali on Monday as part of a “roadmap” to work out a new global pact to fight climate change by 2009.
“It’s prejudging what the outcome should be,” chief negotiator Harlan Watson said of a draft suggesting that rich nations should aim to axe emissions of heat-trapping gases by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
He said that Washington wanted the December 3-14 talks, of 190 nations with more than 10,000 delegates, to end on Friday with an accord to start two years of negotiations on a new global climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
A draft final text by Indonesia, South Africa and Australia says evidence by the UN climate panel demands cuts of 25-40 percent by rich nations to avoid the worst impacts of climate change such as more droughts, floods and rising seas.
“We don’t want to start out with numbers,” Watson told a news conference, adding that the 25-40 percent range was based on “many uncertainties” and a small number of scientific studies by the UN Climate Panel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Other countries such as Japan are also opposed, fearing such stiff goals would choke economic growth.
The Bali talks are trying to agree the principles for a successor to Kyoto, which binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, by five percent below 1990 by 2008-12.
“Our opinion about Kyoto has not changed,” Watson said. President George W. Bush opposes Kyoto, saying it would damage the U.S. economy and wrongly excludes 2012 goals for developed nations, such as China, India and Brazil.
Bush says he will join a new global pact.
Yvo de Boer, head of the UN climate secretariat said that the 25-40 percent range would be “critical issue” at the talks. He said he considered the figure an important signpost to show where the world should be heading in curbing warming.
De Boer also said that all industrialized nations agreed on the need to agree a Kyoto successor at UN talks in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. Developing nations, wary of any commitments that might hit their drive to fight poverty, are undecided.
“This is the week the world has been waiting for,” said Jennifer Morgan of the London-based climate E3G think-tank.
On the margins of the main talks, about 40 deputy finance ministers held unprecedented talks about ways to ensure that efforts to slow climate change do not derail the world economy.
“Having the finance ministers meeting...itself is a breakthrough,” Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said.