SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1355 (19), Tuesday, March 11, 2008
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TITLE: Economic Links To Abkhazia Restored
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: TBILISI — Georgia decried Russia’s decision to restore economic and transport links to the breakaway Black Sea region of Abkhazia, which plans to ask Russia to recognize its independence, citing Kosovo as a precedent.
“This will be viewed as the economic annexation of Abkhazia, which is part of Georgia,” Temur Iakobashvili, Georgia’s minister for reintegration issues, said Thursday by telephone in the capital, Tbilisi. 
“This once again proves that Russia has a political and economic stake in the peace talks.”
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has accused Russia of backing separatist regimes in Abkhazia and another region, South Ossetia. Both regions broke away during wars in the 1990s and have pro-Russian leaderships and Russian peacekeepers. Saakashvili has pledged to bring them back under federal control. Most of their citizens hold Russian passports.
South Ossetia on Wednesday appealed to the United Nations, European and Russian leaders to recognize its independence, citing Kosovo. Abkhazia plans to ask Russia to recognize it as a sovereign state based on the same precedent, Abkhaz Foreign Ministry spokesman Irakli Tuzhba said yesterday.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced that the government would no longer honor a 1996 agreement on Abkhazia reached by the heads of the Commonwealth of Independent States that prohibited member governments from having economic relations and transport links with Abkhazia. 
The goal was to pressure Abkhazia into allowing people displaced by the 1992-1993 war to return home, the ministry said in a statement on its web site.
Russia called on other CIS members to follow its lead and restore relations with Abkhazia.
First Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov said removing the ban on economic ties to Abkhazia “isn’t in any way related to Kosovo” and doesn’t reflect a change in Russia’s “position on Georgia’s territorial integrity,” the Interfax news service reported.
Iakobashvili said the move was connected to Russia’s efforts to develop its Black Sea coast before it hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, located a short distance from Abkhazia. “Sochi is one of their main concerns,” he said.
Gia Khukhashvili, head of the Association for Georgian Economic Security, said Russia will never recognize Abkhazia’s independence.
“Abkhazians can see a brighter future right next door, with job opportunities, while Georgia has nothing to offer,” he said. 
“This is a clever business-related strategy, and it shows once again how ineffective Georgia’s conflict-resolution strategy really is.”

TITLE: Pastures New For Kremlin
AUTHOR: By Mansur Mirovalev
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia — President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that the West should not expect relations with Russia to be any easier under his newly elected successor, who is “no less of a Russian nationalist” than Putin.
Putin said many observers view Dmitry Medvedev as a more liberal politician and hope Medvedev’s presidency will help ease strained relations between Moscow and the West.
“Some of our partners can’t wait to see me stop fulfilling my duties so that they could deal with another man,” Putin said at a news conference after talks with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“But [Medvedev] is no less of a Russian nationalist — in a positive way — than me. And I don’t think it will be easier for our partners to deal with him,” he said.
Merkel later met with Medvedev, the first foreign leader to visit him since his resounding victory in Sunday’s election to succeed Putin. Merkel said she expected cordial ties between the two countries to continue.
“Putin just told us that with you, it would not be easier than it was with him. But I didn’t allow myself to say that I hope it won’t be harder,” she said.
Medvedev’s inauguration is scheduled for May 7. Putin is expected to become his prime minister, which is a more administrative governmental role but has led to speculation over how much power he will continue to wield.
Putin again warned that Kosovo’s independence would only encourage separatism in Europe. He also accused the West of trying to replace the United Nations with NATO.
“An endless expansion of the military bloc under modern conditions when there is no confrontation between two hostile systems — we can see that it is not only unfeasible but harmful and counterproductive,” he said.
Merkel rejected Putin’s assertion about the Western alliance.
“NATO does not want to become the second U.N., this is an alliance of absolutely defensive nature that is based on common values,” she said.
Russia has repeatedly warned that the West’s recognition of Kosovo’s Feb. 17 declaration of independence could fuel other separatist movements, particularly in the former Soviet Union. 
Nations that recognize its independence from Serbia, however, say Kosovo’s situation is unique.
Ethnic Albanians account for nearly 90 percent of Kosovo’s 2 million people. The territory came under UN and NATO administration after a NATO-led air war halted former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999.
Putin was a KGB officer in East Germany in the Soviet Union’s waning days and speaks fluent German — a fact that has contributed in the past to his friendly ties with German leaders. Merkel and Putin began their talks at the presidential compound on Moscow’s outskirts with some light joking about International Women’s Day — a major holiday in Russia.
“You thought up the holiday, but in Russia we do it in a big way. For us, it is a nationwide holiday,” he said.
The Kremlin said the two leaders’ discussions would focus on their economic ties and joint energy projects, particularly the prospective $7.3 billion Nord Stream pipeline from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany.
Construction of the 750-mile undersea pipeline is due to start in 2010. Nord Stream AG is controlled by Russia’s state gas monopoly Gazprom, of which Medvedev is chairman.

TITLE: More Calls Heard for Jailed Politician’s Release
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The tide of protest against the arrest of Maxim Reznik, the leader of the local branch of liberal party Yabloko, showed no sign of ebbing Monday as the prominent oppositional leader began his second week behind bars.  
The Prosecutor’s Office Investigative Committee officially charged Reznik on Friday. 
Reznik’s supporters say the case against him is “fabricated” and “politically motivated.”
Reznik has been charged under Article 318 of the Russian criminal code with “violence against a representative of authority [...] in connection with the discharge by him or her of his or her official duties” and with “publicly insulting a representative of authority” (Article 319).
The former offence is the gravest and punishable by up to five years in prison.
Reznik earlier described his detention as a “deliberate attack” against him, undertaken to prevent him from taking part in the Dissenters’ March, a protest against the manner in which the March 2 presidential elections were held that took place on March 3, and a political conference called the New Agenda for the Democratic Movement in Russia due to be held in St. Petersburg on April 6.
On Thursda, Reznik’s lawyer, Boris Gruzd, appealed the decision of Judge Olga Andreyeva who had ordered Tuesday that Reznik be detained for two months, for the duration of the police investigation. The St. Petersburg City Court is expected to rule on the appeal later this week, according to Alexander Shurshev, the local Yabloko spokesman.
“We put our hopes in the City Court, and hope that this preventive punishment will be revoked,” said Shurshev by phone on Monday.
Shurshev described the case as “political,” adding that Judge Andreyeva admitted it by implication.
“This is what the decision says directly; because [Reznik] is involved in social and political activities, he should be taken into custody,” he said.
“Even if the investigators deny any political motive, it is obvious.”
Protests demanding freedom for Reznik, who is in a pretrial detention center on 39 Ulitsa Lebedeva close to the Kresty Prison, were held during last week and included what activists described as a “flash mob” on Sunday when an estimated 100 to 150 protesters went to the garden on St. Isaac’s Square, just opposite the Prosecutor’s Office, and stood for 10 minutes demonstratively reading newspapers with articles about the Reznik case.
This form of protest was chosen because reading in public does not yet need special permission and protesters expected that other ways of protesting would be banned by the authorities. The police did not interfere.
On Monday, a rotating one-man picket to protest Reznik’s arrest began in Moscow, while daily picketing of the Prosecutor’s Office in St. Petersburg has continued since March 5. According to Russian law, one-man pickets do not require permission from the authorities.
Olga Kurnosova, the leader of the local branch of Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front, Yury Vdovin, a human rights activist and the deputy chairman of Citizen’s Watch and Andrei Dmitriyev, the local leader of Eduard Limonov’s banned National Bolshevik Party, among others, have taken part in the St. Petersburg picket in shifts.
According to Shurshev, 750 people have signed Yabloko’s petition to Russia’s General Prosecutor Yury Chaika demanding the immediate dropping of the case against Reznik and for the investigation and punishment of its initiators and executors. 
Signatures were logged both on the party’s website and at Yabloko offices. 
Nobody believes, said the petition, that “Maxim Reznik could have attacked the policemen. Nobody believes that his remaining free until the court hearing means there is a risk of him fleeing or putting pressure on witnesses.”
More protests in support of Reznik are being planned for this week, Shurshev said. 
Several international politicians, parties and foundations have expressed support for Reznik, including members of the Swedish parliament and members of parliament of Hamburg, Germany.
The Liberal People’s Party of Sweden, the European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity and the Netherlands-based Alfred Mozer Stichting foundation, which supports the development of social democratic parties in Eastern, South Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, joined the demands to release Reznik.
Reznik was detained outside Yabloko headquarters on 46 Ulitsa Mayakovskogo in the early hours of March 3, hours before the Dissenters’ March was scheduled to start. 
The circumstances of the detention are seen by Reznik’s supporters as highly suspicious. 
According to Reznik’s previous statements, he intervened in a street fight involving an acquaintance and former Yabloko member, Sergei Indenok. The police arrived at the scene instantly and seized both men, while those who had started the fight got away.
Reznik went on hunger strike immediately but stopped on March 6, upon requests from both his mother and Yabloko’s national leader Grigory Yavlinsky.

TITLE: Russian Arms Dealer Claims Innocence
AUTHOR: By Sutin Wannabovorn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BANGKOK, Thailand — A Russian businessman accused of running guns to the Taliban and bloody conflicts across Africa said he is innocent and wants to be freed from a Thai prison on bail, his lawyer said Monday.
Viktor Bout, 41, dubbed the “Merchant of Death,” was arrested Thursday in Thailand after a U.S.-led sting operation. He was charged with conspiracy for trying to smuggle missiles and rocket launchers to rebels in Colombia.
“My client denies all charges against him and says he has done nothing wrong,” Bout’s attorney, Lak Nitiwatanavichan, told The Associated Press. The lawyer planned to submit a bail request “as soon as possible,” saying he was waiting for a document to arrive from Moscow.
The United States is seeking Bout’s extradition, but he is being held in Thailand where officials are investigating whether he used the country as a base to negotiate a weapons deal with terrorists. 
Suspects can be held up to 84 days in Thailand without being formally charged.
If convicted, Bout could face 10 years in prison on the Thai charge, and 15 years in the United States.
The U.S. and UN officials have long identified Bout as a weapons smuggler whose alleged list of customers included former dictator Charles Taylor of Liberia, the Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, now known as Congo, and both sides of the civil war in Angola.
Bout also allegedly supplied arms to warring parties in Afghanistan before the 2001 fall of the Taliban’s Islamic regime.
To capture him, undercover agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration posed as rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, seeking to purchase millions of dollars in weapons.
A former Soviet air force officer, Bout allegedly built his contacts in the post-Soviet arms industry into a business dealing arms to combatants in conflicts around the world. He is generally believed to have been a model for the arms dealer portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 movie “Lord of War.”
Thai prison authorities say they are keeping him under special security at Bangkok’s Klongprem Prison.
“He was a soldier who knows how to use weapons and knows how to fight,” said Wanchai Rutchanawong, director general of Thailand’s Corrections Department.
“I have ordered special security measures,” Wanchai said. “Well-trained men will be surveying him around the clock.”
The Bangkok Criminal Court authorized an initial 12-day detention for Bout, which can be extended up to 84 days without formal charges filed.

TITLE: Youth Activist Says FSB Behind His Army Stint
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — An opposition activist who was drafted into the Army despite a medical exemption has been released from active duty after spending six weeks confined to hospital, he said Thursday.
Oleg Kozlovsky, the 23-year-old leader of the Oborona youth group and a fixture at anti-Kremlin rallies, said he would seek 100,000 rubles ($4,160) in compensation from the Defense Ministry.
Kozlovsky said his ordeal was a plan by the Federal Security Service to keep him from organizing and participating in rallies during State Duma and presidential elections.
“It’s the old Soviet tactics at work,” Kozlovsky said.
The FSB could not be reached for comment on Monday.
Prosecutors had begun investigating the incident, Kommersant reported.
Calls to military prosecutors also went unanswered.
Kozlovsky said a policeman and two plainclothes law enforcement officers stopped him outside his Moscow apartment building on Dec. 20, a national holiday dedicated to the security services on which opposition rallies had been planned.
He said he accepted their invitation to a local enlistment office, near the Izmailovskaya metro station, to answer a few questions, believing that the process would take only a few minutes.
But enlistment officers explained that he was being inducted into the army immediately. Kozlovsky’s protests that he was medically exempt were ignored.
A statement from the Moscow military district office at the time defended the decision, saying Kozlovsky’s medical claims had been examined and rejected and that he was illegally trying to avoid service.
A Defense Ministry spokesman refused immediate comment.
Police officers then bundled Kozlovsky into a commandeered minivan, and he was ultimately transported to a military base in Ryazan.
After three days of tests at a Ryazan hospital, beginning Dec. 25, supported Kozlovsky’s complaints of a physical condition, he was moved to a hospital in Moscow, where he was told he would be released “in a matter of days.”
But he waited over a week, until March 3, the day after the presidential vote, before he was released from the hospital. It was then another day before army officers signed his release papers, too late for him to take part in the Dissenters’ Marches.
“I would definitely have taken part in the march,” Kozlovsky said.
Kozlovsky said that, in addition to the Defense Ministry, he would also like to sue the FSB over the affair, particularly as police at the enlistment office told him the plainclothes officers who met him Dec. 20 were FSB operatives.
“The problem with that, as ever, is that there is no proof of FSB involvement,” he said.

TITLE: Donskoi Convicted, Then Freed
AUTHOR: By Alexander Osipovich
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Arkhangelsk mayor and would-be presidential candidate Alexander Donskoi was convicted Thursday of abusing his office and handed a three-year suspended sentence in a case he called politically motivated.
Donskoi, 37, was found guilty of dipping into city coffers to pay for bodyguards for himself and his family but was released from custody at Arkhangelsk’s Oktyabrsky District Court after spending eight months in detention.
He had faced up to seven years in prison, though prosecutors requested a three-year sentence.
Reached by telephone after Thursday’s verdict, Donskoi said he would appeal all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if he failed to clear his name in the Russian courts.
“What the court just read was complete nonsense with no basis in reality,” Donskoi said. “The only point was to remove me from the political arena.”
A spokeswoman for the Arkhangelsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office said she could not comment.
Donskoi said he was abandoning politics to spend more time with his family. “I honestly do not want to continue in public life because this is impossible in our country without the blessing of the Kremlin,” he said.
A relative newcomer to politics, Donskoi ran a chain of supermarkets in Arkhangelsk before being elected mayor in 2005.
In a separate case, Donskoi was found guilty last year of faking his university diploma, for which he got a one-year suspended sentence and was ordered to pay a 75,000 ruble ($2,900) fine.
In October 2006, he announced his intention to run for president in the 2008 election. His legal problems began several months later.
Donskoi blamed the legal attack on his rival, Arkhangelsk Governor Nikolai Kiselyov. He has also called it a warning to other independent-minded politicians against seeking the presidency.
The conflict between Donskoi and Kiselyov escalated in July when the mayor posted a video on the Internet showing a man resembling Kiselyov purportedly accepting a bribe. Kiselyov called the video a fake.
One week later, police burst into Donskoi’s apartment and dragged him out in his underwear. He was put in detention, and the corruption charges were filed shortly thereafter.
Irina Gorkaya, a spokeswoman for Kiselyov, said Thursday that it was Donskoi’s “personal opinion” that he was being persecuted by the governor.
Last month, Donskoi complained his case was being drawn out to run past Sunday’s presidential election. Many regions have seen squabbling between mayors and governors. Mayors are still elected, while governors have been appointed by the president since 2004.
Dozens of criminal cases have been opened against deputy mayors, small-town mayors and former mayors across the country in what political analysts call a campaign by the Kremlin and governors to instill greater loyalty.
In September, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group and a leading Russian human rights activist, called Donskoi a “political prisoner.”
The following month, Donskoi joined A Just Russia, the pro-Kremlin party created by Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov as a center-left alternative to United Russia.
Last week, Donskoi resigned as mayor, saying in a statement that “the lack of leadership was putting the brakes on Arkhangelsk’s development.”

TITLE: Petersburger Sets New Pancake-Eating Record
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A St. Petersburger has set a new Guinness world record for eating pancakes.
Andrei Smirnov, 33, ate 73 pancakes, or blini, in 60 minutes in the village of Lakhta, 20 kilometers west of St. Petersburg, on Thursday during traditional Maslenitsa or Shrovetide festivities.
The total weight of the pancakes Smirnov scoffed was more than two kilograms, Interfax said.
The senior judge of the Russian committee for the registration of world records witnessed the record-breaking blini binge. 
Smirnov said he didn’t feel bloated after the competition, in which he beat three challengers. Instead of fasting before his record attempt, the champion chomper said had eaten a good meal. 
The event’s organizers struck a patriotic note when they explained why they had decided to hold the record attempt.
“The majority of pancake records in the Guinness Book of Records today don’t belong to Russia,” one of the organizers told Interfax. “Englishmen compete by running with pancakes at high speed; in the U.S. they lift pancakes like weights; India set a record with the biggest pancake.” 
The organizers said it was about time Russia, the home of blini, had a pancake record of its own.
“A Russian saying says that the number of pancakes one eats during Shrovetide will equal the number of happy days one will have during the year,” the organizer said.
The competition was open to everyone, Igor Kirsanov, one of the organizers of the event, told Metro daily, but all the participants were men.
“We can’t imagine women claiming such a record. All the participants have been training for the contest for a month by eating pancakes at home,” Kirsanov said.
The competition, held in a local restaurant, lasted for an hour. Organizers cooked 1,000 pancakes weighing 20 kilograms in all. 
Participants were allowed to wash down the pancakes with tea or mors, a traditional berry drink.
Maslenitsa ended Sunday with Orthodox lent  — veliky post — beginning on Monday.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>University Protest</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — About 70 students held street-side lectures on Sunday in act of protest against the closure of the European University last month on fire safety regulations, Fontanka.ru reported
At the so-called “Street University” event, part of a general protest dubbed “Closed-Door Day,” the sudents divided into four groups and conducted a number of seminars under such titles as “the image of students,” “the role of students in society,” “student-led organizations with limited resources” and “the experience of student-led organizations.”
The authorities denied permission for further protest events on Monday, Fontanka.ru reported. 

<b>Colorful Trolleybuses</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Nearly 100 new trolleybuses decorated with garlands of flowers rolled out of trolleybus park No. 2 on Saturday to mark International Women’s Day, Fontanka.ru reported.
More than half the staff of state-owned trolleybus operator Gorelektrotransit are women, and managers decided this year to make public its celebration of Women’s Day with the colorful decorations. 
The buses were also decorated on the inside with painted windows, balloons and posters, Fontanka.ru reported. 
The decorations were put up mainly by the company’s male staff, including its director, the report said. 

<b>Merkel Teases Putin</b>
NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (Reuters) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel put President Vladimir Putin on the spot on Saturday, asking if the former KGB spy had cooked breakfast for his wife Ludmila to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Putin smiled awkwardly before taking a deep breath: “I prepared her present and we will have breakfast together.”
“Then breakfast means lunch?” Merkel quipped back at a meeting that took place after midday at the Novo-Ogaryovo presidential residence outside Moscow.
“Yes I suppose so. But it is Shrovetide too ... so we will have fun later today.” Putin snapped back.

TITLE: House on the Corner Linked Riga to Siberia
AUTHOR: By Patrick Lannin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: RIGA, Latvia — Pitch-black corridors, the stink of damp and peeling walls give the impression of a medieval dungeon: The Russian writing on heavy metal doors hints at the building’s true purpose.
This was the basement of the “House on the Corner,” the headquarters of the KGB in Latvia.
The building, a satellite of the notorious KGB headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad in Moscow, is soon to be vacated by the Latvian state police, and some are campaigning for it to become a place of remembrance for those who suffered during 50 years of Soviet occupation.
Former Soviet dissident Janis Rozkalns remembers being brought from his detention cell on the first floor to the basement, now full of old furniture and chunks of rusting metal.
“We walked past cells like this, the showers were at the end of the corridor where in the days of Stalin people were shot,” he said, standing in a disused detention chamber.
“I can only envision that there should be a memorial museum here,” said Rozkalns, who was arrested in 1983 for anti-Soviet agitation and sent to a Siberian prison camp. “I am very unhappy that this place is in a complete mess. History has been partly destroyed here.”
The KGB’s predecessor moved in 1940 after Josef Stalin forcibly incorporated Latvia into the Soviet Union.
Then began what Latvians call “the year of terror,” when there were mass deportations to Siberia and shootings in the basement of the House on the Corner.
Interrogations were on the sixth floor of the building, on the corner of what used to be Lenin Street and Engels Street.
Those who want it turned into a museum say authorities must ensure that the building, built in 1912, is not sold to a developer for commercial use. It originally housed apartments and shops before being taken over by the prewar Latvian Interior Ministry.
Any museum would complement the Occupation Museum, which shows crimes committed when Latvia was invaded and occupied first by the Soviet Union in 1940, then Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944 and again by the Soviets in 1944.
Russia claims that Latvia joined the Soviet Union voluntarily.
Richards Petersons, an historian at the Occupation Museum, said much research was still needed on what happened at the House on the Corner, and when and how many people suffered.
Its bloodiest period was believed to be in the first year of Soviet rule and in the early stages of the Soviets’ return.
“I think it has enormous historical significance,” Petersons said. “This place is unique in Latvia. There is no other building like it. Other museums of this kind are very impressive.”
The KGB museum in Latvia’s Baltic neighbor, Lithuania, is an important shrine to suffering and a tourist attraction.
Hungary’s capital Budapest has “Terror House” in the former secret police headquarters, which is devoted to the twin terrors of fascism and communism, though with more emphasis on the latter.
Rozkalns said visiting the basement again reminded him how his life felt at an end when his cell door slammed shut.
Though the execution of prisoners was a thing of the past when he was arrested, the building still inspired fear, he said.
“If someone got a call saying ‘come to the House on the Corner’ ... it was clear the absolute worst could happen to him, his family, his kids and his relatives,” said Rozkalns, who left behind two 3-month-old children when he was sent to Siberia.
Rozkalns was released from the prison camp in 1987, stripped of his Soviet citizenship and deported to Germany. 
He returned to Latvia after it regained its independence in 1991.
The basement is the only part of the building accessible to visitors before the police move out finally at the end of March.
Peepholes in the doors of a row of cells and in the wall show how the guards kept an eye on their prisoners.
In one cell is a notice board with documents in Russian detailing various administrative routines. Huge metal doors marked with “shelter” in Russian open off the corridors.
In one basement room old furniture is piled up. Lying on top is a plastic plaque of the founder of the Soviet secret police, Felix Dzerzhinsky.
In another cell is a pile of old boxes, some filled with used bullet shells. A police official is quick to say the bullets were not those used to kill prisoners during Stalin’s rule.
Helena Celmina, a detainee in the 1960s, recalls in her memoirs a bitter joke about the House on the Corner.
What is the tallest building in Riga?
The answer was The House on the Corner, because from its sixth floor you could see Siberia.

TITLE: Real Estate Awards Come to City
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: This year, for the first time the Commercial Real Estate Awards ceremony will take place in St. Petersburg to recognize the specific achievements of leading local developers and real estate professionals. 350 market players will attend the ceremony, which will take place on March 28 in Smolny Cathedral.
Annette Wassenaar, managing partner of Commercial Real Estate Awards, said that St. Petersburg companies have actively submitted their projects during the five years that the CRE Awards have been held nationwide.
However, recently the St. Petersburg market has undergone major changes that have led the awards committee to consider a separate ceremony. Last year 22 local buildings were submitted for the award, while this year the number increased to 50 buildings.
“Because of its historical aspect, St. Petersburg needs its own evaluation criteria. We cannot compare the buildings that are being built in St. Petersburg to buildings in Rostov or Chelyabinsk,” Wassenaar said.
Initially, St. Petersburg companies competed in just two categories — office and shopping centers. This year there are local projects in five categories — office centers, shopping centers, mixed-use projects, industrial premises and hotels. In addition, special nominations have been introduced.
Nominees for Person of the Year title include local entrepreneurs Igor Vodopianov (Teorema), Alexander Olkhovsky (VTB), Andrei Rogachev (X5 Retail Group, LEK and Makromir), Lev Khasis (X5 Retail Group), Alexander Sharapov (Becar) and Maxim Sokolov, chairman of City Hall’s Committee for Investment and Strategic Projects.
Colliers International, Jones Lang LaSalle, Becar, IB Group, Knight Frank and GVA Sawyer will compete for the title of Consultant of the Year, while Teorema, Renaissance Development, Adamant and International Logistic Partnership will compete in the Developer of the Year category.  The awards committee will also announce the Architect of the Year, Engineering Company of the Year and the Best Social Project. 200 market professionals cast votes, the results of which are being audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“The CRE Awards have a reputation for being the most transparent and honest awards. Possessing a CRE diploma makes it easier to negotiate with clients and prove your professional qualifications,” said Oleg Barkov, general director of Knight Frank St. Petersburg, which was named Consultant of the Year at the national ceremony last year.
Last year a number of local buildings received awards at the national CRE Awards ceremony, including the Apollo business center, Senator business center and Mega Dybenko shopping center.
“Just a few years ago I could barely list 5-7 high-quality business centers in the city when foreign experts inquired about the local market. Now we are seeing quite a different level of market development. The CRE Awards are a good evaluation tool for the companies and projects,” said Yury Molchanov, vice governor of St. Petersburg.

TITLE: Local Developer Sets Its Sights on Yekaterinburg
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — LSR Group, the St. Petersburg-based developer controlled by Russian billionaire Andrei Molchanov, will spend $300 million on acquisitions in the Urals region this year, Chief Executive Officer Igor Levit said in an interview.
LSR, a company that also makes building materials, will focus on Yekaterinburg and consider projects in Tyumen and Chelyabinsk, Levit said. In December, the company paid 50 million euros ($77 million) for Investproekt, the Yekaterinburg-based company that owns two land plots. LSR is in talks to acquire another site in Yekaterinburg.
“St. Petersburg will remain our base and we plan to keep our share of the market in northwest Russia, but the company’s strategic development is tied with regional expansion, especially in the Urals,” Levit, 36, said in the interview at his office in St. Petersburg on Thursday.
LSR is spending more than 70 percent of the proceeds from a $772 million initial public offering last November on projects in Russia and elsewhere in eastern Europe. LSR will use all of the money by the end of the second quarter, Levit said. The company will also borrow funds to finance its projects and may sell Eurobonds this year.
Molchanov created LSR in 1993 and now owns about 73 percent of the stock. Some of Moscow’s biggest developers are expanding in St. Petersburg, attracted by the prospect of higher property prices. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Glavstroi won a $1.1 billion government contract to redevelop part of the central district and is pursuing other projects in Russia’s second-largest city as competition in Moscow intensifies.
Fellow billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group bought half of St. Petersburg’s IVI-93 building company in February and plans to pursue development projects in the city.
“We are not concerned about the arrival of Moscow developers because not one of them has succeeded here before,” Levit said.
Residential real estate prices in St. Petersburg will increase by as much as 40 percent this year, according to a report by local consultant Peterburgskaya Nedvizhimost in January. Moscow developers may prompt smaller companies to leave the St. Petersburg market, Levit said.
The value of LSR’s real estate climbed 16 percent to $5.7 billion in the second half of 2007, independent consultant DTZ said in February.
In addition to developments in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the company is spending $880 million to build two brick and cement factories in the Leningrad oblast.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Water Rules Violated</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Northwest Prosecutor’s Office has identified 221 violations in the sea ports and water transportation system so far this year, Interfax reported Friday.
The Northwest Prosecutor’s Office filed 16 legal cases on violations of the Administrative Code and issued 13 warnings and 52 orders. Seven legal cases were referred to court. Most of the violations related to hazardous cargo transportation and licensing laws.
In 2006-2007 a total of 890 violations were identified in the Northwest region.

<b>Exchange Turnover Up</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The St. Petersburg Stock Exchange turnover increased in February by 24.3 percent compared to January, Interfax reported Friday.
Excluding standard contracts, the turnover of the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange increased to 703.1 billion rubles ($29.5 billion). Dollar turnover accounted for $13.15 billion — a nine percent increase compared to the previous month, while euro turnover increased by 40.8 percent up to 929.57 million ($1.4 billion).

<b>Mall To Open By 2012</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The multistory underground shopping center under Ploshchad Vosstaniya could open by 2012, Interfax reported Friday, citing St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko.
The project’s developer, Aditum, has spent $3 million on planning. The total cost of the project is estimated at more than $1 billion. The complex will occupy approximately 90,000 square meters, including parking spaces for 600 cars.

<b>Carlsberg Gets the Nod</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The European antimonopoly committee has given permission to Carlsberg to acquire a share in Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH) from Scottish & Newcastle, Interfax reported Friday.
As a result of the deal, Carlsberg will increase its share in BBH, which owns the Baltika brewery in St. Petersburg, to 100 percent and will become a controlling shareholder of Baltika.

<b>GAZ Goes Eco-Friendly</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — GAZ automotive group has begun selling Gazel cars equipped with engines that meet Euro-3 ecological standards, Interfax reported Friday.
The new engine is eight percent more powerful and four percent more efficient than the previous engine modification.

<b>FTS Told to Pay Arsenal</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The regional branch of the Federal Tax Service should return 25 million rubles ($1 million) to Arsenal industrial plant, according to a ruling by the Arbitration Court, Prime-Tass reported Friday.
The dispute between tax officials and Arsenal began in August 2006, when the Federal Tax Service announced back-tax claims and penalty fees of over 32 million rubles ($1.34 million) and confiscated 25 million rubles from advance payments made by the company made.

<b>Vlankas to Supply Ford</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co. plans to buy parts from AvtoVAZ’s main suppliers of car components after they move production to St. Petersburg, Kommersant reported.
Vlankas and other AvtoVAZ suppliers rented 3,500 square meters of space from Russky Diesel’s facilities in Vsevolozhsk near Ford’s Russian plant, the newspaper said Friday, citing Vladimir Kasparov, the director general of Vlankas.
Vlankas invested 7 million euros ($11 million) in a joint venture to supply Ford “in the near future,” Kommersant reported, citing Kasparov. Ford declined to comment on its plans to Kommersant.
BasEl Plans Gravel Plant</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element holding company will spend as much as $60 million to build a gravel plant in northwest Russia to benefit from a construction boom, Kommersant reported, citing the company.
Basic Element is also in talks to develop deposits of non-metallic minerals in Karelia, a region bordering Finland, and has taken control of a basalt field the Arkhangelsk region, the newspaper said Friday.

<b>Rusal, Onexim Concur</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — United Co. Rusal and Onexim Group agreed to a $300 million breakup fee should they fail to complete a sale of GMK Norilsk Nickel shares, Kommersant said, citing two unidentified people close to the deal.
Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who controls Onexim, may gain more from paying the fee and holding on to his 25 percent stake, Kommersant said. Norilsk’s value has risen since Prokhorov agreed the sale with billionaire Rusal owner Oleg Deripaska, the newspaper said.
Rusal plans to sign a loan agreement with banks in the next few days and close the Norilsk purchase soon after, Kommersant said, citing an unidentified official at the aluminum producer.

<b>Barrick Seeks Partner</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s largest gold producer, is seeking a Russian partner for a venture to develop mines in the country and bid for its largest untapped gold deposit.
Barrick would accept a minority stake in a Russian joint venture, Chief Executive Officer Gregory Wilkins said Thursday. The partnership would be used to try to secure rights to the Sukhoi Log gold and silver deposit when it comes up for government auction, he said.
“Russia is not a country we’d want to ignore in the future,” Wilkins said in an interview at the company’s Toronto headquarters.

<b>Ukraine Calls For Unity</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Ukraine’s government should stop clashing with President Viktor Yushchenko over natural gas talks with Russia because it undermines the country’s position, said Oleksandr Shlapak, a top aide to the leader.
Yulia Timoshenko, prime minister for the government, clashed with Yushchenko over an agreement the president reached with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Feb. 12. Under the accord Russian state natural-gas monopoly Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy, Ukraine’s state gas and oil company, will set up two joint ventures for importing gas to Ukraine and distributing it to Ukrainian consumers.
Timoshenko opposes the plan and wants Naftogaz to be the sole gas distributor across the former Soviet Union country.

<b>IMF Upbeat on Georgia</b>
TBILISI (Bloomberg) — The International Monetary Fund said Georgia’s plan to sell its first foreign-currency bonds this year will draw investors’ attention to the Black Sea country, whose economy is expanding for a fifth straight year.
“Georgia’s main motivation in launching its first foreign-currency bonds is to put the country on the international financial market map and to make investors more aware of Georgia’s excellent economic performance,” David Owen, a senior IMF adviser for the Middle East and Central Asia, told reporters Friday in the capital Tbilisi.
Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze, a former managing director at ABN Amro Bank NV, said last month that the former Soviet republic plans to sell $500 million in bonds this year. The government says Georgia’s economy may have grown 12 percent last year, up from 9.4 percent in 2006.

<b>Lukoil Buys Gas Assets</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Lukoil, Russia’s largest non-state oil producer, bought $580 million of oil and natural-gas assets in Uzbekistan to expand in the Central Asian country.
Lukoil will work with the Uzbek state energy company to develop seven fields, which may hold 100 billion cubic meters of gas and 6 million tons of oil and gas condensate, the Moscow-based producer said Friday in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service.
At least $700 million of investment will be needed to develop the project, Lukoil said.

<b>Rosneft Switches Fuel</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, started switching a refinery it bought at auction from Yukos Oil Co. last year to natural-gas-fired power to lower costs and cut pollution.
The Novokuibyshev refinery’s steam-power generator was switched to gas from fuel oil at the end of February, Moscow-based Rosneft said on its web site. The plant’s primary and secondary processing units will gradually be converted to the cleaner-burning fuel, according to the statement.
The project cost 174 million rubles ($7.3 million) and will provide savings of 134 million rubles a year, Rosneft said.

TITLE: Russia Adds 34 New Billionaires, Deripaska Leads
AUTHOR: By Max Delany
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — From the titans of industry to the friends of President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s richest just had one hell of a year. 
Boosted by soaring oil and commodity prices, the ranks of the country’s billionaires have swollen to 87, up from 53 a year ago, according to Forbes’ new world rich list, released Thursday. 
Forbes’ richest Russian, Oleg Deripaska, the majority owner of aluminum giant United Company RusAl, stormed up from 40th to 9th on the list with an estimated fortune of $28 billion — leaving Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich, the former No. 1, trailing in his wake. 
With 19 of the global top 100, Russia also now boasts more billionaires than any other country apart from the United States. The 87 Russians on the list have a combined wealth of just over $470 billion — or more than twice the country’s GDP when Putin came to power in 2000. 
The Russian billionaires are also the youngest from any major economy, with an average age of 46, compared with a global average of 61. 
Deripaska broke into the world top 10 for the first time on the strength of his Russian Aluminum merging with two other companies to create the world’s top producer of primary aluminum. 
With $23.5 billion, Abramovich is ranked 15th worldwide, ahead of Forbes list stalwarts Alexei Mordashov, the head of steelmaker Severstal, and Mikhail Fridman, the oil, telecoms and banking mogul who heads Alfa Group, who also figure in the global top 20. 
Although the Russian section of the list is, as usual, top-heavy with people making their money from natural resources, the sources of wealth are becoming more varied, said Luisa Kroll, the Forbes editor responsible for the list. 
“The list was really much more diverse than we expected to see,” Kroll said. Geographically, however, the country’s wealth is concentrated, with Moscow still having more billionaires than any other city in the world. 
Among the most profitable sectors were construction and, despite the turmoil on global stock markets, the financial sector. 
The most impressive newcomers were Yury Zhukov and Kirill Pisarev, whose developer, PIK Group, floated on the London Stock Exchange last year, giving them both fortunes of $6.1 billion. 
Seven of the 25 youngest billionaires this year are Russian — although none are as young as American Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 23, who has a fortune of $1.5 billion. 
“None of the Russians inherited their wealth so it’s really interesting to see how much has been created in such a short time,” Kroll said. 
This year’s list also sees two men widely perceived to be in Putin’s inner circle make an appearance for the first time. 
Dubbed Putin’s “cashiers” during the 2004 presidential elections by Boris Berezovsky-backed candidate Ivan Rybkin, oil trader Gennady Timchenko and Bank Rossia co-owner Yury Kovalchuk now have fortunes valued at $2.5 billion and $1.9 billion, respectively. 
Timchenko, reported to be a judo partner of Putin’s who has Finnish citizenship, heads secretive Swiss-registered oil trader Gunvor, which works with state-controlled firms Rosneft and Gazprom Neft. 
Kovalchuk, a St. Petersburg banker, had a dacha neighboring Putin’s in a compound near the city in the mid-1990s, along with the future Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin and future Education Minister Andrei Fursenko. 
No Kremlin officials figure on the Forbes list, and Putin has dismissed as ridiculous rumors swirling in the Western media that he controls a personal fortune of $40 billion. At his annual news conference last month, Putin said the people behind the rumor had “picked everything out of their noses and smeared it on their little papers.” 
Kroll said Forbes did not have any hard information about the president’s income beyond what had been reported in the press. 
“It has been tricky to pin Putin down,” she said. 
Far away from the center of power, the Forbes list also featured some oligarchs who have fallen foul of the Kremlin. Ahead of Putin’s arch-foe Boris Berezovsky, who was valued at $1.3 billion, the richest exile was former Russneft president Mikhail Gutseriyev, with a fortune of $2.6 billion. 
As before, only one Russian woman made it onto the list — construction magnate Yelena Baturina, the wife of Mayor Yury Luzhkov. 
In general, Kroll said compiling estimates for Russia’s rich was trickier than in the rest of the world. 
“It is more difficult and less transparent. They are some of the most difficult and fascinating fortunes to follow,” she said. There is inevitably an element of art as well as science in the figures, she said. 
Despite a number of the Russians on the list refusing to be interviewed for this article, it seems that some of the people on the list take it very seriously. 
“There is a group of two dozen high-profile billionaires — including one Russian — who are very active in complaining that we have underestimated the numbers,” Kroll said. 
In part because of the declining value of the dollar, the overall number of billionaires around the world has risen to a record 1,062. 
At the very top of the list, U.S. financier Warren Buffett knocked close friend and Microsoft founder Bill Gates off the top spot. Buffett’s wealth grew by over $10 billion to $62 billion. 
With a fortune of $58 billion, Gates, who had previously topped the Forbes list 13 years running, slipped to third place behind Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim.

<b>Russia's 87 Billionaires</b>
<table><tr><td>Name</td><td>Business or Sector*</td><td>2008<br>$Bln</td><td>2007<br>$Bln</td></tr><tr><td>01</td><td>Oleg Deripaska </td><td>Basic Element</td><td>28</td><td>13.3</td></tr><tr><td>02</td><td>Roman Abramovich </td><td>Millhouse Capital, Chelsea</td><td>23.5</td><td>18.7</td></tr><tr><td>03</td><td>Alexei Mordashov </td><td>Severstal</td><td>21.2</td><td>11.2</td></tr><tr><td>04</td><td>Mikhail Fridman </td><td>Alfa Group</td><td>20.8</td><td>12.6</td></tr><tr><td>05</td><td>Vladimir Lisin </td><td>NLMK</td><td>20.3</td><td>14.3</td></tr><tr><td>06</td><td>Mikhail Prokhorov </td><td>Onexim</td><td>19.5</td><td>13.5</td></tr><tr><td>07</td><td>Vladimir Potanin </td><td>Interros</td><td>19.3</td><td>13.5</td></tr><tr><td>08</td><td>Suleiman Kerimov </td><td>GNK (formerly Nafta-Moskva)</td><td>17.5</td><td>14.4</td></tr><tr><td>09</td><td>German Khan </td><td>Alfa Group, TNK-BP</td><td>13.9</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Vagit Alekperov </td><td>LUKoil</td><td>13</td><td>12.4</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>Dmitry Rybolovlev </td><td>Uralkali</td><td>12.8</td><td>3.3</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td>Iskander Makhmudov</td><td>Urals Mining and Metals Co.</td><td>11.9</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>13</td><td>Alexander Abramov </td><td>Evraz Group</td><td>11.5</td><td>5.6</td></tr><tr><td>14</td><td>Viktor Vekselberg </td><td>Renova, TNK-BP</td><td>11.2</td><td>10.4</td></tr><tr><td>15</td><td>Alexei Kuzmichyov</td><td>Alfa Group</td><td>10.8</td><td>6.2</td></tr><tr><td>16</td><td>Viktor Rashnikov </td><td>MMK</td><td>10.4</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>17</td><td>Igor Zyuzin </td><td>Mechel</td><td>10</td><td>2.1</td></tr><tr><td>18</td><td>Vladimir Yevtushenkov </td><td>Sistema</td><td>10</td><td>9.1</td></tr><tr><td>19</td><td>Alisher Usmanov </td><td>Gazmetall</td><td>9.3</td><td>5.5</td></tr><tr><td>20</td><td>Nikolai Tsvetkov </td><td>UralSib</td><td>8</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>21</td><td>Leonid Fedun </td><td>LUKoil</td><td>6.4</td><td>5.3</td></tr><tr><td>22</td><td>Boris Ivanishvili </td><td>Banking</td><td>6.4</td><td>4.7</td></tr><tr><td>23</td><td>Sergei Popov </td><td>MDM-Bank</td><td>6.4</td><td>4.6</td></tr><tr><td>24</td><td>Andrei Melnichenko </td><td>MDM-Bank</td><td>6.2</td><td>4.6</td></tr><tr><td>25</td><td>Yury Zhukov </td><td>PIK Group</td><td>6.1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>26</td><td>Kirill Pisarev </td><td>PIK Group</td><td>6.1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>27</td><td>Dmitry Pumpyansky </td><td>TMK</td><td>6</td><td>5.7</td></tr><tr><td>28</td><td>Pyotr Aven </td><td>Alfa Bank</td><td>5.5</td><td>3.6</td></tr><tr><td>29</td><td>Alexander Frolov </td><td>Evraz Group</td><td>5.5</td><td>2.4</td></tr><tr><td>30</td><td>Leonid Mikhelson </td><td>Novatek</td><td>4.7</td><td>4.3</td></tr><tr><td>31</td><td>Yelena Baturina </td><td>Inteko</td><td>4.2</td><td>3.1</td></tr><tr><td>32</td><td>Vasily Anisimov </td><td>Coalco, Gazmetall</td><td>4</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>33</td><td>Mikhail Balakin </td><td>SU-155</td><td>4</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>34</td><td>Andrei Molchanov </td><td>LSR Group</td><td>4</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>35</td><td>Gleb Fetisov </td><td>Banking</td><td>3.9</td><td>1.5</td></tr><tr><td>36</td><td>Rustam Tariko </td><td>Russky Standart</td><td>3.5</td><td>5.4</td></tr><tr><td>37</td><td>Andrei Skoch </td><td>Metalloinvest</td><td>3.3</td><td>1.7</td></tr><tr><td>38</td><td>Filaret Galchev </td><td>Eurocement</td><td>3.1</td><td>2.4</td></tr><tr><td>39</td><td>Alexander Lebedev </td><td>National Reserve Corp.</td><td>3.1</td><td>3.7</td></tr><tr><td>40</td><td>Vyacheslav Kantor </td><td>Akron</td><td>2.6</td><td>1.4</td></tr><tr><td>41</td><td>Mikhail Gutseriyev </td><td>Former Russneft president</td><td>2.6</td><td>2.9</td></tr><tr><td>42</td><td>Vladimir Bogdanov </td><td>Surgutneftegaz</td><td>2.6</td><td>3.7</td></tr><tr><td>43</td><td>Gennady Timchenko </td><td>Gunvor</td><td>2.5</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>44</td><td>Alexei Ananyev </td><td>Promsvyazbank</td><td>2.3</td><td>1.7</td></tr><tr><td>45</td><td>Dmitry Ananyev </td><td>Promsvyazbank</td><td>2.3</td><td>1.7</td></tr><tr><td>46</td><td>Shalva Chigirinsky </td><td>Sibir Energy, ST Development</td><td>2.3</td><td>1.6</td></tr><tr><td>47</td><td>Danil Khachaturov </td><td>Rosgosstrakh</td><td>2</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>48</td><td>Sergei Pugachyov </td><td>Rosgosstrakh</td><td>2</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>49</td><td>Sergei Galitsky </td><td>Magnit</td><td>1.9</td><td>1.7</td></tr><tr><td>50</td><td>Yury Kovalchuk </td><td>Bank Rossiya</td><td>1.9</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>51</td><td>Igor Altushkin </td><td>Russian Copper</td><td>1.9</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>52</td><td>Anatoly Sedykh </td><td>OMK</td><td>1.8</td><td>1.2</td></tr><tr><td>53</td><td>Pyotr Kondrashev </td><td>Silvinit</td><td>1.8</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>54</td><td>Igor Yakovlev </td><td>Eldorado</td><td>1.8</td><td>1.6</td></tr><tr><td>55</td><td>Alexander Dzhaparidze </td><td>Eurasia Drilling</td><td>1.7</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>56</td><td>Sergei Petrov </td><td>Rolf</td><td>1.7</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>57</td><td>Andrei Kosogov </td><td>Alfa Group</td><td>1.7</td><td>1.1</td></tr><tr><td>58</td><td>Andrei Kozitsyn </td><td>Urals Mining and Metals Co.</td><td>1.6</td><td>1.5</td></tr><tr><td>59</td><td>Andrei Rogachyov </td><td>Karusel, Pyatyorochka</td><td>1.5</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>60</td><td>Alexander Svetakov </td><td>Former Absolute-Bank shareholder </td><td>1.5</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>61</td><td>Oleg Boiko </td><td>Ritzio Entertainment Group</td><td>1.5</td><td>1.5</td></tr><tr><td>62</td><td>Lev Kvetnoi </td><td>Gazmetall (former co-owner)</td><td>1.5</td><td>1.4</td></tr><tr><td>63</td><td>Sergei Sarkisov </td><td>RESO-Garantia (founder)</td><td>1.5</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>64</td><td>Nikolai Sarkisov </td><td>RESO-Garantia (founder)</td><td>1.5</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>65</td><td>Vladimir Iorikh </td><td>Former Zyuzin partner (Mechel)</td><td>1.4</td><td>1.3</td></tr><tr><td>66</td><td>Maxim Blazhko </td><td>Don-Stroi</td><td>1.4</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>67</td><td>Farkhad Akhmedov</td><td>Nortgaz</td><td>1.4</td><td>1.5</td></tr><tr><td>68</td><td>Dmitry Zelenov </td><td>Don-Stroi</td><td>1.4</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>69</td><td>Sergei Veremeyenko </td><td>Banking</td><td>1.4</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>70</td><td>Alexander Skorobogatko </td><td>Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port</td><td>1.4</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>71</td><td>Alexander Ponomarenko </td><td>Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port</td><td>1.4</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>72</td><td>Ruben Vardanyan </td><td>Troika Dialog</td><td>1.3</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>73</td><td>David Davidovich </td><td>Millhouse Capital</td><td>1.3</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>74</td><td>Boris Berezovsky </td><td>Businessman</td><td>1.3</td><td>1.1</td></tr><tr><td>75</td><td>Andrei Komarov </td><td>ChTPZ Group</td><td>1.3</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>76</td><td>Alexander Mamut </td><td>Portfolio investor</td><td>1.2</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>77</td><td>Igor Kesayev </td><td>Mercury, Dixy</td><td>1.2</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>78</td><td>Sergei Polonsky </td><td>Mirax Group</td><td>1.2</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>79</td><td>Aras Agalarov </td><td>Crocus Group</td><td>1.2</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>80</td><td>Viktor Kharitonin </td><td>Pharmstandard</td><td>1.1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>81</td><td>Gavril Yushvayev </td><td>Wimm-Bill-Dann </td><td>1.1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>82</td><td>Megdet Rahimkulov</td><td>Former Gazprom chairman</td><td>1.1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>83</td><td>Sergei Generalov </td><td>Industrial Investors</td><td>1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>84</td><td>Vadim Moshkovich </td><td>BIN Bank</td><td>1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>85</td><td>Vitaly Malkin </td><td>Banking</td><td>1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>86</td><td>Igor Kim </td><td>URSA Bank</td><td>1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>87</td><td>Georgy Krasnyansky </td><td>Eurocement</td><td>1</td><td></tr></table>
*Denotes a current or former ownership, control or interest.
Sources: Forbes, Forbes Russia, SPT research

TITLE: RZD Eyes Controlling Stake in TGK
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Railways, or RZD, is considering buying a controlling stake in power generation company TGK-14 jointly with ESN-Energo, an industry source said Thursday. 
“Yes, ESN-Energo’s partner [in the deal] is Russian Railways,” the source close to the deal said. 
TGK-14, in which miner Norilsk Nickel has a large stake, was spun off from former power monopoly Unified Energy System as part of sector reforms. 
TGK-14 plans to issue 590 billion new shares in April or May. In addition to the sale of the new shares, the government’s 33.6 percent stake in the company will be sold, allowing a strategic investor to gain control. 
Engineering and maintenance firm E4, controlled by former UES executive Mikhail Abyzov, and Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element have expressed interest in buying control of TGK-14, which provides power and heat to parts of southern Siberia. South Korean energy major KEPCO has pulled out of the race.

TITLE: Government May Merge MICEX and RTS
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government may merge the country’s stock exchanges and sell shares in the new company to the public, Vedomosti reported Thursday, citing the market regulator. The Federal Service for Financial Markets wants to create a holding for the exchanges — the ruble-denominated MICEX and the dollar-denominated RTS — by 2010, the newspaper said, citing internal documents. 
The service will submit its plan to the government for approval in May.

TITLE: Telecoms to Be Included as a Strategic Sector
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky and Tai Adelaja
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government wants foreign investors to seek its permission for buying control of mobile and landline communications companies, a measure that could hamper growth in the booming sector, according to draft legislation made public Thursday. 
The requirement is the latest addition to the bill seeking to regulate foreign investment in strategic industries that are crucial for national security. 
Some of those additions, such as Internet providers, the print media and the fishing industry, have raised concerns that the definition of strategic is being stretched too far, however. 
Buying control of a company that “dominates the communications services market” or “holds a significant position” in the landline communications network would become subject to government approval if the proposals became law. 
The broad definition of applicable communications companies appears to encompass both landline and mobile operators. The phrase “significant position” is likely to leave room for interpretation by officials. 
Strong opposition to the new requirement came from the IT and Communications Ministry at a meeting held Thursday by the State Duma’s Construction and Land Policy Committee, which oversees the bill. 
If the bill takes effect it will “hamper investment on the communications market and will no doubt cause stagnation in the industry,” Deputy IT and Communications Minister Alexander Maslov told the committee. 
Communications companies need investment to continue consolidating their assets and install digital lines to replace antiquated Soviet-era equipment, he said. 
Maslov also criticized the inclusion of Internet providers as strategic companies, saying more than 95 percent of the country’s 10,000 Internet providers are small operators serving city districts or small or mid-sized towns. 
The government has said its proposals governing foreign access to strategic industries are meant to define clear rules, but some investors raised concerns that the number of such industries had grown from 39 to 43 since last fall when the bill passed a first reading. 
In the proposals, made public this week, the government wrapped several space-related industries into one industry and added such new sectors as media, Internet services provision, publishing, printing and fishing. 
While the Cabinet is sponsoring the bill, the final decision about amendments was made at a Kremlin meeting of senior presidential administration officials with ministers and key lawmakers, said Martin Shakkum, head of the Construction and Land Policy Committee. 
IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman did not attend the Kremlin meeting, which was chaired by Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin, Shakkum said. 
Lawmakers should not change anything in the bill because it has the blessing of senior Kremlin officials, Shakkum said. 
“It would be wrong, I think, to not listen to their opinion,” he said. “It would mean that the State Duma is contradicting the people to whom the president has entrusted the responsibility for national security.” 
Committee members, representing all four Duma factions, voted unanimously to adopt the amendments. The amendments, if approved, could seriously restrict foreign telecom majors from vying for such lucrative assets as Svyazinvest, said Anna Kurbatova, an analyst at UniCredit Aton. Svyazinvest is now state-controlled but the government is looking to privatize it eventually. 
“If the government is talking of privatizing Svyazinvest, for instance, part of the calculation should involve big foreign investors with the necessary funds,” Kurbatova said. 
A senior executive at a foreign-owned telecoms company, speaking on condition of anonymity, praised the proposals, however, saying that they defined “a clear playing field in the business of acquisition and ownership of telecom companies in Russia.” 
The country’s telecoms market, both fixed-line and mobile, has presented attractive opportunities for foreign investors. Last month, VimpelCom, the No. 2 mobile operator, paid $4.3 billion to acquire Golden Telecom, the country’s largest independent fixed-line operator. The deal gave VimpelCom more than 400,000 new broadband Internet customers and a strong foothold in fixed-line services. 
VimpelCom is jointly owned by Norway’s Telenor, with a 33.6 percent stake, and Alfa Group, with 37 percent. Most of the remaining shares are free float. 
The Duma committee on Thursday also rushed through long-expected amendments to the subsoil resources bill, voting to accept them without debate. If foreign investors want to buy control of fields that the amendments describe as having “federal significance,” they will need to seek government permission. 
The committee also quickly rebuffed a proposal from a Gazprom representative to expand the list of such fields to include natural gas deposits that contain helium.

TITLE: Kraft Factory Set to Open
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: ST. PETERSBURG — Kraft Foods Inc., the world’s second-largest food company, plans to open a $100 million plant near St. Petersburg next week to make instant coffee for the Russian market.
The factory will open March 13 near Kraft’s packaging facility in the Gorelovo industrial zone, spokeswoman Anastasiya Zaslavskaya said Friday in a telephone interview from Moscow.
The plant will produce 5,000 tons a year of its Jacobs Monarch, Carte Noire and Maxim brands and may decide to expand annual output to 10,000 tons, Zaslavskaya said.
Kraft, based in Northfield, Illinois, wants to meet rising demand and use the infrastructure around its existing plant, Zaslavskaya said.
“We now have the full cycle of production, from processing coffee beans to packaging,” she said.

TITLE: State Plans 2nd Group Of Funds
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia will allocate as much as 9 billion rubles ($460 million) to create a second group of state-backed venture funds in a bid to reduce the country’s reliance on oil and gas exports.
The government will solicit proposals from financial management companies interested in starting and running the funds. The rules of the competition will be made public on March 14, and the winners will be announced between June 6-8, Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina told reporters in Moscow on Thursday.
“We hope to select several more management companies,” Nabiullina said. “This doesn’t necessarily mean that all this money will be spent.”
Russia, the world’s largest energy exporter, created a company called Venture Co. in August 2006 to distribute state money to the projects in a bid to diversify the economy away from commodities by boosting investment in innovative technologies.
In May 2007, the Economy Ministry chose Russia’s VTB Asset Management, Bioprocess Capital Partners and Finance Trust to start the first three venture capital funds.
The fund run by Finance Trust fell apart when its investors — Israeli financial company Tamir Fishman, Venture Co. and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — pulled out after their Russian partner and shareholder Oleg Shvartsman suggested in an interview published in the Kommersant newspaper that he was attempting to take over strategic companies in the interest of the security services.

TITLE: Finance Ministers Reject Bank Merger
AUTHOR: Rainer Buergin and Meera Louis
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: BERLIN — The finance ministers of Germany and Poland on Thursday rejected the idea of merging two international, government-controlled banks with overlapping responsibilities in regional economic development.
Their comments came after the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers reported that European Union governments are considering a merger of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank. EU ministers debated a merger of the banks’ operations outside the bloc last week, according to people who have seen a discussion paper.
After a bilateral meeting in Berlin on Thursday, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said it would be “completely wrong” to combine the two lenders while his Polish counterpart Jacek Rostowski said “it wouldn’t be prudent to put two well-functioning institutions together in the hope that they function better.”
The newspaper reports and ministers’ comments highlight the problems the EBRD faces now that it’s mostly completed its task of helping Eastern European countries through their transition from planned to market-based economies.
The 27 EU finance ministers, who met in Brussels March 4, reviewed a document outlining possibilities for the future of the EBRD, including closing the institution.
The document outlines the option of merging the EBRD with the “external operations” of the Luxembourg-based EIB, according to the people who have seen it. Most of the EIB’s business is conducted in the EU and about 10 percent in other countries such as Turkey and Serbia.
The document is a “discussion paper for European governments,” EBRD spokesman Anthony Williams said by telephone Thursday. “The bank is owned by European and non-European shareholders. It’s not for me to comment on a discussion paper for European shareholders.”
At the Brussels meeting, Steinbrueck won the backing of fellow ministers for Thomas Mirow, one of his deputies, to be the EBRD’s next president. 
The London-based EBRD was created in 1991 to invest in former communist countries and bolster the private sector. About 90 percent of the bank’s loans last year went to new EU members Bulgaria and Romania, as well as Russia and other non-EU states.
The lender is focusing its attention on countries in the former Soviet Union and away from eight ex-communist countries that joined the EU in 2004.
“Closing down the EBRD is theoretically possible” under the statutes of the bank, the document says, according to a person who read out sections of the paper. “Some non-EU shareholders are already arguing for this scenario. However, for the EU, this would not be an attractive option.”
One of several options for the EBRD’s future “could involve the creation of an integrated EU holding structure which would regroup the shares of the EIB on the one hand and the EU shareholdings of the EBRD on the other. This holding would involve a light governance and light administrative support.”

TITLE: Union Calls For Softer Gambling Law
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — A Russian law forcing gambling out of Moscow and St. Petersburg from July next year will deter investment in the industry and should be relaxed, the country’s Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Union said Friday.
Plans to restrict gambling to four regions of Russia are prompting local operators to expand outside the country, the Moscow-based union said in a March 5 statement on its web site.
The permitted areas — Russia’s Pacific coast, the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, Siberia’s Altai region and around the Azov Sea — aren’t attracting international chains, the organization added.
Union President Alexander Shokhin wrote to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin last month, asking that the government allow gambling everywhere, while limiting casinos and slot machine halls to tourism and hotel areas, according to the statement. Such measures would reduce the number of gaming outlets by more than 70 percent while preserving jobs and providing sufficient tax revenues for regional budgets, the union said.
Gambling has mushroomed in Russia in the past six years after the relaxation of licensing rules led to a proliferation of slot machine halls in bars, on the streets and in subway stations. The industry’s 600,000 workers would be reduced by more than 10 percent by 2009 if the law is kept in its present form, according to the union. Tax revenue from the industry reached 31 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) in 2006, the statement shows.
Moving all gambling to four regions may also lead to the opening of illegal casinos, according to the union. About a quarter of Russian gamblers would attend such institutions, it said, citing research by the state-run All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, or VTsIOM.

TITLE: Lawmakers Reject Calls From Oil Executives For Tax Breaks
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Lawmakers are not planning to cut taxes for oil companies, a deputy speaker of the State Duma said, resisting calls by executives and investors. 
“The attractive pricing environment and the dynamic development of the oil sector mean that there are no legislative initiatives on this issue, and none is foreseen soon,” said Valery Yazev, a member of the Duma Energy Committee, in an e-mailed response to questions Thursday. 
Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, Gazprom’s oil unit, are among companies calling for tax breaks to help spur investment and revive growth. Russian oil output expanded 2.1 percent last year versus 11 percent in 2003, in part because rising export taxes discourage spending on new fields. 
Investment banks Alfa Bank and UralSib have argued that the government will probably be forced to grant tax concessions to stimulate output. 
The government revises export taxes on crude and oil products every two months based on average prices for Urals, the country’s benchmark export blend. Raising tariffs when oil is more expensive erodes most of the benefit of higher prices. 
Yazev echoed remarks by officials in the Finance Ministry and the Industry and Energy Ministry, who said there was no point in cutting taxes when oil prices are at all-time highs. 
Rosneft chief executive Sergei Bogdanchikov called the current tax system “too harsh” in August. Export, extraction and other taxes must be cut or companies will not have any incentive to develop new fields, including in the Arctic, Gazprom Neft chief executive Alexander Dyukov said Feb. 4. 
Alfa added state-run Rosneft to its list of 10 favorite stocks on Feb. 27, saying tax cuts were probable and would stimulate the industry.

TITLE: Single European Gas Hub ‘Unlikely’
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — A single European gas hub will probably never emerge and gas trading may develop in a pattern similar to the U.S., according to the head of gas and power trading at Total SA, Europe’s third-largest oil company.
“I think you’re going to end up with a system very much like in the U.S. where you have regional gas hubs,” Jean-Pierre Mateille said in an interview in Amsterdam on Thursday. “I don’t see that you’ll have a European gas hub because of logistical constraints.”
Mateille said liquidity in European gas trading wasn’t a problem anymore and “very significant volumes” are currently traded in German and French hubs. “It’s quite impressive. It’s fairly liquid,” Mateille said. Forward contracts are still thinly traded, he added.
Europe has traditionally been supplied with gas on long-term contracts. Regional hubs in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France have begun to emerge over recent years, where gas can be traded as a commodity.
Cross-border gas transportation remains a problem for Europe. “It’s difficult to move gas from France to Spain, from Spain to France, from Norway to Germany,” he said. “The transportation capacity is not there.”

TITLE: Melting Arctic Ice Could Lead to Energy War
AUTHOR: By Deborah Zabarenko
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON — With oil above $100 a barrel and Arctic ice melting faster than ever, some of the world’s most powerful countries — including the United States and Russia —  are looking north to a possible energy bonanza. 
This prospective scramble for buried Arctic mineral wealth made more accessible by freshly melted seas could bring on a completely different kind of cold war, a scholar and former Coast Guard officer says. 
While a U.S. government official questioned the risk of polar conflict, Washington still would like to join a 25-year-old international treaty meant to figure out who owns the rights to the oceans, including the Arctic Ocean. So far, the Senate has not approved it. 
Unlike the first Cold War, dominated by tensions between the two late-20th century superpowers, this century’s model could pit countries that border the Arctic Ocean against each other to claim mineral rights. The Arctic powers include the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway. 
The irony is that the burning of fossil fuels is at least in part responsible for the Arctic melt — due to climate change — and the Arctic melt could pave the way for a 21st century rush to exploit even more fossil fuels. 
The stakes are enormous, according to Scott Borgerson of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant commander. 
The Arctic could hold as much as one-quarter of the world’s remaining undiscovered oil and gas deposits, Borgerson wrote in the current issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. 
Russia has claimed 460,000 square miles (1.191 million sq km) of Arctic waters, with an eye-catching effort that included planting its flag on the ocean floor at the North Pole last summer. Days later, Moscow sent strategic bomber flights over the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War. 
“I think you can say planting a flag on the sea bottom and renewing strategic bomber flights is provocative,” Borgerson said in a telephone interview. 
By contrast, he said of the U.S. position, “I don’t think we’re scrambling. We’re sleepwalking ... I think the Russians are scrambling and I think the Norwegians and Canadians and Danes are keenly aware.” 
Borgerson said that now would be an appropriate time for the United States to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which codifies which countries have rights to what parts of the world’s oceans. The Bush administration agrees. So do many environmental groups, the U.S. military and energy companies looking to explore the Arctic, now that enough ice is seasonally gone to open up sea lanes as soon as the next decade. 
“There’s no ice cold war,” said one U.S. government official familiar with the Arctic Ocean rights issue. However, the official noted that joining the Law of the Sea pact would give greater legal certainty to U.S. claims in the area. 
That is becoming more crucial, as measurements of the U.S. continental shelf get more precise. 
Coastal nations like those that border the Arctic have sovereign rights over natural resources of their continental shelves, generally recognized to reach 200 nautical miles out from their coasts. 
But in February, researchers from the University of New Hampshire and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data suggesting that the continental shelf north of Alaska extends more than 100 nautical miles farther than previously presumed.
A commission set up by the Law of the Sea lets countries expand their sea floor resource rights if they meet certain conditions and back them up with scientific data. 
The treaty also governs navigation rights, suddenly more important as scientists last year reported the opening of the normally ice-choked waters of the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
“Of course we need to be at the table as ocean law develops,” the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s not like ocean law is going to stop developing if we’re not in there. It’s just going to develop without us.”

TITLE: India Signs Deal With Russia to Upgrade Jets
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: NEW DELHI — India has awarded Russia a 965-million-dollar contract to upgrade its multi-role MiG-29 warplanes, officials said on Monday. 
The two post-Cold War allies Saturday signed the deal to extend the life of India’s fleet of 70 MiG-29 jets another 15 years from their current 25 years, an air force official said. 
“The project entails two to three years and only six of them would be re-fitted in Russia while the work on the remaining squadrons would be carried out by them at Indian bases,” he said asking not to be named. 
The pre-condition was a “precaution” against delays in the modernisation of the MiG-29s which are among the main combat planes in India’s inventory. 
“We learnt our lessons with the MiG-21 project,” he added, alluding to years of delay in the promised upgrade by Russia of the jets, now labelled “flying coffins” and “widow-makers” because of frequent crashes due to engine failure. 
Under the contract Russia will re-arm the twin-engined MiG-29s with air-to-air missiles, modern bombs, increased fuel capacity and the latest avionics, the contract said. 
The MiG-29 deal came after India last month resolved a protracted dispute with Russia on the sale of the Soviet-era carrier Admiral Gorshkov to the Indian navy. 
Russian export firm Rosoboronexport in 2004 signed up to refurbish the 44,570-tonne carrier for 970 million dollars but last year demanded India pay an additional 1.2 billion dollars. 
The two sides buried the hatchet after India agreed to pay 900 million dollars more for the 30-year-old carrier which will now join the Indian navy in 2011. 
Gorshkov is to fill a vacuum left by the scrapping in 1997 of India’s first aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, which had been in service since 1961. 
The Indian navy has only one operational aircraft carrier, the INS Viraat, which is to be phased out in coming years. 
Russia accounts for 70 percent of Indian arms supplies but late deliveries and commercial disagreements have led New Delhi to use other suppliers such as Israel, Britain, France and the United States. 
Russia is in a race with Western rivals for a 12-billion-dollar deal to sell 126 fighter jets, artillery worth two billion dollars and 317 helicopters worth a billion dollars to India. 
U.S. and European military aircraft manufacturers have emerged as the forerunners to win the fighter deal which will enable India to junk the crash-prone MiG-21.

TITLE: Fuel Costs Increase As Russia Curbs Export
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: SINGAPORE — Russia is forcing Exxon Mobil Corp. to abandon plans to export natural gas to China. Nigeria is requiring explorers to share output with its citizens. Indonesia will cut sales to Japan. 
Countries holding almost half the world’s gas are curbing shipments to meet growing domestic use, hurting importers from the U.S. to Japan. Prices for the heating fuel may rise 50 percent within five years on the New York Mercantile Exchange as a result, said Chris Jarvis, president of Caprock Risk Management in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. He anticipated the rally in gas prices during the past month. 
While raising energy costs, the policies will limit opportunities for Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, who are struggling to reverse a five-year production decline of 23 percent in the U.K. North Sea and 42 percent in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Natural-gas use is rising 2.5 percent a year, three times the rate for oil, according to BP Plc statistics. 
“All the gas is concentrated in places where you don’t have access,’’ said Frank Harris, co-head of the natural gas practice at the Edinburgh-based Wood Mackenzie Consultants Ltd., an adviser to 24 of the world’s 25 biggest oil and gas companies. It’s “a major concern for oil majors,” he said. 
In Russia, the energy ministry told Exxon Mobil in August that gas from the $17 billion Sakhalin-1 project off the nation’s eastern coast should be sold into the domestic market, not exported. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants the gas to feed an economy that’s growing 7.6 percent annually. Putin said Saturday that his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, will also be a “nationalist.’’ 
Exxon planned to build a pipeline to China, where the 10 billion cubic meters a year of Sakhalin gas could meet 18 percent of China’s needs, based on 2006 consumption. 
Changing export policies in Nigeria and Egypt threaten projects that would ship 45 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas to the world market annually, equal to about 33 percent current supply, Wood Mackenzie’s Harris estimates. The 45 million tons are almost fourfold larger than the U.S.’s LNG imports in 2006, according to the Energy Department.
Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua said last month that a new state-run company would start requiring explorers to sell a portion of output locally. Nigeria, Africa’s most-populous nation, holds the continent’s largest gas reserves, yet only about 40 percent of its population of about 140 million citizens have access to electricity, according to the World Bank. 
Total SA, Chevron Corp., Shell and ConocoPhillips have put on hold two LNG projects, at Brass and Olokola, until the government sets its policy on supplies to the domestic market. The gas would have been more than enough to meet India’s annual consumption, based on BP’s statistics. 
Caprock Risk’s Jarvis said restrictions on liquefied natural gas exports will tighten global energy markets. 
Demand for LNG, or gas chilled for shipment in tankers, is the industry’s fastest-growing business, with growth of about 10 percent a year, Shell and Total estimate. 
Compared with fuel oil, natural gas costs 18 percent less, based on the amount of energy in each fuel. Crude prices have tripled since 2002, pushing governments to seek more of the industry’s record profits and limit access to regions that typically harbor natural gas.

TITLE: Raven Russia Sees Warehouse Income Triple
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: EDINBURGH — Raven Russia Ltd., the U.K. owner of Moscow and St. Petersburg warehouses, said earnings almost tripled last year as the company’s properties gained in value.
Net income rose to $95.3 million, or 22.32 cents a share, from $32.6 million, or 9.62 cents, a year earlier, the Guernsey-based company said Monday in a statement. Net rental income more than doubled to $25.9 million from $11 million, while valuation gains jumped to $79.7 million from $7 million.
“The strong profits are providing a platform for our progressive dividend policy and allow our investors to share in the success of the Russian economy,” Chairman Richard Jewson said in the statement.
The Russian economy is growing at more than 7 percent a year, boosted by its position as the world’s largest energy exporter. That’s created a shortage of warehouses and prompting developers such as Raven Russia to build more properties in the country.
Raven Russia gained 3.75 pence, or 4.7 percent, to 83.35 pence at 10:46 a.m. in London. The shares have dropped 16 percent in six months, reducing the market value to 354 million pounds.
The company is on target to have 2.4 million square meters (25.8 million square feet) of commercial space by the third quarter of next year, said Jewson. The properties will be worth $2.4 billion when completed, compared with the development cost of $1.5 billion.
Raven Russia will double its second-half dividend to 4 pence a share. That will bring the total for the year to 6.5 pence, up from 4 pence in 2006.
Net asset value, a measure of performance, increased 8.5 percent in the second half to 115 pence a share.

TITLE: Britain Develops X-Ray Cam
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — A British company has developed a camera that can detect weapons, drugs or explosives hidden under people’s clothes from up to 25 meters away in what could be a breakthrough for the security industry and the fight against terrorism.
The T5000 camera, created by a company called ThruVision, uses what it calls “passive imaging technology” to identify objects by the natural electromagnetic rays — known as Terahertz or T-rays — that they emit.
The high-powered camera can detect hidden objects from up to 80 feet away and is effective even when people are moving. It does not reveal physical body details and the screening is harmless, the company says.
The technology, which has military and civilian applications and could be used in crowded airports, shopping malls or sporting events, will be unveiled at a scientific development exhibition sponsored by Britain’s Home Office on March 12 and 13.
“Acts of terrorism have shaken the world in recent years and security precautions have been tightened globally,” said Clive Beattie, the chief executive of ThruVision.
“The ability to see both metallic and non-metallic items on people out to 25 meters is certainly a key capability that will enhance any comprehensive security system.”
While the technology may enhance detection, it may also increase concerns that Britain is becoming a surveillance society, with hundreds of thousands of closed-circuit television cameras already monitoring people countrywide every day.
ThruVision came up with the technology for the T5000 in collaboration with the European Space Agency and from studying research by astronomers into dying stars.

TITLE: Apple Tweaks iPhone to Tackle Blackberry
AUTHOR: By Scott Hillis
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CUPERTINO, California — Apple, Inc. said on Thursday its iPhone soon will support corporate e-mail, targeting a new market and challenging the dominance of Research In Motion Ltd’s popular BlackBerry devices.
Apple also said it will roll out tools for developers to create software for the iPhone, news that was accompanied by a pledge from legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers to set up a $100 million “iFund” to back iPhone software start-ups.
“This takes the iPhone from being not really in the running in the enterprise to being very much in the running and gives RIM a serious challenge,” said Van Baker, an analyst with market research firm Gartner.
The move would help Apple hit its goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of this year, a target some analysts have questioned if the weakening U.S. economy takes a toll on consumer spending.
“Apple answered the majority of objections that most IT professionals had to the iPhone as an enterprise device,” Baker said.
The shares of RIM (RIMM.O), whose BlackBerry products are widely used in corporations, fell 3.8 percent to $98.72 on the news on Nasdaq. The shares of Apple, which also makes iPod media players and Macintosh computers, fell 2.9 percent to $120.93.
Apple said the iPhone would work with Microsoft Corp’s Exchange software for managing business e-mails, contacts and calendars and “pushing” that information to handheld devices.
“We are doing all of these things with the next release of iPhone software,” Phil Schiller, vice president of global marketing for Apple, said at the company’s headquarters. “I think enterprise customers are going to be pretty excited.”
The new programming tools are also seen as a way to build more interest in the iPhone, which has so far only been able to run outside programs through the Web browser. The tool kit will let software makers write applications that can tap more of the iPhone’s capabilities, such as its touch-sensitive screen and motion sensors.
“Starting today, we are opening up the same native (interfaces) and tools that we use internally to build all our iPhone applications,” said Scott Forstall, vice president of iPhone software.
Programs will only be available through a new “apps store” on the iPhone and in Apple’s iTunes software that currently sells music and videos. Apple will keep 30 percent of revenue, with the rest going to developers.
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs dismissed concerns the company was keeping too tight of a grip on iPhone software distribution.
“As a developer, your dream is to get your app in front of every iPhone user and hopefully they love it and buy it. That’s not possible today. Even big developers would have trouble getting in front of every iPhone user,” Jobs said.
“Are there going to be limitations? Of course. There are some apps we’re not going to distribute. Porn, malicious apps.”
John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins and one of Silicon Valley’s most famous venture capitalists, said his firm started the $100 million iFund in the belief that the iPhone would prove to be a long-lived platform.
“We believe the mobile Internet is a platform and that the iPhone is the best instance of that,” added Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy, who will manage the fund.

TITLE: Facebook Application For Movies
AUTHOR: By Ryan Nakashima
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — Paramount Pictures will become the first major studio to make clips from thousands of its movies available for use on the Internet.
The unit of Viacom Inc. is teaming with Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket to launch the VooZoo application Monday on Facebook.
The service gives users access to thousands of movies to send to others on the popular social networking site.
“The short clips for a movie that you’ve already seen before helps you relive the moment,” Paramount senior vice president of entertainment Derek Broes said.
The clips last from a few seconds to several minutes and cover the gamut from Eddie Murphy’s guffaw in “Beverly Hills Cop” to Audrey Hepburn’s pleas over her “no-name slob” cat in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
The studio will market DVDs of the movies through a button that appears after each clip is played. It eventually wants to use the application to virally market upcoming releases.
For example, VooZoo is withholding clips from the “Indiana Jones” series until it works out a way to market the May 22 release of the latest installment, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

TITLE: Google Street View of Army Bases?
AUTHOR: By Patrick Lyons
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: You’ve seen this feature they added to Google Maps last spring called Street View, right? Click on certain streets and highways highlighted in blue on the map, and you get a panoramic street-level view of the place, including anyone who happened to be there when the Google camera van drove by to capture the images.
The vans haven’t gotten everywhere yet, of course; far from it. To date they’ve been concentrating on the main thoroughfares and downtown streets of big metropolitan areas, with a little more coverage in technophilic regions like the San Francisco Bay area, where the company is based. To address privacy concerns (and more than a few have been voiced), the company says the camera vans are supposed to stick to places that are freely accessible to the public.
Which brings us to Ft. Sam Houston, an Army base in San Antonio, Tex. — or at least, it brought us there briefly. About ten days ago, it seems, a Google camera van drove through sections of the base shooting Street View panoramic images, after the driver asked for and received permission to do so.
Maybe the local base security people didn’t mind, but the Pentagon sure did: It issued a directive banning Google’s camera vans from the grounds of military bases, news agencies are reporting.
Michael Kucharek, spokesman for U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the decision was made after crews were allowed access to at least one base. He said military officials were concerned that allowing the 360-degree, street-level video could provide sensitive information to potential adversaries and endanger base personnel.
Agence France-Presse reports that Google wasn’t too pleased, either, citing Larry Yu, a company spokesman:
“One of our drivers clearly broke our policy and that was a mistake,” Yu told AFP. “We’ve reminded the drivers it is against our policy to ask for access to military bases, drive on private roads, ignore ‘no trespassing’ signs, etc.”
Google quickly removed the base images from Google Earth after being alerted to the situation by U.S. military officials, Yu said.
You can imagine the reaction to all this in the blogosphere, where there is always a spirited debate about what either the government or Google does concerning privacy and the free flow of information. Mike Boyers at Foreign Policy wondered what happened to the common sense of all concerned, while the commenting cut-ups at Fark.com had fun twitting Google for getting into the inadvertently-giving-away-military-secrets business: “We have Geraldo for that,” said one.
Not that very much about the lay of the land at Ft. Sam Houston is secret; the base is cheek by jowl with a large city, it gets many civilian visitors, its web site includes a map as detailed as your average college-campus plan, and the Pentagon doesn’t mind that the whole place is clearly shown in the satellite photos that are a few clicks away on Google Maps and elsewhere.
Still, you can learn a lot about a building from panoramic street-level images that just doesn’t show in satellite photos, so it’s not too hard to understand the sensitivity in the Pentagon.
Or in Google itself, apparently: ValleyWag notes that, though many nearby blocks are viewable in Street View, the block of Spear Street in San Francisco where Google moved into new offices this week is not.

TITLE: Robot Freighter Launched By European Agency
AUTHOR: By Sandrine Rastello
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: The European Space Agency said it launched a robotic freighter vehicle today designed to supply the International Space Station with cargo, fuel and oxygen.
The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), which weighs 21 tons and is dubbed Jules Verne, blasted off aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, the agency said in a statement posted on its Web site.
It is now circling the earth in the same orbit as the space station, although at a lower altitude, and is scheduled to dock with it on April 3, the agency said. An optical system will guide Jules Verne during its final approach, Arianespace, which builds the Ariane rockets, said in a separate statement.
The ATV has been in development since 1998 by a team of more than 30 contractors from 10 European countries, led by European Aeronautic, Defence and Space Co.’s Astrium unit. The agency said it plans to fly four more of them through 2015 to help service missions to the space station along with Russia after the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle in 2010.
The Jules Verne craft, named after the 19th century French author, will deliver five tons of food, water, oxygen and fuel to the space station crew, ESA said.

TITLE: The Lessons of Byzantium’s Collapse
TEXT: Rossia state television showed “The Fall of an Empire: The Lessons of Byzantium,” a film by Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, in late January. The film sparked a heated debate about the role that the West played in the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, whether modern Russia faces similar dangers, and whether the Russian Orthodox Church could help prevent a similar collapse.

By Mark Urnov 

It is pointless to discuss whether the film is historically accurate because it is obvious that the story was deliberately fictionalized. It is enough to recall the line from the film that the Byzantine Empire 1,500 years ago was characterized by the supremacy of the rule of law, which is particularly absurd when we learn later in the film how Byzantine emperors blinded opponents and castrated bureaucrats in large numbers.
This is not a historical film but a mythological one. It appeals to a myth deeply rooted in the consciousness of many Russians — one that combines the bold ideas of Moscow as a “Third Rome,” the greatness of the 18th- and 19th-century Russian Empire and the Communist fairy tale of a flourishing Soviet superpower that was destroyed by insidious and subversive liberals.
The film uses the Byzantine model to advance another myth — that all of Russia’s problems today are rooted in confrontations dating back to ancient times. These include Russia’s eternal battle with the West, which many conservatives believe harbored an irrational hatred for Russia “on a genetic level.” Other clashes included the Russian Orthodox Church vs. Catholicism and individualism vs. the state.
This is why the film depicts Byzantium using catchphrases and images taken right from the ideology and demagogy used in Russia today. We see Byzantium — and by extension, Russia — as a huge country situated between Europe and Asia and “unique in relation to the rest of the world.” It has domestic enemies in the form of “oligarchs” and a pro-Western intelligentsia. The film also portrays the benefits of a power vertical, the harmful disruption to the state that comes from changing emperors every four years. The danger of “revolution” is also discussed against a backdrop of fallen oranges — unsubtly capturing the image of the Orange Revolution. What’s more, the film mentions the unfair and debilitating international agreement between the Byzantine Empire and the West, which can be interpreted in modern terms as membership in the World Trade Organization. Finally, the film warns of the danger of an influx of immigrants who are unwilling to adopt the Orthodox faith.
The film conveys an obvious message to its target audience: Russia’s only guarantee of survival lies in a certain Orthodox Juche — a mixture of the North Korean philosophy of isolation, unconditional obedience to the state and self-sufficiency. This ideology is presented in the film as complete loyalty to the Russian Orthodox faith as the true form of Christianity.
It’s clear why state-run television conducted such an intensive PR campaign hyping this film. The film’s discourse on the relative merits of two competing political parties — one traditional and Orthodox and the other liberal and pro-Western — mirrors the Kremlin’s current propaganda line. The transfer of power to Dmitry Medvedev will only intensify the struggles between two contending Kremlin clans. In that context, the appearance of such a film should not be surprising.
Archimandrite Tikhon’s role in this PR campaign raises some interesting questions as well. Does this mean that, against the backdrop of the power struggle in the Kremlin, the Russian Orthodox Church is trying to establish itself as the official state religion and ideology? Or is there a deeper secret that we are unable to comprehend? I do not have the answer.
The only undeniably accurate historical aspect of the film is that the final conquest of Byzantium came from the east and not from the west. Incidentally, this threat has much relevance today, and it is something that we should be watching closely.

Mark Urnov is dean of the political science department at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
By Vsevolod Chaplin

Archimandrite Tikhon poses very important questions in his film: Who are we as Russians? Is Russia just a remote backwoods of Europe? Are we doomed to be obedient students of the West? Or is Russia heir to time-honored traditions passed down directly from ancient Rome and from which the West could also benefit? Should Russia follow the Western paradigm, as if it were indeed universal, or does Russia have its own path that is just as legitimate?
These have always been questions for Russia, not only during the 19th century disputes between Slavophiles and the Westernizers, but also during Peter the Great’s reforms and the backroom discussions of speechwriters for Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev.
A fresh look at Byzantium — an empire despised by both Western and Soviet ideologues — presents us with an excellent opportunity to talk about today’s Russia. For the first time, the average television viewer heard that the Eastern Roman Empire was neither an “evil empire” nor a center of dark obscurantism and superfluous luxury, but the largest civilization of its time and one that has something to offer modern Russia.
It is little wonder, then, that the film upset those who have been trying to convince us that the sun rises not in the East but in the West. It is surprising that some critics have not bothered to discuss the film’s production quality or the facts and ideas it portrays, but have simply lashed out at the very idea of “rehabilitating” Byzantium and the “Byzantine spirit” in Russia. Their arguments are weak. “The filmmakers are trying to take us back to the Middle Ages,” they say.
What we need here is a real dialogue with pro-Western Russians. Are they able to prove that the course of development they favor is the sole alternative, even though that path is causing an increasing number of crises in the West? What has the West come to when its leading nations drop bombs in an effort to prove the truth of their cause? Alternatively, does the ideal of an alliance between the people and the authorities suggested by Byzantium offer a viable model for the future? Might the West itself one day turn to such a model as well? We clearly do not have enough dialogue on these questions. Instead, we have heated arguments on the one hand and demands that the film be all but prohibited on the other.
The film provides convincing arguments that the Byzantine model of society — based on Christian social ideals, on the unity of faith, on the “symphony” and harmony of church and state and on mutual understanding rather than competition — has a very promising future. It is no coincidence that Russia survived, and even thrived, when it adopted this model. The main thing now is not to marginalize those who are sympathetic to this paradigm, whether in the East or in the West.
By no means was everyone from the West an enemy. Among the first crusaders were quite a few Westerners who sincerely wanted to help, and they sacrificed their money, health and lives. Many in Western Europe, including the pope, viewed the fall of Constantinople and the plundering by crusaders as a real tragedy. Only later did the West attach a pejorative meaning to the word “Byzantium” as something unworthy of respect.
Russia needs dialogue with the West. It is not only indifferent egoists and our opponents that live there — we also have sincere friends in the West, and the copies of Russian icons hanging in the churches of Brussels, Paris and Rome testify to this.
But this dialogue should not be one-sided. Russia and the West need to respect each other and accept each other the way they are. Only in this way can we offer each other our best qualities and values — and correct the worst.

Father Vsevolod Chaplin is the vice chairman of the department of external church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.

TITLE: Can We Save the Baltic Sea?
TEXT: Today the Baltic Sea is dead in many places, and human beings have caused this. Massive discharges of nutrients have slowly brought about the considerable eutrophication which can be seen in the summer as a green and, in places, poisonous algae sludge.
The chances of saving the Baltic Sea are better than they have been for a long time.  Recently we have been given an instrument; an action plan for the Baltic Sea. In November, the ministers for the environment of the countries around the Baltic Sea adopted the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), drawn up within the framework of the Helsinki Commission, HELCOM.  The overall objective of the Baltic Sea Action Plan is for the sea to become healthy, from an environmental and ecological perspective, by 2021 at the latest.
There is an apt proverb to describe the situation in which we find ourselves today. The Chinese philosopher Confucius said: “To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage”. We are conscious of the negative development in the Baltic Sea and we know what must be done. But do we have sufficient courage?
Although the action plan, signed by the nine Baltic Sea States and the EU, could have been even more ambitious and binding, generally speaking progress has been made. It has four main segments which deal with eutrophication, hazardous substances, maritime safety and biodiversity.
HELCOM has estimated that over-enrichment caused by nutrients must be reduced to about 21,000 tons of phosphorus and 600,000 tons of nitrogen in order for the Baltic Sea to have any chance of recovering. The discharge in recent years has amounted to an average of 36,000 tons of phosphorus and 737,000 tons of nitrogen. These figures are proof of the enormity of the work ahead of us.
The plan for the protection of the Baltic Sea sets forth, for example, national targets for the amount of nutrients the countries may discharge into the sea. All of the countries have agreed to have national programmes in place by 2010 at the latest to meet these targets.
The economic and social costs of waiting will be enormous, and, therefore, it is of the utmost importance to get started on the work immediately. It is especially important since new threats against the Baltic Sea are manifesting themselves all the time. For example, a recent report shows that climate changes could have a very negative effect on the Baltic Sea. According to certain calculations, global warming could extend the vegetation period by up to 90 days, which would mean that algal blooms would accelerate even more.
A requirement for achieving results is that we take on concrete projects and find the necessary funding. The ministers have drawn up and adopted the action plan, but the actual work must be done, for the most part, at a lower level.  This is where the municipalities will play a key roll, not least in their capacity as project financiers. Funding is often obtainable, for example, in the form of loans, as long as the project is a good one. However, this requires strong political will, and this is where municipal politicians, and also citizens’ organisations, have a great responsibility. 
There will be an excellent opportunity to discuss concrete local, national and regional actions at the Baltic Sea Day in St. Petersburg at the end of the week. The recent Baltic Sea Action Plan is naturally strongly in focus.
It is particularly appropriate this year that the Baltic Sea Day is being organised in St. Petersburg since Russia will take over the Presidency of HELCOM this summer. We place great expectations on the Russian Presidency to drive the work towards a cleaner Baltic Sea forward.
Nothing can be taken for granted in regard to the protection plan for the Baltic Sea — we must remember that, in the final analysis, the plan is only as effective as we ourselves make it. It will show its strength through implementation and concrete actions. The signatories to the plan have united and come to an agreement on certain goals, and it represents therefore an instrument of great potential. It is now up to the Baltic Sea States to make use of this tool as effectively as possible.

Asmund Kristoffersen, MP and Chair of the Nordic Council’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee and Christina Gestrin, MP, vice president for the Nordic Council and rapporteur for the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC).

TITLE: Turning St. Petersburg Into ‘Motown’
AUTHOR: By Mac Broderick
TEXT: Another week passes and another automotive company has set up shop here in St. Petersburg.  This week, Hyundai finalized a December agreement to build a plant in the city.  The buzz created by General Motors’ CEO Richard Wagoner dubbing St. Petersburg the “Detroit of the North,” has yet to subside here, almost two years later.  The city, now home to Ford, General Motors’, Toyota, and Nissan, in addition to the Korean newcomers, now brims with optimism over the economic possibilities of its new role as an automotive center, and rightly so. However, if the city wants to maximize its growth and truly become a global center of the automotive industry, it should heed Detroit’s lessons, both in growth and decline.  
Detroit experienced one of the most rapid periods of economic growth as it evolved into the world’s motor capital; of American cities, only Los Angeles grew more quickly.  It embodied the spirit of America’s industrialization and became a wealthy symbol of the opportunities industrialization presented.  
First and foremost, Detroit was not a simple manufacturing center; it was home to a critical mass of automotive minds.  Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler, the Dodge Brothers, and other names which currently grace cars worldwide, all converged to make the city a center of automotive innovation.  These engineers fed off each other and in turn evolved from engineers tinkering in one-room workshops to industrial titans.  For years, this trend continued because Detroit continued to attract the best and brightest automotive minds, and made it an engine of growth for the US economy.  These companies didn’t just mass produce cars, they developed some of the most innovative technologies of their generation. 
If St. Petersburg wishes to become more than just a labor source, the city will need to attract not just manufacturing jobs, but research and design positions as well.  The city is currently well positioned to do so, as the hub of an education system which for generations has produced world-class engineers.  Smolny should ensure that the same tax breaks given for factories apply to research and design facilities.  The city and federal government have both touted the creation of technoparks as a way to create centers of innovation.  
The city’s new status as an automotive hub could foster the creation of an ‘automation alley’ in St. Petersburg. This will help to ensure that high-tech jobs come to the city and remain here for years to come. 
Detroit’s growth was also fueled by a large pool of labor which increasingly came from the United States and abroad.  When Henry Ford introduced the $5 dollar day, then an unheard of salary for a manufacturing job, he advertised not only throughout the United States but also in Europe and farther afield. Ford produced pamphlets touting the program in Hungarian, Polish, and even Russian. 
This steady stream of labor coming to Detroit from around the world helped the city solidify its role as the center of a rapidly growing industry.  
Despite St. Petersburg’s economic growth, the city’s population has not expanded over the past few years. Demand for labor far outstrips supply, with manufacturing leaders speaking of labor shortages as a very real problem constraining the city’s growth.  The city and federal government need to formulate a policy that will ensure that the most capable engineers can come from across Russia to where they are needed most.  
Labor mobility will help local manufacturers to take advantage of economies of scale and continue to build on their investments in St. Petersburg, as opposed to looking elsewhere. Simplifying the work permit and visa procedures for foreign workers would also help to ensure that companies have the requisite personnel to grow.  As labor costs rise in Russia and the ruble appreciates, these measures will be especially important. 
Both management and labor also need to work together to make St. Petersburg competitive in the global economy. In Detroit’s case, both the senior corporate and union leadership failed to understand new economic trends that were transforming the automotive industry in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.  As a result, they were too often combative and reactive, instead of cooperative and proactive.  
This shortsightedness produced the hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs from the states of Michigan and Ohio, once the dynamic centers of American industry.  
St. Petersburg has already seen prolonged labor stoppages. In order for the industry to flourish here, both sides need to work to ensure that the operations are as efficient and productive as any in the world.
Finally, St. Petersburg needs to realize that while the automotive industry can promote growth and bring opportunity to a city, it is never wise to place all your eggs in one basket.  A diverse tax base insures that the city’s economic fate remains independent of one very cyclical industry. 
Even as late as twenty years ago, the decline of Detroit as one of the world’s great industrial centers seemed improbable, maybe even unthinkable. However, as the American industry lost ground to their more innovative rivals, the city’s position as a center of ideas, as opposed to just labor, began to erode.  Both labor and management bickered, and the decline continued.  Detroit will hopefully one day reemerge stronger from this position, having learned its lessons.  
For the time being, however, it provides a cautionary tale of how far a once proud city can fall if it fails to evolve.  St. Petersburg would be wise to study its history and learn from its mistakes.

Mac Broderick is an Associate with a St. Petersburg-based investment management firm. He has lived in both Detroit and St. Petersburg.

TITLE: U.S., Poland Try to Seal Deal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is hoping talks Monday with President Bush will help break an impasse on allowing U.S. missile defense interceptors to be based on Polish soil.
The two leaders also are likely to discuss NATO’s operations in Afghanistan, since Poland is set to expand its contribution to the force.
The two countries have been negotiating Polish demands for help in upgrading its military in exchange for allowing the missile defense interceptors, although it was not expected that the two leaders would reach a deal in the White House meeting. Negotiators appear hung up over how specific the U.S. promises would be to help upgrade Poland’s military.
The United States opened the negotiations last year with the government of previous Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who strongly supported the U.S. proposal. Tusk’s government has sought more in return.
Polish officials have said they are looking for help to acquire air defenses against short- to medium-range missiles. Negotiators have asked for Patriot 3 or THAAD missiles and have identified 17 areas of the Polish military that the United States could help modernize. Interceptors for the planned U.S. shield are for protection against long-range missiles.
The Polish government argues that the security backing is necessary because Russia has threatened to target Poland with nuclear missiles if it should allow the interceptors. Tusk and Bush are very likely to discuss Russian relations, because Tusk met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last month, the first visit by a Polish prime minister since 2001.
The U.S. missile defense plans have become one of the thorniest issues in U.S.-Russian relations. Russia opposes the U.S. plan to build part of its global missile defense system so close to Russian borders, arguing it would undermine the Russian deterrent. The United States says the system is aimed at countering a threat from Iran or North Korea and would be impotent against Russia’s massive arsenal.
U.S. negotiators, led by acting Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Mull, have tried to seal the deal with Poland by opening a separate negotiating track on the Polish demands. They have sought to leave promises vague.
“In the final analysis, I assure you that Poland will be able to count on America’s continuing strong and substantial support for years to come as it improves its capabilities to defend against our common threats,” Mull said in a statement after a round of negotiations in Warsaw late last month.
The two sides have said they would like to complete a deal before the Bush administration leaves office in January. Tusk said in remarks published Friday that the U.S. administration has now asked for six months to prepare an offer on the military aid.
Bush and Tusk are likely to discuss next month’s NATO summit in Bucharest, where calls for European countries to strengthen the alliance’s mission in Afghanistan are expected to be a focus.
Poland is expected to boost its contribution of troops to the mission from 1,200 to 1,600 in April and send much-needed helicopters.

TITLE: Serena Wins in India
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BANGALORE, India — Serena Williams won her first title in 11 months, defeating Patty Schnyder 7-5, 6-3 Sunday in the Bangalore Open final.
Williams dominated the final with powerful serves and groundstrokes. Schnyder committed several unforced errors in trying to hit deep and keep Williams at the baseline.
“It’s good to be a champ here, it always feels good to win,” said Williams, who won her 29th career title and first since last April at Miami. “I did not want to make too many errors. That was my game plan, but I did not stick to it.”
The 11th-ranked Williams was warned for a court violation after she cursed and smashed her racket when she faced two break points in the fifth game of the first set.
“I’m passionate about what I do. I got too passionate, my grip was wet and that’s what happened,” said Williams, who managed to hold her serve.
She then broke Schnyder in the sixth game, but dropped her own serve in the seventh.
Williams wasted two set points in the 10th game when she failed to break Schnyder, who stayed even at 5-5. 
In the 12th game, Williams again let go two set points, but won the third when Schnyder sent a return into the net.
“The first set could have gone either way,” Schnyder said. “Serena was really focused, she played tough and it was difficult for me to play my game even when I was 5-5. I was tired from the way she made me run around.”
They traded service breaks in the first three games of the second set with Schnyder breaking Williams in the first and third games. Williams surged ahead by breaking Schnyder in the sixth and eighth games.
Serving for the match in the 12th game, Williams saved two break points and won on the first match point.
“When you’re playing a champion like Serena, you’ve got to be at your best,” said the 12th-ranked Schnyder, whose career record in finals dropped to 10-13.
In the doubles final, third-seeded Peng Shuai and Sun Tiantian of China defeated top-seeded Chan Yung-jan and Chuang Chia-jung of Taiwan 6-4, 5-7, 10-8.

n Members of India’s Davis Cup squad have agreed to play under captain Leander Paes in next month’s zonal tie against Japan but are still demanding his sacking.
“With our only goal being playing for the country and with all other issues very much on the table, we look forward to playing Japan at home in April,” the players said in a statement.
“And just to reiterate, the letter still stands,” it added.
Mahesh Bhupathi backed a revolt against his former doubles partner by younger team mates Prakash Amritraj and Rohan Bopanna who threatened to boycott unless Paes was replaced.
But the federation backed Cup stalwart Paes by postponing any decision at its executive committee meeting last week.
In a stand-off which could hamper India’s preparation for the Beijing Olympics, the Davis Cup players accused Paes of undermining team spirit and running them down in the media.

TITLE: ‘Best Bad Player’ Wins Dubai Crown
AUTHOR: By Barry Wood
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DUBAI — When Andy Roddick defeated Spaniard Feliciano Lopez 6-7 6-4 6-2 to win the Dubai Championships on Saturday, he did it against the odds.
The sixth-seeded American had arrived late after competing in Memphis the week before and admitted that he almost sleepwalked through his first two rounds.
“I was literally asleep before my first match, on the floor in the players lounge with people stepping over me and [Novak] Djokovic dropping stuff on me,” said Roddick after his victory.
“I actually didn’t warm up that day because I was pretty tired. I really didn’t know what to expect coming in, and maybe that’s why I played well. Who knows?”
In addition to jet-lag, Roddick was imbedded in a half of the draw that included two reigning grand slam champions, Roland Garros winner Rafael Nadal and Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic.
But the former world number one wanted to test himself against the best and he came out on top in both encounters without the loss of a set or even a service break.
“I stated a couple of weeks ago that a big part of my decision to come here was to try to get a shot at the top players,” said Roddick.
“I was able to do that, and success here has made it look like it was a good idea. I’m just happy to be playing really good tennis right now.
“If I can keep the form I had this week I’ll definitely be a threat again at the slams.”
A third card stacked against him was that he had split from his coach, Jimmy Connors, just a week before arriving in Dubai.
But traveling now with just his brother John and trainer Doug Spreen, he was still able to talk with Connors before tackling Djokovic in the semi-finals.
Roddick’s victory, his second this season after his win in San Jose last month, also gave him the opportunity to hit back at critics who claim his game is one-dimensional and consists of nothing but a big serve.
“I think the only thing that bothers me is that sometimes I get presented as not a very good tennis player,” said Roddick. “I can play sometimes, besides the serve.
“I’m serving well, but I think I’m hitting my forehand pretty well and there’s not much I’m not happy with as far as this week goes. I’ve been playing the right way, which is good.
“Sometimes I tell people that I’m the best bad tennis player of all time.”
He added: “With the exception of Roger [Federer], if you look at my record against the rest of the top 10 it’s pretty good for a guy who can serve and can’t really volley or hit a backhand or his forehand isn’t big anymore.”

TITLE: Sarkozy’s UMP Party Trails in Regional Vote
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right UMP party suffered losses in the first round of French municipal elections on Sunday but avoided the crushing defeat some had predicted.
Results showed the Socialists had convincingly kept control of France’s second city Lyon and looked sure to maintain a firm grip on the capital Paris after the March 16 runoff ballot.
The first round was branded “Warning” by Le Parisien daily but with much still to play for in a host of cities, leftist leaders urged their supporters to turn out in force next weekend and transform initial gains into ballot triumphs.
“Everything remains open. Nothing has been won or lost,” said Socialist leader Francois Hollande.
The municipal vote is the first major electoral test for Sarkozy since he stormed to power 10 months ago, and comes at a time when his own approval ratings have slumped.
Although he was elected on a pledge to reform the economy, many voters feel he has not protected them from the rising cost of living and feel he has focused too much on his private life, marrying pop star Carla Bruni after a whirlwind romance.
At a national level, leftist parties won 47.94 percent of Sunday’s vote and center-right parties took 45.49 percent, with turnout relatively high at around 65 percent — not the landslide predicted by some commentators before the first round.
“A perverse effect of opinion polls: you find yourself believing in a landslide victory, it doesn’t happen, and disappointment surrounds the success,” left-leaning Liberation said in an editorial.
The key battlegrounds on March 16 will be the southern cities Marseille and Toulouse and, in the east, Strasbourg. All are controlled by the right but could fall to the Socialists.
Both the right and the left face a week of negotiations to try to stitch up local deals, with the centrist Democratic Movement party (MODEM) often holding the balance of power.
MODEM leader Francois Bayrou, who finished third in the 2007 presidential election, refused to back either side and told Sarkozy not to underestimate the result.
“I am convinced that this vote, which has largely gone the way of the left, is not a vote in support of the Socialists but a warning vote against those in power,” he said.
Pollsters Opinionway said 27 percent of those who voted did so looking to punish the government for its performance, while 56 percent said that wasn’t an issue for them.

TITLE: Work on Heath Ledger’s Final Film Resumed
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Work on Heath Ledger’s last film, suspended due to his death by accidental overdose in January, has resumed after three Hollywood stars agreed to play his character, director Terry Gilliam said on Monday.
Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law will step in to complete Ledger’s unfinished role in the movie “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” which is due for release next year.
“Since the format of the story allows for the preservation of his entire performance, at no point will Heath’s work be modified or altered through the use of digital technology,” said the film’s producers in a statement.
“Each of the parts played by Johnny, Colin and Jude is representative of the many aspects of the character that Heath was playing.”
Gilliam said filming on the British-Canadian production had resumed in Vancouver “with the blessing and support of Heath Ledger’s family.”
Ledger had just finished shooting scenes for the movie in London before his death. Newspapers have reported that the story involves a magical mirror that takes people into different dimensions, allowing Gilliam to switch between actors.

TITLE: Russian Runner Breaks 1,500 M Record
AUTHOR: By Simon Baskett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VALENCIA, Spain — Russian middle distance runner Yelena Soboleva stole the show on the final day of the world indoor championships when she smashed her own indoor world record to take gold in the 1,500 meters.
The 25-year-old Russian left the rest of the field trailing in her wake as she crossed the line in a time of three minutes 57.71 seconds, 0.34 quicker than the record she set in Moscow last month.
Fellow Russian Yulia Fomenko was second in 3:59.41, while Gelete Burka of Ethiopia grabbed the bronze.
United States heptathlete Bryan Clay, Australian 800 meter runner Tamsyn Lewis, African runners Tariku Bekele and Abubaker Kaki Khamis and British triple jumper Phillips Idowu also shone on the final day in which 14 titles were decided.
Clay, world decathlon champion in 2005 and twice runner-up in the world indoors, claimed gold in the multi-event competition with an outstanding set of performances over the two days.
The American amassed a personal best total of 6,371 points, just 105 short of Dan O’Brien’s 1993 world record, as he won four of the seven events to finish ahead of Andrei Krauchanka of Belarus and Kazakhstan’s Dmitry Karpov.
Lewis spoiled Maria Mutola’s hopes of winning an eighth indoor world title when she produced an impressive last-lap burst to hurtle past the 35-year-old from Mozambique and Tetiana Petlyuk to take gold.
The Australian crossed the line in two minutes 2.57, with Petlyuk taking the silver and Mutola the bronze.
Bekele took advantage of older brother Kenenisa’s absence to storm his way to victory in the men’s 3,000m in a time of seven minutes 48.23.
The 21-year-old set a scorching pace on the final two laps to give Kenyan steeplechase specialist Paul Kipsiele Koech and fellow Ethiopian Abreham Cherkos no chance of victory.
Kaki Khamis became Sudan’s first world indoor gold medallist at the age of 18 as he held off South African Mbulaeni Mulaudzi and Yusuf Saad Kamel of Bahrain in the 800 meters.
Triple jumper Idowu won Britain’s first gold of the championships with a massive leap of 17.75 meters, just eight centimeters off Aliecer Urrutia’s 11-year-old world record and more than half a meter better than his previous best mark of the season.
Silver medalllist Arnie David Girat of Cuba was way back on 17.47, while world outdoor champion Nelson Evora took the bronze with a leap of 17.27.
Blanka Vlasic deprived Olympic champion Elena Slesarenko of a hat-trick of indoor titles when she won the high jump.
The Croatian cleared 2.03 meters, while the Russian could only manage 2.01, the same height as bronze medallist Vita Palamar.
Canada’s Tyler Christopher found an extra gear in the final straight of the men’s 400m to snatch the gold from Johan Wissman of Sweden in a time of 45.67, the fastest mark in the world this year.
As expected the women’s 400m was an all-Russian affair with Olesya Zykina equaling her world leading time of the year of 51.09 as she managed to hold off Natalya Nazarova by one hundredth of a second in the lunge for the finishing line.
Portugal’s Naide Gomes, the world pentathlon champion in 2004, took the honors in the long jump with a leap of seven meters exactly, with Brazilian Maurren Maggi taking silver ahead of Russian favorite Irina Simagina.
New Zealander Valerie Vili added the world indoor crown to her outdoor title with victory in the women’s shot with a new area record of 20.19 meters.
In the pole vault Yevgeny Lukyanenko beat defending champion Brad Walker with a clearance of 5.90 meters while the American had to settle for a new personal best of 5.85 ahead of Steven Hooker of Australia.
Russia won their eighth consecutive gold in the women’s 4 x 400m relay ahead of Belarus and the United States won their seventh title in the men’s race.
The US ended up top of the pile in the medals table with five goals, five silver and three bronze, one silver better than the Russian haul.

TITLE: Giant-Killer FA Cup Set to Make Soccer History
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON — Barnsley’s reward for knocking holders Chelsea and Liverpool out of the FA Cup is a semi-final against fellow Championship (second division) side Cardiff City.
Monday’s draw also pitted Portsmouth, the only Premier League side left in the competition, against Championship high-flyers West Bromwich Albion.
It is the first time since 1908 that only one team from the top flight reached the semi-finals.
Both ties will be played at Wembley on the weekend of April 5-6.
Cardiff City continued a weekend of shocks by beating Middlesbrough 2-0 on Sunday.
First-half goals from Peter Whittingham and Roger Johnson handed the Championship (second division) side a deserved win at the Riverside and a place in the semi-finals alongside Portsmouth, Barnsley and five-times winners West Bromwich Albion, who last lifted the trophy in 1968.
West Brom restored some order to the competition after the Championship promotion challengers ended the run of League One (third division) outfit Bristol Rovers with a 5-1 victory, Ishmael Miller hitting a hat-trick.
On Saturday, Barnsley stunned holders Chelsea with a 1-0 win at Oakwell while Portsmouth ousted Premier League champions and last season’s beaten finalists Manchester United with a 1-0 success at Old Trafford on Saturday.
Portsmouth are now favorites to win a second FA Cup, 69 years after their first triumph.
Cardiff are the only non-English FA Cup winners after lifting the trophy in 1927 and manager Dave Jones said he hoped his modern-day side could achieve their own slice of history.
“Its important for us as a football club. I get it rammed down my throat... 1927 every time... so we’re trying to make our own history, and these boys deserve it and I’m sure the plane (home) will be rocking, not with the wind but with us on it tonight,” Jones told BBC Sport.
Cardiff rocked Middlesbrough by taking a ninth-minute lead — Whittingham producing some trickery inside the penalty box before unleashing a curling shot into the top right hand corner past a flailing Mark Schwarzer.
Boro claimed that a Cardiff player had handled in the build-up to the goal but their protests were waved away.
Whittingham then turned provider as the Welsh side doubled their lead on 22 minutes. His freekick from the left was missed by all of Boro’s static defenders who failed to pick up Johnson’s run and the defender scored with a well-placed diving header.
James Morrison fired West Brom ahead after 16 minutes against Bristol Rovers, slotting in after keeper Steve Phillips had parried a shot into his path.
Miller hammered in a second on the half-hour before Rovers got one back immediately through Danny Coles following a corner.
Miller poked in to make it 3-1, substitute Kevin Phillips got a fourth and Miller completed his hat-trick in a one-sided second half.
Since the Football League began in 1888-89 there has never been a final between two clubs from outside the top division.

TITLE: Danish Cartoonist Calls For Film Criticizing the Koran To Be Shown
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: AMSTERDAM — The Danish cartoonist behind controversial images of the Prophet Mohammad has urged a Dutch right-wing politician to broadcast a film expected to be critical of the Koran despite fears it might spark violence.
Kurt Westergaard is the author of a series of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed including one showing him with a bomb as a turban which triggered riots in the Muslim world and a boycott of Danish products when they were published in 2006.
Fearing a similar backlash against the Netherlands, the Dutch government has urged politician Geert Wilders not to broadcast a film he has made about the Koran, distancing itself from his views and considering a possible ban.
Westergaard said on Monday no Danish politician would dare to suggest blocking the film.
“That would mean political suicide. A Danish politician knows that you should not limit freedom of expression. Wilders must just show his film,” he said in an interview.
Wilders has given few details about his film, but he has called the Koran a “fascist” book that incites violence. Nobody except Wilders and his producers have actually seen the film.
Wilders said last week he was disappointed that no Dutch broadcaster wanted to show the movie but said he would probably launch it on March 28 at the parliament’s press centre in The Hague and make it available on a special Web site.
In the latest protest against the Wilders film and the reprinting of the Prophet Mohammad cartoon, thousands of Afghan students burned Danish and Dutch flags on Sunday and threatened attacks on their troops serving with NATO in Afghanistan.
The cartoon was republished by a number of Danish papers last month to show solidarity with Westergaard after three men were arrested on suspicion of plotting to kill him.

TITLE: Obama Seeks Mississippi Momentum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Barack Obama focused on Mississippi’s primary for new momentum in his tight race with Hillary Rodham Clinton, as a consensus began to emerge about two states stripped of their delegates where do-over contests could weigh heavily in the fierce Democratic White House battle.
Obama was favored to win in Tuesday’s nominating race in Mississippi, a southern state where blacks — who have carried him to wins previously — make up a majority of the Democratic voters. The senator trounced Clinton in Saturday’s Wyoming caucuses, rebounding from earlier setbacks in a win that allowed him to retain his all-important delegate lead in his quest to becoming the U.S.’s first black president.
After a weekend break from public campaign events, both Democratic contenders were traveling in different directions on Monday.
Obama had rallies planned in Columbus and Jackson, Mississippi, as he tried to pick up the lion’s share of the 33 nominating convention delegates at stake there.
Clinton, who campaigned last week in Mississippi, planned to take part in a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the next major battleground in the campaign. 
The northeastern state’s April 22 primary offers the biggest prize left in the nomination race: 158 delegates.
Clinton scored campaign saving victories in Ohio and Texas last Tuesday after 11 straight losses to Obama. 
Clinton’s campaign views Pennsylvania as friendly terrain, similar to neighboring Ohio. Both are industrial states with large numbers of white working-class voters and Democratic governors who are strong supporters of Clinton, who is aiming to become the country’s first woman president.
In the overall race for the nomination, Obama leads with 1,578 delegates to Clinton’s 1,468, according to the latest tally by The Associated Press. It will take 2,025 delegates to win the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention in late August.
It is unlikely that either candidate would win enough delegates in the remaining contests to secure the nomination outright. Instead, they would need the help of the almost 800 so-called superdelegates — party officials and elected leaders who are not bound by state contest results — to secure the nomination.
The unexpected closeness of the race has created a headache for party leaders who are trying to figure out how to give Democrats in Florida and Michigan a voice after they were stripped of their combined total of 313 delegates for holding early contests in violation of party rules.
Although Obama currently has more delegates than Clinton, that could be eclipsed if the former first were to win a large enough portion of delegates from those two large states.
Clinton won both states, but no delegates. None of the candidates actively campaigned in either state, and Obama withdrew his name from Michigan’s ballot.
Amid mounting calls from Florida and Michigan officials for new contests, a consensus began to emerge on Sunday about holding a mail-in primary
“Every voter gets a ballot in the mail,” Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said on CBS television’s “Face the Nation.” “It’s comprehensive, you get to vote if you’re in Iraq or in a nursing home. It’s not a bad way to do this.”
Cost remains a main factor in the decision, with neither national nor state party officials agreeing on who would pay for a new vote.
On the Republican side, John McCain, a veteran Arizona senator and former Vietnam prisoner of war who wrapped up his party’s nomination last week, was focusing on raising enough money to take on the eventual Democratic nominee in November’s general election.
The Democrats have raised staggering amounts of money. Last month alone, Obama raised $55 million, and Clinton $35 million. McCain, in contrast, was on track to raise $12 million, according to his campaign.
McCain’s schedule has been packed with fundraisers — he held five in two days last week — and he will continue to raise money in the upcoming week during a swing through the Midwest and the Northeast.

TITLE: Gebrselassie Won’t Run In Beijing
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ADDIS ABABA — Marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie said on Monday he would not compete in the Olympic marathon because of fears that Beijing’s air pollution would damage his health.
The Ethiopian runner, who suffers from asthma, said he would still compete in the shorter 10,000 meters event in the August Games.
“The pollution in China is a threat to my health and it would be difficult for me to run 42 km in my current condition,” he told Reuters by telephone.
“But I am not pulling out of the Olympic event in Beijing all together. I plan to participate in the 10,000 meter event,” he added.
Pollution is a major issue facing Beijing in the run-up to the Games.
International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge said last year that events such as the marathon could be rescheduled if contingency measures did not have the desired effect.
Gebrselassie called on China to deal with the problem, saying that pollution “would be a hazard to athletes, seriously affecting their performances.”
Dube Jillo, technical director of the Ethiopian Athletic Federation, said as far as his federation was concerned, Haile was expected to compete in the Olympics.
“But whether he runs in the marathon event or 10,000 m for which he holds a world record, would be his own choice,” Dube told Reuters.
Rogge told reporters last November in New York that a monitoring system would be set up in Beijing to gauge whether air pollution warranted delaying events.
Events that involve endurance, such as the marathon or cycling distance races, could be delayed for a few hours or until another day, Rogge said.
“During a marathon for more than two hours, riding a bicycle race for five to six hours — that could be a danger hazard and then we would postpone the race,” he said at the time.
Meanwhile, female Olympic marathon champion Mizuki Noguchi will lead Japan’s gold medal assault at this year’s Beijing Games after being named in the country’s squad on Monday.
The 2004 Athens gold medallist joins Reiko Tosa and Yurika Nakamura in the women’s team, the latter selected at the expense of 2000 Sydney champion Naoko Takahashi.
Nakamura won Sunday’s Nagoya marathon with Takahashi languishing in 29th place, failing to make the Japanese team for the second successive Olympics after her shock failure in 2004.
Takahashi, 35, has denied she will quit the sport.

TITLE: Dalai Lama Lashes Out At China Over Human Rights
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: DHARAMSHALA, India — Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, on Monday attacked China’s human rights record, accusing it of “unimaginable and gross violations” in his Himalayan homeland.
“Repression continues to increase with numerous, unimaginable and gross violations of human rights, denial of religious freedom and politicization of religious issues,” he told hundreds of flag-waving supporters on the 49th anniversary of his escape to India after an abortive uprising in Lhasa.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner’s angry comments came in a speech in the northern Indian town of Dharamshala and contrasted sharply with what his critics say has been a “soft” approach on China.
“For nearly six decades Tibetans have had to live in a state of constant fear under Chinese repression,” he said.
“All these take place as a result of the Chinese government’s lack of respect of the Tibetan people,” the 72-year-old told the gathering from his palace in this seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
The Dalai Lama said however that he would not abandon his call for autonomy in Tibet even though six rounds of talks with the Chinese since 2002 have yielded little result.
“During the past few years, Tibet has witnessed increased repression and brutality. In spite of these unfortunate developments my stand and determination to pursue the ‘Middle-Way’ policy remain unchanged,” he said.
Despite widespread frustration among the younger generation at China’s stranglehold on Tibet, the Dalai Lama remains the unquestioned spiritual leader of the diaspora.
He also said August’s Beijing Olympics could be a golden opportunity for the international community to expose China, which has ruled Tibet since 1951, over its treatment of Tibetans.
“Besides sending their athletes, the international community should remind the Chinese government of these issues.... China should prove herself a good host by providing these freedoms,” he added.
Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister in the government-in-exile, also lambasted China and backed the Dalai Lama’s calls for autonomy — a demand which many younger Tibetans say is just not enough.
“We do not have any hidden agenda or issues than the basic demand that they [Beijing] should implement conditions of national regional autonomy as set forth in the constitution of China,” Rinpoche said.
The attack on China coincided with a symbolic march home by 100 Tibetans as part of pro-independence protests ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Thousands waved yellow, blue and red Tibetan flags and cheered on the Buddhist monks in red caps and 10 women who said they planned to make it over the Chinese border.
Italian parliamentarian Sergio D’Elia flagged off the symbolic home trek. “It’s the duty of every freedom-loving person to support this march,” he said.
The organisers refused to reveal where any attempt would be made to cross the border but added it could take up to six months to reach the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
“This march reflects the true aspirations of Tibetans inside Tibet and in exile and this will send a strong message to China that Tibetans will fight the illegal occupation of our land,” said Tsewang Rigzin, Tibetan Youth Congress president.
The youngest marcher was 19-year-old high-school student Tenzen Pema, who carried home-made cookies, a bottle of water and a teddy bear. 
“My education is not as important as free Tibet and so I am determined to reach my country and plant this flag on the land that belongs to us,” she said. 
Five Tibetan groups who organised the march remained tight-lipped about the route because New Delhi prohibits Tibetan exiles from using India as a springboard for anti-China political campaigns. 
Tibetan activists are also planning a “Tibetan Olympics” here in May and sent a flaming torch to accompany the marchers.

TITLE: Socialists Win Spanish Elections
AUTHOR: By Jason Webb and Andrew Hay
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID — Fresh from a second consecutive election victory, Spain’s Socialists began to prepare a public works programme on Monday to reinvigorate a flagging economy.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who boosted his tally of parliamentary seats but once again fell short of an absolute majority, said he would approach smaller parties to forge alliances.
“There are a number of parties we can speak to,” an exhausted-looking Zapatero told a news conference.
“Obviously we’re going to be talking to all of them,” he said, without specifying whether he would be seeking a permanent alliance or simply continue as he has over the past four years, with different deals for different legislation.
The Socialists gained five seats for a total of 169 in the 350-seat parliament. The opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) also gained five seats to reach 153, while smaller left-wing parties and some nationalist parties lost ground.
Sunday’s turnout was a high 75 percent, in an election overshadowed by the assassination of a former Socialist councillor in the Basque Country, blamed on ETA rebels.
Participation almost matched that of 2004, when voters galvanized by the PP government’s mishandling of an Islamist attack on Madrid trains handed the Socialists a surprise win.
Zapatero on Sunday promised to govern for the poor, women and the young, continuing the progressive note of his first term, during which he legalised gay marriage and made divorce easier in the once deeply Roman Catholic country.
But with Spain’s long economic boom slowing sharply since the global credit crunch bit late last year, his first priority will be to put the lid on unemployment, which rose by 50,000 in February alone to 2.3 million.
“We have the confidence that comes from a budget surplus,” said Labour Minister Jesus Caldera, explaining that the government’s strong fiscal position meant it would have little difficulty funding public works programmes.
“They know they have to do something quickly ... The dark clouds have gathered, the question is how hard it will rain,” said Martin Van Vliet, chief economist at ING Amsterdam.
The government hopes increased spending will keep economic growth at 3 percent after 3.8 percent expansion last year, but some private economists, worried by high levels of debt in both households and firms, fear it could fall as low as 2 percent.
Analysts also point to the long-term economic problems of a country that for years has relied on a construction boom and ballooning private sector debt for growth.
The private debt load is reflected by a current account deficit running at nearly 10 percent of gross domestic product.
Economists say Spain badly needs to make its exports more attractive and encourage inward investment in sectors other than property, notably by improving productivity as well as infrastructure and education.
“They’re all focused on giving the economy a boost, a much needed boost, but it shifts focus away from reforms in the context of a huge current account deficit. It’s a worrying longer term risk,” said Van Vliet.
The Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia reported that Socialist officials had already met representatives of the moderate Catalan nationalist party Convergencia i Unio to talk about a possible deal. CiU, which won 11 seats, declined to comment.
CiU would almost certainly want a bigger share of tax revenues for the wealthy Catalonia region.
“They [the Socialists] are seven seats away from an absolute majority. They can pick and choose their allies on an ad hoc basis,” said Charles Powell, of San Pablo-CEU University.
In the last parliament, Zapatero often relied on United Left and the left-wing Catalan nationalists Esquerra Republicana, who were punished at the polls this time.

TITLE: China Calms Security Fears Over Olympics
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING — China insisted on Monday it would be able to hold a safe Olympics after officials said they had foiled two terrorist plots, while analysts and activists expressed skepticism about the extent of any threat.
Wang Lequan, Communist Party boss in Xinjiang, where the largely Muslim, Uighur minority has agitated for greater autonomy and rights, told reporters police had shot dead two members of a “terrorist gang” in a January raid and rounded up 15 others whose aim was to disrupt the Games.
Other officials from the far-northwestern region said a passenger jet bound for Beijing from Xinjiang was diverted on Friday after the discovery of what the state-run Xinhua news agency called a “planned terrorist attack.”
“From the very beginning we have attached great importance to Olympic security,” said Sun Weide, a spokesman for Beijing’s Olympic Organising Committee. “We are confident that we will be able to have a safe Olympic Games.”
Rights groups have accused the Chinese government of exaggerating the threat of violence in Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia, in the interests of exerting greater control in the area where China is trying to curb separatist sentiment.
“Anything that is an expression of Uighur identity becomes equated with separatism, which then becomes equated with violent terrorism,” said Corinna-Barbara Francis, a China researcher at Amnesty International in London.
Uighurs have been jailed in China on terrorism charges for what in the West would be considered freedom of expression, Francis added.
Rebiya Kadeer, jailed for more than five years for championing the rights of Uighurs before she was sent into exile in the United States, said she did not believe the government’s version of the alleged militant activities in Xinjiang.
“This is something they have fabricated themselves, it’s an incident they’ve arranged,” she told Reuters by telephone from her home in Washington D.C.
“Right now, Uighur people don’t have the ability to do that. Moreover, they don’t have any plans to do so,” Kadeer said of the plane incident.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uighur Congress, said China was using the upcoming Olympics as an excuse to crack down further on his people.
“China’s aim is to show the world that the Uighurs are terrorists,” he told Reuters by telephone. “We oppose terrorism.” 
The China Southern flight was en route from Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, to Beijing on Friday when it made an emergency landing in Lanzhou after the crew discovered what one source told Reuters was inflammable material in the toilet.
None of the passengers or crew were harmed, according to the Xinjiang government, and the plane finally arrived in Beijing on Saturday.
Analysts said reporting by China on politically motivated plots should be treated with caution.

TITLE: After Tumult of the 1990s, Russian Economy Moves From Battered to ‘Island of Stability’
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: These are extraordinary times. Less than 10 years ago, Russians were looking bleakly into the future, their savings wiped out and their confidence shattered in their country’s government and banking system.
Now, amid jittery global stock markets and a dramatic reversal in fortune for most of Wall Street’s powerhouses, the shoe is on the other foot. Russia’s economy is more insulated from the rout than most of its emerging-market rivals, and the country is molding a new role for itself.
Speaking at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin rammed the point home, noting that Russia would emerge as “an island of stability” amid the gathering storm.
Each time he speaks in public these days, Kudrin — the Kremlin’s messenger on all things economic — reels off an impressive array of statistics, ranging from foreign direct investment figures to GDP growth, that underscore the immense economic achievements of President Vladimir Putin’s government during his eight years in office.
Indisputably, Putin was a lucky man. He came to power at the end of 1999, when the country was emerging from a decade of painful reforms and a catastrophic financial crisis in 1998 to boot. The only way was up.
Fast forward eight years, and annual GDP growth is averaging more than 7 percent. Russia has paid down its foreign debt, boasts the world’s third-largest foreign currency reserves, has built up a huge reserve fund to guard against another crisis, and Russians — from the richest to the poorest — are now materially better off.
“It’s wrong to compare the Russian economy today with the Russian economy in the 1990s,” said Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal opposition party Yabloko. “It is necessary to compare it with the possibilities.”
The extent to which Putin can be directly credited with the economic boom is arguable.
Few are more aware of just how far Russia has come than Yegor Gaidar, the acting prime minister in the early 1990s who saw through some of the country’s most painful economic reforms following the Soviet collapse.
“It’s important to remember that the foundations were created in the 1990s,” Gaidar said, “when Russia started to become a market — mostly private — economy … and the basic institutions necessary for the functioning of a private economy were created.
“Russia in the 1990s was like being in hell, Russia in the 2000s was like being in heaven. … But to think the 2000s are not strongly connected with the 1990s is a big mistake.”
Anders Aslund, a fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute who advised Yeltsin’s government on economic reform in the early 1990s, agreed. “My view is that Putin was lucky,” he said in e-mailed answers to questions. “The main economic problems had been resolved in the 1990s with growth and macroeconomic stability firmly established in 1999.”

A Liberal Agenda
Putin, of course, inherited a quite unenviable list of problems — political instability, crippling foreign debt, a one-engine economy centered on its oil wealth and a banking system that had lost the confidence of a burned population.
Surrounding himself with a group of liberal economists led by Kudrin, then-Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and former Kremlin economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, Putin pursued a prudent fiscal policy in the early years of his presidency, and the budget has boasted a surplus since 2000.
“In many cases, [Putin] was an instigator and initiator of reforms — he was very active in asking and requesting from his economic team what else [could] be done on stimulating economic growth,” recalled Illarionov, now a fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington.
“He had a very strong feeling that reforms were necessary. He was not only ready, but able, to listen … to long and sometimes boring discussions on the technicalities of implementing reforms,” Illarionov said, adding that Putin’s skills in this regard were quite “extraordinary.”
The early reforms set the standard, arguably the most radical being the introduction of a new Tax Code in 2000, which saw taxes slashed to a flat rate of 13 percent, based on the idea that a lower rate would make evasion less worthwhile.
Many economists point to the tax reform as the single biggest achievement of Putin’s presidency, applauding the fact that to this day it has not been revisited. While there are still issues to be ironed out — most notably the level at which to set value-added tax — this is fine-tuning, economists said.
Changes followed to the Civil Code, the Customs Code, the judiciary, and attempts were made to ease the bureaucratic burden for small companies. In these, Putin was less successful, and small businesses still account for just a fraction of the country’s economy.
The judiciary, meanwhile, can hardly be described as independent; bureaucracy and corruption remain major obstacles for the smooth operation of business, particularly for smaller companies, and pension reform has stalled.
Similarly, education and health care reform have a very long way to go.
“In the areas of corruption, small business development, health and education, particularly, there was some progress, but not as much as [the government] initially claimed in 2000,” said Ksenia Yudayeva, an economist at the government-affiliated Center for Strategic Research.
In 2002, Russia was reclassified as a market economy by the European Union, and a year later Putin made his now-famous claim that Russia would double GDP by 2010, a target that is still within reach. It set the tone for the government’s economic agenda, and officials soon took up the cry, leaning on Cabinet ministers and industry to achieve this.
Such an ambitious target took its toll. At a Cabinet meeting in June 2005, an agitated Gref played the antagonist to Putin’s lead, telling then-Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov that doubling GDP was “unrealistic.”
Fradkov responded by urging Gref to “search, search for sources of economic growth.”
While Putin’s target was ambitious, the economy’s growth has been truly impressive, reaching 8.1 percent last year, outstripping official expectations. Others argue it could have been even higher.
“In 2000, Russia’s GDP growth was third among the 15 post-Soviet states, [but] in the last three years, it [has ranked] 13th,” said Illarionov, who has emerged as one of Putin’s strongest critics since quitting as his adviser in December 2005.
Yavlinsky, a trained economist who is another hardened critic of Putin, said the statistics put across a one-sided picture.
“Economic growth is very high, but so what?” he said.
“It’s absolutely not enough. … I’m talking about the other side of the coin, I’m talking about the machinery of the Russian economy. There are no private property rights, there are no incentives, there is no feeling that you can find justice, and there is no economic freedom,” he said.
But for those who lived through the pain of the 1990s, Putin has restored the most important thing of all: stability.
Stability has come at a price, as evidenced by the clampdown on independent media, the eradication of a tangible political opposition, and people’s growing alienation from the state. Yet it is almost a cast-iron certainty that a clear majority of Russians who turn out for Sunday’s elections will vote for Putin’s handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev.
“Probably the greatest legacy of the Putin era for the economy has been a degree of political stability,” said Alan Russo, chief political adviser at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “That gave investors a degree of confidence [to bring] money back into the country and [decide] to invest in Russia for the first time.”
By the middle of Putin’s first term, foreign investment was starting to pick up, led by energy majors eager to get a slice of the country’s huge reserves.
The future of private-sector investment in the energy sector seemed all but secured in fall 2003 when oil major Yukos stood poised to sell a stake to ExxonMobil. But within weeks, the deal was scuttled, Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested on fraud and tax evasion charges and the firm was staring at the first of many multibillion-dollar back tax claims.
Western criticism rained down on the Kremlin for what was widely seen as a politically motivated attack on Khodorkovsky, and investors hung back. In the first half of 2004, $5.5 billion was pulled out of the country.
Yet after foreign investors were assured that the Yukos affair was largely a one-off, they returned in spades, albeit a little warier and wiser about the “rules of the game.”
For many, the attack on Yukos marked the turning point in Putin’s economic approach.
“After 2003, we see almost no economic reform,” Illarionov said, adding that the “next to total” destruction of institutions over the last five years meant that Putin’s legacy would be a mixed one.
Other economists also described Putin’s rule as a presidency of two parts, with the later years marked by a remarkable consolidation of power during a period of high oil prices. With the windfall afforded by these high prices, some argued, the government lost the political will to push through unpopular structural reform.
“[The period of] 2003 through 2007 has been lost time. Putin’s second term is the greatest opportunity missed since Brezhnev,” Aslund said.

Return of the State
From early on in Putin’s second term, the state started to play a greater role in the economy, effectively renationalizing Yukos under Rosneft, and encouraging loyal businessmen to prop up Rosneft’s subsequent initial public offering.
The state’s involvement started to stray into a number of areas, particularly those it deemed strategic, such as aerospace and metals. In the defense industry, the owners of titanium maker VSMPO-Avisma were pushed into selling out to state arms trader Rosoboronexport, while midsized Russneft looks as if it will end up in the hands of Kremlin-friendly oligarch Oleg Deripaska after facing a slew of tax evasion charges.
The country’s largest commercial lenders, meanwhile, remain state-controlled, despite some tentative noises regarding full privatization. In some areas, both foreign and private investors have simply been crowded out.
While sovereign debt has been paid down, corporate debt has soared, prompting fears that these companies might look to the state to bail them out. By October 2007, Russian banks and companies had borrowings of more than $300 billion, much of it lent to state-controlled companies, such as Rosneft.
On the flip side, the state initiated an ambitious program to sell off electricity giant Unified Energy System. But, even here, Gazprom has built up controlling stakes in many of these assets, undermining the basic principle of the reform.
Growth is being driven by the state, said Yevgeny Nadorshin, chief economist at Trust Bank. Government approval is required for major projects, certainly strategic ones, while state projects and the increased government spending drive demand.
“Business has complete dependence on [its] relations with the authorities,” Nadorshin said. “If government expenditure reaches its limit, or if oil prices fall, this growth base will drop. We lack private initiative.
“We could suddenly find that 10 years of growth has been in the wrong direction … Then there will be a crisis,” he said.
While most economists say excessive state intervention is a hindrance to growth, they are reluctant to say Russia’s growth could have been higher without the state.
“If market forces had been allowed to operate freely, that could have attracted even more foreign direct investment and capital inflows into the economy,” said Ivailo Vesselinov, a senior economist at Dresdner Bank in London. “But it’s very difficult to know if that would have been the case in Russia, given Russia’s history in the 1990s, and the generally accepted failure of more liberal economics.”
In the last couple of years, the government has unveiled a new model to power growth: public-private investment channeled via state corporations. The corporations now include Russian Technologies, the successor to Rosoboronexport, and those covering aircraft manufacture, nanotechnology and the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
“The question is whether government intervention would be helpful, or whether it would be neutral or even damaging,” said Yudayeva, of the Center for Strategic Research.

Oil Wealth Dependence
While rapid economic growth has been centered on natural resources, it is to Putin’s credit that his government was able to manage the oil revenues and avoid the so-called “oil curse,” whereby countries in similar positions have frittered away the vast revenues accrued.
Central to this success was the establishment of the stabilization fund, a brainchild of Illarionov’s, which sterilized windfall oil profits to head off inflationary pressures while covering any substantial fiscal gap. By the end of 2007, it had accumulated a total of $160 billion.
On Feb. 1, the fund was split into the Reserve Fund, which will be invested in low-risk bonds and other instruments, and the more proactive National Welfare Fund, which could eventually be invested in equities. Oil and other raw materials currently account for about 75 percent of the country’s exports, and diversification is one of the biggest bones of contention in assessing Putin’s legacy.
In light of the expected global slowdown or recession, Russia is walking a tightrope, capitalizing on its natural-resource wealth while times are good but exposing its economy to the risk of external shocks, such as an oil-price crash.
While fewer than 1 million of Russia’s 142 million people work in oil-related industries, they produce about half the country’s GDP, said Vladimir Popov, a professor at the New Economic School in Moscow.
“It’s definitely one of the failures … that the Russian economy became completely dependent on oil and gas,” Popov said. “This is a continuation of the trend that existed in the 1990s, but [Putin] should be held responsible for not being able to stop it.”
Since 2004, oil prices have soared from a level of about $40 per barrel to break through the $100 barrier this year.
The problem, experts argue, is that it is very difficult to tackle difficult reform when times are good.
“That is not a situation which makes you very inclined to implement very difficult structural reforms,” Gaidar said. “You do not start serious and not always easy economic reforms when everything is OK.”
In the most telling indication yet of how Putin views his own legacy, he told the State Council last month that overdependence on the energy sector would have profound consequences for the economy.
“We have only modernized the economy in a piecemeal way. This will lead to increased dependency on the import of goods and technologies and to a strengthening of our role as an energy annex to the global economy,” Putin said. “Following this scenario, we will not be able to guarantee the security of the country or its normal development, and we will threaten its very existence.”
Perhaps Putin was being hard on his government, but his message of diversification has seldom been more urgent.
Private enterprise has burgeoned under his watch, even if some reforms have not gone far enough. Foreign investors are generally turning toward the fast-growing consumer sector, while real estate has gone from strength to strength. Lifting controls on the ruble in 2006 provided a further boon to investors.
“The most rapidly increasing sectors of the economy are not extractive industries,” Gaidar said. “We are a long way from the situation where we can say Russia is a stable, diversified economy … [but] we are going in this direction.”
In 2006, Russia proudly held the presidency of the Group of Eight, and while some critics have argued that Russia should not be a member of the group of industrial democracies, Putin has insisted on equal treatment.
Illustrative of the Kremlin’s assertiveness has been its reluctance to sign off on certain key concessions demanded by the West for Russia to join the World Trade Organization. After 15 years of talks, the country is only now nearing the point where it looks likely to achieve accession.
Inflation is one of the few areas where Putin has admitted achieving only limited success. While the government was hugely successful in reducing inflation from 20 percent in 2000 to single figures by 2006, it started climbing again in 2007. The country’s poor were the hardest hit by soaring food costs, a result of Russia’s place as an increasingly integrated part of the world economy.
The true extent of Putin’s achievements will perhaps not be known until long after he has stepped down from power, as his economic model of increasing state intervention has yet to be fully tested.
“[His] legacy … will probably only be known when the country faces some future tests,” said Russo, of the EBRD. “That is, when the environment turns less friendly, when oil prices drop … [or] when Russia is forced to compete in the global economy when they join the WTO.”
<b>KEY ECONOMIC EVENTS</b>
<i>August 2000</i> — Putin signs into law the much-praised Tax Code, which introduces a flat rate of 13 percent.
<i>July 2002</i> — Russia is invited to take up full membership in the Group of Eight, giving it the right to take part in financial discussions.
<i>November 2002</i> — The European Union grants Russia market economy status.
<i>May 2003</i> — Putin makes the much-quoted claim that GDP will double by 2010.
<i>October 2003</i> — Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky is arrested on tax and fraud charges in what is seen as a key turning point toward more state control over strategic economic sectors.
<i>January 2004</i> — The stabilization fund is established. The same year, oil prices start to climb, exceeding $50 per barrel.
<i>October 2004</i> — Moody’s awards Russia an investment-grade rating, a prerequisite for boosting foreign portfolio investment in the country.
<i>December 2005</i> — State arms trader Rosoboronexport, headed by close Putin ally Sergei Chemezov, takes control of ailing carmaker AvtoVAZ, the first in an ambitious series of takeovers.
<i>July 2006</i> — Currency controls are lifted on the ruble, making it fully convertible.
<i>January-December 2006</i> — Russia holds the Group of Eight presidency. Despite being criticized over its New Year’s cutoff of gas to Ukraine, the government is generally credited with a good performance at the St. Petersburg G8 summit in July.
<i>August 2006</i> — Russia pays off the last $23.7 billion of its sovereign Paris Club debt ahead of schedule.
<i>November 2006</i> — Russia and the United States sign a key bilateral agreement on Russia’s accession to the WTO, paving the way for the final, multilateral stage of talks with the organization.
<i>December 2006</i> — Inflation is brought down to single-digit figures to stand officially at 9 percent.
<i>April-June 2007</i> — Gazprom takes control of two major foreign-led energy projects, Shell’s Sakhalin-2 and TNK-BP’s Kovykta, after sustained periods of pressure from state environmental officials.
<i>August 2007</i> — The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis hits global financial markets, leading to a tightening in credit terms for Russian companies.
<i>January 2008</i> — Global markets tumble further, closely tracked by the Russian stock indexes. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin declares that Russia is an “island of stability” amid the worldwide turmoil.
<i>February 2008</i> — The stabilization fund, which has grown to $160 billion, is split into the Reserve Fund and the National Welfare Fund.


SPT