SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1380 (44), Tuesday, June 10, 2008
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TITLE: A Forum Of Drinks, Magic, A
Flying Pig
AUTHOR: By Max Delany
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If BMW was the official car and Gazprom the official sponsor, then maybe a flying pig should have been the official metaphor for the 12th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
As the cracked voice of Pink Floyd legend Roger Waters rang out at Friday’s packed opening concert on Palace Square, a 10-meter-long inflatable pig rose up over the Hermitage and soared off across the city’s center. 
But flying pigs were not the only unlikely sight at this year’s relaxed forum, as the home of the proletarian revolution played host to business leaders from around the world — and their lavish parties. 
Beyond the conference halls, as the Neva River flowed by, the champagne, vodka, whiskey and cocktails flowed into ministers and businessmen. 
At an alcohol-heavy party thrown by St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko on the grounds of Mikhailovsky Castle on Saturday evening, a pony-tailed Italian conjuror entertained a group of current and former ministers eating shashlik and drinking wine around a fully laden table. 
Elvira Nabiullina, German Gref and Igor Levitin giggled as the conjuror made Sergei Ivanov’s Visa credit card disappear and Viktor Zubkov’s vodka reappear and then stubbed out a cigarette in the jacket of a bystander. 
“They were a great audience,” Milanese magician Arduino Miscioscia, 42, whose stage name is Eddy, said in Italian afterward. 
But having performed for Vladimir Putin in Sochi and a number of times for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Miscioscia was not overwhelmed. 
“Except for the governor, I didn’t know which minister was which. The one in the glasses was really getting into it,” Miscioscia said. 
Confusingly, though, Matviyenko, Deputy Prime Minister Ivanov, First Deputy Prime Minister Zubkov, Economic Development Minister Nabiullina and Sberbank chief Gref were all wearing glasses around the table. 
The Italian prestidigitator was not the only one getting confused. As President Dmitry Medvedev strode out to deliver a speech at the Global Energy Prize ceremony, the announcer accidentally began introducing him as his predecessor, Putin. 
“The president of Russia, Vladi — Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev,” the announcer said. 
Medvedev seemed to notice the mistake. Entering the auditorium, he smiled widely and gave a wink. But he did not mention it at the podium. 
At Mikhailovsky Castle, the garden resembled a 19th-century party, with doves in gilded cages hanging from trees, paintings reproduced on huge panels standing in the grass, and singing metal butterflies on 3-meter metal sticks, flapping their wings and making melodious sounds. 
A female choir in black sang in the middle of a pond, their faces lit with electric candles. The main stage featured classical music ensembles, fire dancers, folk groups and jazzman Igor Butman. 
But the night air was chilly, so guests preferred to sit in warm tents, drinking mojitos and white wine and eating shashlik. 
“Apparently, Roman Abramovich was meant to come to the party,” said one of the catering staff, as she stood in line to use a stinking portable toilet in the garden. “But I can’t imagine him using one of these.” 
Abramovich, it seemed, was elsewhere. 
The Chelsea owner had moored his sparkling 115-meter yacht Pelorus on the Neva at the exact point where the battle cruiser Aurora had signaled the start of Lenin’s Revolution, avoiding the headache of having to find a hotel room in the city. 
In fact, no big businessmen attended the castle party, leaving the guests staring at the table occupied by Matviyenko and her VIP guests. 
Not everyone was pleased to see the famous faces. “I went up to Matviyenko and gave her my business card, but she just asked her bodyguards to take me away. She was very bitchy,” said Lev Smirnov, 65, a former sailor and port manager, who did not answer a query about why he was attending the forum. 
Matviyenko, who splashed out 716 million rubles ($31 million) on organizing the weekend forum, visibly enjoyed the party. Wearing 12-centimeter heels and white suit with glitter, she chatted nonstop, mainly with Gref, and sipped white wine. 
The menu included three kinds of shashlik, about 10 kinds of cheese, a variety of salads, fruits and vegetables, and seven kinds of ice cream. 
Nabiullina drank only water, nibbled on the appetizers, and left early. Her counterparts, however, stayed for the main meat course and the rich ice cream. 
Among the guests were the chief representative of the European Commission in Russia, Marc Franco, executives from HSBC and Goldman Sachs, British diplomats, retro music star Valery Syutkin and showman Nikolai Fomenko. 
“Do you know what happens at midnight? There will be a duel between Tony Hayward and some of the TNK-BP Russian shareholders at the Palace Square,” one British guest joked. 
He said he knew little about negotiations over a dispute between TNK-BP’s British and Russian owners. BP chief Hayward was in St. Petersburg, and BP’s conference room at the forum was occupied throughout the weekend. 
Some businesspeople, meanwhile, tried on new hats at the forum. Oleg Deripaska, Russia’s richest man with a fortune estimated at $28.6 billion by Forbes magazine, made a report at a session on climate change, chaired by well-known scientist Sergei Kapitsa. 
“What caused global warming is unclear, but the only practical solution to it, in my view, is the development of nuclear energy,” Deripaska said. 
“We need to develop an international nuclear waste treatment and storage system and unify the standards for building the reactors,” he said, adding that he “personally believed in small reactors with a capacity of less than 50 megawatts.” 
At another session, Mirax Group CEO Sergei Polonsky, Russia’s youngest billionaire at 35 and worth an estimated $4.35 billion, expressed outrage at what he called inflated prices at St. Petersburg hotels. 
“I tried to stay in the Grand Hotel Europe, and they sent me a bill of 571,000 rubles [$24,300] for three nights,” Polonsky said, pausing as Yevroset owner Yevgeny Chichvarkin helped him unfurl a 3-square-meter poster of the bill. 
“I stayed at a friend’s apartment,” Polonsky said. “Forget about the Grand Hotel Europe.” 
After complaints last year about overly tight security, reporters were granted access this time to almost all events associated with the forum. 
Inside a cavernous pavilion at the Lenexpo exhibition center, where many businesses set up stands, billionaire Viktor Vekselberg chatted with UES chief Anatoly Chubais, billionaire Oleg Deripaska bent the ear of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov did his best to avoid saying anything meaningful to the press. 
“Of course, we all know each other well, but life moves quickly and it’s difficult to catch up,” said Chichvarkin, dressed in an unusually sober light-gray suit and red converse trainers. 
“In 10 minutes here you can solve problems that it takes months to solve with e-mails and faxes,” Chichvarkin said. 
At the Gazprom stand, excited executives posed for photographs with the UEFA Cup, won recently by Gazprom-sponsored local team Zenit St. Petersburg, grinning like children as they walked away. 
“The cultural program is a good one this year. St. Petersburg has a rich cultural history, and this is being shown off,” said Mariinsky director Valery Gergiev, watching a giant screen showing the French Open tennis final. 
“I think that Russian businessmen are getting more cultured,” Gergiyev said with a wry smile. 
A few minutes later, he hugged Gazprom head Alexei Miller warmly in greeting before accompanying him into the bathroom. 
Although most participants had warm words for the forum’s organization, there were some complaints. 
As leading global economists discussed international food prices at some sessions, delegates and journalists suffered a food crisis of their own. Lines for the buffet lasted almost an hour. 
But with the noisy parties sometimes seeming more important than the formal discussions, delegates who wanted an explanation about the St. Petersburg forum might have gotten an answer by listening carefully to Pink Floyd’s Waters. 
“And did they tell you the name of the game, boy? They call it riding the gravy train,” the British rocker sang.

TITLE: President Scolds United States
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: President Dmitry Medvedev took aim at the United States on Saturday, blaming it for the current global economic gloom, while positioning Russia as a key player in restoring confidence and stability. 
“An underestimation of risks by the largest financial companies together with the aggressive financial policy of the world’s largest economy led not only to corporate losses,” Medvedev told investors at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “Unfortunately, the majority of people on the planet also became poorer.” 
In his first major international appearance since becoming president, Medvedev took a page from his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in making one of his most strident speeches to date. He attacked what he called “egoism” and the protectionist policies of other countries. 
“The modern world is already globalized. And in such conditions mistaken policy in some countries, not to mention national egoism, immediately affect the situation in the entire global economy,” he said. 
“We see companies maximizing their benefits without sharing with their neighbors. There is a growing economic egoism,” he repeated later. 
From an investment standpoint, Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Sunday that domestic and international companies had signed $14.6 billion worth of deals during the summit, an increase of about $1 billion over the reported total for last year’s event. 
But Medvedev’s words on protectionism rang a bit hollow for some participants, coming as they did against the backdrop of recently passed legislation limiting access to certain sectors and the elbowing of certain strategic investors to the sidelines of key projects in favor of state-controlled domestic companies. 
Royal Dutch Shell was forced to cede control of its landmark Sakhalin-2 project in mid-2006, while TNK-BP was forced out of the Kovykta gas project and now faces renewed attacks from its Russian shareholders over claims that CEO Bob Dudley’s allegiances lie with the British shareholder. 
Presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich added Saturday that the government was opposed to foreign investors who obstructed Russian subsidiaries’ plans to expand abroad, in an apparent dig at BP, which is said to have opposed TNK-BP’s efforts in that direction. 
In opposition to the criticism leveled at the United States, Medvedev’s speech stressed Russia’s relative economic strengths, noting that it had escaped much of the fallout from the global financial crisis and provided a broad outline of the country’s plans to emerge as an international financial center and establish the ruble as a global reserve currency. 
He also argued for the removal of barriers for Russian companies looking to invest overseas, stressing that its outward investment is neither “speculative nor aggressive.” 
Existing global institutions are becoming obsolete, he said, demonstrating their inability to tackle pressing global problems like rising food prices. 
“We understand our responsibility for the destiny of the world and are willing to participate in formulating the new rules of the game, not because of imperial ambitions but because we have the appropriate capabilities and resources,” Medvedev said. 
Russia’s economic stability and ability to establish itself as a leading global economy is at the heart of a debate in government, with the liberal faction represented by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin arguing that the economy is expanding at unsustainable levels. 
German Gref, president of Sberbank and former economic development and trade minister, reiterated that view Saturday, adding his voice to a chorus of leading international economists who say Russia’s economy is showing all the classic signs of overheating, which threatens its long-term prosperity. 
Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, said his bank predicts that Russia will be one of the leading eight economies by 2020, up from 10th place now, as the rapid jumps in the oil price slow down over the next decade. 
This forecast is at odds with those from the government, which expects Russia to overtake Britain this year as the world’s sixth-largest economy and to move into the top five within the next 12 years. 
In response to O’Neill’s comments, Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina, who was moderating the session and is one of the government’s keenest proponents of accelerated economic growth, accused him of “forecasting inertia.” 
Russia sizes its economy by purchasing power parity, by which measure it ranks seventh in the world, according to the government. Standard measures of GDP put Russia in 10th place. 
On Sunday, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov showed more interest in policy than the intricacies of economic measurement, arguing that the government should take a liberal tack and step back from interfering in the economy if it is to modernize. 
In a keynote address, Shuvalov said Putin had agreed to cut the number of strategic enterprises in the economy and that the government was committed to high levels of corporate governance at the board of directors level. 
He insisted that the protection of private property would be the state’s chief priority, responding to regular complaints from investors about corruption and a weak judiciary. 
“We have to repeat again and again — the protection of property rights is the top and most important task for the state,” he said. 
Other state officials offered some of the veiled threats that have become a more regular occurrence on the international stage in recent years. 
While he reiterated Gazprom’s commitment to meeting its long-term gas contracts, the state-owned monopoly’s chief, Alexei Miller, appeared to target some of his comments at Europe, which is heavily reliant on Russia for its gas supplies. 
Domestic trends are changing, he said, with many of the monopoly’s industrial customers prepared to pay European prices for their gas, even without export duties, transmission costs and other burdens. 
He further noted that Gazprom is looking at markets to the east, and expects to supply greater quantities of gas to countries of the former Soviet Union. 
After his address Saturday, Medvedev’s tone was less confrontational in a private meeting with a select group of CEOs from leading international companies. 
Recounting the highlights of the meeting, Coca Cola president and chief operating officer Mukhtar Kent said the dialog was much more informal than the previous year’s much smaller meeting with Putin and that the businessmen were “deeply impressed” with Medvedev’s command of the business challenges, and his openness to a transparent discussion. 
“The businessmen raised two issues to be addressed,” Kent said. “Issue number one was the need for a more transparent legal and judicial system, and the second was infrastructure. Russia will become choked at this rate of development if major investments are not embarked upon now.”

TITLE: City Ranks Among Most Polluted in Russia
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg placed 85th out of the country’s 89 regions in a newly released rating by the Russian Independent Environmental Monitoring Agency.
To award a position in the rating, the experts assessed a range of factors affecting the state of the environment, including air and water pollution, changing ecosystems, the production and treatment of industrial waste, environmental protection efforts, accountability by local business communities and the endangered status and extinction of animal species.
City Hall’s continued lack of attention to environmental problems and its aloof, hands-off attitude have become an additional negative factor in St. Petersburg, the agency said.
Dmitry Artamonov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the international pressure group Greenpeace, said City Hall does not simply turn a blind eye to the city’s environmental plight, but vigorously pushes forward with dangerous construction and industrial projects which, if implemented in the intended form, further exacerbate the state of the local environment.
“The massive land reclamation project on Vasilyevsky Island is particularly dangerous and it looks set to ruin the already damaged ecosystem of the Gulf of Finland,” Artamonov said. 
“Turbid spots formed by the masses of highly contaminated deposits rising to the surface now stretch for many kilometers. The works have already led to the mass destruction of living sea organisms and, if continued as before, could potentially turn the Neva Bay into a stagnant body of water.”
Ecologists argue that the construction of garbage incinerators — advertized by City Hall as a progressive campaign — will greatly contribute to air pollution in town.
“Not only is incineration expensive — rest assured that the fee will be incorporated into every resident’s monthly utilities bill — but it is also hazardous,” Artamonov said. 
“Toxic waste is not separated from the non-toxic trash and everything is burnt together. This means the process results in vast amounts of super-toxic dioxin emissions.”
The nearby Leningrad Oblast enjoys 69th place in the rating, thanks to better air quality and the condition of ecosystems and animal life.
Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East tops the rating, followed by the Republic of Adygea in the Krasnodar Krai, the Republic of Tuva, the Buryat Republic and the Irkutsk region in Siberia.
The bottom four positions in the rating after St. Petersburg were assigned to the Stavropol region in southwest Russia, the Tula region 200 kilometers south of Moscow, the Orenburg region in the Volga federal district and lastly, the Penza region, also in the Volga federal district.
Among St. Petersburg’s black marks is the fact that spent nuclear fuel destined for reprocessing and storage in Siberia is transported from abroad via the city.
Environmentalists argue that the safety of nuclear transportation in Russia leaves much to be desired, with inadequate guarding and monitoring.
Water pollution has remained a major concern in St. Petersburg since the Soviet years. Unlike in most European cities, tap water is not drinkable. Before 1978, the city had no water-treatment facilities at all.
However, with several water-treatment plants operating in town, according to St. Petersburg City Hall’s annual report for 2007, 40 percent of the sewage and industrial waste originating in the city — the highest level in the past 15 years — went directly into the River Neva and the Gulf of Finland, owing to a shortage of waste treatment facilities. That figure does not include illegal discharges.
Three years ago city authorities said only 25 percent of untreated waste was being pumped into the river. 
Ecologists stress that since 2000, the amount of unauthorized industrial discharge has grown despite the fact that such practices are illegal and could lead to the temporary suspension of all operations by the company responsible.
Fines for illegal discharges have little or no impact on the problem.   
“Companies prefer to pay fines of anything between 20,000 and 40,000 rubles ($810 to $1,600) rather than install expensive filtration systems,” said Vera Izmailova, spokeswoman for Vodokanal, the St. Petersburg administration’s water-treatment monopoly. “Fines need to be increased drastically and economic sanctions must be used against companies that breach environmental standards.”
In January, Vodokanal itself was fined 40,000 rubles by the local branch of State Environmental Protection Watch, a regulatory body, after it discovered illegal discharges of uncertain origin in the Okhta River, a tributary of the Neva. 
The agency was called in after Vodokanal had been unable to pinpoint the source of the discharges. 
But the watchdog is regarded by environmental campaigners as virtually toothless. 
The head of its St. Petersburg branch, Sergei Yermolov, said his office has only four inspectors and no legal right to initiate an inspection.
“An inspection can only be prompted by an official report about a discharge. We’re not allowed to just show up at a factory and demand that they install a filtration system,” Yermolov said.
Olga Tsepilova, a member of the environmental wing of the liberal party Yabloko, said public awareness about environmental issues remains low, and that officials downplay levels of contaminants in waterways.
“Environmental threats are multiplying as we speak,” Tsepilova said. «Rampant in-fill construction that has flourished under [St. Petersburg governor] Valentina Matviyenko has led to the devastating loss of hundreds of small parks and public gardens.”
For several years, local environmentalists have asked Matviyenko to go with them on one of their water patrols, but they say she has yet to accept such an invitation.  
Matviyenko has never publicly conceded that the scale of the problem is as great as the environmentalists claim. Indeed her speeches on the subject since she took office in 2004 have been optimistic. 
“St. Petersburg strives to reach European standards in all spheres of life, and with regard to ecology we are very close to our goal,” Matviyenko told reporters in 2007 during the inauguration of an industrial waste incinerator.

TITLE: Governor Orders Investigation Into Hotel Rate Hike
AUTHOR: By Gleb Krampets and Alexei    Shaposhnikov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko will ask the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) to investigate increased room rates at the city’s hotels during the International Economic Forum, Interfax reported on Sunday.
“Prices for hotel rooms grew to an unacceptable level, in my opinion.  Taking advantage of such an event [as the forum] and increasing prices is not acceptable.  I think the FAS will have some work to do after the forum,” said the governor at a press conference on Sunday, Interfax reported.
During one of the round tables held at the forum, Sergei Polonsky, head of Mirax Group held up a room bill from the Grand Hotel Europe. The entrepreneur paid 571,000 rubles ($24,193) for a three-night stay, and was anxious to point out that the room was not even a suite, but a standard room, according to the news agency.
The price for a room in the city’s hotels shot up last week, as some hotels more than doubled their rates for the duration of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum that was held from Friday through Sunday, according to Galina Brykova, manager of the A&A booking agency.  For example, a double room and breakfast at the Corinthia Nevskij Palace hotel cost 70,000 rubles ($2,966) per night, said Brykova, while the standard price for high season does not exceed 25,000 rubles ($1,059).  
Another five-star hotel increased its rates for the period of June 2-10 by about 35 percent back at the beginning of the year, according to the hotel’s manager.   A double room at the Ambassador hotel during the forum went up in price from 11,300 rubles ($479) to 15,500 rubles ($657).  
At the Grand Hotel Europe, junior suites were reserved for 220,000 rubles ($9,290) a night during the period from June 5-9, two participants of the forum told Vedomosti.  
According to one of them, the presidential suite cost 380,000 rubles ($16,100).  “It’s very expensive, but no one haggles, naturally,” said the source.  According to him, there were still rooms available at the Grand Hotel Europe at the beginning of the forum.  
The head of guest accommodation and service at the Grand Hotel Europe, Sergei Averochkin, neither confirmed nor denied the information.
At the Renaissance SAS Royal, rooms could only be booked for a minimum of three nights, and cancellations were only accepted up to three days in advance, instead of the usual two, said the hotel’s sales and marketing director, Viktoria Bereshchyan.
Park Inn Pribaltiiskaya roughly doubled its rates during the forum, according to one source at the hotel. A single room  during the economic forum cost  12,500 rubles ($530) a night, whereas now the price has gone down to 7,140 rubles ($303).  About 60 percent of the hotel’s rooms were occupied by forum participants, said the hotel’s general manager Christian Mayer.   
Ninety percent of the Astoria’s guests were attending the economic forum. 
This year’s economic forum attracted 2,500 participants and several thousand delegation members.  The organizing committee’s official partners included 17 major hotels.  The forum’s budget included accommodation expenses of 123.2 million rubles ($5.2 million.)  Those making speeches, presenting the forum’s program and members of official state delegations had their accommodation paid for them by the committee, while regular participants had to pay for a room in a local hotel. 
“The hotels knew in advance that nearly 10,000 people would be arriving for the forum and would need somewhere to stay, and so they didn’t sell any rooms to tourist agencies,” said Sergei Korneyev, vice president of the Russian Tourist Industry Union.
According to him, no discounted rooms were available.
The general manager of the Oktyabrskaya hotel, Vladimir Ivanov, confirmed Korneyev’s statement. Hotel profits during the forum increased by about 30 percent, according to Korneyev’s estimations.
Putting up hotel prices during major events is standard practice around the world, said Alexei Musakin, a member of the board of the Russian Hotels Association.  During fashion shows, the cost of hotel rooms in Milan roughly doubles, according to him.

TITLE: Alarm Raised by Police Monitoring of Schools
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The youth group Oborona held a protest last week at the offices of City Hall’s local Education Committee against what it claims is the existence of watchlists of students who dress as skinheads and emos that schools are passing to the police. 
“With this action we wanted to say that any citizen has the right to express themselves in any way that is not forbidden by the law,” said Oleg Mukhin, head of Oborona.
The youth group said the compilation of watchlists was being conducted under the name Operation Informal.
Oborona also wanted “to protest the latest tendency of our state to see all people as being similar, not having their own opinion, and having no individuality,” Mukhin said.
Skinheads have shaven heads, wear heavy boots and are associated with neo-Nazi extremism while emo fashions include dyed black hair, facial piercings, tight trousers with low crotches, and hooded tops. The emo look has been associated with self-harm and suicide cults.
“To our mind, if young people advocate fascist ideas at school it is one thing and it should not be left unattended, but if some youth simply has a very short haircut and wears heavy boots the police should not be immediately notified,” Mukhin said.
Mukhin also said that some emos may need the help of a school psychologist and that police notification could worsen the mood of emotionally vulnerable young people.
Last month local teachers began to pay more attention to how children dress after Kirovsky District prosecutors blamed the director of School No. 223 for not informing the police about a 15-year-old boy who dressed as a skinhead and brought World War II helmets and ammunition to school.
Prosecutors said the teenager is currently under arrest for murder.
The director and teachers first suspected the boy probably belonged to a skinhead gang last autumn. However, the teenager was backed by his mother in denying being the member of any gang. The school decided to strengthen its watch on the boy but did not inform the police. In February, the boy was arrested on murder charges, the website of the city prosecutors said.
Contrary to Oborona claims, Yelena Ordynskaya, spokesman for the city prosecutor’s office, said there was no special activity known as Operation Informal going on in schools.
But Ordynskaya said that School No. 223 broke 1999 crime prevention laws.
“I want people to have the right idea about the actions of prosecutors, police, and schools.  There’s no way that schools are directed to tell the police about any child who has a short haircut, wears heavy boots or has too much lipstick,” Ordynskaya said.
“We really don’t aim to make all children conform, and we do understand that each child is an individual,” she said.
“However, if a child or a teenager illegally brings ammunition to school or shows obvious signs of belonging to the skinhead movement, schools should accordingly react in order to prevent worse situations and crimes,” she said.
Vyacheslav Stepchenko, spokesman for the St. Petersburg police, said an interdepartmental instruction for school directors to inform police departments about unpleasant incidents at school has long been in place.
“This instruction is not something new. All school directors must let the police know about violations of the law, crimes and alarming incidents at school,” Stepchenko said. The instruction was prepared by the Russian Education Ministry and Internal Affairs Ministry.
Meanwhile, the city’s human rights experts say that teachers and school directors should not do the work of the police. 
Yury Vdovin, co-chairman of Citizen’s Watch human rights organization, said that “obliging teachers and directors to carry out investigative functions into the informal look of students contradicts moral laws.”
“Of course, if a crime is committed at school they should inform police but carrying out investigations is the task of the police and the FSB,” Vdovin said.

TITLE: Saakashvili Opens Parliament
AUTHOR: By Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Opposition lawmakers refused to take their seats in Georgia’s parliament Saturday, claiming that last month’s elections were rigged in favor of the ruling party. 
United Opposition alliance chief Levan Gochechiladaze cut up the ID card granting him a seat in the legislature at a small rally in front of the legislature. But his hopes of mustering tens of thousands of supporters to block the parliament on its opening day were thwarted when President Mikheil Saakashvili brought the date forward at the last moment. 
Authorities announced late Friday that the opening session would be held Saturday instead of Tuesday, leaving Saakashvili’s opponents with little time to get organized.
The May 21 elections strengthened the pro-Western Saakashvili’s grip on power, giving his ruling National Movement 119 of the 150 seats in the parliament.
The United Opposition alliance, which won 17 seats, rejected the results, claiming that the election was tarnished by widespread violations, pressure on government opponents and media bias. Most of the other opposition lawmakers stayed away from Saturday’s session, but several said they would later take their parliament seats. 
Opposition leaders have permission to hold demonstrations outside the parliament on Tbilisi’s main avenue for an 11-day period beginning Sunday. Authorities could have intervened Saturday had the crowd become too large. A few busloads of riot police stood several hundred meters away, and the protesters dispersed at midday.
The scheduling change and the police presence show “that this is not a popularly elected parliament,” United Opposition co-leader David Gamkrelidze said from the steps of the colonnaded legislature as the session went on inside. 
“A group of bandits has seized power,” said another opposition leader, Koba Davitashvili. 
Addressing the parliament, Saakashvili and his allies said they wanted dialogue with the opposition. 
“We are ready for talks, ready for compromises, ready to do everything we can to avoid a split in society,” said David Bakradze, a former foreign minister and Saakashvili campaign manager who was elected parliament speaker. 
Saakashvili was initially elected in a landslide after leading the Rose Revolution protests that ousted his predecessor in 2003. But accusations of authoritarianism and persistent hardship despite economic growth dented his popularity, and foes mounted massive protests last year calling for his resignation. 
In November, police fired tear gas and water cannons in a violent crackdown on protesters that further angered the opposition. 
But Saakashvili maintained his hold on power by calling an early presidential election in January, which he won with a slim majority amid opposition claims of fraud. 
The political wrangling has played out against a backdrop of increasing tension between Georgia and Russia over Saakashvili’s drive for NATO membership and Moscow’s growing support for the separatist Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Saakashvili said overcoming poverty and bringing the breakaway regions into the fold were Georgia’s top priorities. 
“What we value most of all is the unity of Georgia, and everyone must gather together to resolve this issue,” he told the parliament.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Traffic Bribes</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Nearly half of all St. Petersburg drivers surveyed have bribed the traffic police, according to a survey by the insurance company Rossgosstrakh, more than in any other city in Russia.
Data from 10,000 drivers in 37 Russian cities showed that 44 percent of St. Petersburg drivers claimed to have given money to the GIBDD (Traffic Police) at least once during the last year, putting the northern capital top of the list for bribery on the roads. 
In second and third places came Samara (41 percent) and Rostov-on-Don (40 percent). Bribery was least likely in Belgorod, Krasnoyarsk and Barnual (17, 18 and 19 percent respectively).
Fontanka.ru news service estimated the yearly income of a Petersburg GIBDD officer from bribes at more than $9,000. 

<b>St. Isaac’s at 150</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Celebrations of St. Isaac’s Cathedral’s 150th anniversary began on Sunday with a concert of sacred music by Russian composers, Interfax reported.
On Wednesday, an exhibition devoted to St. Isaac’s Cathedral will open at Smolny Cathedral.
On Thursday — 150 years since the completion of four decades of construction — celebrations will begin with a special service led by Metropolitan Vladimir Kotlyarov of St. Petersburg and Ladoga. A concert of sacred music performed by Petersburg choirs will follow.
St. Isaac’s, the fourth largest domed cathedral in the world, was designed by French architect August Montferrand and built between 1818 and 1858.

<b>Tchaikovsky Fired</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The rector of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Alexander Tchaikovsky, was fired on Saturday amid allegations of misconduct, Interfax reported.
Conservatory president Stanislav Gaudasinsky fired Tchaikovsky on behalf of the Culture Ministry.
In February, the ministry discovered financial inconsistencies that cost the Conservatory a total of 15 million rubles ($600,000). In May, an Interior Ministry fraud squad conducted searches at the conservatory.

<b>Teenager Held</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A 16-year old boy associated with an extremist group that the police say was planning to target Udelnaya metro station was arrested on Monday in the Primorskaya region of St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Growth May Reach 3 Percent
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Goldman Sachs warned on Sunday that Russian growth could soon slow to about 3 percent per year, far below Kremlin forecasts predicting the country will be one of the world’s top five economies by 2020. 
Jim O’Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs, presented a study at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum showing that growth would slow to 3.3 percent from 2010 to 2015 and to 2.9 percent from 2015 to 2020, much less than the 8.1 percent seen in 2007. 
Some officials seemed shocked by the figures, and Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said the numbers O’Neill had used were half current government forecasts. 
“I know that a number of people that saw these numbers wanted to throw tomatoes and various other bits of fruit at me because they are very conservative assumptions for Russian GDP growth,” O’Neill said. “This is deliberately conservative.” 
His estimates showed nominal GDP would more than double to $3 trillion in 2020, becoming the world’s eighth-largest, from about $1.3 trillion in 2007. The country has adopted an ambitious 12-year plan to propel it to fifth in the world rankings by 2020. It currently ranks 11th in GDP, the World Bank says. 
“If you want to be big, you have to have a lot of people working. ... And it certainly seems to us ... that there are going to be less people working because the population will be smaller in 2020,” O’Neill said.

TITLE: Gazprom Wants to Join Alaska Pipeline
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Gazprom wants to join a gas pipeline project in Alaska and has already made a proposal to BP and ConocoPhillips, its chief executive Alexei Miller said Saturday. 
“We are interested, for example, in such big projects as building a gas pipeline from Alaska,” Miller told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
“We have made the relevant proposals to our partners, ConocoPhillips and BP,” he said. 
Gazprom is looking to expand outside Europe, to which it is already a key supplier, providing one-quarter of its gas needs. 
Miller’s deputy, Alexander Medvedev, later told reporters that Gazprom would also hold talks with the leader of a competing project, TransCanada. 
“Given Gazprom’s [future] role in LNG supplies to the North American market, we are discussing not only broad cooperation in the LNG business or gas marketing in Canada but also participation in chains that bring added value,” Medvedev said. 
In April, Conoco and BP agreed to team up to build a natural gas pipeline costing more than $30 billion to link Alaska’s North Slope with markets in the rest of the United States by 2018. 
The project has been discussed since the 1970s but has been delayed by high costs and disputes over revenues. 
TransCanada, which has an application for a state license pending before the Alaska legislature, plans another project that would run nearly 3,200 kilometers from Prudhoe Bay to the Alberta-British Columbia border. 
Conoco, BP and ExxonMobil, which together control the estimated 850 billion cubic meters of proved natural gas reserves on the North Slope, refused to participate in the state-backed process, citing concerns over taxes and government control over operations. 
n Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko said Saturday that a nuclear reactor might be built to supply electricity to Gazprom’s offshore Shtokman project in the Arctic Ocean, Bloomberg reported. 
“We’re in early-stage talks with Gazprom’’ to increase capacity at an existing atomic energy plant on the Kola Peninsula, Kiriyenko told reporters. 
n Royal Dutch Shell and Gazprom signed a preliminary agreement Saturday to study liquefied-natural-gas projects on the Yamal Peninsula, Bloomberg reported. 
The companies may also consider LNG projects in third countries, Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer told reporters at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
n European nations may face a “crisis” unless they unite for negotiations with Gazprom, said Fulvio Conti, chief executive of Italy’s Enel, Bloomberg reported. 
“To the extent that we are keeping an individual approach as opposed to a unitary approach from a Europe standpoint might create, here and there, some crisis,” Conti said in an interview Saturday at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
A single European policy will also be needed to create a bloc-wide gas delivery network, Conti said. 
He also said he expected Gazprom to exercise an option to buy natural gas assets in Siberia and shares of Gazprom Neft “pretty soon.” 
Enel and Eni in April 2007 paid 151.5 billion rubles ($6.4 billion) at an auction for 20 percent of Gazprom Neft and Siberian gas fields being developed by Arctic Gas and Urengoil. 
Gazprom has said it would exercise an option to buy the Gazprom Neft stake along with 51 percent of Arctic Gas and Urengoil.

TITLE: Anti-Corruption Database Planned
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: The government will up the fight against corruption with a special electronic property database allowing officials to see more easily what people own, Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov said Saturday. 
“There already is a database on what property people own, but we are talking about streamlining it to make it easier to use and see what people own by synchronizing what different agencies and ministries already have,” Konovalov said in an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
Asked about levels of corruption, he said, “It is an approximate science to say when there is more or less but when business activity rises there are more economic relations and so perhaps this has risen.” 
Analysts said the electronic property base was important as it would allow officials to see exactly what people — including corrupt bureaucrats — own and pinpoint discrepancies between declared income and property. 
Tax authorities in Europe use such databases to pinpoint tax evasion and corruption. 
President Dmitry Medvedev has targeted corruption as one of his key policies since taking office last month. The Kremlin has repeatedly started anti-corruption drives in the past with little impact, and foreign investors say privately that bribe-taking has soared in recent years as Russia’s economy has boomed. 
Konovalov said corruption existed in all societies but that Russian authorities would work to root out corruption. 
“This is an ongoing process and we are going to work on it,” he said.

TITLE: Kudrin Calls for Better Coordination
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin on Saturday called for better coordination between global financial institutions and said NATO should be consigned to history. 
“Global institutions are reacting slowly to challenges, which exist today. ... But, of course, I don’t mean such institutions as NATO. I think such institutions should become history,” he told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
Kudrin repeated earlier criticism made by President Dmitry Medvedev of international financial institutions, saying they needed major changes because they had failed to deliver in past crises. 
Kudrin also said he was cautious about the idea of creating any cartel-like organization in the gas industry. “I’m very cautious when it comes to gas cartels. Cartels are not such institutions which can cut market risks,” he said. 
Iran, the second-largest holder of reserves, has called on Russia and other major gas producers to turn an informal gas countries club, known as the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, into a more formal body similar to the OPEC group. 
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who was president at the time, described the proposal as an interesting idea. Government officials have since been cooler on the idea. 
Kudrin said Saturday that OPEC was probably unable to lower the price of oil. 
“Cartels are not the institutions to lower prices,” he said.

TITLE: Forum In Brief
TEXT: <b>Investment May Triple</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Foreign direct investment in Russia, the world’s biggest energy supplier, will probably rise by a third this year to $60 billion, Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina said.
Foreign direct investment was $45 billion last year, Nabiullina said Saturday at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Russia’s Federal Statistics Service put foreign direct investment at $27.8 billion last year. Nabiullina didn’t explain the discrepancy.

<b>Ford Positive on Russia</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co. expects Russia to become Europe’s biggest car market as early as next year.
Russia will probably overtake Germany in sales in “a year or so,” Ford of Europe chief John Fleming said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum Saturday.

<b>Pepsi Forecasts Growth</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — PepsiCo Inc., the world’s second-largest soft-drink maker, expects snack sales in Russia to continue to climb by more than 10 percent a year.
Growth will remain in the “mid-teens,” Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo’s international chief Mike White said in an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
“Russian snack consumption is still very low,” White said on Saturday.

<b>Speculators to Blame</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Financial speculation may be responsible for as much as 35 percent of the current price of oil, Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said, citing experts he didn’t identify.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is probably incapable of lowering the price of crude oil, Kudrin told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Saturday.
The price of oil has more than doubled in the past year.

<b>VTB Earnings Pick Up</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — VTB Group, Russia’s second-biggest lender, will post six-month earnings that may be “substantially better” following a first-quarter writedown of $400 million in trading losses, Chief Executive Officer Andrei Kostin said.
“We’ll be very much in line with expectations for this year in terms of profit and other results for the bank,” Kostin said Saturday in an interview during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “We expect substantially better results for the first six months.”
Net income by international standards will “remain positive” in the quarter that ended March 31, though less than in the same period last year, amid more than $400 million in losses on its securities portfolio, the bank said Friday in a statement.

<b>AFK Seeks French Firm</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — AFK Sistema, the Russian holding company that controls Mobile TeleSystems, is seeking to buy a company in France, Sistema’s billionaire founder Vladimir Yevtushenkov said
“We are interested in telecommunications,” Yevtushenkov said in an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Saturday, declining to elaborate. Moscow-based Mobile TeleSystems is eastern Europe’s largest mobile-phone company.
Norilsk May Up Stake
</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — GMK Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest producer of nickel and palladium, may add to its minority stake in regional utility TGK-14, Chief Executive Officer Denis Morozov said.
Norilsk may also reconsider spinning off its power assets, Morozov said Saturday in an interview during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Viktor Vekselberg, co-owner of United Co. Rusal, which holds a stake in Norilsk, said yesterday that the nickel producer should spin off its power assets. In addition to its TGK-14 stake, Norilsk controls Moscow-based power generation company OGK-3.

<b>Austria to Join Pipeline</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Austria will “soon” join Russian natural-gas exporter Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline, Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev said.
Austrian oil company OMV AG will become the “coordinator” of the pipeline on Austrian territory, Medvedev told reporters at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Saturday.
Gazprom held talks with Austrian Economy Minister Martin Bartenstein during the forum, Medvedev said.
South Stream is planned to connect central Europe to Russia via a pipeline travelling under the Black Sea and up through the Balkans. OMV is also a shareholder in the rival Nabucco pipeline, which is designed to diversify Europe’s gas imports away from Russia.

<b>PIK to Build Into Sea</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — PIK Group, Europe’s second-largest real estate company by market value, plans to spend more than $3 billion on building a residential complex in St. Petersburg’s “Marine Facade” landfill area.
The Russian developer will construct more than 1 million square meters of housing after acquiring a 63.4-hectare site, the company said Sunday in an e-mailed statement. The project is PIK’s first in northwestern Russia, according to the statement.

<b>RusAl Plans Port Center</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — United Co. RusAl, the world’s largest aluminum producer, plans to spend $300 million on building a shipping facility on the Gulf of Finland.
The complex will be launched by 2011 with an initial shipment capacity of 2.5 million metric tons of alumina and 2 million tons of aluminum, the Moscow-based company said in an e-mailed statement Sunday. Capacity may be increased to 4.5 million tons of alumina and 3.5 million tons of aluminum, the company said.
RusAl signed a preliminary accord to build the trans-shipment complex with Ust-Luga Co., the developer of the Ust-Luga sea port.

<b>Regulator Delays Ruling</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russia’s antitrust regulator will rule on billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s application to buy Russneft after the oil company settles claims concerning the sale of its shares, watchdog chief Igor Artemiev said.
The regulator cannot approve an acquisition of Russneft by Deripaska’s Basic Element holding company because the ownership of the oil producer’s shares is still not determined, Artemiev told reporters in St. Petersburg on Sunday.
Russneft is defending claims brought forward by the tax authorities that some transactions involving its shares in the last year were not made in accordance with law.

<b>BasEl to Invest $20 Bln</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element holding company expects to invest $20 billion in infrastructure projects in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi on the Black Sea.
Infrastructure is a “critical” business for Basic Element, Lawrence Joseph Mahon, head of its construction unit, said Sunday in an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. 
Basic Element has bid with companies including Siemens AG and Singapore’s Changi Airports International Pte for contracts to build a tram system in St. Petersburg and expand the city’s Pulkovo airport.

<b>Deals Total $14.6 Bln</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Russian Economy Minster Elvira Nabiullina said domestic and international companies signed agreements valued at $14.6 billion at this weekend’s Economic Forum.
The deals included plans by PIK Group, Europe’s second-largest real-estate company by market value, to spend more than $3 billion building a residential complex in St. Petersburg’s “Marine Facade” landfill area, Nabiullina said at a press conference Sunday.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko also said a $10 billion tender for building a highway, known as the Western High-Speed Diameter, was won by billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element company in a group that includes builders Strabag SE of Austria and France’s Bouygues SA.
Half of the money for the announced highway project will come from private investors, Matviyenko said.

TITLE: BP Head and Vekselberg Optimistic Over Conflict
AUTHOR: By Stephanie Baker-Said and Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: BP Plc CEO Tony Hayward said he expects to reach an agreement with the billionaire shareholders of TNK-BP, settling a dispute that threatens Russia’s third-largest oil producer.
“I’m confident we will resolve our well-publicized differences with our partners and TNK-BP will continue to prosper,” Hayward said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Saturday.
The conflict over TNK-BP escalated when the four billionaires who control 50 percent of the venture called for TNK-BP CEO Robert Dudley to resign, saying he favored London-based BP’s interests over their plans to expand abroad and cut foreign staff. BP, which relies on the venture for a quarter of its output and a fifth of proved reserves, refused, they said.
Hayward traveled to St. Petersburg after holding “constructive” talks with TNK-BP shareholder Mikhail Fridman, BP spokesman Vladimir Buyanov said. Fridman, whose Alfa Group also has telecommunications and banking interests, is Russia’s fourth-richest man, according to Forbes magazine.
Fridman and Hayward agreed to “take time out” before continuing talks, an official for the billionaire shareholders said on Friday.
Hayward called on Russia to encourage spending, respect property rights and apply the rule of law in a speech at the forum. “If those three things are in place and applied consistently, then there will be very significant inward investment in the oil and gas sector,” he said.
The government isn’t involved and can’t resolve the dispute, which may be an attempt by Fridman to take control of TNK-BP, Vyacheslav Nikonov, a political analyst who advises the Kremlin, told Bloomberg Television on Saturday.
First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, who runs the government when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin travels, said Saturday that the government is not siding with the Russian shareholders in the dispute.
“We’re not involved,” Shuvalov said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We don’t want to be involved in relations between shareholders.”
The venture has been under legal pressure since a lock-up period between the shareholders expired at the end of last year. A court forbade 148 BP employees from working under contract at TNK-BP and the Federal Security Service raided its offices after questioning an employee about industrial espionage.
The court case was filed by Tetlis, founded by Alexander Tagayev and Vadim Zykov, who used to work for Alfa’s financial units. Alfa has denied a connection to Tetlis, which bought $40,000 of shares in TNK-BP’s traded unit this year.
“There have been positive developments,”  Viktor Vekselberg, another of the TNK-BP shareholders, said in an interview Saturday. He said Friday there was no reason for ownership changes at the venture and the conflict could be settled “within days.”
The half of the venture not onwed by BP is split between companies controlled by Vekselberg, Fridman, German Khan and Len Blavatnik, known collectively as AAR.

TITLE: Gref Speaks Out on Economy
AUTHOR: By Ellen Pinchuk and Alex   Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Russia’s $1.3 trillion economy isn’t overheating, a day after her predecessor said the opposite.
German Gref said Saturday that Russia’s lack of infrastructure, high income growth and shortage of skilled labor indicated the economy is already in the process of overheating, a position also held by the Finance Ministry. Gref now heads state-run Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank.
The potential for increasing production to meet growing demand “doesn’t allow us to say in full measure that the economy is overheated,” Nabiullina said Sunday in an interview with Bloomberg Television during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Russian inflation accelerated to a five-year high of 15.1 percent in May, and the government is struggling to meet its target of 10.5 for this year. Consumer-price growth has quickened every month since September and has remained above target all this year. The International Monetary Fund warned last week that Russia must slow the rate to avoid the need for a sharp tightening that could cut into economic growth rates, which have exceeded 7 percent on average since 2000.
Nabiullina said high inflation is an indication that Russia needs to “expand production,” not of an overheating economy. She said inflation “could affect the pace of economic growth,” and that the government is taking this threat seriously.
She repeated the government’s prediction that price growth will start to slow as food prices “stabilize” and the country sees lower net capital inflows this year after they doubled in 2007 to $82 billion, raising inflationary pressures.
The IMF’s expectations are “more conservative” on food prices slowing, John Lipsky, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said in St. Petersburg.
While Nabiullina listed inflation, a shortage of qualified personnel and infrastructure limitations as the main problems for growth, she said investment, which rose by more than 20 percent last year, as well as broadening consumer demand will be a key “locomotive” for growth in the coming years.
“Many think that growth is based only on rising prices for energy raw materials and high prices for oil,” she said. “I want to say that this isn’t true. Our assessments show that the share of growth of the energy sector and high prices for oil are just over a third of our growth rate.”

TITLE: CEO Says Judiciary Deters Investors
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Investors have “no confidence” in Russia’s judiciary, which must improve to attract more foreign investment, Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson said.
“There is no confidence in the rule of law in Russia today,” Tillerson said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Saturday.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev later defended his nation’s legal system at the forum, saying laws on property rights and contract obligations are “in line with world standards.”
Improvement of the judicial system is “the one key element” Russia must undertake to reassure foreign investors, Tillerson said at a roundtable, attended by the chief executive officers of BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips and other international energy companies.
Medvedev, a lawyer who has criticized Russia’s “legal nihilism,” said the country still needs to establish “absolutely independent courts” to help put those laws into practice. A new survey of international companies including Irving, Texas-based Exxon found that while Russia is the most promising market for foreign investment, corruption remains a “major concern.”
“Some considerable doubts remain about the rule of law in Russia,” the Foreign Investment Advisory Council said in the study, which was conducted for the government and presented in St. Petersburg on Friday. Some of the chief executives of the 51 companies surveyed said “corruption is taking on greater proportions,” the council said.

TITLE: RenCap, Macquarie Group Reveal Plans for Russian Infrastructure Fund
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Renaissance Capital and Australia’s Macquarie Group on Saturday announced the establishment of the first major infrastructure fund for Russia and the CIS as the government plans investments of $1 trillion into upgrades of facilities such as ports, railways, roads and airports. 
The first investors into the fund, which aims to raise $1 billion to $1.5 billion, are the state-owned Development Bank, the Eurasian Development Bank, or EDB, co-owned by the Russian and Kazakh governments, and Kazyna Capital Management, a Kazakh-based firm, Renaissance said in a statement. 
The Development Bank, formerly Vneshekonombank, and EDB, have each committed $200 million, while Kazyna will contribute $50 million for central Asian projects, the statement said.

TITLE: Ukraine Told to Expect Gas Price Rise
AUTHOR: By Lyubov Pronina
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko that the price Ukraine pays for natural gas will rise “significantly’’ at the start of next year.
Medvedev informed Yushchenko at a meeting during a gathering of Commonwealth of Independent States leaders Friday on the eve of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters.
Next year “Central Asian countries will shift to European prices,’’ Lavrov said. “Gas from Central Asia forms a considerable part of the gas balance for Ukraine. The president of Russia reminded President Yushchenko that this will happen from Jan. 1. The price for gas for Ukraine will significantly increase.’’
Central Asian natural-gas producers have demanded that Gazprom, Russia’s gas export monopoly, pay “European prices’’ for their fuel, which would also raise costs for Ukraine. Gazprom has twice curbed supplies to Ukraine since the start of 2006 amid price disputes, sparking concerns over energy security in Europe. About 80 percent of Europe’s gas imports from Russia cross Ukraine.
Ukraine’s gas price may double, news agency Interfax reported Friday, citing Lavrov.
Russia will allow Ukraine’s state energy company, Naftogaz Ukrainy, to join Gazprom in talks with Central Asian gas exporters, Yushchenko said in an e-mailed statement after talks with Medvedev.
“Lavrov’s statement on the gas price is more political than economic,’’ Nafotgaz spokesman Valentyn Zemlyanskyi said by telephone from Kiev. “The statement arises from the recent worsening of relations between Ukraine and Russia.’’
Preliminary prices may be announced in July, he said.
Yushchenko replied to Medvedev that “the sooner we shift to market prices, the better it will be for the development of a healthy economy,’’ according to Lavrov.
The demand from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for higher gas prices is non-negotiable, Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller told then President Vladimir Putin, Interfax reported on March 14.
In a March 13 agreement, Gazprom agreed to deliver at least 49.8 billion cubic meters of Central Asian gas at a price of $179.50 per 1,000 cubic meters from March through December. Ukraine agreed to pay the equivalent of $315 per 1,000 cubic meters of Russian gas supplied in the first two months of the year by “returning’’ the volumes to Gazprom.
     Ukraine gets about 70 percent of its gas via Russian pipelines. The March agreement ended a dispute with Gazprom over debt and middlemen. Gazprom had briefly curbed supplies to Ukraine before the deal was reached, raising concern that deliveries for Europe could be affected as they were during a similar dispute in January 2006.
     Medvedev served as the chairman of Gazprom for more than six years, and remains the company’s nominal head.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>AirBaltic to Fly to Sochi</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Latvia’s airBaltic airline will start nonstop flights from Riga to Sochi later this month, Latvian Transport Minister Ainars Slesers said Saturday during a working meeting with Transportation Minister Igor Levitin, Interfax reported. 
The first flight to Sochi is scheduled for June 18. The airline already flies to St. Petersburg and Moscow. 

<b>Iran Plant Set to Open</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Preparations for the startup of an Iranian nuclear power plant will begin this fall, Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko said Saturday. 
Kiriyenko said builders were in the final stages of work on the plant, near the city of Bushehr.   

<b>Bombardier Eyes Stake</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Bombardier, the world’s second-largest train maker by sales, may purchase a stake in Transmashholding after agreeing to two joint ventures with the company this year, chairman Laurent Beaudoin said Saturday. 
The companies are holding talks on the possible terms of the transactions, Beaudoin said in an interview. 
Bombardier is bidding to build double-decker passenger trains for Russian Railways and to take part in large infrastructure projects in St. Petersburg and Sochi, Beaudoin said. 

<b>X5 Considering Lenta</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — X5 Retail Group, Russia’s largest supermarket company, may be interested in buying the Lenta chain of hypermarkets, X5 chief executive Lev Khasis said Saturday. 
X5 would consider acquiring the St. Petersburg-based chain “if Lenta shareholders make us a proposal that would be attractive and hard to refuse,” Khasis said in an interview. “No one has made any proposals yet and it’s a hypothetical story.” 

<b>Aeroflot Cool on Alitalia</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Aeroflot may not resume talks to buy the Italian government’s stake in Alitalia because the airline is “past the point of no return,” the head of Russia’s largest carrier said Saturday. 
“I don’t know if we’re interested in buying Alitalia, because we don’t know what’s going on there,” CEO Valery Okulov said in an interview. “A year ago, it could have rehabilitated its health,” Okulov said. “Now, I don’t think so.”

<b>Russia to Export Water?</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russia is ready to export drinking water to the rest of the world, possibly through special pipelines, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said Saturday, Interfax reported. 
“According to reliable assessments, our country guarantees the preservation of 20 percent of the world’s supply of drinking water,” Gryzlov said. 
“Given the potential of our country and the demand of other states, the issue of exporting drinking water, for example via special water pipelines, will probably be looked into in the future,” he said. 

<b>Grain Prices ‘Solvable’</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Cargill Inc., the largest U.S. agriculture company, said the global problems with food supply that have led to record prices for crops including rice are “imminently solvable.”
Advances in technology and the cultivation of more land will boost production and help drive down prices, Cargill CEO Gregory Page said at the St. Petersburg Eonomic Forum on Saturday.

TITLE: Germany Beat Poland 2-0 in Euro Opener
AUTHOR: By Kevin Fylan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KLAGENFURT, Austria — Polish-born forward Lukas Podolski struck twice to give Germany a 2-0 win over Poland on Sunday, ending their 12-year wait for a victory at the European Championship finals.
Podolski tapped the ball into an empty net midway through the first half after Miroslav Klose, another Polish-born striker, burst through to set him up in the Group B game.
Germany continued to threaten and made it 2-0 when Podolski volleyed home from 12 metres in the 72nd minute after the defence failed to clear.
Victory extended Germany’s unbeaten record against Poland to 16 games and secured their first win in the tournament since the final of Euro 96.
Podolski was named man of the match but it was of little interest to the two-goal marksman.
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” he told the German television station ZDF. “It was important we played a good match today.
“We won 2-0. We did what we set out to accomplish.”
Podolski said he chose not to celebrate his goals because of his Polish roots.
“I was born in Poland. I’ve got a big family. It’s a part of my heart,” he said.
The Poles, making their first appearance in the finals, were nearly punished for a rookie mistake in the fourth minute.
Captain Michael Ballack set Klose racing through on goal with a perfect through ball. The striker chose to cross to Mario Gomez, who somehow failed to convert in front of an open goal.
With 20 minutes gone Germany caught Poland again. Gomez set Klose bursting through and this time his decision to square the ball proved a good one as Podolski, playing as a left-midfielder, calmly converted.
Germany keeper Jens Lehmann had nervously fumbled a cross from the right in the first minute but Jacek Krzynowek blasted the ball over.
Lehmann continued to look jittery before finally getting down to make his first clean save from Wojciech Lobodzinski.
Early in the second half Krzynowek raced clear on the right only to waste the chance with a poor cross before Ballack came close to adding a second with a rasping shot that was pushed away by keeper Artur Boruc.
Ebi Smolarek had the ball in 
Germany’s net in the 62nd minute but it was ruled out by a borderline offside decision.
“We were highly concentrated and didn’t make many mistakes,” said Ballack. “We let them have control of the ball a bit too much but then made it 2-0 at the right moment.
“It’s always good to start with a win. It gives us self confidence.”

Results so far: 
Germany 2, Poland 0.
Austria 0, Croatia 1.
Portugal 2, Turkey 0.
Switzerland 0, Czech Republic 1.

TITLE: Clinton Quits, Backs Obama
AUTHOR: By Beth Fouhy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton suspended her pioneering campaign for the presidency on Saturday and summoned supporters to use “our energy, our passion, our strength” to put Barack Obama in the White House.
“I endorse him and throw my full support behind him,” said the former first lady, delivering the strong affirmation that her one-time rival and other Democratic leaders hoped to hear after a bruising campaign.
Amid tears from her supporters, Clinton issued a call for unity that emphasized the cultural and political milestones that she and Obama, the first black to secure a presidential nomination, represent.
“Children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States,” she said.
For Clinton and her backers, it was a poignant moment, the end of an extraordinary run that began with an air of inevitability and certain victory. About 18 million people voted for her; it was the closest a woman has come to capturing a nomination.
“Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before,” she said in a speech before cheering supporters packed into the ornate National Building Museum, not far from the White House she longed to occupy, as president this time.
Indeed, her speech repeatedly returned to the new threshold her candidacy had set for women. In primary after primary, her support among women was a solid bloc of her coalition. She noted that she had received the support of women born before women could even vote.
But her main goal was to heal the rift in the party — one that cleaved Democrats in part by class, by gender and by race.
“The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States,” she said.
“Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me,” the New York senator said in her 28-minute address. Loud boos competed with applause.
With that and 13 other mentions of his name, Clinton placed herself solidly behind her Senate colleague from Illinois, who awaits Arizona Sen. John McCain in the general election. “We may have started on separate journeys but today, our paths have merged,” Clinton said.
Obama, in a statement from Chicago where he was spending the weekend, declared himself “thrilled and honored” to have Clinton’s support.
“I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run,” he said. “She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams. And she inspired millions with her strength, courage and unyielding commitment to the cause of working Americans.”
Obama secured the 2,118 delegates needed to clinch the nomination Tuesday after primaries in South Dakota and Montana. Aides said Obama watched Clinton’s speech live on the Internet. His campaign put a photo of the New York senator on its Web site and urged supporters to send her a message of thanks. Likewise, Clinton’s Web site thanked her backers. “Support Senator Obama today,” her web page said. “Sign up now and together we can write the next chapter in America’s story.”
Party leaders welcomed the new alliance.
“As you may know, I was a boxer. And I’ve seen many fights go the distance,” said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. “But never have I seen one where everyone came out stronger — until now. Because of the unprecedented number of new voters and the tremendous amount of enthusiastic supporters all the Democrats brought to the primary process, we stand ready to win the White House in 2008.”

TITLE: Race Could Overshadow White House Campaign
AUTHOR: By Charles Babington
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GREENSBURG, Pennsylvania — Joyce Susick is the type of voter who might carry Barack Obama to the White House — or keep him out. A registered Democrat in a highly competitive state, she is eager to replace George W. Bush, whom she ranks among the worst presidents ever.
There’s just one problem.
“I don’t think our country is ready for a black president,” Susick, who is white, said in an interview in the paint store where she works. “A black man is never going to win Pennsylvania.”
Susick said her personal objection to Obama is his inexperience, not his color. “It has nothing to do with race,” she said.
If Susick is right about Pennsylvania voters, it presents a major hurdle for the presumed Democratic nominee. Democrats have carried Pennsylvania in the last four presidential contests, and Obama would have to offset a loss of its 21 electoral votes by taking Republican-leaning states from John McCain.
Polls suggest that Susick, a grandmother of three, does not represent most registered Democrats here or elsewhere. But there may be enough like-minded voters in Pennsylvania, whose last two presidential elections have been close, to tip it to McCain.
In the April 22 primary, Susick voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who carried Pennsylvania by 10 percentage points. Perhaps more troubling for Obama, one in four Clinton’s backers told exit pollsters they would vote for McCain if Obama were the nominee; an additional 17 percent said they would not vote at all.
Obama has time and money to court these voters. Polls indicate some can be swayed. But the first-term senator is wading into unknown waters. Political scientists have reams of data about past elections, but there has been no test of how many voters make their ultimate decision based on race.
The answer may determine the presidency. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida, with large numbers of white, working-class voters, could prove problematic for a black man even in a year that otherwise looks grim for GOP candidates.
Gauging voter sentiments about race is notoriously difficult. Many voters hide their feelings from pollsters and it is possible that some do not even realize race’s influence on their behavior.
In interviews with 40 Pennsylvanians across three counties that Clinton won by big margins, only one person indicated opposition to Obama simply because of his race. But several others said their neighbors might do so. Some offered objections that are familiar, and suspicious, to Obama’s aides and supporters.
A few, like Susick, suggested the nation needs more time to prepare for a black president - and perhaps a woman as well.
“I don’t think we’re ready for either one yet,” said Doug Richardson, 62, a contractor from Latrobe. Obama “just hasn’t impressed me,” he said over midmorning coffee with a friend at Denny’s. “His middle name bothers me a lot.” That name is Hussein.
Obama may have little to lose with voters such as Richardson, a self-described conservative who likes McCain. More worrisome are longtime Democrats who backed Clinton in April but are threatening to abandon the party now that she is not the nominee.
Rose Iezzi, who lunched recently with two friends at a Greensburg cafe, is one. All three women are middle-aged, work for an accountant and admire Clinton. But only Iezzi took a hard stand against Obama.
“I think he’s a snake oil salesman,” she said. “He’s a little too slick and smooth.”
“He just doesn’t appeal to me, and not because of race, definitely,” she said in an interview in which race had not been mentioned.
Such comments are all too familiar to Richard Akers, who phoned dozens of prospective Pennsylvania voters as an Obama campaign volunteer in April. Democrats often explained their opposition to Obama with “excuses that were not rational or valid, as I saw it,” said the retired bank director from Johnstown, another hotbed of Clinton support.
“To me, it was almost a code,” Akers said. “‘He doesn’t wear a flag pin.’ It seemed like code for ‘He’s not one of us.’”
In Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, some people hardly hide their prejudices.
Robert Miller, 72, who lives in a government subsidized room in Bedford, said the Constitution should be amended so it will “not let any colored people run for the White House.” He seemed unsure about his voting record in recent elections, but vividly recalled voting for Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.
Dixie Pebley of Johnstown, 71, explained her distaste for Obama, saying, “black doesn’t bother me, but Muslim does.” When reminded that Obama is a Christian, she conceded the point, but added: “He was born Muslim and raised Muslim, that’s enough for me. He just scares me to death.”
Obama, the son of a white mother from Kansas and black father from Kenya, was born and raised in a mostly secular family that occasionally attended Christian services. He joined the United Church of Christ as a young adult.
Obama has little to fear from Pebley, who said she no longer votes because she is disillusioned with politicians. But even some likely voters who are largely sympathetic to him are troubled by his ties, now broken, to a former pastor who cursed the United States and accused the government of possible conspiracies against blacks.
Kate Tanning, a Pittsburgh antiques dealer who was lunching with friends in Bedford, rejected Obama’s claim that he did not know of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s most bombastic statements even though Obama attended Wright’s Chicago church for 20 years.
“That’s the one thing about him I can’t believe,” she said.
Obama generally avoids direct racial appeals, and he is likely to pursue such voters with familiar arguments: His opposition to the Iraq war and appeals for national unity and bipartisanship, for example. He may be making progress. National polls show him leading McCain among female voters and running even among Catholics, two groups that generally backed Clinton in the Democratic primaries.
But national polls are less important than those in the roughly 15 highly competitive states in which both parties will focus their efforts. These are all big states full of white, working-class voters who were Clinton’s base, and include Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Obama will count on voters such as Iezzi’s lunchmates, Susan Szymanski and Roxane Uhrin. Both said they strongly preferred Clinton, but will vote for Obama this fall in hopes of changing policies on the economy and Iraq.
“I don’t want a third term of George Bush,” Szymanski said.
James Antoniono, a Greensburg lawyer and veteran Democratic activist who worked for Clinton, said many Clinton backers will support Obama this fall, including some who told exit pollsters they would not.
“It’s one thing to come out of the voting both and say that,” Antoniono said. “It’s another thing when you’re faced with a choice in the general election.”
Still, he said, Obama and his aides face tough battles. 
“There’s no way they win Ohio, in my mind,” he said. “I think Pennsylvania is winnable.”

TITLE: Nadal Wins 4th French Open Title
AUTHOR: By Pritha Sarkar
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PARIS — In the end Roger Federer, like the incredulous crowd at Roland Garros, had no choice but to salute Rafael Nadal.
The irrepressible Spaniard put a shell-shocked Federer firmly in his place with a brutal 6-1 6-3 6-0 demolition to complete the most lopsided French Open men’s final victory for 31 years.
Nadal protected his aura of invincibility in devastating style to take his place alongside Bjorn Borg as the only men to have won four successive French Open titles since the tournament went international in 1925.
After the one hour 48-minute destruction, even Nadal was embarrassed to celebrate his triumph and told Federer during the presentation ceremony: “I’m sorry for that final but you played well. I want to thank (you) for (your) attitude on the court.”
A dejected Federer added: “I would have hoped to do better than four games but Rafael is very, very strong. He dominated this tournament like maybe no one before except Borg, so congratulations Rafa.”
Nadal’s victory over the world number one finished off the most dominant men’s French Open campaign in 28 years. Not since Borg’s run to the 1980 title had a man won the tournament without dropping a set.
Like a runaway bulldozer, Nadal has flattened anyone and anything in his path at Roland Garros this year. Whether playing an in-form Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals or Federer, the Spaniard made no allowances for reputations as he extended his perfect record at the claycourt major to 28-0.
As Nadal once again basked in his moment of glory, Federer could only brood over another botched campaign in Paris.
To compound his misery, the 12-times grand slam champion also raked up some forgettable landmarks. The world number one became the first man to lose three finals in a row in Paris and suffered his first 6-0 set loss since June 1999.
Federer, looking to complete a career grand slam, had swaggered on to court with great expectations of narrowing his lopsided 1-8 claycourt record against Nadal.
On the eve of the final, he also chose to remind everyone that: “So far I’ve never lost (to Rafa here) in three sets.”
Those words would come back to haunt him just 24 hours later.
A sense of foreboding set in within three minutes of the start when Nadal broke the Federer serve in the opening game as the Swiss paddled a forehand long.
Throughout the final Nadal leapt in the air administering his beguiling top spin, hammering the ball relentlessly into the corners and stretching his opponent to the limit.
A banner in the crowd proclaimed “Super Rafa” and it did not take Federer long to discover that he was, indeed, facing an opponent from a different planet.
After receiving the runner-up tray and a consolation embrace from Borg, Federer left court a broken man, shaking his head in disbelief.

TITLE: Democrat Focus Turns To Choice of Running Mate
AUTHOR: By David Wiessler
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON — With Hillary Clinton out of the U.S. presidential race, Democrats on Sunday began healing wounds from a bruising nominating contest and speculated about Barack Obama’s vice presidential choice.
Obama, who clinched the Democratic presidential nomination last week, was off the campaign trail, preparing for a tour of the country in his race against the presumptive Republican candidate John McCain in November.
His next major decision was his choice of running mate. Clinton, who officially bowed out of the campaign on Saturday and threw her support to the Illinois senator, has strong support from some in the party but is far from the only possible contender.
“No one brings to a ticket what Hillary brings,” California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said.
Feinstein, who hosted a private meeting between Obama and Clinton on Thursday night, cited Clinton achievement in winning around 18 million votes during the nominating contests with particular strength among women and working class Democrats.
“I do think she has a chance, but that’s up to him,” Feinstein said. “It’s going to take some time. The nerve endings have to be healed. They are being healed.”
Clinton, a former first lady and New York senator, was out of the public eye but in the past has asked her supporters not to mount a vice presidential campaign for her.
“It’s not a job that she’s seeking and it’s not a job that she’s campaigning for,” her campaign communications director, Howard Wolfson, said. “But she has made it clear, during the campaign and now, that she will do whatever she can and whatever she is asked.”
It is traditional for possible vice presidential candidates to say they are not seeking or even thinking about the job — part of the dance they have to do. Few actually say they would not accept if asked to take the job.
Guests on the Sunday television talk shows were in full “V.P. dance” mode.
“I’m not expecting it, don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it,” Democratic Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia said. “Of course, it would be difficult for anybody in those circumstances to say no.”
“I would leave that to Barack Obama,” Senator Jim Webb, a fellow Virginia Democrat, told CBS. “I’m happy to give him as much advice as I can, and support. I’m not really looking to be in that spot.”
Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota said on Fox, “It would be an honor to be mentioned, honor to be asked. It would be difficult to turn that down. But I don’t have any designs.”
Democrats have not won Virginia in a presidential race since 1964 and Republicans have not won in Minnesota since 1972. But both parties think they could win those states this year.
To win swing states, Obama must continue to draw support from independents as he did in the nominating contests and win the backing of the millions who voted for Clinton, a fair number of whom have indicated they are upset at her loss and are considering voting for McCain.

TITLE: Spain Fears Strong Russia Despite Weakened Team
AUTHOR: By Simon Baskett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEUSTIFT, Austria — Russia’s chances of upsetting highly-fancied Spain in their Euro 2008 opener on Tuesday will be undermined by the absences of playmaker Andrei 
Arshavin and striker Pavel Pogrebnyak.
Arshavin is suspended while Pogrebnyak has been ruled out of the tournament with a knee injury.
Spain, on a 16-match unbeaten run, are favorites to win the Group D tie in Innsbruck but Andres Iniesta said the Russian setbacks would make little difference to his team.
“I don’t think we should change our tactics because of what has happened,” the midfielder told a news conference. “We need to concentrate on ourselves and if we do that and play the way we can we’ll win.
“They have lost two important players but Russia’s strong point is their whole team not any particular individuals.”
Spain topped their qualifying group before notching morale-boosting wins over world champions Italy and beaten finalists France in their Euro 2008 buildup.
But despite having Fernando Torres, David Villa and Primera Liga top scorer Dani Guiza in their ranks, goals have been hard to come by with Spain scoring more than once in only one of their last five matches.
To rectify the situation coach Luis Aragones appears to have decided to play Torres and Villa up front rather than a lone striker.
The two-man attack is likely to mean no place for Cesc Fabregas in midfield while Brazilian-born Marcos Senna is favorite to get the nod over Xabi Alonso as the holding player.
Russia coach Guus Hiddink refused to get too downcast about the loss of Arshavin and Pogrebnyak.
“I can’t complain and start crying,” he said. “I have confidence … the rest of the team can cover.
“I want to see a very, very bright team. People like to see a team going forward and taking risks and because of this there have been a few [tactical] changes recently.”
The scoring duties are likely to fall on Roman Pavlyuchenko, who netted twice in the 2-1 win over England in October that paved the way for qualification.
Pavlyuchenko has struggled for form at club level of late and was dropped to the Spartak Moscow reserves in April after being red-carded for dissent.
But he has been finding the net for the national side in warm-up 
matches, scoring against Serbia and Lithuania.

TITLE: ‘Stupid’ Hamilton Angers Kimi At Crazy Canadian Grand Prix
AUTHOR: By Simon Evans
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MONTREAL — Lewis Hamilton went from hero to zero on Sunday after crashing into Ferrari’s world champion Kimi Raikkonen in a bizarre pit-lane pile-up at the Canadian Grand Prix.
The 23-year-old McLaren driver, who covered himself in glory by winning in Monaco two weeks ago, kissed goodbye to his championship lead with the most embarrassing moment of his fledgling Formula One career.
To make matters worse, Hamilton collected a 10-place penalty on the starting grid for the next race in France in two weeks’ time.
Leading the race from pole position at the scene of his first grand prix victory last year, Hamilton ploughed into the back of Raikkonen’s stationary Ferrari after they pitted on lap 20 while the safety car was deployed.
The Finn had stopped at the red light at the end of the pit lane, with BMW Sauber’s Polish driver Robert Kubica waiting alongside for the all-clear to rejoin the race.
Hamilton failed to brake in time, with German driver Nico Rosberg then adding to his misery by shunting the McLaren with his Williams.
“We got into the pitstop, it wasn’t a great stop and I saw the two guys in front of me and they were battling in the pit lane,” Hamilton told ITV television.
“I was obviously trying to make sure I didn’t get involved with those guys. I saw the red light but by the time they had stopped and I had seen the red light it was a bit late,” he continued.
“It’s a lot different if you crash into the wall and you are angry with yourself. It’s not like that. I apologize to Kimi if I’ve ruined his race but that sort of thing happens.”
Hamilton, who had been three points ahead of Raikkonen at the top of the standings before the start, climbed out of the wrecked car and exchanged a few words with Raikkonen before walking back to the McLaren garages without removing his helmet.
In an ironic twist, Raikkonen had failed to score points in the previous Monaco Grand Prix after driving into the back of Adrian Sutil’s Force India in the closing minutes while the German was in a stunning fourth place.
Raikkonen said Hamilton’s error was of a very different kind, however.
“I’m not angry but what Hamilton did was inexplicable. More, it was stupid,” he told Italian television.
“I’m not the right person to talk about a shunt, given what happened in the last race but it is one thing to collide on the track in the heat of the race and another in the pit lane when you are stopped at a red light,” he said.
While Raikkonen fumed, Kubica went on to take his first grand prix win and move four points clear of Hamilton in the championship. That marked a complete reversal of last year’s race in Montreal, where Hamilton celebrated his first Formula One win.