SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1442 (4), Friday, January 23, 2009
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TITLE: Medvedev Looks 
To Fill Top Positions
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that a final list of the country’s top 1,000 managers, which the Kremlin is compiling to help fill senior government posts, has been completed and will be made available to the public. 
The recruitment drive, first announced last summer, is a response to the difficulties the state is facing in identifying and recruiting competent personnel for public service, top officials say. 
It also highlights the lack of a proper recruitment system for government posts and the need for a new generation of managers to replace the Soviet-era nomenklatura, and Kremlin watchers say the initiative is an attempt to lessen the influence of civil servants directly loyal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Medvedev has reached out to Communists, nationalists and liberal politicians alike to create the pool of potential applicants, with the Kremlin contacting all four parties in the State Duma and asking them to submit the names of potential candidates for government jobs. 
The list of Medvedev’s so-called “Golden 1,000” includes scientists, members of nongovernmental organizations, regional and federal officials and businesspeople, Medvedev said in a meeting with his presidential envoys. 
“We will publish this list. It cannot be a secret,” Medvedev said in comments published on the Kremlin’s web site. 
Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin sent a letter to the Duma factions, whose representatives met last summer under the auspices of a new presidential commission on recruitment, asking for names for the “Golden 1,000” list, said Igor Lebedev, chairman of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party faction in the Duma. 
Each member of the commission was asked to submit the names of 11 candidates to serve in federal and regional agencies, party organizations or as “representatives of business, culture and education,” Lebedev said. LDPR has three members on the commission, including leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. 
The only stipulation was that candidates must be 35 to 50 years old. 
LDPR has nominated around 30 candidates, including Alexander Kurdyumov, rector of the Institute of World Civilizations, a higher education college founded by Zhirinovsky in 1999. 
“We hope that all the candidates proposed by us will be approved by the president and will be offered some kind of government post,” Lebedev said in remarks forwarded by his press secretary. 
The Communist Party confirmed that it also had received the request from the presidential administration but offered few details. 
Party leader Gennady Zyuganov is currently drawing up a list of names, said Pavel Shcherbakov, press secretary for deputy party leader Ivan Melnikov. 
Nikolai Levichev, leader of A Just Russia in the Duma, could not be reached for immediate comment. 
A Kremlin spokeswoman declined to comment on the recruitment drive, saying, “We have no official documents about this.” 
Russia doesn’t have a transparent route to government posts, such as the fast-track Civil Service test for graduates in Britain. “It depends entirely on having connections at a high level,” said Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst at Merkator. 
Medvedev first called for a new recruitment strategy back in July and founded the presidential commission on recruitment in August. In his November address to the nation, he said he was looking for the “most talented, creative-thinking and professional people.” 
Medvedev is breaking away from Putin’s strategy of placing personal acquaintances and former colleagues in top jobs — a strategy that proved ineffective by the end of his second term, Oreshkin said. “However large Putin’s circle of acquaintances may be, it’s not large enough for the whole country,” he said. 
Putin also relied on members of the Soviet-era nomenklatura, but this generation is going away, said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who tracks Kremlin politics as the director of the Center for Elite Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

TITLE: Central Bank Seeks to Set Floor for Ruble
AUTHOR: By Gleb Bryanski and Yelena Fabrichnaya
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Central Bank sought to put a limit on the ruble’s gradual slide on Thursday, setting its floor 10 percent below current levels after the currency stabilized in recent sessions.
The central bank said it would stop widening the ruble trading corridor from Jan. 23 — a process which cut nearly a fifth off the currency’s value since November — and would switch to a managed float.
The statement ended a two-month long period of creeping devaluation as Russia strove to bring the currency in line with weak oil prices and an economy which the government expects to slip into its first recession in a decade this year.
“From Jan. 23, 2009 the upper boundary of the technical corridor will be set at 41 rubles [versus a euro-dollar basket],” the central bank said in a statement. “The stated value is defined taking into account the remaining risks of worsening terms of trade for the Russian Federation, but the Bank of Russia sees these risks as moderate and does not plan to change this boundary in the coming months.”
The move comes after Russian officials flagged that the depreciation could be coming to an end, and after the ruble began to show its first signs of resilience.
On Tuesday it posted its biggest ever rally versus the basket, and on Thursday closed at 37.03 — some way off the central bank’s weakest boundary.
“It is a sensible move. They had been very keen to avoid a sudden devaluation for political reasons so we have this instead,” said Nigel Rendell, emerging foreign exchange strategist at Royal Bank of Canada in London.
“A lot of people have been short on the ruble for a long time and they might decide the game is up and close their positions so there might be some short-term support. But the longer-term trend is clearly down unless we get some kind of inversion in the oil price.”
The central bank argues that the softly-softly approach to devaluation has avoided panic among a population which remembers the ruble losing more than two thirds of its value during the last major financial crisis in 1998.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin this week ordered that the 2009 budget be reworked at an average price for key export oil of $41, less than half the originally forecast $95.
That would mean an economic contraction of 0.2 percent this year, according to updated Economy Ministry forecasts obtained by Reuters.
However falling imports — as the domestic economy slows — will likely keep the trade balance in surplus, giving the ruble some support.
Many Kremlin-watchers expect Putin to seek a return to his old job as president in 2012, though he himself has not declared an interest.
Analysts say his chances of doing that hinge on the handling of the current financial crisis, with the ruble one key factor.
But the announcement of a managed float is unlikely to silence the analysts who say controlling the ruble’s depreciation — which has cost a third of Russia’s reserves since August — is too expensive, and a one-off large move or even a free float are needed.
Russia’s reserves fell a record $30.3 billion in the week to Jan. 16, data on Thursday showed, slipping below the $400 billion mark for the first time since May 2007.

TITLE: Murders of Lawyer, Journalist Slammed as 'Political Killings'
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: More than 150 people gathered in central St. Petersburg on Tuesday to mourn lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, who were murdered in Moscow on Monday, and protest against political killings. 
Markelov was known for taking on human rights cases and defending left-wing and anti-Nazi activists, while Baburova was also an anarchist and anti-Nazi activist, so a plan for mourners to gather by Bukvoyed book store on Ligovsky Prospekt was quickly hatched on leftist and activist e-mail and Internet forums late Monday, just hours after the two were murdered. 
The site near the book store was chosen because anti-Nazi activist and musician Timur Kacharava was stabbed to death there by a group of neo-Nazis in 2005. Vigils are held there every Nov. 13 to commemorate the day Kacharava was killed.
From there, mourners planned to march to Marsovo Pole (the Field of Mars), the park where victims of the 1917 Russian revolutions and Civil War are buried, and hold a vigil near the eternal flame monument.
Although information about the event was distributed only via the Internet and word of mouth, dozens of mourners turned up, from young punks, anarchists and left-wing activists to older human rights activists and sympathizers. 
By the announced time of 7 p.m. the police were already on the site, with several police vehicles parked next to Bukvoyed. Three young people were reportedly detained at an early point in the gathering. 
People held flowers, candles and portraits of Markelov and Baburova at the site. But when the mourners tried to move toward Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main street, at 7:25 p.m, they were blocked by policemen. A policeman with a megaphone warned the mourners that they were blocking the movement of pedestrians on Ligovsky Prospekt and demanded that they leave the site “one by one” and go home. 
Some protesters replied that it was the police themselves who were blocking the movement of pedestrians. The policemen formed lines on both sides of the gathering, ready to act.
However, after 15 minutes of negotiations, mourners were allowed by a police colonel in command to walk along the side streets to Marsovo Pole rather than along Nevsky. They were allowed to carry flowers, but not candles or portraits. An estimated 65 people walked, accompanied by four police vehicles, to Marsovo Pole, while some used city buses to get to the site. Some activists distributed leaflets as they walked.
The mourners arrived at the eternal flame at 8:20 p.m., where some 40 people were already present. The mourners stood silently around the flame, holding photographs, flowers and candles, until Vladimir Plotnikov of the left-wing group Rabocheye Deistviye (Workers’ Action) made a speech describing the killings as “state terror” against left-wing activists.
According to Plotnikov, the killings were a continuation of the attacks on newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov and left-wing activist Carine Clement in Moscow and Ford Plant trade union leader Alexei Etmanov in St. Petersburg in November. 
“We were saying, ‘They will start killing us soon’ then, but with a laugh, disbelieving – but now they really are killing us,” he said, before declaring a minute’s silence in remembrance of Markelov and Baburova.
Later in the evening, around 10 p.m., between 20 and 25 punks and anarchists marched under a black flag from Sennaya Ploshchad to Marsovo Pole in protest against the murders, according to the Indymedia anarchist website. The police were not aware of the march and did not intervene in the protest.
Moscow prosecutors, who are yet to make any arrests or offer a concrete motive in the double killing, on Wednesday questioned colleagues and searched offices that Markelov had used, the Associated Press reported. Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin told a news conference Wednesday that the authorities had little evidence.
“All the investigation has to go on is the data from video cameras,” Pronin said, Interfax reported.
The killings were condemned by international rights organizations.
“Freedom House is outraged by these cold-blooded murders which reflect the impunity that exists in Russia today,” said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House executive director, in a statement issued on Wednesday.
 “Responsible critics of the government appear to be fair game for contract assassins in a political climate in which Russian authorities have abdicated their responsibilities for protecting these important voices.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry reacted by saying that Baburova was an “innocent victim of the situation,” while, according to the latest information, it was Markelov who was targeted, ITAR-TASS reported on Thursday.
“The tragic events connected with the death of a journalist are starting to get artificially politicized and used, with dishonest intentions, to discredit Russia and adjusted to the previously developed concept of the lack of freedom of the press in the Russian Federation [and the] persecution of journalists,” an unnamed Foreign Ministry official was quoted by the agency as saying.
Neither Russian President Dmitry Medvedev or Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have  commented publicly on the killings.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Brit Paper Bought</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev has purchased a controlling stake in British newspaper The Evening Standard, the newspaper’s parent company announced Wednesday. 
Evening Press, a company formed by Lebedev and his son, Yevgeny, has purchased a 75.1 percent stake in the newspaper for a “nominal sum,” Daily Mail and General Trust said in a statement. 
The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but the Times of London on Friday reported that the stake would be sold for 1 pound sterling. Associated Newspapers, the DMGT unit that owned the stake, will retain 24.9 percent and continue to provide printing and distribution services, the statement said. 

<b>Information Bill</b>
MOSCOW (SPT) — The State Duma passed in a third and final reading Wednesday a bill that spells out citizens’ rights to gain access to government documents.
The bill obliges officials to answer citizens’ requests for any information that is not a state secret within 30 days.
It will now be sent to the Federal Council for consideration. If approved, it will go to President Dmitry Medvedev to be signed into law. The law would come into effect in January 2010.

<b>Money to Ingushetia</b>
MOSCOW (Reuters) — President Dmitry Medvedev has visited Ingushetia and pledged to spend billions of rubles on the North Caucasus region where violence has threatened to dent the Kremlin’s control.
“Despite the fact that we don’t have the simplest financial situation at the moment, we have allocated 29 billion rubles [$881.5 million], and this is big money,” Medvedev said during a televised meeting Tuesday with Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov.
He did not specify when the money would be allocated.

TITLE: Center Set Up to Assist Unemployed Immigrants
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A temporary center to help migrant workers who have been fired will be opened in St. Petersburg, the city’s ombudsman has said.
Igor Mikhailov announced the plan after meeting Zhafar Ponchayev, the head of the Muslim Board of St. Petersburg and the Northwest Region, Fontanka.ru reported.
Mikhailov and Ponchayev agreed on the need for the center in the face of a severe economic downturn that has left migrant workers — mostly from Central Asia and represented by the Muslim Board — without work.
The participants of the meeting said that staying in the city without employment could be difficult and sometimes even dangerous for migrant workers, Interfax reported.
Mikhailov said that when the crisis is over, St. Petersburg will need to maintain current levels of migrant labor, typically for the construction industry, but that in the current situation they should organize help for guest workers willing to return to their home countries.
“We have often come across workers who could not return home because they did not have the necessary money or documents. In such situations, more support and understanding from state organizations is needed,” Mikhailov said.
The center will coordinate actions between interested organizations to prevent migrant workers from turning to crime out of desperation, the participants of the meeting said.
On Monday, Vladislav Piotrovsky, head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast police, said that in 2008 the number of crimes committed by migrant workers grew by 25 percent in St. Petersburg and by 30 percent in the Leningrad Oblast, Gazeta.spb said.
Piotrovsky said the city’s worst hit districts were Vasileostrovsky, Kalininsky, Frunzensky and Moskovsky.
Piotrovsky said the growth of crime among migrant workers is a result of the financial crisis because many of them have lost their jobs.
St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko has said the city should urgently tackle the problem of illegal migrants. Matviyenko said there are about 100,000 illegal migrants living in St. Petersburg with just 136 of them being deported to their home countries in 2008. 
Ponchayev said that in recent years, St. Petersburg’s mosque, one of the largest in Europe, has not been able to accommodate all the worshippers who wish to go there on religious holidays.
“There are more Muslims now in the city due to the large numbers of guest workers coming from Central Asia who work and live in St. Petersburg,” Ponchayev told Interfax.
Yury Vdovin, co-head of the Citizen’s Watch human rights organization, said that the city’s migrant workers have “really found themselves in a hard situation.”
Vdovin said currently many construction sites are closing and workers are being left with nothing.
“The situation of guest workers is worrying. These people risked everything to go to a different country to earn money for their families. And now their potential is wasted, so the risk of potential crime in not excluded. However, it’s not their fault,” Vdovin said.
“There is only one way to help such people,” said Vdovin. “Help them to return home.”

TITLE: Court Rules for Rights Group
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Dzerzhinsky District Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of the Memorial human rights group and declared the Dec. 4 police raid on the organization’s local headquarters at 23 Ulitsa Rubinshteina illegitimate.
On Dec. 4, a group of armed and masked men who claimed to have been sent by the local Prosecutor’s office raided the local headquarters of the Memorial human rights group, confiscating eleven hard drives from the group’s computers. The investigators also seized all the organization’s research and archive materials collated over the past 20 years. 
Several masked men armed with sticks stormed into Memorial’s office at around 1 p.m. and began searching the premises. All staff were forced to take their seats and were forbidden from making or receiving calls or communicating in any other way with the outside world.
Arseny Roginsky, chairman of the board of the Moscow-based international organization Memorial, said the verdict marked a rare case of an independent and fair trial in Russia.
“I find it encouraging that the judge gave an unbiased verdict that was clearly against the interests of our powerful opponents who represent the law enforcement agencies,” Roginsky said.
“Instead of protecting and placating the investigators — which is what, regrettably, most Russian judges would have done, as can be seen in similar trials — the court came out with a fair verdict.”
The investigators denounced the verdict and said they would appeal the ruling at the St. Petersburg City Court.
The court ruled that all the documents and hard drives taken by the investigators during the search must be returned to Memorial, but the human rights activists will have to wait until the end of the legal proceedings, when a ruling is given on the appeal.
Irina Flige, head of the organization’s historical branch said the investigators’ protests were both predictable and pointless.
“The investigators claimed they never heard our lawyer ringing the doorbell and banging on the door,” she said. “But a video recording – which, remarkably enough, they themselves submitted and screened at the court – proved that the sounds were perfectly audible.”
Human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov who represents Memorial said the organization is planning to sue Anvar Azimov, Russia’s representative at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who, speaking at a session on Jan. 18, claimed the Russian authorities had sufficient reason to believe that Memorial was linked to the funding of extremist materials that were published in the Novy Peterburg newspaper.
According to the Investigative Committee of the Russian General Prosecutor’s  Office, the search was part of an investigation into a criminal case involving  the publication of “Here Comes the Real Candidate,” an article by Konstantin Chernyayev printed in the Novy Peterburg newspaper in June 2007. 
The prosecutors allege that the article incited social and ethnic hatred.
“The very idea of a possible connection between Memorial, an internationally known human rights group, and extremists of any kind, is false; worse, when voiced publicly, it becomes a clear case of libel and an intentional attempt to discredit,” Pavlov said. “The search, and the rough, arbitrary manner in which it was carried out, created suitable grounds for such base speculations and insinuations.”
Investigator Mikhail Kalganov explained to the court during the hearings on Friday that he had reason to suspect that the editors of Novy Peterburg might have used Memorial’s office to hide sensitive documents related to the case.
Memorial’s staff argued that the evidence collected during the surveillance operation cited by Kalganov had either been concocted to order with an eye to intimidating the organization, or was unreliable.
The raid on Memorial’s office and the allegations about a possible extremist connection sent a shock wave through the international human rights community. 
Ulrika Sundberg, an aide to Thomas Hammarberg, the Commissioner for Human Rights for the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, attended the hearings in St. Petersburg and held a meeting at the Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow to discuss the issue and subsequently reported on the trial to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. 
Sundberg had earlier tried to secure a meeting with the city prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev but her request was turned down.

TITLE: President Medvedev Orders Regions to Create New Jobs
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned regional governments to get serious about fighting unemployment and ordered his representatives to the federal administrative districts to “deal with” those who are neglecting a federally funded effort to create jobs. 
The government has allocated 43 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) to boost employment in the regions this year amid growing concern that the worsening economy could lead to unrest. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin on Tuesday to keep him updated on how the funds are being used. 
“Everyone needs to decide for himself what needs to be done, but when it comes to the labor market — creating new jobs and supporting our citizens — these are paramount concerns,” Medvedev said at his Gorky retreat, Interfax reported. 
Medvedev said unemployment had reached 1.5 million people, a 20 percent increase since Oct. 1, and Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova warned that the figure could rise to 2 million people this year. 
The federal funds should go toward public works projects and measures to help with temporary employment, such as paying for workers’ relocation costs, Medvedev said. 
“Regional authorities need to cooperate with employers and labor unions,” he said, adding that they should consider forming trilateral commissions to study the matter. 
Medvedev also said companies should think twice before hiring foreign employees, in an apparent reference to workers from other former Soviet republics. As an example, Medvedev mentioned a visit he made this week to Ingushetia, which has 57 percent unemployment, the highest in the country. “Despite having this 57 percent unemployment rate, I believe that 4,000 workers have been invited from abroad, and they do not know what they should do with them,” he said.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Russian Oscar Hopeful</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A Russian film has been nominated for an Oscar, it was announced in Hollywood on Thursday. The film was nominated in the Best Animated Short Film category.
“Ubornaya istoriya — lyubovnaya istoriya” (known in English as “Lavatory Lovestory”) is a 10-minute hand-drawn cartoon by Konstantin Bronzit about a lavatory attendant.There are four other films nominated in this category.
Other nominations announced Thursday include “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “The Reader” and “Slumdog Millionaire” for Best Film, Mickey Rourke for Best Actor in “The Wrestler” and Meryl Streep with her 15th Best Actress nomination for “Doubt.”

TITLE: Starbucks Set to Enter Petersburg Market
AUTHOR: By Yelena Dombrova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The first Starbucks coffee shop in St. Petersburg will open in the Leto trade and entertainment complex currently under construction on the Pulkovskoye Highway, a source close to the company has revealed. The cafe will occupy an area of 170 square meters on the first floor, according to Stanislav Bilen, senior consultant at the St. Petersburg office of Jones Lang LaSalle, which is the exclusive broker for the complex. He said that a five-year rental contract was signed at the end of December. The chain operates in Russia by agreement with the franchising company Monex Trading, whose management on Wednesday declined to comment.
Arina Sender, an independent retail real estate expert, estimated the cost of renting space in Leto at 25 euros per square meter per month. A source close to the company said that at least $500,000 would be invested into the opening of the coffee house. He also said that talks were taking place on the opening of coffee shops in the Stockmann retail and office center on Nevsky Prospekt, and in the Galleria shopping center being built on Ligovsky Prospekt at Ploshchad Vosstaniya. This was confirmed by Byulent Sarakaya, the managing director of Briz construction company, which is building Galleria. Sarakaya said that a final agreement had not yet been reached. Jussi Kuutsa, director of international operations for Stockmann in Russia, said that he had not heard that any negotiations were underway. Both the Stockmann complex and Galleria are due to open in 2010. Leto is due to open in the third quarter of 2009. 
The first Starbucks in Russia opened in 2007 in Moscow, where there are already eight branches of the chain. The company plans to open 300 cafes in Russia during the next five years, a source told Vedomosti. Last year Starbucks decided to close several hundred outlets in the U.S. to reduce its expenses.
The opening of Starbucks in Moscow had virtually no effect on the market, since the chain does not yet have enough outlets to have an impact, said Andrei Petrakov, general director of Restcon consulting company.  He estimated that there are from 200 to 400 coffee houses in St. Petersburg and said that Starbucks had left it too late, since the market is already saturated with competitors.
Denis Radzimovsky, director of Vkus company, which is developing the Mikc chain of coffee shops, said that the concept of coffee shops was no longer likely to be as popular due to the financial crisis.
Retail companies of this size should open their pilot outlets on the central street of a city, otherwise the opening will have less of an impact, said Nikolai Kazansky, director of investment consulting at Colliers International. He also said that the Pulkovskoye Highway was somewhat overcrowded. Tatyana Vavilova, a representative of Coffee House Expresso and Cappuccino Bar, a local company, said that Starbucks would find its niche due to the fame of its brand name.

TITLE: Property Prices May Fall 40%
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian property prices will fall as much as 40 percent this year as economic growth slows and homebuyers and builders find it harder to borrow money, Fitch Ratings said.
 “The property market downturn in Russia, which started in late 2008, is expected to intensify in 2009,” Fitch analyst Artyom Frolov said in a research note. “We estimate Russian property prices will decrease by 20 percent to 40 percent in 2009, depending on the region and sector.”
A decade-long housing boom turned Moscow into the world’s third most expensive property market after Monaco and London in the first half of last year, according to Global Property Guide. The average price of an apartment in the Russian capital has fallen 15 percent since peaking at $6,114 per square meter in October, according to Property Market Indicators.
Russia expects a decade of uninterrupted economic growth to end this year after commodity prices tumbled. The price of Urals, the country’s export blend of oil, have plunged 65 percent since peaking at $124.73 on Aug. 30. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ordered the government this week to redo the budget based on an oil price of $41 a barrel, less than half the $95 original forecast.
 “Along with a fall in demand, 2009 is likely to see a severe reduction in supply within the primary property market,” Fitch said.

TITLE: City Hall Reveals Plans For Major Expansion of Port
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Sea Port is set to expand during the next 16 years after City Hall approved a plan on Tuesday for developing outer harbors for the port in Kronshtadt, Bronk, and Lomonosov by 2025.
The cost of the project is 240 billion rubles ($7.36 billion), and the investors will be well-established companies that already have port capacities at those harbors.
Nikolai Asaul, head of the city’s transport committee, said the extension of the port is necessary due to the limited opportunities for developing the port’s central territories, lack of space for storage and handling of freight, the limits of the shipping canals, and the lack of railway infrastructure on the way to the port, Fontanka.ru reported.
In 2007 the goods turnover at the port was 59.6 million tons. The transshipment terminals are mostly located in the central parts of the port, and this could lead to collapse. 
If this situation continues until 2015, the port will not be able to process an additional 16.4 million tons of planned cargo, and by 2025 the capacity deficit will reach 85.8 tons.
Asaul suggested that the port should open new sea terminals and transport routes, and develop engineering infrastructure. He said that the company Moby Dick on Kotlin Island in Kronshtadt processes 12 percent of the port’s total container turnover.
Experts plan to not only use the existing territories for the outer harbors, but also to build new ones. The outer harbor in the Bronka district will occupy 350.1 hectares, 286.6 of which will be newly developed territories.  Kronshtadt requires 41.7 hectares, including 16.4 new ones, and in Lomonosov an extra 84.9 hectares is needed, including 79.4 new ones.
The development of these outer harbors will allow the port to increase its cargo shipping by an additional 38.7 million tons in 2015, and 70 million tons in 2025.  The construction of the outer harbor at Bronka alone will cost 118 billion rubles ($3.6 billion), Fontanka.ru reported.
The city hopes to get most of the investment for the development of sea, auto and rail routes to the ports and for the construction of the control point at the Russian border from the federal budget.  It also hopes to receive some money from investors for the construction of the new terminals. The city is only prepared to invest funds in the construction of roads adjacent to the outer harbors and in the engineering infrastructure.
Asaul said the investors they plan to attract include Moby Dick in Kronshtadt, Phoenix company in Bronk and Lomonosov Cargo Terminal in Lomonosov.
Moby Dick said that they had learnt about the project only from the media and were not yet able to comment on it, Fontanka.ru reported.  However, the company confirmed that Moby Dick has said that new terminals need to be built for the past eight years.
Asaul said the completed project could bring in 2.6 billion rubles ($79.2 million) in tax by 2015, and 55.3 billion rubles ($1.7 billion) by 2025.

TITLE: Wage Arrears Fall 40 Percent After Peaking in November
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Wage arrears in Russia declined 39.8 percent in December after nearly doubling the month before as a surge in budget spending helped companies secure funds to pay their staff. 
Total unpaid wages fell to 4.7 billion rubles ($142.6 million) on Jan. 1 after jumping 93 percent the month before, the State Statistics Service said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement. 
“November saw the peak of uncertainty,” said Maxim Oreshkin, head of research at Rosbank. “Companies held wages to build up a security cushion.” 
Russia is facing its biggest economic challenge in 10 years as the global slowdown pushes down the price of oil, gas and metals — the country’s chief export earners. Industrial output shrank an annual 8.7 percent in November, the biggest contraction since the 1998 economic collapse. 
Spending rose to 1.4 trillion rubles in December from 843 billion rubles the month before, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday. 
“More than a trillion rubles” entered Russia’s financial system last month, Oreshkin said. “All this money entered the economy and created additional demand. Some companies got money for the work they had already carried out, and payments started to move more actively in the banking system.”

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>H&M to Open in 2010</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — One of the world’s biggest retailers, the Swedish company H&M (Hennes&Mauritz) may enter the St. Petersburg market in 2010.
The company is holding negotiations with the construction company Briz on the possibility of leasing 2,000 square meters in the Galeria retail complex that is under construction near Moskovsky railway station.
H&M will open its first two stores in Moscow in March this year.

<b>Hotel Rates Fall 20%</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Moscow hotel rates remain the world’s most expensive, even after falling about 20 percent in November and December, Kommersant reported, citing industry consultants.
The average room price in the last two months of the year was about $315 a night, reducing the average rate for 2008 to $417, more than any other metropolitan area, the newspaper said, citing Hogg Robinson Group.
Mumbai and Paris are the second and third most-expensive, Kommersant reported.

<b>Jobless Rate Set to Soar</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — The number of officially registered unemployed people in Russia may rise 47% to 2.2 million this year, RIA Novosti reported, citing Yury Gertsy, head of the Federal Labor and Employment Service.
The number of officially registered jobless was 1.5 million on Jan. 1 — two percent of the working population, the state-run news service reported.
The Federal Statistics Service, which uses the International Labor Organization’s methodology for calculating the number of unemployed, said on Jan. 1 that Russia had five million jobless, or 6.6 percent of the working population, RIA reported.

<b>VTB Announces Loss</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — VTB Group, Russia’s second-biggest bank, declined the most among all stocks on the Micex Index on Thursday after reporting a loss that was more than twice analysts’ estimates.
The loss attributable to shareholders was $369 million in the third quarter, compared with a profit of $555 million a year earlier, the state-controlled bank said in a statement Thursday. The median estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a loss of $137 million.
VTB sank as much as 0.1 kopek, or 3.7 percent, to 2.57 kopeks, heading for its lowest close on record. The bank went public in 2007 in the world’s biggest initial public offering that year.

<b>Timoshenko Persists</b>
KIEV (Bloomberg) — Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko aims to get a discount for Russian natural gas supplies in 2010, she said at a press conference Thursday in Kiev.
Timoshenko said she will negotiate with Russia. Russian gas exporter Gazprom and Ukraine’s NAftogaz Ukrainy agreed on Monday that market prices would be paid from 2010, ending adispute over prices.

TITLE: Starting Fresh With Obama
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Margelov
TEXT: President-elect Barack Obama has formed his team of advisers, but it would be difficult to call them “friends of Russia.” This reflects in part the cool relations Washington and Moscow have had for nearly eight years. No wonder the Kremlin is taking a close look at statements made by members of the new administration to discern whether Washington will support many of the same positions adopted by former U.S. President George W. Bush or if he will finally make changes to U.S. foreign policy that the whole world has long awaited. 
Nobody in Russia is expecting that our relationship with Washington will improve overnight. Obama’s team has more pressing issues to deal with in other parts of the world such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. After an unsuccessful attempt to keep the United States as the unchallenged leader of a unipolar world, Washington will need the support of allies and partners more than ever. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed this idea during her Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 13: “America cannot solve the most pressing problems [in international affairs] on our own, and the world cannot solve them without America.”
Russia’s direct participation is required to solve many of these global problems, particularly in Eurasia, where the interests of both countries coincide. Clinton’s words suggest that the United States will rely on its partners and accept the fact that the world is now multipolar. If Washington can accept these fundamental positions, it will open up many new opportunities to improve U.S.-Russia relations. Under Putin, Russia has returned as a major global power, but it understands that it needs allies and partners as much as the United States does to maintain that leadership status.
As a key element of Russia’s foreign policy, Moscow must play a leading role in such strategic issues as the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the regulation of missile defense, reforms to the global financial system and the fight against terrorism. The new U.S. administration is ready to cooperate with Russia in these areas first. Clinton’s statement inspires hope that Moscow and Washington will find common ground regarding Iran; there is talk of U.S. readiness to hold direct talks with that country.
Certainly, the United States will not renounce its role as a global leader, and it will continue to “stand up strongly for American values,” as Clinton stated in the Senate hearing. It is generally thought that a Democratic administration puts more stress on these “American values,” such as human rights, when it formulates its foreign policy, whereas Republican administrations tend to be guided more by realpolitik principles.
Over the past eight years, there was no shortage of areas over which Russia and the Bush administration sharply disagreed. The most divisive issues were U.S. plans to deploy elements of a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, the expansion of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia and Iran’s nuclear program. Moscow hopes that the new president will reconsider his position on missile defense in Central Europe. If he does, Russia will most likely not deploy Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad. 
Moscow is concerned that the Obama administration will continue to support requests from Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO. In a broader sense, there are disagreements between Russia and the United States on policies in the former Soviet republics and in Europe. Russia is far from alone in opposing Washington’s foreign policy. Last week, German Foreign Minister — and possibly future chancellor — Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote a letter to Obama suggesting that the United States consider President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a European security pact covering the territory stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok. Moscow is ready to cooperate with Washington on all issues of mutual concern, including the prevention of nuclear terrorism and the fight against narcotics trafficking.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said many times that Russia and the United States should develop a unified agenda. That was also reflected in the strategic framework declaration signed in Sochi by then-Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin, in which the two countries agreed that such cooperation should be built upon the principles of equality, honest dialogue and friendly relations. 
Now more than ever, Washington and Moscow need more dialogue on a whole range of issues. I believe that these negotiations should take place on all levels, both governmental and nongovernmental. As the head of the Russian side of the Federation Council-U.S. Senate working group, I am ready to discuss how to increase cooperation between our two countries. I have great hopes for this group, since talks are conducted in a more candid manner than between official diplomats. That is why I am certain that U.S.-Russia relations will improve, starting with the very first meeting between U.S. senators and members of the Federation Council under the new Obama presidency.

Mikhail Margelov is chairman of the International Affairs Committee in the Federation Council.

TITLE: Obama’s Rescue Plan Is Doomed to Fail
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: President Barack Obama’s plan to save the U.S. economy is so ambitious that it surpasses even Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Obama’s stimulus program offers an entirely new strategy for creating jobs and increasing production while at the same time addressing other longstanding issues, such as the environment, alternative energy sources and education.
The president promised to lower taxes and hand over a large part of the bailout funds to private corporations, leaving the government to manage health care, law enforcement, education and other public services. 
In short, Obama’s plan is exactly what the United States — and the rest of the world — needs right now. The only problem with it is that it will never work. Obama’s proposal is an attempt to save the flawed U.S. system from itself without instituting any fundamental changes, and therefore his economic recovery program is doomed to fail.
Even a schoolchild can see the contradictions in the president’s stimulus plan. Obama proposes huge increases in government spending while at the same time lowering taxes. Where is he going to find the money to fund his expanded version of the old New Deal? At some point, Obama will step into fiscal quicksand when it turns out that runaway inflation and an enormous national deficit have caused the U.S. government to default on its debt obligations, much like what happened in Russia in 1998 and Argentina in 2001. 
Obama patiently explains to his listeners that only the government can solve the economic crisis, but in the same breath he promises to hand over a large part of the bailout funds to the private sector. However innovative Obama’s plan might be, it will be based on the same flawed principles that led the United States and the world into this crisis in the first place. Losses are socialized and profits are privatized in a program where the government bears the expenses while favored companies pocket the profits. 
It is commonly believed that the government is less efficient than the private sector, regardless of what country you are talking about. But in recent years, the private sector in the United States has been more corrupt and inefficient than even the worst of Soviet bureaucrats. 
If Obama believes that only the government can pull the United States and the world out of the crisis, then he should place all of his bets in that camp. But his plan will be successful only if the public sector can make enough money to pay for the cost of the bailout without resorting to irresponsible borrowing, excessively high taxes and printing money. 
The people and Congress should evaluate the results of Obama’s programs with the same scrutiny that shareholders do in a publicly traded company. Unfortunately, Washington’s ruling elite is unlikely to embrace this appeal for transparency and accountability. 
If Obama wants to go down in history as having saved his country from the economic crisis, it will not be enough to simply spend enormous sums of money. It will be necessary to radically change the government’s role in the economy by making it capable of not only spending money, but of making it too.

Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.

TITLE: City futures
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An exhibition that criticizes City Hall’s town-planning policies has been forced to relocate from the Mayakovsky Library where it was due to run through Jan. 31. The exhibition, which depicted what St. Petersburg may look like in the future, was abruptly closed by the library’s management last week — a move caused by pressure from the authorities, the organizers believe. The library’s line was, however, that it needed to empty the room to give the space to another exhibition.
The library’s management also said the activists could not distribute drafts of protest letters to bureaucrats, deputies and the St. Petersburg prosecutor at the exhibition, and the organizers were asked not to hold a roundtable on the issue at the library and had to move it to a different venue last week.
“It’s a mysterious story, but I wouldn’t blame the library because it’s obviously come from the top,” said Yulia Minutina, a coordinator of the preservationist pressure group Living City, which organized the exhibition showing how the new planned height regulations would damage the cityscape of St. Petersburg, in cooperation with ECOM, a think tank run by the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists.
However, the exhibition was allowed to remain there until last Friday, after which the organizers packed up the exhibits and moved them to a new location, the Green Lamp press club, where it reopened on Saturday.
Called “St. Petersburg in 2025. What Should It Be Like?,” the exhibition is centered on computer-generated models showing how the city will look if the more than 200 skyscrapers already planned for it are actually built. New height regulations that will exempt dozens of so-called “local dominances” from the regulations on land use and construction, will be discussed at the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
According to Minutina, the exhibition, a smaller version of which was briefly on display at the Legislative Assembly building last month, was set up primarily to influence the deputies.
The exhibition includes a large map of St. Petersburg with 3D models of skyscrapers on it. Pink paint marking the tops of the buildings shows how much taller they will be than buildings allowed under current regulations. Ten photo-montages demonstrate how the planned skyscrapers will affect St. Petersburg’s historic views — showing pink rectangles hanging over the city’s classic buildings and perspectives.
Two dozen photographs in the other part of the exhibition demonstrate views that have already been damaged by monstrous new buildings, such as the Regent Hall business center built opposite the Vladimirsky Cathedral, which is one of the few new buildings that St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko admitted was a “town-planning error” last year.
The photographs draw attention to such “town-planning errors,” whether they are admitted to or not.
“More than 100 historic buildings have been pulled down in St. Petersburg during the past few years,” states the text next to the display.
“Most of them could have been saved — in many cases, without even undergoing capital repairs. Many gardens have been built over. Dozens of historic buildings have been changed beyond recognition by ugly attics. [...] If we don’t interfere, such ‘errors’ could multiply.”
Although the construction business has been stricken by the recession, Minutina said it was still important not to let the new law pass.
“It’s most likely that construction will shrink on a large scale, but we can’t predict how long it will continue or how much more reasonable the people in charge of the construction companies after the crisis will be,” she said.
“What’s important to us is that the law should not permit any buildings above  the height regulations, regardless of whether there are companies who want to build skyscrapers now. Nature abhors a vacuum. If not now, then there will certainly be somebody who will use it, if it is permitted.”
Entries in a visitors’ book are highly critical about the damage done to the city’s historic skyline by massive new buildings that do not fit in with St. Petersburg’s architectural style.
“To see all those town-planning perversions sends shivers down my spine,” wrote one visitor.
Many see the source of the problem in the way that Matviyenko and City Hall govern the city.
“The authorities should be made accountable for the destruction of the city, the violation of architectural unity and the deterioration of the quality of life,” wrote another visitor.

<i>“St. Petersburg in 2025. What Should It Be Like?” is open daily, 3 p.m.-7 p.m., at the Green Lamp press club at 3 Gagarinskaya Ulitsa, M: Chernyshevskaya, Tel.: +7 (921) 974-6867. www.save-spb.ru, www.ecom-info.spb.ru</i>

TITLE: Word’s worth
TEXT: For me, 2009 is going to be <i>Ãîä Ðåìîíòà</i> (Repair Year).
There are two basic ways to remodel your apartment. The Smart Way is to spend several months doing research, getting bids, picking out tile and paint, and then having the whole messy job done while you are out at the dacha. The Stupid Way is to miss the dacha window of opportunity and then have to do emergency repair work at the worst possible moment. You might, say, need to put in new radiators after the city heating system is turned on, or replace your toilet after a plumbing disaster of truly epic proportions late on a Saturday night just before the holidays. I’m doing it the Stupid Way.
In case other expats live in old apartments that tend to self-destruct at the most inconvenient times, here is what I have learned so far: 
Most Russians call the metal thing under the window that gives off heat a <i>áàòàðåÿ</i> (radiator). Do not, in a fit of misguided affection, call it <i>áàòàðåéêà</i> (battery, as in what goes in a flashlight). The specialist you are discussing this with will fall on the ground in hysterical laughter, and you will have irreparably compromised your dignity. Apparently, the word <i>áàòàðåÿ</i> is used for radiators because they have a number of identical sections connected together. It is also called <i>ðàäèàòîð</i> (radiator). 
You know you need a new radiator when the one you have starts leaking thick, black gook. As one knowledgeable person told me, <i>Ìîæåò âçîðâàòüñÿ è çàáðûçãàòü âñþ êîìíàòó êèïÿùåé ìàñëÿíîé âîäîé</i> (It might explode and spray boiling, oily water all over the room). 
After you take some tranquilizers and conduct frantic Internet research, you go to the store and discover that everything you planned to buy is out of stock. So you throw yourself on the mercy of the salesperson. You say: <i>Õî÷ó êóïèòü íîâóþ áàòàðåþ</i> (I want to buy a new radiator). He asks: <i>Èç ÷åãî?</i> (Made of what?) Don’t panic. You say, jauntily: <i>áèìåòàëë</i> (composite metal). So far, so good. Then he will ask: <i>Ñêîëüêî ñåêöèé?</i> (How many sections?) If you haven’t done your homework, say: <i>Êîìíàòà ïðèìåðíî äâåíàäöàòü íà äåñÿòü</i> (The room is about 12 x 10). He’ll figure out how many sections you need for the square meters in the room. At this point, you might feel confident enough to ask: “<i>Êàêàÿ òåïëîîòäà÷à</i>”? (How much heat does it produce?) His answer will sound like this: <i>Áëà-áëà-áëà 168 âàòò áëà-áëà-áëà</i> (Blah-blah-blah 168 watts blah-blah-blah). You say: <i>Îòëè÷íî</i>! (Great!) Remember: Consumer dignity must be maintained at all costs.
Then you call your local housing repair office and lie shamelessly. All my Russian friends say the word <i>òå÷ü</i> (leak) should never be used. Always use the verb <i>ëèòüñÿ</i> and squeal hysterically: <i>Âîäà ïðîñòî ëü¸òñÿ!</i> (The water is just pouring out!) 

<i>— By Michele A. Berdy</i>

TITLE: Romantic revival
AUTHOR: By Amie Ferris-Rotman and Michael Roddy
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: A wobbly table in a blue wooden house overlooking silver birch trees is witnessing the worldwide revival of interest in the work of an often underrated 19th-century Russian composer.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, whose “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” in “The Nutcracker” ballet delights children and adults alike, wrote his later works at the table in his last residence in the small town of Klin, about 85 kilometers northwest of Moscow.
In grounds that are also home to a white pagoda and barn and stables, surrounded by Soviet-era prefabricated homes, the number of Tchaikovsky fans who are ushered along the house’s squeaky oak floors is steadily increasing.
In 2007, there were 86,000 visitors, up from 60,000 in 2003. Even more are expected this year, said Natalia Gorbunova, chief researcher and head of what is now a museum.
“Tchaikovsky’s music is undergoing a revival now, in our time, because his music is loved by the whole world, and this love continues,” she said.
While nostalgia for Soviet days makes headlines about Russia abroad, and some critics deride Tchaikovsky’s work as populist, enthusiasts say its appeal is timeless and intimate.
Visitor Liudmila Soltokova, a retired engineer from Tchaikovsky’s birthplace of Votkinsk, a small town about 1,000 kilometers east of Moscow near the Ural mountains, said she was fulfilling a lifelong dream to come to the house.
“His music is simply amazing, it touches your soul,” she said, glancing at his shiny onyx piano royale, in the center of a large room heavily decorated with framed black-and-white photographs of his relatives.
Every year renowned musicians and composers come to Klin to play the piano for the May 7 birthday of the composer, who lived from 1840 to 1893. Gorbunova noted the number of Europeans and Asians, particularly Korean, is up.
This winter, Moscow has been alive with his work. “Eugene Onegin,” “The Queen of Spades” and “Swan Lake” opened to full houses; “The Nutcracker” plays at a theater named after him.
Berlin’s Staatsoper presented a new production of “Eugene Onegin,” with conductor Daniel Barenboim, while a “Revealing Tchaikovsky” festival at the Southbank Center in London sought to dispel some enduring myths about him.
An alcoholic and likely homosexual, Tchaikovsky’s works including the “1812 Overture,” the ballets “Sleeping Beauty” and “Swan Lake,” the First Piano Concerto and opera house standards like “Eugene Onegin” and “The Queen of Spades” earned him enormous popularity among audiences in his lifetime.
That prompted some to dismiss his work as vulgar and cheap, but it was in the house in Klin that he wrote his wrenching, passionate but despairing final Sixth Symphony, which he named “Pathetique.”
“In the Russian pantheon he is sitting right at the very top of the pyramid,” Vladimir Jurowski, the Russian-born principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, said.
The international Tchaikovsky classical music competition in Moscow celebrated its half-century last spring with concerts played to sold-out halls.
Separately, children from across Russia’s 11 time zones drew impressions of Tchaikovsky, exhibited in a Moscow museum.
“No one can be indifferent to Tchaikovsky’s music,” Muscovite pianist Mikhail Mordvinov, 31, said, before tapping out some Tchaikovsky on a piano.
Gorbunova, who decided to head the museum a decade ago after she heard Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” opera, also written in the house, said: “His music summons listeners from deep within their souls. He wrote it for his nearest and dearest, and it is so gentle, that it attracts many more.”
The Russian state helps with the museum’s upkeep, and three years ago donated a metal statue of a somber-looking Tchaikovsky in his later years that stands in the grounds.
Tchaikovsky is criticized by some because his tunes are almost too good, Jurowski said. For example, it can be hard to escape “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” at Christmastime.
“He’s not the only one — Mozart did the same thing, Verdi did the same thing,” Jurowski said.
“It is a rare gift which is not always a necessary feature of a great composer. Unfortunately he is recognized as a great composer mostly for that particular gift of his and people tend to overlook or fail to see the mastery of his composition.”
Musicologist and composer Gerard McBurney, involved in the London “Revealing Tchaikovsky” program, is emphatic: “He is a much, much greater and more complex composer than most people understand him to be. I put him very, very high up indeed. He is the [Charles] Dickens of 19th-century music.”
Museum head Gorbunova was quick to put down widely reported claims that Tchaikovsky’s death at age 53 in St. Petersburg, widely attributed to cholera, was a suicide in response to being hounded for his homosexuality.
While some biographers say he was gay and in love with his nephew, many Russians are loath to talk about the subject.
“His homosexuality definitely influenced his psyche,” said Jurowski. “We shouldn’t forget that homosexuality in the 19th century was one of the principal taboos of European society, so it is comparable to the situation of Oscar Wilde, for instance, for whom homosexuality enhanced certain aspects of his activities.
“So in a way homosexuality in the 19th century was one of the principal sources of inspiration for composers because of its taboo.”
Several photographs of Tchaikovsky’s nephew and reputed lover Vladimir Davidov are hung throughout the dozen or so interconnecting rooms of his house.
Miniature ceramic and bronze statues of naked men are dotted among dried flowers and shells.

TITLE: Green day
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The opening of Russia’s first organic vegetarian restaurant makes the election of a black president in the U.S. seem unsurprising, even standard in comparison. 
The location of the innovative Green Room is also less than typical. Along with a wine bar, several art galleries, a designer clothes boutique and a hostel, it shares the premises of the former Smolninsky bakery near Ligovsky Prospekt metro. The plant was revamped last year with the aim of creating a hip new cultural venue, Loft Project Etazhi, in which each floor (etazh in Russian) houses an art installation or other tenant.
The Green Room is not the easiest place to find, located on the third floor of the factory and reached by ascending a not-so-revamped, less-than-fragrant staircase. The corridor leading to it is as green as the name suggests, but the spacious restaurant itself is as white as a modern art gallery. Some reminders of the building’s former use remain, such as exposed metal girders and bread-making machinery, all painted a dazzling white. Even the plastic chairs are white. The clinical effect is softened by sprawling houseplants and large, solid wooden tables decorated not with flowers, but with a solitary sprouting onion in a glass — a quirky and original touch.
Visiting the Green Room is almost like leaving Russia, so different is its approach. A jug of complimentary water with fresh lime — surely another first for Russia — was brought over by the congenial waitress, followed by a basket of bread baked on the premises — just like in the factory’s heyday. The restaurant is non-smoking, as is most of the Etazhi complex, but leads out onto a large roof terrace that will no doubt be one of the city’s hotspots in the summer. Best of all, the ubiquitous flat-screen giant TV was conspicuously absent. Lest we forgot where we were, however, we were informed, in true Soviet style, that most of the dishes on the menu were unavailable. This was apparently due to the fact that many of the organic ingredients are bought in Finland.
The remaining options included classic French soup with lentils and garlic bread (280 rubles, $8.50), a thick concoction with a tangy, unusual taste, and grilled bell pepper and zucchini rolls filled with Ricotta cream and served with eggplant “caviar” — a classic Russian paste of mashed eggplant and other vegetables — for 340 rubles ($10). The rolls were a pleasing juxtaposition of firm vegetables and soft, creamy cheese, while the accompanying “caviar” was a far cry from that sold in jars in food stores, being thicker and darker than usual, the last a result of copious amounts of balsamic sauce.
Of the available main courses, lasagne (450 rubles, $14) was a modest but satisfying slab of layers of pasta, roasted bell pepper, eggplant and cheese accompanied by tomato sauce and pesto. Thai vegetables served with rice, green curry sauce and plum salsa (also 450 rubles) arrived as an impressive, precarious tower of bean sprouts, tofu, broccoli, mushrooms and other delights. The sauce, served separately, was not spicy as promised, but had a wonderful flavor. 
The Green Room is unlikely to disappoint with its food or surroundings, but the portions are not vast and prices are not cheap, raising the question of how popular this atypical restaurant in an off-beat location is likely to be. On the evening of the inauguration of the new U.S. president — an event marked at the Green Room by the offer of Barack Obama pie on the dessert menu — the place was almost empty.

TITLE: Portrait in oil
AUTHOR: By Matt Brown
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: An official portrait of former U.S. First Lady Laura Bush by Siberia-born, St. Petersburg-educated artist Alexander Titovets was unveiled at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery earlier this month as former president George W. Bush helicoptered into history and the memorializing of his regime began.
Titovets, who emigrated to the U.S. from St. Petersburg in 1992, landed the commission partly because he and his wife, Lyuba, settled in El Paso, Texas, not far from Midland, Texas, where Laura Bush was born and now resides with her husband in retirement.
“At first I thought it was a joke,” Titovets told the El Paso Times in 2008 as he set about painting the portrait. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Titovets studied under Leonid Krivitsky at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, and paints mostly Russian landscapes, despite living in Texas, in a faux Impressionist style. Marc Pachter, the then-director of the National Portrait Gallery, who organized the commission, considered Titovets’ lightness of touch to be key.
“There’s a softness in his art which I think corresponds to Mrs. Bush’s empathetic world view,” Pachter told the El Paso Times. “She is both elegant and accessible as a person, and his art is like that.”
Laura Bush sat for Titovets “two or three” times, he said, and he likened the process to a conversation. He would “talk and paint at the same time.”
The former First Lady is pictured seated with a book on her lap — a clear reference to her career as an educator and librarian, and literacy campaigns during her husband’s presidency. 
Titovets said that he was inspired by masterpieces by Velasquez and Titian that hang in the State Hermitage Museum when he studied in St. Petersburg. In portraiture, Titovets said he admired John Singer Sargent and pictures of Tsar Nicolas II and his family painted by Valentin Serov in the first years of the 20th century.
Before he completed the painting of Laura Bush, Titovets told the El Paso Times that he had not told his parents, who still live in St. Petersburg, about the high-profile commission. 
The portrait of George Bush by Robert Anderson shows the former president in casual clothes perched on a sofa. 
Pachter said having two official portraits done is a recent trend with presidents and first ladies. One is commissioned for the White House, the other for the National Portrait Gallery.
“In recent years, it’s just gotten harder for people to get into the White House, so the National Portrait Gallery is really where more people will get to see the first lady’s portrait,” Pachter told the El Paso Times.
“It’s also extremely rare for a first lady’s portrait to be done while her husband is still in office. But, every once in a while, the first lady finds an artist she likes and the time required to do this.”
When Laura Bush unveiled her picture, she politely approved of the result, but art critics have been less kind.
Art writer Mason Riddle told the Minnesota Independent newspaper that the portrait is “a fair likeness, when she was perhaps 15 pounds lighter,” while artist Frank Gaard said it was “like an illustration from the cover of a ‘women’s fiction’ book” or “a children’s book illustration” and “corny.”

TITLE: Brainless boogie
AUTHOR: By Leo Mourzenko
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: If I were a Martian or happened to be born around 1990 then I would’ve totally dug “Stilyagi” (translated as “Style Hunters” but given the English title “Boogie Bones” by the film’s creators.) What’s not to love? A flashy, colorful, and diabolically well-produced musical set in the 1950s with an adorably childish storyline and some mighty show-stopping numbers.
Akin to Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe” (2007), a musical based on the music of The Beatles, “Stilyagi” uses tunes from a whole range of 1980s Soviet underground bands. It looks like the movie has hit a home run: judging by the film’s strong numbers in the domestic box-office both teenagers and Martians are roaming the multiplexes around the country in superfluous numbers.
The word stilyaga was used in Russia in the 1950s to describe young men and women who challenged their Soviet surroundings by dressing up in exaggeratedly bright apparel influenced by Western styles. 
According to the film, stilyagi were challenged by ideologically correct Komsomol (Young Communist) brigades that regularly ambushed their rockabilly soirees and ruined the fun by cutting their clothes and hair with massive scissors. During one of these raids, young Soviet proletarian Mels (Anton Shagin) falls for gorgeous young stilyaga Polza (Oksana Akinshina). He’s so taken with her, Mels crosses over to the other side to become a stilyaga himself, much to dismay of his brigade leader Katya (Evgeniya Brik) — who also happens to be drop-dead gorgeous. The rest is not rocket science (or shouldn’t be, at least for the Martians). 
The fact that the film presents an idea of Soviet reality that might appear plausible only to Martians and teenagers is no reason to complain: after all, the movie musical “Chicago” (2002) has nothing to do with the actual city of any era. The naivete of the story is tailored to its target audience: indeed, those who grew up in the ripe 2000s might see forceful hair-cutting as a dramatic and pivotal life-ruining moment. The trouble here is that if the movie is for the teenagers, how does it get away with as many explicit sexual scenes and references as it does? Akinshina flashes her riches for a good couple of minutes of screen time.
But here’s the rub. “Stilyagi” is partly produced by the TV channel Rossiya. This is the channel also known for the single-handed production of a few gems, for example “The British Embassy and Stone of Secrets” (in which a few Brits were accused of trading secrets through a stone in downtown Moscow). This is the television station that channels the strictly official point of view on politics, which on a regular basis offers to look for positive things in the Soviet past, and now it is pushing a musical based on the songs of late Soviet underground bands? Bands such as Kino, Zoopark or Nautilus Pompilius that with their very existence challenged the values of the Soviet system? Those same people who used these songs to nail down the lid of the coffin of Soviet society now use them to give it a facelift? 
It is all true. The audience sits there, relating to the stilyagi strictly on the basis of bright clothes, whereas in reality most of them are the same Komsomol-types that nowadays take their cues from Rossiya. Neither Martians nor teenagers know anything else.

TITLE: China: Two Get Death 
Sentences Over Milk
AUTHOR: By Lucy Hornby
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SHIJIAZHUANG, China — A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced two men to death for their role in a tainted milk scandal that killed at least six children, while the woman most widely blamed for the tragedy got life in jail.
Nearly 300,000 children fell ill last year after drinking milk intentionally laced with melamine, a toxic industrial compound that can give a fake positive on protein tests.
The latest in a string of food safety failures that have blighted the “made in China” brand, it was also one of the worst and prompted an outpouring of public anger.
Beijing may have timed the sentencing to try and tame outrage ahead of China’s most important holiday.
The closely watched trial of middlemen and executives from the Sanlu Group, a now bankrupt firm that had failed to report cases of infants getting sick from drinking its products, wrapped up just before the Lunar New Year.
A handful of parents traveled to the gritty industrial town of Shijiazhuang and waited for hours in the freezing cold — at a time when most of the country is planning family reunions — to hear what justice their children would get.
“Spring Festival is coming up, but what happiness is there for us?” said Hou Rongbo, whose son died in early January just a week before his first birthday. Hou believes his death from a leukemia was caused or worsened by melamine that also gave him kidney stones.
Many families have focused their anger on Sanlu’s former general manager, Tian Wenhua, and felt betrayed that she would not face execution. Tian pleaded guilty late last year to charges that do not carry the death sentence.
“She should have been shot,” said Zheng Shuzhen, a 48-year-old who said her granddaughter died in June of kidney failure after drinking Sanlu milk formula. 
She said the girl was not on official lists of victims as she died before the scandal came to light.
“So many children died but they kept the official number down so that she could get life [in jail], not death,” Zheng added.
Tian was also fined 24.5 million yuan [$3.6 million]. Sanlu, partly owned by New Zealand’s Fonterra dairy cooperative, was fined 49 million yuan.
Melamine, which can cause kidney stones, is meant to be used in making plastics, fertilisers and even concrete. Its high nitrogen content allows protein levels to appear higher when it is added to milk or animal feed.
Claims of official concealment and indifference have turned the milk powder case into a volatile political issue for the ruling Communist Party, which is wary of protests.
Police detained two parents to stop them attending the trial, where they wanted to raise questions about compensation and long-term health problems, fellow activists said on Wednesday.
The family of the first child killed by the tainted milk have now received $29,000, state media said last week.

TITLE: Venus Knocked Out, Serena Struggles at Oz Open
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia — Venus Williams was knocked out of the Australian Open on Thursday, losing 2-6, 6-3, 7-5 to 46th-ranked Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain.
Williams hardly looked like the reigning Wimbledon champion against the 20-year-old Suarez Navarro, whose previous best showing in a Grand Slam was reaching the French Open quarterfinals last year.
Looking increasingly sluggish, Williams was broken while serving for the match and dropped the last five games.
Suarez Navarro, overmatched at first, broke twice in the second set as Williams let a number of reachable shots fly past. She saved a match point while serving at 4-5 in the deciding set and broke Williams in the next game, aided by a double-fault from the American.
Suarez Navarro squandered one match point while serving at 40-15 in the next game before Williams netted a forehand for her 37th enforced error.
Williams’ sister Serena struggled earlier and headed straight to the practice courts for extra work after a 6-3, 7-5 win over Argentina’s Gisela Dulko. She gave her performance a “D-minus at best” as 45th-ranked Dulko matched her shot for shot.
“Lots and lots and lots of room for improvement,” second-seeded Serena Williams said. “But it’s good that I was able to win, too, when I wasn’t playing my best.”
Rafael Nadal, meanwhile, got top marks for his second straight match, a 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 win over Croatia’s Roko Karanusic. The top-ranked Spaniard has dropped only 11 games in six sets and next faces German veteran Tommy Haas, who beat Flavio Cipolla of Italy, 6-1, 6-2, 6-1.
Nadal’s biggest problem was finding a rhythm against the inconsistent, 92nd-ranked Karanusic, who has never made it past the second round in 11 Grand Slam appearances.
Fourth-ranked Andy Murray — a potential semifinal opponent for Nadal — was playing in the late match.
Serena Williams started fast and looked to be headed to a quick victory, stepping in to whack Dulko’s second serve for a clean winner the first time she saw it. By the time Dulko hit her first winner, she already was down 3-0.
But the Argentine soon was slugging it out from the baseline with the powerful Williams. She saved triple set point while serving at 2-5, but Williams finished it off the next game with a pair of aces.
Dulko, who said she wasn’t sure she’d be able to play after running a high fever following a doubles match Wednesday, pulled ahead 3-0 in the second set.
Williams, appearing to be trying to overpower her, broke to within 3-2. Dulko refused to be intimidated, breaking again in the next game.
The Argentine player served at 5-3 and held six set points in a game that went to deuce 12 times. But Williams hasn’t won nine Grand Slams by caving in to pressure and finally converted breakpoint No. 7.
“It was a very tough second set; she started playing unbelievable, hitting winners left and right,” Williams said. “She had a couple of opportunities, but I always felt I wasn’t going to lose.”
Olympic champion Elena Dementieva improved her 2009 winning streak to 12 matches with 6-4, 6-1 win over Iveta Benesova. The 27-year-old Dementieva reached the French Open and U.S. Open finals in 2004 but has not returned to the final of a major since.
Her highlight last year was a win over fellow Russian Dinara Safina in the gold medal match at the Beijing Olympics.
Amelie Mauresmo, who won here and at Wimbledon in 2006, rallied to beat Britain’s Elena Baltacha.
Fellow Frenchwoman Virginie Razzano ousted No. 14 Patty Schnyder of Switzerland 6-3, 6-1.
Other women advancing included No. 8 Svetlana Kuznetsova of Russia, No. 12 Flavia Pennetta of Italy, No. 13 Victoria Azarenka of Belarus, No. 18 Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia, No. 21 Anabel Medina Garrigues of Spain and No. 22 Zheng Jie of China.
On the men’s side, No. 9 James Blake won in straight sets for the second time, never dropping serve while beating Sebastien de Chaunac 6-3, 6-2, 6-3.
Four seeded Frenchmen also advanced.
Fifth-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, last year’s runner-up, had a tough 6-7 (4), 7-6 (8), 7-6 (7), 6-2 win over Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia. He joined No. 6 Gilles Simon, No. 12 Gael Monfils and No. 24 Richard Gasquet in the third round.
Also winning were No. 14 Fernando Verdasco, No. 17 Nicolas Almagro and No. 31 Jurgen Melzer. No. 13 Fernando Gonzalez of Chile, the 2007 runnerup, beat Argentina’s Guillermo Canas.
Dudi Sela became the first Israeli man to make the third round of a major since 1994 when he beat Romania’s Victor Hanescu.

TITLE: Obama Shifts Focus to Foreign Policy
AUTHOR: By Philip Elliott
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is making good on his promise to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and appears ready to name a veteran politician to guide his new administration in the Middle East conflict.
A senior Obama administration official said the president would sign an order Thursday to shutter the Guantanamo prison within one year. The U.S. naval facility has been a major sore point for critics around the world who say it violates domestic and international detainee rights. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the order has not yet been issued.
The executive order was one of three expected on how to interrogate and prosecute al-Qaida, Taliban or other foreign fighters believed to threaten the United States. The administration already has suspended trials for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo for 120 days pending a review of the military tribunals.
Obama also had in hand executive orders to review military trials of terror suspects and end harsh interrogations, a key part of aides’ plans that had been assembled even before Obama won the election on Nov. 4.
“In view of the significant concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally, prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guantanamo and closure of the facility would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice,” said the draft executive order that would close Guantanamo. The draft was obtained by The Associated Press.
On Thursday, Obama was visiting the State Department to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and his top national security advisers.
White House aides announced that the president would meet with retired military officers to discuss the executive orders in the morning, but would not confirm that Obama planned to sign them immediately.
The Obama-Clinton meeting also was to include Vice President Joe Biden and national security adviser Jim Jones and his deputy. It was to be followed by an address by Obama and Clinton to State Department employees.
The address could provide an opening for Obama to enter the daunting thicket of Middle East diplomacy, long dodged by deferring to President George W. Bush, who left office Tuesday. It could also be the time he announces George Mitchell, the former Senate Democratic leader, as his special envoy to the region.
During his two-month stint as the president-elect, Obama promised he would have plenty to say on the conflict as soon as he was in office, but the country could only have one foreign policy voice at a time.
Some of Obama’s other promises, though, have already been attended to. On Wednesday, he signed executive orders to limit his staff’s ability to leave the administration to lobby their former colleagues. He also limited pay raises for his senior aides making more than $100,000 a year — a nod to a flailing economy and voters’ frustrations.
He also opened the doors to the White House to visitors on Wednesday, meeting with guests in the White House’s Blue Room.
“Enjoy yourself, roam around,” a smiling Obama told one guest as he shuffled through the room. “Don’t break anything.”
Obama was starting his day Thursday with a private meeting on the nation’s struggling economy, a signal to the millions of Americans struggling with tighter credit, increasing home foreclosures and the dollar’s shrinking value.

TITLE: Record 8 Injured in Cycling Crash
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ADELAIDE, Australia — Lance Armstrong avoided a serious crash which ended the race for eight cyclists during Thursday’s third stage of the Tour Down Under.
Strong winds, hills and a helicopter also tested Armstrong’s patience and stamina in his comeback race after three years in retirement. For the third straight day, Armstrong finished among the main pack.
He was officially 32nd of the 124 riders who finished the 82-mile stage but had the same time as the winner, Graeme Brown of Australia.
The seven-time Tour de France champion was fortunate to miss a crash at the 8-mile mark which ruled eight riders out for the remainder of the race, including defending champion and first-stage winner Andre Greipel, the leading rider for US-based Team Columbia.
Greipel suffered a dislocated shoulder and will not continue. Australian Allan Davis, the tour leader after the second stage Wednesday, was also brought down but remounted his bike and finished second in the stage to share the lead with Brown on general classification.
“We’ve lost more riders in this one stage than we’ve lost in the 10-year history of the race,” race director Mike Turtur said.
After three of six stages, Armstrong was officially 39th overall and 29 seconds behind Davis, who retained the leader’s ochre jersey.
Strong winds provided riders with the stiffest test of the tour so far as they raced through a series of grueling hill climbs from suburban Unley in Adelaide’s north to seaside Victor Harbor on its rugged southern coast.
Armstrong again made a strong impression, taking part in a 16-man breakaway which led the stage from the 8.7-mile mark to the 63-mile mark. A lack of organization and cooperation among leading riders prevented the attack from being more decisive, and perhaps denied Armstrong a chance for his first stage win.
Armstrong said the winds severely tested the stamina and skill of all the riders.
“It was hard,” he said. “It wasn’t a consistent wind. It was really swirling.”
Armstrong, 37, was satisfied with his own form. He looked composed and comfortable in staying with the leading group for more than 50 miles, riding strongly on the hills and remaining prominent in a bunched sprint to the finish.
“It felt all right,” he said. “The high-end intensity I don’t have yet, that’s the bottom line.
“All in all, I guess the kind of stuff I have to do [to get race fit], I need to do in the race. I’ve got to work that high end. Like I’ve said 100 times, I can’t do that in training.”
Armstrong was disturbed during the race by a helicopter, filming the progress of the stage, which swept low over the riders at times and added to the effects of the gusting wind.
He called for the helicopter to back off to give some relief to the lead group as it struggled to preserve a peak lead of 1 minute, 30 seconds.
“It was like a big wind sitting on top of you because it was swirling so much,” Armstrong said.
“I was saying [to the helicopter] you can get the same shot if you just pull up a few hundred meters. No offense to the helicopter, but you don’t need that, especially when it’s windy.
“For the little guys, with the [lightweight] rims these days and with the big gusts, the next stop is New Zealand for them.”
The opening ProTour event of the season ends Sunday.

TITLE: Swiss Skier in Artificial Coma After Accident on Streif Slope
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KITZBUEHEL, Austria — Swiss skier Daniel Albrecht was placed in an induced coma Thursday after crashing in downhill training on the legendary Streif course.
Albrecht lost control after flying through the air for about 40 yards, landed on his back and came to a stop near the finish line. He lost consciousness and received medical attention for about 20 minutes before being taken by helicopter to a hospital in nearby St. Johann.
“Daniel is in a stable condition now. He woke up briefly but doctors placed him in an artificial coma,” Swiss team spokeswomen Diana Faeh said. “He will be transported to a hospital in Innsbruck for further examinations on his injuries.”
An induced coma puts the brain in hibernation so it can recuperate and allows swelling in the brain to ease.
The 25-year-old Albrecht has four career World Cup victories — three in giant slalom and one in super-combi. He has two GS wins this season, at Soelden, Austria, and Alta Badia, Italy, and is eighth in the overall World Cup standings.
The crash was similar to that of Scott Macartney last year on the Streif. The American sustained a brain contusion after slamming his head on the snow and was out for the season.
Organizers lowered the final jump of the course after Macartney’s crash and clearly marked the natural wave so racers would be able to better time their jump.
In Wednesday’s first training session ahead of this weekend’s Hahnenkamm races, Austria’s Michael Walchhofer almost fell backward at the same point where Albrecht crashed.
“The wind pushed the front of my skis up so I was lifted in the air,” Walchhofer said. “That was quite extreme, I totally underestimated that jump.”
Thursday’s training session was interrupted for half an hour before resuming.
Bode Miller of the United States posted the fastest time, racing down the Streif course in 1 minute, 55.95 seconds to beat last year’s winner Didier Cuche of Switzerland by 0.26 seconds.
Klaus Kroell took third, 1.64 behind Miller, while fellow Austrian and downhill champion Walchhofer was fifth, 1.74 behind.
The 69th edition of the traditional Hahnenkamm races starts with a super-G on Friday, followed by a downhill on Saturday and a slalom on Sunday.

TITLE: Pakistan Arrests Suspect in 2005 London Attacks
AUTHOR: By Munir Ahmad
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani forces arrested an al-Qaida suspect believed linked to the 2005 London transport bombings while U.S. intelligence agents watched the capture from a nearby car, two Pakistani security officials said Thursday.
Zabi ul Taifi, a Saudi national, was among seven al-Qaida suspects caught in a raid early Wednesday near the main northwest city of Peshawar sparked by a tip-off from the U.S., the officials told The Associated Press.
They said an unmanned spy plane and three helicopters hovered over the area during the raid on a house on the outskirts of the city, where militant activity has been on the rise. The officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.
They said the “well planned” raid stemmed from a tip from American intelligence officials, who watched the raid in the Bara Qadeem area of Peshawar from a nearby car but did not participate in it.
Pakistan’s Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik confirmed seven people had been arrested.
However, he did not identify the detainees.

TITLE: Decision on Guantanamo Bay Welcomed
AUTHOR: By Frank Jordans
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GENEVA — Former detainees, human-rights advocates and government officials around the world welcomed President Barack Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, saying Thursday that it helped restore their battered faith in the United States.
The UN’s torture investigator, Manfred Nowak, said news that Obama will issue orders to close the prison, review military trials of terror suspects and end harsh interrogations was a first sign of goodwill by the new American administration. But he warned that shutting the prison will require difficult decisions and said freed inmates should be allowed to sue the United States if they were mistreated.
“Justice also means to look into the past,” Nowak told The Associated Press. Nowak, an Austrian law professor who was appointed in 2004 as an independent investigator on torture for the United Nations, has previously said he had reliable accounts to indicate that Guantanamo detainees have been tortured.
A senior Obama administration official said the president would sign an order Thursday to shutter Guantanamo within one year, fulfilling his campaign promise to close a facility that critics around the world say violates domestic and international detainee rights. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the order has not yet been issued.
“We were overjoyed when we heard the news,” said Ali al-Shamrani, who is from the Saudi capital Riyadh. He said his nephew Mohammed al-Shamrani, 35, has been held at Guantanamo for eight years after being picked up in Afghanistan, where he was doing relief work.
“Obama’s decision is a very good one and we are optimistic that Mohammed will be released soon. Obama is correcting the mistakes of his predecessor. He is a fair and good man, and we hope he will do better than Bush,” al-Shamrani said.
Jomaa al-Dosari, 35, from the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Dammam, was released from Guantanamo about a year ago, after spending six years there.
“When I heard the news (about the closure) I said to myself, ‘I wish Obama was elected years ago. Guantanamo would not have happened.’”
Husain Naqi, an official with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said the decision to close Guantanamo shows Obama to be a man who keeps his promises.
“It has harmed the U.S. image worldwide. The decision to close the center may help improve the image and confidence of the U.S. administration,” Naqi said by phone. 
“Obviously, Obama is keeping his promises. Everyone should keep promises,” he said
Pierre Kraehenbuehl, head of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the process of Guantanamo’s potential closure would be closely followed by his organization.
“Indeed the question now will be how it will be closed down and what it will mean for the detainees that are in there,” he told reporters during a brief visit in Stockholm.
“It is certainly an issue we are keen to discuss with the new (U.S.) administration,” he said.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda told reporters that his country is hoping it will now be able to question one of its nationals who is still detained at Guantanamo.
The Southeast Asian country is keen to question alleged top al-Qaida operative Hambali, suspected of links to Sept. 11 hijackers, he said.
“Until now there has been no communication at all from the American side,” he said.