SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1460 (22), Friday, March 27, 2009
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TITLE: Obama, NATO Boss Discuss Russia
AUTHOR: By Steven Hurst and Barry Schweid
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and NATO’s chief discussed how to more effectively fight Islamic militants in Afghanistan and achieve Obama’s goal of putting U.S.-Russian relations on a stronger footing.
Obama said he hoped Wednesday’s 45-minute session with Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and the upcoming new U.S. plan for Afghanistan would “invigorate” NATO participation in the U.S.-led operation, now in its eighth year.
The United States has about 38,000 troops in Afghanistan, and is the largest contributor to a joint NATO force. NATO also has about 30,000 non-U.S. troops in the country. Obama has approved sending an additional 17,000 American troops this spring and summer, but has emphasized the need for a broader, unified international approach.
Ahead of NATO’s summit in early April, the French and German ambassadors said their governments had not been asked to contribute more troops, but said commitment to the fight was solid. “We are prepared to stay as long as necessary,” said the French ambassador, Pierre Vimont. Germany has 3,400 troops in Afghanistan and has been bolstering its force, Ambassador Klaus Scharioth said.
On Russia, Obama said he wants to improve ties with Moscow in a context consistent with NATO membership. The alliance was founded after World War II to counter Soviet expansion in Europe. De Hoop Scheffer said that NATO and Russia should not hide their differences, but air them in careful negotiations.
The president also sought to assure the NATO chief, who retires this summer, that his administration would not seek to strengthen Russian relations at the expense of alliance solidarity.
“My administration is seeking a reset of the relationship with Russia, but in a way that’s consistent with NATO membership and consistent with the need to send a clear signal throughout Europe that we are going to be abide by the central belief that countries who seek and aspire to join NATO are able to join NATO,” Obama said, with de Hoop Scheffer sitting next to him in the Oval Office.
Russia has strongly opposed bids by two of its former Soviet neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine, to join the Western alliance.
“NATO needs Russia and Russia needs NATO,” de Hoop Scheffer said. “So let’s work on the things we agree on and let’s not hide our disagreements. Let us realize that also this relationship can and, in my opinion, should be strengthened.”
Another issue that has soured U.S.-Russian ties is a missile defense system planned for Europe.
The German ambassador spoke skeptically of any U.S. decision to deploy radar in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland. The Bush administration envisioned the project as a defense against missile attack by Iran.
The Obama administration, however, is taking its time.
“There is no hurry,” Scharioth said. “We don’t know what it will cost. We don’t know if it will work.” The diplomat said the issue would be discussed at the NATO summit and should be taken up in talks between NATO and Russia.

TITLE: State Will Double Its Issue Of Bonds
AUTHOR: By Courtney Weaver
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Finance Ministry will sell 529 billion rubles ($15.7 billion) of treasury bonds this year and issue 50 percent to 100 percent more bonds in 2011 and 2012, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Wednesday, as the government looks for ways to finance a growing budget deficit and increase liquidity in its ailing financial system.
The government may also change some of its capital rules in efforts to recapitalize the banking sector, while shying away from the U.S. model of a “toxic assets” fund.
The bond issue amounts to nearly twice the amount of paper that the Finance Ministry sold last year, and the amount will increase each year to ease pressure on the Reserve Fund, which will cover this year’s forecasted 8 percent budget deficit.
“This will happen every year — it is a necessity due to the depletion of the Reserve Fund,” Kudrin said in comments posted on the ministry’s web site.
Russia does not need to create a toxic assets fund similar to that in the United States since the banking sector here is much less exposed to the web of problem assets, he said at a banking conference with Central Bank Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev. 
“We don’t think it’s necessary to create a ‘toxic assets’ fund. We’ll work with each bank individually, with the help of the Central Bank and the Deposit Insurance Agency,” he said, adding that the primary risk of the U.S. model is that no one actually knows how much the assets are worth.
The Central Bank might allow banks to use subordinated loans for 50 percent of their tier one capital, Ulyukayev said. 
Banks may be able to use 30-year subordinated loans for up to 15 percent of their tier-one capital, in addition to newly issued treasury bonds, a policy analysts said may amount to quantitative easing. 
Because of the bad shape of the financial markets, the government will likely put the bonds directly into the banks’ capital and skip the monetization process, said Mikhail Galkin, an analyst at MDM Bank.
“Banks will subsequently repo the bonds at the Central Bank,” he said. “De facto is similar to quantitative easing, i.e. funding the deficit with the help of the Central Bank.”
Allowing banks to use subordinated loans in this manner will give banks more time before they need to raise capital through share issues, said Mark Rubinstein, an analyst at Metropol.
Increased bond issues will also allow the Central Bank to expand its monetary policy tools beyond exchange rate targeting, he said.
“Now, monetary policy involves targeting the dollar-ruble exchange rate. Normally, it should revolve around the interest rates and around the government securities market,” he said.
Kudrin acknowledged at the meeting that the percentage of nonperforming loans may rise as high as 10 percent in 2009, but he said the country has already managed to escape a “collapse of the banking sector.”
Skeptics like Mayor Yury Luzhkov, however, were less sure. Speaking at an international business gathering on Wednesday, Luzhkov blamed the Finance Ministry for contributing to the country’s economic woes.
“The government’s measures suggested by our Western authority, Finance Minister Kudrin, will lead to the complete bankruptcy of the economic structure,” he said

TITLE: Lomonosov Orphanage Appeals for Aid to Prevent Closure
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The staff of the Lomonosov orphanage in the St. Petersburg suburb of Lomonosov are calling for help to save it from closure.
“If we meet the demands of the fire inspectorate by June 1 of this year we’ll be able to save our children’s home,” said Antonina Petrova, head doctor of the orphanage.
“In order to do that we need to raise about 2.5 million rubles ($75,000) or for someone to donate the necessary construction materials to us,” Petrova told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday.
“If we don’t manage that, we won’t be able to look after children here any more, and we’ll have to lay off 100 staff from our orphanage,” she said.
The work of the orphanage has been temporally stopped for a period of 90 days by a court ruling made on the basis of a report of the Petrodvorets District Fire Inspectorate. 
The inspectors found numerous safety violations in the wooden building, which was built in 1892. The majority of those violations can be resolved within the time period set by the court and the Fire Inspectorate has said that it is ready to assist in eradicating the violations in order to prevent the orphanage’s closure. 
Earlier the Leningrad Oblast Health Committee ruled that the orphanage be closed and that its children be distributed among other orphanages, the decision being made in the belief that the Fire Inspectorate was certain to close the institution down.
As a result, all 95 children under four years of age were moved to various other orphanages in the Leningrad Oblast. They include 22 HIV-positive children who were receiving special care at the Lomonosov Orphanage.
In interviews on Thursday, the orphanage’s staff and volunteers said that the removal of the children would have a negative impact, especially upon those who have been diagnosed HIV-positive. Lomonosov Orphanage is the only specialized establishment in Leningrad Oblast tailored to meet the needs of children suffering from such illnesses.
“If we remove the fire violations we won’t be able to return all of the children that we had to transfer to the other orphanages, but we’ll be able to get our HIV-positive children back, receive new children and keep 100 staff at the orphanage,” Petrova said.
Petrova explained that in view of the current economic crisis it would be “a tragedy” to lose the orphanage’s staff and leave such qualified individuals without jobs.
In order to conform with the fire safety regulations, the orphanage needs to replace its linoleum flooring with a more fire resistant material and fit its kitchens with fire-proof windows and ceilings, among other works. 
The staff at the orphanage are appealing for money, building materials and labor from those who are willing to help. 
They hope that construction and repairs companies will respond to their appeal.
If you would like to provide assistance the orphanage’s phone number is 422 37 59.

TITLE: Gazprom Warns Ukraine Over Pipeline Plan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom warned Ukraine against implementing plans to modernize its pipelines without consulting Moscow, saying any such action would immediately affect gas supplies to Europe.
Ukraine has called on the European Union, which gets most of its imported Russian gas via Ukraine, to help fund modernization of its pipeline system. The proposal has angered the Kremlin and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said Moscow could review its ties with the EU if its interests are ignored.
Gazprom, Russia’s gas export monopoly, said late on Wednesday that any changes to Ukraine’s pipelines, built as part of a single Soviet-era system also including Russia, would need the company’s approval or risk disrupting gas production and output across Eurasia.
“Unapproved change in the Ukraine gas pipeline system’s operations will immediately affect not only export supplies but also the production process of Russian and Central Asian gas and may entail unpredictable consequences for the whole Eurasian territory,” Oleg Aksyutin, head of Gazprom’s transportation department, said in a statement.
Neither Putin nor any other Russian officials have said what exactly they dislike about Ukraine’s plan but analysts say it could diminish Russia’s importance as a global energy supplier and potentially damage Gazprom’s profits. 
Relations between Moscow and Kiev over gas have long been strained due to disagreements over prices and payments. This latest dispute has revived fears of a repeat of January’s three-week stand-off that left millions in Europe without gas in the dead of winter.
Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, supplies Europe with a quarter of its gas. Around 80 percent of this comes through Ukraine’s pipelines.

TITLE: Bad Loans Could Reach 10% of Banking Sector
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian banks facing a rise in nonperforming loans can count on further state help such as subordinated loans or more flexible accounting rules, Central Bank First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said at a banking conference Wednesday.
Russia’s 1,200-plus banks have been hit hard by the credit crunch, the ruble’s depreciation, a collapse in domestic stock markets and the first recession in a decade.
The government has asked the sector, especially state-controlled banks, to distribute anti-crisis funds and ensure that money reaches the real economy.
Kudrin said nonperforming loans to the real economy sector could hit 10 percent.
“That is a possible size for nonreturned credits, and we must prepare for this, developing instruments for increased capitalization of both first- and second-tier capital,” he said, adding that the state would probably not need to buy up the banks’ bad assets on a large scale.
On Tuesday, Sberbank said bad loans had risen to 2.1 percent of its credit portfolio from 1.7 percent in January.
The problem of capital ratios has arisen as banks amass collateral by lending to the real economy and take possession of assets because of corporate defaults at a time when asset values are low or falling.
Despite problems in the sector, Russia’s top two lenders, Sberbank and VTB, should still pay dividends based on their 2008 performance, Kudrin and Ulyukayev said.
Ulyukayev said 10 percent of net profit would be an acceptable level for Sberbank, while for fellow state-controlled bank VTB, it would make sense to reduce dividends from the 25 percent paid in 2007.

TITLE: Russian-American Crew Blasts Off to Space Station
AUTHOR: By David Nowak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — A Soyuz capsule carrying a Russian-American crew and U.S billionaire space tourist Charles Simonyi blasted off for the international space station Thursday.
The Russian rocket lifted off on schedule from the Baikonur cosmodrome facility in a roar of fire and soared into the cold, overcast skies over northern Kazakhstan’s barren steppes.
Simonyi, a software designer paying $35 million for his second trip on the Soyuz, joined Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and American astronaut Michael Barratt in the cramped capsule, where they will sit for nearly two days before hooking up with the station, orbiting some 350 kilometers above the Earth.
Minutes after blast-off, TV cameras from inside the Soyuz showed Padalka and Barratt waving for the camera and giving the thumbs-up OK sign.
At viewing stands a few hundred meters away, scores of officials, reporters and relatives watched the launch, including Simonyi’s 28-year-old Swedish socialite wife Lisa Persdotter, who wept and clutched at the coat of a relative.
“I’m very, very happy. It was very, very smooth,” she said afterward.
Also watching was Paul Allen, a co-founder of software giant Microsoft Corp., where Simonyi worked for many years.
“It’s fantastic to see a launch, but when it’s one of your friends, it’s just something so special,” he said.
Asked if he would be interested in going to space sometime, Allen said he would consider it; not on the Russian capsules or U.S. shuttles, but on one of his own crafts. In 2004, Allen used his Microsoft fortunes to bankroll SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first private, manned craft to reach space.
While Barratt and Padalka will join the current station’s permanent crew, Simonyi will return to Earth 13 days later — a trip that will make him the first two-time space tourist and, for the foreseeable future, the last.

TITLE: Freemason Bogdanov Joins Sochi Mayor Race
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Former presidential candidate Andrei Bogdanov on Wednesday became the latest entry into the crowded Sochi mayoral election, saying the Black Sea resort could become “the Nice of Russia.”
Bogdanov, 39, is the former head of the now-defunct Democratic Party of Russia, which was widely seen as a Kremlin-controlled project to draw votes away from actual opposition candidates and give voters a tame liberal option.
“Sochi should become the Nice of Russia, where the majority can earn a living through small businesses,” Bogdanov told The Moscow Times on Wednesday after submitting his registration papers to the Sochi elections commission. 
The mayoral election in Sochi, which is slated to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, has become one of the year’s most intriguing political events. 
Several high-profile candidates, including opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and businessman Alexander Lebedev, have already announced that they would run for the post.
Bogdanov’s bid brings to the election one of the country’s most curious political actors. 
Though virtually unknown nationally, Bogdanov was the only independent candidate who managed to get on the ballot of the 2008 presidential election by collecting 2 million signatures to support his campaign.
Critics call Bogdanov a Kremlin stooge and say his inclusion on the presidential ballot was merely a Kremlin move to have a token liberal in the election, which Dmitry Medvedev won by a landslide.
Promising to make Russia an EU member, Bogdanov captured a measly 1.3 percent of the vote.
Bogdanov, who also who heads up the country’s largest Masonic lodge, told The Moscow Times by telephone Wednesday that he would again run as an independent in the Sochi election.
Twenty-two candidates had applied to get on the ballot as of Wednesday, Interfax reported. The deadline to register for the April 26 election is Thursday.
State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi, who faces murder charges in Britain in connection with the 2006 poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko in London, had expressed interest in running but announced this week that he would not enter the race.
The United Russia candidate, acting Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov, is seen as a favorite in the election.

TITLE: Debates Reflect Anti-Gay Feeling
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the Week Against Homophobia gets underway in St. Petersburg and several other Russian cities, Wednesday’s debates at Sochi music bar showed that gay rights activists have a long way to go to overcome the superstitions. 
One of the two participants, Mikhail Potepkin of the Kremlin-backed youth movement Nashi, who described himself as “homonegativist,” compared homosexuality to necrophilia and bestiality and said that as a member of a sexual majority, he has the right not to see gay people on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s main street. 
Potepkin’s supporters reacted by giggling and applauding his jokes, and in subsequent discussions in the blogosphere, his views were largely considered to be “moderate.”
But Valery Sozayev, chairman of the board of Vykhod (Coming Out), St. Petersburg’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights organization that was founded last year, believes the discussion was useful.
“Unfortunately — or fortunately, we saw the true colors of the contemporary political scene as it is,” Sozayev said by phone on Thursday.
“Our politicians cannot speak normally about violations of the rights of the LGBT community. For them, it is all either very funny or very scabrous, and we saw more evidence of this yesterday. But the fact that it was articulated, that it entered the public space, the space of public youth politics is already an achievement, because it would not have been possible even 12 months ago.
“We are starting to come out, so the reaction will naturally be negative and tough on the part of homophobes, but we should be prepared for that. We merely see confirmation of the necessity of our work.
The Week Against Homophobia is dedicated to the memory of victims of political repression. 
“The year of 2009 has been declared a year for remembering gays and lesbians who were the victims of political repression, because this year it will be 75 years since consensual same-sex relations between men became criminally punishable under the Soviet Criminal Code,” Sozayev said.
Similar events have been held in the city in the past, but this year, importantly, it is part of Xenophobii.NET, or the No to Xenophobia campaign, which was launched on March 15 and continues through Sunday.
“It’s interesting and positive that in St. Petersburg it has become part of the coalition and is held with the support of other public organizations, and this is for the first time,” Sozayev said. “Many public organizations, both human rights and political, have supported this event.”
Although Vykhod takes part in demonstrations such as last year’s anti-Nazi March Against Hatred, Sozayev described his organization as “non-political.”
“The March Against Hatred is not a political march, it’s a citizens’ march, [but] we don’t take part in and are not planning to take part in political events, because people who belong to the LGBT community have diverse political views, so we cannot maintain a specific political view. 
“Our task is not to confront the authorities, but to help them to fulfill the obligations they took on for themselves.”
Last year, however, the gay community saw a clampdown by the St. Petersburg authorities. In October, Side by Side, St. Petersburg’s first lesbian and gay film festival, had to take place in private after fire inspectors suddenly shut down the two venues due to host the event. Those venues had in turn been hurriedly booked after Pik Cinema mysteriously withdrew its support for the festival. Earlier in the year, gay clubs Central Station and Bunker were subject to police raids.
“I think that despite everything, we can cooperate with the authorities,” Sozayev said. “The fact that some events are being held now and that the authorities are not putting any pressure on these events is also indicative of that, as well as the fact that our organization was officially registered with no problems [in January].
“We can’t see what is on the authorities’ mind, but some process is underway.”
This weekend’s Week Against Homophobia events include a screening of Rob Epstein’s 1984 documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk” (German-Russian Exchange, 87 Ligovsky Prospekt at 6 p.m. on Saturday) followed by an all-night party at local gay club Central Station. See http://piter.lgbtnet.ru for other events and updates.

TITLE: Eight Alleged Plotters Detained in Georgia
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — A Georgian court ruled Wednesday that eight opposition supporters accused of plotting a coup and terrorist acts should remain in custody for two months as they await trial.
Police released video recordings this week allegedly showing the men trying to buy weapons with the intent of causing violence during opposition protests next month.
Most of those sent to detention are supporters of the party of Nino Burdzhanadze, a former parliamentary speaker who once was one of President Mikheil Saakashvili’s closest allies.
Burdzhanadze broke with Saakashvili last year and now is one of the key figures in the call for big rallies on April 9 that will demand that Saakashvili step down.
Burdzhanadze accuses police of planting weapons at supporters’ homes.
The saga has echoes of 2007, when the government accused opposition figures, based partly on video evidence, of trying to stage a coup during opposition protests that were smashed by police.
On Wednesday, officials released more recordings of alleged coup plans by opposition members. One recording purportedly shows a member of Burdzhanadze’s party, Roina Bukhrashvili, as saying that a civil war would be in the party’s interests.
Dissatisfaction with Saakashvili has grown since a brief but devastating war with Russia last August. 
(Reuters, AP)

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Bank Searched</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Local prosecutors searched the central office of VEFK Bank in St. Petersburg Wednesday, Interfax reported.
The search was performed as part of a criminal investigation into illegal bank activities in violation of article 172 of the Russian Criminal Code, according to the report.
The investigation is connected to a criminal case opened against former shareholders and authorities of the bank, according to the Press-service of Investment Insurance Agency (ASB), which currently administers the bank. 
The St. Petersburg-based lender was placed under temporary state administration in 2008, the Moscow Times reported.  The Deposit Insurance Agency spent almost 40 billion rubles ($1.12 billion) to bail out VEFK Bank, an agency spokesman announced in February.
The bank is still serving clients in full capacity.  

<b>14 Die in Bus Crash</b>
MOSCOW  (Reuters) — Fourteen people were killed and four injured early on Thursday when a bus burst into flames after colliding with a lorry east of Moscow, Russia’s Emergency Ministry said.
“According to our latest information, 14 people died — the driver of the truck and 13 people on the bus,” Emergency Ministry spokeswoman Lyudmila Martynova said.
The accident took place in the Petushinsky district of Vladimir region, she said, an area located about 100 kilometers east of Moscow.
Casualty numbers could change due to the difficulty of identifying remains from the burnt-out bus, she said. Local news reports earlier said 25 people had died in the accident.
Russia’s overloaded roads are treacherous with many drivers giving scant attention to even basic traffic safety rules. About 30,000 people died in Russian road accidents last year.

<b>Flowers Destroyed</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance burned 51 import shipments of cut and potted flowers infected with insects and disease, its St. Petersburg branch announced Thursday.
Hundreds of flowers of different species from the Netherlands, Israel, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Columbia and Ecuador were destroyed because they contained thrips, an insect that eats a wide variety plants, Interfax reported.  Two-hundred Dutch chrysanthemums infected by the plant disease “white blister” were also burned.
In addition, the service returned to importers over 230 tons of fish, fruit and animal feed additive due to missing or invalid documentation.
Declarations of return were drawn up for shipments of refrigerated anchovies from Finland and a combined shipment of marinated herring and breaded haddock filets from Great Britain because the importers were not on the list of companies certified to import to Russia.
Specialists from the service also refused the importation of 209 tons of mandarins from Pakistan, apples from Italy and pea seeds for agricultural use from France, for which import documents were missing or invalid.  Furthermore, they slated 18 tons of animal feed additive for return to its importer in Belgium due to the absence of a veterinary certificate.

TITLE: Gazprom to Buy Back Stake From Eni
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian state banks will help Gazprom raise more than $4 billion to buy back a stake in its oil arm from Italy’s Eni to prevent the asset ending up in foreign hands, industry sources said Wednesday.
The deal, expected in early April, the sources said, would help Eni reassure investors that it has enough cash to continue paying its dividend and advance the Kremlin’s strategy of bringing key resources back under state control.
“In the eyes of the Kremlin, Gazprom Neft is a ‘strategic asset,’ and therefore foreigners owning such assets should expect to have the thumbscrews put on them to reduce their equity levels,” analysts from Bernstein said in a note.
Eni, the biggest Western buyer of Russian gas, acquired a 20 percent stake in Gazprom Neft and some gas assets at a state auction of bankrupt oil firm Yukos in April 2007 and immediately agreed on a buyback option within two years with Gazprom.
Eni could become the outright owner of the assets if Gazprom misses the deadline.

TITLE: Ivanov: State Won’t Let GAZ Go Under
AUTHOR: By Lyubov Pronina and Ellen Pinchuk
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — GAZ, billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s vehicle maker, is too big to fail, and the government will step in to prevent it from falling into bankruptcy, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said this week in an interview. 
“We don’t want to nationalize anything except when it’s unavoidable,” Ivanov said. “It’s the last resort.” 
Ivanov said “half of the city” of Nizhny Novgorod, about 400 kilometers east of Moscow, works for GAZ. “We cannot be ignorant of this fact, and we are interested to help the people, to fight unemployment.” 
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said last week that the state would not bail out all companies that it deems systemically important to the economy, and some may go bankrupt. The government plans to support GAZ, carmaker AvtoVAZ and Rosatom, the state’s nuclear holding company. There are no plans to capitalize Deripaska’s United Company RusAl, he said. 
The government last week approved a 1.6 trillion ruble ($47.6 billion) anti-crisis program as part of a revised budget that contains a 2.98 trillion ruble deficit, or 7.4 percent of planned gross domestic product. 
Ivanov reiterated the government’s policy that companies with state involvement will not be allowed to fail, while support for private companies will be selective. 
“As for the shares and the value of the company, if it’s a private company, only the market will decide,” he said. 
In its anti-crisis plan, the government outlined measures to support companies whose failure would have a significant knock-on effect, including vehicle makers and home builders, as well as strategic sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, wood processing, the defense industry and power production. 
In addition to GAZ, Ivanov said some privately owned coal and metals companies were too big to fail “because they are simply huge.” State support for such companies is also necessary because Russia will need “a huge amount of metal and coal” when the economy begins to recover. 
First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said Friday that Russia was “at or close to the bottom” of its economic decline and that growth could return by the end of the year. 
While the government will step in to help some private companies, it will focus on supporting workers, Ivanov said. 
“We try to help, but mainly from the social angle,” he said. “If it comes to bailing out, many people will say, ‘Why are we helping the private sector? It’s not our fault.’ And partly they are right. But the social part of it is always the government’s duty.” 
Troika Dialog withdrew its rating for GAZ earlier this month, citing possible bankruptcy.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <b>Rosneft Heeds Putin</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Rosneft became Russia’s first major oil producer to conduct trading in refined oil products on the ruble-denominated St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange as the country seeks more control over oil prices.
Russia’s biggest oil company Wednesday sold 6,700 metric tons of oil products for 97 million rubles ($2.9 million), the bourse said in an e-mailed statement Thursday.
The St. Petersburg exchange started trading diesel and jet fuel contracts in September. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last month that Russia, the world’s largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, needs to develop trading in ruble-denominated contracts in oil products and crude to gain greater control over pricing of Russian oil.

<b>Terminal Nears Opening</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — Zarubezhneft, a Russian state-run oil producer, will open its oil-product terminal at Ust-Luga port by the end of 2009 as Russia seeks to recoup capacity on the Baltic Sea lost after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
The terminal will commence operations in November or December, Maxim Shirokov, chief executive officer of port operator Ust-Luga Co., told reporters in St. Petersburg on Thursday. The terminal, which will handle light and heavy-oil products, is expected to reach its maximum annual capacity of 10 million metric tons by next year.

<b>Iceland Loan Pondered</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia is still considering a request from Iceland for a $500 million loan, Interfax reported Thursday, citing Finance Ministry debt department chief Konstantin Vyshkovsky.
Russia is waiting for Iceland to provide “additional information” before it can make a decision, the Moscow-based news service said, citing Vyshkovsky.

<b>Mechel Gets Extension</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Mechel, Russia’s biggest miner of coal for steelmaking, won a two-month extension from foreign banks to repay a $1.5 billion loan.
Mechel has until May 15 to repay Merrill Lynch & Co., ABN Amro Holding and other lenders or reach on agreement on a reorganization, the Moscow-based company said Thursday in a statement. The one-year bridge facility, used to buy chrome and nickel miner Oriel Resources Plc last year, was due last Friday.
Mechel gained $1 billion in three-year credit lines from Gazprombank last month and has approval from state bailout lender Vnesheconombank for another $1.5 billion. Repayments of more than $2 billion were due in the first quarter, Chief Financial Officer Stanislav Ploschenko said Dec. 18.

<b>Beer Sales On the Rise</b>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian beer sales increased 15 percent last year as higher prices outweighed the first decline in output since 1996, the country’s Beer Producers Union said.
Sales rose to 458.4 billion rubles ($13.6 billion), the union said in a presentation in Moscow on Thursday. Beer output fell 0.6 percent to 1.1 billion decaliters, hurt by the “economic crisis” and a cool summer, the union reported in January.
Sales growth will slow to four percent in rubles this year as consumers spend less and switch to cheaper local brands, Renaissance Capital forecast on March 2.

TITLE: China as a Partner, Not as a Threat
AUTHOR: By Yevgeny Bazhanov
TEXT: China’s growing economic and military might is changing the balance of power between Moscow and Beijing. This has caused anxiety among various groups of people in Russia — especially those living in geographic proximity to the Celestial Empire — and some have been raising the alarm of a Chinese threat. 
But is that threat real? If the main concern is only that China is a very large, rapidly developing country, then Beijing should also be in constant fear of Russia — another huge and powerful country. Similarly, European countries would have cause to fear their largest neighbors, France and Germany, and by the same logic those two should fear each other. 
However, Europeans have learned to live in harmony without mutual fears or animosities. Can Russia hope to have a similar relationship with China and not view its eastern neighbor as a threat?
To answer that question, let’s begin by taking a look at Beijing’s public statements. In their official documents and speeches, Chinese leaders constantly speak of the need to strengthen friendship and cooperation with the outside world and to achieve a multipolar balance of powers in international relations based on peaceful coexistence. 
Beijing emphasizes that it has no intention of practicing hegemony or expansionism, either now or in the future. Experience has shown that their words are generally backed up by deeds. China has invariably strived to develop military, political, economic and humanitarian ties with Russia. 
China does not build up its military presence near Russia’s borders, does not join any anti-Russian coalitions, helps Russia to expand its influence in the Asian-Pacific region, supports Moscow’s opposition to NATO expansion, founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization together with Russia and actively cooperates with Russia at the United Nations.
Behind all of these actions lies a real and significant interest on the part of China for a strategic, long-term and close partnership with Russia. Let’s begin with the fact that Beijing does not accept the current unipolar world order, seeks a multipolar structure in international relations and requires Russia’s aid in establishing it. China faces other problems in the international arena. These include tensions with Japan, India and Southeast Asian countries, as well as an ongoing problem with Taiwan. Beijing must also confront serious domestic challenges: economic, social, ethnic, ideological, ecological and so on. Under such difficult conditions, it is to China’s clear advantage to maintain peaceful relations with Russia to the north, with which it shares a 4,000-kilometer border. 
One more factor unites Russia and China: Their economies complement each other. Over the long term, China will require increasing quantities of energy resources from Siberia and the Russian Far East, as well as our technologies — especially military. 
For its part, Russia has an interest in exporting energy resources to China, and through China, to other countries of the Asian-Pacific region. Russia also has an interest in buying consumer goods manufactured in China and in hiring Chinese laborers. 
Several negative factors also influence — or could influence — Russian-Chinese relations. The main irritant is the dramatic increase in the number of Chinese citizens living in the Russian Far East. This has prompted fears of demographic expansion by Russia’s giant neighbor.
How should Russia behave in these circumstances? 
Of course, Moscow could focus its attention on the problems and try to anticipate China’s next move. However, predicting the future is extremely difficult, if not impossible. At the beginning of the 20th century, some academics and politicians predicted that China would constitute Russia’s greatest threat. In fact, the enemy ended up coming from the West, and Russia fought two world wars on its western flank. Russia could continue trying to guess the future, but it will never succeed. And in the process of trying, it would provoke tensions that are far from necessary. By exaggerating the notion of a Chinese threat, Russia will only irritate the Chinese, get itself all worked up and ultimately spoil relations.
Russian politicians should instead focus their efforts on whatever will bring Russia and China closer together and enable them to continue cooperating. 
The main basis for such cooperation is the complementary nature of their economies. The proper approach is to cooperate with China — in fact, to work with Korea, Japan, Southeast Asian countries and with all states that want to participate — in developing the productive power of Siberia and the Far East. What would that give Russia? First, interested foreign powers would be forced to compete with one another, making it impossible for any one of them to achieve hegemony. Second, Russians will migrate toward the new jobs and opportunities, strengthening the Far East. And even if at some later date problems do arise between Russia and China, it will be easier for Russia to defend those regions because they will have become stronger, more developed and more densely populated by Russians.
Another advantage of cooperation is that it will deepen our interdependence. The Chinese, Japanese and others who invest in our eastern regions or who work there will literally have a vested interest in seeing those territories prosper. Recall once again the example of Europe. France and Germany were at war over disputed territory for almost a full century. Now the Franco-German border has become only a virtual construct, with people moving across it in both directions without even noticing that it exists.
Russia’s main approach to China should be characterized by close bilateral cooperation and recognition of our mutually complementary economies. Our common geopolitical interests should also play a role. Geopolitical cooperation with Beijing is worthwhile, but the question is just how far it should go. 
I think that Russia should maintain the customary relations with China — while cooperating with the United States and the West — in order to press Washington and its allies to move toward a multipolar world in which the various powers would not compete with each other, as has been the case in the past, but would cooperate. A foundation already exists to facilitate that type of cooperation — the United Nations, regional multinational organizations and international law.

Yevgeny Bazhanov is the provost for science and international relations at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy in Moscow.

TITLE: A Global Game of ‘Broken Telephone’
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: On Monday, several Russian web sites, including the liberal Newsru.com, posted a sensational report. “The European Commission,” Newsru.com said, “having studied the circumstances and the course of the military conflict with Russia in August of last year, has concluded that it was Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who initiated military action.”
The site quoted German magazine Der Spiegel, which did not confirm having published such information. Instead, the magazine’s Moscow correspondent, Uwe Klussmann, wrote that the European Commission, in determining who was the aggressor, would consider Georgia’s “Order No. 2” — issued on Aug. 7 regarding the strike on South Ossetia — “that Russia’s secret service had intercepted.”
Order No. 2 is a well-known document, having been published as long ago as Nov. 21 in such an authoritative source of information as Komsomolskaya Pravda. But the revelation of the order never became the propaganda coup the Russian government might have hoped that it would.
Andrei Illarionov sneered in his blog that even “five days after the document’s first publication, not a single Russian or even South Ossetian official had made any use of it.” 
“With such a ‘solid document,’“ he asked, “why had nobody branded the perfidious aggressor?”
It’s simple: Order No. 2 turned out to be not only a forgery, but an utterly worthless forgery. It included a mistake that not even a 6-year-old native Georgian speaker would make, referring to the enemy of the Georgian army as “anti-separatist forces,” when in reality separatist forces were the enemy.
And now a story published in Komsomolskaya Pravda has returned to the land of its birth through Der Spiegel, which cites a document that Russian General Anatoly Nogovitsyn quoted to the commission and angrily notes that Georgia “still refuses to show the controversial decree to the commission ... because the document is a state secret.”
This is a classic example of Russia’s secret service at its best. First, it tosses out a red herring in the form of a minor note in a Russian publication. Then the foreign media picks it up and quotes it in translation. The translation circulates in the foreign press, becoming so distorted with each retelling that what began as a question ends up as a statement of fact. 
There have been several similar incidents related to the war with Georgia. The most infamous occurred on Nov. 19 when Vedomosti published an article that began with the statement: “Amnesty International confirmed that Georgia initiated the August conflict in South Ossetia.” That was, to put it mildly, a very loose translation of the original English text that read: “The exact circumstances surrounding the onset of hostilities on Aug. 7 remain the subject of dispute.”
Thus, in comparison to the Vedomosti gaffe, the Der Spiegel incident takes a solid second place. But you know what the most ridiculous thing is? After Livejournal bloggers mocked Order No. 2 — which referred to South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity as part of the “anti-separatist forces” and, citing the Georgian military, said the situation on the ground remained “unchanged” at the moment the order was signed, even as the entire Georgian and Russian press knew that mortar and artillery bombardments had already been launched — Livejournal user ra2005 wisely noted, “Interesting, will Der Spiegel and La Stampa reprint it soon, lending it great significance?”
I wonder why that user thought that, of all publications, Der Spiegel would pick up that drivel and reprint it? 

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

TITLE: Cult of personality
AUTHOR: By Aimee Linekar
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As far as the eye can see: Stalin. Stalin the son, emerging, ethereal, from Lenin’s shadow. Stalin the father, doting on a young pioneer, accepting flowers from an earnest little girl. Stalin the protector, all medals and fighting zeal. Stalin the God-king.
Stalin, floating before a sea of blood.
If only for half an hour, visitors to the Museum of Political History’s new exhibition,  “Stalin” (the second installment of the four-part “Images of Soviet Leaders: Reality, Utopia, Criticism” cycle), can begin to get a taste of how it must have felt to live in the U.S.S.R. at the peak of the Cult of Personality.
On every wall, the uncompromising image of the man of steel stares out, fixed and intent, from oil paintings, watercolors, charcoal drawings, limited-edition prints, propaganda posters, photographs, stamps, busts, factory-of-the-month certificates, collages — and even a mosaic.
“This is the second part of a large project devoted to the image of the leader,” said Alexei Boiko, the exhibition’s curator. “In this exhibition, we chart the development of Stalin’s image from the earliest representations right up to works by contemporary artists, including several specially-commissioned works.”
The exhibition takes a chronological approach, and is divided into two main spaces for pre- and post-Perestroika pieces.
“In the earliest works, Stalin is depicted in a military greatcoat, but without any signs of distinction; there are no epaulets or medals,” said Boiko. “But after victory in World War II in 1945, epaulets began to appear, along with a multitude of different orders… The state was becoming more powerful, more imperial, and it needed to portray a strong, imposing leader representing absolute strength and heroism.”
In addition to paintings by prominent artists such as Brodsky, Kharshak and Izmailovich, the first hall boasts a cluster of busts of the great leader. There is also no shortage of artifacts showing his ubiquity in everyday life, with an incongruously hefty volume entitled “A Short Introduction to Communism,” a Stalin-themed poster from Barcelona, and diplomas awarded to highly-performing factories also featuring the Chairman’s image.
Particularly striking is a set of original 1930s posters designed by the Latvian artist Georgii Klutsis in black, white and red, including an (arguably premature) proclamation of the achievement of an ideal socialist economy. Klutsis, who had, according to Boiko, “specialized” in the theme of Stalin, tragically ended his days in a labor camp after being found guilty on false charges of collaborating with a fascist conspiracy in 1937.
Fortunately, however, contemporary artists do not face the same fate, and the second hall showcases a variety of acerbic, witty and bitter artistic commentaries on Stalin’s reign. The contrast is stark; after Khrushchev’s denunciation of the Cult of Personality in 1956, images of Stalin were officially forbidden, and many were destroyed. While Lenin’s image underwent a gradual evolution throughout the twentieth century, Stalin’s completely disappeared for three decades or more, only to return in a profoundly different guise.
“With Lenin, the artistic dialogue is different,” said Boiko. “Lenin has never been depicted in art as evil; in the ‘90s, of course, he was mocked, but it was all quite light-hearted. He was still somehow ‘above’, still the ‘most human human.’ Stalin, on the other hand, has been shown as a bloodthirsty, evil person.”
Mirroring Klutsis’s work is a triptych of anonymous original poster designs dating from the late ‘80s. The Stalin of these depictions is no longer a benevolent, heroic patriarch, but a bloody despot, irrevocably linked to images of destruction and cruelty.
Other works, however, take a different approach: Kozin’s “Reconstruction of a happy childhood” (2006) tackles the problem of the generation gap and forgetting, reworking a propaganda poster from the early 1950s. Artists like Baskarov, Kommisarov and Chinnik offer a more tongue-in-cheek perspective, fusing the leader’s image with a condom advert (under Stalin’s rule, policies relating to contraception and abortion vacillated wildly), or analogizing his complete works with toilet paper — a rare luxury guaranteed to create a spontaneous line were it ever in stock during Soviet times. Even the Chairman’s trademark mustache is fair game as the unlikely subject of a mosaic by Andrzhevskaya and Pavlensky.
A disturbing insight into Stalin’s rehabilitation post-1991 is offered by a collection of pin-badges featuring the leader’s image and the slogan ‘I’m for the Stalin Bloc’ dating from elections during the 1990s. Although the exhibition does not offer any more recent positive representations, it is clear that Stalin’s popularity is still growing, most recently shown by his having received the third largest number of votes in the “Name of Russia” poll last year.
Boiko said he was not concerned that the exhibition might attract hero-worshippers. “We’re neutral,” he said. “We always try to show different perspectives, and I think that we particularly succeed in this respect with the current exhibition. We’re not only showing older [propagandistic] works, but also modern exhibits, and very unconventional ones at that!”

“Images of Soviet Leaders: Reality, Utopia, Criticism” is on display at the Museum of Political History, Ulitsa Kuibysheva 2-4, through April 30, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Thursday.

TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Russia is rising from its knees, official propaganda says, yet is growing strangely touchy as it does so. Last month the Kremlin attacked Georgia’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, which is scheduled to be held in Moscow in May. 
Georgian act <b>Stephane & 3G’s</b> crime was using the verbal phrase “put in” in the song “We Don’t Wanna Put In,” which was seen by some as an intended pun on the last name of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The incident was seen as so important by the Kremlin that Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, made a special statement describing the song as an act of “hooliganism.”
Perhaps it also took a lot of behind-the-curtains pressure, as earlier this month Eurovision’s organizers took the song out of the contest for containing a “political message,” after the band declined their request to “either re-write the lyrics of the song, or to select another song for the contest.”
“I am sure that the Eurovision heads experienced unprecedented pressure on the part of Russia,” Georgia’s culture minister Nikoloz Rurua was quoted as saying. Georgia is not taking part as a result.
The next blow came, unexpectedly for the Kremlin, from Sweden, where a hilarious song called <b>”Tingeling, tingeling”</b> (“Ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling”) was performed on the Globen stage during the Melodifestival finals in Stockholm last week.
The song was performed at the end of a comedy sketch about the Russian showbiz mafia and featured Cossack dancing, female dancers wearing panties with red stars on them and, of course, a dancing bear. It also included an excerpt from the Soviet national anthem, and such lines as “Na zdorovye, Lenin” (“Cheers, Lenin”), “Na zdorovye, Stalin” (“Cheers, Stalin”) and even “Do Svidanya, Putin” (“Goodbye Putin”).
The Russian Embassy in Sweden refused to take a joke and reacted with Cold War-style seriousness. “We do not react to eccentricity by some lunatics, whose Russophobia should place them in an asylum rather than on Globen’s stage,” was the Embassy’s official statement, according to The Local, Sweden’s English-language publication.
Ironically, three decades ago the German disco band Dschinghis Khan (formed to take part in Eurovision, according to Wikipedia) put forward the tongue-in-cheek song “Moskau.” Performed in 1979, it featured fur hats and Cossack dancing and lyrics such as “Moscow, Moscow, drinking vodka all night long, / Keeps you happy, makes you strong, ho-ho-ho-ho-ho, hey!”
But did the Soviet leaders take offense? No. The video was even played on Soviet television.
This week’s local club highlights include the Swiss garage-blues act <b>Reverend Beat-Man</b> (Sochi, Friday), Japanese post-rock instrumental band <b>Mono</b> (A2, Thursday) and Finnish indie-rock bands  <b>Pintandwefall</b> and <b>Risto</b> (Sochi, Thursday).

<i>— By Sergey Chernov</i>

TITLE: Russian artists in America
AUTHOR: By Alec Luhn
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In David Burliuk’s “Hudson,” a view of the New York City skyline seems to fly apart into ribbons of image and memory like a fleeting dream. But for Burliuk and the other Russian emigre artists featured in a new exhibition at the Russian Museum, America was a tangible reality that strongly influenced the development of their art, as demonstrated by Burliuk’s departure from his earlier work in “Hudson.”
The traveling exhibition, titled “American Artists from the Russian Empire,” includes 45 artists who left Russia or the Soviet Union for America in the first half of the 20th century, and is the first time such a cast of artists has been assembled.  
“Some go together, some don’t,” said Yevgenia Petrova, deputy director of the State Russian Museum and the project’s main creative force. “It’s a cross-section of what went on in Russian-American art up to the middle of the 20th century.”
This schizophrenic amalgam of paintings and sculptures runs the gamut from Neo-classicism to Abstract art and includes several generations of artists, from Cubo-futurist Max Weber to Alexander Liberman.
The idea came from a 2003 exhibition of Russians who emigrated to France.  
The American-based Foundation for International Arts and Education organized the exhibition, drawing from museums, galleries and private collections in the U.S. The show made its debut at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum at the University of Oklahoma this spring, and will return to San Diego after a two-month run at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery this summer.  
Its appearance in St. Petersburg marks the first time these works have been shown in Russia.
“For the American public, the goal is to remind viewers that these artists had Russian roots, to point out what they brought from Russia to American art, and what from American art influenced them,” Petrova said.
In Russia, the exhibition aims to familiarize viewers with new art.
“For [these artists], showing in Russia was impossible because of the Iron Curtain; it wasn’t patriotic to show such work,” Petrova said.
American visitors will likely know artists like Mark Rothko, whose distinctive abstract style featuring solid blocks of color has become an icon of American art. Russian art-lovers, on the other hand, may know Boris Grigoryev, whose striking, slightly off-kilter portraits and depictions of peasant life have been extensively exhibited in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The first wave of Russian artists to move to America was mainly made up of Jews who left before the Bolshevik Revolution, seeking chances to exhibit and study art after suffering anti-Semitism in Russia.
“They left to obtain an education and gain freedom,” Petrova said. Life in the Jewish Pale denied these artists a chance to show their work or communicate with kindred spirits on the international art scene, she explained.
After the revolution, many more artists fled in the face of violence, starvation and political persecution during the Civil War and under the Soviet regime.
“They left … to avoid prison and stay alive, but also to keep working; they didn’t want to take part in Socialist realism,” Petrova said.
Once in the United States, Russian artists were exposed to fluid, “contagious” new influences that profoundly affected their work, Petrova said.  
“The Burliuk painting of New York is so unexpected for Burliuk, it shows how strongly American art influenced these artists,” she said.	
At the same time, the Russian artists influenced their American counterparts and retained something distinctly Russian in their work. Petrova pointed to surrealist painter Pavel Tchelitchew, who is included in the exhibition, and how his overarching aesthetic resembled that of Pavel Filonov, who remained in Russia. Although the two men most likely didn’t know each other’s work, they arrived at similar ideas on “what’s close to man in nature” thanks to a shared background in Russian natural philosophy, she said.
Shannon and Julie Ward, visiting from Los Angeles, said the exhibition showcased the ties between Russian and American art.
“There’s really a lot of crossover; American artists looked like Russians and vice versa,” Julie said.

“American Artists from the Russian Empire” runs through June at the State Russian Museum, 4 Inzhenernaya Ulitsa, M: Gostiny Dvor. Tel: 595 4248

TITLE: Home comfort
AUTHOR: By Charlotte Baty
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: After entering Gosti (Guests) from the cold, it becomes apparent why the owners have decided on its rather unusual moniker. The intention appears to be to make diners feel that they are ‘guests,’ not just paying customers, and to provide the more personable experience that you would have when dining at a friend’s house. To an extent, it succeeds at this.
In keeping with this theme, the restaurant comprises several small rooms filled with various knick-knacks, books and table lamps. The rooms are softly lit and feel snug thanks to the heavy curtains and wooden ceiling beams. It’s all very cosy and inviting, but unfortunately the designer’s desire to recreate the home experience extends to the furniture. In one room, many of the tables have odd chairs, meaning that diners are forced to sit at markedly different heights. 
The other downside of this very Russian dining experience is the soundtrack — a CD of cheesy disco and Russian pop was on loop for the duration of the meal, but not so loud as to be intrusive. On a weekday evening, the restaurant was scattered with couples, all taking advantage of the intimate atmosphere and enjoying a laid back evening over a bottle of champagne and one of the several beer platters on offer (310 to 370 rubles, or $9.30 to $11.10.)
Though the surroundings adhere faithfully to the ‘home dining’ theme, in some respects the food seemed to go in the opposite direction. Admittedly, the menu is very Russian — the salads all consist of mayonnaise, potato and herring in various combinations and not a green leaf in sight; it also includes seriously authentic dishes such as chicken hearts, for the initiated or adventurous. Everything was, however, imaginatively and immaculately presented, even when the sensory experience sometimes failed to meet the same standards.
With salmon tartare (290 rubles, $8.70) and meat blini (170 rubles, $5.10), the meal, unfortunately, got off to rather a bad start. The salmon tartare was exactly that — chunks of raw salmon with very little dressing or anything else to complement it save the occasional stray bit of unripe avocado. The blini were bland and flabby, but more than made up for by the uzelki with salmon (190 rubles, $5.70) — small pancake bundles filled with salmon in white sauce and very fine slivers of cornichon, prettily fastened with spring onion.  
Salmon again proved to be the better of the main courses, this time in the guise of Salmon Teriyaki (350 rubles, $10.50); a perfectly cooked piece of moist, flaky fish under a sticky, sweet teriyaki sauce. A side of grilled vegetables (120 rubles, $3.60), however, was disappointing: The portion was so small that it could have been mistaken for plate decoration. The chicken shashlyk (290 rubles, $8.70) was hardly more generous; two very small skewers of dry, stringy meat and a couple of slices of green bell pepper.
Dessert was the highlight of the meal, with two dishes you’d be pleased to eat in any restaurant, let alone at home. A generous pile of profiteroles (190 rubles, $5.70) oozed butterscotch cream, and the apple and pear strudel (170 rubles, $5.10) was a wonderful combination of light, crisp pastry with rich, dense filling, and piping hot fruit with vanilla ice cream.
We washed it all down with one of Gosti’s many house wines (750 rubles, $22.50), but the broad choice of drinks on offer also includes hot and cold cocktails, fresh juices and the more traditional mors and kompot.
Everything was served by wonderfully attentive and professional staff, and in fact, this is perhaps what Gosti does best. Few of us, truthfully, would look to a friend’s house for fine dining, but for a comfortable, intimate evening with known and loved dishes.

TITLE: Ministry Attempts to Turn Cops Into Gentlemen
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Widely seen by the public as corrupt, crude and often violent, the country’s police force has perhaps the most odious reputation of any public servants.
But in a drive to turn policemen into gentlemen, the Interior Ministry has implemented a behavior code forbidding its officers from engaging in a range of unseemly deeds, from cursing to smoking to adultery.
The new code, distributed to senior Interior Ministry officials at an assembly last month, spells out ethical norms for police officers — prohibiting them from, among other things, drinking at work, gambling, making crude jokes, talking on cell phones on public transportation and smoking in public.
Taking a severely moralistic tone, the code states that policemen must not be “committed to the cult” of money and power, and it even bans one of the seven deadly sins: envy. It also calls on police to be polite, use correct Russian grammar and be courteous to women.
“It is impossible to create an ideal police officer, but we must strive for it,” Interior Ministry’s spokesman Oleg Yelnikov told The St. Petersburg Times in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Current and former police officers were skeptical about the possible effectiveness of the code, however, saying it is next to impossible to abide by and reveals the authors’ ignorance of actual police work.
The document, which was drafted by the ministry’s personnel department, is “total rubbish,” a city police officer told The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk with the media. The authors have “lost touch with reality,” he added.
The code, which came into effect in late December, replaced a 1993 police ethics code that was “morally bankrupt,” Yelnikov said.
Opinion polls consistently show police as one of the country’s least trusted institutions, and police officers nationwide are routinely indicted for corruption and violent crimes. 
The Interior Ministry has not been oblivious to public antipathy toward police: The behavior code is the latest in several ministry initiatives in recent years aimed at cleaning up the police force’s image. 
The city police officer interviewed for this report, however, said several aspects of the code, including the ban on adultery, were absurd.
“If I walk out on my wife, that doesn’t mean I am a bad policeman,” he said.
Maxim Agarkov, a former analyst with the Interior Ministry’s anti-terrorism department, called the code “useless.”
“I have an impression that the personnel department staff that drafted it has never been to a police station,” said Agarkov, now an analyst with the SK-Strategia think tank. 
Agarkov said the adultery ban violated officers’ constitutional right to privacy and that police had the right to smoke in public because there is no law forbidding it.
Yelnikov, the Interior Ministry spokesman, dismissed criticism of the code by current police officers, saying it was an “excuse” for their reluctance to do their work properly.
Both Agarkov and the city police officer said drinking on the job and hanging out with criminals — both banned in the behavior code — were necessary aspects of police work, particularly on undercover assignments.
“As I drink [with criminals], I extract valuable information from them,” the officer said.
Drinking on the job, however, has spawned many incidents with police. 
In one bizarre altercation earlier this month, the captain of the Lomonosovsky police precinct, near Moscow State University in western Moscow, hacked off the hand of one of his subordinates with an ax in a drunken argument during March 8 International Women’s Day celebrations, the sensationalist web site Life.ru reported.
“Indeed, ahead of March 8 celebrations, a conflict broke out in the precinct, the circumstances and causes of which are now being established,” RIA-Novosti cited a city police spokesman as saying on March 10.
Though the junior officer’s hand was hanging from his arm by a “thin strip of skin,” doctors managed to reattach it, Life.ru reported, adding in a subsequent report that the police captain had been fired.
The police spokesman told RIA-Novosti that an internal assessment of the incident was being conducted but gave no further details.

TITLE: Seven Contend for Golden Mask Awards
AUTHOR: By Raymond Stults
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This year’s Golden Mask Awards festival, which officially opens Friday, has picked seven nominees for the award for best production of opera staged in Russia during the 2007-2008 season. Two nominees are homegrown Moscow productions, while two from St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater made their Golden Mask appearances in Moscow prior to the festival proper. Though the remaining trio may bring some happy surprises, it already seems clear that this year’s crop of operatic nominees is much less formidable than almost any other in the festival’s 15 years of existence.
Adding a bit of scandal to the festival has been the withdrawal from future Golden Mask contention by two of Moscow’s principal operatic venues, Helikon Opera and Novaya Opera. Each claims that its sole new production of last season was unjustly excluded from the list of nominees.
The leader to date in the Golden Mask opera category has been the Mariinsky, with five out of the 13 past awards to its credit. This time it has two contenders, both of contemporary vintage: Rodion Shchedrin’s “The Enchanted Wanderer” and Pavel Smelkov’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” The former proved an insufferable bore when performed last season, and the staged version earlier this year somehow made it even less bearable. The latter turned out to be pretty dreadful as well, with a feeble score and a staging that trivialized Dostoevsky’s great novel.
Runner-up to the Mariinsky is Moscow’s Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, the recipient of three past awards for best production of opera, including the one given last year to its Russian stage premiere of Claude Debussy’s “Pelleas et Melisande.” The theater’s nominee this year is Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “May Night,” which, as seen at its debut last March, provides a pleasant evening of music and a nice glimpse into the fantasy world of Nikolai Gogol, on whose short story the opera is based. But it fell somewhat short of the best the theater usually produces. “May Night” receives its festival performance on April 16.
Though it has come up with several near-winners in recent years, the Bolshoi Theater has yet to gain a Golden Mask for best production of opera. This year, it has no chance at all, as neither of its two productions of last season, the colorless staging of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” and the misbegotten modern-dress version of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” was deemed worthy of a nomination.
Three nominees are due to present their festival performances next week. On Tuesday, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutiya) Theater of Opera and Ballet brings a new one-act opera, “Alexander of Macedon,” by the prolific Vladimir Kobekin, whose “Margarita” at last year’s festival fell short of expectations but whose “Hamlet (Danish) (Russian) Comedy” has subsequently become a well-deserved hit at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.
The following evening marks the festival appearance of Moscow’s second operatic nominee, the Russian Performing Arts Fund’s production of French composer Francis Poulenc’s “La Voix Humaine.” The setting, a play by Jean Cocteau, presents a woman in the process of breaking up by telephone with her long-standing lover, his voice inaudible at the other end of the line. Since its premiere in 1959, it has become a popular vehicle for some of opera’s best sopranos.
On Thursday, St. Petersburg’s Zazerkalye Theater presents Giaochino Rossini’s “La Cenerentola,” a retelling of the Cinderella story that demands a first-rate mezzo-soprano in the title role and a highly skilled supporting cast.
Finally, on April 16, the Perm Opera of Theater and Ballet presents Claudio Monteverdi’s “Orfeo,” a work dating from the dawn of opera in the early 17th century. 
As for the scandal mentioned earlier, the action on Novaya Opera’s part seems a justified response to the Golden Mask’s failure to nominate its production of Richard Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” Superbly staged to high European standard by a team from Denmark, brilliantly conducted by British maestro Jan Latham-Koenig and sung by casts almost entirely drawn from Novaya Opera’s own roster of singers, “Lohengrin” was Moscow’s most notable production of last season, so its exclusion from Golden Mask contention seems like a disgrace. The same cannot be said for Helikon Opera’s version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” which suffered from serious weaknesses, both musically and from director Dmitry Bertman’s usual stage gimmicks. But it still seems a worthier effort than either of the Mariinsky’s two nominated productions. 
“Alexander of Macedon” plays March 31 at 7 p.m. at Novaya Opera, 3 Karetny Ryad. Metro Mayakovskaya, Chekhovskaya. 694-0868/1830.
“La Voix Humaine” plays April 1 at 7 p.m. in the Theater Hall at Dom Muzyki, Moscow International House of Music, 52 Kosmodamianskaya Naberezhnaya, Bldg. 8. Metro Paveletskaya. 730-4350. 
“La Cenerentola” plays April 2 at 7 p.m. at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater. 17 Bolshaya Dmitrovka. Metro Tverskaya, Chekhovskaya. 629-8388
“May Night” plays April 16 at 7 p.m at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater.
“Orfeo” plays April 16 at 1 p.m. at the Moskovskaya Operetta, 5 Bolshaya Dmitrovka. Metro Teatralnaya. 925-5050.

TITLE: Pope Faces Uproar Over 
Condoms
AUTHOR: By Victor Simpson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY — From the Gospel to Google, the church has been seeking ways to announce the word of Christ for 2,000 years.
Pope Benedict XVI has gone on YouTube and his speeches appear in Chinese on the Vatican Web site, but judging from the uproar over a Holocaust-denying bishop and his pronouncement that condoms deepen the AIDS crisis, he’s clearly struggling with his message.
During his nearly four-year papacy, criticism has been pouring in from Muslims, Jews and members of his own flock, as the German pontiff seems to step into controversy at every turn. The attacks by European governments this past week over condom use are unprecedented.
The controversy could in the future weigh on cardinals when they choose Benedict’s successor, perhaps leading them to look for a younger man more attuned to a wired world.
His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, shared the title of “Great Communicator” with former President Ronald Reagan, and managed to steer clear of controversy even though he held many of Benedict’s conservative positions. John Paul mingled with reporters aboard his plane, walking the aisles, shaking hands and answering questions spontaneously.
“He was inquisitive to know what public opinion thought about him,” said Marco Politi, a biographer of John Paul. From time to time he would call his spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls and ask, “`What do they think about me?’” Politi said.
As he set off on his first African pilgrimage last week, Benedict was just emerging from a crisis brought on when he lifted the excommunication of four ultraconservative bishops — one of them a Holocaust denier — in an effort to end a schism.
An unusual personal account addressed to Catholic bishops around the world in a letter made public by the Vatican helped clear the air. Benedict acknowledged mistakes by the Vatican and said he was particularly saddened that Catholics, who should know his record against anti-Semitism, “thought they had to attack me with open hostility.”
But Benedict found himself under new attack when flying to Africa after he told reporters that condoms would not resolve the AIDS problem but, on the contrary, increase it. The statement was condemned by France, Germany and the UN agency charged with fighting AIDS as irresponsible and dangerous.
The pope was not taken by surprise by the question. Ever since he apparently misspoke about the excommunication of Mexican lawmakers on a trip to Brazil in 2007, the Vatican asks reporters to submit questions in advance and then makes a selection, giving Benedict time to prepare a response.
The 81-year-old Benedict doesn’t mingle with reporters individually but stands before them in the rear section of the plane flanked by aides, and responds drily to the questions.
Top church officials have rallied to Benedict’s side. Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Bishops Conference, said the criticism “has gone beyond good sense.”

TITLE: Protest Lodged Over Car Legality at Grand Prix
AUTHOR: By Chris Lines
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia — Three teams lodged an official protest against the bodywork on the cars of three rival teams ahead of this weekend’s Formula One season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
Ferrari, BMW, Renault and Red Bull entered the formal complaints Thursday after race stewards approved the design of the rear diffuser and attached bodywork on the Williams, Toyota and Brawn cars. BMW team principal Mario Thiessen indicated an intention to protest, but the team did not make the deadline to do so.
The protest was to be heard by race stewards later in the day, leaving uncertainty over the legality of the three affected teams going into Sunday’s race and the early rounds of the championship.
Whatever the immediate decision of the stewards, it was likely to be appealed. A hearing via the appeal mechanism of the FIA _the sport’s world governing body — was unlikely to be scheduled until after the Malaysian Grand Prix, the second round of the championship.
If the bodywork was deemed illegal, and either of Williams, Toyota or new team Brawn appealed, they would likely race with their present design until the appeal was heard.
New F1 regulations limit the size of the diffuser, and the protesting teams say Williams, Toyota and Brawn have bent the rules by designing bodywork to effectively increase its size.
The diffuser is at the rear of the car’s under tray and acts to increase down force, assisting speed, cornering and smooth performance.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner rejected suggestions that this conflict, three days ahead of the season’s first GP, had already fractured the much-trumpeted cohesion between teams since the creation of the Formula One Teams’ Association.
“This is a sporting and competitive issue, it has nothing to do with the workings of FOTA. It’s nothing personal against the teams, it’s simply looking to clarify regulations and our interpretations and others have been different,” Horner said. “Our purpose in all of this is to establish the clarity of the regulation, because it has significant impact on how we channel our development.”
Toyota team principal John Howett said he had no ill will toward the protesting teams, and was confident the Toyota design would be approved.
“It’s part of the sport we’re in,” Howett said. “We have studied the regulations in detail and are very confident we have interpreted them correctly.
“We now just wait for what the stewards or a subsequent court decides.”
Should the ultimate decision go in favor of Williams, Toyota and Brawn, other teams would be forced to play catch-up to develop their own bodywork to match.
Horner said his team had done preliminary work to develop rear bodywork in similar fashion, but abandoned it to comply with new Formula One rules.
“The cost implications are significant but it depends on how far you want to go with it,” Horner said. “We looked at the concept, we looked at it some time ago. We understood it was certainly not within the spirit, or within the regulations. We haven’t committed any significant resource to it.”
The Red Bull boss said it would be possible for the rival teams to change their bodywork in time for Sunday’s race, although the likelihood of appeals meant that was unlikely.
“I don’t see any technical reason why it couldn’t be done quickly, though the optimizing is something different,” Horner said. “It would be possible.”

TITLE: Woods 
To Play In China As Warmup
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ORLANDO, Florida — Tiger Woods is beefing up his schedule at the end of the year, saying Wednesday that he will play the HSBC Champions in China the week before he heads to Melbourne for the Australian Masters.
Woods shut down his overseas travel in 2007 after the birth of his first child, and couldn’t play last year as he recovered from knee surgery. He announced last week he would play in Australia for the first time since the Presidents Cup in 1998.
The trip Down Under comes with a $3 million appearance fee, half of which comes from taxpayers in the state of Victoria.
Woods defended the appearance money when asked about it at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
“This is the only place that doesn’t have appearance fees,” Woods said of the PGA Tour. “Most of the guys get appearance fees to play around the world. I’ve played all around the world and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed going.
“Obviously, there’s some controversy behind it, but I’m really looking forward to getting down there and competing.”
The HSBC Champions is expected to become a World Golf Championship, and when it does, it will be the only WGC event that Woods has not won. But it won’t be his first appearance at the tournament in Shanghai.
He was runner-up in 2005 and 2006. Phil Mickelson won the HSBC in 2007..
Despite his clout and respect, Arnold Palmer isn’t one to dispense advice on how players should behave. His only request might be that they remember how the PGA Tour started — and how good they have it now.
In his first PGA Tour event, the total purse was $10,000. Even last-place money at the Arnold Palmer Invitational gets more than that.
But it’s not only about the money.
“I can think about the years that I played the tour from 1955 to present day, and I can tell you that things have changed,” he said.
Palmer said the tour began with what he called the “Winter Tour,” which now is the West Coast Swing. From there, players would drive across the country, eventually heading to Florida and then north to Augusta National for the Masters.
“When we played the Winter Tour, we always looked forward to getting to Augusta because of the condition and things at Augusta that we didn’t have generally,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that I’m being critical. I’m only pointing out that the conditions of the golf course and the purses that we played for have all changed. I think more than ever, we kind of took all that for granted.
“I would say that they need to understand more about what the tour is all about, how it got to be where it is today. My advice would be to take a good, long look — and then maybe realize it didn’t just happen. It’s taken a lot of years for it to happen.”

TITLE: North Korea Positions Rocket for Liftoff
AUTHOR: By Jean Lee
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has mounted a rocket onto a launchpad on its northeast coast, U.S. officials said, putting Pyongyang well on track for a launch the U.S. and South Korea warned Thursday would be a major provocation with serious consequences.
Pyongyang has asserted its right to develop its space program, but regional powers suspect the North will use the launch to test the delivery technology for a long-range missile capable of striking Alaska. They have warned that the launch would trigger sanctions.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that such a “provocative act” could jeopardize the stalled talks on supplying North Korea with aid and other concessions in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program.
“We have made it very clear that the North Koreans pursue this pathway at a cost and with consequences to the six-party talks, which we would like to see revived,” Clinton said Wednesday in Mexico City.
“We intend to raise this violation of the Security Council resolution, if it goes forward, in the UN,” she said. “This provocative action in violation of the UN mandate will not go unnoticed and there will be consequences.”
A 2006 Security Council resolution prohibits North Korea from engaging in ballistic activity.
North Korea declared last month that it was making “brisk headway” in preparations to send a communications satellite into space, and notified aviation and maritime authorities that the launch would take place between April 4 and 8, between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Satellite imagery provided has revealed steady progress toward a launch, with a flurry of activity at the Musudan-ni site in late February, and an open hatch and crane hovering above the launchpad two weeks ago. Analysts said the North would need a number of days to conduct tests and to fuel the rocket after mounting the projectile.
U.S. spy satellites detected the rocket two days ago, South Korean reports said — the first indication that the countdown toward a launch has begun. Counterterrorism and intelligence officials in Washington confirmed reports that a rocket was in position.
North Korea is now “technically” capable of launching the rocket in three to four days, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said, citing an unnamed diplomatic official. However, South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities have not yet determined whether the rocket is intended for a satellite or a missile because its upper half is concealed, the Yonhap news agency said, citing an unnamed South Korean government official.
The government said Thursday it could not confirm the reports. But Seoul urged the North to cancel the launch, warning that the move would threaten regional stability and draw international sanctions.
“If North Korea pushes ahead with the launch by ignoring repeated warning by our government and the international community, that would be a serious challenge and provocation on security on the Korean peninsula and regional stability in Northeast Asia,” ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae told reporters.
South Korea will take the North to the Security Council whether it launches a satellite or a missile, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young.
He said both satellites and long-range missiles use similar delivery technologies.
North Korea’s bid to send a satellite into space comes at a time of mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula, with Pyongyang lashing out over South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s tough policy toward the North.
Seoul’s decision to hold routine military drills with U.S. troops drew a threat from Pyongyang against South Korean airliners flying over North Korean airspace. Flights were diverted. North Korea also cut off the only military communications hot line connecting the two Koreas during the 12-day drills, and repeatedly shut down its border crossing, stranding hundreds of South Koreans who work at southern-run factories in the northern town of Kaesong.
Pyongyang, also at odds with Washington over nuclear disarmament, also is holding two American journalists they accuse of crossing into the country illegally from China last week.

TITLE: Iraqi Officials: Car Bomb Kills 20 in Baghdad
AUTHOR: By Kim Gamel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — A car bomb exploded near a crowded market in a mainly Shiite area in Baghdad on Thursday, killing as many as 20 people, Iraqi officials said, in the fifth major attack in Iraq this month.
The blast came a day after the U.S. military said overall attacks nationwide have fallen to levels of the early months of the war, which began with the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
The car was parked near a bus terminal surrounded by shops in the eastern Shaab district when it blew up shortly after noon on Thursday, the officials said.
Iraqi police and hospital officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information, said the 20 killed included four children and four women. The officials said 35 people also were wounded.
The U.S. military confirmed the attack but said preliminary reports indicated eight people were killed and 14 were wounded.
Conflicting casualty tolls are common in the aftermath of bombings.
Shaab is a former Shiite militia stronghold that has seen a drop in violence since cleric Muqtada al-Sadr declared a cease-fire amid a crackdown by the U.S. and Iraqi militaries.

TITLE: Chelsea Seeks To Tap Negleced Vein of Britain's Asian Talent
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Chelsea have launched an initiative aimed at identifying promising young players from a south Asian background in a bid to address the community’s chronic under-representation in English football.
Britain is home to over three million people with family roots in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka but the country’s largest ethnic minority has virtually no presence in the national sport at the professional level.
Zesh Rehman, the former Fulham defender, is one of a handful of players from a south Asian background to have made it to the Premier League, and he is backing Chelsea’s move to stage a weekend of trials specifically for young Asians in early May.
Rehman, who is now at Bradford on loan from Championship side QPR, said: “I think clubs need to take a more active role and engage with their communities and I think it’s a great project.
“Chelsea are a Premier League club with a massive profile across the world I am sure other clubs can look at that and use it as a template for future reference.”
Chelsea’s initiative is being backed by the Football Association, the anti-racist organisation Kick it Out, and the Asian Media Group.
The club is planning to stage open trials for 10 to 14-year-olds over the Mayday holiday weekend and will offer residential trials at the club’s academy to any youngsters deemed to have the potential to become the next John Terry or Frank Lampard.
The lack of Asians in English football has been attributed to cultural factors such as parental pressure for boys to concentrate on academic studies, and the fact that soccer is not as popular as cricket among many south Asian families.
But there is also a concern that promising young players from an Asian background get overlooked by club scouts because of negative stereotyping, notably a perception that they are insufficiently athletic to make the grade.

TITLE: Kim Clijsters Announces Plans for Tennis Comeback
AUTHOR: By Benoit Noel
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BREE, Belgium — Former world No.1 Kim Clijsters of Belgium on Thursday announced her return to competitive tennis almost two years after retiring from the sport at just 23 years old.
“I intend to play in the U.S. Open and almost certainly in the tournaments at Cincinnati (early August)- my first official tournament back - and Tornoto,” she told a press conference in her hometown.
“I have been practicing on a regular basis with my training partner Wim Fissette and by physical coach Sam Verslegers, sometimes as much as six hours a day.
“The desire is back!.”
The right-hander, famous for her trademark splits defensive play, won 34 WTA tournaments and 11 doubles’ crowns, including the 2005 US Open title when she defeated French player Mary Pierce 6-3, 6-1 at Flushing Meadows.
She also won the 2002 and 2003 women’s season-ending tour championship title.
Clijsters lost four Grand Slam finals notably the 2003 French Open and U.S. Open championship matches, as well as the 2004 Australian Open to compatriot and rival Justine Henin, who has also since retired.
She reached the top of the world rankings in August 2003 and had a record of 427 wins against 104 defeats as well as having the rare dinstinction of holding the number one spot in both singles and doubles in 2003.
But sidelined by a succession of injuries and eager to start a family with new husband Brian Lynch, an American basketball player, she abrubtly announced her retirement in May 2007 at just 23 years old.
Clijsters married Lynch in 2007 and the couple celebrated the birth of their daughter Jade Elie in February 2008.
She was also engaged to Australian former number one Leyton Hewitt before suddenly ending the relationship in 2004, shortly before the couple were due to be married.
The popular Belgian has been competing in a number of exhibition events in recent months and is also set to play at an exhibition tournament this summer at Wimbledon along with Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf and Tim Henman.
Since the shock retirement of Henin a year ago, the top spot in women’s tennis has been up for grabs with Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic and currently Serena Williams successively filling the spot.

TITLE: Obama Budget on March Through Congress
AUTHOR: By Andrew Taylor
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — For now, President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies are endorsing his ambitious budget plan, but general agreements on fighting global warming and boosting health care promise to be severely tested later in the year as details are negotiated.
The Senate Budget Committee was poised to adopt Obama’s budget plan Thursday after approval by a companion House panel on a party-line vote late Wednesday.
Lawmakers are making modest adjustments to Obama’s blueprint as they advance budget plans that lay out a congressional road map for major legislation later this year on health care, energy and education.
The plans will go to the House and Senate floors next week over passionate protests from Republicans, who warn of big spending increases and record deficits.
Some Democrats are feeling anxiety over the deficit as well, forcing decisions in both houses to cut back big increases in some domestic programs and to drop Obama’s signature $400 tax credit for most workers when it expires at the end of 2010.
Both the House and Senate budget plans lack specifics for any of the administration’s signature proposals or even clues on how Democrats plan to accomplish goals like raising more than $1 trillion over the next decade to provide universal health coverage.
Curbing global warming is welcomed as a general goal, but both budget panels were careful to avoid endorsing Obama’s controversial cap-and-trade system for auctioning pollution permits, which will probably raise energy costs for consumers and businesses.
Under Congress’ arcane budget legislative process, lawmakers devise a nonbinding budget resolution that sets the terms for subsequent legislation. As a practical matter, the budget provides a pot of money to the appropriations panels to fund Cabinet agencies’ annual budgets. But it also serves as a way to define party goals.
The House and Senate plans both call for spending less than Obama’s $3.7 trillion plan for next year, mostly by ignoring his request for an additional bailout of the financial industry, with additional savings plotted for future years.
The House plan foresees a deficit of $1.2 trillion for 2010 but would cut that to $598 billion after five years. The comparable Senate estimates are $1.2 trillion in 2010 and $508 billion in 2014.
Obama’s budget would leave a deficit of $749 billion in five years’ time, according to congressional estimates — too high for his Democratic allies — and would grow to unsustainable levels exceeding five percent of the economy by the end of the decade.
Republicans pointed out budgetary sleights of hand in the congressional plans, like abandoning Obama’s promises for permanent relief from the alternative minimum tax and other politically essential legislation, such as funding to shelter doctors from cutbacks in payments they receive for serving Medicare patients.
In the House, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Democrats were advancing “the president’s high-cost, big-government agenda in camouflage. ... Instead of simply righting the ship, this budget steers it in a radically different direction straight into the tidal wave of spending and debt that is already building.”
Ryan, who is the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, and GOP colleagues were expected to unveil an alternative on Thursday. No similar effort was expected in the Senate.
“President Bush has left President Obama a hard hand to play: an economy in crisis and a budget in deep deficit,” said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., chairman of the House Budget Committee. “President Obama has responded with a budget that meets the challenge head-on.”
Each of the two houses’ plans envisions substantial increases in core non-defense domestic programs — $35 billion in the case of the Senate and $42 billion for the House, although both are smaller jumps than the administration’s figure of almost $50 billion. Those differences are relatively modest in the context of spending more than $500 billion on the programs involved, and congressional appropriators say the increases over current levels are smaller than they seem due to several complicating factors, like extra spending for the decennial census.