SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1494 (56), Friday, July 24, 2009
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TITLE: Designer Quits After Failure Of Missile
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The country’s top missile designer resigned Wednesday after the failed test-launch of a naval ballistic missile last week weakened Moscow’s negotiating position with Washington over a new arms treaty.
“Yury Solomonov has submitted a letter asking that he be relieved from his duties as the general director and chief designer of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology,” said Alexander Vorobyov, a spokesman for the Federal Space Agency, which oversees the top-secret institute.
Vorobyov said the resignation had been accepted.
Solomonov’s Bulava intercontinental missile has failed in seven out of 11 test launches since 2004, the latest on July 15 when the missile self-destructed 20 seconds after launch from the submerged Dmitry Donskoi submarine in the White Sea.
This was the first test in 2009 and the first since Russia and the United States began negotiations over a new strategic arms reduction treaty to replace the Cold War-era START I agreement, which expires in December.
“If Russia had the Bulava coming soon, this would make its negotiating position stronger,” said Vladimir Yevseyev, a security analyst with the Institute of Global Economy and International Relations. “Now, we don’t have the missile, and a lot of the blame for this rests on Solomonov.”
U.S. and Russian negotiators met in Geneva on Wednesday for their first round of talks since Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev agreed on the framework for the new treaty at a Moscow summit on July 6.
The Bulava, which can carry up to 10 nuclear warheads, is based on the Topol, which was also designed by Solomonov’s institute and carries only a single warhead. Analysts say Russia needs the Bulava to maintain its nuclear parity with the United States as its Soviet-built missiles rapidly age and are decommissioned.
The military had planned to enter the Bulava into service in 2008, but after the first failed tests the deadline was delayed by a year and is now undecided. The military has postponed further tests until an internal investigation is carried out over the latest failure.
Solomonov’s resignation does not mean that work on the Bulava will stop, Interfax reported, quoting an unidentified senior officer with the General Staff.
Solomonov, 64, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Solomonov started working at the design bureau in 1971 and became its chief designer in 1997. He gained significant clout after he developed the land-based Topol and Topol-M in response to a Defense Ministry order for a missile that could be produced with purely Russian-made parts. The older missiles contained components made in Ukraine, where several enterprises involved in maintaining the Soviet nuclear arsenal were left after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Solomonov’s newfound clout helped him to persuade the military to chose the Bulava over another proposed intercontinental ballistic missile, the Bark, said Ruslan Pukhov, an analyst with the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
Solomonov’s design bureau traditionally led in research and design for land-based missiles, while naval missiles were developed at the Miass, Chelyabinsk-based Makeyev State Rocket Center.
“Solomonov made a successful land missile, but he overestimated his ability with the naval one,” said Gennady Yevstafyev, a retired lieutenant general and a nuclear arms researcher with the PIR Center think tank. “It took Solomonov too long to acknowledge this.”
The military has a lot riding on the Bulava. Its three newest Borei-class nuclear submarines are designed especially to carry Bulavas. One of the submarines, the Yury Dolgoruky, cost 23 billion rubles ($800 million) to build, and it completed sea tests earlier this month.
Redesigning the Borei submarines to carry the Sineva, the intercontinental ballistic missile currently deployed on nuclear submarines, would cost roughly as much as building new submarines, said Alexander Khramchikhin, an analyst with the Institute of Political and Military Analysis.
Solomonov’s departure is likely to open the way for new designers who specialize in naval missiles to join the Bulava project, analysts said.
The Federal Space Agency said Wednesday that it had started a search for a replacement for Solomonov and that Solomonov’s first deputy, Alexander Dorofeyev, would serve as acting head for now. The new chief designer will be named in September, it said.
TITLE: U.S. Non-Committal Over Georgian Request
AUTHOR: By Douglas Birch
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia’s president asked U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday for advanced U.S. weaponry, military aid and unarmed observers to monitor a cease-fire along the boundaries of two Moscow-backed breakaway regions, a senior U.S. official said.
Biden made no promises of any U.S. military assistance, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Georgia specifically asked for anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, he said.
Russia strongly opposes any rearmament of Georgia and reiterated Thursday in Moscow that it would reduce or halt military cooperation with any country supplying Russian arms to Georgia, an apparent threat to Ukraine.
Biden emphasized to President Mikhail Saakashvili that military force should not be used to retake control of the two breakaway regions at the center of last year’s war with Russia, and warned against taking any actions that could provoke a Russian military response, the official said.
The vice president knows Saakashvili well and felt “comfortable speaking very bluntly with him,” the official said.
Biden also planned to speak later to parliament, where he was expected to affirm the United States’ support for Georgia while stressing the need for further democratic reforms.
Before their talks Thursday, Saakashvili said he and Biden had spoken informally Wednesday night at a dinner in the $40 million presidential compound’s glass-domed dining room.
“I told you there was no such thing as a free dinner in Georgia,” Saakashvili told Biden, an apparent reference to Georgia’s requests for expanded military assistance.
The smiling Georgian leader, who referred to Biden as “Joe,” called the discussions “very productive.”
Biden seemed more reserved, calling Saakashvili “Mr. President.” While citing U.S.-Georgia ties, he also expressed support for political reforms that Saakashvili announced earlier in the week to counter claims he has turned authoritarian.
“We’re here to talk about your security, economy, your democracy and the steps you are taking for solidifying your democracy,” he told Saakashvili.
Biden later spoke privately with major opposition leaders, including two of Saakashvili’s chief rivals: Irakli Alasania, Georgia’s former ambassador to the UN, and Nino Burdzhanadze, former speaker of parliament.
The White House has avoided making any public commitment on aid, arms or observers, although it says it stands behind Georgia’s application for NATO membership despite determined opposition from Russia.
The U.S. gave Georgia $1 billion in aid shortly after Russia defeated Georgia in a short war last August. But Washington has so far not supplied the Georgian military with arms to replace those lost in the war, amid warnings from Moscow that such a step would raise the risk of another conflict.
A spokesman for the Georgian Defense Ministry, David Nardaya, described the weapons being requested as defensive.
In Moscow, the government said it would not stand by while Georgia was resupplied with weapons.
“We will continue inhibiting rearmament of the Saakashvili regime and are taking concrete measures for this,” Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Ukraine supplied weapons to Georgia during last summer’s conflict with Russia, and Belarus has expressed support for Georgia’s claims to two Russian-backed breakaway regions at the center of last year’s war.
Both former Soviet republics currently have military ties with Russia.
Biden is on a four-day mission to Ukraine and Georgia to demonstrate U.S. support for the two countries, where Western-style democracies have struggled in the wake of peaceful revolutions and Russia’s determination to have influence over former Soviet republics.
But Biden’s message so far has been that the Obama administration’s goal of restoring cordial relations with the Kremlin will not come at the price of weakening support for democratic allies in the region.
Nor will the U.S. recognize Moscow’s claim to an exclusive sphere of influence among former Soviet states, he said.
But the U.S. vice president also urged the leaders of Ukraine and Georgia to heal divisions among pro-Western political factions that in Ukraine have crippled the government and that in Georgia led to weeks of anti-government street protests.
Before Biden arrived on Wednesday, Saakashvili announced a series of political reforms, including making the mayor of Tbilisi, the capital, an elective post.
But hundreds of Georgian police also removed dozens of metal cages that protesters erected in front of parliament to block traffic along Tbilisi’s central street.
The mock jail cells were meant to symbolize what opponents say is the authoritarian character of Saakashvili’s rule in Georgia.
TITLE: Notorious British Spy Blunt 'Regretted Working for Soviets'
AUTHOR: By Michael Thurston
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Anthony Blunt, one of Britain’s most notorious Cold War spies, admitted that spying for Russia was “the biggest mistake of my life,” in memoirs released on Thursday, 26 years after his death.
Blunt became known as the “Fourth Man” of a spy ring recruited among academics at Cambridge University, and went on to work for MI5 and leak hundreds of secrets to Moscow.
He wrote his memoirs after that, with the stipulation they should not be published until a quarter of a century after his death, which came in 1983. Under those terms the 30,000-word manuscript was lodged in the British Library on Thursday.
Blunt, a don at Trinity College, met the flamboyantly homosexual student Guy Burgess in 1931, and was persuaded by him not to join the Communist Party, despite intense pressure from left-wing colleagues in Cambridge.
Instead, Burgess recruited him as a fellow spy for Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s Comintern.
“I might have joined the Communist Party, but Guy, who was an extraordinarily persuasive person, convinced me that I could do more good by joining him in his work,” Blunt wrote.
“What I did not realize at the time is that I was so naive politically that I was not justified in committing myself to any political action of this kind,” he said.
“The atmosphere in Cambridge was so intense, the enthusiasm for any anti-fascist activity was so great, that I made the biggest mistake of my life.”
Blunt left Cambridge in 1936 and subsequently worked for the MI5 domestic intelligence service, passing hundreds of secret documents to his handlers in the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB.
The other members of the Cambridge spy ring were Harold “Kim” Philby and Donald Maclean. Burgess and Maclean defected in 1951, followed by Philby in 1963.
In his memoirs Blunt says he had hoped to end his spying activities after World War II and resume his academic life as an art historian.
“I was disillusioned about Marxism as well as about Russia. What I personally hoped to do was to hear no more of my Russian friends, to return to my normal academic life,” he wrote.
“Of course it was not as simple as that, because there remained the fact that I knew of the continuing activities of Guy, Donald, and Kim.”
He was eventually exposed by then premier Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons in November, 1979. The prospect of this almost led him to commit suicide, he wrote.
“Many people will say that it would have been the ‘honorable’ way out. After a great deal of thought I came to the conclusion that it would on the contrary be a cowardly solution,” he said.
After being named he went into hiding, taking refuge in “whisky and concentrated work.” He is thought to have lived somewhere in Europe before returning to London, where he died.
In the memoirs Blunt insisted that there was “nothing sexual” in his relationship with Burgess, although both of them were gay. But he said he was won over by “the liveliness and penetrating quality of his mind.”
“He could be perverse both in argument and in behavior, but in the former he would wriggle back to sense and in the latter he would apologize in such an engaging manner that it was difficult to be angry for long,” Blunt wrote.
“His sex life was already fairly full, but he did not blazon it about as he was to do later,” he said.
TITLE: Kozak Cuts 5% From Olympic Budget
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The government will slash another 5 percent from construction and infrastructure costs for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said Wednesday, Reuters reported.
“While previous assessments provided for 206 billion rubles ($6.6 billion), as a result of optimizing costs we now have 195.3 billion rubles,” said Kozak, who is overseeing the preparations, told reporters, Reuters reported.
Kozak said that the cuts included finding cheaper solutions without sacrificing the project.
Falling construction and labor costs, which comprise the bulk of overall expenditures for the project, have made officials increasingly optimistic about chances to cut actual costs.
“As far as concerns about building delays go, there’s no reason for such concerns today. Although, of course, that doesn’t mean everything is going without a hitch,” he said.
All of the sites must be finished three months before test competitions are scheduled, he said, warning that finishing ahead of schedule was also not acceptable.
“It’s harmful, wasteful, and what’s more constructing a lot of things at once will create additional inconveniences for Sochi residents,” he said.
The state initially pledged to invest $12 billion — 318 billion rubles at the time.
In March, Kozak put the budget at 218 billion rubles ($7 billion), which apparently was reduced at least once more before Wednesday’s announcement.
Kozak said on Wednesday that 102 billion rubles ($3.72 billion of the costs for the hosting of the games would be covered by the state budget.
Kozak said that private investors would be found to pay for the remaining 93 billion rubles ($2.98 billion) needed for the hosting of the games.
TITLE: Ukrainian Authorities Arrest Suspect in Gongadze Killing
AUTHOR: By Maria Danilova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: KIEV — Ukrainian authorities have arrested a former intelligence official in the slaying of an investigative journalist who was kidnapped and decapitated nine years ago, officials said Wednesday.
Opponents and rights groups accused then-President Leonid Kuchma of involvement in the 2000 slaying of reporter Heorhiy Gongadze, who had written about corruption allegations against high-ranking officials.
The killing sparked months of protests against Kuchma after a key witness released tape recordings in which voices that sounded like those of Kuchma and others could be heard discussing how to deal with Gongadze.
Kuchma has denied involvement in the killing, but the arrest late Tuesday of Olexiy Pukach, chief of the Interior Ministry’s surveillance department at the time of the slaying, is likely to bolster suspicions of high-level complicity.
President Viktor Yushchenko has vowed to fight corruption and pledged to bring the killers to justice, and the arrest came during a visit from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. Ukrainian officials denied that there was any connection.
Vasyl Hrytsak, deputy head of the national security service, showed reporters a video of a man who appeared to be Pukach acknowledging “direct” involvement in Gongadze’s killing.
The suspect is shown lying face down on the grass in handcuffs before turning to face the camera and being asked by an agent whether he had any involvement in Gongadze’s murder. The detainee, a burly man with salt-and-pepper hair, mustache and beard replies that he had “direct” involvement.
TITLE: Russia Offers to Operate Pirate Patrols With NATO
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: BRUSSELS — Russia has offered to coordinate the movements of its vessels hunting Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden with NATO, diplomatic sources said Wednesday.
The offer was made at a meeting of ambassadors at a NATO-Russia council meeting, representatives of the two sides said. NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the alliance was considering the Russian offer.
Russia’s ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Dmitry Rogozin, said that his country would not place its ships under NATO command but declared “we need coordination”.
He highlighted that Russia was already working with a European Union military mission with ships and planes patrolling the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean to ward off pirate attacks.
NATO made its patrols in the region permanent in June.
Only one Russian ship is believed to be patrolling in the region now but Rogozin said his offer was “judged interesting” by NATO ambassadors at the meeting.
The NATO spokesman said that Rogozin proposed “detailed discussion on how we could step up cooperation between Russian ships and others off the coast of the Gulf of Aden, including coordinated patrols, as well as liaison between the ships and the possibility of training on the control of piracy.”
Appathurai added: “NATO has to flesh out these ideas to see what’s possible.” Cooperation could be difficult because the western alliance does not want to give details of its procedures and technology. “Sometimes some elements are more difficult,” the spokesman said.
“The Russians understand: They have their own restrictions,” he added.
NATO and Russia have had tense relations since Russia’s five day war with Georgia in August last year. But the two sides agreed in June to resume political and military cooperation.
At Wednesday’s meeting NATO and Russia also exchanged views on the alliance’s eastward expansion.
“Our NATO partners asked us many questions about why we think NATO expansion and the installation of NATO military facilities ever closer to our borders is a threat,” a senior Russian official told the press.
TITLE: Pupils to Have Choice of Religion
AUTHOR: By Mansur Mirvolaev
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BARVIKHA, Russia — President Dmitry Medvedev announced a pilot project Tuesday that will require schoolchildren to take classes in religion or secular ethics.
The proposal is part of a Kremlin effort to teach young Russians morals in the wake of a turbulent period of uncertainty following the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union.
Medvedev said preteen students at about 12,000 schools in 18 Russian regions would take the classes. They will be offered the choice of studying the dominant Russian Orthodox religion, Islam, Buddhism or Judaism, or of taking an overview of all four faiths, or a course in secular ethics.
Students and their parents must be allowed to choose freely, Medvedev said in addressing top clerics and officials at his residence outside Moscow. “Any coercion, pressure will be absolutely unacceptable and counterproductive,” he said.
By 2012, the classes might be expanded nationwide, Medvedev said. The pilot project includes about 20 percent of Russia’s schools.
The offer of a choice appeared aimed to ease concerns that Russian Orthodoxy will be forced on schoolchildren as the church gains influence and tightens ties with the state.
Mandatory classes in Orthodox culture were introduced in a few Russian regions three years ago, but they alarmed adherents of other confessions who said religion has no place in schools in a secular state. The classes also were criticized as being reminiscent of the forced study of communism or scientific atheism during Soviet times, with one mandatory ideology being substituted with another.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has long pushed for the introduction of Orthodox classes in schools, but he was careful not to criticize the president’s initiative. “The free choice and alternatives could serve as the basis for a system” of religious classes, he said.
Medvedev emphasized that the classes will include only “the largest of Russia’s traditional religions” — Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism.
He omitted other faiths, such as Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, which the Orthodox Church accuses of proselytizing.
Some nonreligious Russians complain that the church has tailored its doctrine to suit the government, which has justified Russia’s retreat from Western-style democracy by saying the country has a unique history and culture.
Church and state are officially separate under the post-Soviet constitution, but Orthodox leaders seek a more muscular role for the church, which has served the state for much of its 1,000-year history.
The Russian Orthodox Church counts in its congregation more than 100 million people in Russia and tens of millions elsewhere. But polls show that only about 5 percent of Russians are observant believers.
TITLE: Russia, China Kick Off Military Exercises
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia and China on Wednesday launched massive joint military drills aimed at fighting terrorism and ethnic separatism, Russian news agencies reported.
The five-day exercises near the two nations’ common border “must show the international community that Russia and China have the necessary resources to ensure stability and security in the region,” Ria Novosti quoted the chief of Russia’s general staff, General Nikolai Makarov, as saying.
“This is not a tribute to a fashionable trend, but a concrete contribution to preparing our armies to jointly counter security threats existing in our region,” Makarov said, calling China “a reliable strategic partner.”
The military drills come on the heels of deadly unrest that began on July 5 and which left at least 197 people dead in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, a vast desert region bordering several central Asian countries.
Up to 1,300 troops from each side will participate in the exercises dubbed Peace Mission 2009, which will be headquartered in China’s northeastern province of Jilin, near the two nations’ common border, Chinese media reported earlier.
Up to 22 Russian planes and 40 Chinese military aircraft, including fighter-bombers, armed helicopters, and transport planes, will participate.
The two nations held joint exercises in 2005 and 2007 under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security group consisting of China, Russia and four Central Asian states.
TITLE: Estemirova Jars Nobel Laureates
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A group of Nobel peace laureates called on Russia on Wednesday to find the killers of activist Natalya Estemirova, saying there was “nothing more dangerous than telling the truth in today’s Russia,” Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Estemirova, who worked for rights group Memorial in Grozny, was abducted on July 15 as she left her home and was found dead later that day in Ingushetia.
“Natasha (as she was known among friends and colleagues) was a gentle, loving woman and a brave truth-teller who was not afraid to speak out about torture, rape and disappearances in Chechnya. She paid for it with her life,” the Nobel winners said in a letter published in Britain’s The Guardian.
The letter was signed by more than 100 prominent figures, including Nobel Peace laureates Shirin Ebadi, Mairead Maguire, Jody Williams, Rigoberta Menchu Tum and Desmond Tutu.
“We call on the Russian government to bring to justice both those who killed Natasha Estemirova and those who ordered her murder, and to end the killings of journalists and human rights defenders in the Russian Federation,” they wrote.
A law enforcement source in the Southern Federal District told RIA-Novosti on Wednesday that “a group of suspects” had been identified in the case and that investigators were narrowing the list down, Reuters reported.
TITLE: Chinese Fly In to Settle Cherkizovsky Lockout
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova and Lidia Okorokova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A senior Chinese delegation arrived in Moscow on Wednesday as mounting tensions over the closure of Cherkizovsky Market threatened to sour relations between the two countries.
About 60,000 Chinese traders worked at Cherkizovsky, Eastern Europe’s largest market, and the closure amid a smuggling crackdown could stymie Chinese investment in Russia, Chinese state media reported.
The delegation, led by Deputy Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng and including officials from the Foreign Ministry and customs service, will meet with their Russian counterparts and representatives from Moscow City Hall, Chinese Embassy spokesman Li Hua said, Interfax reported.
The Chinese side hopes to recover billions of dollars of merchandise that has been seized at the market and help the traders relocate to “safe markets,” said Ling Ji, deputy director of the Commerce Ministry’s Europe department, Interfax reported.
The two main sticking points during the talks are expected to be proving that the Chinese traders imported their goods legally and that they worked legally at Cherkizovsky, Ling said.
“Chinese merchants need to provide business documents, including both lease contracts and goods clearance documents,” Ling said, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.
Moscow authorities are requiring traders to provide documentation to get access to the estimated $5 billion in merchandise that is being held on the 300-hectare territory.
Yu Anlin, chairman of Wenzhou Business Chamber in Russia, said traders from Wenzhou city in the Zhejiang province alone have declared losses of more than $800 million, Xinhua reported.
Russian officials had no immediate comment about the Chinese visit Wednesday.
Igor Morgulov, an adviser at the Russian Embassy in Beijing, assured the head of the Russian delegation, Gao, earlier this week that Cherkizovsky’s closure was aimed at cracking down on crime and was not about targeting Chinese businessmen, Xinhua reported.
Gao told Morgulov on Monday that China would increase quality ?controls on merchandise sent to Russia and block the entry of counterfeit goods.
China says it supports Russia’s crackdown on smuggling but that the two countries need to work together to solve the problem.
A Commerce Ministry spokesman said Friday that Russia shares the blame for smuggling because it has imposed cumbersome customs procedures that encourage “gray customs clearance.”
Many Chinese traders, even after filling out the requisite forms, have found it difficult to bring goods across the border without participating in “gray customs clearance,” said Sun Zhuangzhi, a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Some 150 Chinese traders have been deported since Cherkizovsky was closed on June 29.
TITLE: Putin Tells Sberbank to Keep Lending
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered state-controlled Sberbank to keep lending even as the bank reported a rise in bad loans, Reuters reported.
The government is looking to banks, especially state-controlled ones, to help the economy out of its first recession in a decade with affordable loans. In return, the sector has been given billions of dollars of state funds to help boost their capital as bad loans rise and asset values fall.
“Of course, you need to improve the quality of loans, but you cannot close your portfolio, either,” Putin said during a visit to Sberbank’s headquarters.
“It’s very easy to just shut the box, it is harder to work with clients and understand which of them are reliable.”
The comments came minutes before Sberbank published its first-half results to Russian accounting standards, showing that profits tumbled 92 percent year on year to 5.3 billion rubles ($170.6 million).
Bad loans rose to 2.8 percent of its portfolio by the end of June from 2.6 percent at the start of the month.
Last month, Putin ordered state banks, including Sberbank, to boost loan portfolios by 150 billion rubles a month between July and September.
The government is also keen for banks to pass on the cuts in official interest rates — which have been slashed by 200 basis points since April — to their creditors.
“The level of 14 percent a year [interest on loans] is quite acceptable in current conditions,” Putin said Wednesday. That represents a 3 percentage point premium over the Central Bank’s benchmark refinancing rate, now at 11 percent.
Putin also ordered Sberbank not to close branches. “A significant part of the [branch] network is not profitable, but you cannot abandon it. This is your payment for the state support,” he said.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: 10-Ruble Note to Go
MOSCOW (SPT) — The Central Bank will begin phasing out the 10-ruble note this fall, a move that could save the budget 18 billion rubles ($577 million) over the next 10 years, the bank’s First Deputy Chairman Giorgy Luntovsky, told reporters Wednesday.
“Coins are more expensive to make than bills, but they will stay in use longer,” Luntovsky said, adding that the life span of a 10-ruble note is one year, compared to nearly 30 years for a coin.
Aeroflot Delays Jets
MOSCOW (SPT) — Aeroflot said Wednesday that it was delaying the delivery of five new Airbus planes because of the fall in passenger numbers as Russia weathers its first recession in a decade, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Two A320-300 planes scheduled for delivery in the first quarter of 2010 will now be delivered separately, at the start of 2011 and the start of 2012. Three A321-200 planes due in the third quarter of 2010 will instead be delivered in 2012.
Probe Into Sibirsky
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev called for an investigation into Sibirsky Cement’s pricing policy, saying in a statement on the regional government web site that the company charges 15 percent to 20 percent more than its competitors.
The higher prices are driving construction companies away from the region and stalling the local housing market, Tuleyev said in the statement.
Rostelecom Stake
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) The Deposit Insurance Agency will buy 29.99 percent of Rostelecom from KIT Finance, the agency’s Deputy General Director Valery Miroshnikov said, Vedomosti reported Wednesday.
The agency has already bought about half of the stake, Miroshnikov said.
After completing the purchase, the agency may ask Vneshekonombank to manage the stake, Vedomosti said.
AvtoVAZ Halt
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — AvtoVAZ may stop car production for a month starting Aug. 3 because of slumping demand, Kommersant reported Wednesday, citing Nikolai Karagin, the labor union head said.
The suspension is aimed at cutting the carmaker’s inventory in half, the newspaper reported.
For the Record
• Norilsk Nickel said Wednesday that it had not yet decided on dividend payments, denying a report by UniCredit Securities brokerage of plans for a hefty first-half payout, Reuters reported. (SPT)
• Novatek will seek shareholders’ approval at an Aug. 7 meeting to request as much as 30 billion rubles ($964 million) from Gazprombank, the company’s chief financial officer, Mark Gyetvay, said Wednesday. (Bloomberg)
• United Company RusAl may cut aluminum capacity in the Urals and European Russia and focus on Siberia where power is cheaper, owner Oleg Deripaska said. (Bloomberg)
• Silvinit plans to raise second-half production after signing a contract to supply potash to India for $460 per ton, the company said. (Bloomberg)
TITLE: Mac Index Gives Ruble Upside
AUTHOR: By Olga Kushinova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — If the price of a Big Mac is any indication, Russia could have one of the world’s most undervalued currencies.
For the past 20 years, The Economist has been publishing its Big Mac Index, which uses the cost of a McDonald’s Big Mac in various countries to determine the relative values of different currencies to the dollar.
The index is based on the theory of purchasing power parity — the notion that in similar markets identical goods should have the same price. For its basket of goods, the theory uses a Big Mac, which is produced in about 120 different countries.
The cost of a Big Mac in any individual country depends on a variety of factors, including production volume, prices for raw materials, manpower and rent. Comparing the dollar price of a Big Mac in different countries is a good estimate for gauging how overvalued or undervalued a country’s currency is, The Economist said.
The world’s cheapest Big Mac can be found in Hong Kong, where it sells for the equivalent of $1.72, followed by Sri Lanka, China and Ukraine, where the burger costs $1.83 — almost half of the U.S. price. Norway’s Big Mac is the world’s most expensive, selling for $6.15.
The Russian Big Mac has become 13 percent more expensive and now sells for 67 rubles ($2.04). The index showed Russia closing the gap in purchasing power with the United States — in 2008, the ruble was 29 percent undervalued, while this year the currency is undervalued by 43 percent, the index showed.
But the ruble is no longer undervalued if one compares the cost of a Big Mac with the income levels in Russia and the United States, said Vladimir Tikhomirov, chief economist at UralSib.
World Bank data show that gross domestic product per person measured by purchasing power parity is three times higher in the United States than in Russia, he said.
TITLE: Lawmakers Recalled After Bill Is Rejected
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW —President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday called for both chambers of parliament to hold an extraordinary session in order to pass legislation that would create small innovative enterprises at universities.
He also accused the government and parliament of “lack of coordination” after the Federation Council voted against a bill he backed with the prime minister on Monday.
“I asked the leadership of the Federation Council to hold one more session. … I will sign this law, and it will go into effect,” he said, RIA-Novosti reported.
In a May meeting with Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko, Medvedev said the law needed to be passed quickly. “It was even announced as a measure to fight unemployment, and yet there’s still no bill,” he said. On Friday, the president brought up the legislation at a meeting of his advisory State Council, saying, “I’ll remind you — this measure was proposed by me.”
But the following day, the Federation Council’s last before recess, senators voted down the law by a vote of 107-14, with five abstentions.
Throughout the entire legislative process, the Finance Ministry has been protesting the bill, said Yevgeny Fyodorov, chairman of the State Duma’s Economic Policy and Entrepreneurship Committee. Ministry officials repeatedly said the initiative would weaken the state’s control over budget funds, the lifeblood of universities.
The Finance Ministry tried to block the law before it was passed by the Duma, and when that failed they took their effort to the Federation Council, a senator said, adding that they voted the bill down on orders from the chamber’s leadership. The ministry complained that the bill directly contradicted the Budget Code, he said.
The law was submitted to the Duma in February by a group of United Russia deputies led by First Deputy Speaker Oleg Morozov, and it was passed in a third reading on July 15. The bill would give state universities and research facilities the right to create small enterprises to test and implement the results of their work, such as computer programs.
The projects can include third parties so long as the scientific institution’s stake in its capital is no less than 25 percent.
The senators recommended that the law be revised. Khusein Chechenov, head of the Federation Council’s Education Committee, said the law contradicted the Civil and Budget codes, which is why the senators had to vote it down.
Senator Nikolai Ryzhkov compared the law to initiatives 20 years ago, when universities were first allowed to create commercial organizations.
“Half the oligarchs whose names you’re always hearing are a result of that law,” said the former Soviet prime minister. “It’s the single most corrupt law and allows for everything we create with state money to be pumped dry.”
(Vedemosti, SPT)
TITLE: Bill Extends Copyright Protection to News Reports
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government has drafted legislation that would make it easier for news agencies to contest plagiarism of their reports, drawing cheers from big outlets like Interfax and RIA-Novosti, but critics say the bill is too vague to be effective.
The law, drafted by the Communications and Press Ministry, would extend copyright protection to news reports, with the threat of fines and the possible confiscation of publications to dissuade media from using information without properly attributing its source.
News agencies have long complained that other publications — particularly regional and Internet outlets — plagiarize their reports, but the problem became more pressing amid the financial losses related to the economic crisis.
“A copyright holder has to be protected both from the commercial and intellectual perspective,” Deputy Communications and Press Minister Alexander Zharov said last month after a roundtable of media professionals and government officials.
Zharov said the bill could be submitted to the State Duma when it reconvenes this fall.
Under the new regulations, a media outlet accused of plagiarism could be fined 10,000 rubles ($320) to 20,000 rubles ($645) and have its production confiscated. A reporter or editor could be warned or fined 1,000 rubles to 5,000 rubles, according to a copy of the bill provided by the ministry.
But the legislation still lacks many details, including what state body would levy the fines and confiscate materials or under what circumstances confiscations might occur. It also does not say whether a plagiarist would be fined separately for each instance.
The proposal was largely welcomed by the news media, although lawyers and some outlets warned that the lack of clarity could lead to inefficiency and harassment of smaller rivals.
Mikhail Komissar, chairman of Interfax’s board of directors, said at the roundtable that the concept of the bill was “right” and that “today news agencies’ reports are not protected.”
RIA-Novosti registered 1,608 cases of plagiarism of its exclusive news in the period from January to June, editor Svetlana Mironyuk said after the roundtable.
News agencies lose advertising revenue when a media outlet copies reports without citing the initial source of the news, since readers would not visit their web sites or see advertisements there, said Andrei Afanasyev, deputy head of Interfax’s legal department.
Plagiarism by another media outlet also damages a news agency’s “reputation,” Mironyuk said.
Andrei Richter, head of Moscow’s Media Law and Policy Institute, said the bill was “absolutely necessary” because it made it much easier for news agencies to defend their material from plagiarists.
“Currently, news agencies have to go to court and prove that they have suffered financial losses because of the plagiarism,” Richter said, referring to Part Four of the Civil Code, which currently regulates copyright. “This bill would introduce real administrative responsibility,” he said.
The law would also create a legal framework for the sale of information by news agencies, said Vadim Uskov, a copyright lawyer. Currently, information is not legally classified as “an object of buying and selling,” he said.
“There is a real market, but there is no law to regulate it,” Uskov said. “News agencies exist in a legal vacuum,” he said.
Mironyuk said RIA-Novosti has filed complaints with the Federal Mass Media Inspection Service over what it calls a serial plagiarist of its reports, online newspaper The Moscow Post, but it has not been able to prove its case.
Moscow Post editor Alexei Kozlov called the bill “an opportunity to punish a rival media outlet.”
Kozlov shrugged off Mironyuk’s accusations about plagiarism, saying similar reports stemmed from the fact that correspondents from both outlets were attending “the same news conferences.”
“The Moscow Post is a famous brand, but for a young media outlet it would not be easy to fend off” plagiarism accusations, he said. “It must be decided by a court” whether plagiarism actually took place, as is the case now, Kozlov added.
Legal experts interviewed for this report praised the idea of extending copyright protection to news reports but said the bill still needed work.
TITLE: Court Detains Bobylev In Latest Retail Fraud Probe
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A court on Tuesday extended the detention of Sunrise owner Sergei Bobylev, whose computer and appliance retailer ran what it called Europe’s largest hardware store, in a major fraud investigation that arose after a dispute with the company’s creditors.
Bobylev’s case is the latest in a string of recent crackdowns on the owners of major retail chains, including Yevroset and Arbat Prestige.
Investigators accuse Bobylev of siphoning assets from the debt-ridden Sunrise to other firms. An investigation was opened in February after complaints were filed by several Sunrise creditors.
If convicted, Bobylev faces up to 10 years in prison.
Nelli Dmitriyeva, the police investigator leading the case, requested that Bobylev come in for questioning at the Main Investigative Directorate of the Moscow police on Monday, and he was subsequently detained.
Police decided to seek Bobylev’s arrest because he had actively resisted the investigation by destroying evidence and threatening witnesses, a police spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court postponed a ruling on the arrest until Friday but agreed to extend his detention. Prosecutors and defense lawyers declined requests for comment.
A spokesman for Sunrise, Alexei Baklanov, told The St. Petersburg Times that the case against Bobylev was fabricated to evict the company from the spacious premises it rents in central Moscow.
Baklanov said Sunrise has spent $15 million on new pavilions and infrastructure at Stankolit, a vast store at the market, north of Savyolovsky Station. He said Sunrise’s business partners would complain to the presidential administration, the Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service about the legality of Bobylev’s detention.
“He is a great business strategist, and without him our company will have to go through really hard times,” Baklanov said.
Established in 1992, Sunrise has expanded to about 100 stores in more than 40 Russian cities. The company says on its web site that its Stankolit store is the biggest computer hardware hypermarket in Europe. The store was closed last week on investigators’ orders, Kommersant reported Tuesday.
According to expert estimates carried in the Russian media, the company had sales of more than $650 million in 2007.
The retailer’s problems began last fall, when several Sunrise suppliers and banks filed lawsuits seeking more than 700 million rubles ($27 million at the time). Among them was a Vienna-based company called EAA Asset Management Consulting.
The head of the EAA Asset Management Consulting, Alexei Samoilov, told The St. Petersburg Times that he legally represented Emma Dvornikova. He refused to comment on Mikhail Dvornikov’s relation to his company.
TITLE: A ‘Reset’ Button for Europe’s Backyard
AUTHOR: By Carl Bildt
TEXT: Pushing the “reset” button on diplomatic relations is a popular endeavor nowadays. U.S. President Barack Obama just journeyed to Moscow in order to reset strained U.S.-Russian ties. The European Union, though not in need of a reset because of strained ties with its eastern neighbors, is involved in a deep strategic reconstruction of those relations.
When the EU launched its new Eastern Partnership in May, the purpose was to promote further integration with the union’s six immediate eastern neighbors — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The global financial crisis had made an updated and strengthened policy for the EU’s eastern neighborhood an urgent need. Equally important was the fact that all the countries concerned expressed an ambition to move closer to the EU.
The Eastern Partnership — originating from a Polish-Swedish initiative — offers to the six countries a substantial upgrading and deepening of relations with the EU in key areas. In trade and economic relations, it clearly sets out the objective of establishing deep and comprehensive free-trade areas between the EU and the partner countries. It confirms full visa liberalization as a long-term goal (with visa facilitation agreements in the meantime), promises enhanced cooperation on energy security, diversification and efficiency, and it comes with dedicated programs and projects to help the neighbors in their integration and reform efforts in all these areas.
Sweden’s assumption of the EU presidency this month should help these efforts. However, it comes at a time when the union’s eastern neighborhood faces severe challenges, with the financial and economic crisis hitting many of the partner countries hard.
Ukraine suffers from the sharp drop in global demand and trade, severely undermining its steel industry. Georgia’s economic success has been largely dependent on direct foreign investment, for which there is hardly any appetite today. Partner countries that are less integrated into the global market, such as Moldova, have seen the crisis arrive more slowly, but the real effect might be equally as bad, and they are likely to recover more slowly.
The Eastern Partnership does not offer any quick remedies to the crisis. But it can provide a political framework and institution-building support to improve the deficiencies that made these countries so vulnerable to the crisis: imperfect market economies, weak state institutions and continued corruption. The Eastern Partnership’s offer of deep integration with the EU in the areas such as trade and energy carries with it considerable transformational power.
The other type of crisis that most of the partner countries are enduring is political. In most of these countries, democratic development has not yet reached a point where a change in government is a routine part of political life and can take place without risking the country’s stability. The Eastern Partnership is based on the profound values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Political association with the EU, and the process of integration under this partnership, will promote reforms in these key areas.
The Swedish EU presidency will concentrate on starting up the concrete work — the nuts and bolts — of the partnership. The establishment of comprehensive institution-building programs, designed to support reform of key institutions in each partner country, should take place before the year’s end.
Some flagship initiatives proposed by the European Commission will finally see the light of day as well, and new projects and initiatives are likely to be developed. Here, Sweden will attach particular importance to energy-efficiency programs, which will serve not only the purposes of enhancing energy security and reducing costs but will also be an important contribution to the fight against climate change.
The Swedish presidency, together with the European Commission, intends to organize the first meeting of the Eastern Partnership civil society forum this autumn. We hope to see the start of parliamentary cooperation, as well as exchanges between local and regional authorities of the 33 EU and partner countries. At the end of the year, a meeting of EU foreign ministers and their colleagues from the six partners will assess the progress made so far and give guidance on the way ahead.
The Eastern Partnership is about EU integration, about the six countries moving closer to the EU’s values, legislation and ways of working and about the EU being there to support and help this convergence. In Russia, there is a perception that is sometimes fostered that suggests that the Partnership is directed against it. But this, of course, is untrue. On the contrary, Russia, like Turkey, will be welcome to take part in relevant activities within the partnership’s multilateral dimensions.
The Eastern Partnership is not an answer to all the problems and difficulties that the six partners are facing. Nevertheless, it does represent a clear commitment by the EU to lend its political and economic support to their transition and reform — a process that should bring prosperity and stability to the whole region.
Carl Bildt is foreign minister of Sweden. © Project Syndicate.
TITLE: $1,000 or the Cat Gets It
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The world now takes Russia seriously. When Russia first declared in 2005 that it had an energy weapon, Europe was incredulous. Since then, Russia has wielded that energy weapon more than once. Now Europe finally understands that Russia views its gas resources as a weapon, not a commodity. Europe also understands that it has only to go elsewhere for its gas in order to neutralize the effects of the weapon.
In January, the Kremlin waged a “gas war” with Ukraine. Few observers believed that Russia would allow itself to become embroiled in a dispute that could damage its reputation as a reliable supplier. But Russia opted to shut off supplies to Ukraine, thereby causing shortages for the end consumer — Europe. And Moscow was prepared to take the same step again in May and June. By that point, both Europe and the International Monetary Fund took Russia’s words seriously enough to start talks about offering financial assistance to Ukraine. Thus, the Kremlin’s threats are helping Ukraine obtain money it would never have received otherwise.
The same is true regarding Georgia. For many years, Kremlin attempts to make trouble for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili remained outside the spotlight of the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. After the Russia-Georgia war last August, however, the Kremlin’s stance on Georgia has taken center stage. No sooner did Russia recently suggest that Georgia was saber-rattling than the United States dispatched its destroyer to the waters off Batumi, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden headed to Tbilisi and, according to my sources, President Barack Obama obtained assurances from Russian leaders during his recent Moscow summit that no new war against Georgia would be forthcoming.
In short, nobody believed the Kremlin before. Now they do. And now it turns out that the Kremlin’s policies are not those of a rogue state but of a hooligan state. It is as if a neighbor were to say, “Listen up! You don’t show me the proper respect. Give me $1,000 or I’ll strangle your cat, poison your dog and burn down your house!” For a long time, nobody believed the threats and continued to think that the neighbor was a good guy. But then the cat was strangled and the dog was poisoned. Yet the attacks didn’t elicit the desired respect or the money — they just prompted a call to the police.
In this sense, the next two months are critical for Russia’s future. During this period, Moscow, like the belligerent neighbor, must decide whether to carry out its threat and burn down Tbilisi’s house under the watchful eye of the police or to keep quiet and behave itself.
Of course, Moscow could start a war with Georgia, offering the excuse that Saakashvili attacked first. It could again cut off gas supplies to Ukraine over some trivial complaint or buy up gas supplies for the Nabucco pipeline at three times their market value, just to throw a monkey wrench in Europe’s plans to bypass Russian gas. The problem with such an approach is that nobody would believe that Georgia attacked itself, that Ukraine shut off its own gas supplies or that Moscow’s attempts to make Europe more dependent on Russian gas are evidence of the Kremlin’s peaceful intentions. Didn’t the Kremlin demonstrate that gas is a weapon? Well, now the West believes Russia.
But to pursue that course would be to turn Russia from a hooligan state into a true rogue state. And do you know what they do with the leaders of rogue states? They freeze the assets in their Swiss bank accounts.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Variety show
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It will certainly not be of help to those studying Russian history. The first act is sure to make most members of the audiences scratch their heads wondering how on earth this ditzy, at times hysterical woman, racing chaotically across the stage half-dressed and overwhelmed by emotions, managed to rule the state. David Tukhmanov’s new opera “Tsaritsa,” which saw its world premiere at the Alexandriinsky Theater on Wednesday, offers an unorthodox take on Catherine the Great’s 34-year reign.
Responsible for the nearly 2.5-hour show is director Dmitry Bertman, artistic director of the Helicon Opera Theater in Moscow, which, since it first welcomed visitors in 1990, has earned a good reputation and high critical acclaim for its experimental cutting-edge interpretations of classical operas.
This time around Bertman, known for his award-winning productions, has apparently fallen into the trap of trying to create a show that almost anyone will like. The goal was seemingly to avoid targeting the same sophisticated, critically-minded narrow group of operaphiles and try for once to lure the crowds into the theater — especially considering the exciting theme. Catherine the Great’s love affairs, naturally not discussed in great detail during dry school history lessons, are widely known to ordinary Russians, mainly through numerous memoirs — written by both Catherine herself and her contemporaries.
Bertman’s production turned the venerable Alexandriinsky stage, accustomed to decades of traditional shows, into a kind of stylistic polygon as what was billed as an “open opera,” a term invented by the director to describe an opera aimed at a far broader circle than traditional opera-goers, turned out to be a peculiar hybrid of opera, musical, operetta and variety entertainment. The show had a “liquid” genre, changing and transforming throughout the performance like surreal creatures from the worlds of Salvador Dali.
The scenes when Catherine’s young favorite, Platon Zubov (Vasily Yefimov) courts his beloved or apologizes to her for failing to settle the marriage contract of Catherine’s granddaughter Alexandrine and the Swedish king Gustav IV, looks as if it was taken straight out of a provincial vaudeville. Zubov crawls at Catherine’s feet in a vulgar manner, while in one of the bedroom scenes he declares his intention to faithfully serve the empress and accompanies his pledge by opening his bathrobe wide and swiveling his hips.
Some of the scenes are a triumph of conventionality. You need to know your history to make out what exactly is going on. It might be hard, for example, to recognize the Pugachyov rebellion in a brief episode in which a crowd of peasants rocks and rolls on stage shouting that Peter III never died.
The part of the empress is performed by three soloists — Maria Maksakova (the young Catherine before the coup that brings her to power), Yelena Ionova (Catherine II) and Ksenia Vyaznikova (Catherine the Great in her twilight years). Only Vyaznikova brings power, might and regal grace to her character, performing well above the rest of the cast.
Confusingly, the performance styles and stage culture of the three singers differ drastically, which makes Catherine’s evolution a confusing transformation not supported by appropriate acting or storyline.
The show’s ideologists make no secret of the fact that “Tsaritsa’s” libretto is loosely based solely on the empress’s memoirs, in which her love life takes center stage. And so it does in the first opera devoted to Catherine.
“A provincial girl arrives from Germany in this huge country, and suddenly she has to rule it; this massive weight of responsibility falls on her shoulders in the blink of an eye,” Bertman said of his take on the story. “She is making this country more European, importing architecture and culture, including opera, incidentally. Catherine fell in love with talented men who worked hard on making her vivid ideas a reality.”
David Tukhmanov’s score, which boasts a wealth of lyrical melodies, romantic arias and tuneful duets, is somewhat overwhelmed by the opulence, bravado and abundance of movement that are key to the production. The Helicon Opera orchestra under the baton of Konstantin Chudovsky navigated confidently through both the powerful choir scenes and the more delicate lyrical passages. The music definitely has the potential to become the foundation of a beautiful film, provided that the director takes a more balanced approach.
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: This month, the police continued to meddle with music concerts in Russia. The most talked-about incident took place in Saratov, a large city in southern Russia. On July 15, the OMON riot police there stormed an anti-fascist punk gig, where they arrested and beat up approximately 25 fans and journalists.
The OMON officers entered the Canyon Club during a set by the Belarussian band Mister X. They stopped the show and took everyone out of the club, according to Stephan Zebisch, guitarist of the German band TowerBlocks that headlined the event.
“[The OMON ordered] them in a very loud, abrupt and aggressive way to stand in front of a large wall and stay there [until the raid was over],” he wrote in an e-mail this week.
“The audience was definitely very frightened by this and waited for what would happen next.
“Some of the OMON officers carried out their work without regard for people’s health, while others just stood around holding their weapons (I think they were Kalashnikovs). They checked the passports and papers of audience members. If there was anything wrong, they took people out and put them in their cars. Some of the people who did not do [as the OMON requested] the second they were asked were hit hard [by police officers].
“After maybe one hour they left the place and the show went on, but many people were gone, in jail or no longer in the mood for a show.”
According to a report filed by Saratov journalist Nikolai Lykov, he himself ended up in hospital after being beaten with an assault rifle butt and given electric shocks using a Taser gun. The following day, however, Lykov was charged with assaulting a police officer. It has also been reported that a number of fans were beaten or harassed.
TowerBlocks, a Berlin-based street-punk band that describes itself as “100 percent anti-fascist, 100 percent anti-racist,” was on a 17-concert tour in Russia that culminated in St. Petersburg on Monday. During the visit, which began on July 4, the band frequently found itself targeted by both the police and neo-Nazis.
“In Moscow [the police] totally shut down the show and more than 400 people went home after having paid for a show they did not see. In Ryazan, the club was torched by right-wing activists a day before our show,” Zebisch wrote.
“I think Russian democracy has to understand that a culture with different music and also different meanings is very important.
“The change to a democratic state looks as if it hasn’t gone very well up to this point, and I think it will be a hard road [to democracy] when the police treat the public like this all the time.
“It seems difficult, but they have to deal with it because the Russian youth really wants its own way of life and its own music and ideas. No one will be able to stop this process, I’m sure.”
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: From the depths of the sea
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Artifacts from the Russian cruiser Varyag, which fought in the Russo-Japanese war, were brought to St. Petersburg last week from South Korea to be exhibited at the State Hermitage Museum.
The exhibition is due to open on Saturday in the Georgievsky (St. George’s) Hall of the Hermitage.
“This hall was chosen deliberately, since all of the Varyag’s sailors were awarded the St. George Cross, and the awards ceremony took place in the Winter Palace,” the Varyag charity foundation explained.
The artifacts arrived in the city in a special armored truck accompanied by a police cortege to keep them safe, Interfax reported.
The exhibits include a jack from the Varyag, a St. Andrew’s flag (the flag of the Russian navy) from the tug of the gunboat Koreyets, cartridge cases, shells and rifles and an anchor, along with an album of Japanese watercolors and photos of ships in Chemulpo bay during the battle of 1904.
The relics lay forgotten in storage at the Metropolitan Museum in the Korean city of Inchon. After six years of negotiating with the Korean side, it was agreed that the relics would be handed over to Russia for exhibitions around the country.
Saturday, when the exhibition is due to open, is the eve of Russian Navy Day.
After showing in St. Petersburg, the exhibition will travel to Moscow, Murmansk, Severomorsk, Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the bases of the Black Sea fleet.
At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 to 1905, the cruiser Varyag and gunboat Koreyets docked in the neutral Korean port of Chemulpo at the command of the Russian Embassy in Seoul. Ships from England, France and the U.S. were also located in the same port.
On Jan. 26, 1904, a Japanese squadron headed by rear admiral Uriu blocked Chemulpo with the aim of landing 3,000 soldiers and preventing the interference of the Varyag. The next day, Varyag’s captain, Vsevolod Rudnev, received an ultimatum from Uriu to leave port before 12 p.m. or face attack in the harbor.
Rudnev decided to break through to Port Arthur and explode the ship in the event of failure. At noon, the Varyag and Koreyets left Chemulpo. In the ensuing battle, the Varyag sank one Japanese torpedo boat and damaged four cruisers.
The Varyag itself also was badly damaged and suffered casualties. After the Varyag and Koreyets returned to Chemulpo, the Russians scuttled the Varyag and exploded the Koreyets. They also scuttled the Russian steamer the Sungari. The crews of the Russian ships were taken aboard foreign ships, who admired their actions, and who did not give them up despite the demands of Japanese commanders.
Later the Russian sailors returned home through neutral waters. The Japanese were reportedly impressed by the actions of the Russian ships, and used the story as an example to be imitated in their propaganda.
“Relics of the Varyag Cruiser” runs from July 25 to Aug. 2., 10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the State Hermitage Museum, Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya 34. Tel: 571 3420. Closed Monday. www.hermitagemuseum.org.
TITLE: Pub grub
AUTHOR: By Shura Collinson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Brovar at first sight appears to be less of a restaurant than a convenient place to sample the local beer brand of the same name, and little more. The menu gives pride of place to the beer, which is produced in a microbrewery just outside of St. Petersburg, and the first page of the menu consists of beer snacks.
The interior of the establishment, which opened earlier this year opposite the Tavrichesky Gardens, only adds to this impression, and bears closer resemblance to a pub or bar than a place in which to dine. The design is simple and somewhat austere — a stone floor, dark wooden paneling on the walls topped by dark green wallpaper, and wooden tables and chairs. The prints of old tavern scenes soften the general ambience a little, but the overall impression is rather masculine, and indeed the clientele on a recent weekday evening was predominantly male. The background music, seemingly a compilation disc of folksy female singers ranging from Eva Cassidy to Mel C, added a touch of femininity.
There seemed little doubt of the restaurant’s specialty, so a Brovar beer was duly ordered. There are three available — light, unfiltered, and dark — all priced at 70 rubles ($2.25) for 0.2 liters, 150 ($4.80) for half a liter and 300 ($9.60) for a liter. The unfiltered kind was fruity and fresh, and decidedly moreish.
A sample from the beer snacks menu, which includes assorted platters for 500 rubles ($16), was no less satisfying and confirmed Brovar’s success in what it aims to do best. The cheese sticks (220 rubles, $7) were thick battered cylinders oozing with thick, gooey melted cheese, and were accompanied with a barbeque sauce for dipping — truly the ultimate beer snack.
Assumptions that Brovar’s skill ends with beer snacks are however undeserved. Roasted bell peppers with grated brinza cheese (270 rubles, $8.60) — not a common dish, even on menus far lengthier than that of Brovar’s — were a rare treat. The combination of the strong and sharp brinza with the sweet peppers worked very well.
Caesar salad with chicken breast and bacon (250 rubles, $8) was another hit. The lettuce was crisp and the creamy sauce was light and agreeable, the way it should be, and not too heavy on the mayonnaise as is so often the case in Russia.
Service was generally good, and marred only by a ten-minute gap between the arrival of the two salads.
Inevitably, the main courses all consist of either meat or fish, but the cream of vegetable soup may go some way toward appeasing vegetarians. A bargain at 140 rubles ($4.50), it was indeed a creamy, filling yet delicate blend, the most distinctive flavor of which was broccoli.
In sharp culinary contrast, yet just as satisfying, was the goulash (170 rubles, $5.50) — a finely flavored soup of chunks of beef, bell peppers, carrot and other vegetables that was both hearty and light.
Beef Stroganoff with mashed potato continued the high standards. Attractively presented on a black metal skillet with the potatoes molded into dainty florets and garnished with sprigs of herbs and red onion, the dish was an excellent example of everything a Stroganoff should be — good meat chopped finely with an excellent creamy sauce.
Do not be deceived by appearances — Brovar serves up decent, reasonably priced food as well as its eponymous beer, making it a good choice for after-work drinks, a private party (it has a smaller room for up to 18 people that can be hired out) or for watching football matches.
TITLE: Local Artists Take Work Outside in Political Protest
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A group of local artists is taking its art into the street to make a statement, turning exhibitions into political protests and supplementing protests with its artwork.
Having held two street shows in St. Petersburg late last month, they took their exhibition to Moscow at the weekend, where it was part of a demonstration in support of a young man persecuted by the police on Saturday.
Called “Managed Democracy: Horror from Nature,” the series of paintings was created during a 14-day open-air hunger strike, in which several artists sat in a park near Smolny Institute, home to City Hall, creating paintings protesting police arbitrariness in May and June.
They demanded an investigation into and punishment of the bureaucrats and police officers responsible for dispersing a 300-strong crowd who came to hold an authorized anarchist Pirate Street Party as part of the May Day demonstrations (over 130 were detained, officially for “crossing the road in the wrong place.”) They also demanded the release of artist Artyom Loskutov, who was arrested on drug charges in Novosibirsk in mid-May, and an investigation into the activities of the “E” (anti-extremism) Center that was reported to be behind Loskutov’s case.
The artists ended the hunger strike after Loskutov was released and they received replies from the Prosecutor’s Office and the Governor’s Human Rights Commission.
In Moscow last week, “Managed Democracy” was part of a demonstration in support of Vsevolod “Seva” Ostapov, a young man charged last week with assaulting a policeman — an offense punishable by up to five years in prison. According to Ostapov’s supporters, it was him, alongside six other young people, who was attacked and beaten by the policemen in a notorious incident in Sokolniki in Moscow in April 2008.
“The street is the most accessible gallery there is, and that was the idea — to show people the problem with what is happening as much as possible,” artist Yevgeny Schyotov said.
“If you don’t go onto the streets and tell people what is happening, then it might not get noticed. We had the idea to once more point out to ordinary passersby what is happening here, to get them interested in social problems. To use visual objects to simply draw people’s attention to social problems.”
Sharing art and ideas cannot be confined to rooms and the Internet, these artists say.
“The atomization of society that exists now, this fear people have of each other, is aggravated by the hysteria over terrorism or extremism or something else, and so people feel safe only when they are sitting at home in their apartments,” said Anastasia Nekoza, another of the artists.
“On the contrary, we need to do more things on the street, so that the one or two hundred people who do walk by are not afraid to come up and ask, ‘What’s happening here?’ Or so that people go up to them and tell them what is happening. So that people interact with each other outside of their closed, limited circle of relatives and co-workers.”
Every painting in “Managed Democracy” is a striking piece of satire dealing with the arbitrariness of the police and bureaucrats. Perhaps the most controversial one shows Adolf Hitler as a monument in front of City Hall (instead of the Vladimir Lenin monument that has stood there since Soviet times), with the words “Leningrad Is Ours” in German.
The explanatory note says that it reflects the fact that while the artists were dispersed or arrested on May 1, extreme nationalists — including Hitler followers — were allowed to march on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street of the city that resisted the Nazis during the Siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg.)
Schyotov was one of the Pirate Street Party’s official organizers, and he was one of the first people the OMON police arrested. “Along with the demo permit,” he added.
The arrests of young artists and musicians, some of whom had come dressed up and with musical instruments to support Pirate Bay, the Swedish torrent tracker that was then on trial, began all of a sudden.
“The OMON just dashed up and without explanation twisted people’s arms and dragged them into the [police] bus,” Schyotov said.
Arriving at the site of their open-air hunger strike on April 28, the artists were wary of being treated in a similar way. To resist possible arrest, a chain was attached to a large canvas, which remains attached to one of the paintings as an integral part of the artwork.
“We intentionally prepared this gigantic, cumbersome canvas that would be impossible to stuff into a [police] car,” Schyotov said.
“The authorities would have had to show their willingness to hack the canvas in two and arrest people. This was a provocation — to force them to make this choice.”
Surprisingly, they were not detained, but stayed there for 14 days, during which City Hall officials passed by every day, although they were paid visits and sometimes received threats from the police and OMON.
“The FSO [Federal Protection Service] demanded that they keep constant tabs on who was present [at the hunger strike site]. The police told us the FSO needed this data for some sort of analysis,” Schyotov said.
“At first they wrote down people’s passport information,” said Nekoza.
“Then, during the [Petersburg] Economic Forum, they took the passports somewhere and photocopied them. Later, apparently, they were too lazy to do anything at all, so they would just come and ask us for our names. We didn’t show them any documents at all.”
While many works in the series were inspired by situations that arose during the hunger strike, the one depicting the Hitler monument has its origins in a conversation the artists had with a police officer who appeared to hold extreme nationalist views.
“During one conversation, he began telling us about his views and he ended up telling us we should read ‘Mein Kampf,’” Nekoza said.
“It’s banned of course, [he told us], but everything you need to know about life is in that book. [He said] it’s a good book.”
Among the other works that attracted the most attention are “Swine Castle,” showing pigs looking out from the windows of the Smolny Institute (complete with a pig as a monument), and “The Luncheon on the Grass,” a remake of Edouard Manet’s once controversial painting that shows a nude woman in the company of two fully armed OMON special-task police officers.
“Some people would go up to it and say, ‘Really, of all things!’ Despite this, however, a fairly tiny percentage of people recognized [that it was a remake],” Nekoza said.
“Some people liked ‘Swine Castle’ most of all; they’d go right up to it. Some would go up to this [other picture] of the Smolny Institute in ruins and look at the OMON officer [depicted there]. People liked different things.”
According to Schyotov, it was possible to determine what social groups people belonged to on the basis of what paintings they found most interesting.
“The police and the OMON were interested in some of the straightforward pieces, while the intelligentsia found things with cultural references more interesting,” he said.
As it continued, the open-air hunger strike turned into a unique tourist attraction.
“One evening, this bus full of tourists pulled up; it was a nighttime tour of St. Petersburg,” Nekoza said.
“The tourists all got off the bus, began photographing the park, and then they came up and asked what we were doing. We gave them leaflets and explained that an open-air hunger strike was underway and what the reasons were. They all thought this was interesting and had their pictures taken with us. We gave their guide a stack of leaflets to take. All the following nights, the guide brought tour groups to see us, as part of the excursion: ‘Here are the hunger-striking artists.’ Everyone would get off the bus, but they no longer took pictures in the park. They’d come straight to us, take pictures, and read some of our literature.”
The artists made a point of keeping all the works unsigned.
“All these pictures don’t exist separately from our action, they’re simply the products of our social protest,” Schyotov said.
“We also had this concept: We didn’t want to single out anyone, because everyone had expended a lot of energy and was united by one and the same idea. There were people who came to draw, children who came to draw. We believe that all these people are of absolutely equal significance. If we’re talking about contemporary art, then we didn’t want to create some kind of bourgeois gallery cult. All these works exist as parts of the exhibition and belong equally to all the people who worked on this project.”
Schyotov said people generally do not visit galleries nowadays and he is suspicious of what is called “contemporary art.”
“I don’t know, there are all these terms, like ‘post-conceptualism’… I’ve already become totally confused: I don’t even try to follow [the trends] anymore,” he said.
“There is something to this idea of bringing art into the streets so that people can pause to think about the meaning of creativity. Ours is a society that is built on fear, on stereotypes: We need at least to show people that they don’t have to be afraid, that they can take a creative approach to different things.”
According to Nekoza, the artists also aim to avoid any commercialism.
“Contemporary art in general acquires commercial value or value only after the artist has signed his pieces. If there is no signature, then it basically means that everything is meaningless. We weren’t pursuing commercial ends and we’re not pursuing them now. And so we specifically don’t want there to be any signatures on the works because we believe that art should be anonymous.
“If you want to speak out — you can’t stay silent, you want to sing or draw something or dance — then after you’ve said what you wanted to say, it all belongs to everyone else. After your thoughts have been made public, demanding money or fame for them is, well, stupid somehow.”
Despite the highly critical subject matter, the artists said they had no problem getting their street exhibition in the center of St. Petersburg authorized.
“We had a permit for a ‘picket to defend creative freedom,’” Schyotov said.
“We’ve learned our lesson: We didn’t go through Smolny, but through the administration of the Central District. We had no problems at all. They were polite to us and met us halfway.”
After two shows in St. Petersburg and one in Moscow, the exhibition and related events will be held when the artists feel it is necessary.
“The exhibition was a kind of push from society, something to make the case go forward,” Schyotov said.
“The authorities are interested in soft-pedaling the case, if we don’t react, then this is what will happen. So it is hard to predict anything: If something out of the ordinary happens, then of course the exhibitions and other art actions will be continued.”
TITLE: Judge Accepts Mumbai Gunman’s Confession
AUTHOR: By Erika Kinetz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MUMBAI, India — An Indian judge accepted the confession of the lone surviving gunman from the shooting attacks in Mumbai, but said Thursday the trial would proceed anyway.
The young Pakistani gunman, Ajmal Kasab, unexpectedly confessed Monday to taking part in the November attack that paralyzed India’s financial capital and killed 166 people.
The court had delayed a decision on whether to accept his confession and guilty plea, with prosecutors arguing that his statement was incomplete and accusing him of seeking clemency. In response, Kasab said he was willing to be hanged for his actions.
Judge M.L. Tahiliyani decided Thursday to accept Kasab’s confession, but ordered the trial to continue because the accused did not address all 86 charges against him.
“The trial will proceed,” he said.
Kasab’s confession linked the attack to a shadowy but well-organized group in Pakistan. The statement bolstered India’s charges that terrorist groups across the border were behind the well-planned attack and that Pakistan is not doing enough to clamp down on them.
Chief Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had tried to get Kasab’s confession thrown out, saying it was not complete or accurate.
Kasab admitted spraying gunfire into the crowd at Mumbai’s main train station, and described in detail a network of training camps and safe houses across Pakistan, giving the names of four men he said were his handlers.
He denied killing four Mumbai policemen whose deaths remain touchstones of grief and anger in India.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Islamabad was waiting for copies of the confession, but that it would not impede ongoing efforts at dialogue between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
The court has issued arrest warrants for 22 Pakistanis accused of conspiring in the attack.
TITLE: iPhone Loss Leads To Suicide For Worker
AUTHOR: By William Foreman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GUANGZHOU, China — Chinese worker Sun Danyong was responsible for handling the prototypes of one of the world’s hottest products — the iPhone. When one of the gadgets went missing and his company began investigating him, he jumped off his apartment building and killed himself.
The death — which involves allegations that security guards roughed up the worker — prompted Apple Inc. on Wednesday to issue a terse statement, insisting that all the company’s contractors must treat workers with respect and dignity.
The 25-year-old Sun started his new job last year after earning a degree in business management. He moved from his native Yunnan province — a poor region sharing a border with Myanmar — to the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, home to the sprawling factory complex run by Foxconn Technology Group. The Taiwanese manufacturer has long been one of Apple’s key suppliers.
Sun’s job involved shipping iPhone prototypes to Apple. It was a sensitive position for a company like Apple, known for shrouding its new product launches in secrecy and suspense — a strategy that’s consistently helped whip up the just-can’t-wait-to-buy-it feeling among consumers worldwide.
Although Apple and Foxconn confirmed Sun’s suicide, they would not provide much information about the circumstances of his death. Many details have been reported by the state-run Southern Metropolis Daily, one of the region’s most popular and aggressive newspapers.
The paper’s account, which hasn’t been disputed by the companies, said: Sun reported on July 13 that he was missing one of the 16 fourth-generation iPhones in his possession. Foxconn security guards searched his apartment, detained him and beat him. In the early morning of July 16, a distraught Sun jumped from the 12th floor of his apartment building.
Jill Tan, an Apple spokeswoman in Hong Kong, issued only a brief statement about the incident.
“We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death,” Tan said. “We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect.”
Apple’s success amid the recession is due in part to the iPhone. More than 5.2 million of the devices were sold in the third quarter this year — seven times the number sold at the same time last year, the company said Tuesday when announcing its earnings. The sales spike was related to a newly released version of the device, it said.
The Cupertino, California-based company’s earnings jumped 15 percent in the third quarter — growth largely propelled by laptop and iPhone sales.
One of Apple’s key manufacturing partners has long been Foxconn, owned by Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. — the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of electronics. The corporate behemoth has also produced computers for Hewlett-Packard Co., PlayStation game consoles for Sony Corp. and mobile phones for Nokia Corp.
Foxconn executive Li Jinming said in a statement that Sun’s death showed that the company needed to do a better job helping its employees with psychological pressures.
TITLE: Clinton: N. Korea Running Out of Options
AUTHOR: By Robert Burns
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHUKET, Thailand — Faced with a fresh refusal by North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday the communist regime has “no friends left” to shield it from punishing UN penalties.
“North Korea’s continued pursuit of its nuclear ambitions is sure to elevate tensions on the Korean peninsula and could provoke an arms race in the region,” Clinton told a news conference after conferring with officials from 26 other countries and organizations. She cited near unanimity on fully enforcing the latest UN sanctions against North Korea for its repeated nuclear and missile tests.
Clinton said the U.S. will continue to insist that North Korea return to the bargaining table and verifiably dismantle its nuclear program. At the same time, she held out the prospect of restoring U.S. diplomatic ties to North Korea and other incentives — actions the Obama administration would be willing to consider only if the North Koreans take irreversible steps to denuclearize.
Before departing for Washington after a weeklong trip to India and Thailand, Clinton offered a somewhat more optimistic message about another trouble spot on the U.S. foreign policy agenda: Myanmar, the military-run southeast Asian nation also known as Burma.
“There is a positive direction that we see with Burma,” she said. She praised Myanmar’s government for committing to enforce the UN sanctions against North Korea, calling it important in light of Myanmar’s suspected secret military links to North Korea.
And she suggested Myanmar may have played a role this month in persuading a North Korean cargo ship suspected of carrying weaponry in violation of the sanctions to return home instead of continuing to its destination, which U.S. officials said was probably Myanmar.
Clinton also called on Myanmar to unconditionally release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest.
On North Korea, Clinton stressed a point she has made repeatedly — that a fully nuclear North Korea might compel other countries in Asia to follow suit. She mentioned no names, but Japan and South Korea are thought to be among those that might go nuclear under circumstances in which they felt threatened by the North and less than fully confident of protection under a U.S. nuclear umbrella.
Clinton also said, “I wanted to make very clear that the United States does not seek any kind of offensive action against North Korea.” She said a North Korean delegate at Thursday’s meeting complained of being subjected to U.S. nuclear threats, but she said this showed a disconnect with reality, given that U.S. nuclear weapons were removed from South Korea nearly 20 years ago.
She said the world — including China, which has been North Korea’s most loyal supporter — has made it clear to Pyongyang that it has “no place to go.”
“They have no friends left that will protect them from the international community’s efforts to move toward denuclearization,” she said.
Just moments before she spoke at this southern Thai seaside resort, a spokesman for the North Korean delegation at the Phuket conference said his government will not return to six-party talks with the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, citing the “deep-rooted anti-North Korean policy” of the United States.
“The six-party talks are over,” Ri Hung Sik said.
The Phuket forum, known as the Asian Regional Forum and drawing senior officials from 27 nations, is one of the rare instances of U.S. and North Korean diplomats appearing together, although U.S. officials said there was no substantive contact. Clinton told the news conference she was disappointed in what she heard from the North Korean delegate who addressed the conference.
“Unfortunately, the North Korean delegation offered only an insistent refusal to recognize that North Korea has been on the wrong course,” she said. “In their presentation today they evinced no willingness to pursue the path of denuclearization, and that was troubling.”
“The question is: Where do we go from here?” she asked.
Her reply, essentially, was that the U.S. and its negotiating partners will not back down from their insistence that North Korea not only resume negotiations but scrap its nuclear program in a verifiable way and return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it once was a signatory but recently abandoned. And she said the UN sanctions will be applied as strictly and fully as possible.
“The bottom line is this: If North Korea intends to engage in international commerce its vessels must conform to terms” of the UN sanctions, “or find no port,” she said. “Our goal in enforcing these sanctions and others proposed earlier is not to create suffering or destabilize North Korea. Our quarrel is not with the North Korean people.”
Clinton said the Obama administration would soon send Philip Goldberg, its coordinator for implementing the UN sanctions that were approved by the Security Council in June, back to Asia for a new round of consultations on a joint enforcement strategy.
And, in what she called an illustration of U.S. concern about the welfare of North Korea’s people, Clinton said the administration intends to appoint a special envoy to focus on North Korean human rights.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, bristling at an earlier Clinton comment likening the regime to “small children” demanding attention, released a statement Thursday saying: “We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community. Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.”
Turning to another major security problem, Clinton held a one-on-one meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and said afterward that the Pakistani military’s progress in fighting Taliban insurgents has been “encouraging” but incomplete.
TITLE: Iceland Formally Applies To Join European Union
AUTHOR: By Karl Ritter
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — Iceland’s foreign minister on Thursday handed over the country’s application to join the European Union, a move Icelanders hope will bring economic stability.
The small North Atlantic island, with only 320,000 residents, is expected to meet many of the membership criteria, but faces difficult negotiations over its fisheries sector, a key part of the Icelandic economy.
The independent-minded Icelanders are concerned that EU rules would give European fishing fleets access to Iceland’s waters.
“To be frank with you, if we would get a rotten deal on fisheries, the Icelandic people would be quite angry,” Foreign Minister Ossur Skarphedinsson said after presenting the EU application to his Swedish counterpart, Carl Bildt. Sweden currently holds the EU presidency.
“This is not only an issue of economics. It is also an emotional issue. It is also and issue related to sovereignty,” said Skarphedinsson, a former fisherman.
He said he was confident the two sides would “find a solution that will be acceptable for both the existing framework of Europe and to our special needs as a nation.”
In 2007, fishing employed 4 percent of Iceland’s work force, just over 7,000 people. But seafood accounted for almost half of Iceland’s exports and 10 percent of gross domestic product.
Iceland’s parliament last week voted to seek EU membership as a way to stabilize the country’s economy, which was one of the first causalities of the global recession after years of strong growth.
The EU has to approve the accession and Iceland will also hold a referendum on the issue.
Iceland is already part of the European Economic Area, a trading block that gives Icelanders the right to live and work in the EU.