SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1531 (93), Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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TITLE: Theories Abound 
As to Cause Of Crash
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Investigators say a terrorist attack was the likeliest cause of the Nevsky Express train crash on Friday night that claimed 26 lives and left more than 90 people injured.
The scenario was first publicly voiced on Saturday by Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways, before being confirmed by Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in reports on the investigation given directly to President Dmitry Medvedev.
The investigation has already distributed a photo-fit of two suspects, one of them a short, red-haired man of about 40 years of age with thin lips and a broad nose, and another tall, dark-haired man of about 30 to 35. 
A number of nationalist blogs and sites reported that the radical youth group Combat-18 had claimed responsibility for the explosion, but analysts and critics both in nationalist circles and human rights groups have treated the claims with suspicion. 
Galina Kozhevnikova, an expert with the Moscow-based Sova-center, which specializes in researching hate crime and nationalist movements, said Combat-18 is the sort of group that is only active on the Internet. “They have a high presence in cyber-space, but they haven’t gone as far as plotting any explosions yet.”
Extreme nationalist activist Alexander Belov, one of the founders of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, branded Combat-18’s alleged involvement as a red herring created by the security services.
The police have so far failed to offer any comments as to whether they have interrogated any members of Combat-18 or the bloggers who reported their alleged involvement.
Analysts and commentators are also actively discussing possible parallels between Friday’s apparent explosion and a Nevsky Express crash that took place on August 13, 2007, when the train was passing by the village of Malaya Vishera in the Novgorod region. Twelve carriages were derailed on that occasion. There were no fatalities, but several dozen people were injured. 
The 2007 Nevsky Express case is currently being heard at the Novgorod City Court. A few days before the explosion last week, one of the defendants, Maksharip Khidriyev, made a confession, admitting that he carried explosive materials to the scene. As the police continue to search for Pavel Kosolapov, the alleged organizer of the 2007 crash, it has been speculated that he could have orchestrated Friday’s Nevsky Express explosion. Kosolapov, 29, is already wanted by the police for allegedly organizing terrorist attacks.
According to the police, upon completing army service, Kosolapov went to Chechnya, where he joined guerrillas, adopted Islam and became an explosives specialist. Since 2003, he is believed to have taken part in several bombings of bus stops in Krasnodar and metro stations in Moscow.
An insider close to the investigation told Interfax news agency on Monday that the nature of the crash suggested it was “a terrorist attack carefully prepared by a group of fanatics, rather than by a single criminal.”
“The type of the explosive material as well as the type of the explosive device both show that there was a group of criminals behind the attack,” the source said.
As rescue work continued on Saturday, another bomb went off near to the crash scene but the explosion was weak, it was reported.
In the meantime, some industry specialists have not yet been entirely convinced of the terrorism version. Yevgeny Kulikov, head of the Russian Independent Labor Union of Rail Workers was skeptical about the terrorist attack scenario in interviews broadcast on television on Monday and suggested that officials had jumped to conclusions far too quickly.
An experienced former train driver himself, Kulikov said a fault on the line or a train malfunction seemed far more realistic to him.
“The railroad officials are talking about terrorism in order to escape responsibility,” Kulikov said. “But if the train had run over a bomb, the front carriages would have been damaged. Instead, what happened was that the last carriages came off the rails. The loud sound heard by some witnesses could have just as easily been the sound of a broken rail caused by emergency braking.”
Kulikov accused Russian Railways of focusing exclusively on profit and failing to devote enough attention to repair works and maintenance issues.
The management of Russian Railways vehemently denied Kulikov’s allegations. “A technical malfunction is out of the question; this talk would only distract us from the real cause of the disaster, namely, an act of terrorism,” said Mikhail Akulov, vice president of Russian Railways, speaking on the Ekho Moskvy radio station on Monday.
Akulov said Russian Railways had adopted a series of additional security precautions and purchased new equipment, including a number of high sensitivity video surveillance cameras after the 2007 crash.

TITLE: Nevsky Express Crash Takes 26 Lives
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Relatives of the victims of Friday night’s fatal Nevsky Express train crash identified at least 17 St. Petersburg residents among 26 people who died in the crash, Interfax reported. 
By Monday, 89 people out of more than 100 injured in the train crash, which is thought to have been caused by a terrorist bomb, remained hospitalized. The fate of at least four passengers remained unknown Monday, Interfax reported. These people are not necessarily thought to have been injured in the crash, but simply have not reported their whereabouts.
 At least 41 of those injured remained in St. Petersburg’s Railway Hospital, and doctors said their condition was gradually improving. Among them were people in serious condition, the hospital’s doctors said Sunday.
“Most of our patients from the train crash have head injuries, fractures, bruises and scratches,” said Vladimir Zaporozhets, a spokesman for the hospital.
Natalya Tarasova, 36, who broke a rib in the wreck, said the passengers had received “the highest attention from the [hospital’s] doctors.”
Tarasova said she and her sister were reading in the third carriage from the train’s rear when they heard a bang and felt the windows shake. The carriage swung wildly from side to side, then there was a violent jerk and she was thrown to the floor, before her sister fell on top of her.
“People were thrown around the carriage like rags,” said Tarasova, who works at a jewelry business together with her sister and was returning home from an exhibition in Moscow.  “Suitcases were falling from the racks on top of people,” she said.
“It was scary; the lights went off, but there was no panic,” said Marina Tarasova, Natalya’s sister, who came to visit her at the hospital. She said the train conductors behaved very professionally, telling people what to do and taking them to safer carriages.
Tarasova said conductors also collected medicine and other items from passengers and took the supplies to the two more badly damaged rear cars, which were left more than a kilometer behind and were where most of the casualties occurred.
“The conductors even took the rug from our carriage to take to the location of the other two carriages, because they realized they would need to put the injured people on something,” she said.
Since the area where the crash happened is surrounded by forest, it took ambulances and emergency services several hours to arrive there. In the meantime, people helped each other as best they could.
By 2 a.m. Saturday, those who had not suffered serious injuries were put on board the Sapsan high-speed train and taken to St. Petersburg. The others were evacuated by emergency service helicopters.
Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russian Railways, who visited the hospital on Sunday, said many of the patients were suffering from serious psychological shock.
“We’ll do everything to help these people,” Yakunin said.
Yakunin also said the train’s personnel acted very professionally, adding that high-speed trains like the Nevsky Express have the most experienced and skilled drivers.
Among those killed in the crash was former St. Petersburg senator Sergei Tarasov, who recently became the head of Avtodor, the newly-created state roads company. In October, Tarasov, 50, got married for the second time, to Mariinsky Theater solo ballerina Anastasiya Kolegova. Tarasov will be buried in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, Interfax reported.
Boris Yevstratikov, head of Russian Reserve, also died in the crash and will also be buried in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
Independent Media, the parent company of The St. Petersburg Times, also suffered a loss in the tragedy. Natalya Karavayeva, 27, who worked for three years in the personnel department of the company in Moscow, died in the crash. Karavayeva was going to St. Petersburg for a weekend together with her boyfriend. Independent Media expressed its condolences to Karavayeva’s relatives and friends.
Russians mourned at religious services and soccer stadiums on Sunday. The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church urged the nation not give in to fear.
Television networks took entertainment programs off the air, and minutes of silence were observed before matches on the final Sunday of the Russian football league.
Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the country’s Orthodox Church, led a service for the victims at the Christ the Savior Cathedral near the Kremlin in Moscow.  
“Our people have been challenged,” Kirill said in a statement on the church’s web site. “A crime of which any one of us could have been a victim has been committed for effect — they want to frighten everybody who lives in Russia,” he said.
Relatives were identifying victims Sunday at a hospital morgue in Tver, the closest sizable city to the site of the crash near the border of the Tver and Novgorod provinces, about 400 kilometers northwest of Moscow.
Yakunin said Sunday that the company was strengthening its cooperation with the police, Federal Security Service and prosecuter’s office to prevent terrorist attacks on the railways.
“However, the fight against terrorism is mainly the responsibility of the state and society. No company can cope with the problem alone,” Yakunin said.
Yakunin said even the installation of video cameras along the railroads would not solve the problem, for “any technical devices can be sabotaged.”
“There are also ways of visual monitoring from space, but then we’d need to develop a special program for it. Terrorism is such an inhuman phenomenon that all means, including new technologies, should be used to fight it,” he said.
Yakunin said it would be helpful if residents informed the police about unknown people seen near important objects. The remark was apparently caused by the police mentioning the appearance of unknown people in the deserted area around the explosion several days beforehand.
Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg authorities will pay 300,000 rubles ($10,200) to the families of each fatality from the city, Interfax reported Monday.
Those who suffered serious injuries will receive 100,000 rubles (3,400), and those with minor injuries will be given 50,000 rubles ($1,700).
Nevsky Express, a popular high-speed train that was traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, derailed following an explosion on the rails on Friday night. As a result of the explosion, the two final carriages detached and overturned. Most of the fatalities were reported in those two carriages.
The train was carrying several hundred people, and was particularly busy on Friday night, a time when many St. Petersburg residents working in Moscow were coming back home for the weekend. The train takes 4.5 hours to travel from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
As a result of the crash, 60 other trains carrying 27,000 people in different directions were delayed for more than eight hours.  On Saturday, train traffic was fully restored.
Russia has been hit by a number of major terrorist attacks since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, most linked to the 1990s wars between government forces and separatist rebels in Chechnya.
Extreme nationalists were blamed for an explosion that caused a derailment along the same railway line in 2007, injuring 27 passengers. Authorities arrested two suspects in that blast and are searching for a third, a former military officer.

TITLE: Moscow Fans Hit by Mass Arrests on Way to Stadium
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Hundreds of football fans were arrested and many reportedly beaten by the OMON special-task police in St. Petersburg on Sunday. 
A large group of supporters of Spartak Football Club fans who came to St. Petersburg to see the Moscow football club play against the local team, Zenit Football Club, on the final day of the Russian Premier League season was on its way to Petrovsky stadium on the Petrograd Side when the OMON police started making large-scale arrests. The fans were detained just before the stadium, on the Tuchkov Bridge that connects Vasilyevsky Island to the Petrograd Side. 
One Moscow politician protested what he called “illegal mass detentions” in an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev, while the Russian Football Fans Association (VOB) said it would gather evidence and pass it to the Interior Ministry for investigation.
YouTube video footage shows helmet-wearing camouflaged officers dragging young men and women, many of whom appear to be teenagers, out of the crowd. An officer dragging a young man is shown to knee him in the stomach, while another officer passing by hits the same young man with his baton across the chest. A girl who was carrying a drum is shown lying on the ground with policemen dragging and kicking her.
From 400 to 600 people were detained on the spot, according to various estimates. The police said 400 fans were detained and charged with disorderly conduct and the violation of public events regulations, while 24 more, including seven Zenit fans, were detained inside the stadium during and after the game and charged with disorderly conduct. The police said pepper sprays, brass knuckles, sharpened metal bars and flares were confiscated, Interfax reported.
Most fans were released after the game had finished, while Ivan Katanayev, the leader of Spartak fan movement Fratria and the VOB vice president, was sentenced to two days in custody on Monday for organizing the march, Championat.ru reported.
The detentions were “illegal,” Andrei Bogdanov, a Moscow politician, former presidential candidate and a Spartak fan, said in an open letter to President Medvedev later Sunday.
According to Bogdanov, 600 fans who came to see the game were “met by St. Petersburg’s OMON police, put into reinforced trucks and taken away in an unknown direction.” He wrote that the policemen would not give any explanation about the detentions or say to which police precincts the detained fans had been taken.
“There have been frequent reports of arbitrariness conducted by the uniformed forces and their impunity,” he wrote. “I am appealing to you as the guarantor of Russian citizens’ rights and freedoms to look into what happened and, if there was any police arbitrariness, to punish those responsible.”
Fratria said in a statement on the fan movement’s web site Monday that the group was moving in an organized way, following orders from the police and trying not to react to provocations from both the police and local fans when the OMON trucks arrived and detentions started.
“We’ve had enough of our rights being violated by those who are supposed to protect them,” the statement said.
“We’ve had enough of the fact that from game to game, from one city to another we always face violations of freedom of movement; we’re sick of being kept in holding areas and spending time in cold buses rather than in the city, with no food or drink or toilet.
“We thought that the turbulent 1990s and police arbitrariness were in the past, but it seems that that’s far from the case, and if nobody can protect our rights and freedoms, then we’ll do it ourselves, with every means available to us.”
The statement was sent to President Medvedev and Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, as well as to the president of the Russian Football Union Vitaly Mutko and Spartak’s general director Valery Karpin.
VOB president Alexander Shprygin described the OMON police’s actions as “too tough and unjustified.”
“There’s nothing outrageous about fans walking to the stadium en masse,” he said by phone from Moscow on Monday. 
“We agree that holding marches on a day of mourning [because of the Nevsky Express train disaster] was not appropriate, and fans wearing masks could have provoked the police, but on the video footage it is seen to what degree the police’s actions were disproportionate [compared] to the fans’ actions. We’ll collect all the materials and will pass all the information to the Interior Ministry, so that they can examine it there.”
The incident was discussed at a Russian Premier League meeting in Moscow on Monday. 
“It’s likely that a roundtable will be held in St. Petersburg on Dec. 7 on the subject of the security of [Moscow] fans in St. Petersburg, because it’s clear that thousands of fans of Moscow football clubs come to St. Petersburg every year, and they will want to congregate somewhere and support their club. I propose the well-known pan-European practice of fan zones,” Shprygin said.
A Spartak spokesman declined to comment when called on Monday, saying there might be a statement on the club’s web site. No one answered the phone at Zenit.

TITLE: Prime Minister Dodges Question on Magnitsky at French Press Conference
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told reporters Friday that he did not know the details of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death in pretrial detention, just days after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered an investigation and prison officials admitted some responsibility.
Magnitsky was held for almost a year over tax-evasion charges stemming from his work for Hermitage Capital Management. Putin has repeatedly told reporters that he has never heard of Hermitage chief Bill Browder, whose company was once Russia’s largest investment fund.
Browder, a U.S.-born British citizen, is prohibited from entering Russia under a law that bans people deemed as threatening “the security of the state, public order or public health.”  During a news conference with French Prime Minister Francois Fillon in Rambouillet, a French journalist asked whether Putin was concerned that a lawyer died in jail, that human rights activists are killed and whether he and Fillon discussed human rights.
Putin started off by saying although human rights issues are important, prime ministers “are forced to address specific issues that have to do with industry and the economy.”

TITLE: Tver Man Shoots 2 Police in Patrol Car
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Just hours after Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said citizens have the right to fight off unruly and aggressive cops, a drunk Tver resident shot two policemen, killing one, and then killed himself, officials said.
The attack came after a spate of police violence against citizens, including the fatal beating of an Abkhaz man in Moscow last week, and an increasingly heated debate over the need to reform the Interior Ministry. Rallies were held Saturday in Moscow and Novorossiisk denouncing excesses by police.
The Investigative Committee said in a statement Friday that two police patrolmen spotted two drunk men on a Tver street at about midnight, seated them in their car and began driving them to a drunk tank.
One of the men, sitting in the back seat, pulled out a semiautomatic TT army pistol and shot both police in the head, killing warrant officer Andrei Krylov, 47, on the spot, and heavily wounding lieutenant Vladimir Mistrov, 34.
Mistrov remained hospitalized in a coma as of Sunday.
The killer, whose name was not released by authorities, fatally shot himself. The man was 48 years old and worked as an engineer at a local scientific research institute, Russian news agencies reported, citing local police. He was carrying a black bag when the policemen stopped him, but the officers did not search him or his belongings, RIA-Novosti said.
It was not immediately clear why the man attacked the officers.
The shooting came shortly after Nurgaliyev said citizens should fight off police officers who unlawfully attack them. Opposition leaders criticized the comments for blurring the lines of authority.
“If there is an attack, then there should be self-defense. When a policeman attacks, then he is a criminal in uniform who should be isolated and put in jail,” Nurgaliyev said, referring to the recent string of brutal, deadly attacks by policemen against civilians.
Nurgaliyev has been under mounting pressure after a series of unprovoked killings by police this year and Novorossiisk police major Alexei Dymovsky posted a series of videos online alleging that he was forced to arrest innocent people to meet targets for uncovering crimes.
On Wednesday, State Duma Deputy Andrei Makarov, a senior member of United Russia, called for the ministry to be disbanded, with half of the police rehired after screening and training. The call — which was criticized by United Russia and law enforcement officials Thursday — won the support of another top lawmaker Friday.
“There is no sense in reforming the Interior Ministry and, perhaps, a political decision should be made to follow the move proposed by Makarov,” Duma Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska told the Regions.ru news agency.
*?A policeman died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound Saturday in the Moscow region town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo after shooting his colleague in their car, an Investigative Committee official told RIA-Novosti.
According to a preliminary investigation, the officer shot his colleague in the head after an argument and then shot himself. The other officer remains hospitalized in critical condition.
Law enforcement sources told RIA-Novosti that they believed that the shooter, born in 1981, wounded his colleague, born in 1987, after a dispute and then attempted to kill himself.
Eduard Gurtskaya, a 19-year-old Abkhaz man who was beaten to death by three drunken Moscow policemen Nov. 23, will be buried in Tbilisi at the Georgian government’s expense, said Manana Manjgaladze, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s spokeswoman, Interfax reported Saturday.

TITLE: Dagestani Deputies Protest Candidates
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — United Russia deputies in Dagestan are in uproar after their party headquarters in Moscow presented the Kremlin with a list of five candidates for the republic’s presidency, which they say contains people unfit for the job.
In a rare example of open criticism of the center and dissent within United Russia, Dagestan’s regional assembly passed a motion saying the list was flawed and demanded that President Dmitry Medvedev discuss candidates with local deputies.
“United Russia has proposed five candidates for the position, not all of whom meet the requirements, such as the authority, professional reputation and experience in public service needed to fill this position,” the deputies said in an appeal to Medvedev, published on the assembly’s web site late Thursday.
The appeal argues that the Kremlin should discuss the issue with local deputies because of the region’s complex makeup. “We ask you to consult preliminarily with the people’s assembly before submitting … your candidates to avoid mistakes when solving this question in a republic as complicated as Dagestan,” the statement says.
Dagestan has 28 native languages, and its politics are traditionally dominated by carefully balancing ethnic groups’ interests. The impoverished Muslim republic has suffered from a surge in violence this year, which authorities blame on Islamist radicals.
The regional assembly passed the document almost unanimously after a debate in which United Russia deputies said the selection lacked transparency and was usurped by Moscow, the Kavkaz Uzel web site reported.
The 72-member assembly is dominated by United Russia, which commands a two-thirds majority.
The debate’s initiator, United Russia Deputy Surakat Asiyatilov, said that of three candidates forwarded by the local party to Moscow, only one made the five-member list that was officially presented to Medvedev on Nov. 19.
Asiyatilov did not name any candidates, but the original list contained current Dagestani President Mukhu Aliyev, Prime Minister Shamil Zainalov and parliamentary Speaker Magomed Suleimanov, the report said, citing deputies who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Aliyev’s term expires in February. He is the only candidate who also appears on the list forwarded to Medvedev. The others are Magomed Abdullayev, a local deputy prime minister; Magomed Magomedov, an aide to Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov; Magomedsalam Magomedov, a United Russia deputy in the Dagestani parliament; and Saigidgusein Magomedov, who heads the republic’s Federal Treasury.
Other United Russia deputies joined Asiyatilov’s criticism and said the list should include Makhachkala Mayor Said Amirov. Perziyat Bagandova, an ethnic Dargin, said it was “unethical” to offer a list in which four of the five candidates are Avars, the report said.
The rivalry between Avars and Dargins, the republic’s biggest ethnic groups, dominates Dagestani politics. Amirov, a Dargin, is seen as the main rival to Aliyev, who is an Avar.
But the outcry does not only highlight the volatility of the country’s most diverse region — it also shows the risks emanating from new procedures for nominating the regional leaders.
The Kremlin has appointed regional bosses since then-President Vladimir Putin abolished direct elections in 2004.
A reform introduced by Medvedev last spring stipulates that the strongest party in any region has the right to propose at least three candidates, from which the Kremlin chooses one for confirmation by regional lawmakers.
United Russia holds a majority in virtually all of the country’s 83 regions, and the new rule has been used several times already. But the party’s decision to forward five candidates and the local lawmakers’ protest are firsts.
The situation in Dagestan reflects the intensity of the political struggle there, said Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
While technically there is no impasse, because United Russia could just recall its list and give Medvedev a free hand to pick any candidate, the choice would definitely not be easy, Petrov said. “If he chooses the wrong candidate, there is a real danger of instability.”
A Kremlin spokeswoman confirmed on Friday that the appeal was received but would not elaborate on whether it would have any consequences.

TITLE: Court Rules Internet Magazine 'Extremist'
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Samizdat online magazine, which has published thousands of aspiring authors, ended up on the Justice Ministry’s list of extremist publications because of a local activist’s feud with his former employer.
A city court in the Vologda region town of Cherepovets ruled in April that the magazine, available at Zhurnal.lib.ru, was extremist because it contained articles criticizing the town’s main employer, Severstal. The site was automatically included on a list of banned literature, alongside works by Nazis, skinheads and radical Islamists.
Vitaly Dunayev, a retired Severstal employee and critic of its management, was blacklisted after attacking Severstal owner Alexei Mordashov in his articles for Samizdat and on his personal site, hosted by Yandex.
Dunayev said banning the entire library, rather than just his articles, was likely done my mistake. “Our bureaucrats are very foolish, this is common knowledge,” he told The Moscow Times by phone from Cherepovets.
“The Cherepovets court banned [poets Alexander] Pushkin, [Mikhail] Lermontov and [Marina] Tsvetayeva together with me. … It’s nice to be in such company,” he said.
The records for his case were not posted on the court’s web site, but one of his articles is still available on Samizdat’s site. It contains a letter from local prosecutors saying Dunayev’s writing was “propaganda” against officials and Severstal management.
Samizdat means self-published and refers to Soviet-era dissident literature published underground.
Dunayev’s personal site, Barbos111.narod.ru, was closed by the court. He then moved to another web site, where he mocked the court’s decision to label an entire Internet library as extremist.
Officials at the Cherepovets court declined immediate comment when contacted by The Moscow Times on Thursday, while Justice Ministry representatives were unavailable.
Since the magazine is on the extremist list, distribution of its articles is a misdemeanor offense, punishable by a fine of up to 3,000 rubles ($100) and up to 15 days in jail for an individual. A legal entity could be fined up to 100,000 rubles and be closed for up to 90 days.
The Justice Ministry can only remove an item from the list if requested by the court that found it extremist, or if a higher court overturns the ruling.
Maxim Moshkov, who owns the magazine, told The Moscow Times that his web site’s appearance on the extremist list didn’t bother him. He also owns the Moshkov Library, the country’s oldest and best-known collection of freely available literature.
“It’s enough for me that the court decision refers to ‘materials,’ but not the site itself,” he said.
Yandex was ordered to close Dunayev’s personal site, but Moshkov hasn’t been ordered to pull Samizdat or the article. “I’ll remove an article if I’m told to, but I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said.

TITLE: Iran Plans to Build 10 Enrichment Factories
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Iran announced plans Sunday to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants in a major expansion of its nuclear program, a clear show of defiance after the UN nuclear watchdog rebuked Tehran over such secret work,.
The decision by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government will further aggravate tensions between the Islamic Republic and major powers seeking a diplomatic solution to a long-running dispute over Iranian nuclear activities.
The new enrichment facilities would be the same size as Iran’s main enrichment complex at Natanz and work would begin within two months, state broadcaster IRIB said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency angered Iran on Friday when it censured the Islamic Republic for secretly building a second uranium enrichment plant, in addition to the one in Natanz.
“This is the reaction to the resolution which was bound to happen,” a senior diplomat close to the IAEA said, adding that it was unclear how much of it was a bluff or a real plan.
Russia on Friday called on Iran to treat the IAEA’s censure seriously.
“We count on Tehran to react with full seriousness to the signal contained in the resolution … and to ensure full cooperation with the agency,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Ahmadinejad said Iran should aim to produce 250 metric tons to 300 metric tons of nuclear fuel a year and that new, faster centrifuges should be used to reach that target.
He did not give a time frame.
“We have a friendly approach towards the world, but at the same time we won’t let anyone harm even one iota of the Iranian nation’s rights,” he said.
“We have to reach to a level to produce 250 metric tons to 300 metric tons of nuclear fuel per year, and in order to reach this aim we would use new centrifuges with a higher speed,” the president said.
Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency, “Ten new enrichment plants will be built.”
IRIB said the location of five of the plants had already been decided and that work on these should start within two months. At the same time, the Atomic Energy Organization should find suitable locations for the other five.
It did not say when the plants would be completed.
The IAEA approved a Russian fuel bank holding $300 million euros ($449 million) worth of low-enriched uranium Friday.
Ahmadinejad also said the government last week studied the issue of producing nuclear fuel enriched to 20 percent, IRIB reported, compared with the level of 3.5 percent that it has now.
The proposal won by a 25 to 8 vote at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-member board of governors Friday in Vienna.
The agency also said it wanted Russia to improve the way that it deals with radioactive waste.                             

(Reuters, Bloomberg)

TITLE: Shmatko, Iran Discuss Oil Products
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko arrived Sunday in Tehran for two days of talks, including on possible exports of refined oil products to Iran and greater participation for Russian refiners there.
The prospect of Russian oil product supplies to Iran came as the International Atomic Energy Agency rebuked the country Friday for secretly building a uranium-enrichment plant — a project that fueled fears that it was seeking a nuclear bomb.
Russia and China, traditional allies of Iran, gave rare support to the international censure.
Shmatko met on Sunday with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and was scheduled to meet Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. Shmatko and Salehi will visit the delayed Bushehr nuclear power station. He will also meet Iranian Oil Minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi, an Energy Ministry spokesman said.
“We’re going to be discussing downstream projects as well as upstream projects. There’s a project to develop Iran’s petrochemicals industry, and Sibur is very interested,” Shmatko told reporters Friday in Moscow.
Sibur, controlled by Gazprombank, is Russia’s largest petrochemicals company.
“Plans for deliveries of oil products by Russian oil companies will also be discussed,” Shmatko said.
There is a widespread expectation that European countries could approve sanctions, including a halt on fuel exports to Iran. The country imports about 40 percent of its oil products at a cost of between $5 billion and $7 billion annually, depending on prices.
Russia currently does not export oil products to Iran, said Mehdi Ghazanfari, Iran’s commerce minister, who in June listed only iron, steel, wood, electrical equipment, paper, fertilizers and vehicles as imports from Russia.
Spokespeople for Rosneft, LUKoil and TNK-BP said they were unaware of any plans by their companies to begin oil product exports to Iran or whether company executives would accompany Shmatko on the trip.
“Everything depends on the price,” said LUKoil spokesman Dmitry Dolgov, when asked about prospects for such export deals.
Rosneft spokesman Nikolai Manvelov said: “If it’s interesting, we will go for it.”
A call to the Iranian Embassy went unanswered Friday afternoon.
Shmatko said he would also discuss plans by Gazprom and its oil arm, Gazprom Neft, to develop oil and gas fields in Iran, including its Caspian Sea shelf.
Construction of the Bushehr nuclear plant, which Russia has been building, is complete, but work needed to start the facility has been slowed because of IAEA requirements, Shmatko said.
Earlier this month, he said delays to the facility were not political, countering widespread feelings — particularly in Tehran — that the project is being delayed for leverage in other spheres.

TITLE: Ambassador Expects S-300s Delivered Within 2 Months
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Iran expects Russia to deliver powerful S-300 air-defense missile systems within two months, despite fierce objections from the United States and Israel, Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow said Friday, Reuters reported.
Moscow missed its initial deadline to deliver the S-300s, which could defend Iranian nuclear facilities against an Israeli strike, but has reassured Tehran that they will arrive soon, Ambassador Mahmoud Reza Sajadi said.
“There were statements by certain individuals that these weapons systems would not be delivered to Iran. But when we asked the responsible officials, they denied these statements,” Sajadi told a news conference in Moscow.
“From the tone of the discussion, we feel that within one or two months, this question will be resolved,” he said, adding that Russian officials had blamed technical problems for the delay.
Russia is under intense Western pressure to distance itself from Iran in the long-running dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but Moscow has refused to block the delivery of the S-300 system.
Moscow has also refused to bow to Western pressure to scrap its construction of Iran’s first nuclear power plant at the city of Bushehr. Iran expects the plant to come online by the start of the Iranian New Year on March 21, Sajadi said.
The truck-mounted S-300PMU1, known in the West as the SA-20, can shoot down cruise missiles and aircraft. It can fire at targets up to 150 kilometers away.
Analysts say it could seriously disrupt an Israeli air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
A senior Iranian military official said last week that Iran could take legal action if Russia refused to fulfill its commitment to deliver the systems.

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Political Weatherman</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — President Dmitry Medvedev has named Alexander Bedritsky his adviser in charge of climate issues, presidential press service said Friday.
Bedritsky, 62, retired as head of the Federal Meteorological Service, which he led for 16 years, earlier this month. He will act as the presidential sherpa at international negotiations on the climate issues, said Sergei Naryshkin, head of the presidential administration.
Since 2003, he has been chairman of the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization.

<strong>Power Firms</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — The Energy Ministry is preparing legal changes that would introduce punishments — including criminal responsibility — for energy companies that endanger people’s lives by not doing required maintenance, Minister Sergei Shmatko said Friday.
The comments follow a shakeup at state hydropower giant RusHydro earlier this month. In August, 75 people were killed in an accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam, and the government has said it believes poor management was to blame.

<strong>Navy Downsizing</strong>
MOSCOW (AP) — The Navy faces further decline after 2015, when most Soviet-built ships will have to be mothballed, a retired admiral was quoted as saying Friday.
The warning follows comments by Russian officials that they were planning to buy a French Mistral-class warship able to carry at least a dozen helicopters or to land forces.
Russia currently has no big ship with the power to anchor off coast and deploy troops onto land. With the likely decommissioning of other aging warships, distant deployments would be impossible, Retired Adm. Vyacheslav Popov said in remarks carried by RIA-Novosti.
“If things remain as they are, we will have to mothball most ocean warships by 2015,” Popov said, RIA-Novosti reported. “That will sharply reduce the Navy’s capability,” which he said was now five to six times less than Britain’s or France’s, and 20 to 30 times smaller than the U.S. Navy’s.

<strong>H1N1 Spread</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Health officials said Friday that the spread of the H1N1 virus — better known as swine flu — has reached “epidemic” proportions in 22 cities and 54 regions of the country.
More than 11,600 cases of swine flu have been confirmed since the start of the outbreak and more than 70,000 have been vaccinated, according to data posted on Health and Social Development Ministry web site.

<strong>Holocaust Day</strong>
MOSCOW (SPT) — European Jews have asked President Dmitry Medvedev whether his country would observe International Holocaust Day starting from next year, Reuters reported.
The day marking the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland on Jan. 27, 1945, is widely honored.
“We’ve submitted our proposal to Dmitry Anatolyevich [Medvedev] and await his decision,” the president of the influential European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, told reporters Thursday after he met Medvedev. Kantor said in Russia the day would be renamed “Day of the Soviet Army and Liberation of Auschwitz” to honor the role of the Soviets in freeing the camp.

<strong>Symbols Banned</strong>
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish President Lech Kaczynski has approved legislation that allows for people to be fined or even imprisoned for possessing or buying communist symbols, two decades after communist rule ended.
The new law says people who possess, purchase or distribute items or recordings containing communist symbols could be fined or be imprisoned for up two years. The new law has drawn criticism from left-wing lawmakers and other observers, who say it is ill-defined and will be hard to implement.

<strong>For the Record</strong>
The United States and Russia are unlikely to finish a pact to cut Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons by a Dec. 5 deadline, but they still aim to close the deal by year-end, Russian and U.S. sources said Friday, Reuters reported. 
(SPT)

*?Ingush officials said Friday that Abdul-Kerim Tsechoyev, police chief of Karabulak, was killed and his driver injured by a car bomb. 
(SPT)

TITLE: Long-Simmering Debate Over Police Reform Heats Up
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel and Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The debate over Interior Ministry reform began gaining momentum Thursday, after a senior United Russia lawmaker proposed disbanding the police and another death at the hands of law enforcement was reported.
The unprecedented proposal from State Duma Deputy Andrei Makarov was quickly dismissed by others in his party, raising speculation that it was a Kremlin-backed move to challenge the country’s powerful security services.
A spate of violence, including at least two fatal beatings this month, has left the Interior Ministry struggling to repair the image of the country’s already notorious keepers of the peace.
The latest blow was the revelation Thursday that a St. Petersburg citizen died in hospital after suffering heavy stomach injuries. 
The 43-year-old died Nov. 12, a week after being rushed to the hospital because police beat him severely after responding to a drunken brawl in an apartment, local media reported.
Last Tuesday, three drunken Moscow police officers were detained after they beat an Abkhaz man to death, posing an early challenge to the city’s new police chief. His predecessor was sacked after a police major killed three and wounded six during a supermarket shooting rampage in April.
And complaints with the ministry don’t stop on the street. Human rights leaders widely criticized last week’s death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed for almost a year in Moscow prisons awaiting trial on tax-evasion charges related to a dispute with the Interior Ministry.
But the debate only reached political prime time when Makarov, a deputy head of the Budget and Taxes Committee, told reporters Wednesday that the public felt the Russian police were waging a war against its own citizens.
“You can neither modernize nor reform the Interior Ministry. You can only abolish it,” Makarov said.
As immediate steps, he proposed halving the country’s sprawling police force of 921,000. “The whole police force needs to be decommissioned and cleansed with help from civil society and human rights groups,” he said.
He also proposed separating investigative bodies from the ministry and making it illegal to detain suspects before a court ruled that there was reasonable cause.
Party officials were quick to dismiss the proposals as simply being Makarov’s personal position.
“[Makarov] just stated his personal opinion as citizen and as a lawyer but not as a member of United Russia’s faction,” said Andrei Pisarev, the political head of the party’s executive committee.
Police officials, too, were quick to criticize the comments. Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev and Deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky challenged Makarov’s proposal on the grounds that the country had no other force to maintain law and order if the ministry were disbanded.
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev took a different approach in his rebuttal, saying citizens needed to fight back to prevent police violence.
“Can a citizen fight back when a policeman attacks him? If there’s an attack, there should be a necessary self-defense,” Nurgaliyev told reporters, Interfax reported. “We’re all equal, and citizens are doubly equal.”
Attempted murder of a policeman is punishable under the Criminal Code by up to life in prison or death, although Russia has a moratorium on capital punishment.
Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst with the Russian Academy of Sciences, said he believed the clash within United Russia reflected the widening differences between President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
“Makarov is an important ideologist within United Russia, and I’m sure his statement was not made by chance, but organized in circles close to Medvedev,” Piontkovsky told The Moscow Times.
Reforming the country’s police, however daunting, is a task that could raise Medvedev’s popularity, he said. “Everybody hates the police today. If he can solve that problem, he can get 90 percent support and also reform the security services.”
Medvedev’s approval rating has been stable at well above 50 percent in recent months, but he consistently trails Vladimir Putin’s popularity. The prime minister had 65 percent approval in a survey released this month by state pollster FOM.
Piontkovsky cited Georgia as an example of successful police reform in a former Soviet country. After coming to power in 2003, President Mikheil Saakashvili dismissed much of the 70,000-member force, although many were later trained and rehired.
Georgia has since risen dramatically in international corruption ratings, reaching 66th place earlier this month on Transparency International’s index. Russia rose one spot to 146th.
But Kornely Kakachia, a Georgian political scientist who has written extensively on police reform, said the countries could not be easily compared.
“In Georgia, there was demand from below, including NGOs and civil society, even before the revolution, making the job easy for the government. With Russia, I don’t think that ‘the top-down’ system may work,” he said in e-mailed comments.
Analysts agreed that the Interior Ministry could not be reformed separately from other major state bodies, like prosecutors and the courts, which they said made the task impossible.
“Even establishing public control over the police, as demanded by liberals, would be useless now, because general public, not to mention the state, aren’t ready for it,” said Andrei Soldatov, an analyst with the Agentura think tank, which studies law enforcement and security agencies.
Soldatov and Dmitry Badovsky, a political analyst at Moscow State University and a member of the Public Chamber, agreed that reforming the structure of the police, raising salaries and even changing the much-criticized evaluation system — which pushes officers to manipulate their statistics for crimes uncovered — would not stop the brutality and corruption.
“These would be cosmetic changes. The underlying principles will remain the same,” Badovsky said.
Another major barrier to meaningful reform of the Interior Ministry is that the state sees it as its main protector, Soldatov said.
“The main threat, as perceived by the Kremlin, comes not from outside the country but from within, and this makes police a critically important force,” he said.
In 2006, Ivan Safranchuk, then an analyst with the Center for Defense Information, a U.S. think tank, calculated that since 1992 the share of state spending to combat internal enemies — the combined budgets of the Interior and Justice ministries and prosecutors — had risen more than threefold.
And the trend shows no signs of stopping. Mayor Yury Luzhkov said Thursday that the city’s police budget would increase by 8 billion rubles, or by almost 40 percent, to 29 billion rubles ($1 billion) next year, Interfax reported.
But Soldatov and Badovsky agreed that public resentment would only worsen because the force will deteriorate and because of growing information available online about police abuse.
“They often say the country lives off infrastructure built in the Soviet era. The same holds with the police: Whatever good and professional was in the Soviet police force is being sidelined by the new generation of cops who care little about the law,” Badovsky said.
The crackdown on political dissent, which the Kremlin portrays as a fight against extremism, has further contributed to the violent degeneration of police, Soldatov said.
“They don’t get punished for violence against the opposition at public events, and this gives the cops a sense of impunity,” he said.

TITLE: Space Station Too Crowded for New Tourists
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STAR CITY — There is no space for tourists wishing to fly to the International Space Station, a top space official said Thursday. 
Since the space station’s crew doubled to six people earlier this year, there is no longer room for tourists who pay tens of millions of dollars for a trip on a spacecraft from Earth, said Sergei Krikalyov, the chief of the Cosmonaut Training Center. 
The Soyuz spacecraft will provide the only link to the station after the planned retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet next year. 
Each Soyuz craft can accommodate three people. With the doubling of the station’s permanent crew, the station will now make four, rather than two, launches each year to allow for crew rotation. 
A permanent crew of six means that the space program has to have two Soyuz ships permanently docked at the station to be used in case of emergency. 
Canadian Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte returned to Earth last month after a stint as the seventh paying space tourist aboard the station. 
Laliberte, the first professional artist to fly to space, paid $35 million for a 10-day trip to the station. “When there was a spare place, the space tourist could fly together with the main crew and return back with them,” Krikalyov told reporters at the training center in Star City outside Moscow. 
“Now that we have switched to a six-person crew, there is no spare room.” 
Krikalyov added without elaboration that “the situation will remain the same for the nearest flights.”
Krikalyov spoke during exams for a crew set to blast off for the station in late December. The crew includes Oleg Kotov, Soichi Noguchi of Japan and NASA astronaut Timothy J. Creamer. 
The mammoth station consists of 10 modules built by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and the 18-nation European Space Agency. Doubling of its permanent crew will allow other nations to send their astronauts to the station, which had mostly been manned in the past by Russian and U.S. crew members.

TITLE: Renault Agrees to Step Up Its Support for AvtoVAZ
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — French carmaker Renault agreed to increase its support of AvtoVAZ on Friday, in return for a Russian government promise to inject an additional $1.7 billion into the struggling automaker.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin oversaw the deal on his two-day trip to Paris, where he also wrapped up a host of other deals, including signing up French participation in the South Stream pipeline (see story, page 7).
Renault, which owns 25 percent of AvtoVAZ, will invest 300 million euros ($450 million) in the form of a technology transfer to begin production on the Renault Logan platform, according to the statement released by AvtoVAZ and its three main stakeholders.
Renault will help AvtoVAZ develop a budget model to replace the classic Zhiguli and start production of power generating units, the statement said. “Moreover, AvtoVAZ, with the help of Renault — in this case I am referring to its Japanese unit Nissan — will launch car production in the Russian Far East,” Putin said.
Nissan, part-owned by Renault, will provide 60 million euros of the total 300 million euro transfer.
While details of the proposed AvtoVAZ-Nissan plant in the Far East were not made clear, the agreement showed no cash injection into AvtoVAZ on the part of the French automaker, which, along with Nissan, will “transfer technology, equipment, know-how and expert knowledge.”
The government, meanwhile, will inject an additional 50 billion rubles ($1.7 billion) into AvtoVAZ to aid debt repayment and provide operational funding. The money comes on top of another 25 billion rubles provided by the government in June.
AvtoVAZ, operating at a loss for months partly because of a 50 percent drop in demand on the domestic market, will receive the first 12 billion rubles of government funds in January and February — the same time that Renault’s contribution will kick in, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said.
Troika Dialog, which owns 25 percent in AvtoVAZ, will gradually decrease its stake, while state holding Russian Technologies, which owns another 25 percent, and Renault will gradually increase their stakes, Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov said.
“Troika Dialog’s stake will probably be diluted. Not just Troika, but other minority shareholders,” Chemezov said. Russian Technologies will increase its stake according to the amount of government funds provided, he said. Specific figures on share increases will only be available after March 1, he added.
As part of the agreement, AvtoVAZ’s market share must not drop below 25 percent, with 70 percent of that figure made up of Lada sales. By 2015, AvtoVAZ must produce 900,000 cars per year. AvtoVAZ currently has a market share of more than 25 percent, and the carmaker sold just less than 300,000 cars in the first ten months of 2009.
In addition, a total of 14,600 AvtoVAZ employees will be transferred to two recently created subsidiaries, and their salaries will be paid by the government of the Samara region, where Tolyatti-based AvtoVAZ is located.
Putin and French Prime Minister Francois Fillon oversaw the signing of a raft of agreements later Friday, including Electricite de France taking a 10 percent stake in the South Stream pipeline, and France-based Total transferring its 10 percent interest in the Kharyaga oil field to Zarubezhneft.
“When we wrapped everything up today, I have to say, that I am a bit surprised, pleasantly surprised, since I have the impression that we are seeing a certain breakthrough,” Putin said after a closed-door discussion with French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
Putin met with Fillon after catching up with former French President Jacques Chirac over breakfast. 
“Many of the things that we started on together are continuing very actively today,” Putin told Chirac as the two were photographed at a table set for three in Hotel Bristol. “We are cooperating in the aviation sector, and our French partners have a 30 percent stake in one notable project, the Superjet-100,” Putin said.
Putin was vague about new agreements on overflight rights, however.
“When we arrived here, my French colleague said we would not leave without resolving the issue of Trans-Siberian overflight,” Putin said at a joint news conference Friday. “We reached an agreement through compromise. Our partners have cooperated with our existing demands, which are of high interest to Russian companies on this market,” Putin said, without offering further details on the compromise.
The overflight fees that foreign carriers are required to pay to Aeroflot in order to use Russian airspace have been a long-standing sore point.

TITLE: Gazprom Seeks $3 Billion Steel Pipe Deal With Japan
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Gazprom is seeking to reach a $3 billion agreement with Japan to supply almost one-fifth of the steel pipes for a gas link in the Far East, partially replacing domestic producers, a person familiar with the plans said.
Gazprom may decide by the end of this year on borrowing as much as $3 billion from Japan Bank for International Cooperation for pipe imports, the person said, declining to be identified because the talks are private. Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said in September that Russia was in talks with Japan on a loan of $2 billion to $3 billion for the project.
Domestic steelmakers may have trouble meeting delivery deadlines because of the risk of delays in rail shipments to the Far East, said the person. Gazprom is comparing time frames with those proposed by the Japanese.
Sergei Kupriyanov, a Gazprom spokesman, declined to comment on pipe supplies, delays or financing. A Tokyo-based spokeswoman for JBIC, who asked not to be identified in line with bank policy, declined to comment.
With Russia hosting the 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Vladivostok, Gazprom aims to complete the first phase of the pipeline in the third quarter of 2011 under a deadline set by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Construction began in July.
Gazprom estimates the project will cost at least 210 billion rubles ($7.1 billion). Connecting Sakhalin Island, north of Japan, with Vladivostok on the mainland, the 1,350-kilometer link will transport as much as 7 billion cubic meters of gas a year to domestic consumers on the Pacific coast. It will use 1.1 million metric tons of pipe, the person said.
The pipeline will probably be expanded, and a plant may be built in Vladivostok to produce liquefied or compressed natural gas for export to Japan and other Asian nations, Deputy CEO Alexander Ananenkov said in July.
Gazprom is holding talks with JBIC on financing as much as 200,000 tons of pipe purchases from Marubeni-Itochu Steel Inc., the person said.
Several Japanese suppliers are in talks with Gazprom, and the volume is yet to be set, said a Japanese official, who declined to be identified.
Marubeni-Itochu Steel plans to start negotiations with Gazprom on supplies, said a Tokyo-based official for the venture, who asked not to be identified, citing company policy. He declined to confirm or deny whether the companies had held previous talks or provide the start date for negotiations.
Marubeni-Itochu Steel has an option to buy pipes from Japanese steelmakers or to procure them from overseas producers, the spokesman said by telephone Friday. He declined to name any of the potential suppliers.
Gazprom has been in discussions with the Marubeni and Itochu steel venture on pipe supplies “for a long time, already a year,” while talks on the loan intensified after May, one person said. Putin traveled to Tokyo that month, leading a delegation that included Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.
Russian pipemakers said they hadn’t missed deadlines. “There are no delays,” Alexander Deineko, head of the Pipe Industry Development Fund, said Nov. 9. “Mills are producing large-diameter pipes on schedule.”

TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: <strong>Power Machines Plant</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Power Machines, Russia’s energy equipment producer controlled by billionaire Alexei Mordashov, received government approval to begin the construction of a plant to produce energy equipment in the Leningrad region.
During the first phase, the company plans to invest 6 billion rubles ($202 million) in a facility, which will produce low-speed and high-speed turbines, the company said.
Power Machines, based in St. Petersburg and part-owned by Siemens AG, rose as much as 7.8 percent to 5.815 rubles after RusHydro signed a contract Monday to buy turbines from Power Machines for its damaged hydropower plant in Siberia.

<strong>RusHydro to Sell Shares</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — RusHydro plans to sell 19 billion shares at 1.15 rubles apiece to raise funds to help repair the Sayano-Shuchenskaya hydropower plant, the Russia utility said in a statement Monday. 
The proceeds may amount to 21.9 billion rubles ($746 million), according to Bloomberg calculations.

<strong>MegaFon Profit Declines</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — MegaFon’s profit fell to 11.4 billion rubles ($389 million) in the third quarter, a decrease of 7.9 percent from the year-earlier period, the Russian mobile phone operator said Monday.
Sales rose 1.2 percent to 47.4 billion rubles, the company said in an e-mailed statement.

<strong>X5 Gets Sberbank Loan</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — X5 Retail Group, Russia’s biggest food retailer, said it received a $1.1 billion credit line from state lender Sberbank to refinance existing debt.
The five-year credit line is in rubles and will be used to refinance a syndicated loan due in December 2010, X5 said in a statement Monday.

<strong>Deripaska Sells Stake</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska sold his 31 percent stake in Mongolian coal mining company Gobi Coal & Energy for $25 million, Kommersant reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the transaction.
EN+ Group, the energy unit of Deripaska’s Basic Element holding company, sold the shares to investors including Origo Resource Partners, China Commodities Absolute Return, and Origo Sino-India and Gobi’s existing shareholders, the newspaper said.

<strong>Oil Supplies Kept Steady</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia is planning to keep daily shipments of Urals and Siberian Light crude oil from five Baltic and Black Sea ports steady next month.
Russia will ship about 2.69 million barrels a day of oil from the Baltic ports of Primorsk and Gdansk, and from Novorossiisk, Yuzhny and Tuapse on the Black Sea, according to the official loading schedule compiled by Transneft.

<strong>Flaring Up for Exchange</strong>
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — TNK-BP and BNP Paribas agreed to trade carbon reduction certificates derived from cuts in flaring, or burning off, of associated gas in Russia, TNK-BP said Friday.
The partners will cooperate within the Kyoto Protocol and source the Emission Reduction Units by utilizing associated gas that is pumped together with crude oil at TNK-BP’s Samotlor field, its largest in Siberia, the producer said.

TITLE: EU Names German As Energy Commissioner
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — G?nther Oettinger was named European Union energy commissioner on Friday, a post responsible for guarding the bloc’s oil and gas supply security and promoting the use of cleaner technologies to protect the climate.
The decision was announced by the European Commission in Brussels. The appointment of Oettinger, who governs the German state of Baden-W?rttemberg, still needs approval from the European Parliament.
The new commissioner, nominated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, will need to work closely with oil and gas producers while cutting the region’s reliance on dominant suppliers. The EU increased calls for energy diversification this year after Russian gas shipments were disrupted in January. The bloc gets a quarter of its gas from Russia, most of which flows via Ukraine.
“Energy security and good relations with suppliers will certainly be an important task for the new commissioner,” said Christian Schulke, a researcher at the French Institute for International Relations. “The liberalization of the market, boosting the share of renewables in the EU energy mix and decarbonizing the power sector will also all require a lot of effort.”  
The EU has set a target to get 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, more than double the current share. It also aims to increase energy efficiency and expand the use of climate-friendly technologies to reduce emissions blamed for global warming.
The 27-nation bloc is also seeking additional supply routes to reduce dependence on Gazprom and avoid a repeat of cutoffs that have curbed deliveries twice since 2006.
Relations between Gazprom and Ukraine remain tense as the country seeks International Monetary Fund assistance to pay for gas and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warns of a further supply halt in the event of nonpayment.
Earlier this year, the EU agreed to help fund the 7.9 billion euro ($11.7 billion) Nabucco gas pipeline, which is due to send Caspian-region gas via Turkey to Austria starting in 2014. Nabucco, which would bypass Ukraine, is competing with the Gazprom-led Nord Stream pipeline project that would send Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany.  
Oettinger will need to ease tensions between energy-importing countries seeking to strengthen security of supply and producing nations that are concerned that demand will fall. Current Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs began regular talks with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in 2005.
Picking a politician from Germany, the EU’s biggest country with relatively strong gas and oil ties to Russia, as energy chief could be seen as either risky or clever, said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London. One potential advantage is that Oettinger could help make the case for a more coherent EU energy policy, Grant said.  
Oettinger may face reluctance from national governments to cooperate at a regional level. Many view energy as a strategic area with limited scope for EU-wide policy. Even with new legislation to open power and gas markets to cross-border competition and cap air pollution from energy companies, he may struggle to convince member states to cede more authority to the EU and complete energy-market integration, Schulke said.

TITLE: Pipeline Projects Get Support
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Electricite de France, Europe’s largest utility, and GDF Suez agreed on Friday to join Russian gas pipeline projects as European nations seek to boost security of supply following disruptions in the past three years.
EDF will take a 10 percent stake in Gazprom’s South Stream pipe, which will run under the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said. “The realization of South Stream will allow reliability and stability of deliveries to Europe for many decades,” he said.
GDF Suez, which operates Europe’s largest gas network, said it will join the Baltic Nord Stream pipeline project and is in talks to acquire a 9 percent stake.
“What we’re observing today is a real breakthrough in our economic cooperation,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said at a press briefing with French counterpart Francois Fillon. “As far as energy is concerned, a new quality of cooperation has been reached between Russian and French partners.”
France’s Total transferred a 10 percent interest in Russia’s Kharyaga oil deposit to state-owned Zarubezhneft, Total said Friday in a statement. Total is the operator of the field in northern Russia, which is being developed under a production-sharing agreement.
Separately, Gazprom said it was ready to acquire GDF Suez’s 5.26 percent stake in Verbundnetz Gas, the largest gas distributor in eastern Germany. GDF Suez has held the interest in VNG through a wholly owned subsidiary, according to Friday’s statement. The French gas utility said it remains in “constructive dialogue” with Gazprom over joining Nord Stream, which would connect Russia and Germany.
EU countries have sought to strengthen security of energy supply after Gazprom’s gas shipments through Ukraine were halted in January, the second cutoff since 2006. The bloc gets a quarter of its gas from Russia, most of which flows via Ukraine.
Gazprom signed a memorandum of understanding with EDF, under which the utility will coordinate details of its entry into the South Stream project with Italy’s Eni, which holds a 50 percent stake. Gazprom owns the other 50 percent. EDF will hold an interest in the offshore section of the pipeline, Miller said. The agreement signed Friday covers “work on French territory and in other countries” and is “practically an asset swap,” Putin said.
The 900-kilometer pipeline, due to open at the end of 2015, is designed to link Russia to the Balkans, where it will split into northern and southern routes.
“EDF’s entering the South Stream will foresee the conclusion of new long-term gas sales contracts,” EDF and Gazprom said in a joint statement. “Gazprom and EDF will also expand cooperation in the electricity sector in France and elsewhere.”
EDF will get as much as 6 billion cubic meters of gas a year under its agreement to join South Stream, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told reporters in Paris.

TITLE: BRIC Will Gain Collective Veto Over IMF $600 Bln Credit Line
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: WASHINGTON — China, India, Russia and Brazil will have a collective veto over the International Monetary Fund’s use of a $600 billion credit line under an agreement reached this week, Brazil’s representative at the institution said Friday.
The so-called BRIC nations will together have more than 15 percent of votes, the new threshold to block activation of the new credit line, said Paulo Nogueira Batista, Brazil’s executive director at the IMF.
This would put the four-nation group on par with the U.S., Japan and European countries, strengthening their influence two months after Group of 20 leaders agreed to give “underrepresented” emerging economies more clout at the IMF.
Greater formal power for BRIC countries “increases the extent to which all key players see them as crucial to consult, including the senior management of the IMF and senior policy-makers in other major economies,” Ngaire Woods, a professor of international political economy at Oxford University, said Friday. “This is just the beginning of a major reshifting of power at the IMF.”
To obtain the 15 percent of votes, the four countries will need to increase their contribution to the credit line, known as the New Arrangements to Borrow, by at least $10 billion, from the $80 billion that they have already committed.
Brazil raised its pledge to $14 billion from $10 billion Nov. 25 and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Friday that Russia was in talks with the other BRIC nations on boosting funding for the IMF, without specifying what Russia would do.
The agreement on the NAB was struck after a meeting between its current 26 members and 13 potential new participants, the IMF said Nov. 24. It extends an older credit line reserved for severe crises to “as much as $600 billion” as contributing countries agreed to fold their commitments made over the past months into one pool.
The accord goes beyond a pledge by G20 leaders to contribute up to $500 billion to a credit arrangement that’s currently worth $54 billion. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression prompted more economies to seek aid from the fund, created after World War II to help ensure the stability of the global monetary system.
The agreement “formalizes something that was already beginning to occur in the last year,” Nogueira Batista said. “BRICs were increasingly becoming an effective voice in the fund and in the G20, a voice that’s being taken into account.”
The NAB agreement needs to be approved by the IMF board of executive directors and then by participating countries, and so it won’t come into effect before next year, Andrew Tweedie, who heads the IMF Finance Department, said in a Nov. 20 interview.

TITLE: Ministry Sets Terms for Settling Soviet Debt
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Finance Ministry set final terms for settling the last of the Soviet Union’s trade debt obligations Friday, clearing the way for the country to sell new bonds to foreign investors for the first time since its 1998 default.
The remaining obligations for foreign goods and services will be exchanged for existing Russian eurobonds maturing in 2010 and 2030, the ministry said, adding that creditors have until 5 p.m. London time Dec. 9 to accept. The offer is expected to expire Dec. 18, it said.
The details of the debt swap offer won’t be made public, though the ministry said they are “practically the same” as previous offers in 2002 and 2006. The government ruled out issuing new bonds to pay off the creditors, according to the statement.
Russia wants to clear its Soviet Foreign Trade Organization claims as it prepares to sell as much as $18 billion of eurobonds next year to help plug its budget deficit. The country will turn to international debt markets for the first time in more than a decade after the credit crisis depleted state coffers and left public finances in the red.
Dubai’s attempt to reschedule its debt may sour investor sentiment toward Russian debt, said Vladimir Osakovsky, chief economist at UniCredit.
The extra yield that investors demand to own Russian debt instead of U.S. Treasuries jumped 28 basis points to 2.56 percentage points, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s EMBI+ Index. The yield on Russia’s 7.5 percent dollar bonds maturing in 2030 jumped 23.7 basis points, the most in about eight months, for the second daily increase.
“The situation is changing for the worse, but it won’t lead to anything dramatic,” Osakovsky said. “Russia isn’t a bad borrower and will do everything to maintain that reputation.”
Much of the FTO debt has changed hands several times since 1991, when the Soviet Union disbanded, complicating the settlement process. FTO holders agreed in 2001 to accept eurobonds worth 63 percent of the original credit plus interest backdated to March 2000. Russia conducted $2.4 billion of FTO swaps in 2002 and 2006.
Russia exchanged Soviet-era debt for $21.2 billion of bonds maturing in 2010 and 2030 in 2000 in its only offering of foreign-currency debt since 1998. The government also redeemed $23.7 billion of Soviet obligations from the Paris Club of sovereign creditors in 2006.
The government received $675 million of FTO claims when it stopped accepting petitions in October 2008, according to the Finance Ministry.
VEB, the state development bank responsible for handling foreign debt payments, will verify FTO claims and determine exchange terms for holders of Soviet debt, the ministry said Friday. It directed creditors to seek additional information about the offer from Citibank in London, which will act as Russia’s agent in the proposed swap.

TITLE: Customs Union Agreed With Belarus, Kazakhstan
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan on Friday gave the go-ahead for the creation of a united customs union, whose tariff regime will be based largely on the one that Russia currently has in place.
President Dmitry Medvedev met with his counterparts Alexander Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbayev in Minsk on Friday, where they agreed to the creation of a unified customs tariff, which will start Jan. 1, as well as a unified customs code, which will go into effect July 1.
“This is a very significant and long-awaited event, which has come into being through very difficult negotiations,” Medvedev told a news conference after the meeting, Interfax reported.
About 92 percent of the new tariff regime is based on current Russian duties, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said.
And as Russia has, on average, the highest tariffs of the group, that means that Kazakhstan and Belarus will be raising duties on a wide swathe of items.
“We had to agree with our partners on lowering certain customs tariffs on certain groups of goods, and our partners had to raise certain tariffs,” Shuvalov said, adding that Kazakhstan had to raise tariffs on more than 5,000 items.
“This is a difficult process. … It was necessary to make compromises in order to ensure all the decisions could go into effect starting Jan. 1,” he said.
But with Russia as the largest external market for both Belarus and Kazakhstan, raising tariffs remains a lucrative bet for both countries.
“The creation of the customs union of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan will allow the three countries to raise their gross domestic product 15 percent by 2015,” Nazarbayev said. “A common market with a GDP of $2 trillion will be attractive for investors.”
Nevertheless, there are still several sore points remaining in the formation of a unified customs tariff, said Alexei Portansky, head of the information office for Russia’s WTO bid.
“These sore points will affect the economies of each of the three countries — for example, the customs duties on cars in Belarus, which are lower than those in Russia,” Portansky told The St. Petersburg Times.
The countries still haven’t agreed to a set of automobile tariffs, but the Russian side is concerned that the tentative plan for duties would lead to a flood of used cars from Belarus and Kazakhstan and crush the domestic auto market.
While tariffs for Belarussian dealers would jump to the same level as the Russian tariffs, duties for individuals would remain several times lower, which could result in caravans of Belarussian auto runners streaming into Russia.
A number of decisions regarding the customs union don’t correspond to the interests of Belarus in full, Lukashenko said, adding that he hoped that the decisions would nevertheless bring a balance of interests and “common results for all sides.”
Medvedev repeated his assertion that entering the customs union would not affect Russia’s plans to join the World Trade Organization.
“There are two options: Either enter [the WTO] with the customs union, which no longer exists only on paper, or each country can enter with the agreed-upon positions, but separately,” he said, adding that both options were acceptable.
But experts say the new customs union could create an entirely new set of hurdles for Russia’s accession to the WTO.
“The creation of the customs union brings certain problems. Russia has separately come a long way on its accession to the WTO. Now we must explain to our partners in the WTO how and why we’re changing our customs duties,” Portansky said, adding that Russia would have to hold additional negotiations with the organization.
The WTO confirmed that Russia could face new problems with the accession, as it would have to reach a new agreement on its customs duties.
“The creation of the customs union will make Russia’s accession to the WTO more complicated,” WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell told The St. Petersburg Times. “Unless all the tariffs are exactly the same as what Russia had previously agreed to and there are no changes as a result of the customs union, Russia will have to go through the whole process again,” Rockwell said.
Russia has been trying to join the WTO since 1993, when it filed an application to join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the WTO’s predecessor.
But the customs union might be a more lucrative bet for Russia than WTO membership.
“Russia will benefit from the creation of the customs union much more than from its accession to the WTO, since all customs barriers reduce the country’s welfare. The customs union will also attract more foreign investors to the three countries’ common market,” said Alexei Moiseyev, an analyst at Renaissance Capital.
The group also left open the possibility of Kyrgyzstan, already a WTO member, joining the customs union soon.

TITLE: Innovative Economy Needs New Branding
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Ever since President Dmitry Medvedev made modernization the buzzword of his tenure, much of the country’s entrepreneurial class has been eager to hop on the bandwagon and present their own plans for modernizing the country’s economic and political institutions.
But for that to happen, the country has to shed its image as a land of vodka, bears and caviar and make a name for itself by pursuing innovation and building strong country-linked brands, scientists and businessmen said at a forum Thursday.
There are indeed some misunderstandings in the West about what modern Russia is today, said Stephen Weber, a professor of management at Skolkovo School of Management.
“There are some things people in the West don’t think about when they think about Russia,” he said. “No one talks about Russia being a multicultural and multiethnic society and very few people know about Russia’s resilience that helped it survive through its history.”
He said bringing this basic knowledge to the external audience would be the starting point.
“Building a country-associated brand is about positioning yourself as a partner of choice,” he said. “While the country’s rebranding works best when it’s based on a real story, and the change should be more evolutionary, rather than revolutionary.”
But that evolution may be taking place too slowly for many foreign investors, many of whom routinely criticize Russia for its abysmal corporate governance and corrupt institutions.
A report released last week by PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed that more companies in Russia experience economic crime than in any other country in the world. The report was released days after Transparency International listed Russia 146th in a world corruption rating — tied with Ukraine and squeezed between the African nations Kenya and Sierra Leone.
The reality is such that due to historic and cultural reasons, “made in Russia” label puts many people at a loss, said Alexander Galitsky, a partner at Almaz Capital, a venture investment company.
“Ignoring Russian companies, even those leading in some hi-tech sectors, is a rather common phenomenon, so most ‘smart’ Russians prefer to cover up their scientific and innovative activity under a Western brand or at least by establishing a headquarters abroad,” he said.
Criticism of the country’s low level of innovation has come from the very top. In his state-of-the-nation address on Nov. 12, Medvedev criticized the country’s poor competitiveness, saying the country needs to loose the “primitive structure” of its economy.
“The competitiveness of our production is shamefully low,” Medvedev said. “Instead of a primitive economy based on raw materials, we shall create a smart economy, producing unique knowledge, new goods and technologies, goods and technologies useful for people.”
But the country doesn’t need to start from scratch. Much of Russia’s existing infrastructure can be adapted to serve the needs of an innovative economy, said Sergei Nedoroslev, chairman of the board at Kaskol, a high-tech manufacturing company.
“Several years ago we worked with Sokol aircraft plant in Nizhny Novgorod to design our M101-T civil multi-functional plane, which is now widely used in our air-taxi business,” he said. 
“The plant had been used to produce MiG fighters for decades, so finally they came out with a plane that was heavy, durable and could sustain payloads that are rare for commercial flights.”
When the pilot flying the M101-T looped the loop at the Zhukovsky Air Show in 2007, the spectators were excited, but most of the potential Western buyers were a bit disappointed, he said.
“I remember foreign colleagues asked me: ‘Who is going to buy this flying tank with jeep-size chassis, and why?’ I didn’t know what to answer at first, but soon we came up with the idea to position it as a Sky-Utility Vehicle, a flying SUV so to speak.”
The company has had a number of orders so far, he said, as you can always find customers who want to buy something out of the ordinary.
But even when you have the know-how and branding to support an innovative economy, finding someone to bankroll the project can be problematic.
Innovation, because it is a high-risk business, isn’t popular among Russian businessmen, while the state’s efforts to give modernization a new lease on life are sometimes inconsistent, said Almaz Capital’s Galistsky.
“We don’t have a sufficient ‘pool’ of innovative entrepreneurs, and we also have few product management and product marketing specialists in Russia,” he said. “The government’s initiatives are not systemized, most innovative projects are shared between state institutions that compete with each other.”

TITLE: Georgia Lobbies France on Ship
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS — Georgia is very worried about the possible sale of French warships to Russia and intends to press the issue of security guarantees in France, the country’s foreign minister said Thursday.
“Georgia needs security guarantees” for the long-term, Grigol Vashadze said on the sidelines of a speech Thursday at the French International Relations Institute, IFRI, in Paris. He is to meet with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner later in the day.
Vashadze’s visit to Paris coincides with the public display in St. Petersburg of the Mistral amphibious assault vessel, which can carry 16 helicopters and has worried the country’s neighbors who fear that Russia may use such ships to bully them.
It also coincides with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to Paris.
Georgia, which fought a five-day war with Russia last August, fears that the warships could be deployed off its western coastal waters.
“The only destination of this kind of ship is the Black Sea,” Vashadze told a gathering of diplomats and international affairs experts at IFRI. “The consequences might be devastating. … We are tremendously worried,” he said, adding that Georgia “simply would like to understand why Russia would need such an assault vessel.”
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet was quoted in French media as saying this week that his country wanted to ensure that if the sale went through, the vessel would be delivered without top technology on board.
France and Russia have not signed a deal on delivery of the ships, but the possible sale has raised eyebrows in France as well.
Andre Glucksmann, a leading French philosopher, said in an editorial in Le Monde on Thursday that it was “regrettable” that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was “cheaply selling off our principles of humanity for hypothetical contracts.”
Vashadze said Georgia’s long-term strategy now was “to forget about Russia” and concentrate on developing strong ties with the European Union and NATO in order to become a source of stability in the Caucasus region.
“The less Russia we have, the better,” Vashadze said.
He said he would be seeking French support to keep Georgia high on the international agenda, as well as support for greater international investment in Georgia. He insisted that his country would pursue a two-track policy to join both NATO and the EU, without giving one or the other priority.
“We are actively working in both directions,” Vashadze said.

TITLE: Accusations of Price-Gouging For Anti-Virus, Cold Medicine
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Pharmacies are doubling retail prices for anti-virus and cold medicine amid the widening swine flu epidemic, investigators said Friday.
The Prosecutor General’s Office, which conducted a country-wide investigation, found that pharmacies and wholesalers in the “majority of the regions” are raising retail prices as much as 100 percent and creating artificial shortages to spur demand, the agency said in a statement.
“Those violations are widespread and systematic,” First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman said on Vesti-24. While violators face high fees, license revocation and criminal charges under Russian law, “these measures are obviously not enough,” Buksman said.
President Dmitry Medvedev on Nov. 9 ordered the prosecutors and the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service to conduct a criminal probe of pharmacies that are “taking advantage of the flu epidemics.” Russia has more than 11,600 confirmed cases of swine flu, according to data posted on Health and Social Development Ministry’s web sites. Health officials said Friday that the spread of swine flu has reached “epidemic” proportions in 22 cities and 54 regions of the country.
Pharmacy Chain 36.6, Russia’s largest drug retailer, was also probed by the prosecutors, according to spokeswoman Irina Lavrova. She declined to comment further.

TITLE: Vicious Circle
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: On Monday, President Dmitry Medvedev met with the 35-member human rights council that was created by then-President Vladimir Putin in 2004 to improve ties between the government and civil society. Council chairwoman Ella Pamfilova expressed her concern about Medvedev’s plan to fight corruption. “There is one serious problem,” Pamfilova said. “Who will carry out this plan, and how will it be carried out?”
Medvedev answered, “Only you and I will, together with government officials and representatives of civil society.”
You can’t argue with the president on this point. Consider the tragedy of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who paid with his life for blowing the whistle on a major corruption scam involving top government officials. And this is not an isolated case. Many journalists and workers at nongovernmental organizations who investigated big corruption scandals have been eliminated through contract killings.
Efforts made by NGOs to fight corruption could also be undermined by an ambiguity in the Russian law on NGOs. While a new amendment to the law makes life easier for “socially oriented” organizations, it still gives authorities carte blanche to limit their activities by claiming that a NGO is “extremist” or that it unlawfully accepted money from foreign sources.
There is little, if any, opportunity for civil society to control government abuses through free elections, a free press or lawful protests. It is obvious that battling corruption is meaningless without first instituting fundamental changes to the political system by making it more open, transparent and accountable to the public.
While Medvedev has repeatedly acknowledged that corruption is the biggest problem in the country, he is unwilling — or unable — to make the changes necessary to fight it. Thus, NGO activities are permitted, but only under the watchful eye of the state and only if it doesn’t involve criticizing authorities — including the government’s methods to control corruption.
NGOs and other members of civil society are trying to fight corruption by battling the very officials who claim to be fighting their own war on corruption. This includes deputies in the State Duma who claim to pass strict laws on corruption and members of the police, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Federal Security Service and other government agencies who claim to execute these laws mercilessly.

This comment appeared as an editorial in Vedomosti.

TITLE: Strengthening the Reset
AUTHOR: By Thomas Graham
TEXT: The ‘reset’ button has worked and … we are moving in a good direction,” U.S. President Barack Obama said after his fourth meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev on Nov. 15 — and with good reason. The two have vastly improved the atmosphere after the dark days immediately following Russia’s war against Georgia a year ago.
U.S. and Russian senior-level officials are more engaged with each other than they have been since the first year of the administration of former President George W. Bush. The Bilateral Presidential Commission provides a mechanism for engagement and to enforce follow-through on presidential commitments. More important, the reset is moving toward its first practical results, including the creation of a Russian transit corridor for lethal goods for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and the conclusion of a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that will lead to deeper reductions in both countries’ nuclear arsenals.
Yet relations remain fragile. Government officials in both countries continue to look at their counterparts’ motives with suspicion. The U.S. and Russian media still use the same old stereotypes by either depicting an authoritarian, anti-Western Russia from one side and a hegemonic, Russophobic United States from the other. Unfortunately, little attention is paid to explaining or analyzing the complex issues that divide U.S.-Russian relations.
Regarding the beginning stages of the reset, both sides need to ensure that the current wave of goodwill continues and does not end in sorrow, as similar ones did in the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But three main goals have to be achieved to support this foundation in U.S.-Russian relations.
First, and most urgent, a strategic framework for the bilateral relationship has to be built. Is the United States seeking long-term strategic cooperation or simply exploiting a temporary warming for tactical gain? How much time are a busy U.S. president and other senior officials prepared to devote to nourishing a complicated and often troubled relationship that does not promise quick successes? How far is each side prepared to help the other achieve its interests in exchange for help in achieving its own?  
Ideally, the U.S. and Russian presidents should provide clear answers to these questions in public statements of strategy. That would energize and help discipline the bureaucracies. Barring that, the task falls to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. If the statements are not made, that in itself would send a powerful message that U.S.-Russian relations are a top priority for neither country. Frequent high-level contacts are no substitute for a well-crafted strategy. Then-President Vladimir Putin and Bush met face-to-face five times from their first meeting in Slovenia in June 2001 through the Moscow-St. Petersburg summit of May 2002, and we know where relations ended up at the end of their terms.
Second, the two sides need to clearly demonstrate their ability to cooperate for mutual gain. A START I follow-up treaty, although much-needed, will on its own not be enough because arms-control treaties assume a fundamental rivalry, not a partnership. The two areas that could best jump-start a substantive partnership are building civilian nuclear reactors in third countries and a joint missile defense system. Nuclear cooperation would seek to advance the ongoing civil nuclear energy renaissance by combining the two sides’ unique technologies and deep scientific talent to build more efficient and reliable reactors that are environmentally sound and proliferation-resistant. A joint missile defense system would offer a powerful symbol of the United States and Russia working together to defend the territory and vital assets of both countries from missile attack. Missile defense is clearly more problematic than civil nuclear energy because the United States is far advanced in the deployment of its own system, and the Russians understandably will resist joining as a junior partner. But a system that weds superior U.S. battle management capabilities with superior Russian missile propulsion technology would prove more capable than what is now being built.  
Third, the two nations need to find a way to engage both societies more extensively. The much-maligned working group on civil society — headed by Obama’s top adviser on Russia, Michael McFaul, and Medvedev’s first deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov — could play a major role by identifying issues of mutual concern and then requesting U.S. and Russian nongovernmental organizations, think tanks and universities to work together on these issues. They could include domestic problems, such as immigration, corruption, public health and education, as well as foreign policy issues, such as Iran and trans-Atlantic security. In addition, the two governments should work to facilitate issuance of visas and ease customs bottlenecks to encourage greater trade and investment and reinforce business support for improved relations.
If both sides can advance relations in these areas, this will help facilitate the transition from the first phase of reset, dominated by rhetoric, to the second phase: concrete action.

Thomas Graham was senior director for Russia on the U.S. National Security Council from 2004 to 2007.

TITLE: Undermining the Tower
AUTHOR: By Anna Shcherbakova
TEXT: The construction of the planned Okhta Center skyscraper appears to be more and more of a distant dream in these times of financial instability. Gazprom, which was prepared to finance it after City Hall withdrew from the project, is no longer as prosperous as before.  And the office real estate market has become a tenants’ market, where supply exceeds demand despite the fact that many projects have been frozen or canceled.
The crisis is a bad time for skyscrapers. The completion of the 818-meter-tall Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in January 2010 is under question. Its developer Emaar, whose shares are listed on the Dubai Stock Exchange, may be suffering from the problems of another Arab developer Nakheel, which last Thursday asked investors to postpone payments of $3.5 billion. It may also be the victim of the falling demand for residential and commercial real estate in Dubai. The Moscow-based project for the 612-meter Russia tower has in the meantime been transformed into a huge parking lot. 
Another defect of the local project is that it would ruin the historical view of St. Petersburg. This factor upset thousands of St. Petersburg residents and incited a civil protest on a scale incredible in today’s era of “sovereign democracy.” People took to the streets to demonstrate, and questioned the legitimacy of the project in court. 
Despite all these political and economic factors, Gazprom (the investor) and City Hall (the host) have stubbornly repeated that the 400-meter-high headquarters of Gazpromneft will be erected on the Okhta River to the east of the city center. 
Something changed in October, when the state-owned Channel One dared to criticize the project. It inspired people and gave them (or rather us, because I also hate the idea of ruining the city’s appearance forever) hope. I have to say that there are also enough people who do not share the protesters’ views. However, people’s attitudes to the skyscraper have become a quick way of distinguishing those who love St. Petersburg from others.  
 Last week, the chairman of the United Russia party Boris Gryzlov announced that the tower should be moved to the periphery of the city. He was not the only Moscow-based politician to declare his disagreement with the project. It sounded fairly weighty, since Gryzlov is, according to political experts, the mouthpiece of the governing party, and was most likely voicing the opinion of Vladimir Putin, who is the leader of United Russia. Gryzlov only went as far as to say that the central Okhta district is a bad location for a skyscraper, which could be moved to the former artillery practice range of Rzhevka on the city’s eastern outskirts, or to Vasilyevsky Island, where hundreds of additional hectares of land are currently being reclaimed. 
 Lovers of St. Petersburg have heaved a sigh of relief. One more step in defeating the project has been taken. The ground on which the city is built is a former swampland and is far from firm, but the idea of building the massive construction on reclaimed land that was sea not so long ago seems like pure utopia. The most graceful way out of the situation is probably a speech critical of the project by one of our leaders. It would not only send their rating in their home city sky high, but would also put an end to the question forever. It seems we have a sovereign democracy after all. 

Anna Shcherbakova is the St. Petersburg bureau head of business daily Vedomosti.

TITLE: Iran Lays Blame For Plans With The UN
AUTHOR: By Ali Akbar Dareini
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEHRAN — Iran had no intention of building 10 new nuclear facilities until it was strongly rebuked by the UN nuclear watchdog over its nuclear activities, a top official said Monday.
Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi told state radio that Iran needed to give a strong response to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s resolution Friday demanding that Iran halt construction of its newly revealed uranium enrichment facility and end all other enrichment activities.
A Cabinet meeting headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday approved plans to build 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities, a 10-fold expansion of the nuclear program that will likely significantly heighten tensions with the West.
The U.S. and its allies fear the facilities give Iran the capability to produce weapons-grade nuclear material and have called for an immediate halt to Iran’s enrichment of uranium.
Iran has rejected such claims, saying its uranium enrichment facilities will only produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity.
The Cabinet ordered the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to begin building new facilities at five sites that have already been studied and propose five other locations for future construction within two months.
The new sites are to be on the same scale of Iran’s only other industrial enrichment plant currently in operation, near the town of Natanz in central Iran.
“We had no intention of building many facilities like the Natanz site, but apparently the West doesn’t want to understand Iran’s peaceful message,” Salehi said.
Salehi, who is also the head of Iran’s nuclear program, said the IAEA resolution backed by six world powers left no option for Iran but to give a firm response.
“The action by 5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany) at the IAEA prompted the (Iranian) government to approve a proposal to build 10 sites like that of Natanz,” he said.
Iran aims to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear power plants in the next 20 years. Iranian officials say the new enrichment facilities are needed to produce enough fuel for its future nuclear power plants.
Ahmadinejad told the Cabinet that Iran would need to install 500,000 centrifuges at the planned facilities to produce between 250 to 300 tons of fuel annually.
“We require multiple sites to produce nuclear fuel for us. We need at least ten new sites,” Ahmadinejad said in comments broadcast on state TV Monday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier this month that about 8,600 centrifuges had been set up in Natanz, but only about 4,000 were enriching uranium. The facility is designed to eventually house 54,000 centrifuges.
But Iran’s newly revealed enrichment site, which set off the latest cycle of concern and criticism over Tehran’s nuclear intentions, is a small-scale site near the holy city of Qom that will house 3,000 centrifuges.

TITLE: Davydenko Downs Del Potro to Win Finals
AUTHOR: By Robin Millard
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: LONDON — Russia’s Nikolai Davydenko won the ATP World Tour Finals title Sunday with a straight sets victory over Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro at London’s O2 Arena.
Last year’s beaten finalist won 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and 24 minutes to claim the season-ending title, disputed among the year’s top eight players.
The win meant Davydenko jumped up the rankings to finish the season as the world number six, while Del Potro remains at number five.
The 28-year-old Russian scooped 1,510,000 dollars in prize money, while the Argentinian collected 740,000 dollars.
Davydenko’s route to the crown saw him beat Australian Open champion Rafael Nadal, French Open and Wimbledon title-holder Roger Federer and US Open winner Del Potro.
Davydenko, the first Russian to win the season-ending tournament, said he was thrilled to have his name on the trophy.
“I was looking, till 2008, so many names there, like Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, everyone, Pete Sampras. In 2009, the name Davydenko will stay forever on this trophy. I think it’s amazing,” he said.
“I know the history of the Masters Cup. That my name is there is something amazing for me.”
He added: “I was surprised it was 6-3, 6-4. Before I was playing three-set matches, pretty tough, mostly two hours.
“I was coming in from the first point with 100 percent concentration.
“I won my first serve, I started to get really good concentration, to be positive, everything was feeling good.”
He said some of the prize money would be spent in the Maldives but his target was finally owning a flat in Moscow.
Del Potro, 21, said Davydenko had played the final with the speed of a computer game character.
“This tournament has a great champion in Nikolay. He worked hard to beat every player here this week. He played much better than me, and that’s it,” he said.
“He played unbelievable tennis. He beat me in good way.
“He’s very strong. I’ve never beaten him on a hard court or indoors. He’s very fast. He plays like on a PlayStation, he runs everywhere. It’s very difficult to make winners.
“I did a good tournament anyway,” he added.
Both finalists finished second in their groups. In Saturday’s semi-finals, Davydenko beat Swiss world number one Federer, while Del Potro defeated Sweden’s Robin Soderling.
The Russian entered the match with a 2-1 overall lead on Del Potro.
The match was dominated by gutsy baseline rallies, with Davydenko making greater inroads on the Argentinian’s serve and mixing up the play with drop shots.
Davydenko had a break point in the fourth when Del Potro was called for a foot fault, and won the game, leaving the Argentinian glaring at the baseline judge.
Del Potro had break point in the seventh game but Davydenko forced a deuce and converted his advantage at the second time of asking.
The Argentinian served to stay in the set at 5-2 down and though Davydenko took him to deuce, Del Potro hung on.
However, the Russian held three set points in the next game and won it when Del Potro fired long.
In the second set, Del Potro turned up the aggression and gave Davydenko a tougher fight, though it was ultimately not enough.
The first four games of the set went with serve.
In the fifth game, Davydenko had a break point but the Argentinian won the game on the second deuce.
Del Potro then had a break point next game but this time the Russian won on the second deuce.
At 4-4, Davydenko gained three break points and won the game when the Argentinian shot wide following a lengthy rally.
On a roll and serving for the match, Davydenko got to match point with an ace and won it when Del Potro returned a smash into the net.

TITLE: Dubai Official: Dubai World’s Debt Its Own
AUTHOR: By Barbara Surk
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The heavily indebted Dubai World is not guaranteed by the emirate’s government, a top financial official from the city state said Monday, offering little direction to anxious investors on a day when the United Arab Emirates registered a record fall on the back of Dubai’s debt mess.
On the first day of trading since news of Dubai World’s debt crunch became public, Dubai’s main stock exchange dropped more than 7 percent while the Abu Dhabi exchange fell more than 8 percent — the steepest fall in at least a year, according to brokers.
Driving the financial avalanche was Wednesday’s announcement that conglomerate Dubai World would seek an at least six month reprieve on its $60 billion in debts, obligations amassed during years of a building spree that turned the desert emirate into the Middle Eastern version of Las Vegas, Wall Street and, at times, Sodom and Gomorra, all rolled into one.
If markets were looking for reassurances from Dubai that it would stand behind the conglomerate, they got none Monday.
“Dubai World was established as an independent company, it is true that the government is the owner, but given that the company has various activities and is exposed to various types of risks, the decision, since its establishment, has been that the company is not guaranteed by the (Dubai) government,” Abdulrahman al-Saleh, director general of Dubai’s Finance Department, said on Dubai TV.
“Consequently, the company’s dealing with the various parties has been on this basis,” he said.
Al-Saleh’s comments were the first public remarks by a Dubai official since Thursday, the day after the emirate’s government’s announcement about Dubai World’s request for a debt repayment postponement.
The lack of clarity or direction from the rulers of Dubai since the extent of the conglomerate’s financial ills became known has been a major source of angst for investors.
Uncertainty about what step the emirate would take next had cast a pall on world markets late last week.
Investors returned to Dubai and Abu Dhabi’s markets Monday with little news and plenty of questions. As a result, stocks took a dive.
Shares of Emaar Properties, the UAE’s biggest developer, for example were down 9.86 percent to 3.75 dirhams.
The overwhelming majority of companies whose shares traded Monday on the Dubai Financial Market, the city-state’s main bourse, were also deeply in the red. But the market failed to hit the 10 percent stop-trading cap largely because a large number of company shares were not traded.
Asian markets rebounded Monday after taking a tumble late last week while European markets were down slightly.

TITLE: Woods' Quest For Privacy Challenged
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JACKSONVILLE, Florida — All you need to know about Tiger Woods off the golf course is what he named his yacht.
Privacy.
Woods gave up a big piece of that when he left Stanford after two years, turned pro with a “Hello, World” ad campaign and a $40 million endorsement deal, then quickly became one of the most recognizable athletes on earth.
He will invite some people into that world, but only so far.
Earlier this month in Shanghai, while playing a pro-am round at Sheshan International in a World Golf Championship, Woods allowed that he was staying in a cluster of mansions located on an island in the middle of the golf course. Some of the estates were valued at $14.5 million, and Woods could not believe the extravagance of these homes.
Approaching the island, he was asked which one he was staying in for the week.
“Oh, one of those over there,” he said dismissively.
It was a clear example of the world’s No. 1 player giving a morsel of insight, but not much more.
Once asked why he enjoyed scuba diving so much, Woods replied: “The fish don’t know who I am.”
He is friends with many, close to only a few. Among his best friends are Bryon Bell, whom he has known since junior high school, and Jerry Chang, a teammate at Stanford.
When he made history in 2001 as the only golfer to hold all four professional majors at the same time, Golf Digest put him on the magazine cover posing with the four trophies, along with his U.S. Amateur trophy.
Did he keep them on the mantel? A special trophy case? His bedroom?
That remains a mystery.
Even for a magazine with whom he has had a longtime relationship, the trophies were moved out of his house for the photo shoot. That $2.4 million home near the driving range at Isleworth is off limits to anyone not part of his circle.
It’s amazing that Woods has managed to keep such a thick wall around his personal life in the 14 years he’s commanded the spotlight. The last time his name might have been on any police report was when he was mugged going back to his dorm at Stanford in 1994.
In response to a query on his Facebook account in October, Woods said he and his wife, Elin, had managed to stay out of gossip magazines and tabloids. “I think we’ve avoided a lot of media attention because we’re kind of boring,” was the reply.
That changed Friday with a press release from the Florida Highway Patrol that Eldrick Tiger Woods, 33, of Windermere, struck a fire hydrant and a tree shortly after pulling out of his driveway. The patrol described the injuries as “serious,” making the news important enough to be the lead item on news channels and for networks to interrupt coverage of college football games.

TITLE: 10,000 African Albinos in Hiding Following Killings
AUTHOR: Tom Odula
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAIROBI — The mistaken belief that albino body parts have magical powers has driven thousands of Africa’s albinos into hiding, fearful of losing their lives and limbs to unscrupulous dealers who can make up to $75,000 selling a complete dismembered set.
Mary Owido, who lacks the pigment that gives color to skin, eyes and hair, says she is only comfortable when at work or at home with her husband and children.
“Wherever I go people start talking about me, saying that my legs and hands can fetch a fortune in Tanzania,” said Owido, 36, a mother of six. “This kind of talk scares me. I am afraid of going out alone.”
Since 2007, 44 albinos have been killed in Tanzania and 14 others have been slain in Burundi, sparking widespread fear among albinos in East Africa.
At least 10,000 have been displaced or gone into hiding since the killings began, according to a report released this week by the International Federation for the Red Cross and Crescent societies.
East Africa’s latest albino murder happened in Tanzania’s Mwanza region in late October, when albino hunters beheaded 10-year-old Gasper Elikana and chopped off his leg, the report said. The killing left Elikana’s father, who tried to defend his son, seriously injured.
Albinism is a hereditary condition, but occurs only when both parents have albinism genes. All six of Owido’s children have normal skin color.
African albinos endure insults, discrimination and segregation throughout their lives.

TITLE: Inter Milan Clear as Cagliari Stun Juventus
AUTHOR: By Barnaby Chesterman
PUBLISHER: Agence France Presse
TEXT: ROME — Sardinian minnows Cagliari stunned Juventus 2-0 allowing leaders Inter Milan to open up a seven-point lead at the top of Serie A following a controversial 1-0 success over Fiorentina on Sunday.
AC Milan moved up to second place after Dutch flop Klaas-Jan Huntelaar finally came good and scored two goals deep into injury time to secure a crucial 2-0 victory at Catania.
Juve’s title chances took a serious hit as they were well beaten by an energetic Cagliari team who won their fifth match in six - their only defeat in that spell a thrilling 4-3 reverse at the San Siro against Milan.
It means Juve now have a must win clash at home to Inter next weekend, but coach Ciro Ferrara was more interested about the points lost this week.
“Were Juve disappointing? I think we were watching different games,” he said when asked about the match.
“In the first half we had some difficulties but in the second we had several chances.
“Of course I’m disappointed about the gap to Inter and our inconsistent performances but today’s defeat wasn’t deserved,” he added.
Inter coach Jose Mourinho said the gap between the two teams was irrelevant, before swatting away questions about Inter’s confidence since being beaten 2-0 by Barcelona in midweek, pointing out that their main rivals had suffered much worse defeats this season.
“Being eight points ahead of them doesn’t matter, it could be five or we could be level. It doesn’t change anything — we will be going to Turin to win,” he said.
“They (Barca) destroyed us, that’s the right word but I believe other defeats have hurt Italian football more, such as a home loss to FC Zurich (Milan were beaten 1-0 in the San Siro) or one away to Bordeaux (where Juve lost 2-0).”
In Sardinia, Cagliari had much the better of the first period and deservedly took the lead on the half hour through a sensational goal by Brazilian Nene.
From a quickly taken free-kick he took a touch and hit a rocket into the top corner from 25 yards and at an angle that beat Buffon at his near post.
Four minutes into the second period Juve had the ball in the net when Amauri headed home Martin Caceres’s cross but it was ruled out for a narrow offside.
Francesco Pissano saved Cagliari 10 minutes from time with a crucial diving block to stop a Christian Molinaro volley from six yards out before goalkeeper Federico Marchetti palmed away a dangerous Alessandro Del Piero free-kick.
Substitute Alessandro Matri sealed the victory a minute from time as he ran onto a Jeda flick-on, beat Fabio Cannavaro on the outside and shot under Buffon.
Substitute Huntelaar’s late goals, three and five minutes into injury time, settle a dreadful affair and earned Milan a win they didn’t deserve.
But it was a great moment for the former Real Madrid striker who has had a torrid time since moving to Italy and is rumoured to be leaving in the January transfer window.
“I want to play for Milan, I will fight here,” he insisted. “Today is a nice moment, you need a goal because the beginning didn't start well, so it’s good now.”
Inter dominated Fiorentina but needed a helping hand from the referee to turn that into three points.
Inter finally secured victory thanks to a dubious penalty award after Milito flopped comically to the ground in the box under minimal contact from Gianluca Comotto.

TITLE: Mysterious Saddam Channel Hits Iraq TV
AUTHOR: By Lara Jakes
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD — Turning on their TVs during the long holiday weekend, Iraqis were greeted by a familiar if unexpected face from their brutal past: Saddam Hussein.
The late Iraqi dictator is lauded on a mysterious satellite channel that began broadcasting on the Islamic calendar’s anniversary of his 2006 execution.
No one seems to know who is bankrolling the so-called Saddam Channel, although the Iraqi government suspects it’s Baathists whose political party Saddam once led. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus, Syria named Mohammed Jarboua, who claimed to be its chairman.
The Saddam channel, he said, “didn’t receive a penny from the Baathists” and is for Iraqis and other Arabs who “long for his rule.”
Jarboua has clearly made considerable efforts to hide where it’s aired from and refuses to say who is funding it besides “people who love us.”
Iraqis surprised to find Saddam on their TVs responded with the kind of divided emotions that marked his reign.
“Iraqis don’t need such a satellite channel because it has hostile intentions,” said Hassan Subhi, a 28-year-old Shiite who owns an Internet cafe in eastern Baghdad.
Others said they felt a nostalgic sorrow at the sight of their late leader, a Sunni Arab.
“All my family felt sad,” said Samar Majid, a Sunni high school teacher in western Baghdad, mentioning images shown from Saddam’s execution, and pictures of his two sons and grandson.
The channel, which is broadcast across the Arab world, dredges up the sectarian divisions that Saddam inspired among Shiites and Sunnis at a time when Iraq is gearing up for crucial national elections. Iraqi politicians have been arguing over parliamentary seat distribution in a dispute that has inflamed the splits. The wrangling will likely delay the vote beyond its constitutionally required Jan. 30 deadline.
Saddam’s hanging three years ago was on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar. His execution — and the day it was done — remains a sore point for Saddam sympathizers still smarting over images of the defiant leader in his final moments as Shiites in the death chamber shouted curses.
The Saddam Channel debuted on Friday, the first day of this year’s Eid for Sunnis. The holiday started Saturday for Shiites. The station’s official name alternates between “Al-Lafeta” (“the banner”) and “Al-Arabi” (“the Arab”).
It is mostly a montage of flattering, still images of Saddam — some of him dressed in military uniform, others in a suit, even one astride a white horse. One image shows his sons Odai and Qusai smiling with their father, and another their bodies after they and Saddam’s grandson, Mustafa, were killed in a July 2003 gunfight with U.S. troops.
One prominently displayed image is that of a man burning an American flag. Another shows graves covered with Iraqi flags.
All the pictures are set against audio recordings of Saddam making speeches and reciting poetry. Patriotic songs urge listeners to “liberate our country.” None of the pictures appear to be recent, and no announcers or commentators appear or speak.
A media adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, brushed off the station and its message, and refused to comment on whether the government will seek to shut down the channel.
Al-Maliki adviser Yassin Majid said in an interview that he had not seen the channel but had heard of it. He called it “an attempt from the dissolved Baath Party to return to Iraq’s politics.” Since Saddam’s fall, Baathists have spread out around the region, mainly to Syria and Jordan but also to Gulf countries and Yemen.
Among the many mysteries surrounding the channel is where it is being broadcast from. 
In a telephone interview Sunday from Damascus, Jarboua said he is Algerian and that the Saddam Channel is based in Europe but refused to say where, citing safety concerns for its employees. 
“There are threats that the Iraqi government will shut it down, kill its employees, that they will liquidate it,” Jarboua said. 
He said he started al-Lafeta nine months ago in Lebanon, and has employees in Syria, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. 
Ziad Khassawneh, a Jordanian Baathist who once headed Saddam’s defense team, said wealthy Iraqis living in Lebanon, Syria and other Arab countries are funding the channel. He declined to give names. 
Saddam’s oldest daughter, Raghad Saddam Hussein, who lives in Jordan, has denied any connection to the channel. 
One Jordan-based Iraqi Baathist said the station broadcasts from Libya and is run by followers of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam’s No. 2 and a top leader of the outlawed Baath party. Douri’s whereabouts is unknown. 
Another former Baathist official said the Saddam Channel broadcasts out of Damascus. Both men spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they needed to protect the security of the channel’s employees. 
A Mideast satellite expert said al-Lafeta’s operators tried to hide any clues to their identities and broadcast sites by using a variety of satellite services and frequencies.

TITLE: BMW Sells Off Formula One Team to Sauber
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FRANKFURT — German car maker BMW has agreed to sell its Formula One team to previous owner Peter Sauber, provided the team gets a place on the grid next season.
BMW announced in July that it would pull out of Formula One at the end of the season, citing the global economic downturn. The company said Friday that a previous agreement to sell the team to Qadbak Investments has been annulled.
“I’m the sole investor right now,” Sauber told reporters at the team’s base in Hinwil, Switzerland.
The 66-year-old owner said he planned to lead the team for just one season then find a successor.
Sauber said he was “very confident” that the FIA governing body would find a place on the grid for the team, which would use Ferrari engines.
The number of team employees will be cut from 388 to about 250, BMW said.