SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1560 (21), Tuesday, March 30, 2010
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TITLE: ‘Eerily Quiet’ In Rush Hour After Bombings
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The gray streets around the Lubyanka metro station seemed eerily quiet in the moments after the first bomb went off at 7:52 a.m. during morning rush-hour traffic.
Then the masses of people began to emerge from the metro, surging out of underpasses and heading onward by foot.
The throng included many children. Monday marked the first day of school after a weeklong spring break, and Moscow schools opened at 8:30 a.m.
Police cordoned off all metro access points on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, dominated by the towering yet empty-windowed headquarters of the Federal Security Service. Fire trucks and ambulances stood idly waiting. A helicopter clattered into the square for a brief stop.
As journalists came trickling into the square, some dressed in obvious haste, many wondered out loud why there were no visible signs of a terrorist attack — no traumatized or bleeding passengers anywhere to be seen.
As news started swirling about the second bomb blast at 8:36 a.m. in the Park Kultury metro station, officials approached the pack of reporters gathered near the grass knoll where the statue of Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzhersinsky once stood.
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin spoke first, announcing an update on the number of victims and saying the Lubyanka blast had occurred in the second train car.
Minutes later, Moscow’s white-haired chief prosecutor, Yury Semin, wearing a bright blue coat, a huge saucer cap and glasses, emerged from the metro. He was one of the first officials to say that the attacks appeared to have been carried out by female suicide bombers. He also said the Lubyanka train had already closed its doors and was about to leave the station to the north when the explosion went off.
Pressed by reporters about victim numbers, Semin said soberly, “There is no time to count the dead, only time to save the injured.”
Later, a white Emergency Situations Ministry helicopter with orange and blue stripes swooped onto the square. It left 15 minutes later. It was not immediately clear if it had picked up any victims.
Meanwhile, emergency workers set up an old-fashioned looking Soviet TV screen for Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu to appear on as he addressed a Ministry meeting. As Shoigu spoke, reporters found a man who was frantically looking for his wife after she had failed to answer calls to her cell phone.
Shoigu suggested that all cell phone operators send text messages to their Moscow clients asking them to reconnect with close friends and relatives.
TITLE: Moscow Metro Blasts Kill 38, Wound 102
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: At least 38 people were killed and 102 wounded on Monday when suicide bombers detonated explosives filled with bolts and iron rods on two packed Moscow metro trains during the morning rush hour, the worst attack in the Russian capital in six years, officials said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts but suspicion is likely to fall on groups from the North Caucasus, where the Kremlin is fighting a growing Islamist insurgency.
The first blast just before 8 a.m. tore through the second carriage of a train as it stood at the Lubyanka metro station, close to FSB headquarters. It killed at least 23 people.
Another blast about 40 minutes later wrecked the second carriage of a train waiting at the Park Kultury metro station, killing 14 more people.
“Two female terrorist suicide bombers carried out these bombings,” Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov told reporters at Park Kultury metro station.
Russian civil aviation authorities ordered increased security at airports, fearing further actions.
Surveillance camera footage posted on the Internet showed motionless bodies lying in Lubyanka station lobby and emergency workers treating victims.
The Moscow metro system is one of the world’s busiest, carrying about 7 million passengers on an average workday, and is a key element in running the sprawling and traffic-choked city.
The blasts practically paralyzed movement in the city center as emergency vehicles sped to the stations. Helicopters hovered over the Park Kultury station area, which is near the famous Gorky Park.
Service on the Red Line, on which both stations are located, has been suspended from Park Kultury to Komsomolskaya.
Passengers, many of them in tears, streamed out of the station, one man exclaiming over and over “This is how we live!”
At least a dozen ambulances were on the scene.
A source told RIA-Novosti that dozens of Moscow residents and visitors turned to doctors with nervous breakdowns and heart attacks after witnessing the blasts. The Emergency Situations Ministry has opened several hotlines for anyone seeking psychiatric help as a result of the explosions; people can call 626-3707, 632-9671 or 632-9673. The ministry’s web site also has numbers for hospitals treating victims.
Witnesses spoke of panic at the stations, with people falling over each other in dense smoke and dust as they tried to escape.
“I was in the middle of the train when somewhere in the first or second carriage there was a loud blast. I felt the vibrations reverberate through my body,” an unidentified man who was on the train at Park Kultury told RIA-Novosti in a video interview.
“People were yelling like hell,” he said. “There was a lot of smoke, and in about two minutes everything was covered in smoke.”
“I was moving up on the escalator when I heard a loud bang, a blast. A door near the passage way arched, was ripped out and a cloud of dust came down on the escalator,” a man named Alexei told state-run Rossiya 24 news channel.
“People started running, panicking, falling on each other,” he said.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a decree Monday allocating compensation funds to families of the bombing victims. Families of those who died will receive 300,00 rubles ($10,122)
(AP, SPT)
TITLE: Bombings Lead U.S. Cities To Tighten Up Security
AUTHOR: By Megan Scott
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — Major transit agencies beefed up security as a precaution Monday following the suicide bombing in Moscow’s subway system.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority had a “heightened security presence,” said spokesman Kevin Ortiz. He declined further comment. The agency is in charge of New York City buses and subways, as well as suburban trains, and bridges and tunnels.
In Washington, D.C., Metro police were conducting random inspections of stations and rail yards. Metro Transit Police’s acting head, Jeri Lee, said Monday that the agency was doing “what we can to be as secure as possible.”
Representatives of transit agencies in Boston and Philadelphia said they believed their normal security practices were vigilant enough to protect the riding public.
The U.S. federal government did not immediately make any recommendations for increased security at mass transit systems, but authorities were monitoring the situation, a U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Caucasus Islamic separatists tend to be focused on targets in the region, primarily Russia, and are not generally considered a threat to U.S. domestic interests.
The New York Police Department issued a statement saying it was increasing coverage of the subway system as a precaution “in response to the Moscow bombings.” Caravans of police vehicles were dispatched to transit hubs, and officers assigned to subways overnight were held in place so they overlapped with the day tour.
“That significantly bolstered police coverage at rush hour this morning,” said spokesman Paul Browne.
Special units distinguished by their special black uniforms, helmets and body armor also were assigned to transit facilities.
In Manhattan, where the public has grown accustomed to increased security after the World Trade Center attack, many people said they hadn’t even noticed the added measures.
“I don’t think it poses a threat here now,” said Carlos Rivera, 44, of Newark, New Jersey, who commutes to New York City daily and works in sales.
“Every day, I see the NYPD out here. I see the dogs. I can’t let it affect my life right now,” said Rivera. “I don’t think about terrorism. I only think about it when I hear about it. Other than that, it never enters my mind.”
Andrew Davis, 24, who was catching a train home to Morristown, New Jersey, said he feels safe and didn’t notice any increased security.
John Villegas, who said he used to work near the World Trade Center, did sense the heightened security.
“I’m a little wary,” Villegas, 48, said at Pennsylvania Station as he waited for a train home to Woodbridge, New Jersey. “I do not feel safe right now. It’s a little scary.”
Chris Edwards, 18, was heading back to Princeton University, where he’s a freshman.
“I feel like security here is good enough,” Edwards said. “I feel like, in general, any major terrorist attack is going to be more a misstep — the government not doing its job.”
TITLE: FSB Closer to Extraditing Reputed Mobster Kaplan
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A reputed mobster with a U.S. criminal record has been illegally residing in the country, the Federal Security Service said Friday, thus removing a main obstacle to extradition to Spain.
An investigation by the Federal Migration Service found that Leonid Kaplan illegally obtained a Russian passport in 2003 and has been illegally living in the country since mid-2009, the FSB said in a statement carried by news agencies.
The decision removes a main obstacle to extradition that Russia refuses to enact on its own citizens.
Born in 1946 in Novosibirsk, Kaplan emigrated in 1976 from the Soviet Union to Israel. He became a U.S. citizen under the name of Leon Lann in 1985, the FSB said.
In 1997, a Los Angeles district court issued an arrest warrant for Lann on fraud charges, but he managed to flee to Russia, and U.S. prosecutors did not put him on an international wanted list, the Rosbalt.ru news site reported earlier this month.
In Moscow, Kaplan set up casinos and has been linked to a large money-laundering scheme overseen by convicted Georgian crime boss Sakhar Kalashov from Spain, the report said.
The FSB said Friday that Kaplan was wanted for his association with Kalashov, who has been imprisoned in Spain since 2006.
Kaplan is wanted by Spanish police on charges of money laundering and membership in a criminal organization. He has been on an Interpol wanted list since 2006.
TITLE: German Publisher Axel Springer Defends Editor in ‘Cocaine’ Video
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — German media giant Axel Springer defended the editor-in-chief of Russian Newsweek on Monday as the victim of a “targeted campaign based on lies” after a video surfaced that appears to show him snorting cocaine.
Axel Springer, which publishes the Russian edition of the news magazine, promised that Russian Newsweek would maintain its critical editorial policy, which has exposed corruption and other forms of wrongdoing among politicians and business leaders.
A video clip appeared on YouTube last week that shows a person resembling Russian Newsweek editor Mikhail Fishman snorting a white powder in the presence of an unidentified female.
Fishman told Radio Liberty last week that he was being targeted in a smear campaign, without going into details.
Opposition leader Ilya Yashin wrote on his blog that he believed that the apartment belonged to two female informants for the security services. He said he had also visited the apartment and spent the night with one of the women. He said he left the apartment after one of the women invited him to snort cocaine.
Fishman is the victim of “a targeted campaign based on lies and provocations and interference in a private life,” Axel Springer said in a statement carried by Ekho Moskvy radio.
Earlier this month, both Fishman and Yashin came under fire because of another video clip published on YouTube in which they appear to be paying bribes to Moscow traffic police officers. The video also shows liberal political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin supposedly bribing an officer.
All three people have denounced the video as a smear campaign. Yashin has said Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth movement, was probably behind the campaign.
Nashi, which has posted the traffic police video on its web site, has denied being involved in orchestrating any personal attacks against Fishman, Yashin and Oreshkin.
A traffic police spokesman had told The St. Petersburg Times that the officers depicted in the traffic stop video probably did not work for the Moscow traffic police and suggested that they were actors.
TITLE: Opposition May Halt Demo After Bombings
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Organizers of Strategy 31, an ongoing campaign of events in defense of the right to assembly – due to take place in St. Petersburg near Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main thoroughfare – have not yet made a final decision on whether to hold the demos following the bombings on the Moscow metro Monday.
Strategy 31 events are currently scheduled in 35 cities across Russia and are due to take place on Wednesday.
Local organizer Andrei Dmitriyev said on Monday that he was in the process of consulting with organizers in Moscow and would make a final decision by Tuesday. The St. Petersburg event is organized by author and politician Eduard Limonov’s banned National-Bolshevik Party (NBP), of which Dmitriyev is the local leader, the Left Front and former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov’s People’s Democratic Union (NDS).
Earlier this month, most of St. Petersburg’s liberal opposition, including the United Civil Front (OGF) and Yabloko, as well as the Human Rights Council, announced that they would join the campaign but would hold it at a different location, the Palace Square, dismissing the site near Gostiny Dvor as “inconvenient” and “not a square.”
On Monday, the OGF’s local leader Kurnosova said the group would go ahead with its protest despite the terrorist attacks in Moscow, although it would change its theme. “We’ll be speaking about why such things happen in this country,” she said. “Because over the past ten years they told us that we should reject freedom for the sake of security, but these events show that if you agree with that you get neither freedom nor security.”
Limonov, who conceived the Strategy 31 campaign last year, criticized the local liberals’ move as “unethical,” when visiting St. Petersburg last week.
According to Dmitriyev, the site near Gostiny Dvor has been chosen because it was “impossible to cordon off completely or block” and a place where numerous rallies have been held since the late 1980s.
Both March 31 rallies, near Gostiny Dvor, due to start at 6 p.m., and on the Palace Square, scheduled for 7 p.m., have been banned by City Hall.
In order to defend the frequently violated Article 31 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to assemble, the campaigners urge concerned citizens to gather on the 31st day of months that have 31 days in them at the same site in each city. Strategy 31 was first held in Moscow on July 31, 2009. It has been held in St. Petersburg since Jan. 31, 2010, when 41 of the more than 200 protesters were detained.
TITLE: Emergency Lights Still Undeclared
AUTHOR: By Maria Tsvetkova, Alexei Nikolsky and Maxim Tovakaido
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has allowed a large number of officials to use flashing lights on their cars. But there are hundreds more on the streets than are allowed in public regulations, Vedomosti has discovered, with the help of its readers.
An order on March 23 amended the list of government agencies whose automobiles can use light and sound signals, not counting emergency response services. In all, according to the published regulations, there should only be 964 sets of warning lights. In the government orders, however, there are clauses classified as “for service usage,” where there are additional lists.
In all, there are at least 1,123 cars in Russia that operate with warning lights, Vedomosti’s “On the Hunt for Flashing Lights,” has revealed. Vedomosti readers have taken photographs of the license plates on cars with the flashing lights and sent them in to the newspaper. The paper is waiting for an explanation for the phenomenon from the Interior Ministry.
Putin has taken away rights to use the signal from the Interior Ministry, as he has with other security services that report directly to the president. The police lost their right to 31 sets of flashing lights, and now are limited to 142. An Interior Ministry source said that of the current number, about half go to the minister, his seven deputies, including their replacement cars, and the heads of 15 departments.
The remainder are used by the emergency response services of the ministry’s central administration for automobiles not designated as police cars that are nevertheless used for emergency response. But an investigator at one Interior Ministry department said he had only once seen flashing lights on such a car that was definitely being used in an emergency response.
TITLE: Ministry Warns of Risks of Flooding in Thaw
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the city comes out of a winter that brought the heaviest snowfalls in the last 30 years, experts are warning of the high risk of flooding.
According to Shamsutdin Dagirov, head of the Northwestern regional center of the country’s Emergency Situations Ministry, more than 300 towns and villages in the area are likely to be affected by floods that may begin as soon as the first or second week of April.
“Looking back through our archives, we have discovered that the city went through a similar situation in 1966, when there was an unusually snowy winter,” Dagirov said, adding that a team of over 33,000 staff has been assembled to combat the consequences of flooding and prevent casualties.
Speaking to reporters at a briefing organized by the Interfax news agency, Dagirov, however, stopped short of explaining specific prevention strategies, limiting himself to the distribution of leaflets on what citizens can themselves do and the provision of information about special vehicles that will alert residents of the affected areas via loudspeakers.
“If the flooding suddenly takes place and you find yourself in the water, try to hold on to any floating objects and, if possible, make a raft,” reads the leaflet. “Make every effort to reach a higher spot and make yourself visible to the rescue teams.”
Since Dec. 1, a staggering 215 millimeters of snow has fallen in the city.
The harsh weather conditions have led to casualties. According to City Hall statistics, over the past week 20 people have sustained injuries from ice falling from roofs.
Also, last week alone, 167 people have been sent to hospital following falls on the ice. A further 44 were taken to city clinics and hospitals suffering from hypothermia.
According to the city’s ambulance service, since January 2010, 185 people have sustained various wounds from the falling icicles, and three people have died. Three more people died after falling from the roofs when cleaning off the snow.
Independent experts, however, say that the official figures do not reveal the whole truth, and in reality the numbers of casualties and the victims are much higher. “In the Petrogradsky district alone I personally know of five lethal accidents where people who had been recruited by the local authorities to clean the snow from roof, fell and died,” said a source at a municipality authority on the Petrograd Side. “The authorities hushed those cases up, and presented them as incidents unrelated to the snow-clearing campaign. The officials are afraid of looking bad.”
TITLE: Medvedev Seethes as Flag Rises in Sochi
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — As the Olympics flag was hoisted in Sochi, President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that he was considering an investigation into how sports officials spent millions of dollars to prepare athletes for the Vancouver Games and warned them to secure more gold medals in 2014.
“You must work 24 hours a day, not just wear out the seats of your pants, and rove abroad,” Medvedev told the presidential sports council at a meeting in Sochi, which will host the 2014 Winter Games.
Russia was left red-faced after its team placed 11th with only three golds in last month’s Winter Games, its worst-ever performance at an event where it has long excelled.
“The problem is not so much a lack of resources as their ineffective use,” Medvedev said.
“The Audit Chamber on my order is already checking the use of budget funds aimed at preparing for the Vancouver Olympics,” he said. “According to the results, we will decide what to do with [the report] — just to hear it or send it to the prosecutor’s office.”
The results may not be known until September at the earliest. Medvedev asked the Audit Chamber to carry out the checks from April to September and to cover the Russian Olympics Committee, the Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy Ministry, sports federations and several small sports agencies, RIA-Novosti reported.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin suggested this month that state funds had been misused and complained that Vancouver had cost five times more than the 2006 Turin Olympics, where Russia finished fourth with eight golds.
The government spent about 3.5 billion rubles ($118 million) over three years to prepare for the Vancouver Games.
Medvedev warned on Friday of a shakeup in the country’s sports bodies, saying the presidential sports council might close several sports federations. He did not elaborate on the reasons for the possible closure, RIA-Novosti reported.
He also threatened to fire top sports officials who engaged in infighting. “If I find out that the bosses, including the new ones, again start fighting each other, I will have to reshuffle the cards again,” Medvedev said.
State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov lashed out at sports officials for infighting and corruption at the meeting. United Russia, which Gryzlov leads, has promised to personally make sure that Russian athletes are ready to compete in 2014.
“We are witnessing a complete collapse of the Russian Olympic Committee,” Gryzlov said. “Many sports federations are corrupt, and the sports ministry is helpless. The system of financing sports is corrupt from the top to the bottom.”
Several senior sports officials have resigned in the wake of the Vancouver flop, including the head of the Russian Olympics Committee. Late Thursday, Medvedev removed Valentin Piseyev, president of the Figure Skating Federation of Russia, from the presidential sports council.
Seven of the 12 federations for Olympic sports will have new leaders after the previous leaders resigned following the Vancouver Games, RIA-Novosti reported.
Medvedev, meanwhile, said Russian sports officials needed to boost their profile in international sports organizations to defend Russian athletes caught in doping scandals. “Let’s not forget that doping scandals are to a certain extent an element of score-settling and an element of global sports competition,” he said. “We must know how to defend ourselves and not offer the other cheek.”
A total of 343 Russian athletes, including 31 in international competitions, were caught doping from 2006 to 2009, Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy Minister Vitaly Mutko said.
At the flag-raising ceremony, a special train transported the Olympic and Paralympic flags from the airport to downtown Sochi, where Olympic and Paralympic champions carried them to the main square.
Medvedev met separately with the Paralympians, who finished first in Vancouver this month with 38 medals, including 12 golds, the Kremlin said.
TITLE: Obama, Medvedev Seal New START
AUTHOR: By Tom Raum and Robert Burns
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON — The U.S. and Russia sealed the first major nuclear weapons treaty in nearly two decades Friday, agreeing to slash the former Cold War rivals’ warhead arsenals by nearly one-third and talking hopefully of eventually ridding a fearful world of nuclear arms altogether.
President Barack Obama said the pact was part of an effort to “reset” relations with Russia that have been badly frayed. And at home the agreement gave him the biggest foreign policy achievement of his presidency to date, just days after he signed the landmark health care overhaul that has been his domestic priority.
Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will sign the agreement April 8 in Prague, where Obama gave a major speech on doing away with nuclear arms one year ago. The city is the capital of the Czech Republic, a former Soviet satellite and now a NATO member.
If ratified by the Senate and by Russia’s legislature, the reductions still would leave both countries, by far the world’s largest nuclear powers, with immense arsenals — and the ability to easily annihilate each other. Together, the United States and Russia possess about 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
Still, Obama called the pact a step toward “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He said nuclear weapons “represent both the darkest days of the Cold War, and the most troubling threats of our time.”
Agreed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, “Both parties see the ultimate goal in building a nuclear-free world.”
No one sees that happening any time soon. But U.S. leaders noted that the agreement came shortly before Obama was to host an international conference on nuclear proliferation in Washington.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the treaty an “important milestone” and said he believed it would “add a significant impetus” to a UN conference in May to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
“We have turned words into action,” Obama said at the White House after completing the agreement in a morning phone call with Medvedev. The White House said it was their 14th meeting or phone call on the issue.
The United States hopes the 10-year agreement will lead to better cooperation on other issues, such as a unified U.S.-Russian stance against the development of nuclear weapons by Iran.
Ratification in the Senate will require 67 votes, two-thirds of the senators, meaning Obama will need support from Republicans, something he’s found hard to come by on other issues.
Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, a leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, welcomed Friday’s announcement. Lugar, who is influential among fellow GOP senators as an arms control expert, said he looked forward to receiving the treaty so that the committee could hold hearings and “work quickly to achieve ratification.”
Under the agreement, which would replace and expand on a landmark 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expired in December, the two former Cold War foes would cut their arsenals of nuclear warheads to 1,550 — from the 2,200 previously permitted — over seven years. It would also trim the number of allowable missiles and bombers capable of carrying the warheads to targets.
“With this agreement, the United States and Russia — the two largest nuclear powers in the world — also send a clear signal that we intend to lead,” Obama said.
In Moscow, the Kremlin hailed the agreement. Medvedev’s spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, said, “This treaty reflects the balance of interests of both nations.”
According to U.S. officials, the accord won’t restrict moving ahead on deployment of an American missile defense system — long a touchy subject between the two nations. And Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov suggested Russia reserves the right to walk away from the treaty if it sees it can no longer protect its security because of a U.S. missile-defense buildup.
“The existence of strategic defensive systems capable of neutralizing strategic offensive weapons will be taken into account,” Lavrov told reporters.
Sealing the deal gave Obama a needed foreign policy victory. His advisers hoped it would help lend momentum to his overall agenda by demonstrating strength on both the international and domestic fronts. It came soon after Congress approved his top domestic priority, the health-care overhaul.
Yet, given the highly charged partisan atmosphere in Washington, Republican support for the treaty is not a foregone conclusion. Obama will need at least eight Republican votes in the Senate.
And despite supportive statements by more moderate Republicans such as Lugar, some conservative GOP senators have voiced concerns that too many concessions to Moscow could limit the flexibility of future presidents.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl have voiced concerns about the treaty’s impact on missile defenses and have proposed linking ratification with modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
McConnell said Friday that GOP senators will attempt to determine whether the treaty’s provisions would be verifiable and would maintain America’s full ability to defend itself.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, standing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates alongside Obama, said, “National security has always produced large bipartisan majorities, and I see no reason why this should be any different. I believe that a vast majority of the Senate, at the end of the day, will see that this is in America’s interest.”
Clinton also jokingly offered the Russian government help in getting the treaty through the Duma. “President Obama has said he will send Rahm Emanuel to Moscow” if necessary, she joked, referring to Obama’s blunt-speaking chief of staff. “We all endorsed that offer.”
Because the earlier START treaty expired in December, Russia and the United States will not have an agreement for inspecting each other’s arsenals until a replacement treaty comes into effect.
Clinton emphasized the verification mechanism in the treaty — a key demand of the U.S. that was resisted by Russia and was one of the sticking points that delayed completion of the deal. It will “reduce the chance for misunderstandings and miscalculations,” she said.
TITLE: U.S. To Back Georgian, Baltic Armies
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Pentagon plans to build military capabilities in Georgia and the three Baltic states to ready them for operations in Afghanistan, a move that could raise alarm in Moscow.
The Pentagon announcement Friday came on the same day that U.S. President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev sealed an agreement on a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty that they are to sign on April 8 in Prague.
In notifications sent to Congress, the Pentagon said military assistance programs for Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia and Hungary were designed to build their capacities “to conduct stability operations alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
Russia and Georgia fought a brief war in 2008, and U.S. officials have acknowledged tensions with Moscow in the past over similar programs to bolster the military capabilities of Russia’s neighbors.
Russia defeated Georgia’s military bid to retake a pro-Moscow region from rebels in a five-day war that rekindled tension between the Kremlin and the West.
Russia has since accused Washington of rearming the Georgian “war machine.” Because of the sensitivities, Pentagon officials have said they have consulted with Russia about the military programs with Georgia.
Despite efforts by the Obama administration to shore up relations with Russia, tensions remain, including over France’s recent decision to sell an advanced warship to Moscow.
Russia asked to buy the 21,300-ton, Mistral class warship to modernize hardware that was exposed as outdated during its war against Georgia.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates protested the sale during a recent visit to Paris, arguing that it could stoke tensions with key U.S. allies, especially Georgia.
The Mistral is an amphibious assault ship able to carry helicopters, troops, armored vehicles and tanks.
The Georgian-Russian region is viewed by the West as a vital energy transit route from the Caspian to Europe.
Along with the programs for Georgia and the Baltic countries, the other military programs to be led by the Pentagon are designed to help Yemen and the Philippines battle militants.
Georgia and the Baltic states have been key supporters of U.S.-led military operations against terrorism in Afghanistan.
In other news, a dispute between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan has caused a bottleneck in the shipment of some nonmilitary supplies destined for the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, Tajik officials said Friday.
Tajikistan says freight traffic is being blocked from crossing its border with Uzbekistan, holding up many shipments, including the Afghanistan-bound supplies. Tajiks say the action has severely damaged their economy.
Some analysts say Uzbekistan has halted traffic because it fears that a huge dam project in Tajikistan will divert water from its territory. Uzbekistan denies that the interruption in railway deliveries is intentional.
Under deals secured last year, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan granted the United States and NATO forces permission to transport nonmilitary materials through their countries to neighboring Afghanistan.
(SPT, AP)
TITLE: A New Ancestor? Scientists Ponder Siberian DNA
AUTHOR: By Malcolm Ritter
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: In the latest use of DNA to investigate the story of humankind, scientists have decoded genetic material from an unidentified human ancestor that lived in Siberia and concluded it might be a new member of the human family tree.
The DNA doesn’t match modern humans or Neanderthals, two species that lived in that area around the same time — 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.
Instead, it suggests the Siberian species lineage split off from the branch leading to modern humans and Neanderthals a million years ago, the researchers calculated. And they said that doesn’t seem to match the history of human ancestors previously known from fossils.
So the Siberian species may be brand new, although the scientists cautioned that they’re not ready to make that claim yet.
Other experts agreed that while the Siberian species may be new, the case is far from proven.
“We really don’t know,” said Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who wasn’t involved in the new research.
But “the human family tree has got a lot of branchings. It’s entirely plausible there are a lot of branches out there we don’t know about.”
The discovery “is like many new finds,” said Eric Delson of Lehman College of the City University of New York, who didn’t participate in the new work. “You say, ‘I think this is different, but I’m not sure.’ And then you look for more material and you try to make better comparisons.”
The researchers, who say the Siberian species is not a direct ancestor of modern-day people, hope further genetic analysis will show if it’s a new species. Some experts are skeptical about whether such analysis will resolve that.
In any case, the finding emphasizes that quite unlike the present day, anatomically modern humans have often lived alongside their evolutionary relatives, one expert said.
“We weren’t alone,” said Todd Disotell of New York University, who was familiar with the new work. “When we became modern, we didn’t instantly replace everybody. There were other guys running around who survived quite well until very, very recently.”
Just last month, other researchers used DNA analysis to show the genetic diversity still present in residents of Africa, the cradle of the human race. And another project produced the first genome of an ancient human — a man who lived in Greenland some 4,000 years ago.
The new work, published online Wednesday by the journal Nature, is reported by Johannes Krause and Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and others.
They describe mapping DNA from what appeared to be a youngster’s pinkie finger bone, which had been recovered in 2008 from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. They showed how it differed from the DNA of 54 modern-day people and six Neanderthals.
Their analysis indicated that the Siberian species last shared a common ancestor with modern humans and Neanderthals about 1 million years ago. That, in turn, suggests that there was a previously unrecognized migration out of Africa around that time, they said.
The work decoded the complete set of DNA from mitochondria, the power plants of cells. That’s different from the the better-known DNA that comes from cell nuclei and determines things like eye color. Paabo said the researchers are working to decode nuclear DNA from the Siberian species. That will reveal whether it was closely related to Neanderthals or today’s humans, and answer questions like whether it interbred with Neanderthals or ancestors of modern-day people, he said.
Without a completed analysis of the nuclear DNA, “we are not saying this is a new species,” Paabo said, although he said that’s a likely possibility.
Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian Institute’s human origins program, said the Siberian find might represent Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus. And even analysis of the Siberian species’ nuclear DNA won’t show if it’s distinct from those ancestors, he said.
As for the study’s suggestion of a migration out of Africa about a million years ago, Potts said there’s already evidence of one or two migrations around that time.
The finger bone recovered from the Siberian species is not enough for a fossil-to-fossil comparison with other ancient species to show whether it’s a new species, Delson said.
He suspects it might be a descendant of Homo erectus that’s already documented in some fossil remains in northern Africa and Europe. Scientists are still trying to figure out how many species of the Homo grouping those bones represent and what name or names to attach to them, he said.
Disotell said the new creature could be an early version of Homo antecessor, a forerunner of Neanderthals and modern humans known from fossils in Spain. Or, he said, it could be a new species. In fact, the eventual decision could hinge mostly on the philosophical question of just how different a creature has to be to be declared a new species, he said.
Potts said that in the new work, “what we’re seeing is a really, really interesting distant echo of the DNA history of human evolution. … This is an amazingly powerful technique that these guys have. This is going to be a growth industry in the study of human evolution.”
TITLE: Kyrgyzstan’s Legacy of Repression Five Years Later
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — On the anniversary of the uprising that toppled Kyrgyzstan’s’s hardline leader, the same revolutionaries who came to power promising a new era of freedom announced they have given up on Western-style democracy.
Five years ago last week, about 1,000 angry protesters laid waste to Kyrgyzstan’s presidential compound, ousting President Askar Akayev and bringing hopes of a fresh start.
But as in Ukraine and Georgia, where peaceful revolutions raised similar hopes, dreams of sweeping change have soured. Many worry that this struggling Central Asian nation is rapidly plummeting into full-blown authoritarianism.
“The world is actively discussing the shortcomings of a model of democracy based on elections and human rights,” Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev told a national assembly Tuesday. “There is no certainty that such a model is suitable for all countries and peoples.”
Kyrgyzstan lacks the copious oil and gas reserves of its neighbors, but its strategic location has made it the object of lively interest from Russia and the United States, which both maintain bases here.
Attention from these eager suitors has done little, however, to improve the country’s economic health, and many people are gloomy about Kyrgyzstan’s future.
“All the talented and educated people are leaving the country,” said Aisha Maratova, a 39-year-old music teacher in the capital, Bishkek. “Kyrgyzstan was once respected as a democratic state — now it has an international image of a corrupt and backward country.”
Bakiyev — the opposition leader who spearheaded the Tulip Revolution of March 24, 2005 — was hailed as a reformer when he was appointed caretaker president that day following the sacking of Akayev’s office.
Emerging from the parliament, Bakiyev told a cheering crowd assembled in a central square of the capital that “freedom has finally come to us.”
Since then, Bakiyev has tightened his grip on power at the expense of the liberties he promised.
In recent years, government opponents have faced physical intimidation, threats and legal prosecution. Last summer, Bakiyev was elected to a second term as president in an election described as fraudulent by international election observers.
Independent reporters and political analysts critical of the government have been subjected to vicious beatings. And in recent weeks, the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kyrgyz radio service has been taken off the air, while prominent Central Asia-focused web sites have been made inaccessible.
Kyrgyz authorities deny they are trying to silence dissent, but experts are skeptical.
“The Tulip Revolution marked a negative turning point in the democratic development of Central Asia,” said Alexander Cooley, a political scientist at Columbia University.
Some hoped Kyrgyzstan’s revolt would help bring democracy and the rule of law to other former Soviet countries, but the opposite may have been the case.
“In countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Azerbaijan, alarmed governments equated democratization with regime change and clamped down on the activities of domestic civil society, externally sponsored non-governmental organizations and their media,” Cooley said.
Initially, the Tulip Revolution stoked expectations that the country might move Westward. Those hopes evaporated last year, when Bakiyev ordered the United States to vacate the Manas air base on the same day that Russia pledged billions of dollars in aid and loans.
Moscow appeared victorious in its apparent effort to squeeze the United States out of a region it views as its own fiefdom. But within months, the Kyrgyz again turned the tables, agreeing to allow the Americans to stay in exchange for higher rent for Manas.
All the diplomatic double game seems to have achieved is to anger Kyrgyzstan’s most steadfast allies.
“Relations with Russia have never been as bad as under the Bakiyev regime,” said Bishkek-based analyst Alexander Knyazev.
TITLE: Russia Uses Its UN Veto On a Table
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — The world wasn’t able to watch Thursday as the UN Security Council’s horseshoe-shaped table was taken apart and moved to another room while the chamber undergoes renovation. Russia vetoed a public dismantling.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said his government thought it would be “bad symbolism” for photographers and reporters to document the event, as the United Nations proposed. The council makes such decisions on the basis of consensus, meaning agreement of all 15 member governments is required.
Pictures of the table being taken apart would make it look “as if the United Nations and the Security Council is somehow falling apart,” Churkin said in an interview Wednesday. “The Security Council is working still. When they put it together I would very much appreciate their presence.”
Diplomats have gathered around the table more than 6,000 times during the past 50 years, once to witness U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson’s presentation in 1962 of evidence that Russia had put missiles in Cuba and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s case in 2003 that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The UN is carrying out a $1.9 billion renovation of the headquarters complex on First Avenue in Manhattan. Its electrical, plumbing and security systems haven’t been updated since construction was completed in 1952. Only about 400 people are still working in the 39-story main building, out of more than 3,600 before the update work began. Workers have been moved to various buildings in Manhattan.
TITLE: Homes on Napoleon’s Battlefied to Be Razed
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Here’s an unusual excuse for razing an entire settlement that the authorities have not used before — and are unlikely to use again.
The federal government wants to demolish a tiny settlement of 75 people in the Moscow region because it sits on the land where Napoleon fought the pivotal Battle of Borodino in 1812.
The old battlefield, the government says, needs to be restored to the way it looked after the fighting: a battle-scarred terrain devoid of the 14 dilapidated houses that now occupy the site.
The planned demolition of the settlement, Posyolok Borodinskogo Muzeya, located about 120 kilometers west of Moscow, is part of preparations to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Russia’s victory over Napoleon’s army.
Although Napoleon defeated the Russians at Borodino on Sept. 7, 1812, the victory proved to be his undoing because he ended up exhausting his forces by pressing deeper into Russia with the mistaken belief that the campaign could be won.
Most residents of the settlement are current and former staff of the State Borodino War and History Museum and Reserve, which is located nearby, and they are more than happy to give up their ramshackle homes in exchange for something better.
“The houses are made of panel board and meant for temporary living. The toilet is in the yard,” said Alexander Gorbunov, deputy director of the State Borodino War and History Museum and Reserve.
Gorbunov has been living in the settlement with his family for 30 years.
“We hope that funding will be allotted this year and a place will be found to build housing for us,” he told The Moscow Times.
The eagerness of the settlement’s residents to see their homes destroyed marks a stark contrast to the anger of homeowners who have seen their houses demolished by the authorities for various reasons.
In a recent example, Moscow City Hall razed more than 20 private houses in the Rechnik neighborhood and threatened to demolish the Fantasy Island residential complex in January after declaring that the homes had been illegally built.
City authorities backed off after President Dmitry Medvedev intervened.
City Hall has often torn down centrally located apartment buildings in the name of progress and resettled residents in neighborhoods in the city’s outskirts — much to the residents’ wrath.
Deputy Culture Minister Andrei Busygin announced the plans to knock down the settlement of Posyolok Borodinskogo Muzeya at the inaugural meeting of a 200th-anniversary planning committee on March 17.
“We are facing an obstacle in preserving the Borodino field. We have to knock down a settlement located directly on the Borodino field in the Mozhaisk district,” Busygin said.
But the government isn’t sure what to do with the residents. Although the houses are in ill repair, they cannot yet be condemned, which would qualify their owners for a government-sponsored resettlement program, Busygin said.
About 40 billion rubles ($1.4 billion) has been earmarked in the federal budget to resettle residents of condemned housing this year, Konstantin Tsitsin, head of the Housing and Utilities Reform Fund, a state corporation, said last month.
Busygin said the authorities were seeking private investors to build new houses for the residents.
“There is a willingness and opportunity to find investors to build housing and to relocate [residents],” he said, Interfax reported.
The first houses in Posyolok Borodinskogo Muzeya, or the Borodino Museum Community, were built for museum staff after World War II, in the late 1940s, by captured German and Italian soldiers, museum director Mikhail Cherepashenets said.
Other houses consist of former barracks brought from Arkhangelsk in 1978 to accommodate additional museum staff.
The settlement now consists of 14 shabby panel-board houses where 75 people live, Cherepashenets said.
Thirteen houses are state-owned and one, which was built by museum staff in Soviet times and later sold to its current owners, is private property.
Knocking down the houses is part of a government program to restore the historic and cultural landscape of the area, Cherepashenets said, adding that the government has promised to provide new housing for residents in one of the nearby villages.
Finding a way to preserve the Borodino battlefield represents a major problem that must be resolved this year, said Busygin, adding that the funding for the project had been appropriated in the budget. “There are some disagreements with the Economic Development Ministry and the Finance Ministry, but I think that we’ll solve this issue,” Busygin said.
In all, the government plans to spend about 2.4 billion rubles to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Russia’s 1812 victory over Napoleon, said Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov at the planning committee meeting.
Part of the funds will be spent on the construction of a new museum devoted to the Napoleonic war of 1812. The museum will display items from the vaults of Red Square’s State Historical Museum, Zhukov said.
The country already has at least two state museums devoted to 1812 — the State Borodino War and History Museum and Reserve and the Borodino Battle Panorama Museum on Moscow’s Kutuzovsky Prospekt.
TITLE: Governers Face Deadline to Provide Homes
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Nineteen regions are at risk of failing to provide free apartments to World War II veterans before a deadline coinciding with the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in May, the Regional Development Ministry said.
Governors in those regions, which include Leningrad, Stavropol and Udmurtia, face “very serious consequences” if they miss the May 1 deadline imposed by President Dmitry Medvedev, a Kremlin envoy said.
More than 60,000 veterans are queuing for the promised apartments, including 2,800 veterans who signed up for a waiting list by March 1, 2005, Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin said at a meeting Thursday dedicated to preparations for the 65th war anniversary.
About 59,000 veterans missed the 2005 deadline but are eligible for apartments under a second list being compiled by the government, Basargin said.
Medvedev promised in May 2008 to provide housing by the 65th anniversary of the end of the war for all World War II veterans, as well as family members of those already dead who were on the waiting list before March 1, 2005.
Medvedev said in his state-of-the-nation address in November that providing apartments for the veterans, regardless of whether their names were on the waiting list, was a key task for the government.
But Basargin warned that developers in 19 regions might not meet the deadline to complete apartment buildings where the government has bought homes for the veterans.
“We’ve found a number of possible delays to the deadlines for completing the houses,” he said, RIA-Novosti reported.
“The Udmurt republic and the Stavropol and Leningrad regions are causing the biggest concerns,” he told Medvedev, who chaired the meeting in Volgograd, the site of the Battle of Stalingrad, widely seen as a turning point in World War II.
Medvedev promised that all veterans who were on the waiting list before the 2005 deadline would get housing. He also said the list of those who missed the deadline would be completed soon.
Ilya Klebanov, the presidential envoy to the Northwestern Federal District, which includes the Leningrad region, hinted that regional officials who failed to meet Medvedev’s May 1 deadline might get fired.
“The consequences will be very serious for leaders who don’t fulfill this task, even though I realize its complexity,” Klebanov said.
He singled out Leningrad Governor Valery Serdyukov as a regional official who must speed up work on providing apartments.
Serdyukov denied that his region was experiencing delays, firing off a telegram on Friday to Basargin, Klebanov and Konstantin Chuichenko, head of the Kremlin’s control department, that darkly suggested Medvedev had been given incorrect information.
“The governor expressed his confusion regarding unreliable or false information being provided to the president of the Russian Federation,” the Leningrad regional administration said in a statement published on its web site.
The statement said 78 out of the 317 veterans and their families included on the region’s waiting list before March 1, 2005, had not received apartments but would get them by April 27.
Serdyukov also promised that 167 veterans and families who had missed the 2005 deadline would get apartments this year or in 2011.
“We have no serious concerns about not being able to meet the deadline for providing housing,” regional administration spokeswoman Yulia Slutskaya told The Moscow Times.
In Arkhangelsk, another of the 19 problem regions mentioned by Basargin, 30 veterans on the 2005 list are waiting for apartments, said regional administration spokeswoman Svetlana Antufyeva.
TITLE: Markets Rise Following Moscow Metro Bombs
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Stock markets rose the most in two weeks on Monday, being driven up by gains by telecoms operators, after a pair of deadly metro bombings rocked Moscow.
Two explosions — believed to be triggered by suicide bombers from the troubled North Caucasus — killed at least 36 people, the biggest such attack since 2004.
The MICEX Index was up 1.18 percent on the day to trade at 1,432.21 at 4 p.m., while the RTS Index gained 1.55 percent to trade at 1,542.36.
Telecoms operators were among the big winners after Kommersant reported that Russia may buy shares at a premium from minority owners of the country’s seven regional telecommunications operators as they are merged with Rostelecom.
Uralsvyazinform, a fixed-line operator in the Urals mountains region, had gained 11.6 percent by 4 p.m. to trade at 1.09 rubles, while Volgatelecom, the dominant operator in the Volga region, put on 4.96 percent to trade at 102.00.
The terrorist attacks, however, are likely to have a limited impact on equities and currency markets as they have become mostly immune to such events.
“Unfortunately, it’s not the first such attack in Russia, and the market has gotten used to such situations,” said Nikolai Podguzov, an analyst at Renaissance Capital.
TITLE: Sistema Agrees To Buy 49% Of Russneft
AUTHOR: By Yelena Mazneva
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Sistema, billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s holding company, said Friday that it reached an agreement to buy 49 percent of oil producer Russneft for no more than $100 million.
The final price will depend on whether Russneft meets a series of financial and operational targets, Sistema said. Closure of the deal is subject to a variety of other conditions, including approval from the relevant corporate structures, the results of a financial and legal audit, and approval from major creditors.
Russneft will need to complete a comprehensive restructuring of its debt, among other things, for the deal to be closed, a Sistema spokesperson said, declining to elaborate on when final approval might be reached.
As of Oct. 1, Russneft had loan debts of $6.3 billion, or roughly the same price that analysts have put on the entire company without counting its debt.
The oil producer’s main creditor is Sberbank. Russneft has loans of $1 billion and 14.7 billion rubles ($497 million) due to the state bank in 2012, as well as $2.7 billion due in 2016. Its second-largest creditor is Intersil Limited, a firm affiliated with Swiss trader Glencore, to which Russneft owes roughly $1 billion by the end of this year.
The Sistema spokesperson declined to name a deadline for Russneft’s restructuring.
Russneft and its owner, Mikhail Gutseriyev, could not be reached for comment.
The businessman founded Russneft in 2004. In the summer of 2007, after the company was hit with tax probes and two criminal cases were opened against him, Gutseriyev sold Russneft to Oleg Deripaska for about $3 billion and left Russia.
In late 2009, one of the cases against Gutseriyev, on tax charges, was dropped, and his acquaintances said he had begun thinking about returning to Russia.
In January, Gutseriyev regained control of Russneft. Spokespeople for Deripaska’s En+ Group said at the time that the deal was canceled because it did not receive approval from the state.
After that deal fell through, Sistema announced its interest. But because of Russneft’s high debt level, Sistema is limiting itself to a 49 percent stake, although it could consider buying control after a debt restructuring, Yevtushenkov has said.
Sources close to Sistema and Russneft have said Sberbank may get a 1 percent stake from Gutseriyev. As early as 2006, there were discussions that Glencore — which has minority stakes in virtually all of Russneft’s production assets — could receive an interest in the oil producer.
Sistema has been bolstering its oil portfolio, which now includes Bashneft and refineries in Ufa. Bashneft has an annual production of about 13 million metric tons, while Russneft’s yearly output is roughly 11 million tons.
TITLE: RZD Eurobond Debut Meets Strong Demand
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russian Railways on Friday sold debut foreign bonds at a lower yield than Gazprom’s similar-maturity debt on speculation that the notes would be included in benchmark bond indexes, making them more attractive to investors.
The $1.5 billion, seven-year bonds were priced to yield 5.739 percent, a banker with knowledge of the transaction told Bloomberg. This compares with a yield of 6.065 percent on Gazprom’s dollar bonds due 2018, according to Bloomberg prices. The yield on the rail company’s bond fell to 5.608 percent on Friday evening in Moscow, according to VTB Capital prices.
Russian Railways, the biggest issuer of ruble bonds, is selling foreign debt for the first time, providing an indicator for corporate borrowing ahead of Russia’s return to international capital markets 12 years after defaulting on $40 billion of domestic debt and devaluing the ruble.
Russian Railways is fully owned by the state, while Gazprom is just over 50 percent state-owned, qualifying the rail company to be included in JPMorgan Chase’s Emerging Markets Bond Index, boosting its appeal to a broader group of investors, said Nikolai Podguzov, a fixed-income analyst at Renaissance Capital.
“This would mean that some accounts should buy it automatically to track the index,” Podguzov said. “That explains the difference and the more aggressive pricing.”
Russian government officials will meet U.S. bond investors on April 21 and 22 to promote the eurobond sale. Russia plans to borrow as much as $17.8 billion abroad this year to help plug a budget shortfall.
Investors submitted about $10 billion of bids for the offering, reducing the yield to 245 basis points from an earlier price guidance of 250 to 260 basis points over the benchmark midswap rate, the banker said.
Strong demand for Russian Railways bonds “is not surprising” because there is an “obvious scarcity premium in a top credit name that hasn’t been on the eurobond market,” said Luis Costa, an emerging market strategist at Citigroup in London.
Russian companies sold just $13.6 billion of foreign-currency bonds last year, a five-year low, after the global financial crisis cut access to refinancing for riskier, emerging-market borrowers. The country’s borrowers sold about $5.4 billion of international bonds so far this year, according to Bloomberg data.
Russian Railways is rated Baa1 by Moody’s Investors Service, three levels above noninvestment grade, and one rank lower at BBB at Standard & Poor’s, the same as Russia’s sovereign credit rating.
TITLE: Central Bank Rates Cut Again
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Central Bank cut key rates by 25 basis points, knocking the ruble off multi-month highs on Friday, and analysts forecast more easing to come as the economy remains sluggish and the currency remains strong, Reuters reported.
The widely expected cut, the 12th in a year, puts the benchmark refinancing rate at a new historic low of 8.25 percent effective from Monday, March 29. That takes the cumulative easing since April 2009 to 475 basis points. It also cut the repurchase rate charged on one- and seven-day Central Bank loans to 7.25 percent from 7.5 percent.
“Despite certain positive changes in the dynamics of macroeconomic indicators pointing to a resumption of economic activity, this process remains not sufficiently stable,” the Central Bank said in a statement.
“By limiting the stimulus for short-term capital inflows, [the rate cuts] should help balance the domestic currency market,” it added, but noted that ruble volatility could increase in the future.
After the announcement, the ruble fell from an earlier peak of 33.92 against the euro-dollar basket — its strongest since late 2008 — to trade at 34.08.
“This is not a turnaround [in the ruble rally], it is a short-term reaction to the Central Bank’s decision,” said a dealer at a major foreign bank in Moscow.
Analysts had expected that any rate cut could prompt a knee-jerk sell-off in the ruble. But in the longer term, the currency still looks attractive to yield-hungry investors as oil prices hold at about $80 a barrel and Russia’s rates remain far higher than in most Western economies.
Tim Ash, an analyst at RBS, said the move was “as expected given the strength of the ruble, concern over the durability of the real economy recovery and the downside pressure on inflation.”
The fragility of Russia’s recovery from its first recession in a decade was underscored last week by data showing that the economy actually contracted in February month on month, hurt by falling investment and weak domestic demand.
While the rate cuts are filtering through to lower charges on loans, overall lending remains on a downward trend as banks fret about creditworthiness and companies are reluctant to launch new projects until demand recovers.
The Central Bank said the “advisability” of future rate moves would depend on inflation, manufacturing sector and lending dynamics and the state of the domestic financial market. The next rate decision is due in April, it said, giving no date.
The inclusion of the word “advisability” this month could be a hint that the monetary easing cycle is approaching its end.
But most analysts still expect at least one more move, noting that with inflation running at 6.9 percent year on year, there is still room for easing without compromising the Central Bank’s aim of keeping real rates positive.
(SPT, Bloomberg)
TITLE: Putin Shows Little in Azarov’s Gas Price Pitch
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s interest in operating Ukraine’s gas transit pipelines has declined, having taken great pains to promote other export routes, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, signaling that Kiev may have a hard time convincing Moscow to lower its gas import bill.
Putin made the statement Thursday night after meeting his Ukrainian counterpart, Mykola Azarov. The new Ukrainian prime minister laid out proposals for compensating Russia for a lower gas price, including an offer for Gazprom to join a planned international consortium that would run Ukrainian transit pipelines.
The European Union is wary of any friction between Moscow and Kiev in their gas trade, because 80 percent of the Russian gas it buys is transported across Ukraine. Previous disagreements between the countries have led to disruptions of substantial transit deliveries, most recently in January 2009.
Some interest in the consortium plan — a reincarnation of an agreement dating back to the early 2000s — still exists, Putin said. If created, the consortium would have to invest heavily in the long-neglected pipelines, recouping the money by collecting transit fees.
“If this takes shape in the course of a constructive dialogue, we, of course, are ready for this work,” Putin said.
The European Union has estimated that an upgrade of Ukraine’s gas pipeline grid, which is 10 years past its expected operational life, would cost 2.5 billion euros ($3.3 billion). The 13,500-kilometer pipeline network was built 40 years ago.
Moscow and Kiev plan to hold the next round of talks next month, when their intergovernmental commissions will meet to discuss trade, Azarov said.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Peugeot Hatchbacks
MOSCOW (SPT) — Peugeot will start production of the Peugeot 308 hatchback at its plant in the Kaluga region on April 23.
The plant, jointly controlled by PSA Peugeot Citroen and Mitsubishi, had been running in test mode since March. Peugeot plans to produce up to 20,000 cars there this year, Francois Poirier, head of Peugeot Russia, said Thursday.
Saab in Russia?
MOSCOW (SPT) — Saab is looking to build an assembly plant in Russia, said Vladimir Antonov, a former stakeholder in Spyker who left the company so it could buy Saab from General Motors.
“I think we will sign a memorandum of understanding regarding production in Russia … within a month,” Antonov, who said he was a financial adviser to Spyker CEO Viktor Muller, told Slon.ru web site Friday.
In all likelihood, the assembly facility will be in Kaliningrad and produce 10,000 cars per year, he said. Neither Saab nor Muller had any immediate response to the interview.
Crime Bill Passed
MOSCOW — The State Duma on Friday passed a bill in final reading that would let many suspects in economic crimes be released on bail instead of being sent to jail.
The Duma gave final approval to President Dmitry Medvedev’s bill in a vote of 374 to 55. All Communist lawmakers voted against it, saying portions of the legislation were too soft on certain economic crimes.
TITLE: Most U.S. Pork Bans Pulled
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Eighteen U.S. pork plants will be able to resume shipments to Russia within days after Moscow lifted a ban that had closed the United States’ fifth-largest export market for several months, officials said on Friday, Reuters reported.
Russia’s farm produce watchdog is preparing to allow imports from even more U.S. suppliers in the near future, officials from the body said, after Washington agreed its supplies would be free of an antibiotic that violated Moscow’s food safety rules. “I have signed documents lifting restrictions on practically all U.S. suppliers,” Sergei Dankvert, head of the Rosselkhoznadzor watchdog, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference.
Rosselkhoznadzor spokesman Alexei Alexeyenko later clarified that 18 U.S. enterprises were on the list of companies no longer subject to the ban. He said the documents were signed on Thursday and would take a few days to come into force.
“As soon as this is done, shipments can be renewed in full,” Alexeyenko said by telephone.
Russia and the United States have been involved in several disputes over meat supplies in recent years. Exports to Russia of pork, poultry and beef combined earned the United States more than $1.3 billion in 2008.
Poultry from the United States has been banned in Russia, the biggest U.S. export market, since Jan. 19 due to Moscow’s opposition to a chlorine wash routinely used in U.S. processing plants. Russia has said talks are progressing. The bans on pork were introduced in several stages last year on an individual plant basis. As of December, about 70 percent of U.S. pork suppliers to Russia had been banned.
Russia’s concerns centered on the presence of the antibiotic oxytetracycline, and Moscow has taken a tough line with Washington on food safety.
Some U.S. officials have said the bans could be politically motivated or linked to Russia’s plans to increase its self-sufficiency in pork and poultry meat.
Alexeyenko said Russia was prepared to widen the list of U.S. suppliers that would no longer be subject to the pork ban, although he declined to say how many plants were still banned.
“This is the start of some very serious work. A decision has been taken in principle and the list can be widened,” he said. “The American side has given official guarantees of the safety of its products.”
The U.S. Meat Export Federation said on March 12 that Moscow had approved the resumption of imports from 11 U.S. plants. Alexeyenko said these plants were among the 18 on the list approved by Dankvert.
Smithfield Foods Inc, the largest U.S. pork producer, said at the time that Russia had agreed to resume imports from its plant at Tar Heel, North Carolina, the world’s largest pork plant.
Russia was the fifth-largest export market for U.S. pork last year, taking nearly 139,500 metric tons, data from the U.S. Meat Export Federation shows.
TITLE: BRIC Countries Set Agriculture Priorities
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Brazil, Russia, India and China agreed to combat hunger and boost efforts to promote food security, according to a strategy signed by the countries’ agriculture ministers in Moscow on Friday.
“In order to promote food security, it is necessary to have a well-functioning, worldwide food market and a trade system based on the principles of justice and freedom from discrimination,” the declaration said. “Therefore speeding up the accomplishment of the WTO Doha round of talks is a primary task.”
The Doha round of negotiations, which started in 2001, is aimed at lowering trade barriers. The talks were stalled in 2008 over disagreements between developed and developing countries on measures that would allow poorer countries to levy tariffs on certain agricultural goods.
The four countries, known collectively as BRIC, agreed Friday to establish an agricultural information database that would help countries compute supply and demand and establish grain reserves.
In addition, the ministers agreed to reduce the effects of global climate change on food security and cooperate in the field of agricultural technology and innovation. An expert working group was set up to implement these measures, and it will meet on a regular basis, the statement said.
The four agriculture ministers — Russia’s Yelena Skrynnik, China’s Han Changfu, Brazil’s Guilherme Cassel and India’s Sharad Pawar — also made signs of boosting trade within the group.
The countries are home to 42 percent of the world’s population and 32 percent of its arable land, the Russian Agriculture Ministry said in a statement ahead of the meeting. Combined, the BRIC countries produce about 40 percent of the world’s wheat, 50 percent of its pork, more than 30 percent of its poultry and 30 percent of its beef, the statement said.
Skrynnik said after the meeting that Russia had made its first shipment of grain, 24,000 metric tons, to Brazil. The country already accounts for 65 percent of Russia’s meat imports ($2.1 billion) and 12.4 percent of total agriculture imports.
Skrynnik also said poultry from India could help replace U.S. imports of the meat, which were frozen when long-planned regulations went into effect that forbid the import of poultry treated with chlorine — a production method used by many U.S. producers. In exchange, Russia hopes to secure India as a buyer for its grain and oilseeds.
But Russia isn’t very interested in increasing its agriculture imports from other countries. Earlier this year, President Dmitry Medvedev signed a new food security doctrine, calling for 85 percent of all meat consumed in the country to be produced domestically. Instead, it is trying to position itself as a major regional agriculture supplier, hoping to double its exports of grain within 15 years.
TITLE: Government to Overhaul Migration Rules
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Pismennaya and Dmitry Kazmin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government is working on a plan to simplify the migration system, seeking to attract foreign professionals and investors, which it says are necessary to help modernize the country.
Among the Economic Development Ministry’s proposals to improve the country’s investment climate, simplifying the migration system is first on the list.
The main goal at the moment is to entice the best minds to the country, a government official said. This means personnel not only for future innovation cities, but for the educational sphere as well, as “modernization without smart personnel is impossible.”
The Federal Migration Service developed these proposals, said Oleg Artamonov, an advisor to the service’s director. “We already tested out this proposal with France, with which Russia signed an agreement on preferences for highly qualified specialists and managers, as well as their family members and accompanying staff,” he said.
A repeal of the limits on the labor market and an improvement in visa support are necessary for innovators and investors to come to Russia, Artamonov said.
For such people, officials are offering to cancel quotas on work permits and visa invitations, to stop using permits for foreign workers and to allow their hiring without approval from employment agencies. While it currently takes 12 to 23 months to prepare the documents for such a worker, the new system will require no more than a month, the Economic Development Ministry said in a presentation.
Now, foreigners can get work permits for one year, but only for specific regions (for instance, if a person works in St. Petersburg, then he cannot work in Moscow on the same permit). The ministry is proposing to unify the permit system and increase the length of permits to three years or according to the length of the employment contract.
“The period of one year for foreigners is a joke,” a government official said. “And our five-year passports are a farce. We only give our scientists five-year passports, while foreign governments give them 10-year visas.”
“The fact that foreign investment has frozen to a certain extent due to migration barriers and that this is accounted for in investment decisions is true — the feedback from our clients testifies to this,” said Yevgeny Reizman, a partner at Baker & McKenzie.
The proposed measures require more amendments to legislation, including to the law “On the legal situation of foreign citizens,” as well as the Tax and Budget Codes, said the government source. But the proposals already exist and are now being discussed with the relevant agencies, he said. Staff in the Economic Development Ministry and the Federal Migration Service are planning on making the changes quickly, so that they would go into effect Jan. 1, 2011.
Russia has problems with foreign workers, said Jere Calmes, board member of Tele2 and former CEO of pharmacy chain 36.6. To extend your visa you have to leave the country and return to your own country. If Russia wants to attract highly qualified foreigners, it’s important to change this, he said.
The list of quota-free categories of workers needs to be expanded as much as possible for highly qualified managers and specialists, Reizman said. According to current procedures, employers have to say a year in advance what kind of worker they will need.
To bring a foreign representative to Russia is so difficult that it’s insulting, said Sergei Guriev, rector of the New Economic School. Getting a work permit at the school took one professor more than a year. He had to come several times to fill out different documents, Guriev said. “When people see how the migration authorities treat them, their desire to work in Russia sharply declines,” he said. For some people, this problem cannot be overcome, and instead of Russia, they go to work in Latin America or Europe, he said.
TITLE: Protests Over Weekend as Baikalsk Paper Mill Prepares to Relaunch
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Between 800 and 1,000 people turned out Sunday on Bolotnaya Ploshchad to protest the planned relaunch of a paper and pulp plant on Lake Baikal, Greenpeace Russia spokesman Yevgeny Usov said by phone.
The protest followed demonstrations Saturday as well as a rally in favor of restarting the facility in Baikalsk.
The Baikalsk Paper and Pulp Mills has been preparing for relaunch since Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a decree in January that would allow the plant to dump waste into the lake. The facility could be restarted in early April, Baikalsk Mayor Valery Pintayev said Sunday on Ekho Moskvy radio.
The day before, about 200 people gathered in St. Petersburg to demand that the government revoke its decision. Another 500 rallied closer to Baikal, in the city of Ulan-Ude in the republic of Buryatia, organizers of the rally said.
Several hundred supporters of the factory, which employs 1,600 people, gathered Saturday in Baikalsk in a rally organized by the mill.
The mill said in an e-mailed statement that more than 1,000 people turned out for their rally, including Irkutsk Governor Dmitry Mezentsev. Interfax reported that 700 turned out in Baikalsk, citing Pintayev.
The decision to reopen the mill is seen as part of the government’s broader support for Russia’s single-industry towns, which are often located in remote areas. The government owns 49 percent of the mill. Oligarch Oleg Deripaska owns a minority stake.
TITLE: High-Speed Sapsan Train Has Locals Up in Arms
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Traveling by train between Moscow and St. Petersburg can be perilous.
The Nevsky Express, which travels along that route, was the target of two terrorist bombings in 2007 and 2009. But after the launch of the new high-speed Sapsan train, travelers are finding that they have become targets of a different group: disgruntled locals.
The Sapsan train, which had its maiden trip in December, has provoked the outrage of those who live near the railway, many of whom are venting their anger by pelting the passing train with rocks and ice. Locals say the new train causes huge inconveniences for them, and they point to two fatal accidents in which the train has already been involved.
A man was killed in December when he was struck while sitting on the edge of a train platform in the Tver region, and in February, a woman died when she was hit while trying to cross the train tracks at the Obukhovo station in St. Petersburg.
The police are currently investigating nine cases of vandalism against the train, which zips along the track at a snappy 250 kilometers per hour, a source with the police in the Northwest Federal District told RIA-Novosti earlier this month.
One of the vandals caught throwing ice at Sapsan was detained in January and identified as Mikhail Samartsev, 35, from the village of Leontyevo in the Tver region. Samartsev, who has a criminal record, said his motive for attacking the high-speed train was anger, precipitated by an incident in which he was knocked off his feet by a blast of air as the train passed.
Locals are also angry because Russian Railways, the country’s state-owned railway monopoly and the operator of Sapsan, did not consult them before canceling a number of commuter and long-distance trains, causing massive inconveniences for many in the region.
Russian Railways, known as RZD, played down the complaints, saying the company had done its best to accommodate all parties.
“There have been minor cancellations, and we did our utmost to keep the trains of different price segments operational,” a spokeswoman said, asking not to be named in line with company policy.
“Besides, Sapsan isn’t the only cause of schedule changes. Trains are canceled because of railway repairs and other reasons. Sapsan is only eliciting such an interest among the public because it is a new, high-profile project.”
Four round trips for commuter trains on short routes between Moscow and St. Petersburg have ceased running as of Dec. 18, according to data provided by RZD, while 81 or 82 round trips, depending on the day of the week, are still active daily.
Three long-distance trains were canceled, including the inexpensive and popular Yunost train, long used by students because of the 350 ruble ($11.80) ticket price. An economy-class ticket on the Sapsan is currently available for 2,408 to 3,596 rubles, depending on the time of the departure.
“The train schedule is changing every day, and many people find it difficult to travel to Moscow, where they work, and back,” said Anton Stamplevsky, head of the local Yabloko party.
“Until recently, people had to walk a long distance to get to the Zalineiny district [of the city of Tver] just to cross the railway because of the new barriers installed to avoid accidents. The situation has improved, however — people are now allowed to cross through the terminal without paying for the ticket.”
“The number of commuter trains was reduced and the schedule was altered in a very inconvenient way,” said Lyudmila Vorobyova, first secretary of the Communist Party’s Tver regional committee.
Things could get worse with the start of the dacha season in May, she said.
But for many, it’s not just the inconvenience caused by the new train, but a matter of principle. Local residents are furious that the government chose to buy an imported product, rather than support local industry, Stamplevsky said.
In 2006, RZD acquired eight Velaro high-speed trains for 276 million euros ($368 million) from Germany’s Siemens and signed a 30-year, 354-million-euro contract to maintain them. In addition, the company is considering building a new Moscow-St. Petersburg route, for which it may acquire 20 high-speed trains from France’s AGV, RZD’s senior vice president Valentin Gapanovich said last month.
“We have several train maintenance enterprises in the region, including the major ones located in Tver and Torzhok, which have been out of work, and workers there don’t get paid,” Stamplevsky said, adding that vandalism was often the only option for many who want to draw attention to regional problems.
“I think these ‘Robin Hoods’ who hurl stuff at trains are people who are stuck in these small villages across the region, being unemployed for years without any hope of earning a decent living,” he said.
Local residents commute to Moscow and back in tightly packed commuter trains, and they see the comparatively luxurious Sapsan as the cause of their problems, Vorobyova said.
“Most people in the Tver region cannot afford to travel on the Sapsan, and therefore it is perceived as a bourgeois means of transport, which causes the hate,” she said.
Travelers aren’t at any particular risk from the projectile rocks and ice, but if residents decide to start firing guns at the train, such an attack could be deadly, Dmitry Pegov, RZD’s head of high-speed transport, told Izvestia earlier this month.
The vandalism comes after two major terrorist bombings of the Nevsky Express train, which travels along the Moscow-St. Petersburg route: one in August 2007, in which 30 people were injured, and another in November 2009, in which 28 people were killed and 90 were injured.
In December, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin allocated 1 billion rubles in subsidies to improve security on the route. The Transportation Ministry suggested setting up security posts every 20 kilometers of the route, in addition to the existing CCTV monitoring system.
The RZD spokeswoman would not comment on the new security measures, saying the plans were confidential.
TITLE: Five Regions Shift Clocks Toward Moscow as Time Zones Are Lost
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The former superpower Russia suffered another downsizing this weekend, and at President Dmitry Medvedev’s initiative, no less.
The world’s biggest country by land mass shed two of its time zones when daylight saving time was introduced nationwide early Sunday as five regions shift to zones lying to the west — that is, closer to Moscow.
Chukotka and Kamchatka in the Far East, as well as south Siberian Kemerovo, Samara and Udmurtia further west, edged one hour closer to the capital by simply not moving their clocks forward an hour.
The result is nine contiguous time zones between Moscow and the Pacific Ocean, although the country still encompasses ten zones — ranging from Moscow time minus one hour to Moscow time plus eight hours — when including the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea.
The initiative came from Medvedev, who surprised observers in his state-of-the-nation address last fall by saying the country should consider reducing its time zones and rethink the logic of daylight saving time.
Officials around the country have eagerly carried out the task, arguing that it makes it easier to communicate with Moscow. And while critics say the switch is a pointless issue that only shows the president’s political impotence, the only significant opposition so far has been in the Samara region.
The president defended the plan last Wednesday, when he told a Kremlin meeting of experts and officials that he came up with the idea after being pressed by the regions.
Reducing time zones, Medvedev argued, would stimulate business and make governing easier.
He added that the Kremlin was studying the further amalgamation of time zones in the Urals and western Siberia. “This is possible but … we need to calculate consequences and monitor all factors, including biological, economic and international,” he said.
Some of the leaders of the five regions involved in the time shift this Sunday offered peculiar arguments for the move.
Chukotka Governor Roman Kolpin said being an hour closer to Moscow would allow his people to watch more national television. “Access to educational programs is extremely important given our informational isolation,” he said in a statement on his administration’s web site.
Located at the country’s easternmost tip, opposite Alaska, Chukotka will see its time difference to Moscow reduced from nine hours to eight. The Arctic region was governed by billionaire Roman Abramovich from 2000 to 2008.
Aman Tuleyev, governor of the coal-rich Kemerovo region in southern Siberia, told Medvedev during the Kremlin meeting that reducing the time difference made life easier for people who had been “confused” by the fact that the next time zone to the west was just an hour’s drive away.
Tuleyev also lobbied for totally abolishing daylight saving time, arguing that it was bad for both miners and cattle. After each time switch, accidents in coal mines rise sharply while cows do not adjust their milking habits, he said.
“The number of illnesses, primarily cardiovascular ones, rises sharply, mainly among veterans,” Tuleyev said, citing several years’ data for the month following each jump forward or back.
Medvedev promised to consider abandoning daylight saving time, though he cautioned that this could isolate the country because it is observed practically everywhere in Europe.
Introduced by the Soviet Union in 1981, much later than in Western Europe, daylight saving time remains unpopular among many officials. The State Duma is currently considering a draft law to abandon it, which cites the number of “illnesses, suicides and accidents” it causes.
The most notable opposition came from Samara, a Volga region with some 2.5 million inhabitants.
The switch would eradicate the so-called Samara time zone, one hour ahead of the capital, which hitherto represented two islands on Russia’s time zone map, along with the Udmurtia republic further north, which will also adopt Moscow time.
The Samara legislature voted 27-11 for the switch on March 12, but Mikhail Matveyev, an independent deputy, is campaigning against the decision.
“Nobody discussed it with the people. Decisions from the top are not good for a democratic country like Russia,” he told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday. Locals would miss peculiar traditions around their time zone, Matveyev explained.
People in the region like to celebrate New Year’s twice: first according to local time and again one hour later, by Moscow time, he said. “But our political elite does not care about those traditions,” he said.
Matveyev also complained that all regional time changes went westward — toward Moscow. “This means setting clocks forward and getting up earlier,” he said.
Some in the region must even start two hours earlier: Children in the village of Komsomolsk will have to get up at 5 a.m. to get to their school, located in the Orenburg region, now two time zones to the east, the Mir Television channel reported this week.
An online petition to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, organized by Matveyev on the Girus.ru web site, had garnered nearly 12,500 signatures by late Thursday.
Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said the time zone initiative was telling for Medvedev’s weakness at reforming the political system.
“This is something where he can act totally independent from Putin. But it is a niche pretty much at the fringes of politics,” Petrov told The St. Petersburg Times.
Sergei Kravchenko, a Moscow-based psychologist and member of the Nature of Time Institute, an unofficial group of scientists, said moving time zones would invariably add stress to people’s lives.
“We already have a lot of stress. The last 20 years have been without rest for Russians,” he said.
TITLE: The EU Lifesaver
AUTHOR: By Oleg Vyugin
TEXT: The crisis is not over. There are three economic indicators that demonstrate this. The first is the continuing growth of foreign exchange reserves in China and the corresponding increase in U.S. budget deficits. China consumes far less than it could in relation to its economic potential, while Americans consume too much and beyond their means. Thus, the main macroeconomic imbalance at the heart of the crisis remains unchanged. This has led to prolonged low interest rates and bubbles in selected markets.
The second indicator is the high level of unemployment in the countries hardest hit by the crisis. The absence of new jobs means that the private sectors in those countries bear no short-term prospects for growth in demand. The result is that privately held companies continue to cut costs. The third indicator is the declining level of private debt. The desire of private companies to reduce their debt and the reluctance of banks to extend credit testify to the high risks still facing the global economy and the threat of a further weakening of the financial situation of the world’s leading credit and financial institutions.
The key question is how the world will overcome these problems.
There is a real possibility that over the next few years more countries will resort to protectionist policies in an attempt to save their domestic economies. Developed economies will be forced to continue their policies of low interest rates and high fiscal deficits. Meanwhile, government spending will be less effective in stimulating economies. All of these factors will prolong the global stagnation.
One potential solution is if Chinese families increase consumption. The refusal by Chinese authorities to restructure their economy in favor of increased consumption or to be more flexible regarding the yuan exchange rate to maintain a high rate of economic growth and employment levels makes it impossible for the United States to eliminate its trade deficit through standard market mechanisms. The United States needs to increase exports, reduce consumption per household, increase the rate of national savings, invest more in industry and reduce its deficits. Without those measures, the Federal Reserve cannot step in to raise the abnormally low base rate and keep bubbles out of the stock market. That situation will likely push the United States toward increased protectionist trade policies, which will reduce overall demand and slow down the global recovery.
The Russian economy, which remains extremely sensitive to external factors, has fared worse during the crisis than any other Group of 20 economy. The country should use the crisis to draw the necessary conclusions. Russia must bring its head back down out of the clouds regarding fiscal policy. Even when oil prices remain at $70 per barrel, the country’s deficit is projected to be 5 percent of gross domestic product. Runaway spending during the pre-crisis period of rapid growth in commodity prices and the unprecedented influx of foreign capital sent budget spending through the roof. One serious problem is that ballooning state subsidies and cash infusions for favored domestic industries are crowding out the more effective private investments. Finally, the capital inflows that boosted the economy in the 2000s were largely a form of repatriation of Russian capital. Unfortunately, many misguided steps were taken that have turned that inflow into an outflow.
The government’s continued support of state-owned companies is fraught with the risk of running up deficits. It would be wrong to assume that there are more people in the government and state-owned companies with Russia’s best interests at heart than there are in the ordinary business community. It would make more economic sense to have state policies that win the trust of citizens and investors than to continue the unchecked growth of government spending and the sinking of budgetary funds into an economy fraught with corruption.
The European Union may be the best stabilizer. With its diversified and highly competitive industries, its balance between the industrial and financial sectors and its reasonable and prudent regulatory policies for the financial sector, it will serve as the best anchor as the crisis unfolds, the guarantor against further drops in GDP. Germany and France are best positioned to lead this stabilization, although their decrease in exports has already caused concerns.
The EU’s aggregate economy would be stronger if it weren’t for its weak links: above all, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Latvia. Addressing the weaknesses in these countries is perhaps the most important challenge facing Europe’s largest economies.
Oleg Vyugin is the chairman of the board of directors of MDM Bank. This comment appeared in Vedomosti.
TITLE: Why Putin Isn’t Afraid of a Free Internet
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Have you ever wondered why the Kremlin does not control the Internet as China does?
China surpasses Russia on every conceivable front. After Russia suffered more than any other country in the Group of 20 during the crisis, economists rallied to rename BRIC as BIC, while China overtook Germany to become the world’s largest exporter.
During 10 years of Vladimir Putin’s rule, Russia collected more than $1.5 trillion selling oil and gas but didn’t build a single kilometer of new highway. In the same period, China built 5,000 to 6,000 kilometers of highways every year.
China is also the world leader in building nuclear power plants. It produces more wind energy than any other country. Most of the world’s computers are assembled in China, and China has become the world’s largest market for automobiles.
At the same time, China maintains far tighter control over the media than Russia does. A new Great Wall cuts off the Chinese Internet from the world. The scope of misinformation spewed out by China surpasses the wildest dreams of Russia’s state-controlled Channel One television. For example, official Chinese propaganda claims that students attacked soldiers on Tiananmen Square.
Chinese authorities initially encouraged the quasi-religious Falun Gong sect, but when its membership outnumbered that of the Communist Party, they ruthlessly cracked down on the movement. The followers of Falun Gong are probably just as crazy as any other sect, but they are peaceful and have never been prohibited in other countries.
In contrast to China’s Communist Party, the Kremlin has nothing to brag about, so why doesn’t it enact tighter controls of the Internet to cover up negligence, incompetence and abuses?
The answer is that those 700 million peasants who play a crucial role in China’s modernization and economic boom are also the power base for any potential mass uprising. China’s ruling party is afraid that free speech on the Internet could cause the spark that mobilizes the peasants, transforming them into a huge and dangerous social force — just like a peaceful atom, which, under the right conditions, can unleash a nuclear blast.
But Putin doesn’t face this danger at all. Russia’s equivalent to the Chinese peasant is the archetypal Vanya the tractor driver. Vanya has been drinking for the past 30 years and uses his tractor mainly to get to the local store to buy another bottle of vodka, not to work his plot of land.
In contrast, the typical Chinese peasant is prepared to work, eat and sleep at the factory for five years straight to save up a few thousand dollars to open his own little kiosk selling fruit or other goods. Vanya the tractor driver will never vote for a liberal opposition candidate, nor will he take part in a protest or rebellion. Deep in his soul, he understands that he doesn’t deserve anything more in life than his beloved bottle of vodka.
The Communist Party of China is not worried about the occasional journalist or member of a sect who gains access to a free Internet, but it is deeply worried about the hundreds of millions of people who could be mobilized by these ideas and take their protests to the streets.
Putin, however, has absolutely nothing to fear. He knows that no storm raging over the Internet in reaction to the latest police shooting of innocent people can ever drive Vanya and the millions like him out of their constant state of inertia and onto the streets.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Polonsky Studies Light From Molotov’s Magic Lantern
AUTHOR: By Sebastian Neave
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Vyacheslav Molotov’s initials are the same as the acronym for the death penalty in Russian, vyshaya mera, the “highest measure.” He was a monster; one of Stalin’s most loyal henchmen who personally signed 373 documented execution lists containing the names of 43,569 people in the years of the Great Terror — more than Stalin himself. He was, however, a true bibliophile. The personal library in his former apartment in central Moscow forms the foundation for Molotov’s Magic Lantern, Rachel Polonsky’s splendid journey through Russian history. Molotov had owned these books “as a true collector possesses: poring over them, ordering them, living in them.” The foreign banker who found himself living in Molotov’s former home handed over the keys to Polonsky with the words, “You’re the scholar, you’ll know what to make of it all.” And we can be very grateful that he did.
Polonsky’s book is a breath of fresh air. It is not another chronological drudge through Russian history, from Kievan Princes to Putin with nothing but the steady ticking of time dragging it along. This is a hybrid of biography, political, scientific and cultural history; an ode to Russian literature and a monument to books and reading, all disguised in the form of a travelogue. That might sound complicated but it makes sense, as Polonsky explains, “history does not move forward. It moves not in a line, or a circle, it moves in an arabesque”. Molotov’s Magic Lantern is chronologically all over the place. Polonsky is more concerned with the way history works — how people and places are interlinked and the surprising frequency with which great ironies come about as a result.
A quick glance at the contents shows that each chapter is centred on a single place; starting in Moscow in the “the Party Archive” (as Molotov’s apartment building is still referred to by some Muscovites) and moves, chapter by chapter further away from Moscow, via a bath house, colonies of dachas, obscure provincial towns and vast areas of forest, tundra and steppe. Moscow is at the centre of this history, figuratively and geographically. Polonsky points out that the Kremlin, on maps, “looks like the round centre of a compass, with roads leading out of it to north, east, south and west into the spreading, never-quite-defined lands it tries to rule.” It is this central seat of power, along with Molotov’s sinister collection of annotated books, some with hairs eerily tucked between their pages, which acts as an anchor for Polonsky’s travels around Russia. Everything is skilfully linked back to Molotov and his surprisingly varied volumes.
It is the people Polonsky meets and their acts and writings, which she uncovers on her travels through history that give the book its character and originality. She makes her way to Staraya Russa, where Dostoevsky wrote the final instalments of Demons, under secret police surveillance; to Taganrog, the childhood home of Chekhov, Molotov’s favorite writer; Vologda, where Molotov himself was exiled before the revolution; north to Murmansk and east to Irkutsk, on the steppe which proved so useful to Stalin’s regime as a place “to which all the scum and rubbish can be sent.”
The myriad connections and coincidences over which Polonsky stumbles on her travels make for wonderfully satisfying reading. Who would have guessed that Chekhov’s maths teacher in provincial Taganrog would be the father of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the notorious first head of the Cheka, whose statue stood in front Lubyanka until an angry mob tore it down in 1999? Polonsky also picks up on the more melancholic ironies of Russian history, for example, the fact that the Soviet regime actually did much to venerate the work of writers such as Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, whose work it was trying to repress.
As an ode to books and reading, Molotov’s Magic Lantern is a delight to read. It is a book by a booklover about booklovers. (Polonsky herself seems charmingly unable to resist buying and collecting books all over Russia.) She finds a volume in the Lenin library in Moscow in which the previous owner’s bookplate reads; “Long live the book, the most powerful weapon in the struggle for truth and justice!” This seems to be Polonsky’s overlying message as she outlines the struggle of the Decembrists, the Mandelstams, the Shalamovs and the Politkovskayas who have indeed struggled for truth and justice and brought light to the darker periods of Russian history.
One senses that Polonsky is not that interested in contemporary politics, but nonetheless Putin’s regime lurks as a shadow throughout her work. For example, the parallels drawn between the murdered journalist Politkovskaya and the repressed 20th century poet Marina Tsvetayeva and between Khordokovsky and the Decembrists are hard to ignore.
One drawback of the book, however, is the difficulty in keeping up with Polonsky’s immense knowledge of Russia’s political and literary history. To non-specialist readers, the task of getting the facts, names and dates in order could diminish the narrative power of the work. The endless cross-references of writers and writing, and writers writing about reading other writers, can often become confusing.
However, let that take nothing away from the achievement of this work. Polonsky has thankfully written a book lacking the egoism of many western works about Russia. Molotov’s Magic Lantern is a poignant and personal tribute to the vast range of people, through whose deeds, despite the persecution of men like Molotov, Russian literary and political history has become such a rich and captivating subject.
Molotov’s Magic Lantern is available in the Galitzine Memorial Library.
TITLE: Golden Mask Reveals The Year’s Best Operas
AUTHOR: By Raymond Stults
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — This year’s Golden Mask theatrical awards festival, which officially began on March 27, has come up with a bumper crop of 11 nominees for best opera production of the 2008-2009 season. Unfortunately, for various technical reasons and because of a shortage of available venues, Moscow audiences are being treated to only seven of them.
Three nominations — for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” and “Idomeneo” and a triple bill of new operas by three different composers based on stories by Nikolai Gogol, called “Gogoliada” — have gone to St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, a five-time past winner of a Golden Mask for best production of opera. In addition, five participants in the three productions have received individual nominations. “The Marriage of Figaro” played in Moscow early last month, but neither of the other two productions is scheduled for an appearance here.
Despite having one less nominated production than the Mariinsky, Moscow’s own Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater is the clear-cut winner of this year’s Golden Mask opera nomination sweepstakes. In addition to having in contention its productions of Vladimir Kobekin’s “Hamlet (Danish) (Russian) Comedy” and Gaetano Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” no fewer than 14 participants in one or another of those productions have received individual nominations.
The Novosibirsk Theater of Opera and Ballet is also the recipient of two nominations for best production of opera — Giuseppe Verdi’s “Macbeth” and Alexander Borodin’s “Prince Igor” — and six participants have been singled out for individual nominations. Neither production is being presented in Moscow.
Moscow’s third contender for the best production of opera award is Novaya Opera’s staging of Giacomo Puccini’s one-act comic masterpiece “Gianni Schicchi.”
The other nominees are Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” from the St. Petersburg Opera, a second version of the same composer’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” from the Yekaterinburg Theater of Opera and Ballet, and a new work by composer Alexander Tchaikovsky, titled “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and based on Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel of the same name, from the Perm Theater of Opera and Ballet.
Overall, the Golden Mask is fielding what appears to be a much stronger group of operatic contenders than it did a year ago. My guess is that the winner for best production is likely to be either Kobekin’s wild and wonderful updating of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, the same theater’s elegantly staged and sung “Lucia di Lammermoor” or the Novosibirsk “Macbeth,” a co-production with the Paris Opera that boasts the same director/conductor team of Dmitry Chernyakov and Teodor Curentzis that so successfully brought Alban Berg’s opera “Wozzeck” to the Bolshoi last November — though perhaps the Mariinsky’s “Idomeneo” or the Alexander Tchaikovsky opera from Perm have an outside chance at the prize.
Eight productions have been nominated for best production of ballet, among them two stunning one-act ballets from Moscow theaters, Leonid Desyatnikov’s “Russian Seasons” from the Bolshoi Theater, with choreography by the theater’s much-missed former ballet artistic director, Alexei Ratmansky, and “Na Floresta,” a work by master Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato, from the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. Also among single-act ballet nominees are two from the Novosibirsk Theater of Opera and Ballet: George Balanchine’s “Who Cares?” performed to music by George Gershwin, and “Immortal Beloved,” choreographed by Taiwanese-American Edward Liang and performed to music by Philip Glass.
The other four ballet nominees are all full-length productions: from the Perm Theater of Opera and Ballet, “Medea,” originally created for the San Francisco Ballet by Yury Posokhov (choreographer of the Bolshoi’s current version of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Cinderella”) and set to music by Maurice Ravel; from the Mariinsky, Roland Shchedrin’s “The Little Hump-Backed Horse,” choreographed by Ratmansky and already given its Moscow Golden Mask performance earlier this month; from the Musical Theater of the Republic of Karelia, in Petrozavodsk, Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” choreographed by Kirill Simonov; and from St. Petersburg’s Boris Eifman Ballet Theater, “Onegin,” created, like all of the theater’s repertoire, by the choreographer whose name it bears.
The two Ratmansky ballets and Duato’s “Na Floresta” look like the strongest contenders for best production of ballet. But considering the unpredictability of past Golden Mask juries, a surprise winner could well emerge from among the other five.
Finally, a note concerning the award for best operetta or musical. Among the nominees in that category is the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko’s “Evening of Classical Operetta,” with two of its participants also nominated for individual awards. Those nominations, added to the others for opera and ballet, bring the theater’s total to 20. A search of the Golden Mask festival archives seems to indicate that no theater has ever before received such a large number of nominations at any of the 16 festivals to date.
For Golden Mask festival tickets and information, call 755-8335 or log on to www.goldenmask.ru.
TITLE: S. Korea: Mine from N. Korea May Have Sunk Ship
AUTHOR: By Hyung-Jin Kim
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea may have deliberately directed an underwater mine toward the South Korean naval ship that exploded and sank three days ago near a disputed maritime border, the defense minister told lawmakers Monday.
Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said military authorities have not ruled out North Korean involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, which split apart within minutes of an explosion in the rear hull late Friday night, according to the ship’s captain.
Fifty-eight crew members were rescued from the Yellow Sea waters near Baengnyeong Island west of Seoul, but 46 others are missing, most likely inside a rear segment of the ship, military officials said. Divers rapping on the stern with hammers got no response Monday, military officials said.
South Korean officials have been careful to say the exact cause of the explosion remains unknown, and that the rescue mission remains their priority.
However, Kim told lawmakers Monday that North Korean involvement was one possibility.
“North Korea may have intentionally floated underwater mines to inflict damage on us,” he said.
The two Koreas remain in a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953. North Korea disputes the maritime border drawn by the United Nations in 1953, and the western waters — not far from where the Cheonan went down — have been the site of three bloody skirmishes between North and South.
A mine placed by North Korea during the Korean War may also have struck the ship, he said. Many of the 3,000 Soviet-made mines North Korea planted during the war were removed, but not all. Kim noted that a North Korean mine was discovered as recently as 1984.
There are no South Korean mines off the west coast, he added. Kim also ruled out a torpedo attack, citing rescued sailors who were manning the radars.
Officials have also said an internal malfunction may be to blame. The 1,200-ton Cheonan is designed to carry weapons, and was involved in a previous skirmish with North Korea.
U.S. and South Korea military officials said there was no outward indication that North Korea was involved in the sinking of the Cheonan.
However, “neither the government nor the defense ministry has ever said that there was no possibility of North Korea’s involvement,” Kim said.
The North Korean military was keeping a close watch on the search operation, the Joint Chiefs of Staffs said in a defense committee report cited by the Yonhap news agency.
But Pyongyang’s state media have made no mention of the ship. The North Korean military’s first comments since the ship went down warned the U.S. and South Korea on Monday against engaging in “psychological warfare” by letting journalists into the Demilitarized Zone.
President Lee Myung-bak said rescuers “should not give up hope” of finding the crewmen, according to a statement from the presidential Blue House after Lee met with a security ministers Monday.
“We’ll continue our search operation until the last minute without giving up hope of rescuing even a single survivor,” a Joint Chiefs officer said Monday on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.
But the prospect of pulling out anyone alive seemed dim Monday. Any navy crewmen who initially survived and managed to seal themselves inside watertight cabins would likely have run out of air by Monday night since the supply of oxygen in the cabins was estimated to last up to 69 hours.
Rough waves over the weekend prevented military divers from gaining access to the wreckage. On Monday afternoon, divers finally reached the ship’s rear segment — where most of the missing were believed to be trapped.
Divers knocked on the ship with hammers but there was no response, Rear Adm. Lee Ki-sik of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters.
The U.S. Navy sent four ships and a team of divers to join the search, said Lt. Anthony Falvo, a spokesman for the U.S. 7th Fleet, based just south of Tokyo.
At a naval base south of Seoul, anguished relatives waited for news from the search mission, some pounding their chests with grief.
“My baby, my baby!” one woman murmured while being carried on a gurney to an ambulance after briefly losing consciousness.
TITLE: Race On To Rescue 153 Coal Miners
AUTHOR: By Gillian Wong
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: XIANGNING, China — Rescuers working in a drizzling rain raced Monday to free 153 coal miners trapped deep underground by a flood that may have started when workers digging a new mine in northern China accidentally broke into a network of old, water-filled shafts.
Such derelict tunnels are posing new risks to miners across China even as the country improves safety in its notoriously hazardous mines, where accidents kill thousands each year.
So far, there has been no contact with the trapped miners, more than 24 hours after the flooding.
“Their situation until now is still unknown so that is making everyone very worried,” said Liu Dezheng, a chief engineer with the work safety bureau in northern China’s Shanxi province, where the mine is located.
Rescuers worked to pump water from the Wangjialing coal mine. The state-owned mine about 650 kilometers southwest of Beijing was under construction and had been scheduled to start production later this year, the China Daily newspaper reported.
The accident could become one of the worst mining disasters in recent years if rescue efforts fail and would set back marked improvements in mining safety.
Liu warned that any rescue was still days away, and workers were being put on four-hour shifts to make sure they got enough rest.
“This is not something that can be achieved in one or two days,” Liu said. “(Rescuers) must be prepared to work at least seven days and seven nights.”
Some 261 workers were inside the Wangjialing mine when it flooded Sunday, and 108 escaped or were rescued, China’s State Administration of Work Safety said in a statement on its Web site early Monday.
State television said the workers were trapped in nine different places in the mine, which was flooded with up to 140,000 cubic meters of water.
At the mine, located at the end of a long winding mountain road, rescue workers strapped metal pipes and other parts of a pump onto a metal trolley and pushed it along rail tracks into the entrance, where it was lowered into the shaft.
About 30 people, many of them miners, stood quietly behind the police cordon watching the rescuers work.
Fan Leisheng, one of the miners who escaped, described the sudden rush of water that tore through the mine.
“It looked like a tidal wave, and I was so scared,” Fan told China Central Television. “I immediately ran away and looked back to see some others hanging behind. I shouted at them to get out. It was unbelievable because I got out from 1,000 meters underground.”
The official Xinhua News Agency reported that President Hu Jintao ordered local authorities to “spare no effort” in saving the trapped workers.
Officials have yet to declare the cause of the accident, but experts said it was likely that workers broke into the old shafts or pits of derelict mines that had filled with water.
TITLE: John Paul’s Miracle Comes Under Scrutiny
AUTHOR: By Nicole Winfield
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY — The Vatican this week marks the fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s death amid some doubts that the miracle needed for his saint-making cause will stand up to scrutiny and questions about his record combating pedophile priests.
The inexplicable cure of a young French nun from Parkinson’s disease had initially seemed like the perfect case for a miracle as the Vatican fast-tracked John Paul’s beatification. The nun, who suffered from the same disease that ravaged John Paul for years, had prayed to him for relief and one morning two months after John Paul died, woke up completely, inexplicably cured.
But from the beginning, Simon-Pierre’s mysterious cure seemed difficult for the Vatican to certify as a miracle. According to the Vatican’s own rules, the medically inexplicable cure must be instantaneous, complete, and lasting.
While the nun’s cure was by all indications instantaneous and complete, some would argue the world will have to wait her entire lifetime to determine whether it was lasting, in case the symptoms return.
New questions were raised in recent weeks, after a Polish newspaper reported that doubts had been cast about whether Simon-Pierre had Parkinson’s to begin with. The Rzeczpospolita daily, one of Poland’s most respected and widely read newspapers, suggested that Simon-Pierre instead may have suffered from another neurological disease which has smilier symptoms as Parkinson’s but which can be cured.
Without citing sources, it said the Vatican had called in new experts to examine the case.
Responding to the report, the emeritus head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, suggested that what may have happened was that a doctor, who is asked in a preliminary phase by the Congregation to advise whether it’s worth sending the case onto the fuller Vatican-appointed medical board, may have expressed some doubts.
“It could be that one of the two medical consultants perhaps had some doubts,” he told reporters last week. “And this, unfortunately, leaked out. But we cannot confuse one thing with another.”
“So it’s wrong to say the doctors haven’t approved the miracle,” he said. “It’s absurd because the doctors of the medical consultation board haven’t pronounced themselves.”
That said, he acknowledged that the doubts would require further investigation. In such cases, he said, the Congregation would ask more doctors to come in and offer an opinion.
The postulator who is spearheading John Paul’s cause, Monsignor Slawomir Oder, has declined to comment on the reports, citing the Vatican rule for secrecy in the handling of the case.
Beatification is the first step toward possible sainthood. The Vatican must confirm one miracle has occurred due to the intercession of John Paul before he can be beatified. A second miracle is needed for him to be declared a saint.
Saraiva Martins was also asked how the Vatican could be certain that the cure is lasting, when a disease like Parkinson’s is something that most commonly occurs late in life. For a woman who suffered from it in her 40s, how could the Vatican be certain she won’t get it again?
The cardinal acknowledged the difficulty of the case, and hinted that waiting might be necessary. “It depends on the nature of the illness,” he said. “For some illnesses, it’s clear: it’s totally cured. Some others return. That’s why we need to wait.”
TITLE: Prominent Iraqi Politicians Fail To Win Seats
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD – Several prominent Iraqi politicians — long considered untouchable in the political arena — have failed to make it into parliament following the country’s March 7 elections.
The names of candidates elected for the 325-member parliament were published in Iraqi newspapers on Monday.
Those left out included Ali al-Lami, from a Shiite religious alliance, who led a government vetting panel that banned about 450 candidates from running, mostly Sunnis.
Unpopular Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obeidi was also voted out.
Another candidate to miss out was Adnan Pachachi, from top vote getter Iraqiya’s list. Pachachi, in his 80s, rarely attended parliament sessions in the past.
Iraqi police say a pair of car bombs in the holy city of Karbala killed at least four people and wounded 22, with the second blast detonating near the provincial governor’s home.